2 Thessalonians 1 - A Battered Believing Church

Well, welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. It has been a couple of days since I have recorded one of these, and coming off of a good weekend, moved into our new home, and we do not have Wi-Fi there as of yet.

I am working on that process. And so I'm right here at Old Tabernacle Baptist Church, recording our first lesson from 2 Thessalonians. So we should be in this for...

Let me check my notes real quick. We're going to be in 2 Thessalonians for about six episodes, maybe five. And we did 1 Thessalonians a good ways back before we did Book 2 of Psalms.

And so we were with this little church from kind of Greece, Macedonia region. And Paul had come here. He had given the gospel.

He wasn't here for very long before he was run out of town. And he had written the Book of 1 Thessalonians in order to encourage this little fledgling church that didn't know a whole lot with what they needed to know.

And unfortunately, a lot of the things that they were going through that Paul was addressing in 1 Thessalonians, they didn't get better. A couple of the things got worse, specifically some of the persecution that they were undergoing.

And it was causing some kind of doubts and questions in their minds. And as we'll see in a few days in Chapter 2, there were actually some people saying, oh, Paul said that the day of the Lord, like God's final judgment day, is already here.

And so, like, you know, Jesus already, like, returned, he came like a thief in the night, and we're just kind of doomed.

And so, there was justifiably some panic, as people are undergoing persecution as a religious minority from the Greeks and the Romans, and possibly even some of the Jews, as we would look at how those in that region had treated Paul and Silas when

they had come through preaching the gospel. So, all of these things are happening. They're worried. There are even some people that are struggling with a very intentional lack of solid, like, good work ethic, and all sorts of things are going on.

And so, Paul and Silas and Timothy, they're writing to this church again to help them know in the middle of really hard times, in the middle of getting just brutalized by this world, what is our hope?

Even as Paul had addressed in 1 Thessalonians 5, hey, the day of the Lord isn't going to come like a thief in the night to overtake you because you're not from the world.

Instead, like, it's going to be clear, you know, you're going to have a trumpet, you're going to instantly be with the Lord. And that's what that circumstance is going to look like. You don't have to worry about if God forgot about you.

He knows you. And so here, this book is a great encouragement to people to say, God's not abandoned you, he's not forgotten you. And the hard times that you go through, it's a way for you to participate in God's kingdom.

Like, Jesus was made the king of everything. You know, he was crowned with that crown of thorns in his suffering and death and crucifixion before his resurrection.

And so when we're going through some persecution, when we're going through a crucifixion of our own, a la Jesus, you know, if any of you don't take up his cross and follow me, he can't be my disciple, that kind of thought, that we become a little bit

like Jesus. We're participating in the kind of Jesus suffering when we undergo persecution and rejection. So don't view it as God abandoning you. View it as you participating in his kingdom.

So let's do this. Let's start off. And we will, Lord willing, get through chapter one today.

And if we don't, then that'll be all right. But I think if we got about 11, 12 minutes, we'll have plenty of time for this. Okay.

Paul, Silvanus or Silas, and Timothy. To the Church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They are those dual blessings.

The grace, charis, that the Greek-speaking people would say to each other, and peace or shalom that the Hebrew-speaking people would say to each other. And there again, that emphasis of we don't just serve God, but we serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we'll see the spirit some more as we look through the rest of the book. Verse number three. We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters.

And rightly so, since your faith is flourishing and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing. He says you've got that faith and love just abounding. It's getting bigger and bigger.

And so we ought to be thankful for you. Verse number four. Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God's churches, about your perseverance and faith and all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.

They say when we're going and we're talking to Philippi, we're talking to Corinth, we're talking to Athens, we're telling everybody, hey, those people in Thessalonica, like they've got a real faith that even though they're getting brutalized, even

though they're going through it just like we were when we were in Thessalonica, that it's still with them, like they're sticking around and they've got an endurance belief and faith in Jesus that is stronger than circumstances. So they say, hey,

we're talking about you to everybody. And then they say this in verse number five, it is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom for which also, for which you also are suffering, since it is just

for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted along with us. Okay, all right. There's a long Paul sentence.

Those of you that have maybe interacted with people talking about Paul's sentence lengths in Greek before, he has super long run on sentences. What he's saying here is God's justice is proved in the fact that right now you are being mistreated.

And because God is good and he is just, he is going to, if you will, he's going to take vengeance on those that are currently mistreating you.

That can be a very foreign thought to those of us that certainly enjoy God's grace and his love and his forgiveness. And we are used to just grace God. But God is not just graceful.

He is also all righteous, all just. And he will punish evil. And so maybe you today, you're going through something and someone's talking ill about you.

Someone is intentionally like misreading, misunderstanding you. And they've just really got it out for you. They're complaining, they're trying to bring in other people.

Maybe someone is is talking down to you. Maybe someone's trying to take advantage of you. People that you trusted, that betrayed you, whatever it is, know God will be just and he will make it right.

That doesn't happen on our timetable. It's not like someone says something or does something. And then immediately, you know, they just get lightning struck.

No, no, it happens in God's good time. And certainly as believers, we have a purpose to not be seeking that out ourselves. That's a Romans 12.

Don't exact vengeance, like don't take revenge on anyone, but give it up to God because God said, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

And so if we believe in him to do the justice and we just do like the kindness, we're forgiving, we are asking for, you know, we're looking to be reconciled with people. We're not hoping for their downfall. That that's a good heart posture to be in.

I think I talked about that a little bit with David, even in some of the Psalms. This is Paul echoing those same justice elements of like, God, destroy the wicked. You know, let those that set a trap for me fall into it themselves.

Those kinds of thoughts is what Paul here is saying. He says, God is going to be just in your guys' lives. So don't think that this means he's abandoned you.

This is an opportunity for him to show how good and how righteous and how just he is by how he treats those who have afflicted you. And he also says that this is like one of the ways in which you show that you are counted worthy of God's kingdom.

Certainly, our works don't merit our forgiveness, but when we do good works that God has appointed us beforehand to do, that's Ephesians 2, 10, Titus 3, 5 and 6 in that area, as we do good works, we make it obvious who our real father is.

Is our father the devil? Is our father God? We make it clear through our actions.

And so he says, you're making it clear that you are true believers. You've got the real deal. You're really Christians as you are being persecuted and you're not giving up on Jesus as a result of it.

Then in verse number 7, he lets him know what the timeline is on that. They're like, OK, great. There's going to be justice from God on these people.

When exactly is that happening? And he says, This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels. OK, when Jesus returns.

So he lets him know right off hand. Jesus has not returned yet. Your persecution is not a sign that you missed him.

It's a sign that he's not here yet. If you're still undergoing stress or persecution or whatever, it's because Jesus has not come back yet. Because when he comes back, there is no need for that anymore.

Everything will have been set right for the child of God. Okay, so that happens. Jesus comes.

He comes with his powerful angels.

That's a consistent theme in the Old Testament prophets in the intertestamental period, actually with a lot of the like apocryphal books that they're not inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they were written by Jewish people as they were thinking about

the Old Testament. So, they repeat those things a lot. And then God reemphasizes it over and over and over and over again in the New Testament, that Jesus is going to return.

He's bringing heaven to earth when he returns, especially in power, Armageddon, final battle, and then his thousand-year reign on earth. It's not just that we're going up to heaven, it's heaven's coming down.

First, as we would know from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, we're going up and enjoying the marriage supper of the lamb, all those things talked about in Revelation.

But then we're coming back and we are reigning and ruling with him for a thousand years as scripture tells us. So he's coming with his angels.

It says, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don't know God and on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Okay, who gets the flaming fire?

Is it the people that do the worst things or give the least amount of money or commit some specific set of sins? Are those the people that get flaming fire of God's vengeance? No, it's those that do not know God.

Here, it's not just like they had no idea that he existed. It's those that have rejected him, as shown by that second statement, and those that don't obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. Those that say, hey, I don't want a relationship with God.

I don't want to know him. I don't want to follow Jesus. I don't want to be part of his people.

God will allow them to experience that. They will experience existence without a creator, without the giver of life, without the giver of all good things. They will get exactly what they have desired.

Verse number nine, They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by all who have believed because our testimony

among you was believed. So here, there's this very clear choice between you can know God and obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus or you can try it your own way and all that's left for you is eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord.

Can I ask you today, what choice have you made? And if you have made the choice to obey the gospel, to know God personally, then are you walking worthy of this kingdom? Like, are you acting like a kingdom citizen of God's kingdom?

Or are you acting just like someone that doesn't believe or know God or obey the gospel of Jesus? Verse number 11, in view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling.

You can't make yourself worthy of the calling of Jesus. Only God can make you worthy through his Holy Spirit and through his working.

So they pray that our God will make you worthy of his calling and by his power, fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith.

He says, I want God to make it possible for you to do everything good, every evangelism, every love, every discipleship, every care for someone else.

He says, I want God to empower you to be able to do all of that and that you would have your faith actually producing works.

And he says, verse 12, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I love that sentence there, so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified by you, that you would glorify Jesus, and you by him, that Jesus would glorify you. What an incredible prayer. How does that happen?

He says, according to the grace of our God and our Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful thought that God doesn't just view you like what you are right now. He wants to make you new.

I love the Matthew West song. I'm laughing a little bit because my friends DC and CC, who listen to the podcast, they've mentioned that every time I mention a song, they do like a little finger gun thing. They're like pointing at each other.

I love the Matthew West song. He's making you new. It's basically like don't give up in what you're doing because God is creating you not just into like a better you.

He is creating you into the you that he intended from all eternity past and that he knows because he knows the end from the beginning. He knows everything that you will be. He knows what you will be in the millennium.

He knows what you will be in heaven. He knows what you look like with your personality and with your giftings when it is perfected, when he glorifies you, when he takes away all sin from you, that you never have to struggle with it again.

So this is Paul's prayer. He says, I want Jesus to be glorified by you, and I want you to be glorified by Jesus. And we don't just have to wait for a great Sunday for God to glorify us.

As we have this sanctification process where we're growing day by day to say no to sin and yes to the Savior, that we would say, God, I want to walk worthy of your calling. I want my life to glorify you.

Because when people see me and they go, man, there is something different about that Christian. There's something different about that believer.

How they interact with fighting, how they interact with gossip, how they interact with heartbreak is different than anyone else. And they go, man, there is something to this Christianity. There's something to this Jesus stuff.

There's something about that person's God that's drastically different than anyone else. Well, then that is a wonderful declaration that our God is the one true God, that we glorify Jesus through our works.

But that also means that the person actually thinks that there's something admirable or good about us, that Jesus has glorified us in that way, that it didn't come from just our greatness, that everyone went, oh man, they're so much like Jesus.

They in and of themselves are horrible, but you know, Jesus is really something. No, no, it glorifies us as we glorify Christ. You can think about Moses when he went up onto Mount Sinai.

He interacted with God's presence and his face was literally shining out for days afterwards, and he had to put a veil over his face because no one could handle looking at Moses because his face was shining so much from being in God's presence.

And that's what we want to do, that that glory that God has, that we would have that same glory giving it out to other people. What is the glory of God?

It is his goodness, his kindness, his forgiveness, his love, his patience with us, that we would exhibit those exact same characteristics to other people, that Jesus would be glorified in us, and that we would be glorified in him.

For you today, if you're going through a hard time, realize it's not God abandoning you, it just means Jesus isn't here yet.

And if you're going through some hard times for the sake of Jesus, going through some ridicule for the sake of the Gospel, it's okay, that just shows, it just proves that you are a part of Jesus' kingdom family.

And when he comes back, he's going to execute justice on everyone that did not treat you right. That they will get the end goal of what they wanted, of life without God, without Jesus, and they will receive that.

But for you, walk worthy of the calling God's called you with, glorify him, and he will glorify you. Thanks for tuning in tomorrow, 2nd Thessalonians 2. We're going to, I think, have like three, I think it's three days in 2nd Thessalonians 2.

Really, really rich passage that we definitely need for today. So look forward to studying that with you.