As daylight fades earlier each evening, familiar rooms become harder to navigate—and life can darken just as predictably. In 2 Corinthians 1:7–11, Paul refuses to minimize an affliction so crushing that he despaired of life itself. His words confront the question that surfaces when relief does not come: where can hope rest when personal strength is gone?
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Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. If you notice, I’m a little bit in the dark. Now during the summer months, I can record and be with you, and the natural daylight will be enough light to light up the camera. Cameras are a little more sensitive than our eyes, but you get to about this point in the year, and it starts to be that if there isn’t actual lighting for the filming, it’s going to look, well, like this. It’s going to be a little bit dark.
But that doesn’t just matter for being together on this livestream. It matters for all kinds of things we do, right? We notice the difference in the season, and so we go from the bright summer days, where it goes late into the evening bright, to times where it’s dark relatively early. You go outside to find something, and you stumble around in the dark when just a few weeks earlier, it was still light out. And you know what? I can tell you with absolute certainty that come a month from now, this time, it won’t just be sort of dark like we are together right now. It will be very dark because it keeps getting earlier and earlier. That’s an inevitability out of the year. As we get towards the end of the year, it is going to be darker.
So too, and this is what Paul’s going to tell the Corinthians tonight, it’s going to get darker at times in our lives. There will be those dark moments, and we hear a lot of people trying to preach and say you’re not going to deal with that as long as you have enough faith. And Paul doesn’t say that because God doesn’t say that. He says, no, I can tell you. I can look at the forecast. And not a forecast, it’s actual mechanical prediction, right? You can say it will get darker. It’s going to get darker outside. We are going to face those dark times. But there’s hope.
Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you are here with me tonight. Would you please give us a like or a share? You see those buttons there? Would you hit them right now so that someone else who needs to know, even if they’re in one of those dark moments and they feel like their situation is as dark as my situation right here is right now, or maybe even darker, can’t really see it all because it’s just pitch black. Whatever it might be, that this is not surprising. And there’s hope in the middle.
We’re going to turn to those next few verses of 2nd Corinthians 1 tonight as Paul writes up to these messed-up people, the hope of a God who very much is not messed up. And as we come to that, would you please pray with me? Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for this evening and thank you for your Word. Would you help us to see your Word and have it applied to our hearts that we feel confident because of it? Lord, your Word is good. It’s true. And it’s true even when it feels dark and overwhelming. Lord, would you help us that we would see your Word, that we would react to your Word, and that we would feel hope in your Word. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Let’s go ahead and turn. We’re going to go starting in verse 7 tonight, picking right up from where we were last week. Here’s what we read: “Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we, the spirit of life itself, we will suffer.”
Paul and Timothy, as they were doing their missionary journey, what did they do? They suffered. Paul isn’t trying to hide that, right? It would seem kind of impressive if you’re writing to people that know that the church is being persecuted and you’re trying to establish your apostolic credentials. “Yeah, I’m really an apostle, unlike some of those others that are saying all kinds of horrible things about me. No, we wander around the Empire. People try to harm us, and you know what? We never suffer.” That’d be really impressive, but what does Paul say? Look again: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers.”
Not unaware. Paul isn’t trying to hide it. He isn’t trying to pretend everything’s going smoothly. No, Paul says it really is dark, just like right now. As dark as we’re here together. It’s dark.
Last week, we saw Paul said a lot about suffering. We talked about that, that in that suffering, what happens? Well, in the suffering, we actually get to experience Jesus, because as we go through suffering, we know that Jesus has gone through suffering alongside us and for us. And he’s experienced the things of this world, not because he needed to, but because he loves us. And so, when we’re experiencing the things that he, too, has experienced, we’re reminded, one, that he loves us enough to go through it for us, and two, that he understands. And that’s really, really important for us to hold on to.
And that’s important for us to hold on to, whether we’re doing the right thing and suffering comes to us because we’re doing the right thing, or, as sometimes is the case, we’ve created self-inflicted suffering. A lot of what the Corinthians are going through is self-inflicted suffering. They’re doing the wrong thing, and they’re making it tough on themselves. And they’ve made it tough on themselves in the past. Go back to 1st Corinthians and the things going on between 1st and 2nd Corinthians. A lot going on, and a lot of it’s self-induced.
So, we’re going to experience both kinds of suffering: our just natural suffering, doing what is right, just suffering in general in life, and then suffering where we bring it on ourselves. And it doesn’t really matter, in some sense, which one. We know what it’s like to suffer.
Now, true, you could say, Jesus doesn’t understand what it is to bring self-induced suffering upon himself where he does something wrong and suffers for it. And yet, he does know what it is like to actually choose a path that brings suffering, just for a different reason. Well, we bring suffering upon ourselves when we do the wrong thing. Jesus did the right thing to the extent that he suffered for us because he chose to. He knew it. So, even there, there’s an understanding, only that we’re the reason that Jesus suffered. Because we think, why am I suffering? What do we do with that? We process that.
I think it’s helpful, all that in the background, to hear what Paul says as he goes on, though. Because Paul doesn’t say, Jesus went through suffering, we went through suffering, let’s rejoice in God, it’s all good. No, what does Paul say? It was bad. It’s okay to say that it’s bad. Suffering is bad.
Look again here: “For we were so utterly burdened, beyond our strength, that we despaired of life itself.” Paul is going through this and he doesn’t think, “Ah, I know God has it all under control, it’s going to be great.” He knows ultimately God has it under control. But how does he feel in the moment? He feels like he is despairing of life itself.
And sometimes that’s translated that they had something like a death sentence and people have tried to interpret that, well maybe Paul was sentenced for some kind of crime, whether it was preaching the gospel or causing a riot because people were angry he was preaching the gospel, something like that. It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and Paul doesn’t tell us here. The key thing is it felt inescapable. It was a striking sort of suffering. Not, yeah, I know you guys are suffering over in Corinth. You know what, the other day, the other day I went to the market, and they didn’t have my favorite cut of meat, and I was really sad. Yeah, I know suffering. No, Paul went through suffering, all caps, complete suffering, painful suffering.
It’s not that Paul had never suffered before. By this point, Paul was well seasoned in suffering. He was used to the times where he was walking around and it was like this room right now where, yeah, the season is encroaching and it is now darker. So it wasn’t that he was shocked there was suffering. It’s just the suffering was so oppressive. So, so oppressive.
The question is, well, what do we do in that? Why did Paul despair? Because we often don’t know what to do in that. I’ve shared before how I’m really bad at charging things and keeping batteries and things, and you may have noticed I have something around my neck here. I have a handy-dandy two-headed flashlight. This thing’s great. You can wrap it around your neck, you can wrap it around a shelf or something else you’re working on, and you have all this light as long as you remember to actually put batteries on a regular basis.
I’ve been meaning to put fresh batteries in this for, oh, several years now. I go and reach for it, and then I have to figure out, well, which one actually will still turn on? Because, yeah, this one, battery’s bad. Let’s see about the other side. Do we have some light here? Let’s see. Ah, there’s some light right there. There we are. I have a little light there. There’s a little light of mine. But I only have one, and I don’t even know how long this one would stay on. I’m going to turn it back off here, and we’ll just stay in the dark because I keep forgetting to put new batteries in.
So, I only have half the light. This could potentially be shining and I don’t even know how long that this one is going to keep going for. This is, oh, there. Was that it? That might have been, oh, there it goes again. Sort of, kind of, for a little while. If only I would remember. It’s self-inflicted.
But nonetheless, if I’m walking around and it’s this dark and I’m trying to do something careful, or if it’s even darker and I don’t know where I’m at, I’m going to stub my toe. I’m not going to be able to complete it. And it’s all something that, even though in theory I could do it, you know what? I’m going to go hang this back up after Steadfast tonight, and I bet if you ask me in a week it’s still not going to have new batteries in it because I will forget again until I need it, and then I’ll think, oh, if only I’d charged it.
And a lot of times those self-inflicted times of darkness we’re in are like that. We could have put new batteries in but we didn’t. Or we didn’t realize they went bad, right? A lot of times you put batteries in, we don’t use a flashlight for a while, and then it just doesn’t work. And you reach for it in the dark, and now you can’t find your, even if you have a box of batteries someplace, because it’s just so dark. We realize I can’t quite do this. And I certainly can’t bring light myself, right? I can’t just say, light! And this room lights back up how it should be. No, I need external light to come in.
And that’s exactly what we need in life, too. I can’t bring that light. And even the light that I try to bring, you know what? I mess it up.
But God turns on the light. He’s not like a flashlight where I say, I wonder if this is gonna turn on this time. Ah, there it did. It’s just mostly, is it back up? There it is. It’s cooperating for the moment. May or may not. God does bring light. Not necessarily in the situation in the way we want to, right?
Paul doesn’t say, and immediately as we despaired and we cried out to the Lord, everything was great. There was no more suffering. He doesn’t say that. But you know what? The flashlight we need often doesn’t completely illuminate the room. It illuminates what we need to see. That’s what God does. He illuminates what we need to see in the moment.
And we might wonder, is God going to turn on the light? But here is what we don’t need to wonder. We don’t need to wonder that. In Christ, God will turn on the light that we need when we need it. So Paul says, we go on to verse 8: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raised us from the dead. He delivered us from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us.”
Take a look at that. I just want to back up for a moment. Make sure you see this. “He delivered us from deadly peril, and he will deliver us.” But then if we go back, why? Because it leads us to rely on Him, God who raises from the dead.
Back to this: “He delivered us from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope. Listen to this again: And he will deliver us again. You must also help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
We will find the strength. We’ll find the reliable and not unreliable light that we need. See, this is not reliable. It comes, it rings at the wrong time. We will find the light we actually need when we come, when we come to our God.
You know the thing with a phone? It goes off right now in the middle of Steadfast, and what do we find in there? Well, if we’re in the dark, we can’t even maybe find the phone. We end up stubbing our toes more. But God’s call, God’s call rings at the right moment, in the right place, at exactly the right time. He delivers us.
Now, God doesn’t just deliver us once. We’re told He delivered us, and He will deliver us. Paul says that twice. It’s very clear. Paul isn’t speaking just sort of generally. He said, it’s coming. This will happen. That’s how he phrases it, because he wants us to know that that deliverance is still coming. We won’t miss God’s call. We won’t stumble in the dark and not be able to pick up the phone. God’s call is there, and for all who call on Him, all who believe in Jesus, it’s going to happen.
For the Corinthians, as messed up as they are, if they have true reliance on God, if that’s where their hope actually is, however messed up they are, God is going to deliver them, and He will provide the light exactly when they need it, where they need it. That’s what He did for Paul. That’s what He will do for Paul, and that’s what He does and will do for us.
He’s always, as it says in Psalm 119:105, a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I think that’s actually a very apt Psalm for what we’re talking about because it doesn’t say, and He lights up the night as if it were day in this moment. That’s some day. There will be no night. But no, He provides light for my feet so I don’t stumble. And if we’re following Him, we might seemingly be stumbling, but as long as we have Him, we won’t genuinely stumble.
Even if, as Paul describes, we felt in such danger, in such trouble, that it felt like death itself. Because it wasn’t an actual death sentence, necessarily, but we get it. There’s a lot of times we’re not facing an actual death sentence. Most of us probably have never experienced that whatsoever, and yet it feels like it. But in that, we look to our God. He provides that light so our feet won’t stumble.
One commentator referring to this section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians said it’s a lot like what we see, we talked about this a few weeks ago, with Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Because in that moment, did it feel dark for Abraham? Yes. As he cried out to God and surely said, God, what do you… we’re not told about the whole conversation, but I’m sure he said, God, what do you mean? Do you really mean this? And even if he wasn’t saying it out loud, I bet in his head, the whole time going up the mountain, God, what are you asking me to do? This doesn’t make sense. It’s painful.
And he couldn’t explain it.
But he knew the Lord.
And so in that dark, what does he find? He doesn’t stumble. There’s light in his feet. Of course, God doesn’t have him sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham continues to fulfill his promise.
Paul didn’t die in that moment. He did eventually, but only after he completed his calling. And even then, death didn’t get the final word. And that’s the point.
We often think that God bringing light into the dark situation is lighting up the room as it is right now.
Might be waiting. When’s this room that Tim’s in going to light up? It’s not going to light up during this message, because you know what? When we’re in the dark, it often doesn’t light up.
But do we see God shining the light on our feet in that dark? It’s hard. I wish I could say I always do. The answer is I don’t. It’s hard. But God shines that light, and He shines it to do something as well.
This is not fruitless. When we’re in this pain, it’s not fruitless.
That’s so important for us to hold on to, I think. I think it’s what keeps Paul from despairing entirely in that moment when he was so despairing of his situation.
Notice what he says here. He calls on the Corinthians to pray. He’s already said that God’s faithful, that God’s the one who delivers us from death. Why does he need the Corinthians to pray? Well, he tells us, so there could be more thanksgiving. That’s what God continues to call us to do.
What happens when we pray? When we pray and God answers those prayers, it’s not just for us, but yeah, it speaks to us. It reminds us of that light on our feet, but it also speaks to those people who see us praying. When people see us praying and God delivers, it sends a powerful message.
What Paul’s saying is, Corinthians, as you pray for me, and I continue to do this mission, even though so much seems broken, you know what’s going to happen? People are going to see me and see me following the Lord and see you following the Lord, and someday when I’m back with you, they’re going to see me there and see the answer to your prayers, and you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to give thanksgiving to the Lord because they see that the God of this universe actually hears prayer.
It goes back to what we talked about last night with Jeremiah 31:10. After all the darkness that Israel was going to face in the exile, here is the key, 31:10: “Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away. Say, He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.”
The time will come when that alarm goes off—Alexa, stop the timer. That alarm will go off—Alexa, stop the timer. And sometimes it feels like our prayers are not being answered, our cries are not being answered. And when it’s our own technology, you know what? It doesn’t always work. When I cry out, it doesn’t always work. And then we relate that to God. Because you know what? When that speaker doesn’t answer a timer request that I make or puts it at the wrong time or what have you, you kind of think, well, nothing seems to work. But God does. And unlike when the speaker doesn’t answer, and I know that means it’s not going to do it, when God seems silent and He leaves us in the dark and the room is still dark, you know what? It doesn’t mean He’s not here with us right now.
Look how He’s continuing to be with us, even in the dark. Right there with us tonight. He paints something beautiful in that dark as He brings His light, sometimes in tiny little places, there’s still so much dark, but He brings that tiny little place. He gives us hope.
A young graduate student by the name of Regina years ago, back actually the week after the London 2012 Olympics, went back to school in England and went to that school’s observatory where they have a telescope to see the stars. And she was an art student, so she wasn’t doing scientific study of the stars, but she was interested in the artistic value of them, and she decided to create a pinhole camera.
If you know what a pinhole camera is, it’s the lowest tech kind of camera you can create. You put some kind of medium that can be exposed inside something dark and have, well, a pinhole. She took a can, punctured the hole in it, and let that light focus on it, and slowly exposed the film. It’s not going to create super sharp, high-resolution pictures, but it can do all kinds of interesting things, and it harkens back to a simpler time in photography.
Anyway, she wanted to see what would happen if she exposed, over a period of time, a set of pictures of the stars. And so she put it there, and she had some failures where the photographic paper crinkled up or different things. But she put this one out a week after the 2012 Olympics and forgot about it. And it wasn’t until the director of the observatory, David Campbell, noticed it in 2020, that’s eight years later, and thought, hmm, this is interesting, and apparently realized what it was and decided to see what he could make of it.
Was there an actual picture had been recorded? Well, the answer is yes. Take a look. That stunning picture there, see those streaks of light? That’s the sun moving across the sky day after day, and the different heights are the different seasons, the times where it’s low because it’s closer to winter and it’s darker outside and the sun is lower, the times that it’s higher. That’s the summer and the height of the sun. And you see that day after day, year after year, and it’s not often apparent, right? When it’s getting dark outside, it’s December and it gets dark really early, we don’t think, boy, the sun’s painting a beautiful picture today, do we?
Take a look at what was recorded there. Eight years. Quite possibly, it’s thought, the longest exposed photo in history. It records the passage of time, the beautiful picture of light being painted, that was being painted in part because it’s dark a lot of the time.
Think about that long, long, beautiful exposure, wrought by time, by, in some sense, pain. And what God’s calling us to do is be pinhole cameras to this world. We’re in the dark, but we’re praying, and the people around us are praying, and we keep focused on the light that God gives us.
Just keep following me, even in the dark. I know it’s dark. It’s not surprising that it’s dark. I’ve told you in my Word over and over, it’s dark. And we hear that, and we respond, and we see, thus, His Word lighting our feet, even as we stumble in the dark. And He keeps us from ultimately stumbling. Keeps us from falling down, and He picks us up when we do stumble.
He’s painting a picture. And if that picture had gone for a day, or only a day-time, never, not that longer period of time, people wouldn’t have thought anything of it, wouldn’t have been anything of note. But what Paul’s saying to the Corinthians is that suffering you’re going through, the suffering I’m going through, if you keep focused on the Lord and you testify to Him in the darkness, guess what? People will see it. It will leave an exposure. It will leave something worth seeing, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
The longest exposure ever is beautiful, but the exposure of God being with His people from age to age, the SON, sun never setting, being with us forever, something so much more beautiful. It’s not about—it isn’t going to be hard. If someone decides, I’m going to go take a pinhole camera picture. Well, it’ll be easy, right? No, it’s going to be hard to produce something of value in it. It might take time and patience and effort and redoing it when it doesn’t work right. It’s not that it’s not going to be hard, but the message here that Paul’s telling the Corinthians and also telling us is it’s going to be beautiful. If you believe in Jesus, it’s going to be beautiful. It’s not going to always feel like it.
We have an opportunity in the hardness to say, God, how can this testify to your beauty, to your grace? Because here’s the thing we know. There is something that can bring more people to give thanksgiving to God as they see us turn to Him and trust Him in the darkness, because He’s etching a beautiful story, far more beautiful than that light was etched across that film. He’s etching it for you, and He’s etching it for me.
What He’s calling us to do is to have confidence in Him. Paul said to the Corinthians, I have confidence in you, even though I know you’re going through this, even though you’re all messed up. And that’s the message that God tells each and every one of us: I have confidence in you because I am your strength. Not because you’re so strong that you’re not messed up, but because your God is faithful. He’s there. He has a story for you and for me.
Would you pray with me, please? God, we do pray that you would help us to be faithful and to believe in how you’re painting that beautiful light picture, even when it feels dark. And we look at our own efforts, and the flashlights of life remain dead. Remind us that there’s something better. It’s not the sort of thing that we do by our own effort, by our own remembering it, by our own doing it, but rather our own experiencing what you are doing. Help us to hold on to that.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Hope this has been an encouragement to you tonight. If it has, shine some light for somebody else. We can’t light up everything by ourselves, but you know what? When we point to God’s light, someone who needs to see light does.
And so would you please do that? Hit that like button. Hit that share button. Personally invite somebody to listen to this with you and talk about how God meets us in dark places. Because He really does.
If there’s any way I can be encouraging you, praying for you in your own dark place or just in life in general, feel free to shoot me a text. Shoot us, the prayer team, a text. You can do that at 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. Or you can do it in the comments below. 833-356-4032.
I just made it really dark by showing the logo instead. But you can now see that phone number. It’ll pop up on screen for you. 833-356-4032.
Also, please do join us. Being together helps because we often can’t see the light and sometimes we just need someone else to help steady us a little and say, here’s where God’s light is. And so please do not just reach out in the texting line or the comments, but also would you please reach out by coming.
Come into our service online. Come in person. We can encourage each other, and that makes all the difference.
Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. See you again very soon.
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