Sermon preached on Sunday, April 28, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our Sunday morning service based on 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 6-7.

Take your Bible and open it, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. This is perhaps the greatest single passage on comfort anywhere in the Bible.

Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-7.

Comfort is what is being addressed in our text - comfort that comes in the midst of affliction. This is what is in the heart of the Apostle as he launches this letter to the Corinthians.

He talks about his afflictions here in chapter 1.
He describes his pain and persecution in 4:8-12.
He talks about his hardships in 6:4-5.
He talks about his humiliating persecutions in 7:5-6.
He talks about his sufferings again in 11:23ff.
He talks about it again in 12.

All throughout this letter Paul is letting us feel the ache that is in his heart over the various trials and troubles that afflicted him.

He holds nothing back, not so you would feel pity for the man, but that you would know that he wears the true badge of apostleship.

He is the real deal. He is genuinely a servant of God. All along, the words of our Lord being brought to the foreground -

John 15:18 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.
20 ... `A slave is not greater than his master.´ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you...

This is what sets Paul apart from the other self-appointed false teachers that had infiltrated the church at Corinth and had begun a mutiny against him.

You might recall their plan was to discredit Paul - tear him down. They attacked him with slanderous lies, accusing him of all kinds of sins, everything from immorality to embezzlement.
This is what caused Paul to write the third letter to the Corinthians that was the "severe letter" which Titus delivers.

Titus has now come back and reported great news to Paul that the majority of the people have responded with repentance.

They still stand with Paul and love him still - "zeal" for Paul (cf. 7:7) and he is rejoicing in his heart.

He is boiling over with thankfulness and joy in his heart and 2 Corinthians is his letter in which he expresses that.

But Paul knows that there is still a minority who are still "chomping at the bit" to overthrow the Apostle and still eager to tear up that church.

Apparently one of the assaults on Paul was that he was being punished for sin. "God is punishing Paul for his sins. That is why he suffers so much. That is why he is persecuted so much."

In the same way Eliphaz the Temanite said of Job´s sufferings. He believed Job was suffering because of his sin (2:11; 4:1-5:27; 15:1-35; 22:1-30; 42:7-9).

Yet we read in Job 1:22 -

22 Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.

Paul´s response on the other hand was personal -

"God is coming to me, but not to punish me, but to comfort me. He is working out His good plan in my life - a plan that includes encouraging others in their afflictions; a plan that includes comforting others. You may be attacking me and you may be accusing me of sin and the judgment of God, but I want you to know all the while that you are doing this, God is comforting me."

What better person to hear "Reminders to the Afflicted" than the Apostle Paul who endured afflictions on every side - "conflicts without, fears within" (2 Cor 7:5).

In this passage Paul will give us clear-cut reminders which will help us in our afflictions.