When things feel overwhelming, you reach for comfort food—a buttery potato, a square of chocolate—knowing none of it will fix the job or the diagnosis. In 2 Corinthians 1:3–6, Paul calls God “the God of all comfort” while placing that comfort squarely in the midst of affliction, not beyond it. When God does not remove the pain, could comfort be arriving in a form you did not expect?
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Two words for you: comfort food. If I say those two words, what do you think of? Would you go ahead and throw that in the comments? I’d like to hear what your choice for comfort food is. If you know me, you already know what my answer is. It is, of course, the potato. What’s more comforting than a potato? It could be a baked potato, nice French fries, it could be hash browns. There are so many wonderful possibilities, but if you need comfort, a nice, warm, delicious, buttery, maybe cheesy potato—oh, I mean, how do you get better than that? Some tater tots, so many different options.
But comfort food, we call it comfort food because if things are stressful, things are uncertain, we feel overwhelmed, what do we find in that comfort food? We eat it and it just makes us feel better because it takes us back to a happier time, or just in that moment, we love that food and it’s just so unassuming and yet wonderful. It just seems to take an edge off of whatever is wrong.
Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you are here with me as we go into week two of our series in 2 Corinthians chapter one. If you would, please do hit that like and share button, do it right now. Stop what you’re doing and hit that button and invite someone else to think about the comfort we find from our God. Because tonight we’re going to talk about comfort.
And I think if we’re going to talk about comfort, the reason I bring up comfort food is that we mean different things at different times by comfort. Here’s the thing I know about comfort food, and maybe someone wrote in fried chicken, maybe someone wrote potato because you’re sensible like me and you know that I mean potatoes—what could be more comforting? But fried chicken next to it, yeah, all comfort food, right? Maybe you wrote something entirely different. Here’s something I would bet though: most of the things that you wrote down for comfort food, they remind you of times past. They are not the most exotic things that you even enjoy eating probably. They’re probably the things you’ve been eating since you were a kid that you’ve always enjoyed. That’s usually what we mean by comfort food. And so it reminds us of something. And that’s what we call comfort food. It doesn’t actually erase whatever it was that we felt like we needed comfort because of.
Put down chocolate. Chocolate cures a variety of ills. We see all those studies talking about how maybe dark chocolate actually is healthy for us. But at the same time, you bite into that piece of chocolate, you don’t expect whatever is going on at your job to go away. Whatever health scare you’re having, unless it’s something directly addressed by those studies, which are long term, they’re not going to change what’s going on this week, right? It’s not going to do that, not going to fix your job, not going to fix your health, not going to fix whatever other struggles you might have. We understand that, and yet we call it comfort.
And yet when we talk about God and His comfort, we say, well, God, why haven’t you fixed this situation? I thought you were the God of comfort. As we go into the next part of chapter 1 of 2 Corinthians, Paul is going to help us to think about what is the biblical idea of comfort? Because it’s a lot more, actually ironically, like comfort food than what we often expect. That’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t comfort us. It just means that often we miss Him comforting us because we’re so focused on what we think God should be doing, rather than what He actually is doing.
Let’s pray that we can see what He’s doing in our lives, how He’s offering comfort to us. Then we’ll dig right in. Let’s pray.
Lord, we do pray that you would help us to understand how you are working comfort into our lives. That when we face difficulty, that we wouldn’t think that means you don’t care to comfort us. Lord, would you help us to understand? Would you help us to respond? And in that, Lord, help us to live in your love and to be agents of comfort in this world. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Well, let’s go ahead and dig into verse 3, picking right back up from where we were last week. Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
One thing I mentioned about comfort food: I would imagine there may be something more exotic that you’ve acquired a taste for that you look forward to, but it’s probably not the thing that you go for when you go for comfort food, right? That fried chicken and baked potato or maybe mashed potatoes or that chocolate is often just nice and gentle and pleasant.
But the ingredients Paul’s talking about here don’t sound much like comfort. They sound at best exotic and really worse, right? It’s not some international flair added to our food to have affliction. Affliction actually sounds like the opposite of comfort. It’s sort of like saying, I need some comfort food and then getting one of those infamously hot hot peppers—the kind that they have to put warnings on and have you sign an agreement before you can get it because it might actually injure you. I like spicy food an awful lot, but there’s a point, I don’t want the skin on my tongue to peel off. I want some level of reason to even that spice, and I can take a fair amount of spice. I like habaneros, I like ghost pepper in moderation in something; I don’t just eat, obviously, a raw ghost pepper. But affliction, it sounds like Paul’s saying God’s going to comfort us by giving us the hottest pepper he can find and making our tongues boil in the heat. What’s going on here?
That was a little different than what we think of by that word. And it sounds different than even what we see throughout scripture where we’re told that God is the one who comforts. What are we told in the Old Testament? He’s the consolation of Israel, that he consoles his people. And the language Paul’s using here matches the Greek translation of the Old Testament. He’s intending for people who know their Old Testament to know that this is a continuing effort from God. God has been the God of comfort and he continues to be the God of comfort. So that’s what we know about God.
And yet Paul goes into this thing about affliction, and it sounds like Paul just needs some comfort food right now. Why are you talking about something that isn’t just spicy—sometimes spicy can be comforting—but is outright painful? How is that in any way related to comfort? It’s a little confusing, isn’t it? And yet where Paul ties it is he says, you know the God who’s always been the God of comfort? That’s the one, that’s whom I’m talking about.
And so the first part is he’s saying, I want to tell you about whom it is that’s going to comfort you. And yes, these other things are true and he’s going to explain that more for us. But even in that, the first thing, the thing that roots us, the thing that secures us is the comfort coming from God. He’s the source. And really when we say we want comfort, that’s where we should start. Sometimes it’s not food you go to for comfort, but a friend or family member. And you don’t always know what that friend or family member is going to say. Sometimes that friend or family member is actually going to challenge us on something, and it doesn’t exactly feel comforting, and yet there still can be a comfort in knowing that it’s safe to have that conversation, that it’s helpful feedback and not someone looking to get an edge on us.
That’s a little bit more in line with what we’re hearing. There could be things God’s going to ask us to do that don’t feel comforting. But the primary thing, the primary thing is to know that we are in our God and because we are in our God, in his care, guess what? We actually do receive his comfort. We’re safe. Even when we wish he had closed the door of pain and it’s still open.
I was thinking back, we had the 25th anniversary of 9-11 this past Friday and there were all the usual remembrances tracing back to that and you relive parts of it. And then I found my mind wandering to something that happened right after. Remember if you are old enough to remember this, you remember that right afterwards churches got a lot busier. And every once in a while we refer back to that. That moment in time where all kinds of good comforting things happened. Republicans and Democrats lined up in front of the Capitol and sang together. And then many of them went to church together. And many of us who weren’t politicians, guess what we did? We went to church together too. Even if some of us didn’t go, right? We saw that. But while those who went to church every week, we kept going. There were those who didn’t, who came, who then started to drift off again.
I found myself thinking back to that time and at first sort of wistfully just wishing it hadn’t been where that drift off occurred. But also thinking, well, why was it? Why would it be that if you show up at church and you’re wanting comfort, you show up at church, you encounter the God of the universe who loves you, and then you drift back off? And I think it’s that challenging second part of what Paul’s talking about here.
Because why did a lot of people go to church? Because they wanted to know that God was going to say, I’m going to take away everything that’s worrying you right now. There won’t be any more fear of terrorism. There won’t be any challenges that seem to be upending our world at the moment. And sure, if we are properly looking at scripture, we can say that will be true. One day God will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more of that stuff. But if you went to church hoping to hear it was all going to be solved right then and there, well, no preacher actually sticking to the word of God could say that.
And I would imagine a good number of people, they came for a while, they said it’s comforting to, you know, I remember as a kid singing this song or the way the church service operated or it feels good to be with other people who are confused and hurting right now. But then a few weeks later, it’s, well, my life still feels upended. Maybe I’m going to get laid off because the economy’s gone wild with the ramifications of 9-11, all these things, and it doesn’t feel very comforting anymore. I think I’ll just go back to what I used to do. Because it doesn’t seem like God’s actually fixing it. It was the right idea to go to get that comfort. But if the goal was that comfort equals everything’s going to be better right now, it’s sorely disappointing. Like biting into that potato that’s supposed to be comforting and finding out it’s actually rotten inside.
But God is the ultimate comfort food. He’s the provider of everything, including comfort food. The best comfort food we ever eat is a gift from God. And like comfort food, it’s about reminding us that he’s with us in the affliction, in the challenges of the moment, looking forward to the day when it passes, not that it’s all gone. Maybe part of the reason we find that comfort food so comforting is it reminds us of times that were better, that we have every reason to expect will return again. And so when we’re eating it, it says, okay, this is a really hard time, and no, eating this potato is not going to erase that. But it isn’t always like this. That might be part of why we find it so comforting. That’s exactly what God’s saying to us, only with a lot more force and a mission in the midst of it.
That’s what we see when we come to verse six. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings we suffer. Paul says, we’ve been through it too. You’re not alone in this. That first part of showing up after 9-11: oh, I’m not alone in this. I’m not alone being scared and uncertain and feeling like the world’s been turned upside down. There’s all these other people that feel that way too.
But the key thing is, it’s not only that either. It’s not just, oh, we get to be in a support group now. Because of what Paul said before, we’re sharing in Jesus’ afflictions. It’s not just other human beings that have gone through this. Yes, Jesus is fully man, but he’s also fully God. God is the source of comfort and also the one who’s experienced affliction himself.
Now, what kind of afflictions are the Corinthians experiencing? There’s debate on that. Some people think there’s something really severe going on. There’s big conflicts or opposition from the non-Christians in the society. Maybe that’s part of the reason why the Corinthians keep going off the rails as they’re trying to find a way to respond to that. But quite frankly, it could just be everyday affliction. Life can be hard. We know that, right? We don’t have to have a special wave of persecution to know that a lot of times it’s just difficult.
I know for so many of you who are with me tonight going through this passage, you’re facing affliction, challenging, painful things. And the Corinthians were going through that kind of stuff too, right? Life is hard. And so it could be that there’s not any special thing going on here. It’s just special to the individual because he or she’s going through it. It’s difficult. It’s not that that means the so-called special affliction isn’t happening as well. For example, we know the Philippians were going through actual persecution, but we don’t need to escalate it to that level and say, well, God comforts those who go through really bad persecution, right? Jesus understands that because he was persecuted. But Jesus understands what it’s like to have a friend die. Jesus understands what it’s like to have the people around you just being grumpy. Jesus understands what it’s like when you’re trying to get something done and it just isn’t working because everyone around you just will not cooperate with it. He knows that.
And he also knows taking on the sin of the world. I’ve talked to a client at work, and that client was really upset with my work or with the company’s work. I’ve been anywhere from there all the way to the entire world hates me and wants to kill me, which none of us actually experience, but anywhere in that spectrum, Jesus has experienced it too. That’s a key part of this. Every time someone opposes you or me because we’re actually standing properly for Jesus—not that we brought it on ourselves, but we actually are doing the righteous thing—and that we face opposition. And sometimes that’s that part where we kind of want to walk away, and maybe some of the people after 9-11, that’s why they did, right? Because, oh, you’re becoming one of those weird religious people. Maybe I won’t be, because it seems hard.
Every time that happens and you feel like someone’s opposing you for your faith, you’re actually opposing Jesus, and he feels it right with you. Take a look at Acts 9, verse 4: “And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This is Jesus talking to the apostle Paul before his conversion. Paul answers, “Who are you, Lord?” And he, that is Jesus, said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Now note here, whom is it that Paul’s apparently persecuting? He’s going around from town to town and seeing to the persecution, the execution—he just had Stephen executed—the execution of followers of Jesus. He’s not putting Jesus to death when Jesus already been put to death, triumphed over death, but he’s also ascended into heaven. So Paul isn’t chasing after Jesus himself, trying to persecute him, and Jesus on the run trying to get away from Paul. It’s not that. Rather, Jesus says he’s being persecuted. Why? Because Paul is persecuting the body of Christ. And Jesus is so constantly with us that when we face opposition, he faces opposition.
Again, if we’re actually following him and we bring it on ourselves and we’re just obnoxious and not very Christ-like, yeah, that’s us. That’s us bringing on our own problem. But when we’re following him and we face that pain and we think, why Lord? He says, I’m right here with you. I’m experiencing it too. And yeah, when we mess up and we bring it on ourselves, I’m right there with you for that as well.
I took on that sin that you’ve just committed. I’ve experienced the consequences of it, even though I didn’t actually commit it. So through all of it, we find that Jesus is with us. And in fact then, because of that, when we face affliction and we realize that Jesus is with us, we’re actually right in the midst of Jesus’ sacrifice. Not that he’s being sacrificed over and over again, but we’re right in the heart of what Jesus did on the cross. We’re experiencing it. In some way, we’re actually getting a taste of what he experienced. And if we look at it rightly, and this is the hard part, we actually understand a little bit more about what he did for us.
That’s what Paul’s talking about here. He, as he faces affliction, is reminded of the affliction Jesus faced. And then, as the Corinthians face affliction, they’re reminded of what Paul was willing to face for them. And why was Paul willing to face it? Because Jesus faced it for him. And Jesus faced it for them. And so, as we pass down things and we go through difficult things to help other people too, it comes to that second part, that mission. We’re not just facing affliction to face affliction.
Take a look at Philippians chapter 1, verse 29: “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.”
The Philippians were on a mission. Every Christian is on a mission. That mission will include opposition. Until the end of time, when sin is vanquished totally, and we find ourselves in the presence of our God, we live in a broken world. We face affliction. The question is, what do we do when we face affliction? Do we take up a martyr complex and complain to everyone about how much we’re afflicted by things? That’s awfully tempting, and we’re all going to do that at times. Or do we have the opportunity to actually meet Jesus in that and say, Jesus, I know what I’m facing still is nothing like what you faced. You faced so much more. But I don’t even want to face this. How amazing is it that you faced what you faced for me?
Do we find that comfort in there? Do we dig into that comfort food meal of Jesus’ love that we’re reminded, yes, it’s messed up now. But Jesus loves me so much that as I take on this potato of grace, there’s a future hope. There’s something better. There really is something better. And do we share that with others?
When we do act like the world, and we’re going to, and this is not to beat any of us up because we’re going to get to that point where we just feel overwhelmed and we’re going to say it and sometimes not act as righteously as we should, it doesn’t excuse that, simply how it is. But do we also point to Jesus clearly enough in that that people say, yeah, I’d like to know a little bit more about what that person’s facing?
You think about, speaking of 9-11 and the day before that, many people were talking last week, they’re reminiscing not only about the terrorist attacks but also the assassination last year of Charlie Kirk. And if there’s one moment that we as Christians should hold on to from all that, I say it’s the moment at the memorial service where his widow, against everything that a human being wants to do, that she was forgiving her husband’s killer. And so many people got really angry at her. How could you do that? Did you not care about your husband? Did that not matter to you?
But I thought about it again. Some people reminisced about it this past week, and I thought about that, and that’s exactly what we should be doing as we face affliction. And Erica Kirk is a sinful human being like we all are. She’s not going to get everything right. We don’t need to say, well, just be like Erica. No, be like Jesus who said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. But here’s the thing. We sinful people, when we actually follow Jesus in that and we realize we’re not just those who have the comfort and affliction that Jesus has gone through it, but now we can comfort others as they go through affliction. We can have those moments. It may not be on national or international TV, but it’s just as profound to the people around us where we don’t say what it seems like we should say. We don’t do what it seems like we should. We are agents of forgiveness and of comfort, even to people that don’t seem like they should be comforted.
That’s exactly what Paul’s doing here. We’re going to see more as we go through 2 Corinthians 1. These people, Paul should be ripping them apart. He shouldn’t be comforting them, it seems like, but he wants them to experience comfort because he knows that he should be ripped apart too. But Jesus forgives him and he’s going to be an agent of forgiveness to the people whom he’s writing. We agents of forgiveness. Are we restoring even when it seems like that shouldn’t be?
Why does Jesus let us go through this? It’s because he has a mission for us.
This might seem like an odd question to ask in the middle of this, but let me ask you for a moment. How do you like your shoes? Shoes do all kinds of things. They kind of can keep us from having affliction, right? If they’re good, if they fit well, they may keep our feet from being sore, or at least help if our feet are sore. One of the things that we take for granted, but really when I think about it, maybe we shouldn’t, is how we can go and if we know a certain brand at least, we know we can go get a certain size shoe, and it’s going to fit, right? Because there’s standard sizes and you can go buy two pairs of shoes and if they were manufactured properly, they’ll fit, even if they’re two separate shoes, but they have that same size on them. The better the quality of the manufacturing, the more likely that’s true. Have you ever wondered how that happened?
Well, if you’re ever thankful for that, you can thank a man named Stammering Tom. Tom Blanchard lived in the 19th century and was an inventor who came up with all kinds of interesting inventions during that early industrial revolution. One of the things he came up with was a duplicating lathe that could duplicate the main body of a gun for an armament company and it could trace what had already been shaped and match it on another unit so that you didn’t have to have someone individually shaping it. It could do that over and over again and produce more. But then he realized this had a lot of different ways it could be used. It could be used, for example, to make the spindles on pianos so you could produce more pianos that the legs could just be replicated over and over again without someone hand carving it over and over. And then, ultimately, perhaps one of the things we experienced most that came from this, you could use a pattern of a standard shoe size and replicate the sole of a shoe over and over and over again. The shoe didn’t need to be custom made to your foot. You could have a set of sizes and know that when you got that size, if it was sized to your foot, whatever size you happened to be, you could get another shoe and it would fit.
How does that work? Well, you have one that’s right and the other’s being shaped by that machine to be right too.
When we think about affliction, persecution, pain, suffering, the things we go through, we’re being shaped to be like Jesus. And he’s taking his Spirit, and using his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, he’s shaping us as a duplicating leg does. Shaping us more and more to be like him. And you know what happens when he does that? He can take someone whose feet are aching and become a soul to that person. And we’re not the original model, that’s Jesus. But someone can put their foot on the shoe that’s shaped to their size and feel comfort. And you say, well, where did that come from? Well, it came from the original, the perfect one, Jesus.
We actually came into this world not to bride a soul for our feet, but to save our souls. Here’s the challenge that we have. Are we willing to go through the duplicating leg and to be shaped by pain and affliction in a way that we look more like Jesus so that we’re comforted in the midst of that because we realize we’re becoming more like the Savior? And as we do, that we comfort others because people can look at what we’re going through and the times that we offer forgiveness when we shouldn’t, it seems like, and so on and so forth. And they realize why. It’s not because we’re so great and we’re perfectly custom fit, but because we’ve been shaped by the one who actually is.
That was the challenge for everyone who showed up after 9-11. And some of you, maybe even here tonight, came on 9-11 to church. And you kept coming. You said, Jesus shaped me. And over the last 25 years, what have you been doing? You’ve been an instrument that God is shaping other people with. Although maybe you’re the person that came and then left again. It doesn’t mean you can’t be shaped by Jesus today, because all of us can. And all of us then can take the aching feet of others in the world and provide comfort to them.
Not to be an end in ourselves for them, but just as the apostle Paul comforted the Corinthians to do so by saying, why am I doing this? How am I doing this? It’s because of Jesus. He’s with us and he comforts us. And our very lives can be a perfect sacrifice for him. Exactly what he said in Romans chapter 12: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
What does God ask of us? Allow me to shape you. Sacrifice your life. Not go and end your life today. Not that kind of sacrifice. But a living sacrifice. A sacrifice where we go through sometimes the painful things, but we go through them, and we point to others and we point to their pain. We say, I see your pain because I’m experiencing it too. But let me now point you to Jesus, who not only experiences it, but he is that comfort food. He can make it right and he will make it right. And yes, we’re on a mission now. We’re in that pain. But there’s a solution to that pain. It won’t stay.
What does it mean to say that God is the God of comfort? It doesn’t mean he’ll take away all the bad times. But it means that he’ll meet us in those bad times. That he knows them and has experienced them himself. He’s going to use us in those bad times to help other people out of their own bad times and into the hope of the future.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, we do pray that you’d help us. Would you comfort us where we are? That if we’re not sure how to make sense of things, that you just remind us that you were right there with us. That your Son, our Savior, actually came into this world and experienced the brokenness of it himself. And now, even now, is with us. That your Spirit, he dwells in us. That we don’t face this alone.
And would you help us to be those who, whether we’re on an international stage and can offer forgiveness that everyone hears, or it’s the quiet forgiveness, the quiet comfort and pain that only a person or two hears, that we would do that. We would be Jesus-shaped in our lives and in our action. That in this time, we wouldn’t miss the mission that you have for us. That we wouldn’t walk away because the pain’s still here in the moment, but rather, we’d see how you’re using that to be with us and to comfort others.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Well, I do hope that this was an encouragement to you today. And if it was, would you give it a like and a share? So many people need to hear, how does the God of the universe actually comfort us when it seems like things stay broken? And this doesn’t solve everything, obviously. But I think if we do understand how he is the ultimate comfort food, how he really does meet us in the problem, and in that uses us so we have a purpose in it, and that then ultimately one day he will wipe every tear away, that’s what we need to hear more than some false promise.
And so, would you help to get that word out? I’m so grateful when you hit that like and that share button. It really is there. And if there’s ever anything that you share online, what could be better than comfort from God’s word? Would you hit it right now?
I do hope to see you on Sunday for our continued Gone Fishing series. And in the meantime, anytime, if you need prayer, if you have any questions, you can always text us at our texting line, 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032, right on screen. Or use the comments below. It’s great to hear from you, great to pray with you. Have a blessed week. See you again very soon.
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