“Broken but Believing” (2nd Corinthians 4:8-10) Sunday, November 9, 2025 8am Worship Service Pastor, R. D. Bernard

“Broken but Believing” (2nd Corinthians 4:8-10)

If you’re going to make it to Heaven, there must be a place deep within where Christ truly lives (2nd Corinthians 4:10-11; 13:5). Because life has a way of stripping away everything we once thought we couldn’t live without: our reputations and self-worth, our possessions, and our friends and loved ones (Job 14:1; Romans 8:22-23; 1st Peter 5:9).

Early in life, we are in the “acquiring mode.” When we are in this mode, there is the all too human tendency to confuse life and its enjoyment with these “things.” As we age, these very things and their ultimate loss bring confusion and uncertainty, not only about the nature of life, but about our faith as well.

If there is a place deep in your heart where Christ dwells, this paradox or tension will have to be overcome. This is the dis-ease (or uncertainty) par excellence that is inherent in modern spiritual life. It causes us to ask questions, even if we don’t ask them audibly.

Questions such as: “Do I continue to believe when things definitely don’t go my way?” “Do I continue to trust God, even though my trust has gotten me nothing but trouble?” “How can brokenness and belief coexist in the same life?”

Each of us has asked ourselves these things, especially when we face the hard decisions that come with age and responsibility. How does one’s faith navigate seasons of brokenness?

The supreme challenge of sincere belief as you age, is continuing to believe, even in seasons of brokenness; times in which God requires you to give the things up that you once thought made you “you” (Job 13:15).

Here, from the quill and ink of the Apostle Paul, we find some spiritual gems written in a letter to a church of new Christians, ones who had not yet matured enough to understand what it means to be broken and yet still believing.

Paul understood what it meant to be broken but still believing. He wrote in our text: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

That’s not just poetry, or some first century rhetorical device, that’s a man who has been broken but still believes. Consider the following three points.

1. Salvation is everything.

a. This is the point that Paul drives home in his letters to this group of believers (2nd Corinthians 3:5; 4:5-7; 5:17-21; 8:9).

b. Only those who are truly saved can endure through seasons of brokenness (Matthew 24:13; Mark 13:13; 2nd Timothy 2:12).

c. Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 4:1 that he can believe despite his brokenness because of what Christ has done (see also verse 16).

i. The ESV reads in part that it is because of “the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.”

ii. Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians 2:17 that he is not motivated by money.

1. In salvation, we seek God first, and He will then supply everything else we need (Matthew 6:33; Philippians 4:19).
2. Many have left Christ over money (1st Timothy 6:9-10; Matthew 6:19-21, 24).
3. iii. Paul also talked about how his salvation means more to him than his public reputation (Galatians 1:10).
4. He had counted all loss to follow Christ (Philippians 3:7-8).
5. This is likely the reason why most who were called to salvation in Corinth were former nobodies anyway (1st Corinthians 1:26-29).

2. The saved life will break us.

a. What Paul describes as being “troubled on every side,” “perplexed,” “persecuted” and “cast down” was not his life before Christ, it was his life because of Christ.

b. To have Christ in your heart does not mean that everyone is going to love you. It means the opposite (James 4:4).

c. At this point in human history, all that we previously associated with contentment and enjoyment came from the one Paul called “the god of this world” (2nd Corinthians 4:4).

d. What’s buried deepest in hearts must come out so that the light of Christ can shine through us (2nd Corinthians 4:6).

e. When you trust Christ, Satan will use everything in his power to break you, and he will be successful at times (John 10:10; 2nd Corinthians 12:7).

i. Paul calls us “earthen vessels” or in the ESV “jars of clay” in 2nd Corinthians 4:7.

ii. Clay is described in the Bible as brittle, fragile, and transitory (Isaiah 64:8; Job 10:9; Lamentations 4:2).

3. Christ is seen through your cracks.

a. Paul, when telling his story, had indeed been struck down many times. He gave a comprehensive list to the church in 2nd Corinthians 11:23-28. But he reminds them that he was not destroyed. It is paradox.

b. In 2nd Corinthians 4:16 Paul writes in the ESV that it is the “outer self is wasting away” (the things I used to value) but the “inner self is being renewed day by day” (what I am becoming).

c. In 2nd Corinthians 4:17 (ESV), Paul concludes by writing that what we are going through and have gone through is “light” and “momentary” not to be compared to the “eternal weight of glory” for which we are being prepared.

“Christ First, Christ Only, Christ Always”