Today we are going to start a new series, a series that I have entitled Hope for the Hurting. Maybe you are thinking this morning, “Pastor James, that sounds wonderful, but right now, I’m not hurting, and I have plenty of hope.” Well, that’s great, because this message is for you, too. You see, all of us at some time or another are going to be hurt. All of us, at one point, will lose hope. It happened to the best of men and women in the faith; even some of the prophets in the Bible had lost hope at time; some of them were hurt and grieved because of personal loses in their lives, and at sometime in our life, it will happen to you.
It will also help you to handle those who currently are hurting. It doesn’t take me long to think of families and friends that I know are hurting this morning, and need this message of encouragement. I’m sure that many of you can think of people right off of the top of your heads as well. Unfortunately, I’m not able to speak to them this morning—but you are. You can use God’s Words of encouragement and comfort to speak with them and help them deal with their pain. The Bible says in Galatians 6:2—“2Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
But truth be told, there are probably many here this morning dealing with unresolved hurt. Pain in their lives over something that is still lingering to this very day. Maybe it is the loss of a loved one. Maybe a broken relationship. Maybe a failure in the workplace, or a moral failure in your life. Maybe it is a recent hurt, or a distant hurt, but one thing is certain—unless hurts are dealt with, they will haunt you for the rest of your life. When we let the hurt linger, we open the door to resentment—resentment toward others, ourselves, even God. And instead of dealing with the hurt immediately, we hide it away, and never deal with it, and live lives of regret, resentment, and remorse. I’m sure that there is no one here like that this morning.
The problem comes when we try and resolve hurts in ways other than God intended. Some people try and resolve their hurts in things. Sometimes it’s alcohol, sometimes it’s cigarettes, sometimes it’s drugs. Sometimes it is in shopping—you know, go on a shopping binge. Sometimes, it’s a cleaning binge. You know, you get so mad, you’ve just gotta clean something. Or maybe it’s a drive, or a golf outing, or all kinds of different things. But when you try and substitute your own method of resolving hurts, you will never resolve them, only postpone them.
Well, I want to give you hope. That is exactly what this series is about—hope for the hurting. Maybe you don’t know if you can ever cope with the pain. I’m here to tell you that you never have to deal with it by yourself. In fact, you were never meant to. The passage that we are going to look at today and the next two weeks will show us how to deal with the hurts in our lives—how God wants us to deal with the hurts.
The passage that we are going to look at this morning is 2 Corinthians 1, and we will look at verse 3 this morning. Just one verse, and maybe you’re thinking, “Pastor James, we just went verse by verse through Ephesians 4:18-32, and that took forever. Now you want to do the same thing here?” Absolutely. The reason why is that we often familiarize ourselves with a verse and lose the impact of it because we are familiar with it. And that is a shame, because we miss out on important truths and lose sight of potential blessings.
Turn in your Bible’s to 2 Corinthians 1, and in your pew bible, it is on page ________. I want to try something this morning; let’s read this verse together. I’ll wait while you turn there.
Speaking of waiting: It was flooding in California. As the flood waters were rising, a man was on the stoop of his house and another man in a row boat came by. The man in the row boat told the man on the stoop to get in and he’d save him. The man on the stoop said, no, he had faith in God and would wait for God to save him. The flood waters kept rising and the man had to go to the second floor of his house. A man in a motor boat came by and told the man in the house to get in because he had come to rescue him. The man in the house said no thank you. He had perfect faith in God and would wait for God to save him. The flood waters kept rising. Pretty soon they were up to the man’s roof and he got out on the roof. A helicopter then came by, lowered a rope and the pilot shouted down in the man in the house to climb up the rope because the helicopeter had come to rescue him. The man in the house wouldn’t get in. He told the pilot that he had faith in God and would wait for God to rescue him. The flood waters kept rising and the man in the house drowned. When he got to heaven, he asked God where he went wrong. He told God that he had perfect faith in God, but God had let him drown.
"What more do you want from me?" asked God. "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."
Now, if you are all there, let’s read that verse together: “3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,”
Let’s read it again, one more time: “3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,”
Now, what is Paul telling us in this verse? What comfort can we get out of this? What hope is carried in this verse? Well, it’s there, believe it or not, and sometimes hardest place to find the truth is right in front of our eyes.
To help us find the truth, let me read this verse in another version.
3All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source[1] of every mercy and the God who comforts us.
Did you catch it? Let me repeat that verse again for you this morning.
3All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source[1] of every mercy and the God who comforts us.
Let me put it to you this way in the form of a story, and maybe you’ll understand it.
Little Johnny was playing with his father’s wallet when he accidently swallowed a quarter. He went crying to him mom, choking on the quarter. They took him to a doctor, who said that the quarter was impossible to remove without surgery, they consulted a specialist who was of the same opinion. Then came a man who said he could get the money out in a jiffy. He turned little Johnny upside down and patted him with great precision on the back of neck and, sure enough, the quarter rolled out. Everyone was amazed, the father said “You must be an expert!” The man replied, “No sir I’m just a tax collector.”
Let me put it to you another way. If your car needed to be repaired, would you go to your repair man or to your pastor to get it fixed? Now I’d be flattered, but I wouldn’t know what in the world was wrong with your car, let alone fix it. You would go to the repairman, wouldn’t you?
Here’s the hope for the hurting this morning: when you are hurting, and you need comfort, you need to go to the source. There’s only one source, and that is God.
He is called the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort. You could literally say that God wrote the book on compassion and comfort, because He is the creator of it.
I’m convinced that there are many people in the world who are hurting unnecessarily because they refuse to turn for the source of all compassion and comfort.
Do anyone of you remember Lamentations 3:22-24? 22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
I want you to listen to a verse that might not be familiar to you, but I want you to listen to it closely.
Micah 7
18 Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
19 You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
God doesn’t just have compassion, He designed compassion. God does just comfort us; HE IS COMFORT.
Let’s look at the ramifications of these two statements.
He designed compassion.
Compassion is:
sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help
Often times, we like to throw our own pity party. Anybody here ever do that before? Oh, woe is me. My life is a disaster. Oh, if only I would just die. And the party goes on, and we like to share it with everyone we come into contact with.
How are you today? Oh, I feel like I’m gonna die! My dog didn’t come to me this morning when I called, and I feel rotten!
You see, we are willing to go and share our problems with others (just to complain about them), but we ought to first go to God. God designed compassion (He is the father of it), and as such, when we are hurt our first thought should be to go to Him.
Psalm 86:15
But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Psalm 116:5
The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.
Hebrews 4
15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
In other words, we have a high priest in Jesus Christ who can sympathize. The next verse tells us what to do.
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
We are familiar with the verse in 1 Peter 5:7—“ 1 Peter 5
7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
There can be no one who cares any more than God, because he created it! He wrote the book, and He desires you to cast all of your anxieties, your hurts, your hang-ups—all of it on Him, because He cares for you!
Maybe you don’t believe that He’s waiting for you to do this. Listen to this verse—maybe you’ve never heard this one before, either. Isaiah 30:18
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
Not only is He the Father of all compassion, but He is the God of all comfort.
The word comfort is repeated ten times in 2 Corinthians 1:1–11 . We must not think of comfort in terms of “sympathy,” because sympathy can weaken us instead of strengthen us. God does not pat us on the head and give us a piece of candy or a toy to distract our attention from our troubles. No, He puts strength into our hearts so we can face our trials and triumph over them. Our English word comfort comes from two Latin words meaning “with strength.” The Greek word means “to come alongside and help.” It is the same word used for the Holy Spirit (“the Comforter”) in John 14–16 .
The greatest comfort you can have in life is knowing that you never face it alone. You may be in the darkest of valleys; abandoned by everyone else; nowhere else to turn, all hope lost, but you will never be alone. In fact, you will have the number one person to have on your side. Remember Psalm 23:4? Psalm 23
4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, [1]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
Who is David writing about here? GOD! God is always with us, and he will comfort us—he will come alongside and help. In fact, as God’s children, we have His Spirit, who is always with us.
The problems with our pains and hurts come when we focus on them instead of the God who can solve them. It is a proper focus that is required. God is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.
As I stated this morning, God never desired for you to walk this life alone. He intended for Him to walk it with you. That’s what life was like in the garden of Eden. Yet because of our sin, because we rejected God, we now have a hole in our life that was never meant to be there.
And when the problems come, and the pain comes, and the hurt comes, we don’t know how to deal with it. And we do our best on our own, yet we will never be fulfilled, the problems still come, the pain never disappears, and the hurt still lingers.
This morning, I don’t know where you are at, but remember the words from Isaiah 30:18
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.
Maybe you don’t know God personally this morning—it’s His desire that you come to know him, and not a minute later. If you want to know more about God, and how to have a relationship with Him, a relationship that will fill that empty void in your life, I want to talk to you today.
Maybe you do know God, yet when it comes to the hurt and pain, you still like to hold onto it. God is telling you this morning, “I want to show you compassion. I want to help you—cast all of you anxieties to me in prayer, and I will help you with them.” The Bible tells us, “6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This morning, I want you all to know—there is hope. There is hope that the hurts and the pain and the troubles of life can be resolved because of God. He is the father of compassion, and the God of all comfort.
