Our text for this morning's sermon is taken from 2 Corinthians chapter 1. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, we'll begin reading at verse 12 and continue through chapter 2, verse 4. I chose the text because this was the next significant portion of a study that I am thinking about in 2 Corinthians. Studying my way, in other words, through 2 Corinthians, I've come to this section, one that I hope will be a great encouragement to you. Having announced to the congregation the good news of God's comfort for us in Christ, Paul now turns his attention in verse 12 to a kind of defense of why he changed his plans to visit Corinth. And so we read here a kind of defense of Paul's message and ministry. Before we read it, however, let's ask God to bless it. Our Father in heaven, we do thank you for giving to us, written in black and white, preserved over the centuries, your will for us, your people. And we pray to your Father that we might not merely read it like the newspaper or hear it like the daily news but that your spirit would come and enliven your word that it would be powerful for our lives. Dear God, without your work this word will fall short. So, do not let it return void this morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. 2 Corinthians 1, beginning with verse 12. Now Paul says that this is our boast. Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially in our relations with you and the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom, but according to God's grace. For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus. Because I was confident of this, I planned to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. I planned to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and then to have you send me on my way to Judea. When I planned this, did I do it lightly? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say yes, yes, and no, no? But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not yes and no, but in Him it has always been yes. For no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. And so through Him the Amen is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth, not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm. So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you. For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? I wrote as I did, so that when I came I should not be distressed by those who ought to make me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you that you would all share my joy. For I wrote I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you, but to let you know the depth of my love for you. We read here in these last words about the depth of love, or, in the ESV, the abundant love that Paul has for the church. James Denny, a pastor of the early 1900s, reflecting on this text, described it this way, the heart of a pastor. The heart of a pastor, a complex union of pain, confidence, and joy. We get a sense of this from verse 4 of chapter 2 when he writes that I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears. Not to grieve you, but to let you know the depth of love that I have for you. Though we might, as James Denny did and others like him, see here the pastor's heart, we can also rightly see here an expression of the Christian heart. For Paul, didn't Paul write both as a pastor and as a believer in Christ, a Christian? And so we see here not only the heart of a pastor, but we see in our text also the Christian heart. We see here its pain, its confidence, its joy. We see the pain of brokenness, the confidence of Christ, and the greater joy of knowing Christ. This morning we'll consider those three things together, its pain, its confidence, and its joy. When thinking of the pain, thinking first of all of the pain, we might immediately in our minds go to the physical, the physical pain that Paul or Christians experience. And indeed, he does describe much of that physical pain, or some of it anyway, in chapter 1, verse 8, when he describes some of the afflictions that he experienced in his travels. Yet our text is not dealing specifically with physical pain. It's dealing more with that emotional pain, which we might describe as a broken heart. We see it in chapter 2, verse 1. Again in verse 2. Again in verse 3. The grief or broken heartedness a Christian experiences when dealing with sin. It was the problem of sin that was confronting Paul and the congregation. It's the problem of sin that led Paul to defend his message and his ministry. And what's ironic is that as we draw back from the details of our text, in order to piece together the story, we find that this pain is the result of what was once a new and vibrant relationship. Acts chapter 18 describes that new relationship for us. When Paul, as he's traveling through Asia Minor, he comes to Corinth and there he meets Aquila and Priscilla and others who received the gospel of Christ eagerly and gladly. In fact, we read in verse 8 that there were many of the Corinthians who heard and believed the Gospel, they were baptized, and a new work of Christ had begun there in their lives. A new covenant community was established by this missionary work of Paul. Verse 11 says that he stayed with them a year and six months, investing in them, sharing together as Christian communities do The grace of God that we enjoy through faith in Christ. Sweet fellowship around the shared doctrines of grace. But things changed. Paul left them and it seems that along with Paul's leaving, there was left within the Corinthian community a kind of vacuum regarding the gospel and the teachings of Christ. For this community, once so unified under the ministry of Paul and his preaching and teaching of the gospel, we read in his letter of 1 Corinthians, it seems rather quickly found themselves plagued by division. Their doctrine was confused. We read that their worship and their lives likewise were corrupted. If you've read through the book of 1 Corinthians lately, you'll find it. It's not a very joyful book. It's a painful book. But notice that the manner and method that Paul uses in dealing with this sin, notice what it looks like as he describes it in our text of 2 Corinthians. We see that he deals with sin by describing, rebuking, and correcting the believers with the law of God. We might in general say that their sin is addressed through discipline. And that for us wouldn't be all that surprising. We would expect that when faced with sin, either within or without and around us, that the church would respond with discipline. But what is surprising is how Paul in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 4, describes the manner of his discipline. The method was church discipline. Listen how he describes the manner of this discipline in verse 4. For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears. What do we see here? Does Paul, does he question their faith? Does he exercise the authority given to him as a king might exercise his authority to a servant? Or does he command them like a general might command the troops beneath him? Or maybe we find Paul taunting his brothers and sisters in Christ much like, well, maybe a brother might taunt his younger sister. We don't find that in these words, do we? We find here Paul's manner in dealing with sin in terms of a broken heart described as affliction, anguish, many tears. This is the expression of a Christian heart when dealing with sin. The method of Paul is joined together with this method, with this manner, which we might call a broken heart. A heart that is filled with grief because of the corruption of those he loves. James Denny, the pastor I mentioned a little while ago, listened to how he reflects upon this text and applies it to us. It's a few sentences worthy of your hearing. There are few things which test men and show what spirit they are of more than this. To denounce sin and proclaim its folly is the easiest and cheapest thing in the world to do. Yet even so, it seems to be taken for granted as the natural and praiseworthy mode of dealing with evil. People assail the faults of the community or even of their brethren in the church with violence, with temper, or maybe with the tone of one injured of his innocence. They think that when they do so, they are doing God's service. But surely we should have learned by this time that nothing could be so unlike God, so unfaithful and preposterous as a testimony for Him. For God Himself overcomes evil with good. Christ vanquishes the sin of the world by taking the burden of it on Himself. And if we wish to have part in the same work, there is only the same manner and method open to us. Those are humbling words. How often might we find ourselves in the first group? Finding it far easier and favorable to merely denounce sin and proclaim its folly rather than following the example of God for us in Christ. As God employs good against evil, as the resurrected Christ joins with us in order to carry and deal with the burden of sin, So the Christian, like God, like Christ, like His minister Paul, deals with sin. Or as the husband, whose wife has been mistreated by thugs. The husband cares for that wife and deals with her pain. so the Christian deals with sin. But there's good news in the midst of this painful reality of the Christian heart. There's more to the heart than the brokenness of pain. There's hope. And what we find in our text is that this hope is not merely a fleeting hope, but we could describe it just as accurately as confidence. A broken-hearted boldness becomes the character of the Christian life. Confidence that is grounded in and grows out of the Gospel. In chapter 1, verse 20, Paul brings us right there. He writes, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our Amen to God for His glory. You see, it's because Jesus Christ that we can be confident there is a greater purpose in our lives than a pain-filled, broken heart. the movement of God's Gospel by the power of His Spirit doesn't merely leave us as broken people. It moves to a greater purpose and a greater end which we can be confident of because of Christ. Paul was confident of this. While defending his message and his ministry throughout chapter 1, He appeals to a number of truths. However, when he comes to the heart of his defense and the heart of his argument, he brings us to the faithfulness of God, the fulfillment of his promises in Jesus Christ, the good news of his kingdom. As elsewhere, Paul, as he does for other purposes, Paul could have certainly here appealed to creation. He could have appealed to Moses or to Sinai or to the prophets. But what we find here is that he is arguing to uphold the Christian faith. He brings us to the faithfulness of God to fulfill His promises in Christ. He brings us to God. And he has us rest there. In the promises, yes and amen in Christ. So that whatever may be happening around us or within us, at home or in the workplace, at school or in our recreation, we can have confidence that there is a greater purpose in our lives than pain and brokenness. If we lose sight of this greater purposes, if we lose sight of what Christ guarantees for us, if we lose sight that there is more for us yet to come than what we already know and enjoy, or grieve and regret, what will our lives become if we lose sight, if we remove our seat within the promises of God? Well, Paul brings us, Paul brings us beyond the broken-hearted boldness and he brings us to the greater purpose that we have. Because of Christ, there is a greater purpose in life than brokenness. And that greater purpose is greater joy in Christ. The pain of a broken heart is not the end. It's not the chief characteristic of piety. It's one of the means God uses to give us greater joy in Christ. Church discipline is not an end. It's one of the means God uses to give us greater joy in Christ. You see, the Christian has a broken-hearted boldness that is in pursuit of greater joy. In Christ. I choose those words carefully because I believe it's what Paul shows us here relative to his own heart. There is a broken-hearted, painful boldness that is in pursuit of greater joy, greater satisfaction than we know today in Jesus Christ. Inspired and empowered by the Gospel. In 2 Corinthians 1, verse 15, Paul explains that he wanted to have a quick return to the congregation of Corinth so that as we read in the NIV, they might have a second benefit, that they would benefit twice. Or, as we might better translate and slightly paraphrase, Paul wanted to go back to them so that they would enjoy to gather once again the shared faith they have in Christ and the grace of God that He distributes to all of His people. But Paul didn't come. The church was devastated. But you said you were going to come, Paul. But he didn't come. And he describes in chapter 1, verse 23, why. He said it was to spare you. Chapter 2, verse 1. I didn't want to make another painful visit to you. Paul didn't want to cause the congregation of Corinth greater pain. He already wrote 1 Corinthians. They were already dealing with their pain. And he says, I don't want to make another visit and cause you greater pain. For, he says in verse 24, we work with you for your joy. Greater joy for the believer in Christ is the greater purpose of our lives. And friends, if we lose sight of the Gospel and this greater purpose for the Christian life, we will undermine our vitality and quite possibly we will undermine our faith if we lose sight of this greater joy. John Updike, author, not long ago, reflected on the beautiful white churches of New England. He wrote, Joy and aspiration have shaped these churches, but a certain melancholy may fill them. Puritanism faded into Unitarianism and thence to Stoic agnosticism. These gallant old shells hold more memories than promises. brothers and sisters, if our hearts are not broken by the sins of life, if our hearts are not emboldened and inspired by the promises of God for us in Christ, we too will leave nothing more than a memory for the generations to come. If our eyes are not lifted beyond the horizon we currently see to the glory that is yet to come and even now breaking into our lives through the ministry and proclamation of the gospel, we too will be nothing more than a shallow shell and distant memory. But if, by God's grace, we can grow together more into those who have broken-hearted boldness, in pursuit of greater joy in Christ, God will act. He will transform the shells of our lives into a vibrant witness that will endure forever. just as those who've gone before us, just as those the preacher of Hebrews describes in chapter 11, just as those who, like us, long for the greater glory of God among the nations. And you see, because all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ, we can be confident that God is faithful and He will do it. Let us be praying He does. Let us be praying and passionate to see that He does for His glory and our good as His church. Amen. O Father, may we not be unaffected by sin. May we not deal lightly with sin and neither let us deal coarsely and callously with the sin in us and around us. Rather, dear God, may we be broken by the reality of its presence and may we be emboldened to know that all the promises are yes and amen in Christ. Because of this, dear Father, there's more to come. And grant that that greater joy Paul longed to have with the congregation of Corinth would be indeed enjoyed more and more by us as sin is fought against, as the promises are embraced, and as the good news of an eternal hope of glory is proclaimed in our midst. Dear Father, work we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you.