2 Corinthians 1:8-11
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost - 9 October 2016
Rev. John Derme
To whom do you go when life gets hard? Kids, I bet I you look for mom or dad. For example, when you fall and get hurt, mom and dad know how to help you feel better soon. Teenagers, you probably sometimes think that you know more than your parents do, so maybe you don't go to them quite as often as you once did. But parents can still be pretty helpful when your homework is difficult, or you need some help dealing with other people. It doesn't stop once you become an adult, though. Adults often still go to their parents for advice when they face big decisions in life. No matter how old we are, it is a blessing to get help from our parents and from others we trust.
As we get older and become adults, though, it is expected that we won't need quite so much help as we did when we were children. We are supposed to become more responsible for ourselves. You can still ask for help, of course, but you'll have to be the one who acts on the advice. Ultimately, you will have to make sure you've got your problems handled. It is good for us to learn to take care of ourselves, even if we still need help from time to time. Some people have things so under control that they never ask anybody else to help them.
Is it possible, though, that something might one day happen to you that you cannot handle by yourself? Could something happen, and not even your mom or dad or any other person can make it better? Some of you know that this is not only possible, but it actually has happened to you. It will eventually happen to all of us. To whom do we go then? Who helps when hardships happen?
St. Paul learned the answer to that question, but it took him longer to learn than you might think it should. In our Second Lesson he wrote to the Corinthian Christians about how he learned it. Paul had already gone through several hardships in his ministry that were a lot more difficult than anything you or I have ever experienced. He wrote about some of them in 1 Corinthians.
Apparently in the few months between writing 1 and 2 Corinthians, another hardship happened to Paul. He doesn't tell us what that hardship was. But since he spent most of his time between writing the two letters in the city of Ephesus, he may be talking about something that happened there. Acts chapter 19 tells us about a bad experience that Paul had in Ephesus. In that city, the people's favorite goddess was Artemis. There was a temple built to her honor, and the merchants made a lot of money selling silver statues of her. When Paul came to Ephesus, though, many people believed the truth that he preached about Jesus. He told them that man-made gods are no gods at all. People stopped buying the statues of Artemis. The silversmith and craftsmen were not happy that their business was suffering, so they started a riot and dragged off two of Paul's traveling companions. Paul was ready to go speak to the crowd, even though he knew they might kill him, but his friends stopped him. Fortunately, nobody died. But as it was happening, Paul and his friends must have figured that the crowd wasn't going to let them go.
Even though it was a terrible experience, Paul was later able to see that God worked it for his good. The event taught him and his companions that they could not rely on themselves. They could not save themselves from death. Only God could. And he delivered them. Paul learned not to rely on himself, but to rely on God alone. God had delivered him in the past, God delivered him yet again, and he realized that God would deliver him in the future, as well.
Paul's safety wasn't only good for Paul, though. It was an answer to many prayers from many people. Therefore, as Paul encouraged them, many people would now give thanks to God for his safety.
Have you learned the answer that Paul learned? Many of us would say that we have. If you have, how long did it take you to learn? As long as it took Paul? Some of us think we have learned the answer, but when the hardships actually happen, we see that we're like Paul, not learning as quickly as we should.
It is a difficult lesson for us to learn because, by nature, we think that we can rely on ourselves. And it often looks like we are right. When I was a baby, I cried for my mom when I got hurt. But now that I am big, I don't cry for anybody else's help. When I was in school I needed help solving problems in the math book or problems in dealing with other people. But now that I'm smarter, I know how to figure out all my own problems.
What we don't always realize is that, even though it looks like I am handling everything on my own, God is actually helping me. The only reason I don't cry anymore is because God has kept me from getting hurt so badly that I would need to cry. The only reason I can solve all the problems that I've faced lately is because God has given me the ability to do it and has kept the problems from being too hard to solve.
It makes us feel good about ourselves when it looks like we're handling all of the small issues in our lives. But eventually, bigger problems will come. Will I cry when I hurt, not because I fell off my bike, but because I've got a chronic disease? Will I still feel like I can figure out any problem when it's no longer in the math book, but now it is in the checkbook, and the amount in the account doesn't add up to the amount that is on the medical bills? If we rely on ourselves, when hardships far beyond our ability to endure happen, we will fail and we will realize it. We may lose everything we have – including our lives. Even worse, failing in hardships can cause us to despair of any help and lose our faith in God and lose eternal life with him.
Hardships can be dangerous when we rely on ourselves. But hardships can also be a blessing when they teach us not to rely on ourselves. When they happen, we often ask, "Why does God allow bad things?" We usually do not understand how he is going to do it, but the only reason he allows them is because he is using them for our good. One of the ways God uses hardships is to teach us to rely not on ourselves, but only on him. He is the only one who can keep small problems from becoming big hardships. And he is the only one who can deliver us when the hardships happen.
All you have to do is to take a look at the people around you and the world in which you live. You will see that, if it hasn't happened already, it is only a matter of time until hardships happen to you. When they happen, who will help? Only our God can. Paul calls him the God who raises the dead. Indeed, God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead after he died on the cross and was buried for you. If he did that, then he can save you from death, too. He cares about your body and life. He cares about your soul and eternal life. He will give you strength to face each day here. He will give you the forgiveness for all of your sins and the righteousness of Jesus that you need to be in heaven with him forever.
So don't rely on yourself. Rely on your God! But if you are not in the middle of a hardship right now, how can you know whether you are relying on him or not? Paul talks about one tool that can really help us to recognize whether our trust is in God or in ourselves. That tool is prayer. Do you pray that God will help you when hardships happen? Or do you think that you do not need to pray, because it looks like you already have everything under control? And when you make it through some kind of pressure or hardship, do you give thanks to God for delivering you, or do you forget to give thanks, because you think that you are the one who handled it?
As we've seen, the situation is only really under control if it is under God's control. And the only way you make it through hardship is if God delivers you. When we understand these truths, we will pray for ourselves and others. We will give thanks to God for taking care of us each day. And we will rely on him to deliver us in the future.
God has delivered us in the past, whether we realize it or not. God will deliver us in the future, too. Finally, he will deliver us from every hardship when he brings us to heaven. Until then, when life gets hard, there is only one to whom we can always go, no matter what the problem is. Rely on your God. He helps when hardships happen.