TD Jakes - Showing Comfort and Mercy Towards Others
I want you to go to 2nd Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 1. There, we’re going to have an honest, deep, intrinsic conversation as the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth, sharing a very transparent yet transformative moment in his life. I pray that it would be a blessing and, most of all, give comfort and strength to you. I find this passage almost at the apex of scriptures I use to understand my own struggles, adversities, and the vicissitudes of life that come against me. It has been a fortress and a great strength to me, and I’m happy to teach on it today. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, and we already know that this church is not very mature. They are filled with the gifts of the Spirit, yet they still have a great deal of carnality. They are caught betwixt and between these two different states of being.
On one hand, they’re prophesying, speaking in tongues, and operating in the gifts, but they have not yet been refined to have the order and infrastructure necessary to be adept at the gifts. They also have a propensity to be carnal, and this dichotomy of experiences makes Corinth a very good text for us to draw from because many of us today have such contradictions in our own lives. You could take out «Corinthians» and put in «contradictions» because the church at Corinth was full of contradictions. To be honest, all of us have some contradictions in our lives, areas in which we need to develop and grow. Don’t let anybody fool you into thinking they have graduated from contradictions.
There are contradictions in all our lives that keep us at the feet of Jesus, lest the mercy of God be wasted. The Bible says the mercies of God are new every morning. Why would He renew mercy that you don’t need because you’re so perfect? The truth of the matter is, you need mercy every day. You want to minimize the contradictions as much as possible, but there will still be contradictions in your life—things you struggle with, things that pull at you, and things that would desire to take you under. They are not always the sins that people want to talk about, though there are certainly those as well—sins of the flesh, lust of the flesh, lust of the pride of life—all of that is part of it, and all the things that come from those three categories are included. See, all that is in the world consists of three things: the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
That’s all there is. All these other things, like adultery, whoremongering, and lying, are subcategories under those three issues: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It may not be any of those things that the church likes to focus on; you might struggle with depression or insecurity. But everybody has a certain amount of struggle. You would not think, due to the way we esteem leaders, that the Apostle Paul would have had any such struggles, but here in the text, he expresses some interesting things. I’m going to start with the first verse, and then we’ll go down. Are you with me? Alright, he starts with salutations: «Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.»
Whenever Paul says that he is an apostle by the will of God, it serves as a sticky reminder that he did not become an apostle through the approval of the other apostles. He was not highly favored among them; they feared him, some resented him, while others revered him. He was chosen to be an apostle by the will of God, and this very introduction to the chapter sets up the context to understand that he has not enjoyed the benefit of the favor of all those he worked beside. It’s important that you understand this because some of you are so preoccupied with your haters that you never get anything done. You’re so focused on who resents you, who didn’t like you, and who didn’t support you.
Well, Paul said, «Oh, that’s nothing; I’m an apostle by the will of God,» and «Timothy, our brother"—he also acknowledges his brother Timothy, who is really his spiritual son—"unto the churches.» So he acknowledges the church of God, which is at Corinth, and all the saints that are in Achaia. «Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.» Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Oh, I love that! Blessed be God. First of all, God is fully equipped with every blessing. If you don’t understand that God is blessed, you’ll never understand how you can be blessed.
Paul makes this point almost insistent in every greeting, referring to God as being blessed. Blessed be God! He later says that He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, the things that pertain to life and godliness in Christ Jesus. He always extols God as being blessed. He doesn’t see God as impotent, powerless, insignificant, insecure, or in need of anything. He esteems God high enough that when you start esteeming God high enough, your problems will get low enough for you to see Him in a different light. Some people’s God is too small to tackle the challenge. That’s not to say God is small, but their concept of God is. He says, «Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies.»
Oh God, the Father of mercies! If you’re taking notes, you want to hone in on the fact that the blessed God is still the Father of mercies. He is full of power and authority; He is omnipotent. He is sovereign; He is absolute. He doesn’t have to meet with a board or committee; He has absolute autonomy, control, and power over our affairs. So, He could be blessed and not be merciful. He then advances in his understanding of God from talking about the blessed God and then refers to Him as the Father of mercies. That’s who you’re praying to—the Father of mercies! Every mercy ever executed, implemented, or applied in your life was fathered by Him. He is the Father of mercies. Then he advances again and states that He is the God of all comfort. The God of all comfort!
Listen, see what I’m trying to get you to understand is how Paul knows God, as that has a lot to do with how he writes about God, how he sees God, and how he understands God. He has called Him blessed, the Father of mercies, and then the God of all comfort. Look at his relationship with God, how he understands Him in his life. «Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.» First, he talks about how God comforts us so that we might emulate His comfort in the lives we touch. I teach people about mentoring and say, «If I’m mentoring you as a pastor, just go back and do ye likewise.» That’s what Jesus taught the disciples: «Do ye likewise.»
In other words, there should not be a contamination between what I gave you and what you give them. A lot of times, people who represent you don’t represent you correctly. Remember how God punished Moses for misrepresenting Him. Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land because he was angry and struck the rock, expressing an anger that was not of God. Misrepresentation happens a lot among staff. Often, you will have the right heart about a matter, but the people who represent you to others don’t share your heart, leading to misrepresentation. God shows us how to deal with that misrepresentation by removing Moses for his failure to represent Him accurately. There should be a constant flow between the way God has comforted you and how you comfort others; the way God forgives you and how you forgive others; the way God is merciful to you and how you’re merciful to others.
You don’t want that comfort or mercy to be diluted or polluted. We’ve spoken about the blessings of God, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. Then Paul says, who comforted us in all our infirmities. It’s one thing for Him to be the God of all comfort, but that doesn’t help if He doesn’t communicate comfort to me. You can be rich, but that doesn’t help if you don’t share it with me. The only way I can benefit is if you communicate the comfort. So, the God who is the God of all comfort now communicates comfort to us. But the challenge is for you to then comfort other people in the same way that God comforts you. That’s always been my challenge as a minister. I’ve never preached against another pastor or competed with them. I’m never worried about who preached before me or who will preach after me. I’m not competing against them; I’m competing against the voice within.
The voice that preaches in me is so much better than the voice that preaches out of me that it’s hard for me to walk away feeling good about my message. The voice I hear is far superior to what I communicate, and I find myself racing against the voice I hear to communicate effectively. I’m essentially teaching you a nugget right here. See, you don’t want to race against other people; you want to compete against your revelation of God within you. If God comforted you, brought you through something, was merciful to you, or blessed you, you want to be able to bless others. If He didn’t chastise you, bring up your sins, or condemn you, you shouldn’t turn around and condemn them. When you do that, you either dilute or pollute the comfort of God. The art of remaining in your station without being removed, like Moses, is to allow what you receive to flow out of you without dilution or pollution. The same way it came down, don’t dilute anything or add anything, which amounts to pollution.
Psalms 127 states, «Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the oil that falls upon the head of Aaron onto his beard and onto his skirts.» Then it concludes, «There God commanded the blessing,» referring to unity. Notice that the oil that falls upon the head is the same oil that falls upon the beard—it’s the same oil that falls upon the skirts. All you have to do is be in alignment; the oil is neither diluted nor polluted. This same thought brings to life the text: the same God that comforts you is the same way you should comfort other people.
That’s a big order, right there! It’s significant because when you say, «Can’t nobody do me like Jesus,» you should ensure that the way Jesus treated you ought to be the way you treat others. See that? You are not competing against others; you’re not responding to others based on what they did to you. You respond based on the grace, blessing, and comfort God has given you. The more perilous times you have faced, the more grace you are to produce. Do you understand what I’m saying? Is that good? The more you have experienced the comfort of God, the more that comfort needs to be duplicated and shared in your life. That’s why the Bible later says in Corinthians, «If a brother is overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself.»
The whole point in considering yourself is that the same way God restored you, you ought to be able to restore them. If people treated others the way God treated them, the world would be a better place. This is what Paul is talking аbout: emitting the same comfort you received. You release it as you received it; you give it the way it was given to you—without diluting or polluting, with no contingencies in the contract. Just straightforward, no chaser. Act like God—this is a principle of mentoring. The first time, you sit back and watch me do it. Then, you do it with me. Step two: I do it with you. Step three: I watch you do it. By the time we get to step four, I’m ready to step back. Essentially, when I mentor you, I’m teaching you to do likewise. God is merciful to you so that you might be merciful. God is comforting you so that you might comfort others. Are you getting what I’m saying?
Now, if you’ve never had to be comforted, that’s why I’m cautious of people who’ve never… You haven’t been through anything because your revelation of God is a result of your experience with Him. If you’ve had no experience with God, you have no real revelation of Him, and you’re preaching the letter of the word but missing the spirit of the word. You haven’t been a student of His mercy; you haven’t been a recipient of His grace. Therefore, you can be condescending, self-righteous, and condemning, living on an island by yourself.
However, once you have messed up, once you have gotten into trouble, once you have insecurities, and once you have burdens, it changes how you handle other people because you see yourself in the people you serve. You understand now that if you can’t relate to that, you need to get out of the ministry. You’re not ready to minister yet; you’re not prepared to do what God has called you to do until you’ve faced trouble yourself. You’re not ready to minister to people who are in trouble because you’re not going to be compassionate. You haven’t been a recipient of mercy; you haven’t been a recipient of grace; you haven’t been a recipient of comfort, and so you need to do likewise. Are you getting what I’m saying to you?