Years ago, when Patty and I first came to Red Deer with our newborn daughter, Andrea, the church was in its earliest beginnings. That was over 41 years ago. After witnessing the church's amazing growth over 10 years, we resigned and moved to Seattle, Washington. Three years later, we were confronted with a very agonizing and significant decision that affected not only our lives but also two congregations. I was at that time leading a new church plant in the greater Seattle area, and seeing God bring people into his kingdom. Meanwhile, the church here in Red Deer had experienced a terrible conflict and was now without a pastor. I was asked to consider returning, which created a difficult, agonizing decision. As I was studying our text today, I gained a new appreciation for why Paul left Troas and the ‘open door’ of ministry there to discover what was transpiring in Corinth.

In addressing the criticisms levelled at his apostolic ministry, particularly his boldness in correcting the Corinthians, Paul explains the nature of true Christian ministry. When I speak of ministry, I’m not just speaking of Christian leadership or ministry; I also include the idea that each of us, who are followers of Jesus, communicates God’s message to others. This includes our communication with those we lead, parent, coach, and mentor. It is also the communication we share with one another, discipling and encouraging people in their relationship with God. At times, it means not only affirming and encouraging, but also correcting those we love, as we see sinful behaviour that is destructive not only to the individual but also before God and its effects on others. One of the most difficult things to bear is the criticisms from those we love, particularly when we are being misjudged when trying to speak into their lives.

Emotional suffering and anguish can be the emotional toil of having a meaningful relationship when we are being criticized for addressing issues. It certainly was true in the life of Paul, as we see from his letter to the Corinthians. What we also discover in 2 Corinthians 2 is the conflicted emotions between two significant elements in Paul’s ministry. We see Paul’s deep desire to know what is happening in the life of the church in Corinth in response to his latest letter correcting their sinful behaviour. He is also conflicted about what to do with the amazing opportunity in Troas, as the gospel is transforming people’s lives. Obviously, one situation was far more fulfilling and joyous, while the other left him in deep anguish and concern.

We may have experienced conflicting emotions when torn between two concerns. Some of you may be bearing the weight of caring for elderly parents, while at the same time navigating through your child or children’s teen years. Paul, in defence of his absence in coming to Corinthian, explains why he addressed them from a distance and the heart behind such a strong, direct, and confronting letter, in which he called for their repentance. Paul agonized over causing them pain, but then rejoiced over their proper, godly response to correction, renewing their expression of love for him.

The context for C. S. Lewis’ book, “Mere Christianity,” was drawn from a series of wartime BBC broadcasts on the Christian faith in which he spoke on the problems of suffering, pain, and evil from 1942 to 1944. You can then imagine when, in one broadcast, Lewis spoke on the issue of forgiveness. The book was published ten years later, in 1952. During WW2, 800,000 Londoners lost their homes to the Nazi ‘Blitz’. Night after night, hundreds of planes bombed not only London but also many other cities in the UK. Later, jet-propelled rockets turned civilians and their towns into the front lines, designed to put pressure on the government to surrender.

One address that Lewis broadcast was the Christian idea of forgiveness.

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. …And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew? So do I. I wonder very much, just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death and torture. I wonder very much what I should do at that point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven.

…we might try to understand precisely what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?

…my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. …In my most clear-sighted moments, not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So, apparently, I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man, or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time, I used to think this was a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later, it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-- myself.

However much I might dislike my own cowardice, conceit, or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated those things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them [sin] in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”

If we could hate sin in us and in our world, yet still love people and ourselves, we would begin to understand the heart of God. That is the way of compassion toward others.

We should never be surprised when our good intentions are misconstrued and cast in a negative light. We can also expect that in serving others, there will come moments of misunderstanding and unwarranted criticism. In teaching a course on Nehemiah, I was reminded of this very thing. Nehemiah was confronted by those opposed to God’s purposes for His people.

When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites. One of the strategies of the opponents of God’s work is to discredit the leader. When I talk about leadership, I mean anyone God is using to direct and influence people in the right direction.

So, how do people try to discredit people? They often come to intimidate through false accusations. I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to i

ntimidate me so that I would sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. What was true of Nehemiah was also true of Paul. We find an attack upon Paul, his character, his ministry, and his message. The issue is not whether people will attack those who serve others, but how we respond to the attack. We will discover in 2 Corinthians Paul’s response to the attack he experienced. We can also learn from that response so that when we feel misunderstood, or even worse, when others are discrediting us, we can biblically address the issue.

Rick Warren, former pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Southern California, shared the tragic death of his son, Matthew and his struggle with depression that led to his ‘suicide.’ Rick related that Matthew struggled with this his entire life, even though they sought extensive treatment, counselling, and prayer over the years. He shared that he continued to believe God for a miracle and also encouraged Matthew that, even if he did not receive complete freedom, he should pray for God’s strength to manage the challenges he was facing. Despite all these efforts, Matthew ended his life after twenty years of struggle. This catapulted Rick and Kay into a ministry they never wanted, but God indeed called them into: ministering to others who are struggling with the loss of a loved one. Six months after the death of their son, Rick and Kay Warren expressed the following sentiment in an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan. “We intend to spend the rest of our lives comforting others with the same comfort God has given us. …Your deepest life message will come out of your deepest pain.”

As we begin our journey through the most autobiographical sketch of Paul's life, we discover something of the nature of the gospel, the challenges, the sorrow, and the ultimate hope that God’s gracious message brings into our lives.

In the introduction to this letter, Paul writes that he experienced his greatest pastoral challenge at Corinth. Linda Belleville, in her commentary on 2 Corinthians, explains that itinerant ministers were challenging Paul’s credentials and his authority.

“Paul’s focus on visions, revelations, and the miraculous suggests that the issue was what constituted an appropriate witness to the gospel. A mistaken emphasis on the miraculous by these so-called super-apostles resulted in a misconstrued view of Jesus as a wonderworker rather than a suffering servant, and a misrepresentation of the Spirit as a miracle empowerer rather than a guarantor of the gospel message. In so doing, they effectively put forward “a different gospel” (11:4). For Paul, the role of the miraculous was to validate, not displace, the gospel. This is clear from the recurring thought in his letters that his preaching was one of word accompanied by power, conviction and the Spirit (1 Thess 1:5; see also Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 2:4; Gal 3:5).”

In Paul’s greetings to this congregation, he appeals to three essential concepts regarding the nature of the gospel. This gospel of Jesus has the power to comfort us in the hours of darkness, where suffering and pain can at times overwhelm us.

As we come to the close of the book of James, we see that James has been speaking to believers who were experiencing ‘trials of many kinds (1:2).’ In the closing chapter, we see the abuse and exploitation of the poor by the rich. James speaks of developing an attitude of patience in their suffering by encouraging them that God will address all injustice, if not in one’s life, then at the Judgment at the end of the age. James concludes by moving to what we can do in times of trial and suffering. He challenges us to pray. It is as we pray that God brings hope, healing, and restoration to our lives. Suffering can move us to look beyond ourselves to God. The literal word that is translated here is ‘to suffer evil.’ Alec Motyer explains that suffering is a broader concept than simply sickness. “Jeremiah suffered opposition, Ezekiel bereavement, and Hosea marital breakdown.” In other words, it is any trouble we face in our lives that causes physical, emotional, and spiritual torment. Douglas Moo speaks to the attitude we need when praying and waiting for God’s outcomes. “Because the verb [for prayer] is so general in its meaning and application, no certainty about the content of the prayer that James calls for here can be attained. Perhaps James would include a petition to God to remove the trial. But James’s concern when he addresses trials elsewhere (1:2–4, 12; 5:7–11) is to encourage believers to endure suffering with the right spirit and a divine perspective on history. Presumably, then, the prayer that he encourages here is for the spiritual strength to endure the trial with a godly spirit.”

Yet we also see that when God’s people begin praying, they start experiencing spiritual growth, healing, reconciliation, and restoration. Here, in the conclusion of his letter, James gives us direction in addressing two significant areas of our lives: physical and spiritual health.

In D. A. Carson’s book, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil, he begins, “A pastor is cutting his front lawn. He looks up from his task just in time to see a heavy dump truck back out of his neighbour’s driveway—right over the neighbour’s eighteen-month-old son, who had been squatting behind the massive tires. The pastor accompanies the hysterical mother and ashen father to the hospital in the ambulance. There is no hope for the little boy; he has been crushed almost beyond recognition.

…my own mother was mugged at the age of 72. As a result, she fell and hit her head on the curb. Her family noticed mental deterioration and personality change within weeks; she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and went through all the predictable stages of that wretched disease. She died nine years later.

…And all these things represent the suffering that takes place in relatively stable societies. Add war, racism, genocide, grinding poverty, starvation.”

We can say that when sin entered the world, so did suffering, evil, and death, but this remains a set of beliefs until suffering strikes us personally. Carson pushes us to see beyond the mental aspect of truth to apply the truths we know that are consistent with a good and compassionate God.

“…in addition to holding that Christian beliefs are true and consistent, the Christian, to find comfort in them, must learn how to use them. Christian beliefs are not to be stacked in the warehouse of the mind; they are to be handled and applied to the challenges of life and discipleship. Otherwise, they are incapable of bringing comfort and stability, godliness and courage, humility and joy, holiness and faith.”

James, rather than shying away from the reality of suffering in our world, speaks to the issue.

James 1:2-4 - “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.“

What James is saying is that God uses the worst things in our lives to cultivate spiritual maturity. Yet, we find that suffering can be overwhelming. In this letter, he is speaking to believers who have been exploited by those who use their wealth and power to devastate their lives. How should we respond to evil? How are we doing to find the endurance and hope necessary in times of suffering in our lives? James calls for restraint and patience in addressing these issues. He gives several reasons for those who are suffering to be patient and to entrust their situations to God.

One of the concerns for people as they age is whether they will have enough finances in their retirement years. Financial planners all have different gauges to determine how much is enough, but maybe we are not thinking far enough about our future. How will God evaluate our financial portfolio? How will that impact our lives in eternity?

If financial planning is part of our eternal plan, perhaps we need to evaluate what we are or are not doing in this area of our lives. Are we living the kind of life that God has called us to be ready for eternity? Being generous with our time and money does affect eternal outcomes.

Charles Dickens' Christmas classic, ‘A Christmas Carol,’ is a cautionary tale about how we prioritize this world’s riches over people's needs. James challenges us regarding our priorities with finances, both in how we attain and invest them, often taking advantage of others or simply living a self-gratifying life.

James 5:1-6

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.

Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.

Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

Is this simply a warning against ungodly people? Or is this a warning against the misuse of God’s resources that He has given us? Obviously, it serves as a warning against those who oppress others, but it is also a word of encouragement to those who suffer as a result of financial inequality.

James is using a literary device known as “apostrophe’—speaking to people who are not present, for the benefit of those who are. This way, James’ listeners will know the certainty of the coming demise of their oppressors.”

James is about to call for patient endurance under repressive economic conditions, where some are benefiting at the expense of others. The analogy James makes in Chapter Five is that of a ripening harvest. Jesus’ return to judge is often spoken of metaphorically as a harvest of people. The harvest is divided between that which is of value, the righteous and those who will be judged for their sinful actions, the unrighteous.

James 5:1-6 deals with this economic oppression and serves as a warning to affluent Christians to invest in the lives of others, particularly those who are unable to care for themselves.

David Platt explains: “You might wonder why, in a book addressed to Christians, James would spend time using such harsh language toward unbelievers. The answer is that he is reminding the Christians that the justice of God is coming. This reality should enable them to be patient. With that said, it doesn’t mean these verses have no other application to Christians. James has already rebuked Christian brothers and sisters who favoured the rich over the poor, so 5:1–6 serves as both a direct rebuke to rich nonbelievers who were oppressing the poor and a subtle, indirect warning to rich believers (Christians) who were ignoring the poor. Notice that James is not necessarily condemning wealth here; instead, he focuses on the sinful use of wealth. At the same time, for those of us who are part of a culture that is extremely wealthy compared to the rest of the world, we need to examine whether we are engaged in a sinful use of the resources God has given us.”