2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5
May
our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace
gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and
strengthen you in every good deed and word.
–2 Thessalonians 2:13-17
If you’ve ever been concerned or worried about
anything, then I think that you would have something in common with the people
of Thessalonica. Apparently, they
thought that persecution would come only after Jesus came back. Their thinking was that Jesus would come back
a second time, bringing the disciples with Him to heaven. Then the persecution would come. The people of Thessalonica were undergoing
persecution. Therefore, in their minds,
they had missed the return of Jesus, being left behind and undergoing
persecution.
What did the disciples experience while they were
under the impression that they had been left behind? They were “unsettled” and “alarmed”. The word “unsettled” could mean
“shaken”. In Acts 16:26, the word was
used to describe people who had been shaken in an earthquake. The word also could be used to describe a
boat that’s being pushed around by a strong wind even though its anchor has
been deployed. Paul talked about a
similar situation when he said, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back
and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and
by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” (Ephesians
4:14)
In the case of the Thessalonians, they were concerned
about missing the second coming of Christ.
Today, people can be “unsettled” or “alarmed” about many things, not
just the second coming of Christ.
Christians are concerned about their financial future or about whether
they will get married or not. They can
be concerned about how their children will turn out or if they will be able to
win their children’s hearts again after a fallout in their relationship. Keeping up appearances can also produce
anxiety as well. If you feel like you
have to “have it all together” in front of your Christian brothers and sisters,
then this can lead to a great amount of anxiety. Trying to please everyone all the time will
wear you out.
The other day I was talking with a student who just
became a Christian. He’s being trained
right now in one of our small groups.
He’s a Resident Advisor in one of the apartments on campus. Two of his residents had a disagreement and
one of them had a bad panic attack. The
EMS had to be called and the student was seen at a nearby hospital. I struggled with anxiety and depression while
I was in college. I didn’t realize what
I was struggling with until later, after I finished college. But my anxiety wasn’t nearly as intense or as
frequent as what college students are dealing with today. It’s a monumental problem today.
What did the Thessalonians need to do in order to
overcome the unsettledness and alarm that they had experienced? What can we do in order to overcome these
same challenges?
But
we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from
the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the
Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our
gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then,
brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by
word of mouth or by letter.
May
our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace
gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and
strengthen you in every good deed and word.
–2 Thessalonians 2:13-17
Paul is not saying, “I hope you can see how much God
loves me and the apostles. I want you to
be intellectually aware of how God has been gracious to me and the other
important disciples. We’re so close to
God that He personally gives us encouragement and hope. I hope, that one day, you will be at the same
level as we are.” Instead, Paul was
saying that God was already personally concerned and involved with the
disciples in Thessalonica. The way they
were going to be able to “stand firm” would be to remember who it was that
loved them, to remember who it was that chose them, to remember who it was that
called them, and to remember the words of the one that had already spoken to
them.
When God asked His people to do really hard things,
what did He say to them? Before God
asked Moses to lead His people out of Egypt He told him, “I am the God of your
father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus
6:6) He went on to say, “I will be with
you…” (Ex. 6:12).
When God told Joshua to lead the people of Israel into
the Promised Land, what did He say? He
told Joshua, “I will be with you...for the LORD your God is with you wherever
you go.” (Joshua 1:5,9).
When God was bringing judgment upon the other nations,
He told the nation of Israel, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be
dismayed, for I am your God.” (Isaiah 41:10).
When God promised a Messiah to save His people, what
name did He use for the savior? In
Isaiah 7:14 it says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin
will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
What does Immanuel mean? It means “God
with us”.
When God gave His disciples, and gives us today a
difficult mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ, what did He tell
them? In Matthew 28:20, where the Great
Commission is located, Jesus said: “And surely I am with you always, to the
very end of the age.
In Acts 18:9-10, when Paul was facing opposition to
the preaching of the Gospel, this is what Jesus said directly to him, “And the
Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid any longer, but
go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you…’”
Finally,
brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be
honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked
and evil men, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will
strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord
that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. May the Lord
direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance. –2 Thessalonians
3:1-5
Through Paul, God is revealing how personal He is to
His people. He’s revealing that He is,
and wants to be close to His people.
He’s not distant. He’s not
aloof. In 2 Thessalonians we see that
God is reminding His people that they are loved by him, chosen by Him, called
by Him and He has already spoken directly to them. He’s also reminding them that He is
personally giving each person encouragement, hope and strength. He’s also protecting them and directing their
hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.
When I was about 6 or 7 years old I remember sitting
on the front porch with my dog. I looked
up into the bright blue sky and I had this feeling that there must be something
out there beyond the sky, something that made everything. Even though I had gone to church on Sunday
some growing up and even though I had been dragged to vacation Bible school, I
didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t
understand that God created everything and that He wanted to be involved with
my life. He wanted me to know Him and He
wanted to be involved in my life. I
didn’t come to realize this until I was in college, reading the Bible for
myself the first time.
Do you want to get over the humps in sharing your
faith with people? Do you want to see
change happen in you or someone in your family?
Do you want to have a new sense of purpose and excitement in your
life? I don’t think that we can see any
victory in these areas unless we know and have experienced the closeness of
God.
Some of you may be going through what I had gone
through. You’re still seeing God as a
bit distant, as not involved with your life.
You haven’t embraced God’s mission for your life because you haven’t
embraced God. How can someone possibly
“hold fast” or “stand firm” if they don’t know that God is with them? One comes before the other.
I can’t go sailing until I actually get into the
boat. A person who wants to sail but
doesn’t have a boat may feel like giving up on sailing. I couldn’t embrace God’s mission until I let
Him embrace me. I couldn’t live for
Christ until I stopped making my desires my number one concern. Hearing a message about standing firm in your
faith is frustrating for someone who’s not sure if they have any faith to start
with. If I tell you to sail somewhere
but I haven’t given you a boat then you will, most likely, turn back to the
land. The land is symbolic of the things
this world has to offer us. What God has
to offer us is out there, in the ocean.
Have you ever tried to keep one foot on land and the
other foot on a boat? It doesn’t work
too well. It’s very tiring. You have to give up on one in order to
embrace the other. If I tell you that
you need to defend the Christian faith or stand up under persecution, then you
might walk away from the possibility of following Christ. I realized, after a while, that I couldn’t
have one foot in the world and one foot with Christ. It was tiring. It made me want to give up on Christ. We can’t “stand firm” with one foot on the
boat and one foot on land. Please don’t
go another week with one foot with Christ and one foot in the world. Plant both feet solidly on the boat.
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