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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday, and I want to welcome you to 2nd Corinthians in
Daily Drive Time Devotions. We are beginning a study in 2nd Corinthians this
day. As we look at 2nd Corinthians, we're going to find out together that God
wants to encourage us.

He wants to encourage us as His people and His servants. He wants us to realize
that we're not alone. I want to begin with the first couple of verses which sets
up where we're going and who Paul was talking to as he wrote this book of 2nd
Corinthians.

2nd Corinthians 1, 1 and 2 says, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will
of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God in Corinth, together with
all the saints throughout Achaia, grace and peace to you from God our Father,
and the Lord Jesus Christ. " This letter is written to Corinth and to the whole
region around, we'd call it maybe a county today of Achaia. It's written to
these people that Paul so loved because he'd spent much time with them, serving
them.

Paul first goes to Corinth, you can read about it in the book of Acts. He's just
gone to Athens and he's preached the gospel there and not many have responded.
Maybe he was discouraged because not many had responded, who knows?

And then he walked into the city of Corinth. Athens was a city of thinkers, it
was a city of philosophy, it was a city of beauty and of art. Corinth was a city
of noise, confusion.

It was a city of a lot of marketing going on. And it was a city that had a lot
of sin, evident sin in it. Corinth, in many ways, was the least of the places
where you'd think the gospel would be heard.

And yet, God sent Paul there. And the truth is, it wasn't the city where the
thinkers and philosophers responded so well. It was this city where people
struggled with the realities of everyday life and sin, where people responded to
the gospel.

Corinth was a very busy city because of where it was located. It was essentially
made for greatness by its location. It stood on a narrow, four-mile-wide isthmus
between north and south Greece.

So it was a great trading and commercial center of the north-south traffic, but
also a great commercial center of the east-west traffic. Because the southern
cape of Greece, you'd have to go around this dangerous cape by ship. And if you
walked across this four-mile-wide isthmus, it could save you a 200-mile journey
around that dangerous cape.

So you had people coming from all different directions, north, south, east,
west, and they're all colliding in Corinth. And because of that, so many people
coming through, it was a city that seemed to have everything, all the luxuries
that our world, that that world had to offer. And yet, they lacked joy.

Yet they lacked peace. Yet they lacked love. They lacked what only Jesus Christ
can give.

And in their great need, in their great lack, they turned to immorality and sin.
It was well-known in that day. In fact, the word "Corynthicize" literally meant
in that day, it was a slang term for drunken and immoral debauchery.

In the Greek plays of that day, the Corinthians were always the drunks. In
Corinth, on a hill outside of Corinth stood this foolish temple. They called the
god they worshiped their Aphrodite, but it was just an excuse for their own
selfishness.

A thousand temple prostitutes served there, some of whom, by the way, would be
set free from their bondage by the gospel of Jesus because Paul went and
preached at Corinth. And Paul comes into a city like this and he has a ministry
there that's an amazing ministry. He begins preaching in the synagogue.

He has great success there. This often happened in Paul's ministry. The people
were hungry.

But because of the great success, there came the usual jealousy and opposition.
So they threw Paul out of the synagogue, but they didn't throw him very far in
this case. Justice, who lived next door, offered his house to meet in.

In fact, one of the great stories of the church is in what happened in Corinth.
Only a few months later, Crispus, who was the synagogue leader, came to know
Jesus Christ. Here's the guy who was the leader of the synagogue that had thrown
Paul out.

He pushed Paul out of his building, but he couldn't push the message of the good
news out of his mind. And in just a few months, he comes to know Christ. This
ministry in Corinth, it was difficult at times, but it was also extremely
effective.

And as a result, Paul stayed there for quite some time and the people became
very close to his heart. He stayed in Corinth longer than any other city except
for Ephesus for 18 months. And as he stayed there and preached to the people, he
helped them to know the good news of who Christ is.

As we walked through 2 Corinthians, you realize it is 2 Corinthians, so there
was a 1 Corinthians. I'd encourage you, if you haven't done that study in drive
time devotions, to do that study first. It tells you about the struggles that
this church was having.

Paul walked through a lot of those struggles and questions with him in 1
Corinthians. And now in 2 Corinthians, he walks through a lot of their personal
relationship, how he has served them and wants to continue to serve them. This
is in many ways is the most autobiographical of all Paul's letters.

He just talks about who he is and what he's come to do. And as Paul talks about
this throughout this book, I've come to see this book as a kind of a servant
survival handbook. Paul talks about himself as a servant and how he's come to
serve the Corinthians and the struggles that he had with them or the struggles
that they had together with others.

And he talks about how God helped him to overcome those struggles, how God
helped him to survive those struggles. In fact, as we walk through this book,
we're going to see together 10 specific ways that God showed Paul how to
survive. God shows us how to survive and some principles for surviving the
realities of serving Christ.

If you think that serving Christ means everybody loves you, you're never going
to have any problems. You haven't looked at Jesus. Jesus, who was perfect, and
I'm sure not, Jesus, who never made any mistakes, and I sure make plenty of
them, Jesus wasn't loved by everyone.

Jesus had to survive a lot of things. And Paul starts it from the very beginning
as you walk through these 10 principles through the chapters. In chapter one,
the first few verses, you learn about surviving despair.

And the survival principle there is that God will comfort us so we can comfort
others. A second principle that Paul had to survive under comes in the latter
part of the first chapter and the second chapter, surviving misunderstandings,
misunderstandings of your motivations. And the survival principle we're going to
learn there is that our confidence is based on conduct that's marked by holiness
and sincerity.

Paul had to survive a third thing, had to survive the offenses of others in
chapter two. And the principle there is you have to learn how to forgive as a
servant. A fourth thing that Paul had to survive, we see in this book, is he had
to survive accusations in chapter two and three.

And the principle we're going to see there is you, in order to survive
accusations, you recognize openly that your competence comes from God. You don't
try to defend yourself, you realize God's my defender. Paul had to survive, we
see in chapters four and five, he had to survive a loss of heart.

And the survival principle there is you fix your eyes not on what is seen, but
on what is unseen. Paul had to survive a sixth thing, he had to survive everyday
life, just the routine-ness of serving. We see this in chapters six and seven.

And the principle there is you try to live so that no one will find fault with
you. A seventh thing Paul had to survive is he had to survive hurtful
relationships in chapter seven. And the principle there is you keep your heart
open, even if they close theirs.

Don't let a hurtful relationship close your heart down. That's what Satan wants.
That's what caused you to no longer be a servant.

An eighth thing that Paul had to, in this case, help others to survive is
surviving selfishness in chapters eight and nine. And this principle there is
whoever sows generously will reap generously. You just remember that principle,
to survive as a servant of God.

Number nine, Paul had to survive criticism. In chapters 10 and 11, we hear about
that. And Paul says the way to survive criticism is let him who boasts, boast in
the Lord.

And then in chapters 12 and 13, Paul talks very honestly about how he had to
survive weakness, human feelings of weakness. And the principle there is God's
power is perfected in our weakness. Now, we've just run through these 10 things
that Paul had to survive very quickly and just mentioned the principles very
briefly.

This is going to be our study these next few weeks together as we walk through 2
Corinthians. We're going to see together how God can help us to survive and
thrive as servants. As a servant of Christ, you're going to face challenges.

But as a servant of Christ, God is up to helping you to meet those challenges.
Not always the way that you would expect, but in ways that actually transform
your heart and life and the life of those around you. So as we begin this
servant survival manual, this is a good time to affirm your decision.

I'm a servant of Jesus. Paul often called himself a bond slave of Jesus Christ.
That meant a willing servant.

I'm a willing servant of Jesus because I know he loves me. Or maybe for the
first time to say, Jesus, I want to serve you with my heart and life. I don't
want to live just for myself anymore.

Let's affirm that with him right now. Our Father, we thank you that you've given
yourself for us. Jesus, we thank you that you have served us.

Not only the way that you lived and taught, but in the life that you gave on the
cross. And so we reaffirm right now, we want to serve you. We want to serve you
by loving you and responding to you.

And we want to serve you by serving the people that you've made that you love.
So show us how. And in those times when it's not easy, when there's things that
we have to survive, let your words speak to us.

And give us the strength not to be deterred by the things that we struggle with,
but instead to survive and thrive even through those things that we struggle
with. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look together at verses three to seven, and we're going
to hear about God's comfort.