Community Bible Church Manchester Michigan Podcast

I Thessalonians 5:12-15

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All right, we’re going to read some scripture this morning, and 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, we’re going to read verses 12 through 15. This is from the New Living Translation, and so you can follow along as I read these four verses from Paul to the church there in Thessalonica. Here’s what he wrote, Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work.

They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work, and live peacefully with one another. Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy, encourage those who are timid, take tender care of those who are weak.

Be patient with everyone. See that nobody pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all.

All right; well, we’re in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5. So, we’re in the last chapter, and we’re going to look at verses 12 through 15 this morning. And so just to remember some background of 1st Thessalonians, Paul’s writing to this church that he established, and he had to leave very suddenly for his own protection.

And so now he’s writing this letter back to encourage the believers. He taught about the second coming of Christ, and what had happened is that some of the people in the church, their loved ones had died, and they’re thinking, oh no, they’re going to miss the second coming. And Paul corrects that error in thinking in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4. We said that the theme of 1st Thessalonians is to be ready, to be ready for the second coming of Christ.

It’s mentioned in every chapter in 2nd Thessalonians. So just as Jesus came the first time, and we celebrate that at Christmas, the Bible says over and over and over again that Jesus is coming back someday. And we’ve looked at that in the last several weeks.

We believe in a twofold return. 1st Thessalonians 4:13 through 18, Paul writes about the rapture, and we studied that a couple weeks ago. And here’s the order.

First of all, Paul talked about revelation. This isn’t Paul’s idea. He says, I got this from the Lord.

Revelation, Jesus returns, and then there’s a resurrection of the dead in Christ, and then there’s a rapture of those who are alive and remain, and there’s a reunion in the air. That’s the rapture of the church. And Paul says, I want you to encourage one another with these words.

So, if you know some believers, some family members that are in Christ and they’ve died, and you’re a believer, the encouragement is you will see them again someday, and that gives us hope. And then we looked at 1st Thessalonians 5, and we thought about this concept of the day of the Lord and the fact that there’s a judgment day coming. And so, in the order of our eschatology, we believe the rapture is the next event on Jesus’ prophetic calendar.

It could happen at any time. Then there’s seven years of tribulation. That’s Revelation chapter 6 through 19.

And then Jesus comes back to the Mount of Olives and returns. And so, we talked about this concept of the day of the Lord, and Paul wrote about it in the first 11 verses here. Now, when we come to 1st Thessalonians 5, beginning of verse 12, the little subtitle in my Bible says, Final Instructions.

And so, Paul wants to give some final instructions to these believers at Thessalonica. He wants to give them some last words. Paul doesn’t know if he will ever see them again, and so Paul wants to give them some final instructions.

And we’ve entitled this, What to Do Till Jesus Comes. So, we know that Jesus is coming again, so our question then should be, like, well, what are we supposed to do till Jesus comes? And that’s what we’re going to think about this Sunday and next Sunday. I’ll tell you what not to do.

Don’t be like the Millerites. I don’t know if you know who the Millerites are or were, but let me just give you some background on the Millerites here. The Millerites were a religious movement led by William Miller, a Baptist preacher from New York.

He began publicly sharing his belief in the imminent second coming of Christ around 1831. Now, remember the Bible says that nobody knows the time of Christ’s return. So, if somebody starts to say, hey, I know when Jesus is coming back, and they begin to set dates right off the bat, that should put up some red warning lights in our hearts and in our minds.

And so, he said that he would come back around 1831. His teaching gained traction during the second great awakening. Miller’s calculation led him to conclude the exact date, October 22, 1844.

As that date approached, his followers sold their possessions, donned white robes, gathered on hilltops in churches, believing that Jesus was coming back on that day to take them back to heaven. The fervent anticipation was fueled by a sense of urgency and hope for divine intervention in a world filled with turmoil. Well, guess what happened? October 22, 1844 came, Jesus did not return, and the event became known as the Great Disappointment.

So don’t be like the Millerites, set date and quit your job and say, well, let’s just wait till Jesus comes. But the Apostle Paul gives us some instructions here in the rest of chapter 5. So, two categories. First of all, instructions regarding spiritual leaders.

Instructions regarding spiritual leaders. Now, I have to tell you, when we begin to look at this text this morning, this is going to sound a little self-serving. And Paul’s saying, this is how I want you to treat or interact with your spiritual leaders.

And then the second category is that he talks to us about interacting with one another as the body of Christ. So, let’s look at the first one, instructions regarding spiritual leaders. Here’s the first part here, verse 12, now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge, that’s what the NIV says, the ESV says respect, some translations say recognize, some translations say honor, honor those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord, and who admonish you.

So, Paul’s addressing the church and he says, I want you to know, respect, and honor your spiritual leaders. And he gives three reasons. Here’s reason number one.

He says, I want you to know and respect and honor them, first of all, because they work hard among you. The Greek word there is kopiaó, it means to work to the point of being weary. It was used in Luke chapter 5, verse 5, remember the story, Jesus is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the disciples been fishing all night long, they’ve gotten skunked, they’ve not caught a thing, and Jesus says, hey, go out into the deep and cast your nets on the other side.

And the disciples respond, Master, we’ve worked hard all night, it’s the same word there. Know and respect your spiritual leaders because of their hard work. Now, I’ll say this, I’ve seen this from the inside because my dad was a pastor, I grew up in a pastor’s home and I saw firsthand what ministry was like.

And, you know, you kind of see Sunday morning as the tip of the iceberg, but ministry, if done properly, is hard work. I’ll also say that it can be an excuse for laziness. I mean, nobody’s punching a clock, but if ministry is done properly, it is hard work, hard work emotionally, hard work mentally, the spiritual care of a body of believers is hard work.

Now, true story, I’ve told this before, I’ll tell it again, when I was five years old, people asked me, what would you like to be when you grow up? And my answer was, I’d like to be a garbage man. That might sound funny to some of you, but here is my logic. I saw them come to our house once a week, and so I thought, that’s a great job, they work once a week.

And then I’d tell people I became a pastor and, you know, I opened myself up to that punchline, they’ll say, oh, you got your wish, didn’t you? Work. No, know and respect your leaders, number one, because it’s hard work. Secondly, it says, because they care for you in the Lord.

So, the word there, proistemi, it means to care for, to stand over, to be in charge of. Here’s what the author of Hebrews says, Hebrews 13 verse 17, have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be no benefit to you.

And so, ministry is hard work, and guess what? They have the responsibility of watching over their flock. And I truly believe that someday I’m going to have to stand before the Lord and give an account of how well I have shepherded the flock of God. And so, respect your leaders because it’s hard work, because they care for you.

And then thirdly, here’s the third reason, they admonish you. It means to instruct, to warn, to faithfully share God’s truth. Somebody said the job of the pastor is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

And so, there are times where maybe on some Sunday we should leave with a little bit of an admonishment of what we need to be doing. That is part of the pastor’s job. So, instructions regarding spiritual leaders, know and respect your leaders.

And then it goes on to say, verse 13, hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. And so, he’s basically saying we need to value our spiritual leaders, value them highly because of their work.

So, when I was working on this, I got on a website that I go to frequently, and I was looking up this website called Got Questions, and I was looking at this text where Paul says you need to honor your leadership and value your spiritual leaders. And so, I printed off what the website said about how to do that. And I’ll share it with you because what I want to communicate is that you all do this very well.

And you’ll get my drift here in a little bit. Here’s what it says. Showing appreciation to your pastor is commended in Scripture.

And then the text is quoted here that we just read. The job of the pastor, literally a shepherd, is to teach the Word of God, show the love of God, and lead their flock. Therefore, pastors should be held in the highest regard.

And then it goes on to say, here are some ways to show appreciation to your pastor. I told you this would be self-serving. A simple word of encouragement, verbal or written, is always nice.

Send a card or write a note. Well, many of you do that. I’m not going to connect all these illustrations to names

And so, there’s like 50, 60 pages here of words of appreciation to me from you. And you put that together in a very nice booklet. And the title says, a wise man once said, no one has ever come to me and said, pastor, I’m feeling way too encouraged.

That’s something I’ve said often. And so, yeah, from kids, from young to old, there’s some wonderful things in here. Again, I won’t tag names here.

These are from young kids. I love it when he tells us stuff about Jesus and God. I like when he sings.

I like it when he high fives the kids at church and we ask, how was your day? And so, this is filled with encouraging words that you wrote to me. And I’ll tell you, someday if the Lord tarries and I’m sitting on my front porch in a rocking chair, it’s like, I’ll tell Daniel, go get that book. I’m going to read that book again.

So, all that to say, thank you for loving us well. So, that’s the self-serving part, but let’s go on instructions then regarding the body of Christ, regarding one another. And here’s what he has to say, last part of verse 13, hold them in the highest regard and love because of their work.

Live in peace with each other. Live in peace with each other. Psalm 133, verse 1, how blessed it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been part of a church family where there’s some disagreements going on. I mean, church families, we have that in our own extended families, don’t we? Times of disagreement and the church is just one big family. But what the Bible calls us to is unity.

Jesus’ prayer in John chapter 17, this is what Jesus prayed when he was giving His upper room discourse, John chapter 17. Here’s part of Jesus’ prayer. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.

So, that’s all future believers. Here’s what Jesus is praying, that all of them may be one, that there be unity, that all of them may be one Father, just as you are in me and I in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

So, one of the reasons, the important reasons for a church, a body of Christ to be unified and to be united is that, number one, that’s what Jesus prayed, but also, it’s a testimony to the world. Who wants to invite someone to a church where there’s disagreements and fighting going on, but when there’s harmony and oneness and unity. And so, Paul says, live in peace with each other.

Three kinds of peace in the Bible. First of all, the most important is peace with God. Romans 5:1, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that’s making our peace treaty with God through what Jesus did on the cross. And before we come to Jesus as our Savior, we’re called enemies of God. But once we realize that Jesus paid the sacrifice for our sins on His cross and we repent and turn from our sin and put our faith and trust in Jesus, then we’ve made that peace treaty with God and we become a child of God.

And then there’s the peace of God. That’s Philippians 4:6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, stop worrying, but what are we to do? In everything with prayer and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And then the peace of God will fill your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So, basically paraphrase, don’t worry about anything, pray about everything. And I’ll tell you to be honest, I need that verse every day, because we all have stuff. And once we start to worry about stuff, and then we can begin to downward spiral and say, well, if this happens, then this could happen.

And if this happens, that can happen. And the enemy likes to keep us anxious and worried. And Paul says, don’t live like that.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts and life. And then the last part is, and this is where Paul’s talking, live in peace with each other, is a peace with others. Romans chapter 12, verse 18, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

So, notice that Paul says, this isn’t always possible because it takes two people to reconcile. But as much as you can control, as far as your part, live at peace. And so, here’s the first instruction then to what we’re to do until Jesus comes.

He says, live at peace with each other. Well, he goes on to give several other instructions, at least three or four other ones. Here’s the second one, verse 14, and we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are unruly or disorderly.

The NIV translates this, idle and disruptive. The Greek word ataktos is found only here in the New Testament. It means not to keep rank, to be insubordinate.

And so, I also want you to notice that this admonition isn’t just given to the church leadership. This is the responsibility of all of us to warn those who are unruly. When Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians, Philippians chapter 4 verse 2, and these were letters that were read publicly in the church, he calls out two ladies who weren’t getting along, who were causing disruption within the family of God.

And he says, I plead with Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. He’s saying, hey, get along. Warn those who are unruly.

Galatians chapter 6 verse 1 lays this responsibility of those who are spiritual. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. And so, we’re called, what, to encourage one another, to walk with God and not be unruly or out of rank.

But warn those who are disruptive or unruly. Well, there’s more advice here for all of us to do until Jesus comes. He goes on to say, encourage the disheartened.

Encourage the disheartened. It literally means the despondent, the discouraged. The word there means to come alongside and help and encourage somebody up close and personal.

Don’t lose heart. The disciples lost heart in the upper room in John 14. Jesus is giving them His last words.

He’s going to go to the cross very shortly and he says, I’m leaving, you can’t come with me. And by the way, one of you, one of you 12 is going to basically betray me. And that was Judas Iscariot.

And one of you is going to deny that you even know me three times. And the disciples are like, oh man. They’re like taking three gut punches.

And what’s Jesus saying? He’s encouraging them. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.

Begins to talk to him about heaven. And he talks about a person, a place, a promise, I’m coming back, and a pathway to get to God. John 14:6.

I’m the way, the truth, and the life. And he encourages them. Paul does this to the Corinthian church in 2nd Corinthians chapter four, verses 16 through 18.

He says, therefore, don’t lose heart. And I realize that anytime a church body gets together, there are some people that are in a good spot in life and praising the Lord, but there’s also some people that are going through tough stuff. Maybe you walked through the doors here this morning discouraged and downhearted.

And so, the apostle says, Paul says, though outwardly we’re wasting away, our bodies are decaying, yet inwardly we’re being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So, here’s what we’re to do.

Fix our eyes not on what is seen. Don’t focus on your problems. Don’t focus on the fact your body’s breaking down.

Don’t fix your eyes on what is seen, but what is unseen, or what is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. So, he’s saying, have an eternal mindset and realize that ultimately the wonderful promise is the promise of heaven and a new glorified body and a place where there’s no more sorrow, no more sin, no more sadness, no more suffering. Encourage the disheartened.

And so, we need to be doing that constantly within the body of Christ, don’t we? But this is where we’re called to what? Encourage one another. And so, Paul says, encourage the disheartened.

And then he goes on to say, help the weak. Literally, those without strength. Physically, yes, but probably more so spiritually and emotionally.

So those that are weak, those that are struggling, we’re called to what? We’re called to come alongside and to help them. I love the picture in the Old Testament. Maybe you’re familiar with this story in Exodus chapter 17.

So, the Israelites are fighting their first battle, their very first battle. And Moses is up on the mountain and the Israelites are fighting the Amalekites down in the valley. And here’s Exodus chapter 17, beginning in verse 13.

Here’s what happened. So, Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up on the top of the hill.

Maybe they’re up there because they want to get a good view of the battle. So, the leaders, Moses, and Aaron, and Hur are on the top of the hill. Here’s what it says.

As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. And what happened? And this often happens in our lives.

For all of us, sometimes in church leadership as well, Moses is getting tired holding his hands up. And so, what do Aaron and Hur do? Well, look at the text. It says, when Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and they put it under him and he sat on it.

And Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So, Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with a sword. He won the battle, why? Because Moses had a couple helpers that came alongside him.

And when he was getting tired, they said, hey, can we help? Can we assist? And the battle was won. And that’s a great picture of what we need to do with other people when they’re struggling, when they’re weak, to give a listening ear, to give a helping hand, to give maybe some financial encouragement if they’re struggling with their finances, to give them words of encouragement. Well, a couple more quickly here, encourage the disheartened, help the weak.

And then it says, be patient with everyone, be patient with everyone. So, there’s these three categories of people, those that are disruptive, those that are disheartened, those that are weak and struggling. And the Apostle Paul says, we need to be patient with everybody.

The word there is makrothumós, makros meaning long, thumos is the word for anger, have a long fuse. We need to be patient with people. Why? Because people don’t change as fast as we’d like them to.

Our kids don’t grow spiritually as fast as we would like them to. We need to be patient, we need to be patient with everyone, with the disorderly, the disruptive, the disheartened and with the weak.

This is actually a fruit of the Spirit. Nine characteristics of the Holy Spirit’s producing character in our lives. And one of them is that we are to be long-suffering, we’re to be patient with people.

This is a character trait of God. And in fact, I think it’s in 2nd Peter 3:9, why hasn’t Jesus come back yet? Well, 2nd Peter 3:9, the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, He is patient, long-suffering with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Why hasn’t Jesus come back yet? He wants everyone to come to salvation, waiting for people to bow the knee and to receive the gift of salvation rather than facing God’s wrath and God’s condemnation. Be patient with everyone. Two more, we’ll just run through these quickly.

Verse 15, make sure that nobody pays back wrong or wrong. Make sure nobody pays back wrong for wrong. So, the Apostle Paul basically says, don’t seek revenge.

Don’t get in a habit of trying to retaliate and make people pay and take things into your own hands. Don Smith, who wrote a booklet in context for, he put this in the context of marriage, but here’s what he had to say about not getting involved in revenge. When we get hurt by someone in our lives, we usually want them to pay for the wrong they have caused us.

This happens a lot in marriage, I must admit, with a silent treatment. Ever use that one? Man, I have a lot over the years. You just go radio silence because, you know.

Don’t retaliate, we usually want to make them pay back for the wrong they’ve caused us. We want them to feel the same pain that we’ve experienced. We try to take matters into our own hands to make things right, but here’s what scripture says, Romans 12:17, do not repay anyone evil for evil.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. As far, it depends on you, we read this verse earlier, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge.

Don’t waste your time, resources, and energy in retaliating and splatting revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath. Word is written, His mind’s revenge, I will repay, says the Lord. But what’s he say to do? Turn that person over to God, because God is much better at taking care of matters than when we try to take things into our own hands.

This is what Paul means when he wrote in 2nd Timothy chapter four, verses four through 16, about a person by the name of Alexander. He was a metal worker, and Paul’s last letter, 2nd Timothy four, Alexander, the metal worker, did me a great deal of harm. Paul doesn’t discount that, hey, this guy doesn’t say what he did, but this guy didn’t treat me right.

What’s he say? Man, I’m going to get revenge against him, look out. No, he says, the Lord will repay him for what he’s done for me. You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.

So, he doesn’t plot revenge, he turns him over to the Lord, says God will take care of him. By the way, watch out for this guy. He’s opposing the gospel message.

So, he says, don’t retaliate, but how does the section close? Final instructions, always strive to do what is good. Make sure that nobody pays back, wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else. And so, the Bible says, pursue goodness.

Matthew 5, let your light so shine before men that men will see what your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Now we’re not saved by good works, that’s Ephesians 2:8 and 9. We’re saved simply through putting our faith in what Jesus did and paid our sin debt on the cross. But Ephesians 2:10 says we are saved to do good works.

That’s one of the reasons that we’re to come together as the body of Christ. Hebrews says, don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together, but provoke one another, what? To love and good deeds. Put together a birthday package for somebody you don’t know.

Do good things for other people. And so, Paul says, strive to do good to each other, body of Christ, and to everyone. And so, what are we to do until Jesus comes? Well, encourage your spiritual leadership because they work hard.

Thank you for doing that. But he also says, hey, we need to live at peace with each other. And that’s hard to do.

Bible says, make every effort to live in peace. And Jesus is our peace. So maybe there’s somebody in your life this morning that you’re at odds with and you need to initiate a peacemaking.

There’s a process in the Bible to do that, but the first one is to go directly to that person, try to resolve it on your own. Another thing we can do is, and I was going to go through these peacemaking principles, but the Bible says, you know what? We can overlook offenses. Proverbs talks about that, you know? Maybe somebody’s having a bad day.

Don’t take everything personal. And we can simply overlook that, but if we can’t overlook it and it hinders our relationship, then the Bible calls us to go to that person and work it out just between the two of you. If you can’t work it out, then you bring another person along.

And so, there’s this process of how to do that, live at peace, warn those who are out of step, encourage the disheartened. I’m sure there’s several people here that are a little discouraged. That’s why it’s good to hang around after the service and find that out.

Great question is, hey, how are you doing? How was your week? How can I pray for you? Help the week, be patient with everyone. Don’t seek revenge, turn them over to God and seek to do what is good. Well, the rest of the passage gives us like eight more instructions of what to do until Jesus comes and we’ll look at those next week.

But I thought eight or nine for one Sunday is enough to lay at our feet and put into practice. So, trust that you’ll be encouraged by that.

The post What to Do ‘Til Jesus Comes: I Thessalonians 5:12-15 appeared first on Community Bible Church.

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

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All right, we’re going to read some Scripture this morning, and I don’t know if you kind of follow the songs that we sang, but there’s a little bit of a theme to it, saying about the gospel and his robes for mine, but then what are we to do with that? We’re to send the light and share that word, and so I appreciate all those songs this morning. All right, we’re going to read 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, the first three verses, and then the verses 8 through 11. Words are on the screen, and Paul’s writing to the church at Thessalonica, and this is what he wrote a couple thousand years ago.

Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. Verse 8, but since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing.

 Well, it is hard to believe that Labor Day is tomorrow. Where did the summer go? But technically, we still have three more weeks of summer. I think fall starts September 21st on the calendar, so we can still get some summer in, but quite frankly, I enjoy the fall and great, great change of seasons and a little cooler weather.

Well, we’ve been looking at 1st Thessalonians, and we’re going to be into chapter 5, so we’re in the homestretch. Probably have three more messages on 1st Thessalonians. We’ll look at verses 1 through 11 this morning, and he’s been with us.

There’s a theme for the whole book, and I’ve taken it from Dr. Warren Wiersbe’s series commentary called the Bee Series, where he writes a commentary on every book of the Bible, and he entitles it Bee Something, and so the theme of 1st Thessalonians, and this is interactive here. I hope somebody remembers. Just fill in the blank.

It’s be? Ready. All right. We got one or two that remembered.

Bee ready, and what are we ready for? It’s the second coming of Christ, and at the end of every chapter in the book of Thessalonians, Paul writing to this church that he planted, and he had to leave suddenly because of persecution, and now he’s writing this letter to encourage them. He talks about the second coming of Jesus. Did you know there’s eight times as many verses about his second coming as there are about his first coming, and we celebrate Christmas and the coming of Jesus, but there’s eight times as many verses that tell us that Jesus is coming again, and Jesus himself made that promise in John chapter 14, those first three verses in the upper room called the upper room discourse.

It’s right before the cross. The disciples are reeling because Jesus says, I’m leaving, and you can’t come with me, and one of you is going to betray me, and one of you is going to deny me three times, and they’re just taking three gut punches, and then Jesus says this to them. Let not your heart be troubled.

You believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions.

It really means dwelling places. If it were not so, I would not have told you, but I’m going to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, guess what? I’m coming back so that where I am, you may be also. What a great comfort that is to realize that Jesus is coming again.

Forty days later at his ascension, there’s Jesus on the mount there, and he ascends back to heaven after giving the disciples some final instructions, and then two men appear, and as the disciples are looking up into the sky because Jesus has just levitated back to heaven, they ask the disciples a question. They kind of chuckle at the question. Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? Because we just saw Jesus elevate from the mountain up to heaven.

That’s why we’re looking up, but then they speak this to the disciples. This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you’ve seen him go into heaven. So, they said he’s coming back, and when he touches ground, he’s coming back to that same spot that he left.

It’s called the Mount of Olives there near Jerusalem. What does Jesus say in Revelation 22, the last chapter of the Bible? Three times, look, I’m coming soon. It really means quickly.

So, while there’s different interpretations of the timing of Jesus coming and how this all works out in our eschatology, to believe the Bible, you must believe that what? Jesus is coming again, and the encouraging news is that it’s 2,000 years closer to when we first read these promises. Now, the disciples kept asking him a question like, when is this going to happen? They asked that two or three times, and Jesus told them, it’s not for you to know the date. What we’re to know is to be ready and to be busy working.

So, when we think about the fact that Jesus is coming again, here’s where our church stands as far as eschatology, the order of last things, and I’m just taking it from our doctoral statement in our constitution. We believe in the blessed hope, that’s the fact that Jesus is coming again, of the personal, he’s coming, he’s not sending a representative, imminent, it could happen at any time, pre-tribulational, before that seven-year period of God’s wrath that’s going to be poured out on the world, pre-millennial coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for his redeemed ones, that’s referring to the rapture. We also believe in a subsequent return to earth with his saints to establish his kingdom.

So, it’s a two-fold return. So last week, we looked at 1st Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18, and we talked about how Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers about this thing that we call the rapture of the church. And he wrote them because he had been with them in Thessalonica, he had taught them that Christ is coming again, but then some time’s gone by and some of their loved ones had died.

And they’re thinking, oh no, they’re going to miss the return of Christ. And so, Paul writes 1st Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18 to set them straight on how this is going to happen. So, we looked at five points last week.

First of all, revelation. Paul says, I’m giving you this by the word of the Lord. I’m not making this up.

This is God’s revelation to me. So, revelation, return, Jesus comes back. Resurrection, the dead in Christ will rise first.

Rapture, then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet them in the air. Reunion, so shall we ever be with the Lord. So that’s the rapture that could take place at any moment.

But this morning we’re going to look at 1st Thessalonians 5, 1 through 11. And we’re going to think about this phrase, the day of the Lord. So, we’re not going to actually outline the text, but we’re going to ask three questions about this text and answer hopefully three questions.

So, here’s the questions from 1st Thessalonians 5. What does the Bible mean by the phrase, the day of the Lord? It’s found over and over throughout the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament. So, what is the day of the Lord? What does the Bible mean by that? Secondly, we’re going to see how does Paul characterize the day of the Lord in this text here? What does he say it’s going to be like? And then thirdly, and this is going to be the application part, how should we then live? In other words, in light of what we’re going to learn about the day of the Lord, and I’ll tell you this, it’s not going to be a pretty day. How should we then live? Because we know what the day of the Lord holds.

And so, as my friend, Dr. Lutzer, who’s pastor emeritus of Moody Church, always says this morning, he says, my job is to speak this morning, your job is to listen, and hopefully we end at the same time. So that would be the goal here that happens. All right, so let’s look at question number one, beginning in the text here, verse one of 1st Thessalonians 5. Now, brothers and sisters, this is the NIV, brothers and sisters, you know, I counted how many times in 1st Thessalonians Paul uses that phrase? Fifteen times.

He’s referring to the church, the body of Christ, and he refers to them as brothers and sisters. And so, we think about the fact that we are part of what? God’s extended family. There’s the universal church made up of every believer who’s put their faith in Jesus, and then there’s the local church.

And we are part of God’s family. We sing that chorus, I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God. And one of the marks of a true believer is that you love other Christians.

So, the book of 1st John gives us a litmus test of three things. Of someone who’s truly been born again, there’s the doctrinal test. You must believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

He’s the Christ. He is who he claimed to be. That’s the doctrinal test.

Then there’s a moral test that a true believer does not live a life of continuous pattern of sin. Not that they don’t sin, we all still sin, we won’t reach sinless perfection until heaven, but there’s not a continuous pattern of sin in their life. And then there’s the social test, that a true person, a person who’s been truly born again, loves other Christians.

They love to be together with other Christians and encourage one another. So, Paul’s writing to these believers that have become family to him, and what does he say in verse 1? Now about times and dates, we do not need to write to you. Times and dates, he uses two different words there.

The word for times is the word Chronos, which is chronology. So, this is August 31st, 2025. The word Kairos means a set or proper time, which means like a season of opportunity.

When the Bible says redeem the time, it’s talking about Kairos, capture those opportunities in your life. Like for parents, a number of years ago I heard somebody talk about the 216 principle. What’s the 216 principle? They said, well, from zero to 18, you have 216 months with your kids.

And you need to capture those moments and redeem that time. So Chronos and Kairos, Paul says, I don’t need to write you about the dates and the times and the seasons. Why? Because he’d already taught them this.

But he says in verse 2, for you know very well, that means with certainty, here it is, that phrase that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. So, what is this phrase, the day of the Lord? So, it’s found at least 18 times in the Old Testament.

It’s found four times in the New Testament. And so, here’s one definition, although I think this one might be a little too broad, but here’s one person’s definition. The phrase day of the Lord always refers to a span of time during which God personally intervenes in history to accomplish some specific aspect of his plan.

The Old Testament passages referring to the day of the Lord often speak of a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment. And so, when we read passages in the prophets and they’re talking about the day of the Lord, there’s like a precursor, a near fulfillment, and then there’s the ultimate fulfillment. The near fulfillment was often God’s judgment on the nation of Israel.

We know that in 722 BC, the northern kingdom, the ten tribes of Israel were taken captive by the Assyrians. And the book of Habakkuk talks about that. Actually, the book of Habakkuk talks about the second judgment, 586 BC, the Babylonians.

And that should be no surprise to us, because if you’re reading Deuteronomy 28, God clearly lays out for Israel, if you follow me and do this, you’ll experience all these blessings. But if you don’t follow me, then you’re going to experience all these curses. And some of it was that you would be controlled by another nation that would take you into captivity.

And so, some of the Old Testament passages that talk about the day of the Lord are referring to when the Assyrians took the northern kingdom, 722 BC, 586 BC, the southern kingdom, the two tribes of Judah were taken captive by the Babylonians. This is where the book of Daniel fits in. And so, they’re talking about that near fulfillment, but then ultimately, they’re also referring to sometimes later in the same book, a far fulfillment of the day of the Lord.

And that’s the day that we’re going to look at this morning. It’s a future fulfillment that hasn’t come yet. Let me just read a couple of Old Testament passages just to give you a little flavor for this phrase, the day of the Lord.

This is a prophecy against Babylon. This is Isaiah 13:6, “‘Wail, for the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty.

Because of this, all hands will go limp. Every heart will melt with fear. Terror will seize them.

Pain and anguish will grip them. They will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame.

See, the day of the Lord is coming, a cruel day with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.'” Now, some of these passages, as we think about this, might sound a little harsh to us because we think, well, I thought God was a God of love. He is a God of love. But God is also a holy God, and God is also a just God, and therefore, He must judge thin.

And the Bible says that day of judgment is coming, and the prophets talked about it, and it is all through the Old Testament and all through the New Testament. Here’s Joel 1:15, “‘Alas for that day, for the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty.'” Joel 2:11, “‘The Lord thunders at the head of His army.

His forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys His command. The day of the Lord is great. It is dreadful.

Who can endure it?’ And so, the prophets are talking about this future, this day of judgment that’s coming. And that’s where Paul begins to write to the Thessalonian believers. He says, “‘The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.'” So, here’s another definition of the day of the Lord.

This is from Dr. John MacArthur, who just recently passed into heaven. John MacArthur says, “‘The day of the Lord’ is a technical term to describe God’s final judgment, God’s final judgment. James 5:7 says, “‘Be patient until the coming of the Lord.'” Verse 9 says, “‘The judge is at the door.'” So, the day of reckoning.

This could be called man’s day or the day of grace. But there’s a day coming called the day of the Lord, which is a future judgment when God’s wrath is poured out on the world. If you want to read about it, read Revelation chapter 6 through 19.

And there’s three series of judgments. There’s the seal judgments, there’s the trumpet judgments, there’s the bowl judgments. In each of those judgments, God’s pouring out His wrath during a time called the Great Tribulation on planet earth, and it will be the most horrific time in human history.

Now, there are many people that question that and doubt that, and that’s true today. That was true back in the first century, because in 2nd Peter chapter 3, Peter says, you must understand in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own desires, and they will say, where is this coming, He’s promised? So, Peter says, people are going to say, oh yeah, where, yeah, oh Jesus is coming, right, right, yeah. He said He’s coming soon, that was 2,000 years ago, and they’re going to mock this doctrine of the second coming.

And Peter says what they misunderstand is that there was also a previous time in human history where God judged the world, and He begins to talk about the flood. They’re ignorant that back in Genesis 6, God sent a universal flood to the world and rescued eight people in the family of Noah. And so, Peter encourages us with these words, the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise.

Instead, He is patient with you. Why hasn’t Jesus come back yet? Here’s one of the reasons, not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance. He’s not coming back because He’s waiting for people to come to faith in Jesus.

He’s long-suffering, offering the gift of salvation. But then verse 10 says, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. Matthew 24:21, the words of Jesus, He’s describing this day of the Lord, for then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, never to be equaled again.

So, the day of the Lord is God’s final time period of reckoning when He’s going to pour His wrath out on planet earth. So, what are some of the characteristics then of the day of the Lord that Paul’s writing to the Thessalonians about here in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, and we’ve already referred to the first one here, it will come unannounced. Verse 2, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

You’re not going to get an advance warning of a specific date; it’s going to come unannounced. And Jesus said in Revelation 16:5, look, I come like a thief. And a thief doesn’t send you an email or a text and say, hey, I’m showing up and give you the time and the date, do they? It just happens with surprise.

I started thinking about just in our own family incidents that we’ve had with a thief. I remember my dad pastored in Cleveland, Ohio for 18 years, and I remember him telling this story. So, he was making a visit on one of the shut-ins that was related to probably my dad’s best friend, and she lived in the inner city of Cleveland.

My dad’s making a visit on her visits. Mrs. Messner was his name. He’s walking down the sidewalk to his car, and all of a sudden, a guy comes behind him with a gun.

Says, give me your wallet, don’t make another move or you’re dead. And he was robbed. No previous announcement there.

I remember when we lived in Cleveland, we were at a church event one night. I remember we came back to our home and started looking around like, who left this mess here? And why are all the drawers out? And what happened? And then all of a sudden, we begin to notice there’s some things missing. I was like, oh man, someone broke into our house and robbed us.

My younger brother, when he was right out of college, walked into a store that was being robbed. And this is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and a fella had a gun. Said to my brother, put your wallet on the counter.

And he puts his wallet on the counter, and then he opens fire. Shot the clerk in this store and shot my brother. The clerk passed away.

My brother survived that shooting. Our middle son manages a bank in Grand Rapids, and he got moved to a new branch of the bank that was close to downtown Grand Rapids. And in the first year there, it was robbed two times at gunpoint.

So, in none of those instances does the thief say, well, hey, this is the date. This is what’s going to happen. No, it’s unannounced.

And the Apostle Paul says, that’s what’s going to happen in this day of judgment. It’s going to come like a thief in the night. Here’s the second characteristic that will characterize this.

Many will have a false sense of security before the day of the Lord. Oh, Paul writes in verse 3, while people are saying, what, peace and safety, you know, they think, oh, you know, our life is fine. You know, we’re safe.

We’re secure. But they will have a false sense of security. Matthew chapter 24, the words of Jesus in verse 36, that he says, hey, that hour and day, nobody knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, nor the Father.

Verse 42, therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day the Lord will come. So, you better be ready. And there’ll be many people that will have a false sense of security.

Just like the scripture says before Noah’s flood, because people were marrying and giving in marriage and life was going on as normal. And then what happened? Judgment fell. And so many will have a false sense of security.

And then the third characteristic here is sudden destruction. While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly. As labor pains on a pregnant woman, they will not escape.

Here’s 10 biblical words to describe God’s judgment during this time period. It’s a time of wrath, judgment, indignation, trial, trouble, destruction, darkness, desolation, overturning, punishment. Dr. David Jeremiah in his book, The Great Disappearance, this is how he describes the time of God’s wrath, that seven-year tribulation period.

Let me just read a few verses here. Nowhere in scripture will you find one word or description that says anything good about the tribulation period, unless it is the promise that it will end after seven years. Zephaniah says it’s the day of the Lord’s anger.

Moses called it the day of their calamity. Paul refers to it as the day of wrath to come. John called it the hour of trial, Revelation 3:10, the hour of his judgment.

Daniel describes it as a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation. According to the prophet Zephaniah, the day is a day of wrath, of trouble and distress, devastation, desolation, darkness. Jesus told us that the tribulation would be a time of terror and horror without precedent, Matthew 24:21 and 22.

For then there will be a great tribulation such as has not been seen since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect’s sake, those days will be shortened.

And so, it’s a time period of tremendous tribulation, wrath, and judgment. It’ll be unannounced. People will have a false sense of security.

And then God’s judgment will come. Well, let me just read the next few verses here, and then we’ll look at some applications and how we should then live. So, here’s what Paul writes to the Thessalonians in verse 4, But you, brothers and sisters, there it is again, are not in darkness, so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You have some advanced information that this day is coming, although you don’t know exactly when.

You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness, so then let us not be like others who are asleep, but let us be, what, awake and sober. We need to be ready and informed.

Verse 8, But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, alert, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. And so, Paul talks about, what, the three great virtues of the Christian life, faith, hope, and love. Well, how should we live in light of what Paul’s talking about here, in light of the day of the Lord? And so, we’ll just conclude by thinking about some application truths of how we should then live.

Number one, we need to be informed. 1st Thessalonians 4:13, when Paul is writing to the believers there, and understand they didn’t have the New Testament like we do, they just had the Old Testament prophets’ writings. They weren’t, they didn’t know about this concept of the rapture of the church.

The apostle Paul says, brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed. Some of your translations say ignorant. So, we need to be informed about, what, the future, because the Bible tells us how the world’s going to end.

Read the book of Daniel, read the book of Revelation. We need to be informed. Matthew chapter 16, Jesus had a conversation with the religious leaders of the day, the Jewish religious leaders, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and it says they came to Jesus asking Him to show them a sign from heaven.

Jesus, show us a sign. They’re always, like, testing Jesus, always trying to get into a conversation, an aggressive conversation with Jesus. And here’s what Jesus said to the religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders.

When evening comes, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

And Jesus is telling these religious leaders, you’re good at trying to forecast the weather. What you don’t know are spiritual truths about what’s coming and God’s future judgment. And so, God wants us to be informed.

The second thought here, application, is that we need to be spiritually alert. We need to be spiritually alert. And it’s all through this text that we just read.

When the text says, be sober, it’s not talking about not being drunk, although there are places in the Bible where it talks about that. It’s talking about spiritual alertness. Be ready, be informed that Jesus could come back at any time.

The late Southern preacher, Dr. Vance Havner says, we need to take down our do not disturb signs, come out of our coma and awake from our spiritual apathy. God’s word calls us to awake out of our sleep and to walk in righteousness. And when we know that Christ is coming again to this earth, we cannot go on being the same people.

So, here’s some things that Dr. Jeremiah’s book, he says we need to be doing until Jesus comes. And because he’s coming back, they all start with a letter of R, remember the Lord’s table. We need to come together, and the Bible tells us to do this, doesn’t tell us how often, but the front of this communion table says, just do in remembrance of me.

It’s a command from Jesus what to observe, what the bread and the cup as a way of remembering what Christ has done for us, that we sang about this morning, His robes for mine, that in the righteousness of Christ, we are perfect and our sins are forgiven. Many times, we as believers don’t put a whole lot of stock into the Lord’s table. We do it seven times a year here, every other month, and then Christmas Eve.

I think we need to circle those on our calendar. Jesus’ invitation to come and remember my sacrifice for you. We need to remember the Lord’s table.

We need to restore the bereaved. That’s encouraging those who have lost loved ones, and that’s 1st Thessalonians 4:13 through 18. Don’t lose hope.

You’re going to see your loved one again someday if they’re in Christ. We need to refuse to neglect church. Hebrews 10:24, and 25 talks about not neglecting the assembling of yourselves together.

We need to remain steadfast in our faith. We need to reach the lost. If there’s any thought that wants us to be double down on sharing the gospel and making sure that people in our circle of relatives and friends know Jesus, it should be a message on the wrath of God.

It was Jonathan Edwards that back in the 1700s, I think it was, wrote, preached the sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. There’s a day of judgment coming, and so we need to get the gospel out locally and to the ends of the earth. Well, we need to be informed.

We need to be spiritually alert. Thirdly, we need to be thankful. Here it is, verse 9, for God did not appoint us to suffer wrath.

Let that phrase sink in a little bit. He’s writing to believers. God did not appoint us to suffer wrath.

We sang about it this morning in one of the phrases of the hymns. When Jesus was on the cross, what did he do? He took God’s wrath upon him and paid our sins so we don’t have to suffer wrath. And what is God’s wrath? It’s eternal punishment in a place called hell.

Jesus took that for us, and so we need to be thankful for what Jesus has done. Now, for those of us that believe in the pre-tribulational rapture of the church, and that’s how we tend to interpret the eschatology, we can add a double thanks here because those that believe in that point to this verse that says the rapture of the church is going to happen before God’s time of judgment. And so, we can also say, well, we can be thankful that we think God’s going to remove believers out of this world before this time of wrath and tribulation.

So, we need to be thankful for what Christ has done for us. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. So, he’s appointed us, what, to receive salvation and to be thankful that God took our place, that Jesus took our place, and he suffered God’s wrath for us.

And then verse 10 says, he died for us so that whether we are awake, that means alive, or asleep, that means we’ve died, euphemism for death. Jesus died for us so that whether we’re living or we’ve died, we may live together with him. Oh, we could be thankful that when we live our Christian life, God promises, Jesus promises to be with us, but if we die, guess what? We’re going to go to heaven and we’ll be with him forever.

This is what Paul writes in Philippians 1:21, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. As I heard someone say this summer for the Christian, every day above ground is a good day, every day below ground for the Christian is a great day, because it means you’re in God’s presence, a place of no more sin, no more sadness, no more suffering, no more pain, forever and ever with him. And that’s what Paul’s saying here, died for us so that we’ll be together with him.

That’s why Jesus is coming back, he said in John 14, so that where I am, you may be also. And so, in one sense, we have some descriptions of heaven in the book of Revelation and yes, streets of gold, yes, pearly gates, but as beautiful as heaven is going to be, here’s the best part of heaven, you’re going to be with Jesus. You’re going to see him face to face and the one who gave his life for you.

And so how should we then live? We need to be thankful every day that Jesus took our place and took the wrath of God on him so that we don’t have to endure God’s wrath. Well, lastly, here’s the fourth one. And it’s right in the text here.

We need to encourage one another and build each other up. Verse 11, therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing. And so, Paul’s teaching about the second coming of Christ, the rapture, the day of the Lord, he says, what are we to do with that? Well, we’re to encourage one another.

That’s how he concludes chapter four, verse 18. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing.

And so how does that happen? Well, we encourage one another with words, can’t we? We underestimate the power of the spoken word. Proverbs says death and life are in the power of the tongue. And we have this powerful tool called speech that we can use to either encourage others or tear each other down.

And Paul says one of the marks of a person who’s redeemed, and he says, don’t use any rotten speech in your, let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth, that means rotten speech, but what, use your words to what, build each other and encourage one another. So, we need to encourage one another with our words. We can encourage one another with our works.

Ephesians 2:10 says, 8 and 9 says, we’re saved by grace through faith alone in Christ alone, not of works. So, salvation is not of works, but then verse 10 says, we aren’t saved by good works, but we are saved to do good works. And so, we encourage one another by doing good works.

Jesus said, let your light so shine among men so they may see your, what, good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So, God’s called us to do good works out of gratitude for what he has done for us. And then we encourage one another, not only with our words, not only with our works, but also, we already mentioned this, with our weekly gathering.

Hebrews 10:24 and 25, and let me just read that as we conclude here from Hebrews 10:24 and 25. Here’s what the author of Hebrews has to say. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.

And in my Bible, that’s capital D. That’s the day that we’re talking about, the day of the Lord. And so, the author of Hebrews is saying, hey, don’t stop meeting together. Paraphrase, don’t stop coming to church.

And what’s one of our goals when we come to church? It’s, first of all, primarily to worship, but it’s also what? To encourage one another and to build each other up and to think how is we, corporately, as the body of Christ, how can we do good works and let people see Jesus in us? So how should we then live? We need to be informed the day of the Lord’s coming and it can happen at any moment. It’s going to come like a thief in the night. We need to be spiritually alert and have our radar screen up and radar up and realize that we need to live for him in the time that he’s given us.

We need to be thankful that God hasn’t appointed us to wrath, but Jesus took our wrath on the cross. And then we need to be constantly encouraging one another. Well, I want to close with some encouragement and reading some scripture.

And so, I want you to listen to this. This is the prophet, Zachariah. He’s writing about the day of the Lord and he’s referring to the second coming, I believe, at the end of the tribulation when Jesus’ feet will literally touch the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

And here’s what Zachariah has to say, referring to Jesus, on that day, His feet will stand, this is Zachariah 14:4, on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel.

You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all His holy ones, those are believers, with him. On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness.

It will be a unique day, a day only known to the Lord, with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. On that day, living water will flow out of Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea in summer and winter.

But here’s where we want to close and be encouraged. This is verse 9. The Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day, there will be one Lord and His name, the only name.

When Jesus comes back, he’s going to be the king. He’s going to rule and reign the whole earth and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. That day is coming.

It’s going to be a great day. I hope you’re ready. I hope you know Jesus, that you put your trust in His finished work on the cross for your salvation.

I hope we’ll live every day in light of the fact that Jesus could come today. And I hope we’ll be busy in sharing the good news of the gospel with many that have yet to bow the knee to Jesus.

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Matthew 24:36-41

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So, I’m going to read from Matthew chapter 24, 36 through, I’m actually going to add 42, so you can follow along. This is Jesus on the Mount of Olives discourse, and here’s what Jesus had to say. He’s talking about His return.

But about that day or hour, nobody knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark.

And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away. This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left.

Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

Well, if you’ve been with us over the summer, you know that we’ve been preaching through the book of 1st Thessalonians. And we’re going to continue through there. We’re going to conclude chapter 4 this morning.

And so, a couple more messages in 1st Thessalonians. So just to give you a little background, the theme of 1st Thessalonians is be ready. And what are we to be ready for? Well, we’re to be ready for the coming of Jesus, the second coming.

All through the book of 1st Thessalonians, Paul writing to this church at Thessalonica refers to the second coming of Jesus. In fact, at the end of every chapter, there’s five chapters in 1st Thessalonians, he refers to the second coming of Christ. And so, Paul is wanting those Thessalonian believers and you and I to be ready for the second coming of Christ.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. Did you know a quarter of the Bible is prophetic? 25% of the Bible approximately talks about the future. And God has given us a glimpse of how the world’s going to end.

The book of Revelation lays that out for us. Revelation 1:19, this is the outline of the book of Revelation. John is on the Isle of Patmos and he has a vision of Christ.

Revelation 1:19 says, John, write the things that you have seen, the things which are and the things which are coming thereafter. There’s the outline of the book of Revelation. The things that you have seen, John saw a vision of Christ.

Read Revelation chapter 1. It’s the only description of what Jesus looks like in all the Bible. So, John writes that. Write the things that are.

John wrote seven letters from Jesus to seven historical churches that were present in modern day Asia and Turkey. And then write the things that are coming, that are hereafter. That’s chapters 4 through 22.

4 through 19 talks about the time of God’s wrath on the world. It’s called the Great Tribulation. Chapter 20 talks about the millennial reign of Christ.

Well, he will rule and reign for a thousand years. Chapters 21 and 22 talk about the new heaven and the new earth. So, this morning we’re going to think about 1st Thessalonians 4:13 through 18, and it’s called the Great Disappearance.

If there’s one section of Scripture in 1st Thessalonians that you might be familiar with, this would be the most familiar. It talks about what we refer to as the rapture of the church. And so, let’s just think about some introductory thoughts here.

And here it is, the return of Christ is mentioned all throughout the Bible. So, just like we celebrate His first coming at Christmastime, the Bible all throughout the Scriptures talk about what? The second coming of Christ. We just read about it in Matthew chapter 24.

John 14, in the upper room, Jesus’ words to His disciples before he goes to the cross. And what does he say in John chapter 14? He talks about a person, a place, a promise, and a plan. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you.

Here’s the promise. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am. And then Jesus talks about the plan, how to get to heaven.

John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And 40 days later, Acts chapter 1, here’s Jesus. He’s made many post-resurrection appearances.

Now he’s on that Mount of Olives, and he ascends back to heaven. And as he ascends back to heaven, there’s some angels there. And this is what they say to the disciples in Acts chapter 1, beginning in verse 9. After he said this, Jesus was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They, the disciples, were looking intently up into the sky he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. So, there’s the promise.

Just as Jesus ascended to heaven, guess what? This very same Jesus, he’s not sending a representative, he’s coming back a second time. When we get to the last chapter in all the Bible, John writes three times, quoting Jesus, behold, I’m coming soon. It really means quickly.

That’s found in Revelation chapter 22, verse 7, 12, and verse 20. Well, our passage this morning, then, talks about the rapture of the church. And hopefully you can see this little outline, timeline of the end times.

Now, there’s different churches and doctrinal positions that disagree on the doctrine of last things, that’s called eschatology. And when we introduced this section of Scripture a couple weeks ago, we said that should not be a dividing point among Christians. So, the timing of all this are disagreement among Christians, but here we are in the church age, and what is the next event on God’s prophetic calendar? What does the Scripture say we need to be anticipating and looking forward to? And it’s our passage here this morning.

It’s the rapture of the church. That begins a seven-year period of what’s called the Great Tribulation. Read about it in Revelation 4 through 19.

And it’s a period of judgment, God’s judgment upon the earth. And there’s three series of seven judgments that God’s going to pour out on the earth, and then the return of Christ, and then He returns to planet Earth, back to the Mount of Olives. And for a thousand years, He rules and reigns, and then the final judgment, and then eternity, the new heaven, and the new earth.

Well, this morning we’re going to look at this passage in 1st Thessalonians 4, the passage about the Great Disappearance. So, if you have your Bibles, you can turn there, or we can just follow along as we think about what Paul had to write to these Thessalonian believers. So, here’s, just again by way of introduction, and then we’re going to go through an order here of how this is going to happen, and then we’ll look at some application truths.

But here’s Dr. David Jeremiah’s most recent book is entitled, in fact, The Great Disappearance. The whole book is about the rapture of Jesus. So let me read some introduction from chapter 1. He’s entitled it, Chaos on Earth.

This is how he describes the rapture. It will be an ordinary day on this globe until suddenly it isn’t. One day soon, the world will face the great disappearance.

Billions of people gone in a flash more powerful than an atomic burst, yet silent, invisible, sudden, inexplicable. Try to imagine the extraordinary moment on planet earth. Every single follower of Jesus Christ, as well as those under the age of accountability, all the babies, young children, and mentally disabled gone in a flash, along with all those who have died in Christ.

Bodies will disappear from their coffins at funeral homes all over the world. Patients will vanish from hospital beds, babies from their cribs, children from their classrooms. Imagine cars driving down the freeway with missing drivers, planes with missing pilots, nuclear submarines with missing commanders, nations with missing leaders, parents with missing children.

In various parts of the world, Christian congregations will be mating for worship. Suddenly the buildings will be empty, or nearly so, as the churches resume their services in the sky. Soldiers will be missing in action.

Emergency responders will find their numbers depleted. Prisons will be partially depopulated. News reports will spread like wildfire, but the Christian press will be strangely silent.

There’ll be no believers to report the news. People will frantically search for their loved ones, but phone calls will go to voicemail, and texts will be unanswered. In today’s world, just one missing person case can grip the nation.

What about a billion? What will people think? What panic will they feel? What theories will they embrace? I got to tell you, when I read that, it sounds a little bit like science fiction. It’s not. This is the reality of what will happen one day when the rapture of the church takes place.

And so, we’re going to go through this outline this morning, and here’s our first point. The first point is revelation, God’s revelation to Paul. And we read about it in verse 15.

Paul says, according to the Lord’s word. So, this isn’t Paul making this up. This is what Paul got from God’s revelation to him, and he writes it to the Thessalonian believers, and 2,000 years later we’re reading it.

This is the word of the Lord written to Thessalonian believers. The phrase brothers and sisters is mentioned 15 times in the book of 1st Thessalonians. The inspired inerrant word of God.

Titus chapter 1 verse 2 talks about God’s character, that God cannot lie. And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 verse 17, for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Every word in this book will come true, will come to fruition.

And so, the first point here is revelation. Paul’s giving to us what he got from God himself about the future. Now, point number two in the order of what’s going to happen here.

Verse 16 is return, return. Verse 16, for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ will rise first. So, what happens first here? And we don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s the next event on God’s prophetic calendar.

Christ is going to return, not all the way to earth. It’s called the meeting in the air. And so, Christ is going to return, but guess what? He’s bringing some people with him.

Who’s he bringing with him? Well, look at it in the last part of verse 14, for we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. Now, that’s a euphemism for death. Someone once asked a pastor, how many people does your church auditorium hold? And he says, I don’t know how it many holds, but I know it sleeps 150.

He’s not referring to that kind of sleep. He’s referring to death. So, when Jesus returns in the rapture, he’s bringing with him all those who have died in Christ.

You got some relatives and friends that have gone on before you that knew Jesus? Guess what? He’s bringing them with him. And so, it’s the return, and it’s accompanied by three unique sounds. Look at it in verse 16, the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command. That’s the word keleusma. It’s a military command. John chapter 5, verse 28.

Let me read John 5:28 for you this morning. This is, again, the words of Jesus, do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all those who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out. Well, that’s going to be the next part of this.

It’s going to be resurrection. So, there’s going to be a loud command. What’s Jesus going to say? Well, we don’t know.

We could speculate. Remember when he raised Lazarus from the dead, John chapter 11? Lazarus had been dead for three or four days, and Jesus shows up. They roll back the stone, and Jesus said three words, Lazarus, come forth.

Somebody once said, if he didn’t say the name Lazarus, if he would have just said, come forth, then everybody in their graves would have come out. Maybe he’s going to shout, come forth, but he’s going to give a command. And then it says, the voice of the archangel.

The Lord will come down from heaven with a command with the voice of the archangel. Now, the archangel is like the highest-ranking angel, and there’s one archangel mentioned in the Bible. He’s mentioned twice, 1st Thessalonians 4, here, and Jude chapter 9, his name is Michael.

So, it sounds like the chief angel might be with him when he comes, or Jesus will use the voice of that of the archangel. But then, here’s the third thought, or sound, with a loud command, the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God. When we sang our hymn, When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, if you listen to the words, it says, when the trumpet of the Lord will sound.

Now, we picture a trumpet in our day, but years ago, one of my friends went to Israel and brought me back this as a gift. And this is the shophar. This is a ram’s horn.

This is the trumpet in Jesus’ day. This is what they use. And some of you are going to say, is he going to try to blow this thing? And no, it’s very difficult to try to make a sound come out of here.

But maybe it’ll be the shophar sound. In Jesus’ day, in Roman times, a trumpet sound announced a very important person, or maybe a military leader. And so, here’s the first thing, return.

Jesus will return, not all the way to earth. He’s bringing all those who have died in Christ with him. And then, here’s the order, resurrection.

Resurrection. So, let’s look at it. Again, verse 16, the Lord will come down from heaven, a loud command or shout, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God.

What happens next? And the dead in Christ will rise first. There’s going to be a resurrection. Now, what happens when a believer dies? I believe the Bible teaches, absent from the body, present with the Lord.

That’s Paul writing in 1st Corinthians, that their soul goes immediately to heaven, their body gets buried, but there’s a day coming when those bodies will be resurrected, and the dead in Christ are going to rise first. Now, somebody said the dead in Christ have to rise first because they have six feet further to go to meet the Jesus. So, that’s true as well.

The dead in Christ will rise first. We have a little preview of this at Jesus’ resurrection, and it’s found in Matthew chapter 27, and a passage that really doesn’t get talked about a lot, but actually, this happened in Jesus’ day. Matthew’s writing about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Let me just read for you Matthew 27, beginning in verse 51. It talks about the moment that Jesus dies. It says, at that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs opened. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

That would be interesting. After Jesus rose again, he opened some of the tombs, and some of the people got out. Can you imagine getting a knock at your door? You’ve been at your uncle’s funeral two years ago, and he’s there.

It’s a little preview of what’s going to happen here. So, the dead in Christ will rise first. This is all through Scripture as well.

1st Corinthians 15, that resurrection chapter, talks about it. And let me just read some familiar verses from 1st Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter. It says, listen, I tell you a mystery.

We will not all sleep, but we will be changed in a flash, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. There’s the trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we’ll be changed.

We’ll have our new bodies, our glorified bodies. They’ll be a lot better than this body. There’ll be no more sin.

There’ll be no more sickness, no more sadness. Study the resurrected body of Jesus, and that’s what our bodies will be like. Jesus made some appearances just by showing up, walking through doors.

We’ll have our new glorified body. So, resurrection is the second order here. Then there’s the rapture.

That’s the next step. Verse 17, back to 1st Thessalonians chapter 4. After that, after the dead in Christ rise, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So, Jesus comes back with all those who have died in Christ.

The dead in Christ are raised, and if you are alive at the time of the rapture, the Bible says you will be caught up. The Greek word there is harpazo. It means to snatch up, away and will be raptured.

There’s one generation of Christians that will not have to experience physical death and will be caught up, and we will then what? Meet the Lord and all those that have come with him, and we will meet him in the air. Now, where do we get the word rapture from? The word rapture is not found in the Bible. It’s actually based on a Latin translation of this word caught up, which is rapturo, and so we get the phrase here, the rapture of the church.

And then here’s the last thing, reunion. So, it’s revelation, and then it is the return, and then it is resurrection, and then it is the rapture, and then here it is, reunion. Verse 17, after that, we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so will we be with the Lord forever.

And then he concludes, therefore, encourage one another with these words. What a welcoming committee. What a great reunion to look forward to, to not only see Jesus, but to see those that have gone on before us, that have put their faith in Jesus, and to have that new resurrected bodies, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

No more death, no more sorrow, no more goodbyes, no more separation. As the old hymn says, what a day that will be when my Jesus I shall see, and I look upon His face, the one who saved me by His grace, when he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land, what a day, glorious day that will be. The second verse says there’ll be no more sorrows, no more burdens to bear, no more sickness, no more pain, no more parting over there, but forever I will be with the one who died for me, what a day, glorious day that will be.

Well, the apostle Paul wrote this to a group of believers, young believers, 2,000 years ago, because he wanted them to know what to expect next on God’s prophetic calendar. And so, let’s, this morning, just think about some application truths for us that we can draw out of this text. What should this, how should this impact our lives?

The first truth here is the word consolation or encouragement, encouragement. In fact, Paul gives us the application right in the text as he closes this section. He says, therefore, I want you, what, to encourage one another with these words, to encourage one another that as Christians we have hope, that this world is not all that there is, that there is a reunion day coming someday where we’ll see Jesus face to face and we’ll see our loved ones who have died in Christ. This should bring great encouragement to our hearts and lives.

Most of us here have had somebody in our family, grandparents, parents, siblings that have died in Christ. The question is, will we ever see them again? And if they put their faith in Jesus as their Savior, and if you know Jesus your Savior, the encouraging answer is yes, you will. May Christ return.

Back in October of 1981, 44 years ago, I remember standing in a church entryway in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My mom had been a pastor’s wife, had fought a battle of cancer, and eventually died at the age of 50. I remember the funeral service.

I remember our family standing around that casket before they’re going to close the casket for the last time and have a time of memorial time and a funeral service. And as the casket was about to be closed, my dad said these words, I will never forget them, we will see her again someday. This is not the end.

There’s hope because of what Jesus said. And then when we say goodbye to our loved ones, it’s simply a temporary goodbye until Jesus returns. Well, that’s the first thought that we need to be encouraged by this truth.

The second one is expectation, expectation. In our passage that we read in our Scripture reading, Jesus said twice in Matthew 24, we don’t know when this is going to happen. Nobody knows that the time of Jesus returned and the rapture of the church, but we need to live lives, what, with expectant hearts, knowing that the next event on God’s prophetic calendar is the rapture of the church.

And so, Jesus is going to come someday. It could be today. We don’t know.

All I know is we’re 2,000 years closer to when Jesus said he was coming back again and that promise in Acts chapter 1, some of you remember, you’ve been a long-time part of Community Bible Church, Augie and Joan Piccoli that came here for many, many years. And Augie went home to be with the Lord maybe a year or two ago. But one of Augie Piccoli’s statements that I remember, Augie Piccoli used to say often, he says, I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m looking for the upper taker.

And by that he meant I’m looking for Jesus’ return. And Augie’s in Jesus’ presence right now, but to live lives expectantly that Jesus could come again. And if you read 1st Thessalonians 4 carefully, as Paul’s writing this, we discover that Paul was expecting Jesus to return in his lifetime.

Verse 15, according to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord. Paul included himself. He says, we who are alive when Christ returns.

So, he was thinking Jesus is going to come back in his day. And so, we need to live expectant lives, expecting His return. Thirdly, the word consecration, living in reality of Christ’s return should make a difference in how we behave.

Someday, Christ will come again and we will be like him. But in the meantime, we need to live for him. We need to live with the hope that Jesus can come anytime.

And we need to live a life of dedication and consecration. And Titus chapter 2 talks about that, verses 11 through 13, talks about the blessed hope. This is what the apostle Paul writes to Titus.

The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus.

So, what’s Paul saying? We need to live holy lives. It’s kind of like a teacher that might leave the classroom for a few minutes and say, I’ll be right back. And you better be on your best behavior because you don’t want to be in chaos when the teacher returns.

And so, we need to live a life of purity, of holiness. 1st John writes about that. 1st John chapter 2 and 3, here’s what John has to say.

Verse 28, 1st John 2:28. And now, dear children, continue in him so that when he appears, we may be confident and unashamed before him at His coming. Dear friends, now are we the children of God? And what we will be is not yet made known, but we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

We’ll be just like Jesus. And then he says, all who have this hope in them purify themselves even as he is pure. So, the return of Christ should motivate us, what? To live a life for him.

There’s a fourth truth, and we’ll conclude with this. The fourth truth is examination, examination. So, if Christ could return at any moment, then we need to examine our hearts and make sure we’re ready for His return.

2nd Corinthians 13 verse 5 says, examine yourselves to make sure you’re in the faith. If there’s one mistake you do not want to make, it is about your eternal destiny. The Bible says we are saved by faith alone, through grace alone, and Christ alone.

I don’t know if you caught this on social media. I’m assuming it’s true. That’s not a good assumption, is it? But it was Fox News quoting President Trump, working on trying to stop the war in Ukraine and Russia and what he’s trying to do over in the Middle East and bring peace.

He basically said, I want to go to heaven. Some people say I’m like way down on the ladder, but I think if I can get this done, if I think I can bring these parties together, I think I’m going to make it to heaven. Sad statement.

If that’s true, President Trump doesn’t understand God’s grace. There’s nothing you can do to earn your way into heaven. It’s all about putting our faith in Jesus and Jesus alone.

So, are we ready? Are our family members and friends ready, co-workers, neighbors? Let me read Revelation chapter 20. This is why it’s so important to be ready. This is the end judgment, the judgment of unbelievers.

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it, the earth and the heavens fled from His presence. There was no place for them. I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne and the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life.

The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. This is the judgment for those who have not accepted Jesus. Believers have a different judgment.

It’s called the judgment seat of Christ. This is called the great white throne judgment. At the end of the book of Revelation chapter 20, the sea gave up the dead that were in it and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them and each person was judged according to what they had done.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

There’s a heaven to gain. There’s a hell to shun. We need to be ready.

Not only do we need to be ready, but we need to spread the good news of the gospel to those that God brings across our pathway so they can be a recipient of God’s grace and not have to face a second death. 2nd Corinthians 5:21, I call it the great exchange. He who knew no sin, that’s Jesus, became sin for us so that in him we might become what? The righteousness of God.

When you put your faith in Jesus, His righteousness, His perfection gets credited to our account and Jesus looks at us and God looks at us as in Christ, justified positionally, just as if we’ve never sinned. So, Andy Stanley writes the book, and asks the question, how good do you have to be to get into heaven? The answer is you have to be perfect. There’s the problem, but God gave us the solution in Jesus because the Bible says for all have sinned and come short of God’s glory.

There’s none righteous, no not one. And so that’s why Jesus came to live a perfect life, to go to the cross, to have your sin put on him, to take our penalty in our place. And when we receive that gift, we have the wonderful gift of salvation, of being in Christ, and of knowing that someday we will be with him forever and ever in His glorious presence.

I trust that you’re ready I trust that we’ll make it our goal to share the good news of the gospel with those that need to get ready. May God give us the grace and courage to do that.

The post The Great Disappearance: Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4:13-18 appeared first on Community Bible Church.

Please enjoy our Guest Speaker, Dr. Hal Walters

We are truly loved by God who loves us and that’s going to, I think, come out in this Bible passage that we’re going to be studying together. So, my text for today is Ephesians chapter 1, 1 through 4. And if you would, just keep your Bibles open to that place in your Bible and all the other Bible references will be projected up on the screen so you don’t have to go back and forth in your Bible. But what God’s word says is that Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you. Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless in him.

So, just a few introductory remarks about Ephesians. This was written, this letter was written by Paul the apostle around 60 A.D. from prison in Rome. And Ephesians is six chapters and it can roughly be divided into two parts.

The first half, the first three chapters generally talk about what we as Christians should believe about salvation. And the core message of those first three chapters is this, that spiritually dead sinners are made alive and gain eternal salvation by grace through faith. That’s the main message that Paul is putting forward in the first three chapters.

Spiritually dead sinners are made alive and gain eternal salvation by grace through faith. And the last three chapters generally talk about what we as believers, how we should live in light of the fact that we’ve been blessed so much by God for all these spiritual blessings. Now, as we go through this passage, I’d like for you all just to look for one thing to sort of pull it all together and that is God’s sovereignty.

God’s sovereignty in everything in our lives from salvation, we’ll see that in the conversion of Paul, we’ll see that in our own conversion stories. As he calls saints to worship him and to be his children, as he calls apostles, look for his sovereignty as he encourages believers through this passage. Look for his sovereignty as before the foundation of the world he decided to sacrifice his only son on a cross for our sins and look for his sovereignty as he bestows on us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

So, let’s just start with the first word in this passage. It is Paul and to understand Paul the apostle who was commissioned by Christ to do amazing things in the New Testament church, but to understand him fully, we need to understand his dark side. We need to understand Saul of Tarsus.

Saul of Tarsus was born in Cilicia, that is a place in southeastern present-day Turkey and he was born a Pharisee and he was born a Jew and not only that, he was a Roman citizen. He had remarkable religious zeal and there’s nothing wrong with having zeal for one’s religion, but this morphed over time into religious extremism and add to that brutal violence, absolutely brutal violence. He soon became a religious terrorist, no different than someone like Osama bin Laden.

Saul was a true religious terrorist and to make things even worse, he thought he was doing the will of God in what he was doing. In Acts chapter 8, it says, but Saul was ravaging the church, entering house after house. He dragged off men and women, committed them to prison.

He participated in the murder of Christ’s followers. He participated in the murder, for example, of the martyr Stephen and held the garments of those who cast stones at him. And as part of his crusade against followers of Christ, he took a journey of 135 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus and before he went, excuse me, before he went, he asked that the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem would send him with letters.

It said, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest in Jerusalem and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. And on his way, he was confronted with a light and it wasn’t just a light that shined on him. If you read in Acts, it was a light that was all around him.

It enveloped him and out of that light came a voice Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And as I was reading that story, I was reminded of the fourth and fifth verses in John chapter one, the gospel of John, where it says in him, meaning in the word or in Jesus was life and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. So, Saul was knocked off his feet. He was blinded by this light.

He was completely overcome. He knew that he was facing something that was far more powerful than himself. And he responds to this voice that comes out of the light.

Who are you, Lord? And the word for Lord in Greek is Kurios. And in this case, it probably does mean Lord and doesn’t refer in this particular context to Yahweh or Jehovah. But it reminded me of when Jesus, during his earthly ministry, would confront demons and the demons knew that they were confronting someone who was far more powerful than they were spiritually.

And Saul knew this, that he was he was confronted by someone over whom he did not have control. And this voice responded to him. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

And Saul epitomizes the darkness of sin. And this darkness again was completely overcome by the light of Jesus Christ. And God came to a Christian named Ananias in Damascus and says to Ananias, Ananias, go for Saul is a chosen instrument of mine.

Remember that word chosen, because we’re going to see words just like that as we go through this passage. For he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and the kings and children of Israel. And so, he put his hands on Saul.

He regained his sight. The Holy Spirit came upon him very much like the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism. And it in effect, it in effect sort of commissioned him for his ministry to the Gentiles.

And Saul went immediately was baptized and then started to preach Jesus Christ as the Son of God in the synagogues. So, what can we learn from this passage? Well, first of all, the negative side of things. Saul was definitely, as you can see in this passage from Ephesians, he was definitely following the course of this world.

Saul was following the prince of the power of the air. He was a son of disobedience. He was living in the passion of his flesh.

He was under spiritual condemnation. Unless we think, though, that that we’re any different. Before we were saved, we too were blinded by sin, just as Saul was.

We too, our desires were controlled by our sinful nature, because as you can see in Ephesians, it says that we were once dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked. And that is a phase of complete spiritual inability. And we’re in need of a and Saul was in need of a spiritual rebirth.

But fortunately, there is a but to this. Because as we read on in this passage in Ephesians, it says, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And now this is sort of the focal point of the first half of this letter to the Ephesians, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not of your own doing. It’s the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.

So, what can we learn from this radical transformation of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul, someone who was actively persecuting Christians, and then later became one of the most influential leaders in the New Testament church? The lesson we can learn is this, God can transform even the hardest of hearts. So, if there is a mother or father, brother or sister, son or daughter who is not following Christ, take heart. God can transform even the hardest of hearts.

Saul, as he was going from Jerusalem to Damascus, he wasn’t pining over his sin. He wasn’t looking for a Messiah. God entered into his life.

God initiated this and overcame his sinfulness and gave him, I like this analogy, a spiritual heart transplant. He gave him a new birth. So, let’s go on in this passage.

It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus to the saints who are in Ephesus. So, the question is, what is a saint? In the Greek, the word is hagios, and it means someone who’s holy, someone who is set apart. So, a saint is someone who’s put their trust in Jesus and him alone for their salvation.

And because of that, they are set apart for God’s purposes. And the word saint in the New Testament is usually used in the plural form. So, we can also think of it as the company of all faithful believers, not only now, but throughout all of history.

And in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, it says, to the church of God that’s in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There’s that word again. Well, there’s that word call.

So, we have chosen, we have called. Take note of these words because they’re going to be familiar themes as we go through and study the ramifications of this passage. So, we learned that saints are from this passage, that saints are sanctified in Christ Jesus.

We learned that God calls us to be his saints. And we also learned that saints do calling on their own. We worship, we pray, we walk with God.

So, saints are holy. They are called and they call themselves. And this is to be differentiated from the Catholic view of saints, who are typically individuals who have done some, reportedly, some miracle or led such wonderful lives that after their death, they are beatified or canonized by a pope or a bishop.

That is not particularly scriptural. All of the Catholic saints are dead. The scriptural view of saints, they can be alive or dead.

And saints are not worshiped and revered. We saints do the worshiping and the revering of our Lord God, who has called us. So that’s what a saint is.

And as we go on, it says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. Well, what is an apostle? Well, the word disciple and apostle are often used interchangeably, but that’s probably not a good idea. Because indeed, all apostles were disciples of Jesus Christ and they were saints, but the reverse is not true.

Saints and disciples of Jesus Christ are not all apostles. And if I was going to tell you one word to think of when you think of apostle, think of an ambassador. An ambassador for a country, someone who carries the political intent, the policies of one country to another country and speaks with the authority of the president or the prime minister of the country he or she represents.

And that’s exactly what an apostle of Jesus Christ is. It is an ambassador for Jesus Christ. Now, there are several sort of what I’ll call classical criteria for an apostle.

One is the apostles were disciples of Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry. Two, apostles were witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ during his ministry. And number three, apostles were called by Jesus Christ to establish churches, to preach, to teach, and in some cases, they were empowered to perform miracles.

So those are the classical qualifications for an apostle. But we went through Paul’s conversion story and probably some of you are thinking about that and saying, well, then why do we think, why is Paul calling himself an apostle? Because indeed, there has been a debate over his apostleship. There are some who take issue with the fact that he was not a disciple of Jesus during his earthly ministry and wasn’t a witness of the resurrected Jesus during his earthly ministry.

But as we saw from the Bible passages that we read concerning his conversion, Paul was called directly by Jesus Christ to become an ambassador to Gentiles primarily and also to Jews and kings, as we saw from that Bible passage. Paul’s apostleship was also confirmed in scripture by the other apostles. And finally, he was also authenticated by the miracles that he performed during his ministry.

So how did Paul’s apostleship differ from the other apostles? Well, he was specifically called to be an apostle to Gentiles. He had a very unique encounter with Jesus Christ, and he was different from the other apostles because he was better educated, he was from a higher social class, and he was a Roman citizen. And this Roman citizenship became an important thing in his ministry because he was a Roman citizen.

He was very well suited culturally to interact with Gentiles. And this Roman citizenship also saved his life in certain circumstances during his ministry. So, the important things to remember about his apostleship is that apostles are in some way, shape, or form witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

They are called to their position and they’re ambassadors for Christ. And that’s a very serious thing to be an ambassador for Christ because at that time, they didn’t have the full canon of scripture. And if someone rejected what the apostles said, in effect, they were rejecting Jesus Christ.

Just as if we reject Jesus Christ, we’re rejecting God the Father because we know that Jesus is God. So that’s a very important thing. And it brings up the important question, are there any apostles today? The answer is no; there aren’t any apostles today.

So, what is our authority? Our authority is the word of God. Our authority is scripture. So, we go on to read this passage, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

So very briefly, what do we mean by the will of God? That is God’s sovereign purpose and plan, particularly in the context of salvation, but in every aspect of believers’ life. God’s will isn’t accidental. God’s will is not random.

It is based upon his predetermined and unchanging purposes that have been determined before the foundation of the world. And what we need to remember is when we read something like by the will of God, let’s just remember that God is in charge and in control of every aspect of our lives. So, he’s writing to the saints who are at Ephesus.

Now, we don’t have a lot of time here, so I’m just going to very, very briefly say a few words about Ephesus. It was a major economic hub for the Roman Empire on the Aegean coast in western present-day Turkey, and at that time in history, Christ’s followers were actually being tossed out of Rome. There was considerable political resistance to the Christian movement, and so undoubtedly in Ephesus there was Roman political resistance, but also Ephesus was the seat of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and that was the temple of the goddess of fertility, Diana, otherwise known as Artemis.

And there was a whole financial setup surrounding the worship of the goddess Diana, and Paul’s preaching interfered with that and cut into the profits of that kind of economic activity that surrounded the worship of Diana, and so there was also financial resistance to the establishment of the church in Ephesus. Yet the church thrived, and Paul founded the church during his second missionary journey, and this is what I want you to understand. He didn’t do that alone.

There were several people who helped him that were named in Acts. One was a tent-making couple, Priscilla and Aquila. He was also helped in establishing and nurturing the church by a very talented, very talented evangelist from Alexandria, Egypt named Apollos, and Apollos didn’t have a full understanding of the gospel, but Priscilla and Aquila, very strategically and very sensitively, so as not to point out his incompleteness of his knowledge of the gospel, took him aside, took him under their wing, and mentored him until he had a more full understanding of the gospel, and he accepted that with humility.

Again, so you see how Paul, Priscilla, Aquila, Apollos, all working together in harmony and with humility, and when Paul returned on his third missionary journey to Ephesus, he stayed three years longer than he ever stayed in any church that he founded, and when he left that time, he left in charge his protege Timothy, and Timothy later left in charge of the apostle John. My point is this, a ministry requires the participation of everyone, of the saints, the deacons, and by the sovereignty of God, the church of Ephesus was founded and grew despite political and financial obstacles, and a church is a place for everyone to use his or her gifts with which they’ve been blessed by God, and I hesitate to mention all of the things that can be done, but whatever, to preach, to teach, to evangelize, to pray, to cook, to clean, to beautify, there are innumerable things for us all to do, and to work together in harmony, and to work together in humility, and as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s buried grace. Community Bible Church is not just the ministry of Pastor Ron and Diane, this is a place for everyone to play a role, everyone can do something and take upon their shoulders part of the burden.

So going on, let’s just talk a little bit about who this message was for, who this letter was for. This letter has a universal message, and the reason I say that is obviously our salvation and what we can learn about our salvation is something that all Christians should know, but some of the oldest manuscripts, there’s just a few of them that don’t say to the saints who are at Ephesus, there are a few of the oldest manuscripts that say to the saints who are in blank, and it’s thought by some scholars that this was meant to be a circular letter so that if this letter was sent to Corinth or Thessalonica, the person who sent it could just write in the name of the church, and this underscores the universality of this message. This is a message not only for Ephesus, not only for the New Testament churches, but we could say to the saints who are in Manchester, to the saints who are seated right here at Community Bible Church, and moving on we say, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

What does it mean when the Bible says that we are in Christ Jesus? Well, this isn’t just symbolic, this isn’t just metaphorical, this is telling us where we are located spiritually as Christians. Read this passage with me, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

There is a spiritual union between believers and Jesus Christ. Believers are in Christ in so much as we have been buried with him in baptism, and we have been raised up to walk in newness of life. So, you might say, well, how do I know that I’m in Christ? Well, I just ask a few questions.

Do you trust Jesus and him alone for your salvation? Do you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? Is it your heart’s desire to walk and grow in grace, to grow in your faith as you go along in your Christian life? These sound kind of simple and basic, but if the answer to these questions is yes, then the Holy Spirit has worked and is working in your life. You are no longer in bondage to sin, but you’ve been reborn to walk in newness of life. Paul goes on to say, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s a common greeting. We read it and we kind of gloss over it, but you know, it’s very appropriate for someone like Paul because grace is a Greek greeting, a Gentile greeting from the Greek Charis. And peace is a Jewish greeting, shalom.

And this underscores that the gospel message is for Jews and Gentiles. It is for all of mankind. And that was, until the ministry of Jesus, a mystery. And that’s a mystery that Paul kind of unfolded in some of his writings, that the gospel message is for all mankind. And he was an ambassador, an apostle, to Greeks and Jews alike, and he uses this greeting that has both Greek, both Gentile, and Jewish components.

Now, when we think about the word grace, we think about God’s unmerited favor. That’s a wonderful definition, it really is. But another way you can think about grace, that may be even easier to remember, is this acrostic.

It’s God’s riches, eternal life, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, at Christ’s expense, Christ’s death on the cross. So, God’s riches at Christ’s expense. And this highlights salvation as a gift, and peace signifies the reconciliation that we have between God and humanity through Jesus Christ.

And notice the word order, most of the time it is grace and peace. So it is that when it is only after we experience the grace of Jesus Christ in our life that we can really live a life of peace and assurance, knowing that we are God’s children, that we are restored to a right relationship with Him. Now, before we go on to verse 3, I just want to say something about verses 3 to 14.

In the Greek, and I’m not a Greek scholar, but in the Greek, this is all one sentence. There are no periods. So, it was almost as if Paul wanted to blurt out his message.

He didn’t want to stop. He was excited about this message. And he just wanted to say it all in one breath.

And it really conveys his excitement about the whole message, and it sets the tone and the melody for the rest of the epistle. So, with that introduction, let’s just look at part of verse 3. Now, you might be saying to yourself, okay, I feel blessed by God. I know I’m blessed by God, but how do I bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? It doesn’t seem possible, but the meaning of blessed, you can think of it as this.

We’re thanking God for these spiritual blessings that He’s given us, this blessing of salvation, this blessing of eternal life with Him. And Paul is pouring out his soul for God’s goodness. And how can we do that? How can we bless God? We can bless Him in our thoughts, our meditations.

We can bless Him in our words. We can bless Him in our actions, in our worship. There are so many ways we can bless Him.

And think of an electrical circuit. You know, electricity doesn’t flow unless there’s a complete circuit. And God the Father, before the foundation of the world, ordained the plan of salvation, and Jesus Christ made it possible through His perfectly righteous life, His death on the cross, and His resurrection.

The Holy Spirit then applies that to our lives, and in turn, we turn around, and in gratitude, we give thanks back to God. We complete that circuit. And that spiritual electricity flows that way.

That’s what I think it means when it says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And why does it say, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, very briefly, when it says, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we ought to remember, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We know that Jesus is God.

And when it says, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that emphasizes Jesus’s divine nature. And when it says, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, that emphasizes His human nature. In Galatians 4, it says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so we might receive adoption as sons.

We are those who were born under the law, and we could not keep the requirements of the law perfectly. But Jesus was born of a woman. He was born fully man, and He too was born under the law.

He was under the law, just as we are under the law. And He kept the requirements of the law perfectly. Yet, as a fully human, as a full human being, Jesus said Himself, I can do nothing on my own.

As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my will, but the will of Him who sent me. So, Jesus was perfectly human. He was born under the law, and His will was subordinate to the will of God the Father.

So, when it says, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s emphasizing Jesus’s human nature. When it says, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s emphasizing Jesus’s divine nature. Now, Paul says that we’ve been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

So let me just ask you a rhetorical question. What kinds of things in this life give you the feeling of the most security? And when I ask that question of myself, I have to be honest. Sometimes I think, well, if my bank account is steady, and my investments are doing well, that gives me a sense of security.

But those kinds of things, as important as they are, they’re things we’ve worked for our entire life, and yes, they’re important. No, they’re not bad. We can use those things to support the ministry.

But those are things that are secondary. Augustine says that anything that can be taken away from us against our will is something that has no eternal value. And those are things that can be taken away against our will.

Those are things that have no eternal value, as important as they may be. But what this passage is saying, that God’s given us a spiritual bank account. And that spiritual bank account is full to overflowing.

And the balance on that spiritual bank account, it never goes down. It never goes down. We have no need of a spiritual financial advisor.

God keeps that bank, that spiritual bank account full at all times. Believers lack nothing in their spiritual life, and we have access to all that God intends to us through Christ. So, what’s in that account? What are these spiritual blessings? Well, if you want to think about it this way, it’s a straightforward way to kind of organize it in your mind.

We can think of them in terms of past, that before the foundation of the world, God ordained that he would send his Son to die for the sins of those who put their trust in him. In the present, we have, because of that, we have forgiveness of sins. We have redemption, justification.

We’re adopted as children into God’s family. Not only that, we have assurance of salvation. We can walk with that peace we talked about earlier because of that assurance.

And we have the gift of the Holy Spirit. And for the future, we have the hope, the sure hope of heaven, of eternal life with Christ and glorified perfect bodies. Now, I’m just going to read verse 4 and 5 together, but we’re only going to go through verse 4, but they complement each other.

In verse 4, it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. So here again, we have that word chose. We’ve had as we went along the word call.

And here we add to that list of words predestined. And what we’re talking about is the doctrine of election. And that doctrine simply says that before the foundation of the world God sovereignly chose specific individuals for salvation.

So how do we respond to something like that? I mean, really, how do we respond? Well, I can tell you the way I respond. Can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood? Died he for me who caused his pain? For me who him to death pursued? God the Father is the author of this election. He takes the lead role in that.

The objects of election are all of us. In the context of this passage, it’s the saints in Ephesus. But in the context of the universality of this message, it is all of us here who have put our trust in Jesus Christ.

And this passage tells us what the result of our election is. We’re holy and we’re blameless in God’s eyes. There’s something called double imputation, and that is that on the cross our sins were imputed or put upon Jesus.

And Jesus’ righteousness was then imputed to us. So, we’re clothed with Jesus’ righteousness so that when God looks at us, he sees Jesus’ righteousness and not our filthy rags. Now there are so many passages that support this doctrine of election in Scripture.

There are too many to go through, but this is one of the most beautiful ones. And it not only talks about this doctrine, but it also sort of talks about something that has been called before the golden chain of salvation. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called. There’s that word. And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. When did this election occur? Before the foundation of the world, before any of us were born, before any of us sinned. That’s when it occurred.

And the passage goes on to say, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. In him means in Jesus. So, God is a loving God.

He’s perfectly loving. God is perfectly merciful, but he’s also perfectly just. And because of that perfect justice, our sins will be paid for.

They’ll be paid for either by us, through eternity in hell, or by Jesus Christ. And that’s what scripture means when it says we’re chosen in him. Because Christ redeemed us from something we couldn’t do.

The curse of the law is the curse that we couldn’t possibly keep the law perfectly. And he redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us and by dying on the cross. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

He was cursed for us. God the Father turned his back upon him. And finally, not only did God choose us before the foundation of the world, but also God appointed Jesus Christ for his redemptive work before the foundation of the world.

This passage in 1 Peter says, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things. We weren’t ransomed with money, like gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. That reminds us of the Passover.

He, Jesus Christ, in his death on the cross, he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who throw him, our believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. So, what can we conclude from this passage that we’ve been studying this morning? Well, as a result of the sovereign mercy and grace and love of God the Father, as a result of the perfectly righteous life of Jesus Christ, along with his death on the cross to ransom us from the power of sin in our lives and as a result of his resurrection, and as a result of the Holy Spirit applying this gift of grace, this gift of salvation to us and giving us a new spiritual heart, as a result of all of that, our eyes are open to the seriousness of our sin. Our eyes are open to the holiness of God.

We’re born again. We’re restored to a state of, as this passage says, holiness and blamelessness in the eyes of God who sees only Christ’s righteousness when he looks at us. God is sovereign in all those things, just as he was sovereign in the miraculous conversion of Saul, just as he was sovereign in the conversion of each one of you.

He’s sovereign in the ministry to the Gentiles, to which he called Paul the Apostle, and in the ministry to which he calls each one of us here. We’re sovereignly called to use our talents, whatever they are, as best we can in the ministry here, just as God sovereignly established and maintained the church at Ephesus despite many obstacles through the ministry of Paul, Priscilla, Aquila, Apollos, Timothy, the Apostle John. And finally, God has chosen to bestow on us as all believers an unlimited spiritual bank account of spiritual blessings, blessings that began before the foundation of the world, blessings that we can enjoy every day of our lives right now, and blessings that we can count on for the future.

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1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

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All right, you’ll remain standing. We’re going to read some Scripture. This is 1st Thessalonians 4, verses 13 through 18, and you can follow along on the screen as I read.

This is Paul’s encouragement to the church at Thessalonica. He writes, “‘Brethren, sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

According to the words of the Lord, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will ever be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.

We have been going through the book of 1st Thessalonians on Sunday morning, and the theme of the book that we’ve chosen is Be Ready.

That’s actually the title of Dr. Warren Wearsby’s commentary on 1st Thessalonians. The title of the book is Be Ready. Dr. Wiersbe, who went home to be with the Lord a number of years ago, wrote a commentary on every book of the Bible.

It’s called the Be Series, and every title is Be Something. The book of Joshua, it’s Be Courageous. 1st Thessalonians, it’s Be Ready.

And so, we’ve been looking at 1st Thessalonians, and so the question is, ready for what? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be unprepared. I don’t like surprises in life. I like to know the plan.

I know what’s happening for the next day, what’s happening for the next week. I flat out told my wife, no surprise birthday parties, please. I don’t like surprises.

Well, when Paul says be ready, he’s telling us to be ready for the return of Christ. And when you look at the book of 1st Thessalonians, every chapter, those are obviously man-made divisions, but every chapter ends with a reference to the fact that Christ is coming again. So, I think Paul wanted to communicate that to the Thessalonian believers, and he wants to remind us of that this morning, that Jesus is coming again.

Let me just illustrate, at the end of chapter 1, Paul says that we’re to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from His coming wrath. The end of chapter 2, Paul writes in verse 19, for what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we glory in the presence of the Lord Jesus when He comes. The end of chapter 3, may He strengthen your heart so you will be blameless and holy in the presence of God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all His holy ones.

The end of chapter 4, we just read that passage that talks about the second coming of Christ. And then the last part of chapter 5, verse 23, may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, the message is that we need to be ready, and the readiness is for the fact that Jesus is coming again.

And Paul established this church on one of his missionary journeys, but if you remember and you’ve been with us, he had to leave very suddenly. There was like a flash mob that broke out, and they were going after Paul and Silas, so they made a nighttime escape. In fact, when he writes earlier in chapter 2, he says, I left you as orphans.

I had to leave suddenly. And no doubt when Paul was there, he talked about and taught the second coming of Christ. But now they’re separated, and, excuse me, some of these folks in the church at Thessalonica, their loved ones have died.

And they’re wondering, what’s going to happen to them? Are they going to miss the second coming of Christ because they’ve died? Now, you need to remember that they just had the Old Testament. We have the complete of God’s revelation in the New Testament. They didn’t have that.

And so, one of the reasons that Paul writes this is, as we read, he wants to explain to them they’re not going to miss the second coming of Christ. There’s going to be a return, and there’s going to be a resurrection, and there’s going to be a rapture, and there’s going to be a reunion someday. And so, Paul writes this letter to inform them about the second coming of Christ and to give them encouragement.

So, this morning, we’re not going to get much into the text, but I thought I would just give four introductory truths about 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 13 through 18, and then we’ll jump deeper into the text in the coming weeks. So, here’s four introductory truths as we think about 1st Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18. Number one, differing views of eschatology.

That’s the study of the doctrine of the last things. That’s the study of the future. Differing views of eschatology should not be divisive in the body of Christ.

Different views of eschatology should not be divisive in the body of Christ. It was Saint Augustine that said, in essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty. So, there are five fundamentals of the faith historically.

Doctrinal truths that without them that we would die for because they’re the fundamental truths of Christianity. Number one, the inerrancy of Scripture. This is the Word of God.

It is without error. Number two, the virgin birth. Number three, the substitutionary atonement that Jesus paid our sin debt, took our place when he gave His life on Calvary.

Number four, bodily resurrection. Number five, the second coming of Christ. Now, to believe the Bible is to believe that Jesus is coming again.

It is all through Scripture. Let me just share a few of the passages all through Scripture that talk about the Jesus is coming again. This is Zechariah 14:4. On that day, His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.

Now, where did Jesus ascend from in Acts chapter 1? The Mount of Olives. What did those angels say? This same Jesus that you see going up to heaven is coming back again someday. And so, the prophet Zechariah says, His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west forming a great valley and half of the mountain moving north, half of the mountain moving south.

Our passage in 1st Thessalonians 4 talks about the second coming. Titus chapter 2 verse 13 talks about the blessed hope. Revelation, the apostle John in the first chapter of Revelation verse 7, look, he’s coming with the clouds and every eye will see him.

Revelation 22, the last chapter in the Bible, three times. Verse 7, look, I’m coming soon. Verse 12, look, I’m coming soon.

Verse 20, look, I’m coming soon. It means quickly. And so, to believe the Bible is to believe that, what, Jesus is coming again.

The difference is there are different eschological views of when he’s coming. And so, sometimes within churches and believers, there’s a disagreement about the timing of His coming, not whether or not he’s coming. And so, the truth is that those types of disagreements should not be divisive within the body of Christ.

So, here’s our doctrinal statement from our Constitution about the second coming of Christ. It’s just a simple statement. We believe in the blessed hope, the personal, imminent, that means it could happen at any time, pre-tribulational, it means we believe that the rapture is going to take place before that seven-year period of tribulation when God pours His wrath out on the world, and premillennial coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for His redeemed ones.

We also believe in a subsequent return to earth with His saints to establish His millennial kingdom. So, we believe in a two-fold return. The rapture, he comes with His saints to meet the saints in the air, those who have died in Christ, those who are living at that time, they’ll be snatched up.

The word rapture isn’t in the Bible, but it’s the Latin term for caught up. But then there’s a second coming when Christ literally comes, His feet stand on the Mount of Olives, and he comes as the great warrior on the white horse in Revelation chapter 20, and he establishes His millennial kingdom. So, there’s all sorts of different views on when the rapture is going to take place.

Some believe it’s before the tribulation. There’s a position of the mid-tribulation rapture that Christ raptures the believers out halfway through the tribulation. There’s a new view put out by a fellow by the name of Marvin Rosenthal about 40 years ago.

He called it the pre-wrath rapture. Some people believe that the rapture is at the end of the tribulation. And so, having said that, what we agree on is that Jesus is coming again, and we need to be ready.

So, these differing views should not be divisive. Here’s the second introductory truth this morning. No one knows the day or hour of Jesus’ return.

No one knows the day or the hour of Jesus’ return, and that’s Matthew chapter 24. Let me read beginning in verse 36. But about that day or hour, these are the words of Jesus, and He was asked a question about the end times.

But about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. You might read that, you mean Jesus doesn’t even know when He’s coming back? Well, I think in Jesus becoming human flesh, He limited His ability in some areas, and His knowledge in some areas. So, I think now that Jesus has ascended to the right hand of God, and He’s omniscient, I think He knows when He’s coming back.

But perhaps Jesus is saying, at this point in time, nobody knows, only the Father in heaven. And then He describes this, as it was in the days of Noah. We kind of have an ark theme going here this morning.

As it was in the days of Noah, so will be at the coming of the Son of Man. From the days of Noah, before the flood, people were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, up until the day Noah entered the ark. Life was going on as normal, until Noah went into the ark.

And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all the way. This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left.

Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will be taken, the other left. And so, here’s Jesus’ words of application. He tells us in verse 42, therefore keep watch.

Verse 44, so you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come in an hour when you do not expect it. So, the any moment return of Christ. Jesus says, we need to be watchful, and we need to be ready, because nobody knows when he’s coming, and it could be today.

So, date setting is useless. And down through history, many people have tried to predict when Jesus is coming again. There was a group in the 19th century, the end of the 19th century, called the Millerites, and they knew that Jesus was coming again.

So, they sold all their possessions, and they went up onto a mountaintop, and they were waiting for Jesus to come. No, we don’t know when he’s coming, but he calls us to be ready, and to be watchful, and to be faithful. Well, the third truth is this.

The Apostle Paul writes this letter to encourage these new believers to be ready for Christ’s return. So, as I mentioned, part of the reason that he wrote this letter is to explain to these new believers in the Church of Thessalonica about the doctrine of the second coming, to encourage them to be hopeful, and to be ready. Now, when we read verse 15, notice it suggests that the Apostle Paul was looking for Christ’s return, and if you read the text carefully, he’s expecting Jesus to return in His lifetime.

Look at verse 15 from 1st Thessalonians 4, according to the Lord’s Word, we tell you that we who are still alive, Paul writes. Did you catch that? We who are still alive will not precede those who have died in Christ. Paul writes this, and he’s thinking that Jesus is coming back in His lifetime, and so he shares this with the Thessalonian believers, and he wants them to be ready.

How can we be ready for Christ’s return? Well, the first step is to know Jesus as Savior. The Apostle Peter writes in 1st Peter chapter 3, actually it’s 2nd Peter chapter 3, he’s writing about the day of the Lord, and he says in the last days people are going to say, well, where is this Christ’s return? Since the beginning of time, things have just happened day after day, the doctrine of uniformitarianism, nothing’s changed, and Peter writes and says, well, you’re unaware of history, that in the past Jesus broke into history and he brought judgment through, again, the flood, Noah’s ark, and then he writes about being patient for the return of Christ. Do not forget this one thing, dear friends.

With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. God is eternal. He’s not bound by time.

One of the things I’m looking forward to in heaven is not being bound by time, not having to look at my watch saying, now I’ve got to be here, now I’ve got to be here. One day is like a thousand years, a thousand years is like one day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient. The word is makrothumia. He’s long-suffering.

What is he waiting for? He’s patient. Here it is. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance.

So why hasn’t Jesus returned yet? Because he’s waiting for people to receive Jesus as their Savior. He’s waiting for the message to go out and being patient, long-suffering until that day of judgment comes. And so, the Apostle Paul is writing to these believers to say, you need to be ready for the return of Christ.

Maybe my favorite verse in the Bible, certainly one of the top three is 2nd Corinthians 5:21. It’s the gospel in a nutshell. He who know no sin, Jesus, became sin for us so that in him we might become what? The righteousness of God. That’s what salvation is.

We put our faith in Jesus and repent from our sins and put our trust in him, and we exchange our sinfulness for the righteousness of Christ. And in our standing before God, when we come to faith in Christ, we are justified just as if we’ve never sinned, because he sees us through the righteousness of Christ, wrapped in the robes of Christ’s righteousness.

Well, number four, fourthly here, we think about 1st Thessalonians chapter four, and we get into the text in the coming days. Prophecy gives us a glimpse into the future so we will know how to live in the present. Prophecy gives us a glimpse into the future so we’ll know how to live in the present. Did you know over one-fourth of the Bible is prophetic? You put the Old Testament and New Testament together.

Did you know there are eight times as many verses in the Bible about the second coming of Christ as there are about His first coming, all those verses that we read about on Christmas time? And so, God gives us a glimpse into the future. That’s the outline of the book of Revelation. John was told, he’s on the Isle of Patmos, write the things which have been what you have seen, the things which are, and the things that will be hereafter.

So, the book of Revelation pulls the curtain away. Chapter one is the vision of Christ. That’s what John records.

He saw a vision of Christ. Chapters two and three are seven letters to seven historical churches that are given to these churches, words from Jesus himself. Chapters four through 22 are all prophetic.

This is what the future is going to look like. This is what’s coming. It’s the only book in the Bible where there’s a blessing promise for reading the words that are written in the book of Revelation.

And so, prophecy gives us a glimpse into the future, so we will know how to live in the present. And so, as we study this passage in 1st Thessalonians chapter four, there’s a couple of applications that should move our hearts as we look at what God has told us about the future. And the first one is that you and I as believers in Jesus have hope, have hope.

Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 13, now abideth these three, here’s the three great Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love. And then he says the greatest of these is love. One of those great virtues that we have is hope and Titus 2:13 calls the return of Christ the blessed hope.

So, how does Paul begin here in encouraging these believers from Thessalonica, brothers and sisters, by the way, that phrase is in there 15 times in this letter. We’re all part of the body of Christ, aren’t we? We’re brothers and sisters in the Lord. We do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, those who have died, so that you will not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope.

So, if someone’s here without Jesus, you don’t have any hope, but there’s hope in Jesus. There’s hope. And I don’t want you to grieve like those who have no hope.

One of the religious sects in the New Testament, there was a Pharisees and the Sadducees. One of the things that distinguished the difference between the two was that the Sadducees, those Jewish people in the first century, did not believe in the doctrine of the resurrection. They thought the grave was the end.

There’s many people today that believe that. They simply believe in nihilism and that this is the only world there is. And so, you might as well like, what? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Grab all the gusto you can and enjoy life because after the grave, there’s nothing. The Bible tells us differently. The Bible says, when a person in Christ dies, we grieve and we sorrow, but not like those who have no hope.

This was the pagan world in Paul’s day in the first century. They had no hope. They had no hope, many of them, of life after death.

Diane and I, at this point in our lives, have stood by the graveside of five parents. My mom died at 50, died of cancer. My dad remarried about three years later, and in case you’re wondering why there’s five, and my stepmom passed away about four years ago.

We’ve stood at the graveside of five parents. We stood at that cemetery and watched as they’ve lowered their bodies into the grave. And yes, there was sorrow, but there was also hope.

That this plot of ground, where their physical bodies are, are simply a temporary holding place. Not their final resting place. It’s a temporary holding place until the trumpet sounds and the Bible says, the dead in Christ will be raised incorruptible with a new glorified body, just like Jesus’ body.

And so, at this point, I’ve stood by hundreds of graveside services. As that body’s lowered into the ground and we leave that graveside, my closing words at the committal service is a paragraph that many pastors read, and this is what I read. For as much as it has pleased Almighty God in His providence to take out of this world the soul of, and then we name the person, we commit their body to the ground, looking and waiting for the resurrection of the last day, at which time those who have died in Christ will be raised and will be given a body like His glorious body, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

What’s Paul saying? There’s hope. This is not a final goodbye. This is a temporary goodbye until we see Him again someday.

Now, that’s one of the benefits of understanding biblical prophecy, and it’s specifically this passage in 1st Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18. But there’s one more that I want to share with you, and it’s not only that studying prophecy should give us hope, the blessed hope, and His name is Jesus. And by the way, here’s a statement that I heard this week at Maranatha from one of our speakers.

His name is Cisco Cotto. He’s a professor at Moody Bible Institute, and he did a whole series on Jonah. But one of his messages, he said this, and it stuck with me, and I wrote it down.

For a believer, every day above ground is a good day. You know, sometimes when we get older, like, how you doing today? Well, yeah, I’m vertical. It’s a good day.

Every day above ground is a good day. But then he said, for a believer, every day below ground is a great day. Why? Because you’re not there.

You’re in the presence of God. And so, we have hope, and the study of prophecy should give us hope. But also, the second application of this is that studying biblical prophecy should give us an urgency in sharing the good news of the gospel.

Because we don’t want to keep this hope for ourselves. We want to share it with other people. And so, the apostle Paul says, the love of Christ compels me, what, to share the good news.

The fear of the Lord, the terror of the Lord, that He’s going to judge this world someday compels me to share the good news of the gospel. So, if you have some people in your family, you have some neighbors on your street, some co-workers, some extended family somewhere that don’t know Jesus, because Jesus could return at any moment, we need to have a sense of urgency sharing the good news, sharing the gospel. And He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in Him we could become the righteousness of God.

Back when I was a teenager, there was a very popular Christian movie. And some of you that are closer to my age might remember this. It’s called A Thief in the Night.

It’s all about the rapture. And they did this dramatic movie. It became very, very popular in Christian circles.

And there was a song that someone wrote that went along with it, talking about the rapture of the church. And the song says, I wish we’d all been ready. And so, prophecy gives us hope but also should give us urgency in sharing Jesus’ love with our neighbors, our family, and across the ocean to those in Uganda.

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1 Thessalonians 4:1-7

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Okay, we’re going to read some Scripture, this is from 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, the first seven verses, Paul writing to the church at Thessalonica. And you can follow along as I read, and then we’re going to jump into this in a little bit here. Paul says, as for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God.

As in fact, you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans who don’t know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins as we told you and warned you before. God did not call us to be impure, but to live.

A couple things before we get into 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, and I’m looking at these flowers here.

These don’t appear by accident, but Cindy Embry gets these from her garden and brings these beautiful arrangements every Sunday. So, thank you, Cindy, for doing that. Much appreciated.

Also, Lord willing, next Sunday when you come to church, there’s going to be a little different landscape out here. We’ve been working on three or four different projects, some of them more visible than others, but we voted in our business meeting to buy a big play structure for our kids in the church, our Awana kids, beyond Awana and the kids that attend here. So, there’s going to be an ark out here, and it’s going to be placed kind of between the youth barn, storage barn, and where the pavilion is.

There’s a little rise a little bit behind that, and that’s where this ark structure will go. And so next Sunday you can visit the ark, and hopefully that’ll be a great blessing to our kids. Well, we’ve been in the book of 1st Thessalonians, and the theme is be ready.

And what are we to be ready for? Well, we’re to be ready for the second coming, because it’s interesting that in all five chapters that, of course, we know Paul didn’t put these chapters in. These are man-made divisions, so we can find Scripture easily, but so at the end of every chapter, Paul talks about the second coming of Jesus. And next Sunday we’ll look at verses 13 through 18, the rapture passage, and dive into that.

So, the theme is to be ready, but this morning we’re going to look at the first 12 verses of 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, and the message is entitled, How to Please God. I hope that title piques your interest. How to Please God, because that’s what Paul talks about here in these opening verses.

It’s interesting that the Bible calls this to self-examination. 2nd Corinthians 13:5, let a man examine himself to make sure they’re in the faith, Paul writes. If there’s one area of life that you do not want to make a mistake on, you do not want to miss, it is your eternal destiny.

Matthew 7, Jesus talks about a narrow gate and a wide gate, a narrow road and a broad road. Many are on the broad road, it leads to destruction. There are few at the narrow gate and the narrow road that leads to eternal life.

And so, the Bible says you need to examine yourself, make sure that your faith is in Jesus, and Jesus alone, that we’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The communion passage, the Lord’s Table passage, also encourages us to examine ourselves, and this is in 1st Corinthians chapter 11, verse 28, everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Like, don’t come to the Lord’s Table without doing some serious inventory.

And so, this morning we’re just going to think about, what is the focus of our life? And who are we living our lives for? And Paul’s going to encourage us to live it for Christ. So, there’s a couple of choices when we think about life. By the way, there’s no mulligans in life.

You get one chance, one life to live. So, who are we living for? There are many people, and maybe we’d say most people in our American culture, and if we had a little box to check, they would say, maybe they wouldn’t admit it, but when you examine their life, they are living to please themselves. They are living for pleasure.

They are living for hedonism. Life is all about them. Life is all about what brings me pleasure.

In fact, the apostle Paul, when he writes to Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 3, and he’s talking about life in the last days, he says, people will be lovers of themselves. So, they live their daily lives, and certainly their weekends, and their weekends are lived for what? For pleasure. The problem is that’s a dead-end street.

King Solomon, read the book of Ecclesiastes, and King Solomon had endless resources, and he was looking for purpose and meaning in life, and he tried everything. He said, emptiness, meaningless, I cannot get satisfaction, because he was looking for satisfaction under the sun when he needed to look above the sun, satisfaction in a relationship with God. And we get to the end of the book, and he kind of comes to that conclusion.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments. Obey God.

Love him. This is the whole duty of me. So, there’s one box that many people would check and say, well, I live to please myself.

There’s another option. Option number two is to live to please others. Now, there’s something very subtle about that, and this one is a little bit of an easy trap to fall into, living to please others, because we want to please, if we’re married, our spouse.

We want to please our boss, our employer. We want to please other people, but living to please others ultimately leads to disappointment as well. The reason why is you cannot please everyone.

You can’t do it. I remember our three boys graduated from Lenawee Christian School a long, long time ago, and we did a lot of sporting events, and we’re down in Adrian, and we’re going to attend a sporting event that night for one of the boys, and we got about 45 minutes to eat dinner, three boys in the back. It’s got to be fast food.

Where do you want to eat? One boy says McDonald’s, one boy says Taco Bell, one boy says Kentucky Fried Chicken, and all of a sudden, the big argument breaks out because they don’t want to go to the other place, and finally, like, we’re done. I’ll make the choice. I remember 2020 and COVID when everything was shut down, and now a lot of churches are going back to in-person worship, and I remember we took a little survey about people’s feelings about coming back to in-person worship, and I remember going through those surveys, and this little one survey says, I’m willing to come back to worship as long as everyone wears a mask.

Okay, next survey. I’m willing to come back to worship as long as no one wears a mask. Okay, maybe we need to have a mask service and then the unmasked service.

You cannot please everybody, and it’s a trap to fall down into that area of life. Well, here’s the box we want to check, and that’s what we’re going to look at this morning. Not pleasing self, not living for others, but we want to check a box that says, my life is being lived to please God.

This is all through Scripture, and this is why we read the Scriptures, and this is how Paul starts this passage. As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God. So, Paul says, when I was in Thessalonica, I taught you and talked to you about living a life that is pleasing to God.

It’s all through the Bible, 2nd Corinthians 5:9. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, so we make it our goal, our aim, to please Him. And he writes to the Galatian believers in Galatians chapter 1, verse 10, that letter to the Galatian believers. He asks a couple questions.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Now, the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes the letter to the Ephesian believers, this pagan culture where some of them came to know Christ. He says, you were once darkness, now you’re light in the Lord.

Live as children of light, that’s Ephesians 5:8, verse 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. Find out what pleases God. So, in our passage this morning, the apostle Paul tells us how to please God.

And again, we could go to many other portions of Scripture to find out what pleases God. Worship pleases God. That’s Psalm 69.

Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Putting your trust in God and His promises. But this morning, we want to think about three ways to please God.

So let me pick it up in verse 2. Paul says, you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus? Here it is. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. So, here’s the overall arch principle.

God’s will for us is to be sanctified. Three tenses of salvation. The first one is the past tense.

If you put your faith in Christ, Christ for your salvation, you could say, I have been saved. That’s justification. Your legal standing before Christ, when He looks at you, He sees you as in Christ.

The righteousness of Christ gets credited to your account. That’s salvation from the penalty of sin that we heard about this morning. Jesus took our place.

But then there’s sanctification. And that is, I am being saved. That’s the present.

I’m being saved from the power of sin. And so, as we grow in our walk with God, God wants us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ and have victory over sin. But there’s a third tense of our salvation.

That’s future. We could say, I will be saved. And that’s our glorification, when we’re in the presence of Christ and we’re with Him forever, and we will be like Him because we’ll see Him as He is.

But we’re talking about the second aspect of salvation, of sanctification, of becoming more and more like Christ. And that’s where Paul focuses here. So, sanctification is being set apart from sin and being set apart to God.

You’ll notice the word holy is in our passage here a couple times. And live your lives, control your bodies in a holy and honorable way. God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life, to be set apart from sin and set apart to God.

This is Romans 12:1 and 2, isn’t it? Paul says, after the first 11 chapters of Romans and all that God has done for us, then he says, I beseech you, brother, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies, what, as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your acceptable worship. And so how do we please God? Well, here’s the first of three ways we’re going to quickly look at this morning, and Paul addresses it right off the bat. Sexual purity pleases God.

Sexual purity pleases God. We already read the verses in our Scripture reading, but here it is. Paul’s very clear.

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified and that you should avoid sexual immorality. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, and here’s what part of sanctification is. You need to live a pure, sanctified life.

Do not get involved in sexual immorality. It is a huge problem in the world today. It is a huge problem in our culture today.

It is a huge problem in our churches today. Pornography is a huge problem. When I was growing up, I’d go to a convenience store, and they had the Playboy magazines behind the counter, and they had the brown paper covering the front of the cover.

Today, there are millions, millions of pornographic websites that are clicked on thousands of times every day. Sexual purity pleases God, and the Bible has one prescription when it comes to sexual temptation, and it’s quite a consistent. Here’s what the Bible says when it comes to sexual temptation.

Sex outside of the confines of marriage, it’s run, flee. Genesis chapter 39, you know the story of Joseph, and Joseph is in Potiphar’s household.

He’s Potiphar’s right-hand man, and Joseph is a good-looking, well-built, handsome man. This is Genesis 39:6. This is after a while, his master’s wife, Potiphar’s wife, took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me, but he refused. With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house.

No one is greater in this house than I. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph, day after day he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her, and then the story goes on. You know the story.

One day she sees Joseph, grabs him, and Joseph runs. He flees from Potiphar’s wife’s advances and leaves his coat. He lost his coat, but he kept his integrity.

The Bible’s consistent. Flee. 1st Corinthians 6:18 through 20.

Flee sexual immorality. 2nd Timothy 2:22. Flee youthful lust and pursue what? Righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

And so, Scriptures tell us that sexual purity pleases God. This is a huge battleground in our world today, our culture today. Proverbs 4:23 reminds us to guard our hearts.

I love Psalm 119. It gives us some good instructions here as far as purity. How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.

The psalmist says, I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

So, we need to be reminded that sex is a wonderful gift from God, but it is within the confines of marriage, Hebrews 13:4. The author of Hebrews makes this statement, marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually.

So how do you please God? Live a life of purity. Live a life of sexual purity. There’s a second way to please God that’s in the text.

And it’s found in verses 9 and 10. Paul writes now about your love for one another. We do not need to write to you.

For you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, and by the way, Paul uses that phrase 15 times in his letter.

He calls them brothers and sisters, family of God. We urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more. So, what’s Paul encouraging him to do? To love other people.

What’s the greatest commandment the Pharisees asked Jesus? They were trying to trap him actually in Matthew chapter 22, and he basically said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love people. And so, Paul says loving other people pleases God.

And what’s the identifying mark of a follower of Jesus? It’s not whether you can quote all 66 books of the Bible. It’s not based on how much Bible knowledge you have or whether you do well at Bible trivia. Not how many times a week you attend a church.

Not following rules. The mark of the believer, John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35, by this will all men know that you are my disciples. If you love one another, and then Jesus raises the bar, love one another as I have loved sacrificial love.

Greater love hath no man than this. A man laid down his life for his friends and what Jesus did for us. First Peter 1:22, love one another deeply from the heart.

And so, Jesus has given His life for us. He’s given His life to purchase our salvation. God wants us to love God and love others.

It’s the greatest sacrifice that’s ever been made. Unfortunately, in the last couple of months there’s been some, you know, I watch the news like religiously because I like to kind of know what’s going on, but the news can be very, very depressing when you find out what’s going on in our world. A couple months ago there was a horrific shooting of two individuals in Minnesota that were in the state legislature.

Let me read this story here from CBS News amid the horror of the senseless violence in the shootings of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and Senator John Huffman and their spouses. The Huffman’s nephew shared that during the shooting, if you follow this on the news, this man came in with a mask and a gun and just began to fire a targeted shooting. Yvette Huffman jumped in front of their daughter Hope to shield her from the bullets.

Hope was unharmed while Yvette and her husband John were shot multiple times and the other couple that he shot lost their lives. July 4th, Kerr County, Texas, if you follow the stories of the horrific flooding that was down in Texas, as the stories began to come out, you hear story after story of counselors who risked their lives and ultimately gave their lives to save those campers that were camped down by the riverside there. Well, greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Because Jesus loved us, we need to love God in turn and love other people. What pleases God? Sexual purity pleases God. Loving others pleases God.

There’s a third mention in the text of what pleases God found in verses 11 and 12. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God.

Verse 11, Paul continues, after he encourages those brothers and sisters to love other believers more and more, then he says, to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life. You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. So, the Apostle Paul says living a life of honesty and integrity pleases.

Paul says live a quiet life. He’s not saying move out of the city and move to a rural area like where we live because it’s nice and quiet. The word quiet there really means to avoid unnecessary conflict.

The MacArthur Study Bible says this refers to one who does not present problems or generate conflict among people in their lives. Get along with others. Romans 14 says, as much as lies in you, live at peace with other people.

In Romans 16, he says, watch out for those who cause divisions. There’s some people that like to cause division and controversy wherever they go. Paul says, no, live a quiet life and make it your ambition to get along with people.

And then he says, mind your own business. Mind your own business. Focus on your life and you don’t need to be nosy.

The Bible has a lot to say about gossip. Sometimes when people, you know, sometimes press for information, you just have to say you’re on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know that. You’re not really involved in this problem.

And so, we need to guard ourselves. Proverbs 11, all through the book of Proverbs, talks about what gossip does. Proverbs 11:13, we read these words.

A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret. Proverbs 20, verse 19, there’s dozens of verses about this in Scripture. A gossip betrays a confidence, so avoid anyone who talks too much.

Proverbs 26:20, without wood, a fire goes out. Without a gossip, a quarrel dies down. And so, live a life of honesty, integrity, get along with people.

And he goes on to say, and work with your hands, just as we told you. There were some in Thessalonica that perhaps when Paul began to talk about the fact that Christ was coming again, they stopped working. And they were like the Millerites.

If you’re familiar with the Millerites, I think it was in the 1800s when they heard about the second coming of Christ, they sold their possessions, and they went up on a hill waiting for Christ to come back. And Paul says, no, no, you need to be busy. You need to work with your hands.

You need to be faithful in what I have called you to do as far as your job is concerned. In fact, in the second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he writes, we hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busy bodies.

And so, he encourages them to work. And in Ephesians 4, Paul, when he is in that section where he says, put off this and put on, he says, I want you to work with your hands so that you may have some extra to give to those in need. And so, Paul says, sexual purity pleases God.

Loving others in the body of Christ and not only believers but unbelievers pleases God. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. In fact, verse 12, he says, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders, those are unbelievers, so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Well, this morning, we’re just going to take a little inventory here as we conclude and ask some application questions as we think about pleasing God and the life that pleases God. And so, the first question is this simply, which of those three boxes and statements reflects my life?

Am I living a life to please myself? Am I living my life to try to keep everybody happy and please others? Or am I living my life to please God? And of course, where do you find out? We just looked at a few verses this morning, but the entire scripture will tell us how to please. And so, first of all, do I know him as Savior? He said the one area that we don’t want to mess up on is our salvation.

1st John, the book of 1st John, is a great litmus test for whether someone really knows Jesus as their Savior. There’s three types of tests there. There’s a doctrinal test.

You need to know who Jesus is. If you don’t know who Christ is, you won’t come to salvation. That’s the doctrinal test.

There’s a social test. 1st John says if you truly know Jesus as your Savior, you’re going to love other believers. You’re going to love the brethren.

You’re going to love the family of God. There’s the moral test. There’s going to be a pattern and a desire of obedience in your life.

Not that we never sin, but there’s a pattern of wanting to please God and of obedience. And so, I hope that as we think about inventory in our lives that we can check that third box. Secondly, is there something in my life that I need to stop doing? Is there something in my life that maybe I take inventory this morning or this afternoon that I know is against Scripture and I need to stop doing? A great book that a fellow by the name of Carl Claussen wrote a couple years ago called Killing Sin.

We need to learn how to attack sin in our lives and get serious about sin and stopping sin in our life. So, maybe God’s bringing something to your mind this morning that, hey, I need to stop doing. And maybe you might need help with that.

And that’s what the body of Christ is here for. That’s what the church leadership is here for. Thirdly, is there something in my life I need to start doing? James 4:17 says, to the one who knows the good he should do and doesn’t do it, it is sin.

So, there’s two types of sin. There’s sins of commission. When we break God’s law and do something against God’s law, there’s sins of omission.

In other words, we know the right thing to do, but we don’t do it. 1st Samuel 12:25, Samuel confesses the sin of prayerlessness. He says, we need to pray.

We can sin by just not doing what God wants us to do. Lastly, here’s the fourth application question. Is my love for other people and non-Christians growing? This is what Paul’s talking about here in verses 9 and 10.

Now, about your love for one another, you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. And in fact, you do love all of God’s people, yet we urge you to do so more and more. So, we need to think about, how can I demonstrate love to others? A love within our own church family, a love to our extended family, love to our neighbors, love loving people.

What can I do? How can I demonstrate? Well, three areas that pleases God. Sexual purity pleases God. Loving others pleases God.

Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. I trust that that’s the desire of your heart. We want to live a life, one life that God gives us, not for ourselves, not to try to get into the game of trying to please everybody else, but as we learn and grow in Scripture and know what it is to please God, that we’ll put it into practice and we’ll live a life of pleasing to Him.

Someday we’ll hear the words of our Savior, well done, good and faithful.

The post How To Please God: I Thessalonians 4:1-7 appeared first on Community Bible Church.

1st Thessalonians 3:1-5

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*scroll to 23:50 for beginning of sermon*

All right, if you remain standing for scripture reading this morning, we’re going to read from 1st Thessalonians chapter 3. I don’t know what you’re struggling with, what you’ve been praying about for weeks or months or years, but God’s got a timetable and God’s got a plan.

And it’s usually not according to our timetable, but God will make things beautiful in His time and He’s promised that and we can hang on to that. So, I hope that’s an encouragement to you. All right, 1st Thessalonians chapter 3. We’re in the book of 1st Thessalonians.

I’m going to read the first five verses from chapter 3. This is Paul writing to the church. Here’s what he has to say. So, when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens.

We sent Timothy, who was our brother and co-worker in God’s service and spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted.

And it turned out that way, as you well know. For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain.

Let’s get into 1st Thessalonians chapter 3. And so, remember this book that Paul was in Thessalonica on his second missionary journey. And some people came to faith in Christ.

And then some were not happy of what was happening in people’s lives. And so, they created a riot, kind of a flash mob riot. And Paul and Silas, who had been in this synagogue and preaching for like three weeks and had some good results, had to make a nighttime escape out of Thessalonica, a very sudden escape.

And so now Paul’s writing this letter back to the church. And the theme of the letter and our theme is to be ready, because in every chapter, five chapters, at the end of every chapter, the apostle Paul talks about the second coming of Christ, that Christ is coming again. So, this morning, we’re going to look at 1st Thessalonians chapter 3, and think about the ministry of, I’m calling it, long distance encouragement, long distance ministry.

So, a hundred years ago or so, families kind of all lived together in one spot. And it was not uncommon that wherever you lived, you had extended family nearby, whether it was aunts and uncles or grandparents, and families were all together. My paternal grandmother lived in two houses her whole life, 35 Manhattan in Buffalo, New York, and then next door, 37 Manhattan in Buffalo, New York.

And that’s because they had families living next door to each other, and relatives and cousins playing back and forth. My paternal grandmother never got a driver’s license, and so she did not venture very far from Buffalo, New York. But all that’s changed today, hasn’t it? So, families do not live close by in many, many cases, and families are moving because of jobs or other circumstances, and so it’s not unusual that there’s no family close by, or they’re living on the other side of the country, or the other side of the globe.

Now, Paul faced that dilemma because here he is, he has ministered and started this church in Thessalonica, and now Paul is in Athens. He’s like 300 miles away, and he’s concerned about these new believers. They’re baby Christians, and are they still walking with God, and they face some trials? Are they still standing firm in their faith? He mentions it in chapter 2 verse 17, but brothers and sisters, we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time.

So, we felt like we left you without spiritual leadership because we had to leave in this nighttime escape. And so, Paul is looking to minister to these families and these believers in Thessalonica, even though he’s 300 miles away. And that’s going to be a little bit of a model for us.

How can we have a long-distance ministry when people that we know and love are separated from us? Maybe it’s a college student. Maybe it’s family that lives on the other side of the country. Maybe it’s some friends of ours that just need encouragement.

And so, we’ll see, how did the Apostle Paul do this, and what did he do? And then we’ll use that as our model. So, three ways in which we can have a long-distance ministry. Here’s the first one, and it’s the ministry of sending a representative.

The ministry of sending a representative. So, Paul wanted to go back and visit. He wanted to see how these new believers were doing.

He mentions that in verses 17 and 18. Let me read verse 18 of chapter 2. We wanted to come to you. Certainly I, Paul, did again and again, but Satan blocked our way.

So, Paul wanted to go back and visit these new believers and encourage them and establish them in their faith. But for some reason, Satan blocked the way, and Paul wasn’t able to go. And so, what does Paul do? He says he does the next best thing.

When we could stand it no longer, verse 1, we sent Timothy. So, Paul can’t go, but Paul’s right-hand man, Timothy, could go. And so, Paul sends Timothy back to Thessalonica to see how these believers are doing.

Notice the description of Timothy, and we’re introduced to him in Acts chapter 16. He was Paul’s right-hand man. He did missionary journeys with Paul.

So, we sent Timothy, who is our brother, so he’s a believer. He is our, what, co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ. So, this is not just anybody.

This is someone that Paul knows as a believer. This is somebody that Paul knows, has a track record of working with Paul and ministering, and he’s been faithful. And his purpose is to send him to, what, strengthen and encourage those new believers.

Notice Paul’s description, and you don’t have to turn there, but Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 19, Paul describes Timothy like this, and now he’s writing to the Philippian believers, I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I may be cheered when I receive news about you. Here it is, I have no one else like him who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone, this describes our culture today, doesn’t it? Everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

But Timothy, you know, has proved himself. He’s a son in the faith with his father. As a father, he has served with me in the work of the gospel.

And so, here’s Paul’s description of Timothy, he goes, I’ve got nobody else like him. He’s my number one guy, he’s my right-hand guy, and everyone else is kind of living for themselves, looking out for big number one. No, Timothy has a heart for ministry in the gospel.

And so, while I cannot come because of circumstances beyond my control, what I’m going to do is I’m going to send somebody else that can. One of the great blessings of being a Christian is that there’s not only a local church that you can fellowship with and encourage, but there is a worldwide network of believers that’s called the family of God. And what a blessing the network of the family of God is.

And so sometimes while we cannot do something personally, maybe we know somebody or some connection to know somebody who lives in that same town who can make an impact, who can go and perhaps make a personal visit to somebody that is struggling or needs encouragement. Years ago, probably 20 years ago, my dad was serving with our daily bread ministries in Grand Rapids, and he served in the church ministries department. And one of the things that the church ministries department did for our daily bread out of Grand Rapids is they would travel all over the country and they hold pastor’s meetings.

They’d hold a pastor’s breakfast and feed the pastors and then they knew how to get pastors to come. They gave them a bunch of free books and then they’d have a message and just to try to encourage pastors, let them know of all the resources that our daily bread ministries has to encourage people in their walk with God. And so probably this is 20 years ago, my dad is traveling with our daily bread team and they’re in Lincoln, Nebraska, and they’re putting on this pastor seminar and my dad gets sick.

He gets very sick and incredible pain that he’s never had before. And so, they take him to the hospital and he was diagnosed with pancreatitis. Anybody knows anything about that? That’s very, very painful.

He ends up in the hospital, I think for 10 days in Lincoln, Nebraska. So somebody knew my dad needed encouragement and had a connection and if you know anything about Back to the Bible Ministries out of Lincoln, Nebraska, for a while Dr. Warren Wiersbe was the head of Back to the Bible Ministries and somebody called Dr. Warren Wiersbe and said, hey, would you have any time to go visit a pastor that’s far away from home, that’s been in the hospital for a week, away from family? Dr. Warren Wiersbe, who’s now with the Lord and wrote that whole commentary on the Bible, the B series, if you’re familiar with that, that’s where we got our title from First Thessalonians, his commentary on First Thessalonians is Be Ready. And Dr. Warren Wiersbe came and visited my dad.

I cannot tell you how much that meant just to encourage his spirits. Well, when you can’t be there personally, sometimes you send a representative. We have a friend that Richard Stone lived in, they lived in Brooklyn for a number of years, went to Michigan Center Bible Church, a very faithful couple that love the Lord.

They eventually moved to the other side of the state and actually have a property on Maranatha’s campus and we’ve known the Stones for like 30 years. And so, Richard’s gone through all sort of health problems in the last number of years and he passed away about four months ago. But a lot of his medical stuff was on this side of the state and at Chelsea Hospital and University of Michigan Hospital.

And so, his wife, Becky, in the last couple of years, two or three times would text me and say, hey, just let you know, Richard’s in Chelsea Hospital. And I kind of knew, kind of reading between the lines, that means like, would you go encourage him? So, I would go to Chelsea Hospital and, you know, his pastors on the other side of the state, but I went and encouraged Richard and was able to pray with Richard and Becky. Last time I did that, he was up at U of M Hospital going to go through some very, very serious surgery.

And I got a call the night before from Becky. She left me a voicemail and said, can you call me? And I called her back and it’s about 9:30 pm at night and I call her back and says, well, Richard’s at U of M Hospital and he’s going to have some serious surgery tomorrow. Is there any way you could pray with him before the surgery? And I said, I’d be glad to do that.

He says, well, you’d have to be there really early. Not a problem. I can be there. Just tell me what time should I be there? She says, 4:30 am. I’m like, oh, okay. I can do that. So usually, you know, you got to go up to the top ramp, but when you can’t be there yourselves, what can we do? We can send a representative and that’s what Paul did. He sends Timothy.

Here’s a second way of encouragement. Not only sending a representative, but simply words of encouragement and admonition. Verses six through nine from 1st Thessalonians chapter three.

But Timothy has now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us just as we long to see you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our disgrace and persecution, we were encouraged about you because of your faith.

For now, we really live since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? So, here’s Timothy now. He comes back to Paul and he’s visited the Thessalonian believers and he’s telling Paul, you know, just like you were missing them and want to see them, they want to see you.

And they appreciate you and your ministry and they’re encouraged about our time together when we ministered there. And so, there’s a mutual encouragement and Paul here is relieved now. You know, he had to leave these believers very suddenly.

He’s wondering, are they still walking with God? Are they still being faithful? Are they still true to God and His word? And he gets the report back. Even though they’ve gone through distress, even though they’ve gone through persecution, we were encouraged about you because of your faith because what you are standing firm. And nothing would encourage a pastor’s heart to know somebody that comes to know Christ and then maybe you’re separated and years later you’re wondering, are they still walking with God? Are they still faithful to God and His word? And when you hear the report back, they’re still walking with God.

Even though life is hard, even though there’s challenges, they’re standing firm. And so, what an encouragement that was to Paul’s heart. So, what does he do? He writes this letter.

In fact, he wrote two letters to them. We have the first one. He writes this letter back and he is encouraging the Thessalonian believers with the spoken word and the written word.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. We need to realize the impact of our words. And the book of Ephesians says that as believers, we’re to use our words to what? Build up and encourage one another.

And so, Paul writes this letter and his goal is to encourage them. Chapter 1 verse 2, we always thank God for all of you continually mentioning you in our prayers. We remember before God our Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, your endurance inspired by hope in Jesus Christ.

So, what’s the second way we can encourage somebody long distance? Well, we can write a letter. Now, do people write letters anymore? Very few. I still occasionally write some letters, but it’s not the mode of communication today.

My grandmother, the one I mentioned that lived in Buffalo, New York, she would write a lot of letters to her family and we got many of those letters, handwritten letters that she wrote. She lived in Buffalo her whole life and in the upper right-hand corner, she always put the temperature, you know, what the temperature was that day. So, if it’s in January, it was like minus five degrees, but she wrote a letter.

And that’s the way we can encourage one another as well, because we have a lot of options today. We can write letters, this whole thing called email. We got these cell phones.

I heard one of the speakers a couple weeks ago said, don’t let your smartphone outsmart you. Those cell phones can be used for good or they can be distractions. The cell phones give us access to the world, but it also gives the world access to us.

So, we have to be very careful with those, don’t we? But cell phones, texting, FaceTime, these are all ways in our technological age that we can, what, impact and connect with people and give them words of encouragement. And Paul writes a letter. Maybe for us it’s going to be a text.

Maybe for us it’s going to be an email to someone that we want to bless and encourage. I’ve shared many times a story of my pen pal, Steve, who’s in Jackson prison and he’s got a life sentence in Jackson prison and came to know the Lord 30 years ago, been in prison for 31 years. He’s 71 years old and for 30 years we’ve been pen-pals.

And I mentioned that every quarter he sends a check to our church. I get the mail from Michigan Department of Corrections and I know that that’s, here comes Steve’s check to support our ministry in a small way. And so, I’ve shared his story in, I do a Bible study class at Maranatha, just kind of a small group study of 15-20 people.

And one of the lessons I just share about Steve. And so, week number one, I had a couple come up to me and said, would it be okay if we wrote a letter to Steve and if I gave it to you, would you mail it to him? And I said, yeah, that would be fine. I thank you for putting that out there and for God putting that on your heart.

And so, here’s this couple, Kevin and Carol, they’re from Illinois. And they gave me this, they’ve never met Steve, they just heard about him and they thought, well, we can encourage somebody that we don’t know that’s in prison. And I won’t read the whole letter, but I’ll read a couple paragraphs here.

Here’s Steve, we had the pleasure of getting to know your friend Ron at Maranatha this week. I’m sure he’s told you lots and lots about this wonderful place over the years. He mentioned that you’re his pen pal and of how he rejoiced that you placed your faith in Christ.

And she talks about one of the things that they enjoy about Maranatha. This is, Pastor Ron has likely described Maranatha to you many times and in many ways. We wanted to share some of the special Maranatha’s joys and encouragement with you, Steve.

And they done that in the bulk of the letter. With you, Steve, our brother in Christ, we hope this has blessed you until we meet in heaven, Kevin and Carol. I thought, wow, what an encouragement that Steve received when he received that letter.

Now, she also included some pictures of Maranatha and I photocopied them and tried to send them and the pictures came back. You cannot send pictures through the mail to somebody in prison. But he got the letter, not the pictures.

But God put it on their heart to write a letter to somebody that they didn’t even know that’s a brother in Christ just to encourage them. And we too can use our words, whether spoken or written, to encourage one another. Well, long distance ministry, you can send a representative if you can’t go personally.

You can share words of encouragement and admonition through letters, through computer, email, through texting. But here’s maybe the biggest thing that we can do. And number three, we underestimate this one is prayer.

Prayer. So, Paul concludes this section by thinking about prayer. How can we thank, verse 9, God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Here’s what he has to say.

Night and day, we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now, may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.

May God strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father. Here’s the reference to the second coming of Christ, when our Lord Jesus comes with all of His holy ones. And so, what’s the third way that we can minister and encourage long distance? We can reach out and touch somebody through prayer.

And Paul says, I’m praying for you. 1st Samuel 12:23 talks about the sin of prayerlessness. James 4 says, to him who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, sin. So, there’s two types of sins.

There’s a sin of commission, lying, stealing, doing something proactive, but we can sin by not doing something. And so, the Scriptures encourage us to pray, and so to not pray, that is a sin. And so, we underestimate the power of prayer.

James 5:16, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous person is what? Powerful and effective. It tells the story of Elijah, and you know that story from the Old Testament, and there was this drought for three years or three and a half years, and finally Elijah prayed and prayed and prayed, and what? God answered that prayer, and the rain came. And so, we can pray.

The ministry of prayer can make a huge impact in the lives of those we know and love and we’re separated from. So, notice three characteristics now of Paul’s prayers here in the last part of our section here this morning. First of all, Paul’s prayer was persistent, persistent.

He says, night and day. Now we say day and night, but in the Jewish mind, they think about night and day. We say day and night, but the Jewish mind thinks night and day.

Paul says, we pray what? Night and day for you. We are praying persistently for you. Later on, in the letter in chapter 5, verse 17, one of the shortest verses in the Bible, 1st Thessalonians 5:17, pray without ceasing.

It doesn’t mean that we’re praying 24-7. It means pray continually. Make prayer your first response.

Make prayer a priority. And so, Paul is praying persistently, and that’s all through the Bible. Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, Jesus says, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.

Ephesians 6:18 talks about praying always with all prayers and supplication. And Jesus told a story in Luke chapter 11 about somebody that shows up at your front door at midnight and they’re hungry, and they’re knocking at the door. And let me just read this short section here.

It’s Luke chapter 11, verse 5. Suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. I need some food. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him.

So Middle Eastern hospitality is huge. This person has need of food, doesn’t have any, goes to his friend. And suppose the one inside answers, this is what I would answer, don’t bother me, the door is already locked.

I reposted something on Facebook. It was a welcome mat and it said, don’t stop, be leaving, L-E-A-V-I-N-G. A little play on that song, Don’t Stop Believing.

He says, hey, it’s midnight, I’m in bed, the doors are locked, I can’t get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of your friendship, this is the NIV, yet because of your shameless audacity, it means because you just keep on knocking and keep on knocking and keep on asking, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. So, I say to you, ask and it will be given.

Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you. For everyone who asks, receives.

The one who seeks, finds. And the one who knocks, the door will be opened. And so, the whole meaning of the story is don’t give up, keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep praying.

The story is told of George Müller who had a burden for five of his friends that didn’t know Christ. And so, he had this list of five friends and he was praying for them regularly that they’d come to faith in Christ. And the story is told that after five years, friend number one came to know Christ.

Ten years after praying for somebody for ten years, friend number two came to know Christ. Friend number three came to know Christ after 25 years of praying. And friend number four came to know Christ after 35 years of praying.

Friend number five came to faith in Christ after George Mueller had passed away. So don’t get discouraged about prayer because you may not live to see the answer to those prayers. God may answer that prayer sometime after we’re been promoted to glory.

Paul says, I am praying night and day for you. But his prayer life was also passionate, passionate. Night and day we pray most earnestly.

He’s saying we’re praying passionately. We quoted James 5:16, the effectual, what fervent prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Nothing increases the fervency of our prayer life like a crisis.

Sometimes our prayer life can get very boring and lackadaisical and routine. But then crisis hits. And God wants to hear the cry of our hearts and he’s near to the broken hearted.

And we need to pray earnestly, fervently. I mentioned about a month or so ago at our first church in Strongsville, Ohio. One of my friends came up to me, we hadn’t been at the church very long.

And Dan was his name. And he came up to me and he says, hey, would you like to be a part of the wrestling team? I’m like, this church has a wrestling team? That seems odd to me. And so, I kind of inquired a little further and he was kind of playing with me.

He says, well, no, read Colossians chapter four, verse 12, Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus sends greetings. He’s always wrestling for you in prayer. Like, oh, okay, that’s what you want.

You want me to be a part of this prayer team? And meeting together and praying. And we did that with about four or five guys for nine months on a Saturday morning. And every Saturday we’d just get together and pray and encourage one another.

A passionate prayer. Paul’s prayers was persistent. They were passionate, but they were also purposeful.

And by that we mean specific. God wants to hear the specific requests and needs of our heart. And so, Paul has three specific requests that he prays about, precise.

And here is the first one, an open door for him to visit the Thessalonian believers. That’s what he says in verse 10, night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.

So, he’s praying for an opportunity for him to what? Visit them personally. And some commentators believe that Paul did make a return visit on his third missionary journey. So, he’s praying for an open door to visit.

What else is he praying for? Well, he’s praying that their love would increase and overflow. Verse 12, may the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. So, Paul’s praying for these new believers.

He says, I’m praying that you will grow in love, not only for one another, believers, but for everyone else, for unbelievers. What is the defining mark, Jesus said, that’s to define a Christian? Not theological doctrine, knowing all the main doctrines of the Scriptures. It’s not how many times you come and attend church.

It’s not how often you read the Bible or even how often you pray. But Jesus said in John 13:34 and 35, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you. And so, the defining mark that is going to tell the world that there’s something different about us is that we love one another and we love unbelievers as well.

First Peter chapter 1 verse 22, now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply from the heart. This is over and over and over again in Scripture, and this is what Paul’s praying. May they love each other.

That’s what we want as parents for our kids, don’t we? We want our grown kids, and even when they’re young, we want them to get along and love one another. Nothing breaks a parent’s heart more, especially adult children, when you have adult children that don’t like each other or don’t talk into each other, and there’s a barrier between them. And as God’s children, as part of the family of God, he wants us to love one another deeply, and Paul’s praying for that.

Lord, make their love increase and overflow for each other. Lastly, he’s praying for an open door to visit them that their love would increase, but he’s praying for holiness. He’s praying that they’ll walk with God.

Look at verse 13. May God strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all of His holy ones. So, he’s, again, referencing, what? The second coming of Christ.

And he says, when Christ comes back, I want them to find you walking with God. And 1st John chapter 3 talks about the fact that Christ could come at any time, should motivate us, what? To live for Him. 1st John chapter 3, verses 2 and 3. Dear friends, now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.

But we know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, or we shall see Him as He is. We’re going to have a new glorified body. All who have this hope in Him purifies themselves just as He is pure.

So, John’s saying that as we look forward to the second coming of Christ, one of the things it should do is should make us live a life for Him, a holy life. And so, Paul says, I pray that the fact that Christ is coming again someday will motivate you to live for Him. Well, how do we minister to people that are far away? Paul gives us three models here.

He says, if we can’t come, we can network, find somebody that can and send a representative. If we can encourage with our words, spoken or written, we could encourage through prayer. Well, three quick questions just as we wrap this up, application questions.

Here’s the first one. Am I available to minister and encourage others like Timothy? Am I one who, if there’s a need, would I be available if somebody called me up and said, hey, here’s this believer over here, and they are hurting. Would you be willing to go and encourage them in their faith? Am I willing to go like Timothy did? And Timothy went the extra mile because he traveled a long distance to go encourage those Thessalonian believers.

Secondly, what person would God bring to my mind this morning that might not be geographically in close proximity, but maybe it’s a relative, maybe it’s a friend. What person would God bring to my mind that needs encouragement? I see there’s one phrase that I’ve never heard people say to me. It’s like, Pastor Ron, I’m just way too encouraged.

The people are just over-encouraging me. No, we all desperately need encouragement. The longer that I journey and live and talk to people, everybody, we look at everybody on the outside and they look, everybody’s got it all together.

No, everybody’s got stuff. Every family has stuff. And so, who is it that God would bring to my mind that I could encourage, that I can pray for, that maybe as God brings them to my mind, I can send a quick email or text to? And lastly, what’s your prayer life like? Mine’s like this.

You can relate to that. And what we need to do is we need to make our prayer life persistent and passionate and purposeful. And as we do that, God will bless and you will see God at.

The post Long Distance Ministry: I Thessalonians 3:1-13 appeared first on Community Bible Church.

Please enjoy the audio by our Guest speaker

One of the hardest things I have about coming here is I’m a one-off. I’m only here speaking one time a year. And I tend to be a teacher, and I speak straight through a book.

So right now, I’m in Acts in our service at the church I pastor. And I’m in Ezekiel in Sunday school, and I just go straight through. And so, when I have to do a one-off, it’s something different for me.

And I usually try to squeeze too much in and probably go too fast. But here we go. At the end of World War II, towards the end of World War II, the war in Europe had died down, and the war in the Pacific had escalated.

The Allied forces were making advances. They outnumbered the Japanese with their warships and their airplanes. But it still was tough fighting.

And even though the Allies could make advances in Southeast Asia with all the islands, the Japanese were able to move their troops, move their warships, and cause quite a few fatalities to the Allies. There was no warning system, and so the Allies came up with the idea of putting Australians and New Zealanders and some British people on the islands in Southeast Asia with a radio and some binoculars. And they would be the early warning signals.

And they would call in, or they would tell of airstrikes and prepare the Allies to meet those. And it made a huge difference. It made a big enough difference that the Japanese went out of their way to hunt them down, captured many of them, and executed everyone that they found.

In Madang, and I think there’s a picture of it here, maybe. Yeah, there’s a memorial to the coast watchers in Madang, Papua New Guinea. We’ve been down there to see this.

And there’s a plaque there, and the plaque says this. To those that watched, warned, and died so that others would live. Watched, warned, and died so others might live. The idea of watching is kind of the theme of this teaching here today.

I’ve been in Ezekiel, and in Ezekiel, kind of an interesting book. If you ever get to read it, it gives you a good description of the cherubim’s. I should have brought a picture of the cherubim’s that you can see.

They have four faces. They have a man, a lion, an eagle, and an ox. And so, these faces go out, and they have six wings and kind of strange beings.

But Ezekiel had to do a lot of crazy things. But one of the things he did is he was prophesying that what God had already determined was going to happen to Judah. And then God said to him, you are to be a watchman.

You’re to be a watchman. And a watchman was a man that typically went on the walls, and he would look for the danger. And for Ezekiel, that meant symbolically, he was to look for the signs of the very judgment that he is predicting is going to come.

In John 16, verse 3, Jesus talking to the Pharisees, the religious rulers, he says to them, hypocrites, you can figure out the weather. You can figure out the weather, but you don’t understand the signs. Signs of the times.

You don’t understand. You can do the weather, but you can’t figure out the signs of the times. In 1st Thessalonians, it says this, but you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this day may overtake you as a thief.

You are all sons of light, sons of the day. We are not of the night, nor of the darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober.

The idea of sober there is valuing the things that are important. Be sober, value the things that are important. But it tells them to watch.

Now, it’s interesting that he tells them to watch, and he’s talking about the rapture. Remember, Thessalonians is talking about the rapture. He tells them to watch, and there’s no signs for the rapture.

Do you realize that? There’s no signs in Scripture that you could look at to say, this is when the rapture could happen. From the book of Acts on, the rapture could have happened any time. There’s no prerequisite for the rapture to happen.

I’m going to qualify that a little bit later on, but there’s no way to see when the rapture is going to happen. Now, I’m going to tell you there are about three ways that God gave us to kind of understand the signs or the seasons, and I’m going to talk about two of those today. The one I’m not going to talk about is in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, where he gives the letters to the seven churches.

I believe those are a way that we can understand the signs as well. I don’t have time for that, so we’re going to cover the other two. So, what we’re going to look at in the first place is the feast, the timeline in the Old Testament.

And someone once said Israel is God’s timepiece. I guess I put Israel’s timepiece. I guess I forgot a word there.

Spell check would have been nice. Verb check, I guess. I don’t know.

Israel is God’s timepiece. And so, we’re going to start out with the first feast, and the feast is the eight days of Passover. Now, when I say the eight days of Passover, that’s actually two feasts.

It’s the feast of Passover, and it’s also the feast of unleavened bread. And though the Passover is listed first in Leviticus 23, we’re going to cover, really, in effect, the feast of unleavened bread as the one that goes first. And what would happen is, this is where spring cleaning came from.

You hear people talk about spring cleaning? It came from the Jews. As Passover came close, and as the feast of unleavened bread came close, they would clear the house. They would take all the mattresses out.

They would clean it, spick and span, top to bottom. And the main reason is to make sure that there is no yeast or leaven in the house. Leaven was a sign of sin.

When they got all done, they would go back in, and they would put little piles of breadcrumbs in certain places. I think I might have talked about this before here. And the father would come home, and he’d say, have you cleaned the house? Is there any leaven here? And the kids would say, oh, we’ve cleaned the house, Daddy.

And then he’d go around, and he knew there would be piles, and he’d find them, and he’d take these piles, and he’d take a feather and scoop them off in a spoon, and then he would dump them in a linen cloth. And then eventually, when he got them all, he would take that cloth, fold it up, and bury it. Bury it.

And it commemorates the idea of there should be no sin in the house. Interesting, it kind of dovetails a little bit with what happens with Christ, right? It says in 2nd Corinthians 5:21, it says, for he made him who knew no sin, sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him. So, what did Christ do on that? What was he on the cross? He became sin for us, and that sin was buried, right? The sin was buried.

But the picture then is of the Passover. The Passover was a time where they take this little lamb. It had to be less than a year old.

It had to be perfect. They would take the lamb on the 10th of Aviv, their first month, and they would slaughter it on the 14th. And the reason is they would have time to examine it to make sure that that lamb was perfect.

And so, as we look at that idea and remember that as that story of the blood being spread on the doorpost and the angel of death passing over, and certainly it falls into the fact that Christ, it says in the New Testament, he’s our Passover, right? John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. So, he was our Passover. Now interesting, the timing of it, right? The lamb had to be a certain age.

Jesus had to be a certain age, too. Ever wonder why he waited till he was 30? Why he didn’t just come here, you know, wait till he graduated from first grade or something, say, hey, I’m the Messiah, reject me, kill me, get me out of here, I’ve had enough being with you guys. Well, the thing is, he had three offices.

He was prophet, priest, and king. There’s no age requirement for a prophet. Elijah might have been pretty young when he became a prophet.

There’s no age requirement for king. Josiah was eight. Jehoash was seven.

So, you could be a pretty young king, but you had to be 30 years old to be a priest. You had to wait till he was 30 to fulfill that office, to be all those things that he had promised to be, prophet, priest, and king. The third feast that comes on is the Feast of First Fruits.

That’s the first Sabbath after Passover, and it commemorated the beginning of the harvest. We planted our garden late this year. I built raised beds, and it took me longer than I thought, and so we’re just now getting beans.

The rest of you are probably sick of beans. We’re just now getting them. The fact is, I think there were four on the counter the day I ate.

That was it. It’s the First Fruits. Now, there’s a promise of more.

The plants are about 18 inches tall, so I figure we’re going to get more. This is the idea of the Feast of First Fruits, that we’re going to get more. You sacrifice or you offer those first fruits to the Lord.

1st Corinthians 15 and 20 says, but now Christ is risen from the dead, becoming the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. He’s the promise that more are going to be raised from the dead. The next feast is the Feast of Weeks.

It is Pentecost. The Feast of Weeks is kind of an interesting one. There’s no blood sacrifice.

They take two loaves of bread. One has barley, one has wheat. They make it with leaven, and they sacrifice.

They offer this to the Lord. It commemorates the end of one harvest and the beginning of another. It very closely resembles what happens with Christ.

Ephesians 5:24 says, He broke down that middle wall of separation. Remember in the temple compound, the Gentiles had a big area. They could come into this big area in the temple compound, but there was a wall.

If the Gentiles crossed that wall into that Jewish area, they could be killed. Even the Romans allowed them to kill a Gentile that crossed that wall. Jesus Christ broke down that wall at the Feast of Pentecost, as that gospel is allowed to go out not only to the Jew, the Gentile, and the Samaritan.

Then after that, there is a break for four months. It was a four-month gap. Jesus even talked about it.

Do you not say there are still four months? Then comes the harvest. Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest. There’s four months.

Now, interesting in Leviticus, and I have it up there, when it’s talking about this four-month gap, it throws in this strange information. Information that you would think would be someplace else. It says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest.

You shall leave them for the poor, for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. In the middle of this gap period, it says, listen, here’s your welfare system.

Here’s your welfare system. Years ago, I went to Mexico, down Chihuahua, Mexico. I was kind of on a mission’s trip.

When you come up to a stoplight, if you’re brave enough to stop at it, you’re going to get swarmed with kids and older people washing your windows. Sometimes they’re dirtier afterward than they are before. I’ll tell you what, I was driving down there and I would turn on the windshield wipers just to keep them from doing that.

I remember talking to one of the Mexicans down there because I noticed that the Mexicans didn’t do that. I said, you guys don’t do that, but I noticed that the rest of us do. He said, it’s our welfare system.

He says, they’re trying to do something and we try to help them out. I didn’t feel very tall right then. I felt pretty cheap.

But this is their welfare system. Notice, though, it’s for the poor and the strangers, the Gentiles. In the midst of this four-month gap, God is saying, listen, this is for those people that are disenfranchised and for the Gentiles.

It’s for those that haven’t had a way before. We’re in that gap period right now. This is where we are.

We are in that church age where we’re gleaning what the Jews didn’t want. We are gleaning. The next feast, there’s four feasts in the spring.

There’s three feasts in the fall. The next thing that is going to happen is the Feast of Trumpets. It is a memorial of blowing a horn.

It says in Joel 1, So on this day, and the Jews do not know why they do this. They got a reason for everything. They have books and books, and they have reasons for everything.

They do not know why they blow the trumpet. For some people, for some rabbis, they say it’s a time of judgment. For some people, some say it’s for a time of war.

Some say it’s for a time of gathering, but they do not know. I would say there’s a chance, and I’m going to make this point, that this coincides with where it says in 1st Corinthians 15:52, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Now, I’m going to make, I’m going to defend this later, but let me say here right now, notice it says at the last trumpet.

On the Feast of Trumpets, the trumpet blows all day long. They blow it all day long, until at the very end there is an extra loud trumpet saying, this is your last chance. This is your last chance.

And so, I’m going to make the point later on that there’s a possibility that this trumpet that it talks about in 1st Corinthians 15, and it talks about in Thessalonians, that this trumpet is the same trumpet that is the trumpet in the Feast of the Jews. Right after this comes the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement is where the Jew got saved.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest goes into the Holy of Holies two times. Once for himself, and once for the nation of Israel. And the individual Jew was to afflict their soul.

In other words, they would say, I’m a sinner. I need this, Messiah. And that’s what they were to do on that day.

Hosea 5:15 says, I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek my face in their affliction and they will earnestly seek me. He says, listen, Hosea, they’re going to be afflicted during this time of tribulation until they seek me.

What’s happened is, Jesus came presenting Himself as King. The Jews reject Him. Because of that rejection, He’s killed, but also, He needs to leave.

Because He’s been rejected, He leaves. He doesn’t come back until the Jew says, that Jesus was the Messiah. So, in Zechariah 12:1-9 it talks about the affliction during the tribulation period and it says it afflicted their bodies and physically they were afflicted.

And then in verses 10-13 it says, and their soul was afflicted. Because during the tribulation period, finally the Jews are going to say, that was the Messiah and Jesus comes back. The last one is the Feast of Tabernacles.

The Feast of Tabernacles commemorates the end of the harvest. It commemorates the fact that God dwelt with the Israelites in the wilderness. He lived with them.

And this thinks back to that time. It also looks forward to the millennial kingdom when God is going to live, Christ is going to live and rule on this earth for a thousand years. Now I have a picture of a tabernacle.

And this tabernacle, if you want to find out how it was to be built, you would go to Exodus. In Exodus it tells exactly how the tabernacle was built. And guess what? There isn’t anybody that believes the tabernacle wasn’t built.

Everybody believes the tabernacle was built. If you go to 1st Kings chapter 6, you’re going to see the design and the requirements for the temple. It’s very intricate.

It tells a lot about the size of the temple, the utensils in the temple. And everybody believes that that temple really existed. There’s nobody that doubts that that temple, because it was so exact in its dimensions, so exact in every piece of utensil, that that existed.

Now if you go into Ezekiel, Ezekiel talks about a millennial temple. It has more information about the millennial temple than there is about the Solomon’s temple. In fact, there’s more information about the millennial temple than there is about Solomon’s temple and the tabernacle combined.

Yet, I think I pulled this picture, I think it might be out of the Geneva Bible. I don’t know if you can read what it says up there. Ezekiel’s restored temple is not a blueprint, but a vision that stresses the purity and spiritual vitality of the ideal place of worship and those who worship there.

It’s not intended for an earthly, physical fulfillment, but expresses the truth found in the name of the new city, the Lord is there. See what it’s saying? This is symbolic. This is not a real temple.

This is symbolic. Now it’s interesting, it has more information about the building of it than any other of the temples or the tabernacle, and yet somehow this one’s symbolic. You know why? Because when this Bible was written, there was no Israel.

There was no Israel. And so, what they did is they tried to fit their doctrine, tried to fit a doctrine in, in these places where they said oh well, we can’t have a temple, there is no Israel. I would say that’s doctrine created out of lack of faith to tell you the truth.

There is going to be a Millennial Temple. If you look at this next picture, not that it matters very much because it doesn’t have that much to do with it, this is actually a picture of what it’s going to look like in that Millennial Kingdom. There’s two rivers that run out of the throne, it divides and half of it goes west to the Mediterranean Sea, the other half goes towards the Jordan River to the Dead Sea and they’re actually going to fish in the Dead Sea.

Hard to believe if you’ve ever been there. It’s pretty bad. When we went there, we went into the Dead Sea and I’d heard lots of people talk about they swam in the Dead Sea and when we saw it, nobody was swimming in the Dead Sea.

They were in there sitting and I said Well I can’t go back and tell people I swam in the Dead Sea if I just sat. So, I swam. I put my face under the water, did a couple breast strokes and then I suffered for an hour.

I couldn’t move. I had to squeeze my eyes shut, I couldn’t open them. I was paralyzed in there.

The salt was so bad. In the Millennial Kingdom, they’re going to fish in there. So that is all we’re going to talk about for now about the feast.

Now we’re going to go to the other picture and I think these two pictures interconnect. So, let’s talk about them. The next one is the New Testament picture of marriage.

Remember the number one in the marriage is that the father arranged the marriage and he arranged the bride price. He makes the regiment pay the bride price and sometimes this could happen when they’re very young. One of my favorite guys to listen to and read is a guy by the name of Arnold Fruchtenbaum.

He’s a Messianic Jew. He says his grandparents didn’t meet each other until they got married. They met on the altar as they were getting married.

It was an arranged marriage and very common in those days. But the father arranges the marriage and he sets the bride price. In this case, Ephesians 5:25b says, just as Christ also loved the church, gave himself for her.

That’s the bride price. Christ’s death. The second part of the marriage is the preparation.

If you remember right in the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are betrothed. They’re legally married as you are after the bride price is paid. But they were separated and during that time the bride was to prepare herself to be the kind of wife that would help her husband and she was seen to see if she was pure.

And so typically the preparation stage was at least for one year. Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse 2 says this, God wants to, He wants a chaste version prepared for His Son. Ephesians 5:29 says, just as the Lord does a church.

God is sanctifying the church right now. This passage here is really talking about telling men to love their wives. Love them like you love yourself.

And how do you love yourself? You nourish yourself and you cherish yourself. You know sometimes in church I get the idea that people think that God is trying to just correct them to make them, you know, get them to look good and kind of has this plan and He’s pushing them towards it. And really this is it.

This is how He deals with us. He nourishes us and cherishes us. He cares for us.

He’s on our side. He loves us. The next thing that happened is the fetching of the bride, and I’ve told you before, every Jewish bride is abducted. Every Jewish bride is abducted. She’s stolen away, sometimes in the daytime, typically at night.

You have that picture where they talk about, you know, the virgins and their lamps, right? And some of the virgins had oil and some didn’t. It’s talking about this very fact that finally the father says, the father determined when to go get the bride. The father says, you can go get the bride, so the bride groom takes his best man and his groomsmen and they sneak into town and they go to abduct the bride.

There’s one caveat. There’s one place that they had to put a little bit of safety in because they didn’t want to catch the bride kind of inconvenient, if you know what I mean. So right before they come in, they burst in, they blow a horn.

They blow a horn to warn them, hey, you better be presentable. And so, then they come in and they grab the bride and take the bride out and she’s veiled at this time, fetching of the bride. First Thessalonians 4:16 says, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first.

I believe this could be the fetching of that bride, the fetching of that bride. Now, I’m going to explain something to you. The rapture could have happened any time.

Probably from the time the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit on, the rapture could happen any time. Nothing had to take place, but time has gone by. Imagine you as a child loving ice cream.

You dream about ice cream. You think about ice cream all the time. I still do.

You wake up one day and you say, mom, can I have ice cream for breakfast? And your mom says, no, you can’t have ice cream for breakfast, but you can have ice cream before you go to bed. Now, the child doesn’t know when they’re going to have ice cream. There’s a span of time when she could have ice cream or he could have ice cream.

But as time goes on, pretty soon you’re in the afternoon and no longer is it 12 hours to bedtime. Now it’s getting to be about three or four hours and it’s getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And it’s not like you can get a pinpoint to the exact minute you’re going to have ice cream, but you’re able to see it’s later, right? It’s later.

That’s kind of what’s happened here. We could have had the rapture any time, but we’ve gone 1900 years. Now we’re into this time where guess what? We’re looking at end day, end times, right? It’s getting close and we’re going to talk about that a little bit.

We’re getting close. Now it looks like that these two pictures, if you will, of the history of the world, one looking at the church, one looking at the Jewish nation, it looks like they might intercede and come together right here on the trumpets. And maybe that trumpet that is calling for judgment against Israel is actually the trumpet that is for the church, the rapture of the church.

Right after the fetching of the bride is the wedding, the wedding ceremony. The groom takes his wife back and with just a few people, the bride and a few witnesses, they have the wedding ceremony. It says in Revelation 19:7, this is where the wedding ceremony takes place.

Let us be glad and rejoice. Give him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready. The marriage ceremony, not too many come, not many there.

But then there’s the wedding feast. So, after a Jewish bride is abducted and taken away in her veil and she goes and she’s married and they consummate the wedding, she finally comes back and as she comes back, they have a feast there. And in this feast, it’s interesting who’s going to be there at the feast of the bride.

Number one, Old Testament saints. Old Testament saints are going to be at the feast. That’s people like John the Baptist, who was called the friend of the bridegroom, but he dies before Christ did.

And so, he’s an Old Testament saint. Daniel, Elijah, all the patriarchs, they’re going to be there. That’s one of the ones that are going to be there.

The second one that’s going to be there is the saints that die in the tribulation. Revelation chapter 20, verses four through six. There are people that are going to believe in the tribulation.

They’re going to be persecuted, killed, and they’re going to be there. And then there’s going to be the ones that are coming through the tribulation period. Remember in the rapture, you wanted to be the one that was gone, right? In the rapture, you want to be the one that’s gone.

In the tribulation period, you want to be the one that stays, right? Because the ones that are gone, they’re going off for judgment. And the ones that stay go into the millennial kingdom. It says in Revelation 19:9, then he said to me, write, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

You know who that is? Those are those tribulation people. There’s a call out to them, come on, so that you can come into the millennial kingdom and feast with the bride and groom. Finally, there’s the taking of the bride home.

The last step in all this is that the man takes his wife back to a place that he prepared for her. You know when he prepared it? When she had that time where she was set apart, he goes back, and he prepares a place for her. Jesus Christ says this, in my father’s house are many mansions.

If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. He prepared a place for you. So, what is the place? It tells us in Revelation 21:9 and 10, in case you ever wondered where you’re going to live for eternity.

Because in case you think that you’re going to be in heaven with God, you’re off. You’re not going to be in heaven with God. Very clear in Revelation 21:9 through 10.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me saying, come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the great city, the Holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God. Not going to be in heaven.

You might do some singing, okay? But you’re going to do it down here. There’s a new heaven, new earth, and a new Jerusalem. So, we have two histories there or two outlines that are taking place.

Somehow, it looks like they might connect. I can’t guarantee it. But as time comes closer and closer to the tribulation, that we can figure out.

The tribulation, the end time, we can figure out. There we have a lot of information. I’m not going to cover all of it.

But Jesus in Matthew chapters 24 and 25, he says, listen, before the time comes, when the time comes, there’s going to be worldwide conflicts. Had a couple of world wars. There’s going to be increased earthquakes.

Now, understand, we measure earthquakes. We can feel earthquakes better than they did back. We have, you know, equipment that can see earthquakes sometimes you can barely feel.

But there is a seismologist out there that doesn’t tell you. They’re getting way worse. And there’s getting to be more of them.

There’s an earthquake every hour now. And it keeps going up and up and up. Jesus talked about persecution.

When he talked about persecution increasing, we don’t know for sure if he’s talking about Christians or Jews. The number one group persecuted in the world today, without a doubt, Christians. Number one, absolutely.

Number one, if you read anything you read, way above everybody else, number one, Christians. The Jews, how are they doing? 40 million people in Canada. There’s about 400,000 Jews.

They’re 1% of Canada. 70% of all hate crime is against Jews. Pretty bad.

Now, one of the things that had to happen, and this is very close, that says we’re towards the last days, is the reestablishment of Israel, 1948. We talked earlier about people trying to spiritualize things because there was no Israel. Nobody thought there could be a nation that could come back after 1,900 years.

They didn’t know about God. 1948, we have a nation of Israel, very tiny. 1967, they win a six-day war.

That’s important because they get the Temple Mount. It’s a big step. One of the things that has to happen before the Tribulation period, they have to control the Temple Mount.

In Ezekiel 38, it says that a nation comes down from the north to fight against Israel. God destroys them in the mountains of Israel. Before 1967, Israel did not have mountains.

They did not control mountains. Those were part of Syria. So, in 1967, another big thing happened.

Now, some people will say, just a little aside, that when it’s talking in Ezekiel about a nation coming down from the north, that that’s during the Tribulation period. It says in Ezekiel that after God destroys the army that came down, whoever it is, Russia or whatever, after he destroys them, it takes them seven years, it takes the Jews seven years to burn up all the weapons. Now, if this happens during the Tribulation period, which lasts seven years, halfway through the Tribulation period, the Jews are going to be persecuted and they’re going to flee.

When you flee, when you’re being persecuted, you don’t burn up weapons. You take them with you. So, this is happening before.

So, before the Tribulation period, we have to have an army come down from the north that’s going to be destroyed. We have to have a worldwide Baikal. Joel 2:31 says, The sun will be turned into darkness, the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

These are some of the things that happen now. Let me just tell you, if a nation came down against Israel and God destroyed that army, it is going to shake up this world like you never saw. Do you think the world’s changing pretty fast? I think it’s changing really fast.

I’ll be honest with you, things that come up, all of a sudden, it’s just like, I never thought that was a big deal, and all of a sudden, it’s huge. The world changes every day. It’s big.

It’s fluctuating all the time. And so, if a nation came and their armies were destroyed, I think in a very fast amount of time, there could be a one world government, very fast. Because that’s one of the requirements for the Tribulation period, it’s going to be a one world government.

So, all this to say, we see some things. We can see some things that are happening that they aren’t the Rapture. There’s no prerequisite for the Rapture.

But this end time, this ice cream before bed, is coming closer and closer. And now we’re here. And we ought to know the signs and the seasons.

1st Thessalonians 5, verse 4. Let me read this again. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light, sons of the day.

We are not of the night nor of the darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night.

And those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love as a helmet, the hope of salvation. Why do I mention this? Well, one thing, it was an imperative.

It’s imperative in Hebrew to Ezekiel to be a watchman. It’s an imperative here for us to watch. And as we look at this, as we think about the fact that it’s getting closer and closer, I think there’s some things that happen to us.

One, it gives us hope. You ever just look at your life, and there be times in your life when there aren’t any good decisions? When things are just really rough. And any decision you make is a tough one.

The woman that is raising a boy by himself, and she doesn’t have much money, and he’s struggling at baseball, but she doesn’t have time to go out there and help him. And so, he doesn’t do very well, and he’s struggling, and she can’t help him. Those are hard things, right? That’s a little thing, but we face hard things.

Where the slave down south, when they’re picking cotton, they used to sing songs, Swing Low Sweet Chariot. What were they doing? Thinking about the fact that someday I’m going to get out of here, right? I hope there’s a better place. And that’s one of the things watching does.

Another thing watching does, it should spur us to warn others, right? But let us, whoever the faith of the day, be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love. Let us care about other people. And lastly, I’ll tell you, if you think about the last days, the fact that the rapture is close, it gives you a different perspective.

If you start thinking about the rapture, and being caught up with him, and eternity with Christ, eternity with God, living in that kingdom, New Jerusalem, I’ll tell you, you can start having an eternal perspective instead of a temporal one. It can get your mind off of the problems that we have and start thinking differently. And so, I think that’s the reason that Paul tells us a couple of times, Watch, Watch.

The post Israel–God’s Timepiece appeared first on Community Bible Church.

1 Thessalonians 2:17-20

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We’re going to read some scripture this morning and four verses from 1st Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 17 through 20. Words are on the screen, and you can follow along as I read Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica. Paul writes, but brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time, in person, not in thought, out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you, for we wanted to come to you, certainly I, Paul, did again and again, but Satan blocked our way.

For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy. Well, we have been looking at the book of 1st Thessalonians and just progressing through verse by verse, chapter by chapter. And so, this morning, we’re going to be in chapter 2, verses 13 through 20.

If you were here last week, we looked at the first 12 verses and looked at Paul’s characteristics of ministry. And as Paul ministered there in Thessalonica in Acts chapter 16, there were three pictures that he writes about that we can model in our ministry. And he says, I was a faithful steward.

I ministered to you like a caring or nursing mother and like a concerned father. And that was Paul’s word pictures of how he ministered. This morning, we’re going to talk about growth.

We’re all interested in growth. When that newborn baby is born and you begin to take them to those regular doctor appointments, the doctor’s office will take a measurement and a weight and you’ll find out what percentile your child is in. And that’s very concerned that they continue to grow.

We’re interested in this, especially rural area, agricultural growth. Spend a lot of time, the farmers do, putting in seed and planting and, yep, the corn looks like it’s doing well. And we want those fields and things to grow, don’t we? We track economic growth, don’t we? If you have investments, perhaps you look at them, perhaps you follow the stock market.

You want those to grow. But this morning, we’re going to talk about an area of concern and it’s spiritual growth. And as the Apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he’s going to give us some resources for us to grow spiritually.

2nd Peter 3:18 says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s Peter’s parting words. Not a suggestion, it’s a command, he says, I want you to grow.

And earlier, Peter writes to these believers in 2nd Peter who were persecuted and scattered throughout the Roman Empire that God’s divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life. As Peter says, God’s already given us the resources that we need for a godly life. And so, this morning, we’re going to look at six of them from 1st Thessalonians chapter 2, and they all start with the letter S to help us remember.

And so, what are the resources that God has given us for growth? So, let’s look at the first one, and the first one, to no surprise, is the Scriptures. The Scriptures. Earlier, Peter wrote, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may what? Grow by it.

And now Paul’s writing to the Thessalonian believers and he is encouraging them regarding how they received God’s word when he preached the word. So, let’s look at it in verse, beginning in verse 13, we also thank God continually because when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, Paul spent three Sabbaths there in Thessalonica reasoning with the Scriptures and preaching. You accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.

Paul says, when I was there in Thessalonica, when I preached from the Old Testament Scriptures, you received what I said, not as coming necessarily from Paul, although he was the human instrument. This was the word of God. And that’s the challenge to anybody that stands behind this pulpit or any pulpit on Sunday morning.

We’re not really interested in what Pastor Ron has to say. What we want to understand and hear is, what does God have to say? That’s why over 400 times in the Old Testament, we read the phrase, thus saith the Lord. That was the ministry of the Old Testament prophets to proclaim to the nation of Israel and the surrounding nations, the message of the Lord.

And so, the Scriptures that we’re looking at, the book that you hold in your hands is the infallible, inerrant word of God. It is absolute truth, and it has the power to change our lives. And Paul mentions that.

He says that you received it as God’s word, which is at work in you who believe. Does the work of salvation, Romans 1:16, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe. The power of sanctification to sanctify our lives.

And so, the first resource that God gives us for spiritual growth is the word of God. Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in all the Old Testament. It’s got, I believe, 176 verses in it.

In almost every verse in Psalm 119, there’s a word that references, that symbolizes the word of God. Sometimes it’s called the law, sometimes it’s called God’s precepts. And Psalm 119 is a tremendous psalm to read to think about the power of God’s word and the Scriptures.

And so let me just read a couple verses from Psalm 119. It’s poetic in Hebrew. We kind of lose that in the English translation.

The psalmist writes; how can a young person stay on the path of purity? Well, there’s a great question for today. How do not only young people, but how do all of us live a life of purity? And he answers that by living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart.

Do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, Lord.

Teach me your decrees. I rejoice in following your statutes. Verse 9-20, my soul is consumed with longing for all your laws at all times.

So, the psalmist is writing, he says, I have a hunger for God’s word. Psalm 42:1, as the deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you. And I hope in your life that you have a desire and a longing to know God and to know God’s word.

Early this morning when I was over here, I’m looking out the doors of the church out in the field there, and there’s a deer that comes out from the wooded line there. And I don’t know, I still enjoy just watching a deer. And that Psalm 42 came to my mind.

The deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you. Well, the first resource is scriptures, and I trust that you’re in God’s word. We have so many resources that can help us with devotionals and Bible readings, and the scriptures will help us grow.

Well, there’s a second resource, and it’s found in the text here, resources for spiritual growth, not only the scriptures, but saints, the saints. Look at verse 14. For you, brothers and sisters, he’s writing to those in Thessalonica, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus.

So, these new believers in Thessalonica were going through some challenges in their life, and they had some other mature believers that could help them. They were the believers in the churches in Judea who also were experiencing some challenges in their lives. And so, what’s another resource that God gives us to help us grow? It’s the body of Christ.

It’s other believers. If you’re trying to live the Christian life in isolation and alone, it’s not going to go very well because God designed us to live in community, to pray for one another, to encourage one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to love one another. And so, God’s given us the saints, the body of Christ, to help us grow.

And the Thessalonian believers, those new believers, looked to some other churches that were maybe a little more mature and further along in their walk to help them grow. And this is what Paul did when he came to minister to different areas and started churches. Paul set his life up as an example.

Follow me as I follow Christ. To the Philippian believers, he says, the things that you have learned and heard and received and seen in me, this is what I want you to do. And so, to find another believer who might be a little further along in their spiritual journey and the journey through life together is a gift from God.

And we grow in community. As Proverbs 27:17 says, iron sharpens iron. And so, God’s given us one another to help us grow.

And so, the author of Hebrews says, don’t forsake the assembly of yourselves together, as the manner of some is, but encourage one another all the more as you see the day approaching, the day of Christ’s return. Then he says, I want you to spur one another on toward what? Love and good deeds. And so, it’s the body of Christ that can help us.

I’ve shared several times that as I look back in my life, I had four men who were instrumental in my Christian Walk. Number one, my dad, who was in ministry for 60 plus years, a great role model for me. A youth worker at our church I grew up in, in Cleveland, Ohio, at Bethlehem Baptist Church.

His name, Tom Ladd. He’s now with the Lord. A soccer coach and a Bible teacher in a Christian school that I went to by the name of David Graham.

And lastly, a mentor when I was at Grand Rapids Seminary, a fellow by the name of Louis Konopka. And those men influenced me. And sometimes it was through words, but oftentimes it was just by modeling a godly life.

And so, we have the resource of saints. Well, here’s a third resource that is mentioned in the text, and it’s found in the last part of verse 14. Let me read the whole verse again.

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus. You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews. So, the Thessalonian church was going through suffering, just like those Judean churches were experiencing suffering from the Jews.

The Thessalonians were also experiencing suffering and persecution. If we go back to Acts chapter 17, when Paul and Silas made the trip there to minister in Thessalonica, while the gospel made inroads, so did opposition. Let me just remind you, although some people came to Christ that said some other Jews were jealous, so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace and they formed a mob and started a riot in the city.

And Paul and Silas end up making a nighttime escape. And so, these new believers are experiencing what? Some suffering, persecution. That’s the book of 1st Peter, by the way.

The whole theme is pain with a purpose. And Peter writes to these believers who, because of the Roman persecution that had broken out, were scattered all over the Roman Empire, and he’s trying to encourage them in their time of suffering. And so, we read in 1st Peter chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, Don’t be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come to test you, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice in as much as you participate in the sufferings of Christ.

And so, these believers were undergoing fiery trials. Some of them ended up being human torches in Nero’s garden, and they gave their life for the cause of Christ. And God often uses suffering in our life for our spiritual good and His glory.

And so, Peter concludes 1st Peter chapter 5, verse 10 with these words, And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast. What does suffering do, when we suffer well, it makes us stronger, it makes us steadfast. And I love this verse because it says, after you have suffered a little while.

Oh, Mark Lowry says his favorite verse in the Bible is, and it came to pass. Whatever you’re suffering or going through in your life right now, we can put one word on it from Scripture, and it starts with the letter T, it’s temporary. But whatever suffering we’re experiencing, it’s temporary.

And God often uses those suffering to mold us into Christ likeness. Open Doors Ministry publishes a world watch list every year. Because quite frankly, we live in the United States of America, which in one sense is the Disneyland of Christianity.

We’ve got lots of churches to go to. We’ve got lots of spiritual helps and books and resources and devotionals and Bible studies. One of the most confusing things for some people is to go to a bookstore, if they exist anymore, or go to Amazon, try to buy a Bible.

And all of a sudden, like, there’s like 45 translations. Most of the world doesn’t have that. And many people globally are suffering for their faith as we enjoy the comfort of an air-conditioned auditorium and padded pews.

So, here’s what Open Doors has to say. More than 380 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. One in seven Christians are persecuted worldwide.

Last year, 7,679 churches and Christian properties were attacked. We won’t hear that in the news at all. Last year, 4,476 Christians were martyred for their faith last year.

So, the author of Hebrews writes, continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison. And remember those who were mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. So once a year in November, sponsored by Open Doors, they have a Sunday dedicated to praying for the persecuted church.

God uses suffering to help us grow. Well, there’s a fourth resource that God gives to us in this text, and let’s find it in verse 17. But brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time, in person, not in our thought, out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you.

And so, Paul says, we were orphaned by being separated from you. And we went back briefly to Acts 17 and discovered because of persecution, because of a riot mob that developed that Paul and Silas make a nighttime escape, and they very quickly had to leave these Thessalonian believers. Paul says, we were separated from you.

In body, but not in thought. The King James says, taken away from you. Other translations say, torn away from you.

Sometimes God uses separation to help us grow. All of a sudden, the church at Thessalonica doesn’t have their founding pastor with them. All of a sudden, these men who led them to Christ and were teaching them the scriptures are gone.

And oftentimes in our journey in life, we can find ourselves separated from our support system, our spiritual support system. Maybe we’re transferred to a new city and we’re taken away from what’s familiar and we need to find a new support system. Maybe we go off to college and now the real test is, what do I believe? Do I believe what I believe because my parents believe it? Or is this really my faith? And that’s quite frankly a crisis that many young people go through when they go off to college.

I highly recommend anybody that goes off to a secular college to find a ministry, whether it’s crew or whether it’s navigators, get involved in some sort of Christian support group that can grow your faith. And so, Paul is separated. They make this nighttime escape and now those believers are forced to either sink or swim on their own.

I love what David writes in 1st Samuel 36. He says, David encouraged himself in the Lord. And it’s great and necessary to come to church and sit through Bible studies and have pastors proclaim God’s word to you.

But we also need to learn how to feed ourselves, learn how to get in the scriptures ourselves and grow. Sometimes separation is what puts us on that track of growth. Well, there’s a fifth resource.

Paul mentions it here in verse 18. He says, hey, I wanted to come to you. In fact, I tried again and again, but notice what he says in verse 18, we wanted to come to you, Paul and Silas.

Certainly, I did again and again, but who blocked our way? Satan blocked our way. So, fifth resource for spiritual growth is an understanding of spiritual warfare, a recognition of spiritual warfare. And Paul says, hey, I wanted to come back to Thessalonica, and he doesn’t give us any details here, but he says, Satan blocked the way.

So, this is why Paul writes to the Ephesian believers. And he reminds us with these words, be strong in the Lord and His mighty power, put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the devil’s schemes. The word there is really the word is methods, the methods of Satan.

And then he reminds us, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Paul reminded us, hey, there’s a spiritual battle going on out there. There’s a spiritual battle for the heart of America, and there’s a spiritual battle for families, and there’s a spiritual battle for the minds and the hearts of our young people and our grandchildren.

And we need to recognize that there’s an enemy out there. He’s called the great deceiver, and he has different methods that he uses. It’s just the doubt God’s word.

That was how he worked in the book of Genesis with Adam and Eve, call them the five Ds. He uses doubt, he uses discouragement, disappointment in our life, division, despair. Satan has all sorts of methods to divide Christians, discourage us.

And so, the apostle Paul says, put on the whole armor of God. It takes us through that armor. And then he finishes that passage by saying, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.

Here’s the good news in this spiritual battle. The Bible says, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And how do we defeat Satan and his methods and attacks? Well, Jesus did it by quoting Scripture.

Matthew chapter 4, Satan came to him, tempted him three times. Jesus responded by quoting the book of Deuteronomy three times. We defeat the Satan by Scripture and by prayer, by realizing that God is greater and God has ultimately won the final victory.

Well, there’s a sixth resource for spiritual growth that we can discern from the text here. It’s not only the Scriptures. It’s not only the saints, the body of Christ.

God not only uses suffering, sometimes separation, recognition of spiritual warfare. And by the way, if you get serious about growing in the Christian life and getting involved in ministry, guess what? You’re going to have a target on your back. Just expect it.

Because then you become a threat. But it’s number six resource is this, living in light of the second coming. Living in light of the second coming.

And so, the overall theme of 1st Thessalonians is be ready. Be ready. Be ready for what? Be ready for the second coming.

But Jesus is coming back. And every chapter, all five chapters of 1st Thessalonians concludes with some sort of reference to the second coming of Christ. And that’s how Paul concludes our section here this morning.

He says, for what is our hope, our joy, for the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? So, Paul’s looking ahead to what? The future second coming of Christ. Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy. What brought Paul joy in his life? What was he aiming for in his life? His joy was found in other believers and sharing the gospel and being a part of their spiritual journey and their spiritual walk.

And he says, someday when Jesus returns, you’ll be my crown. You’ll be my joy. You’ll be my glory.

Paul looks forward to the second coming. And so, in 1st Corinthians 4, Paul reminds us about having an eternal perspective. And actually, it’s 2nd Corinthians chapter 4. So let me get there.

Here’s what he writes. Therefore, do not lose heart. Here’s an encouraging word for this morning.

So outwardly, we’re wasting away. Our bodies are beginning to break down. Yet inwardly, we are being renewed day by day.

Here it is again. Our light and momentary troubles, they’re temporary, are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So, here’s the application.

So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Because what is seen is temporary, and what is unseen is eternal. Paul reminds us to have what? An eternal focus.

Paul reminds us to focus on those things that will last forever. And in my short list of what lasts forever, there’s three things that are eternal. God is eternal.

The word of God is eternal. That’s Isaiah 40. The souls of people are eternal.

And so, Paul encourages us to live in light of the second coming. To look at life through the lens of an eternal perspective. Look at the world through the eyes of Jesus.

How did Jesus see people? Well, in Matthew chapter 9, he saw the crowds. He says he was moved with compassion on them. They were helpless and harassed.

And then he said, pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest field to reach people for Christ. And so, resources for spiritual growth. Just a couple of application questions as we close this morning.

Where am I in my spiritual growth chart? Quite frankly, oftentimes spiritual growth charts aren’t kind of like this ascending with upward all the time. It’s more like maybe the stock market, up and down, up and down. Sometimes the Christian Walk is three steps forward, two steps backward. But we need to keep pressing on.

And so, am I growing in my Christian Walk with God? Am I regularly reading and studying God’s Word? Is it part of my daily routine? Am I regularly in fellowship with other believers to encourage them, to journey through life with them, to pray for them, to bless them, to bear their burdens?

Thirdly, do I recognize suffering, that suffering is often part of the Christian life? In fact, 1st Timothy 3:12, all who desire to live a godly life will suffer persecution. We don’t quite have it yet in this country, but it could very well be coming.

Sometimes God uses persecution and sometimes God uses suffering. In fact, this is what Paul’s prayer was in Philippians 3:10, I want to experience the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. And when those apostles who were put in prison and were beaten rather, not put in prison, the Sanhedrin released them and said they rejoiced after they were beaten and flogged that they were able to suffer for Christ.

And so, do I realize that sometimes suffering is part of the Christian life? And then lastly, as Randy Alcorn puts it in his book, The Treasure Principle, am I living for the dot? The dot being the 70, 80, 90 years perhaps that God gives us on this planet? Or am I living for the line? The line is eternity. That’s an infinite line. And where is my focus? Is it on the seen or the unseen? Well, I trust that as we think about Paul’s encouragement to the Thessalonian believers in their Christian Walk, that you will avail yourself to God’s word, the body of Christ, the resources that God has given us.

Sometimes they’re not easy resources but continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.

The post Resources for Spiritual Growth: I Thessalonians 2:13-20 appeared first on Community Bible Church.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-12

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This is going to be from 1st Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 9 through 12. Words are on the screen, actually 7 through 12, and you can follow along as I read 1st Thessalonians 2:7 through 12. Here’s Paul writing to the church at Thessalonica.

Instead, we were like young children among you. Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you because we loved you so much. We were delighted to share with you not only the gospel, but our lives as well.

Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship. We worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believed.

For you know how that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom.

Well, we’re looking through the book of First Thessalonians and we gave an introductory message a few months ago or weeks ago actually. So, last week we looked at chapter one.

And Paul’s writing to this church that he established in his second missionary journey. And he’s writing to encourage them. And the church at Thessalonica was a model church.

And so, in chapter one we looked at three aspects of how the church in Thessalonica was a model and says they were an elect people. They were chosen by God. And we talked about this doctrine of election that’s all through scripture.

They were also an exemplary people. It says, from you rang out the gospel to all the surrounding areas. And the church at Thessalonica became a model for other churches.

But they were also an expectant people. Every chapter in the book of Thessalonians, all five chapters, ends with the Apostle Paul writing about the second coming of Christ. And so, that’s really the theme of this book of First Thessalonians is be ready.

And what are we to be ready for? We’re to be ready for Christ’s any moment return. This morning we’re going to jump into chapter two and look at the first 12 verses of First Thessalonians chapter two. And the title of this is characteristics of an effective ministry.

Characteristics or portraits of an effective ministry. And when you look at that title you might say, well that’s a good message for pastors who are in the ministry. But if you read your Bible carefully and you understand what the scripture teaches, if we know Christ as our Savior, every one of us is a minister.

We have all been called to minister to one another and to minister to the body of Christ. We’ve all been given a spiritual gift. So, one of the responsibilities and jobs of a pastor, according to Ephesians chapter four, is what? To build up the body of Christ and to train them what? To be involved in ministry.

And so, this isn’t a message and these aren’t portraits just for a pastor. This is a portrait for all of us as we minister to our family, as we minister to our surrounding community, as we minister in opportunities in our workplace, as we minister to one another within the body of Christ. And so, let’s look at three pictures or three portraits because Paul models an effective ministry.

And so, here’s the first picture that Paul gives us from 1st Thessalonians chapter two beginning in verses one through six. It’s the ministry of a faithful steward, of a faithful steward. Paul says that he’s been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

And so, it’s the stewardship of the gospel. And so, we’re going to get to verse four in just a little bit, but let’s start in verse one of chapter two. Paul writes, you know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results.

So, we go back to Acts chapter 17, when Paul visited Thessalonica, he ministered in the synagogue for three Sabbaths. And what happened? People came to faith in Jesus through the power of the gospel. And we read about it in Acts chapter 17, that Paul was explaining and proving that Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.

This Jesus I’m proclaiming to you is the Messiah. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. So, Paul’s recalling his time there in Thessalonica, and he says, guess what? There were some results.

I preached the gospel. I preached that Jesus is the Messiah, and some Jews and some Greeks, some Gentiles came to faith in Jesus. Then he goes on to say in verse two, we had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi.

So, before he was in Thessalonica, he was in Philippi, and you remember what happened there, that there was a slave girl that was demon-possessed, and the slave girl was making her owners quite a bit of money. And Paul and Silas cast that demon out, and all of a sudden, their bank account went to zero. They weren’t able to use this girl anymore to make money.

And they ended up putting Paul and Silas in prison. They were flogged. They were beaten.

And then there was that miraculous earthquake, and Paul and Silas were eventually freed from jail. So, he’s talking about his time in Philippi. He says, we were treated outrageously, as you know, but with the help of our God, we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.

I don’t know about you, but if I had spent time in prison and being flogged and was treated like that, I might have gone for like, hey, I need a little R and R. I need a little break. Not Paul and Silas. They went from Philippi to Thessalonica, and they continued to preach the gospel.

And what happened there? People got upset, and a riot broke out. And Paul and Silas had to make a nighttime escape for their own safety. Now, Paul goes on to talk about his motives in the next three or four verses.

And why is Paul doing this? It’s because Paul faced some false accusations. There are many, even in the first century, who used religion for profit. And so, Paul is saying, hey, my motives are pure.

Let’s look at it beginning in verse three. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

There’s that stewardship of the gospel. We are not trying to please people, but God who tests our hearts. So, Paul says, we were entrusted with the gospel.

Paul never got over that. He writes about it in his autobiographical section there in 1st Timothy chapter one. He says, I was the chief of sinners.

I was the chief persecutor of the church. I was the one who was chasing down Christians and taking them out of their homes and putting them in prison. And then I had that experience on the Damascus Road and my life was changed and God entrusted me with the stewardship of the gospel.

And so, the first picture of an effective ministry is that Paul was a faithful steward of the gospel. Actually, think about that. I think there’s two aspects to being a faithful steward of the gospel.

It’s a two-fold responsibility. Here’s the first one. The first aspect of being a steward of the gospel is to guard the integrity of the true gospel.

It has to do with the true gospel that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. It’s what Peter proclaimed in Acts chapter four, verse 12, neither is there salvation in any other for there’s no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

Jesus described the gospel in Matthew chapter seven and he talks about there’s two gates. One’s a narrow gate; one’s a broad gate. There’s two roads.

One’s a narrow road; one’s a broad road. And through the narrow gate and through the narrow road, there’s a few people on it. Through the broad gate and the broad road, there’s many.

And that road leads to destruction. The narrow gate, which is Jesus, leads to eternal life. So, we need to guard the integrity of the gospel that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Paul was always concerned about this. Paul was always concerned about false teachers that might come in and distort the gospel. So, in Acts chapter 20, Paul’s meeting with the leaders of the Ephesian church.

They meet in a place called Miletus, and Paul knows this is the last time he’s going to see them. And here’s Paul’s charge to the Ephesian leaders. I know that after I leave, this is his word picture here, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.

Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So, he’s warning the church leadership at Ephesus, you better guard the integrity of the gospel because there’s false teachers out there who will twist the gospel. That was Paul’s strong warning in the opening verses of the book of Galatians.

Listen to this text from Paul, verses 8, 9, and 10. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse. As we’ve already said, so now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one you are accepted, let them be under God’s curse.

The word there for another gospel means another of a different kind. What are some of the false gospels? That’s when people begin to mix works into the gospel picture. Say that, well, you got to get to heaven, it’s yes, Jesus’ death on the cross plus something, plus your works, or you have to do this or that.

And anytime you add anything and say, well, we have to do something else to get to heaven other than trusting in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, we’re really saying Jesus’ death on the cross and his shed blood for our sin payment is not enough. And so, when we studied the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter 3, verse 2, Paul gives a strong warning, watch out for those dogs. He calls them dogs.

He calls them mutilators of the flesh. Who were they? They were the Judaizers that said, yes, you can follow Jesus, but you have to add following the law. And Paul gave a strong warning against it.

So, a faithful steward protects the true gospel, the integrity of the gospel. But there’s also a second aspect to being a faithful steward, and this was what Paul did in his life and ministry and as mission trips. The second aspect is to faithfully, faithfully proclaim the gospel that we put our faith in Jesus and Jesus alone.

And his shed blood on the cross paid for our sin debt. And he gave a victory cry on the cross. He said, it is finished.

He was buried and three days later, he rose again and he’s coming again someday. And now what’s he instructed us to do? Here’s where we’re ministers too. He’s given to us, all of us, what? The ministry of reconciliation, 2nd Corinthians 5:19 through 21.

Here’s the gospel. He who knew no sin became sin for us so that in him, in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God. And so, the integrity of the gospel, and you can’t read the New Testament without realizing that God’s given us a commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel, not only here locally, but as we have the privilege of supporting missionaries through our church giving and encouraging those that have been called to go cross-culturally, our goal is to get the gospel and to faithfully proclaim the good news.

Well, that’s the first portrait of an effective ministry, an effective minister. It’s being a faithful steward to protect and guard the gospel, the truth of the gospel, and to faithfully proclaim it.

But Paul gives a second picture here of what effective ministry looks like, and it’s found in verses 7 and 8, and it’s a very tender picture of a nursing mother, a nursing mother.

So, look at it with me in 1st Thessalonians chapter 2. We’re going to look at four characteristics here that Paul talks about that need to be in our lives as well as we minister. Here it is, verse 7. The NIV says, instead we were like young children among you. The New King James Version in the ESV says we were gentle among you.

And so, what’s the first picture of a nursing mother? Paul begins to talk about we were gentle among you. In an effective ministry, we need to be gentle with people. I’ve learned over the years that we all need to maybe have a sign on our forehead, maybe not literally, but handle with care, because we’re all going through something.

We might look good on the outside, but everybody’s got something on their plate. Everybody’s going through a struggle, and we need to be gentle with one another. One of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 and 23, the works of the flesh, 17 through 23, the nine evidences of the fruit of the Spirit, one of them is what? Gentleness, gentleness.

So, Paul says we were gentle among you, and then he says we cared for you, just as a nursing mother cares for her children. Another translation says we affectionately were longing for you. And so, Paul has this picture of gentleness, but he genuinely cared for those believers at Thessalonica, genuinely cared for the people that he was ministering to.

And you know when we minister, people can determine that, they can decipher that, whether we really care about them. Paul pictures a nursing mother who’s gentle, who’s caring for her own children. So, we cared for you, why? Because we loved you so much.

So, a nursing mother, gentle, caring, and loving. Jesus talked about this in John 13, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. And then he raises the bar, and he says, love one another as I have loved you.

And so, Paul pictures this nursing mother, she’s gentle, she’s caring, she’s motivated by loving her own children, and we need to be loving toward one another. But then there’s a fourth characteristic. We’re going to just use the word transparent, transparent.

Notice Paul writes, because we love you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, so he faithfully shared the gospel with those Thessalonians, and some of them came to faith in Christ, but what else did Paul share? Goes on to say, not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well. Paul shared his life. Paul was transparent.

Paul was like an open book, and he shared life together with those that he loved. This is a picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, where they met together, and they committed themselves to the apostles’ doctrine, they committed themselves to prayer, they committed themselves to fellowship, they committed themselves to sharing the gospel, and it said they broke bread together every day. They were sharing meals together; they shared their lives together.

One of the ways that we can share our love for one another is to be transparent with one another. Not every day is a good day sometimes in our life, and it’s okay to be transparent. In fact, when you open up and maybe share that you’re struggling, you want to give us that vulnerability for others to come around you and to pray for you and to encourage you.

So, Paul’s picturing three characteristics of an effective ministry. The first one is a faithful steward that guards the gospel and proclaims the gospel. The second one is a nursing mother who’s gentle, caring, loving, and transparent.

The third one is a concerned father, a concerned father. Let’s pick it up in verse 9 here. Some pictures of Paul as a concerned father, and so we want to look at, first of all, Paul’s work, Paul’s work.

Writing to the Thessalonians, surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship. We work night and day in order not to be a burden to you or to anyone while we preach the gospel of God to you. So, Paul was what? A bi-vocational missionary.

Yes, Paul did receive financial support. The Philippian church sent him money and a gift, but Paul was a tent maker. Paul says, we worked day and night.

So, I picture and imagine Paul teaching and preaching in the synagogue during the day, and then at nighttime he’s working on his craft and working on his trade. Paul toiled and labored, and why did he do that? He did not want to be a burden, a financial burden, to those that he was ministering to. He was what? Starting churches, and so when a church is a startup church, there’s not a lot of finances.

So, Paul helped support himself by being a tent maker. Notice he uses the word toil and hardship. Paul worked hard, and when I was growing up as a young boy in Cleveland, Ohio, I remember somebody asking me, I was probably maybe six, seven years old, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I remember this distinctly.

My answer was, I want to be a garbage man. Garbage man. Like, why do you want to be a garbage man? I said, well, they only work one day a week, you know.

That’s all that I saw them, you know. Little did I realize that. I just thought, well, they picked up our garbage, they’re done.

And then I became a pastor, and whenever I tell that story, I open myself up to it, you know, the joke. Oh, you only work one day a week. You got your wish.

Let me tell you, ministry is hard work, and done the right way. If you care for people, if you love people, it’s hard work. And Paul worked hard, and Paul toiled in preaching the gospel and also in his bi-vocational ministry.

Paul worked hard. Secondly, we read about Paul’s walk. Paul’s walk in verse 10.

He’s talking about his life now. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believed. So, Paul talks about his work, then he talks about his life.

He says, I wasn’t perfect, but I want to tell you, I lived a holy, righteous life. I tried to be an example to you. And Paul writes to the Corinthians, follow me as I follow Christ.

To the Philippians, he says, the things you have learned and heard and received and seen in me, I want you to do. So, Paul’s life was an example, a godly example of what it means to walk with God. Paul said that I was blameless.

Now, when you go to 1st Timothy 3, chapter 3 lists the qualifications to be a pastor and an elder in the first seven verses. The overarching qualification is this term here that a pastor’s life should be blameless, not perfect. But if somebody makes an accusation, it should prove to be false.

There should be no reason for some sort of deep sin in their life. And then it goes on to list what that blameless life looks like, and then it adds in verses 8 through 12 the qualifications for church deacons. There are qualifications there.

Paul’s walk was holy, was righteous, and was blameless. But then we look at Paul’s words as a concerned father. Paul says, I was like a gentle mother, but I was also a father to you.

For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children. And now Paul gives three descriptive words here, Paul’s words. By the way, we underestimate the power of words.

Proverbs says, death and life are in the power of the tongue. And we can use our words to uplift and encourage, or we can use our words to tear down. And Paul says, I was like a concerned father.

Three descriptive words here, verse 12, the NIV uses the word encouraging here. It’s the word Parakaleo. It means to come alongside, to assist somebody.

It means help up close and personal, ministry up close and personal. It starts with our own families, doesn’t it? To minister to them, and to come alongside them, and encourage them.

My research says, and I understand this as parents because we want to raise our kids in the admonition of the Lord, but oftentimes we give many more negative messages than positive messages, and sometimes the negative messages are necessary, but we need to balance that out with words of encouragement. Boy, do our kids and grandkids need encouragement as they grow up in the culture in which we live. Paul says, I came alongside you, Thessalonian believers, and I encouraged you, like a father dealing with his own children.

Encouraging, the second word here is Paramytheomai, means comforting. Paul says, encouraging and comforting. And then the third aspect is urging you, or some of the translations say charging you.

So, Paul says, I was like a concerned father. I worked hard, I ministered, I tried to live an exemplary life, and I used my words to uplift, to encourage, to charge, to correct. And what’s the goal? What is Paul aiming at here with his words? Here it is, the last part of verse 12, encouraging, comforting, urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into His kingdom and His glory.

What’s the goal? The goal is to encourage others, what, to walk with God, to live a life worthy of what God has called you to do, to be a follower of Jesus and not to bring harm or shame or reproach on the name of Christ. That was Paul’s goal. So, Paul says, my aim is to encourage you to live a life worthy of 48 years ago, next month.

My wife and I stood before a congregation of people in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My dad was the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church. We stood in front of a church and we expressed our vows to one another, and we’ll celebrate 48 years of marriage next month.

But we also, in our dating years, picked a life verse. What would be a good verse scripture that as we start our married life together that we can kind of shoot for to try to live out? And so, the life verse was Colossians 1:9 and 10. I’ll just read verse 10.

It says that we might live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every good work, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. We started our married life together. Our goal is to live a life worthy and pleasing to God.

And so, on that wedding day, and I’m holding the ring in my hands, I can’t get it on anymore because my little arthritis in my knuckle doesn’t allow me to wear it. But hey, maybe we’ll get it enlarged for our 48th anniversary, you know, simple solution, right? But engraved inside, you can barely read it now because it’s kind of been worn off, but engraved inside my ring is Colossians 1:9 and 10. Love, Diane.

I hope that’s your goal as well. That was Paul’s concern for those believers, that they would live a life pleasing and worthy. So, three portraits of an effective ministry, and Paul’s our role model here.

Paul says we need to be faithful stewards. So, by just application in these three aspects here, we have to ask our question, am I a faithful steward of the gospel? Do I know the gospel? Have I received the gospel? And secondly, am I sharing the gospel? I’m looking for opportunities to impact my world by being a faithful proclaimer of the gospel. Secondly, here’s a second thought and a second application question.

Do I care for others, love others, and share my life with others? And Paul says, I was like a nursing mother. I was gentle and caring and loving, and I shared my life with you. That’s God’s call to us.

As you read through the New Testament, there’s 12 one another phrases there. We’re to honor one another, pray for one another, encourage one another, love one another. On and on it goes with gentleness and love and caring.

Thirdly, Paul says I was like a concerned dad. And here as a concerned dad, he was wanting those Thessalonian believers to continue on in their walk with God and to live a life that was worthy of him. And so, the question that we’re asking is, do I regularly encourage others? It starts out with our own family unit, and it spreads out to those that God gives us positions of influence and spheres of influence, but do I regularly encourage others to live their lives worthy of God? Part of the purpose of the church, isn’t it? Proverbs 27:17 is iron sharpens iron.

Hebrews 10:25, don’t forsake the assembly of yourself together as some are, but what? Encourage one another in what? Encourage one another in what? To love and good deeds. And that’s part of our goal as a child of, well, we’re all ministers, and I trust as you evaluate your life in ministry and as I evaluate mine, there will be faithful stewards of the gospel that will love and care others, share our life with others, and encourage others to walk faithfully with God.

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