Hickory Bible Church

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

5 Marks of Steadfastness at HBC in 5 Years

 Download transcript

2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 1 to 5. It to me is amazing where we are right now in this letter, as it corresponds to my life in the sense of this is around the time I came five years ago, and I was reflecting on that this week. God's kindness and our family coming back around this week, five years ago, sometime around like the 20th, we boomeranged back from the 818 of Los Angeles to the 828 of Hickory. Because your two fine cities are so similar. There's really no change at all. But I was studying this while thinking about my first five years as the preaching pastor here, and as I was studying the text and just seeing what Paul is doing here in this final exhortation of Second Thessalonians one that not a lot of people would probably have high in their list of a place in the Bible they go to understand what a steadfast church is like. But as I read this and saw its truth, I couldn't help but think of what I've seen in you. How this text, though the truth is in the words in the Bible. It's lived out amongst Hickory Bible Church and I was just so encouraged by that. Simultaneously, I just so happened to have a guy reach out to me. New to town here. Um, took a church and we were having lunch. And he though he's five years my younger, he's already actually pastored two churches as a preaching pastor or senior pastor, if you want to call it that, for five years each. And, you know, that actually is more common than one guy being at a place for a really long time. I was looking into the research of LifeWay. They did a survey in 2021 of 1500 evangelical pastors and found that, um, the average tenure of a senior pastor, um, is five years. And, um, I was thinking, well, here I am, by the way. I'm not going anywhere. Somebody, as far as I know, uh, after first service did come up and he said, I sat waiting the entire time, you know, because you always want to save it for the end. I was like, no. So he's like, just tell the people this isn't setting up for something else. But as that guy and I were talking, I was thinking about, well, he's done two, five year stints and and then if 50% of pastors being interviewed, you know, 50% of them have been somewhere five years or less and even 50% of them, they were they've been there other places multiple times. What I'm getting to do right now, five years in, is is somewhat unique. It also made me think, is it any different in the world? Is it just that a senior pastor would have this? And I found a study from Harvard Law School that the Tenure rate of CEOs of the best of the best 500 large cap companies traded on the US stock exchange. The median tenure is 39% will be there less than five years, which kind of blew me away because you're talking to these, you know, fortune 500 companies and all the research they do, all the interviews they do to find the person to lead them ahead. 39% will last five years or less, and 13% will be there less than a year. And so whether a CEO or pastor can be over quickly. But as I studied our passage today, I was encouraged in putting statistics aside. Just saying, do I see the same things that were true about this good church that we've talked about now since January? First Thessalonians? A good church, second Thessalonians, a growing church. Do I see the same characteristics when we talk about the Word of God is to be that mirror to us. James one says that we look into and I was just studying it this week, going, God, you have given me. You have allowed me, privileged me to be a pastor of a church that looks like this church. And I don't take that for granted at all. The same qualities of steadfastness that Paul rejoiced in in these believers. I rejoice in in you. And so I titled this message Five Marks of Steadfastness that Hickory Bible Church in five years. I know that it's about a church back then, but it's also true of you now, and God gets all the praise for that. So let's read this text together. This kind of closing exhortation before Paul gives them one final admonishment about working. He has this five verseencouragement to them, and we see five marks of steadfastness there. Follow along as I read Second Thessalonians three 1 to 5 Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did also with you, and that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men. For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you that you are doing, andwill continue to do what we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. I often quote that Isaiah 40, verse eight before each sermon, and it actually was the passage, the first passage I preached when I came back in the fall of 2019. Isaiah 40, verses 1 to 8. Because I was coming back and asking myself the question, what is a preacher to do? And that was the title of that sermon then. What's a preacher to do? And it's answered very clearly in Isaiah 40. Right out of the gate. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. That word for comfort is a word for strengthening. And it's the pastor's primary calling as a shepherd to the Lord Jesus Christ's sheep, to strengthen them, to do everything he can within his power to feed them and lead them to grow stronger in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Bottom line. And so that was where we started five years ago. And we talked about how in that passage, that it was foreshadowing the arrival of John the Baptist, who would quote these very lines. And he would he would clear the way of the Lord in the wilderness. He would make smooth a way for the Messiah to come for the glory of the Lord to be revealed. Verse five, and all flesh will see it together, In the mouth of the Lord is spoken, calling out, and the prophet answers, what shall I call out? What shall I tell God's people? All flesh is like grass, and its loveliness like the flower of the field. It's passing. The flower is going to fade. The grass is going to wither. When the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are like grass. But there is one thing that will stand, and it's the Word of God. And when I got back, I said, this is I did not, um, make myself go through the pain of listening to that sermon. I just went to my notes and I found the section where I talked about my vision, and I said, you may wonder what my vision for this church is. Here it is. I look out and I see a field of withering grass and fading flowers. No offense. None taken in 60 years. Most of us won't remain. But one thing will the Word of God. The preacher will change. The people will change. The Word of God will stand. So that's my vision for this church. That's what it's going to be. I have no idea of anything else that will happen to this place, except that this church will stand as we faithfully preach and teach the Word of God, and that will endure even when we are gone. Five years later, I still stand by that claim. What is more encouraging to me than anything is I do see a field of healthy and alive flowers and grass, as this week my heart was overjoyed to to read through second Thessalonians three 1 to 5 and see these five marks of steadfastness in the church that caused Paul great joy to write them this letter and close this letter out with this exhortation. So let's start with Mark number one, what he saw in them and what I see in you. Mark number one, the benchmark of a faithful church is that the word has spread.

God's word has run ahead. You see that in verse one when he says, brothers and sisters, pray for us of all the things. What does Paul want them to pray for? That the word of the Lord will spread rapidly. The Word of God speeding up and spreading out. That's the pastor's greatest joy because it doesn't just go out from him. It goes to the people who take it out. You build up the body. You strengthen the body. You edify the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. So it doesn't terminate on me or on you. And when we talk about God being faithful to a church and the Word of God being spread, we can't move past prayer as in the mark of a faithful church that you can decide by. The thing you can hear Here is whether or not they are preaching and teaching, but what you can't see. But by the power of the word going forth, what you know is there is prayer. Because prayer is what precedes the power of that word. Do you see that there? He's asking Paul the apostle is saying to these brothers and sisters, my request is that you pray for us. The wordhas been going forth in power. We saw that in first Thessalonians chapter one where he said, you received the word of God and much affliction. And then it didn't stop with you. It went out to Achaea and Macedonia, and everywhere you went, it went. He used this word that we get echo from. It echoed out. It resounded out from you. But he's saying, don't be fooled to think it was about me, or it was about you. It was about that you prayed. So keep praying. Any preacher knows that this is true, that the power is in prayer that precedes any preaching, any teaching, any evangelizing. C.h. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, 19th century pastor of New Park Street Chapel in London, eventually to be called Metropolitan Tabernacle. I mean, one of the first megachurches, if you want to call it that. In the 1800s, 5000 members reached thousands more millions, perhaps in the pamphlets that were sent out, his sermons being written down by people listening and then printed and sent around the world. And most people just thought the power of this came from the preacher. It came from the preaching. I mean, come on, we're talking about the Prince of Preachers. One time on a Sunday, a group of young pastors enthralled by Spurgeon wanted to visit his large church and hear him preach, and afterwards he showed them the sanctuary. He was most eager to take them to what he called the boiler room. And these young, impressionable men were not eager at all to go and see it. Why would you going to be hot? You've just seen the Prince of Preachers, you've just heard the preaching. What could be learned from a boiler room? They declined, he insisted, and he led them to the basement. And there they saw hundreds of members praying. And this, Spurgeon said, smiling, is my boiler room. When asked the secret of his ministry, he always repliedthe same thing. My people pray for me. He might have been the Prince of Preachers, but they were the people of prayer. And that's the explanation for his ministry. And that's the explanation for anything we see around here. I know personally the power of your prayers for me from day one. I didn't plan on coming back when I left in 2016. Nothing personal. I had it on my heart while I was gone to get prepared to go play in a church back in Pittsburgh, and I was moving in that direction. It was May 2019. John Crick invited me to come and preach to the young adults at a retreat out in Black Mountain, and I never turned two things down. Preaching and Black Mountain drip-o-later coffee shop. Beautiful spot. So I come back and I lined it up that as I was preparing to go church plant, that I would meet with the elders here and talk about what partnership would look like. And they were eager to do that. I didn't expect anything other than that. And I was May in 2019 on that way. They didn't even mention me coming back here, but they were still praying for a senior pastor here. I had actually turned down the job twice before that, so why would they continue to ask? But they were praying, and I don't know if they were praying for me to change my mind. But long story long. One evening in July of that summer. So just 2 or 3 months later, there was a prayer meeting over in the Ryle Room across the way, and the focus of prayer that night was for the preaching pastor. Who would it be? Well, that same night I had written that week, I had been thinking about knowing the need was still here and knowing there was also a need where I wanted to go. I had actually written two different emails to the elders here, one saying, I would love to come back and be the preaching pastor if you would have me. I know I've said no already a couple of times and I wrote another one saying, no, I can't do it, I'm on my way. And I sat there with that. And then that night, that same night, you guys prayed. I woke up at 3 a.m., couldn't sleep. And just asked the Lord. Give me direction. And he finally brought me to a point of changing my heart, changing my mind and in faith. Coming back here saying no to one thing, saying yes to another. Both would have been in faith, but I wouldn't have come if it weren't for prayer. I'm positive of that. Why did I say that? Because the other two times. Search committees, Meetings, all that stuff. None of it worked. Maybe he was teaching this church something. He was certainly teaching me something. The only explanation for the change of heart was prayer. You people praying God waking me up to pray. In responding the next day and sending the first email, not the second. When prayer paves the way, what ultimately moves ahead is the gospel. So it's not really about whether or not I came back. God was going to provide somebody to preach here. He always has. That's one of the wonderful things about the legacy of this place, that anybody that's been here for a few decades always reminds me, Adam, no matter what season this church has been through, what they've gone through, the one thing that's never changed is he's always had somebody here that was going to be faithful to the Word of God. The message was always going to keep going. And we see it now, don't we? When it says the word will spread rapidly, that's a word for it runs ahead. It's a picture of an athlete and we see it running ahead here. We see it now as we move to this campus in 2014, I think, and our prayer was to be a city on a hill. Some of you remember that idea. And what that meant was that the crossroads of 321 and 70, that people down south in Lincolnton or up to Lenoir, we even have some people that make the drive down from Boone out west to Valdez, or out east to Statesville, that the word would spread rapidly. And how does it spread? It spreads through you. You tell people, you invite people, and it spread far beyond that. It's gone to the ends of the earth. It's in Uganda, it's in Romania, it's it's in Mexico, it's Haiti, it's Nepal. We have a young couple here going to Nepal in a few weeks, just testing out to see. Would the Lord call them there? The word spreads rapidly. It goes faster and farther than we could ever make it go using our own man made ideas programs. No, it's you build the people up. You encourage them in the faith and then they want to do something with it. They can't sit on it. Now there is something else to be highlighted here. It's not just that the word of the Lord spreads rapidly in a steadfast church. It's glorified. Well, what does that mean? Well, it's a word for it's honored. The reward of the runner is to get to the finish line and win. And so what's Paul saying here? He's saying we've not just seen it go out. We've seen it transform that that message, that word of the Lord that's gone out into all these different directions is changing lives. It's saving lives. It's being glorified and the transformation of the life. And then that that person who is now a new creature in Christ, a new creation, lives a life worthy of the gospel. The gospel is being adorned by good works. That's what Paul is saying there, that the message is matching up with the lifestyle, that our life is matching, our doctrine that we're about God's Word spreading rapidly, and God's saints living righteously. And I see that in you. That's why the people you invite actually take you up on it, because they see your life and it proves it. Who would be interested in going to a church of a neighbor who's a terrible neighbor, who's a rude customer at a restaurant, who's a poor coworker who shows up late, who leaves early, who cuts corners, who gossips behind people's back. You think they're going to want to come to church with you, but you invite them and they come. Why? Because your life is glorifying to God as they see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven. And when you get the courage to invite, they may be not interested in the truth, but they at least believe your life. And that's how it should be. That's what it was in Thessalonica. And that's what true. What's true with you. Now, if this is happening, if the word of the Lord is spreading rapidly and being glorified as it did there. Look what happens next in verse two. The next mark is that there's going to be oppositionand the leaders will stand firm. The next mark of a steadfast church is it's being led by people who stand firm, leaders that endure. He says, pray for us that we Paul, Silas, Timothy, some of the other leaders that joined them in the ministry in Thessalonica, that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men, for not all have faith. He wants prayer not just for the preaching, but for the persecution. But he's not asking to be able to fight these perverse and evil men, to stand toe to toe with them, or to run from them. He just says, hey, when the time comes for us to be rescued, that God would be faithful and show up. Similar to the prayer Jesus has in Matthew 6:13, deliver us from evil. It's the same word or the prayer Jesus prayed in John 17:15. I do not ask you to take them out of the world to run from it, but to keep them in it and keep them from the evil one. I mean, that's what's true about our lives. Otherwise we get saved and we'd go up. But he leaves us here for the mission to move forward, and he knows how much we can handle, whether it's opposition from without or from within.

The Lord will be there for us. They were. He was there for Paul. Paul never ran from a fight. He stood firm in it because he knew that when the time came, he needed to be rescued. God would show up and he would show up and deliver from perverse and evil men. Who is he talking about here? Well, if you go back to where this church started in Acts 17, it actually wasn't these pagan gentiles running them out of town. It was religious Jews. It was people that should have known and recognized the truth, seen that there is hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But 1705 says, the Jews became jealous, formed a mob, set the city in an uproar. These are the. These are the wicked and perverse men. He's speaking of and he's saying, why are they perverse? And that word perverse? We know what that means. When you pervert something, you twist it. You take a good thing and make it a bad thing. Well. What's that? That's when people pervert the gospel. When they want to say, oh, no, no. What were they saying? What were those Jews have been saying about Paul? You can't listen to this guy. He's proclaiming a Messiah that he'll forgive your sins. You don't need to keep the law. You can just live however you want to live. But we're the righteous ones by the way of the law. And Paul says, no, it's not that way at all. The gospel is all of grace. You're justified by faith. You stand in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, or you don't stand at all. And so how perverse is it for religious people to come in and say, that's not the truth, that's a lie. You need to do it on your own. So that's the opposition that Paul was facing in verse two, and the mark of a steadfast church is when you have leaders that stand firm in truth. I mean, when I look back at five years here, one area I am certain your prayers have showed up for me and for our elders is that the fourth man always showed up in the fire. You remember that when we preached Daniel chapter three? That was the lesson. No matter what you're going through, the fourth man will show up and he's done it for us as the leaders here in this church. There hasn't been a fight we've been through in the last five years or beyond that, that at some point we didn't look around and realize, just what does God want from us, from His Word? Get on our knees and pray and see the Lord show up. See him. Keep us first. Stand firm with us. He was faithful. He's been faithful. So I've seen the power of your prayers from the beginning for me coming back. And all throughout. I hear it when you send me an email. The most common line in it is always, pastor, we're praying for you. Not just praying for verse one. The preaching to spread and be glorified, but that we would be rescued. We would be protected. We would stand. We wouldn't compromise. We wouldn't step back. We wouldn't step down. But when the time comes that we need to, we would step up. And that work never ceases for a leader in a church. You never can stop being on guard for the truth. Galatians 2:4 warns of false brothers who are secretly brought in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Jesus Christ, to bring us back into bondage. Do you know that's the greatest threat is for the gospel to be twisted? It's the greatest threat in your life in a church that you might trust somebody, a leader, a teacher, and they start to take you away from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus Christ and trusting in him alone, and try to put you on a path to something else. Some new things. Some new age thingor some old thing. Go back to works. Go back to the law. Go back to customs. Go back to traditions. What did we learn last week in verse 15? We hold firm to the tradition, the teaching only taught by apostolic authority, bound in the Word of God. Anything else? We lay it aside. So that's the work of a leader in a church to protect the flock from wolves dressed up as sheep. Antagonists of the gospel, running after us, trying to trip us up, unfaithful. But verse three, the Lord is faithful. And so the third point isn't just that leaders will stand firm. Mark number three of a steadfast church is the church stands firm. God's people stand. That's what Paul is encouraging and exhorting these thesebelievers in Thessalonica, the Lord is faithful. You may see opposition all around you. We read of it in chapter one. Those people that are afflicting them in verse six. He promises them coming relief in the return of Jesus. But in the meantime, before you see him face to face, he's with you in your heart. He's faithful and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. Notice Paul upping the ante back in verse two when talking about the threats to the leadership, he and others. It was evil ones, wicked and perverse people. But for everybody in the church, you as a saint, you as a member may not feel targeted by opposition from people like I might because I'm preaching it. But you know what? You have the same target when it comes to the evil one wanting to take you down. So? So it's not like a, oh, you know, we're cool. We don't need prayer. No, we all need prayer because every one of us. Verse three. Part of the church needs strengthened and protected from the evil one, and God is faithful to do it. He's faithful to do it. What do those words mean? Strengthened and protected. Strengthened is just a word of forming a foundation, a groundwork. We went back to that last week, didn't we? We saw that. What do we stand firm on? What's the first thing that we check if we're going to stand firm in verse 13 of chapter two. That we are loved by God, chosen from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. You go back to the gospel. That's our firm footing. We just sang it. Jesus is our firm foundation. Nothing exalts Christ more and encourages our hearts more than being brought back to the basics of the gospel. We never get over it. That's where we stand and fight from. And he says, you need to be strengthened by the Lord, remembering the gospel. Fortify that foundation in your life. And then he says he'll protect you. That's another way. God is faithful in your life against evil ones and the evil one. He protects you. This word is used in acts 12 four, when Peter was guarded by four squads of soldiers when Herod threw him in prison. I mean, it's just basically that that word protecting you is a word, a soldier guarding someone who's doing the guarding of our souls, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's protecting your salvation. John 17:12. He prays this while I was with them, the disciples, I was keeping them in your name, father, which you've given me. I guarded them, and not one of them perished, except for the son of perdition, so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I mean, he's praying to the Father, knowing he's knowing what's coming ahead for Peter. Luke 22:31 to 32. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan, the evil one has demanded permission to sift you like we put you through his sieve of suffering, to break you down, cause you to quit. Back off. Recant. That's what Satan has demanded. And he doesn't say, you know, Peter, you're the rock. You're so strong. Look inside yourself and you can fight. That's what we tell people, isn't it? You've got what it takes. It's not what Jesus told Peter. He said he would be too much of a match for you. But I prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And we're thinking. But it did fail, didn't it? Not all the way. He may have been knocked back a little bit, but he wasn't knocked out. He remained. He came back. He came back. As Christ prayed for him. And what Peter just needed to know that Christ's eye was always on him. He was praying for him. He saw him when he walked across after he had denied him. He knew Christ never gave up on me. The Lord is faithful to guard me. And then he says to Peter, in that moment, and once you have turned again, Once you have gotten back up off the mat, go and strengthen your brothers. So he strengthens you and he protects you. Believer. Not just for your own faith, but the faith of the people around you. And I see that in this church, elders and I have a front row seat to all the trials. And there's a lot all theopposition, all the heartaches. But in five years. Far, far more, we see people standing, not falling, and we give praise to who? For? That God. Because he's faithful. He's faithful to keep you. I've seen it for ten years. Some of you for 20 others. 30, 40. The OGs, as I call them, they're almost were coming up on 50 years. Pretty soon they'll tell you time and time again how the Lord has been faithful, not just generally, but they'll have stories. That's why some of us who are newer here, younger in the faith. Need those older mentors and disciplers to tell us the stories of God's faithfulness, not just out there in somebody else's life, but they'll tell you the stories of God's faithfulness in their life. A couple of years ago, fall of 2021, we made a film here 45 Years of God's Faithfulness.

We didn't have that as the working title when we started. All I knew was there was about 6 or 7 couples who were here from 1976 near the beginning, and we said, you know what? We want to capture them. We want to get their story. And so I just said, can you show up on a Friday? I'll interview you. I'll just ask you a couple questions about how you came, how God worked in your life, what you've seen since then. That was the plot. I mean, you could see now why I made it big in LA. It just I really think these things out. But what was awesome to hear is the camera rolled without any of them talking to each other in advance. They all came back to the same story. God is faithful. So we named it 45 Years of God's Faithfulness. And that's what we bank on. That's the firm foundation we stand on here. Is that the flower? Like people, they come and go pastors as well. But the constant is God. Paul saw it. This church. I see it here. All our boast is in him. For that he strengthens. He protects us. And it could lead you to ask the question. Then what are we responsible for? What do we do? Well, it's in verse four. Fourth mark of a steadfast church is they obey, knowing that we have God fighting for us, strengthening us in the inner man, protecting us from outside opposition. Verse four we have confidence in the Lord concerning you. Thessalonians Hickory Bible Church that you are doing and will continue to do what we command when it comes to keeping the commands of God. This church doesn't flinch and neither do you. And it's based on a precedent of the past and a call to excel still more in the future. First Thessalonians four Paul repeats it twice. Verse one. You've received from us instruction as you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do. He's constantly saying, you're already doing it. Keep doing it. That you excel still more. And then verse ten, we urge you, brothers and sisters, excel still more. What's he saying over here? He's just saying it a different way. Our confidence is in the Lord concerning you. That the evidence, the proof of your salvation, that you are rooted in Christ as your bearing fruit for Christ by your obedience will be known by our fruits. Right? Victory Bible Church we're known by our fruits. Our reputation precedes us. What we do out there is the proof that there's actually a God at work in here. Through the preaching of his word and the power of His spirit and you applying what you learn. It's the fourth mark of a church that obeys. Or a church that's steadfast is that they obey. And we see an example in verse four of Paul of he is commending them to obedience by way of encouragement. And that's that's what good teachers and leaders do. I put a quote in the pulpit curriculum last week from Mark Dever, a pastor in Capitol Hill, where he talks about the need for pastors to encourage, particularly the young ones. He writes this so many times I've seen men, particularly the younger guys, act as if real leadership is shown in correcting others. And that's why young men's sermons are often so cold as they scold. What they haven't figured out is that you can accomplish more by encouragement. There are times to admonish, but 80 to 90% of what you hope to correct can be accomplished through encouragement. If you look back at your life and consider who influenced you the most. You will probably find that it's the people who believed in you. So for the scholars in the room, the quick to rebuke. Think about it a little more encouragement. It goes a long way. And you know that by your own life, your own testimony, that the people that have been there for you. Yeah, they've had a correction to give you, but how much more they've given you encouragement because again, it's not their belief in you. It's their belief in your God. They believe in your Savior. They believe that the spirit is actually in you. They believe that the word can actually changeyou. So it's never really faith in that person. It's faith in the God of that person, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we can go up to people and say what Paul says here. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you. So it protects us too, from being too let down, because our our faith and confidence was never really in that person, but it was in their Lord, it was in their Savior. And if they are in Christ, if you're in Christ today, we can have courage looking at your life no matter where you are. We believe in your God. We believe in your Savior. We believe that he transformed you, saved you and set you apart and has good works prepared for you in advance. And we're not just shining your face on with that. We're telling you the truth about who you are. And if you're going to lead in this church and serve others and disciple others, you have to get that one straight. You believe in their God. You believe in the power of the word. You believe in the power of prayer. And once you've run through all those things, then yeah, maybe it's like, you know, put my arm around. Yeah, I kind of believe in you, too, you know, you're not so bad. But you have all these other reasons to put your faith in people. Because the Lord is faithful. That's the fourth mark. A church that obeys and then the last one that ties it all together. Really, it's the legacy of this church. And that church is that we love. We're people that have been loved and we love out of that love. When he says, May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. Isn't that the greatest legacy of a church? Loving God and loving people. It's the great commandment. It's our mission statement here. Fulfill the great commandment and fill the the Great Commission. Going out with making disciples in the force of the Great Commandment. I mean, you could put that as a slogan. You could put it on a t shirt. But if you don't understand the power of that request in verse five, it's not going to do anything in you. Last thing I wanted to do when I came back five years ago was to be some sloganeering pastor. You know what HBC really needs? We just need some more cliches. Fire up the printing press. Let's make some more shirts. What's grown this church and what's grounded this church and what's kept you and what's protected you and secured you and moved you, is that God has directed your hearts into the greater depth and length and height and breadth of his love. Is that not true? And that's what keeps you standing. When you understand that nothing separates you from the love of God in Christ, that he stood for you. His steadfastness. Verse five. His perseverance, his devotion, his obedience to the father. To persevere for the joy set before him, to go all the way to the cross and stand in your place and take your sin, and go to the grave, and come back again, and rise to the father and see it. Sit at his right hand, and rule and reign from there with all power over all things in heaven and earth. That's Steadfastness is what allows you to stand, and what that reminds you of all that Christ did for you, that you didn't do for him, is how much the Father loves you. A church that loves understands its God who that word for direct. It's a picture of a ship being guided on a straight course. And if there's one thing that's going to keep this church, that church and this church on a straight course is going directly always back to the love of God for you. That's right. You move an inch away from that, you'll land 20 miles away. You'll think there's something else that has to be there for your faith to stand some work you can do some new thing you can learn. Because the gospel is old hat. You'll be lost. I'm not saying you'll lose your salvation, but you won't know which way is up if you don't stay on the course that takes your heart right back to God's heart for you. He loved you and sent His Son to die for you.

And if you're not in Christ today, that's the message we preach. You can call on him right now and be saved. He demonstrated his love in this, that while you were a sinner, Christ died for you. And Jesus Christ came into the world to save only one type of person, sinners, of which I and anyone else in here that's put our faith in him are the worst. And he gave us his life. He gave us his best. He gave us his righteousness. He took away our sin. Do you believe that message? If you think you have any hope outside of the righteousness of Christ, you're lost this morning. You're lost. You've got some other message along the way, and any other message outside of God's love for you in Christ, and you putting all of your faith in him is not going to set your heart on a direct course to the love of God. And if you don't have yourself firmly founded in God's love for you, you won't stand in the steadfastness of Christ. You'll find something else to stand in, and you may think it works for a while until it doesn't. Socall upon Christ and be saved. Cast yourself upon his mercy. He offers you it this morning in himself. Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden. Whatever course you've been trying to chart. Get back on mine.

I put your sin on my shoulders. I stood where you couldn't stand. I died and rose again. No one else can do that. Do you trust me? Do you believe in me? Call upon him and be saved. For those that have. I hope we've seen in the word this morning. These five marks of a steadfast church, a people dependent in prayer, proclaiming the Word, standing as one, obeying in love. And I think back of five years here, that's as good as a vision that I could ever give you. I don't have any outside of this. You figuredit out by now. I came back and said I didn't have any vision outside of what was going to be in the Word of God, and five years in, I still don't have one. To be a church whose hearts are divinely directed into the depths of God's love and standing firm in Christ. How do you take that sublime thought and turn it into a church growth plan? You want to put that on paper? Your heart being captured, captivated by the love of God for you, believer. You can't sell that. You can't market that. You have to believe it. So maybe church growth and church vision was never actually something we can capture. It's something that captures us. Captivated by his love. Holding fast to his Son. That's how you grow. Can you say amen? Let's pray. We thank you, father, that you make it so clear to your children. You make it so obvious. There is no other way to know you and to be known by you than through your Son. This is eternal life to know you, the Father and Jesus, your Son, whom you sent. And what we know at the heart of his love for us is we are sinners indeed. But we have a Savior who loved us and died for us, and rose again for our justification. And rules and reigns now and will return for our relief and deliverance. We have nothing else to hold to but that no other ground to stand on but the firm foundation we have in you, Christ. And so we stand today. We don't stand perfectly in our own righteousness. We stand perfectly in yours. And you strengthen us in that truth. You protect us with that truth. So we thank you for that. Spirit, Minister, to our hearts now and the application of these truths. Help us to be who this church is in Thessalonica now. We're thankful that we we're not confused about our identity when you've given it to us. Now, just help us to be all who you've already made us in your Son. Strengthen us for that task. We pray. Reach those through us, Lord, that you want to reach. May our our righteous lives match up with our saving proclamation of the gospel. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

GROWING IN STEADFASTNESS PT.2

Download transcript

Good morning Saints of HBC, please turn in your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians and we will see in the Word of God what he's done. We love to sing about it, as evident in the last song, and we love to see it in the baptism. We love to look both into the past of the eternal glory of our salvation...what was accomplished as we saw last week in eternity past. And yet what happened in time and space when Christ died on the cross for sinners. And then when we hear someone give their testimony in baptism, we're also praising God for what he's done in that person's life. So in every aspect, it's exactly as we just sang...all the glory and the honor to the son.  And that is the only point towards all history is headed. If you have any sense of fear and trepidation about the future and what's going to happen next, next week, next month, next year, whenever it is. You have tounderstand this foundational thing of what we just sang when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he has already achieved victory on the cross, he rose again. He went back to the father.  We just sang and now seated in victory, that we just look forward to the day where this happens. At the name of Jesus Christ, every knee will bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That's what he's done. That's it. And so we can get excited about it now, and we could be lifted up by it now, because that's the victory that we talked about last week that we actually already stand in. That's where we started last week in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14. We're not fighting for victory. There is not a battle that hasn't been already won by Jesus Christ when it comes to the salvation of man. So we fight from victory. We're already standing in it. We have been loved by him, as we saw. We have been chosen by him. And we are called through the gospel to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That's it. That's done, that's accomplished. And as we said, if you're going to stand firm in the fight, you need to know the level ground that you stand on...on Christ, the solid rock you stand, all other ground is what?...sinking sand. It's not that you're just standing on neutral ground if you're not in Jesus Christ today. You are in quicksand and you don't know how far up to your neck you currently are. But in Christ, you're on the rock that will not fail. Your salvation is secure. So the first part of standing firm, being steadfast as a Christian, enduring hardship, embracing difficulty, whatever comes your way is to know that you stand firm because God loves us in Christ as his children. He chose us in Christ, and he calls us to grow in Christ likeness. What wonderful promises that we only got through last week in verses 13 and 14.

Today we'll pick up in 15 to 17, and we'll see two more aspects to the idea of standing firm. That phrase in verse 15 that Paul calls this church to, amidst the challenges and troubles that they were going through in 52 AD that there were adversaries, chapter one told us, afflicting them, trying to either take their lives, lock them up, run them out of town like they did to Paul, Timothy and Silas. But it wasn't going to stop them. In chapter one, he gave them hope. He said, those 'afflicters' will be the ones that when Christ returns, he will repay, and you will be relieved. You will be rescued. So he gives them hope in chapter one...whatever way it currently looks like things are going around you in Thessalonica and today in America 2024. If Christ has not returned yet, we have not missed the day of the Lord. We are not in the end times yet, and our rescue is coming, and his retribution for evildoers is also coming still. That's the first promise he gives them in chapter one.

Chapter two, he then has to remind them, hey, you're being deceived by being told that this Antichrist is now here. Don't believe the hype. He's not. Because the day of the Lord hasn't come yet. And I've already taught you these things. And that kind of is this recurring idea, even into what we're going to see today, that you've got to remember what you already know. Soyou don't live in your fears, but you live in faith. You don't just walk around doubting what you already have been taught, as if it's not true, forgetting what has been told you all along. And he says no. If you're going to doubt something, doubt your doubts. Doubt the things you don't have any idea about, That's fine. If I haven't taught you it. If it's not been made clear, fine. You're okay with that. But don't doubt that which you know...that's the rock that you stand on. And so he takes them back to that rock in 13 and 14. And then today we'll see the two other ways in which we stand firm in verse 15, to know the weapons that you stand with, the weapons that you fight with, and then to know who you stand in.

So let's read the text together. I'll go all the way back to verse 13 to reestablish this closing thought from the first two chapters, and then launch us forward into today's three verses...2 Thessalonians 2:13.

"But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word."

Father, open the eyes of our hearts, that we would know the hope of our calling, the riches of our inheritance, and the glorious and surpassing greatness of your power to those who believe. Amen.

First words to be built up in and sent out by today...stand firm. Right there. The pivot point of these five verses. We are closing out chapter two. Before Paul is going to launch them into ethical living in chapter three, he has to encourage them by what has come before, to exhort them for what's to come in the future. And it all rests on that phrase, as we said last week, to stand firm, to be steadfast, to be firmly fixed in the place that you stand. And you could add all the descriptions to that you want...to be persevering, to be dedicated, to be devoted. Whatever images come to your mind for somebody who is not going to back down as a Christian, that's what he's calling the believers here and us towards today. We started with God's electing love that knew us and chose us and called us in Christ apart from any work of our own, so that we have no reason to boast. If we are so inclined to think highly of ourselves as we shouldn't. But we also have no reason to fear. Because if God has started a good work in you, what's he going to do? He's going to bring it to completion. So the good works he has prepared for you in advance, Christian...He will bring you all the way to the end. And it's all by his grace. So he starts with the firm footing of a soldier. And then today we'll see the weapons that he stands with, the strength that he stands in. And I wanted to remind us of last week so we can have these three dynamics of standing firm in our minds together, picturing ourselves as Christian soldiers...standing firm, knowing the stability on which we are. Knowing what weapon is in our hands given by his grace, and then knowing who it is that we actually standwith, who we stand in.

So start with what weapon we know we stand with in verse 15. Stand firm and hold to the traditions to which you were taught. What is the weapon that we have? The weapon that Paul reminds these believers that they have is not the traditions of man, but that which Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, whether he taught them or whether he wrote a letter to them. He is referring back to when he mentions the letter from us, 1 Thessalonians saying, you got that from me. Silas and Timothy that's the thing you hold fast to. That's the tradition. Or going back to 1 Thessalonians, if you just want to turn back to chapter one, if he's talking about that which was preached right from the beginning, he says in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, our gospel didn't come to you in word only, as in it wasn't just the word of man. Paul wasn't just like any other soothsayer or any other ethical teacher or whatever, whoever it might have been in his time period, that was just talking. He was called by God, given the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it came, he says, in 1 Thessalonians 1:5. It came in power in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. It also came with the example of his life. And what was the response of the Thessalonians?...Verse 6, you became

imitators of us and of the Lord. And here's what they did. They received the word in much tribulation. They took it in. That's how they got started. So he's referring back to that here in verse 15, that tradition, that teaching that I gave you. And that word tradition is just a simple word that means something passed on. What was Paul passing on? He was passing on that which he heard from the other apostles, and that which Jesus Christ taught him. That's what put him in a category of his own. And he said, I preached it. You received it. And then in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, this is key to understand when Paul's talking about the traditions he passed on, why they're in a category of their own. He says for this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. He says that's what separates what I taught you from false teachers of the day. In the time of the Reformation, that's what separated what Luther and Calvin and Zwingli taught them. They took them back to the Bible, away from the traditions of men...the Catholic Church at the time. The tradition of indulgences that you could pay your way to heaven, you could pay someone else's way out of purgatory. Traditions of men...not rooted and grounded in the scriptures...just made up. And into today no tradition of Ashoff, though I have many. But if I can't point you back to the chapter and verse and say, this is why we do what we do here and not something else, it's just a tradition of man. And so that's how we separate it out in our heads. False teachers in his day, Martin Luther's day...anybody else today? Paul, being able to teach traditions as in things passed on doesn't apply to the rest of us. We don't get to make it up. We pass it on. You pass it on. You hear what you hear today from here. You take it to a life group and pass it on. You share the gospel with a neighbor and pass it on. But it's not what?...It's not starting with you just taking it and passing it on to somebody else. So having been taught these traditions, what's going to help them stand firm in the fight? Well, it's the phrase...hold fast to it, grip it and let it grip you. Don't let go of what you know. Keep it in your minds so that it captures your heart. Paul writes this 20 years or so after Jesus goes back up to heaven. He's in these early churches saying, look, there is already a fixed teaching that's ours, not someone else's. And that's what you need to hold fast to. But then if you just flip two letters later, 2 Timothy, maybe written 10 to 15 years later after this. Towards the end of Paul's life, 2 Timothy is written. Maybe he would have some new instruction to give Timothy to give to these churches. And maybe there's something else that he would say. You need to make sure the people are remembering this now that some time has gone on. Listen to what he writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13-14. Paul writes, retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me. Has anything changed with Paul? Has he moved an inch? No, he said, I'm exactly the same guy at the end as I was at the beginning. Retain these sound words you've heard from me. And the sound words in verse 13 that are the foundation of our standing firm in the faith are this...in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. You go back to the Gospel. The same thing he was starting on his first missionary journey...now towards the end of his life, nothing is moving. So the things we hear about today. The deconstruction movement in evangelicalism, moving away from what I thought I was taught growing up is...no, I can't believe it anymore...flies in the face of Paul's own example, doesn't it? You don't move an inch. You don't go past the gospel. These sound words that they were to retain, to hold fast to the faith and love in Christ Jesus...He goes on to say in verse 14...we guard them.  Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. Just let that word treasure get into your head and into your heart this morning. Why do we need to have that in our heads and hearts? Because it ascribes value to the Word of God, doesn't it? Treasure is something that you don't buy high to sell low. It's not an investment you make that's going to end up ripping you off by the end. Treasure is something that if you hold on to it over time, it's going to increase in value. It's going to do you better the longer you hold on to it. And that's what Paul is saying in 2 Thessalonians here. Hold fast to this tradition.

Reminds me of a verse I learned in my youth, and it was, um, kind of one of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you want to call it that, because it was Proverbs 23:23. Buy the truth and do not sell it. There's a lot of verses you can try to memorize and forget, but the one that tells you not to forget the verse you memorized, you better remember. Now. It helped as a teenager watching the GOAT play basketball...Michael Jordan. What number was he?...33. Proverbs 23:23. That's the reason I remembered it. As stupid as that is, 30 years ago, I said, that's the GOAT verse of truth by the truth. And don't sell it because of its value. You don't play fast and loose with it. You don't take something that's worth something and then just leave it lying out. You protect it, you guard it, you hold fast to it. You cling to it because when you take care of it, it'll take care of you. I mean, think of the people in your life that you've seen walk away because they didn't buy the truth, but they sold it. They sold it for a lie. They sold it for a pleasure. They sold it for something cheap. And it's worth so much because you have to give your most valuable resource to get it. What do you have to give it?...your time. Every second is a trade off that you're saying, I'm either going to wake up and the first thing in the morning, reach for my phone, reach for the news, or I'm going to reach for the Word of God. And now the clock is ticking, and every second you spend inone thing or the other is going to dictate your day. It's going to determine a lot more down the road, too, because what you're investing in now, what you're filling your mind with to get to your heart with now, is what's going to pay you back dividends decades from now. But you got to believe the value of it today. You got to buy low today. And what I mean by that is everybody around you is looking at it saying that's that's not worth anything. And you're saying, no, I'm buying low. I know it's going to go up. The people around you are saying what the word of God. What are you talking about?...wisdom of the world. Find something new. And you're saying, no, I'm investing my time in this thing. I'm reading, I'm studying. I'm saturating myself in the scripture because it's going to go up. And when I need it, it's going to be the most valuable thing I have.

I was thinking about this with Dwight Stone who passed away about a month ago now. There's a lot we loved about Dwight, his legacy in missions. But what you knew was absolutely trueabout him is he bought the word of God, and he didn't sell it from day one. When God saved him, pulled him out of the darkness, brought him into the light of Jesus Christ, gave up. He was a banker. He was an investor. He had money and he walked away from it. He knew he couldn't stay near it, and he started filling up his mind and heart with the truth. And he didn't sell it. And if you were around him the last five years of his life, he had nothing to give you but gold. He bought the truth and didn't sell it. And any time I would take young guys with me to see him in the last five years. And you can ask Justin and you can ask Nathan. We would go and sit on his porch and he owned nothing, absolute nothing.  And we would sit on his porch and he

would talk to us, and he would give us the Word of God from the heart. It was there. He could pull it out, even when he couldn't even see anymore to read it. He could pull it out and we'd leave and we'd drive away and they would say, that was gold.

That's your motivation to hold fast, because one day you're going to need it, not just to give to somebody else. Dwight had a lot more hours by himself in his last few years than he did with people. What do you think was going to be tempting for him to fill his mind with? Satan wanting to make him doubt...was it worth it? Maybe. Look around and see. What am I left with here? Look at my failing body. I can't be on the mission field anymore. What did he have to fight with besides the Word of God? What do you have to fight with besides it? And it's not just a priceless weapon. It's a powerful one. It's called the sword of what?...the sword of the spirit. It's the last weapon you get. It's the only actual weapon you get. You get a bunch of armor in Ephesians 6:10-20. But the only weapon for the attack you get is the Word of God, which is the sword of the spirit. And it says, we take it up to stand firm against the schemes of Satan. And what type of sword is it? It's the strongest and sharpest weapon that you can have because Hebrews 4:12 says, the sword of the spirit, the word of God can what?...pierce you. How deep?...can divide you between soul and spirit? Oprah's words can't get to your soul and spirit. They get to your ears. They tickle them, they give you a few clever ideas and then they're gone. They're useless. But the word of God, it gets you and exposes you. It opens you up to do surgery on your heart. It shows you your sin. It lets the light in and you realize how great a God, how wonderful a Savior that He can see to the innermost part of who I am like no one else can. That's how sharp it is. How strong is it? Jeremiah 23:29, is my word, not like fire and like a hammer which shatters a rock. So you put all that together. What do you have with the Bible in front of you? It scorches and smashes every lie that's out there. You're saying, how do I know what's true today?...fake news. Do you have the Word of God? Just slices through all of it, Burns it up and you go that was a bunch of malarkey. What a weird word to choose. Cuts you deep, breaks you down, lights you up.

Kids, now would be a great time, you know, to draw during a sermon. I thought about this. If you're a young person here, you take some notes, you find yourself trailing off. Here's a great time to draw. You can draw the Bible that is both a sword and it's smashing rocks while it's shooting fire. I'd love to see that picture. So if you want to draw it for me and give it to me afterwards. I got one after first service. It's going to go in my room. Parents, I just got you ten more minutes. All right. Sothere you go.

That's what it is to hold fast to the Word of God. We treasure its priceless value, but we also we also put our hope in its power. Nothing else is as powerful with the Word of God. It's wisdom. Our wisdom is ineffective. The world's wisdom is folly. Our powers are no power compared to God's weapon of choice.

So maybe just the last question I could ask you under this is if you're not grabbing it, how is it grabbing you? I've been a Christian 34 years. As powerful as the Word of God is, it's never picked itself up and flown into my hand like Thor's hammer. It'll sit there and it won't move. And it won't turn a page without my human agency. It's got to come from a desire inside, I need that. It's powerful, but it's not mystical. It won't just open itself up and start talking to you. You got to make that move towards it. And when you do, when you put your mind to this, it will change your mind it says. It transforms your mind. It gets to your heartand it stays there and you live out of it.

So that's the second way we stand firm. We have to know the weapon that we fight with. Clinging to the truth of biblical teaching will grow stronger in steadfastness by going deeper in God's Word. And then last but not least, know the strength you stand in verses 16 and 17. Know the strength you stand in. Back in 13 and 14, he had them look backwards. Look back to God's love for you, choice of you calling on you. Then look presently to the Word of God in your hand. And then he says, as you're going to move forward, as I'm going to exhort you to every good work and word. See verse 17, he's moving you here. He's not wanting you to just learn a bunch of stuff and pontificate on it. The end game of all this is you're going to move forward stronger for every good work and word, but you got to know who you walk with moving forward. Whose presence do you stand in? Well, it tells us in verse 16, you stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God the Father. That's pretty good, isn't it? You know how we talked about last week there's a lot of things we might accept even though we don't understand them yet. Well, this is a pretty powerful one. That when we're told that we're going to be given the Holy Spirit and and he's going to come to dwell in us and not just him, that the son and the father will have a dwelling with us. You have the Trinity dwelling with you, within you. Anybody fully understand that one? But I accept it. And I accept it for a lot of different places it teaches me in the Bible when one's right here, when Paul says, now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself. It's personal, it's powerful. He's present. He's God with us, and he's the one who loved us. He loved us by coming down to earth, taking the form of man, lowest of the low. Humbled himself even to death on a cross. Went all the way to the cross to die for our sins. Rose again. He loved us. But you know. Here's the thing. God the father loved us. God the father demonstrated for his love for us. He sent Jesus to die for us. So what Paul is doing here in verse 16, that might just seem like we skip right past it. He's showing equality between the father and the son 20 years later, after Jesus goes back. So hundreds of years later when false teachers are trying to say, you know, um, later on, people started making up the idea that Jesus thought he was divine, that he was equal with God. No, Paul's saying it right here in verse 16. There's your equality with God because he links them. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father...and then that 'who'. Well, who is it? Was it the son? Or was it the father who loved you and gave you eternal comfort and good hope by grace? It was both of them. The son's efficacious death on the cross. Substitutionary atonement was his demonstration of his love was the sacrifice we needed. And we have eternal comfort and good hope by grace in him, because it was powerful enough to keep us forever. It was effective. It was finished. As it was with God our father, who loved us, chose us from eternity past, gave us eternal comfort in His Son Jesus Christ, and we can hope in God the Father by grace. You see how they're working together here. There's a robust Christology here for the son, linked together with the father to fight any false teaching that would try to say that the son is not also God along with the father. And it's just kind of a again, as Paul often does here. He just says it doesn't have to defend it. It's just true.

But knowing this love in eternal comfort and good hope by grace is what verse 17 says. It's meant to comfort you and strengthen you...that word for comfort. It's meant to encourage you. Your heart right now, even as you hear it, to say, wow, how deep the father's love for me, how vast beyond all measure that he would take his only son and make a wretch his treasure. That encourages you. It also strengthens you. It fortifies you. It builds you up to say, I don't have to leave here living in my doubts and fears of, for many people, losing my salvation could be an issue....lacking assurance. To think as some false teaching might say that you can lose your salvation. That oh, you know, if I'm not, if I'm not perfect with God, if I haven't cleaned myself up. If what if Jesus came back right in the moment of me sinning? Are you in Christ? Yeah. It matters very little your eternal salvation of the state he finds you in when he comes back or when you die. Because if he finished it on the cross and you are truly in Christ. It's not so you could just go out and live however you want, but it gives you the assurance of. I mean, think about that. There's false teaching about losing your salvation, that if you're not in a state of grace when you die, if you're if you happen to be sinning, when when you die or the Lord comes back, you're out of luck because that sin is not forgiven. Oh, so the cross wasn't enough. So it wasn't finished. So essentially, you have tokeep your salvation. You have to keep short accounts versus coming back to the glorious truths that he strengthens the believers with here. It says, no, you've been loved. You've been given eternal comfort. And that eternal comfort is...my salvation is secure.

And so now those weak and discouraged and deceived believers in Thessalonica who weren't comforted and weren't strengthened can now move forward in faith. They can go out and do every good work and word. It's because Jesus Christ

Himself is doing that comforting, strengthening. It's also interesting that that word you see, if you have the NASB, comfort is used twice in 16 and 17. The eternal comfort and then he does comfort us presently. Well, that's the same word for the Holy Spirit's name back in John 16:7.  The parakletos is going to come, the one who is called alongside you to help you and strengthen you. So the Holy Spirit is active in this work. You have all three members of the Trinity working in your heart right now as you hear the Word of God to build you up however you came in this morning, whatever you were burdened by as a child of God, all of them, all of them at work in you believer to build you up, get you back on your feet. Get the Word of God in your hand, moving out those doors ready for every good work and word. Christ's power in us and through us all the time. That's how we stand firm. It's in us.

I was thinking about that phrase because I think it might have been just a few days ago. It was during the Olympics and then football season. You know, Gatorade knows their audience. And so they have their advertisements and their slogan is...is it in you? And I think the latest rendition of that is like this question at the end. Do you have 'it'? Do you have 'it'? And advertising works. Talking....we saw the ad in one of my kids asks me, so dad, do they mean Gatorade? Like, do I have 'it'...is Gatorade the it. Is the Gatorade in me? Is that what they mean, or do they mean like the guy in that commercial? He was, you know, working hard and he has passion and he's determined. And is that the it. And I said, I think you're going to have to drink Gatorade to figure it out. It's the only way to test it. You drink the Gatorade, you go bench press £300 as an 11 year old. It worked. You get crushed on the bench. You didn't have it.

But we know absolutely that we have Jesus Christ himself. We have God our father, and we have the Holy Spirit with us, in us, and we stand in him. Because we have responded to Jesus Christ...Who says, if anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink because he has something he has 'it' to give. He says that and that could sound strange. What is he offering when he says, I have something to give you to drink that will fulfill you always. Well, he's talking about the the problem of our sin, the lack of satisfaction we have in our life, no matter what we fill it with. Eternal life is what he had to offer. And he says, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will flow from you. Some of you here are like a woman he met in John chapter four. She was disheartened. She lived on the shadows of society. She was dejected and distant from God. And she meets Jesus at a well. And she's there to get water. But he's there to let her know her sins could be forgiven. And he says to her, if you knew the gift of God. If you knew what it means to be forgiven. The freedom that's found there. The removal of your guilt and the shame. I know all about you. You've already had five husbands. He's gotten her attention. He says if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink. You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

So today you're being offered that which will satisfy you unto eternal life in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't have to be a mystery of why your life feels empty today. Jesus says to you, I who speak to you am he. So is that you this morning? Came in here. Don't even know why you came to church. You wandered in. You're kind of like that lady in the story. But God has you here to hear this offer of eternal life. I who speak to you am he? Whoever drinks of the water that I will give shall never thirst again. But the water that I give will become in you a well of water springing up to eternal life. Some of you reject it not because you're just wandering around and you don't even know what you need. You think you already have it. You think you already have it because you're religious. You're like the people that Jeremiah calls out on behalf of the Lord when he says, my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Some of you aren't like that wandering lost woman in John 4. You're the religious person who you've made a god of your own cistern, and you have fixed that thing up and you think it's solid and you fill it. But what you don't know and what Jeremiah was saying there is there's a crack at the bottom you can't see. And you keep filling it up and it keeps draining out, and you fill it up with more good works, and you fill it up with your own idea of your own righteousness, and you keep going to get a drink, and there's not enough in there, and you're never satisfied. But you keep putting more in and you keep putting more in. And then finally you sit here today and you have somebody tell you none of that religious effort gets you anywhere, and you're empty and frustrated because of it, because you've made a cistern of your own religion, and you think that you can handle eternal life in that thing and you can't. And you've got to throw the thing away because it's busted. Whoever drinks of the water that he gives...the water of eternal life. You believe in him, you'll never thirst again. You got to believe that wherever you stand with God today, you might be the wanderer thinking you're way far off sin too much. He can never forgive you. And he says, come. Come and drink, come be forgiven. Or you could be the person that thought you were as close to God as you can get. But you've had that empty bucket your whole life. Drip, drip drip. Never full. The one who comes to me, believes in me...will never thirst again. And I will not cast out. So you come to Christ this morning. You repent of your sins. You call on his name for forgiveness. You trust in him.

For those who have trusted in Christ this morning you have all of what he just explained in 16 and 17. And through the work of the spirit, through the word, you can leave here comforted and strengthened. For every good work and word, you're to stand firm. His righteousness is yours. His presence is with you. And it's all of this. I mean, even this last verse, verse 17, is to launch you forward into good works, good words and chapter three, ethical living. But you have to stop this morning if you're feeling worn down, thirsty as a Christian and say, am I drawing on the strength that I already have in Jesus? And even thinking about where he is right now, he's reigning in heaven. He has all authority in heaven and earth. He's seated, not standing as the sovereign of creation. And this is the power you draw from that. It's called the session of Christ by theologians. Just like when a sovereign takes up his rule and reign, he sits in the throne. He grabs the scepter. Because the work's done. It's been accomplished. Now it's for him to give the directives. Believers, he is seated in the heavens right now, and he's seated so that you could stand firm. He doesn't need to stand up again. It's done. Now it's for you to stand firm. It's for you to do the work. And his triumph on earth, in his substitutionary death and being raised for your justification...that triumph on earth at the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and now seated at the throne in heaven, is your irrefutable and invincible evidence that you can stand.  That's all you need

today to stand. He's seated up there, meaning I could stand here and I'm waiting for his return.

I was reading this week...going deep again. You know, we didelection last week, so I wanted to go even deeper and started reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, a legendary Anti-Hero. And he was steadfast in his loyalty to Sir Richard. There was a king that he did believe in, but when that king had to go away and fight and he was usurped by his own brother and he's bringing the kingdom into chaos. And Robin Hood has seen enough and that's, you know, enough motivation for that guy to go out and join with the merry band of brothers to steal from the rich and give to the poor and try to take things into his own hands. But he was loyal to his king, and he had a problem. And maybe this is a sign of the times it was written in with clerics. Sadly for me...monks religious types were loathed by Robin Hood because he just saw through the veneer. These guys are empty. So Robin and his friends come upon a monk in Sherwood Forest, and before they rob him, they offer...come have a meal with us. And so they sit down and they start talking, and the monk asks them why they despise him so much, and why do they insist on a life of robbing and stealing while the king is away? And Robin answers him, I do this not because I'm against the king, but because of my allegiance to my king. And then that monk removes his attire, and he displays the lion and the cross on his chest. And it's Sir Richard. And he says, I am your king, your sovereign king that appears before you all. When Robin saw that it was he, straight then he down did fall. Stand up again then said the king, I'll thee my pardon give. Stand up, my friend who can contend when I give leave to live. He said, you stand up right now, and you keep doing what you're doing, because you've been faithful to me this whole time. You believed in what I believed in. You stood for what I stood for. Soyou have my pardon. And when I'm back on the throne, you won't be guilty. You go and serve for me.

Are you loyal and steadfast to your king's return? Is that you? That you're awaiting his return? And you say until he comes back that's who I'm standing for. And I'll bow down to no man other than that king. It doesn't matter who's around me. Doesn't matter what it costs me. I have allegiance to my Lord. I have his sword to fight and his strength to endure. He's in you. He's with you, and he loves you. Brothers and sisters, stand firm in him.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace in our lives this morning. We have nothing to stand on apart from Christ. We would be most to be pitied if we thought there was anything else in this life that would give us a firm foundation. We would be laughed at with whatever wisdom we thought we had to go into the world and share if we didn't have your word, and if we didn't know that you are with us always to the end of the earth, your abiding presence in your spirit is with us. The father has come. The son has come to make their dwelling with man, to make a home in our hearts. And you push out and up in our hearts to increase our ability, even this morning, to receive the height and depth and length and breadth of your love. What a gift! And invigorated and inspired by your love, we can stand firm and we can be strengthened, and we can be built up for every good work and word this week. We take you at your word. Help us to do it, Spirit, we pray. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

Accordion Item 1

Growing in Steadfastness, Part 1

 Download transcript

Please turn your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians 2. We will look at 13 to 17 today. We're at the two thirds mark around there of this letter, three chapters, almost at the end of chapter two, and in similar fashion to 1 Thessalonians, which we were in last spring. Uh, it's around this point, the close of chapter 2, similar in chapter 3, in 1 Thessalonians, where Paul looked like he was getting finished. He even had kind of a closing tone to his letter, where he was giving them a blessing and a benediction at the end of 1 Thessalonians three and then just when you thought he was done, he revs up. And he has two more chapters about Christian living. In similar fashion we find in 2 Thessalonians that these first two chapters, most of the focus is on what they needed to know, what they needed to know about the suffering they were going through, and about the future that they were going to face, more so than how they were to respond. That's going to come in chapter three of 2 Thessalonians. But what we find today is kind of a closing thought in this second chapter that is meant to encourage them to move forward in faith, that is meant to encourage them to stand firm in the faith, to be steadfast in the faith. And it's all predicated, as often we see in the gospel, in the New Testament, predicated on the realities we already know about ourselves, that are the strength in which we stand so that we can fight.

 

In the New Testament I call that gospel grammar that we move from the realities of who we are in Jesus Christ, into what we do for Jesus Christ. And that's maybe we want to call that the indicatives, the things that are just true of us as Jesus followers, as children of God, as brothers and sisters in Christ. They're true of us, irrespective of what we think about ourselves. That if you find yourself in Christ today, these are the benefits, the blessings, the spiritual blessings that you have that are untold, that you can't count them all according to Ephesians 1:3. That all the blessings in the heavenly places are ours in Christ. Those realities are true about you, believer, and they are what can lead you to fulfill imperative statements in the New Testament, or commands of what you're supposed to do. And even when we look at this letter of 2 Thessalonians, we see there's really two chapters of Paul telling them whose they are, who they are in Christ before, and last chapter three, he's going to tell them what they are to do. And that's a good ratio to keep in mind. Side note kind of a 2 to 1 ratio of when I live my Christian life, I need to double down on the things that I know are already true about me in Jesus. That's where the strength comes from. That's the victory that we fight from...we're not fighting for. Because we just sang it. What's already been done for us. The price has been paid. The victory has been won. It's who we are in Christ Jesus. And then that 2 to 1 ratio...for the two things I know about who I am in Christ then becomes the one part which is now what am I to go and do? And we see that in the letters to 1 and 2 Thessalonians. You could even make the argument from Romans. You know, 11 chapters of all these truths and realities about what we have in Christ before chapters 12 to 16 about what we're to do for him.

 

So follow along in the section as Paul is really using this as a transition, encouragement, even a prayer in 16 and 17. A benediction, a blessing to launch these believers forward in faith based on where they stand in Christ. Verse 13. 2 Thessalonians 2:13...

 

"But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word."

 

The grass withers and the flowers fade away, but the Word of God stands forever. May he bless the preaching and hearing and applying of it today.

 

Call your attention to that phrase in verse 15 that really these five verses hang on, it's the hinge, which is when he says, brothers and sisters, stand firm. It's a command that means to be steadfast. And if I asked you when I use the word steadfast, if we as Christians are to be growing in steadfastness, who is it that comes to mind when I say the word steadfast? Or maybe what is it that comes to mind when you hear the word steadfast. It's maybe not the most common adjective that I use when I'm trying to describe someone or something that has qualities of loyalty, dedication, perseverance, devotion. But it's a good word. In fact, when I checked on Google, as I often do for its definition just to be right on things and even its etymology...based on Google listening to us and hacking into our lives constantly. The word steadfast peaked in the mid 1800s. How they take all those books of antiquity and pulled them together, I don't know, but they do. So if you find yourself using the word steadfast on a regular basis, you now know what generation you belong to...the 1800s.

 

When I heard that word, and it's an old English word combining the idea of place and firmly fixed, I thought of the Beefeaters, the the King's guard, you know, protecting Buckingham Palace...the Queen's jewels. That they're steadfast. Right? They stand there. They're supposed to be immovable, unswerving. You can try to make them laugh. They're not supposed to crack a smile. They're not supposed to do anything. But you've probably seen some of those videos where, um, you push it too far and you're going to pay for it. I also thought of the Marines and theirtheir motto, Semper fidelis, always faithful. Those those people come to mind for me. That being steadfast is at the heart of what they're about. And at the heart of what Paul is saying to these beleaguered Christians in Thessalonica are to be about despite being   discouraged. Chapter one, he had to help them, as we talked a few weeks ago, that they were suffering affliction for their faith. They were being persecuted for their faith. And he encourages them to not lose the faith, not stop loving, not stop hoping in what?...the righteous return of Jesus Christ who will repay those afflicted, and rescue those being afflicted. And then in chapter two, they were discouraged. They were deceived, thinking the day of the Lord had come. But he reminds them and enlightens them to the truth, that the day of the Lord has not come. And when that day comes, God will triumph over Satan, over Antichrist, over sin, once and for all.

 

And so to close chapter two, after he has bolstered them in their knowledge of who they are and who they belong to and the strength that they fight from, he can tell them in verse 15, stand firm. And that's what we want, isn't it? As Christians in the day and age we're in, whether you're being persecuted in the present or you just see the inevitability of it in your future for believing what you believe, for living the way that you live. I think we all want to know how Paul strengthened these Christians to grow in steadfastness, so that we can be the same, so that we can have those same qualities said about our faith devoted, dedicated, persistent, persevering, unswerving, unflappable, unflinching in the face of persecution and affliction.

 

And Paul gives them three ways that they can be steadfast. Three things that any Christian soldier would need to know in order to stand firm. And, um, truth be told, I actually only got through one of them today in first service, so I'm going to do something I haven't tried before. I'm going to just preach to you guys points two and three. And then you guys can meet up with first service this week. You could trade notes and you have a completed sermon. Actually somebody asked me a few weeks ago, have you ever done that? Adam preached one sermon to 9 a.m. and the other to 11 and don't tell anybody. And then just let them show up for small group this week and see what comes of it. But no, we  only covered point one. And so if you have that sheet of notes in the back. Um, point one is all we're getting through because point one had three sub points. So you still get three points today no matter what you do. It's a blessing and a curse.

 

Here's the first point that you need to know. And it's just in verses 13 and 14. To fight the good fight, to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord as a soldier of Christ, you must know the ground that you stand on, and that is the ground, the immovable, unshakable ground of God's providence. In a book by Sun Tzu called the Art of War, written in the fifth century BC. One of his key principles for warfare is the importance of knowing the terrain that surrounds you, and you make wise decisions in light of it. He wrote, "In any military operation, it's important first to know the lay of the land. When you know the relative safety of the terrain, then you can discern whether to do battle or disperse."  And so maybe Paul one hundred years later

 

got a copy of that Art of War. Because when he is telling these believers to stand firm he wants to first give them the principle of...know the ground that you stand on before he encourages them to take any action. He is saying take an assessment of where your feet currently stand. And are they firmly planted on the providence of God? And we'll learn about that Providence or that sovereignty of God in three ways. And these are the three sub points in verses 13 and 14. The first ground to stand on to wage war from is this God loves you.

 

What a wonderful starting point. In fact, the love of God is the highest ground to get to. I'm no soldier, nor pretend to be, but I did play my fair share of King of the Hill growing up...in the day and age we're in, where the weirdest things could become the next Olympic sport. If it ever comes back I'm coming out of retirement. That's my shot. I think I can make it to the Olympics and at least get a bronze in King of the Hill. And the whole point of that is you need the high ground, and if you have the high ground, you can wage war from there.

 

And the highest ground that Paul starts with to shore these Christians up is to say right out of the gates, we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, beloved by the Lord. The love of God is the high ground in standing firm. No matter how frustrated Paul was with some of these believers in Thessalonica, anxious about anti-Christ, nervous about the day of the Lord...he calls them beloved. And that's just like Paul, isn't it? Notice what he said right out of the gate before he called them loved by God. He said, I should always give thanks to God for you. What principle have I been repeating myself over the last few months, maybe even years. When you see the grace of God in operation around you, what are you to do?...give thanks. Because our theology is grace. Our ethic is gratitude. I feel like I have played that one out, but yet in my life group just a month ago I had mentioned it apparently and mentioned that I mention it and then it was mentioned in life group. Adam, I never heard you say that before. So I said, I'll keep saying it to just drive it home. That because our spiritual synapses should be trained to constantly be on the lookout for the work of grace around us. Because think about what that does for you. One, it takes your eyes off of you. You're not so consumed with you. And then it puts your eyes on two things. God is working in someone else's life, and I recognize that that is a work of grace. And hopefully, when I do that, it produces greater humility in me to see God's grace is at work all around me. And then maybe if you are discouraged in your own faith of where you're at, maybe knowing, seeing the work of God's grace in other people around you then reminds you he could do that same work in you. And maybe the work of grace he's trying to do in you is for you to be recognizing grace. But it's not enough just to see it. Paul says it. He sees that they are loved by the Lord.

 

And I know in my own heart, when I'm at odds with the fellow believer, when I'm at the end of my line, if you want to call it that. When I stop to pray for them and the first thing on my lips is God, you love them. That changes the whole direction. When you are at odds with a fellow believer who is loved by God, right? They're in Christ, it's the one thing you know about them...they're loved by God. They've been saved by his son, whom he sent in love. And if you can coach your heart when it feels like it's hardening and growing bitter to someone who's your brother and sister in Christ, maybe even lives under the same roof to say right out of the gate, God, you love them. Now help me. That gets you somewhere.

 

And that's the that's the first ground that they're fighting from, is that they are loved by God. Our kids need to hear that constantly from us as parents. Why wouldn't we, as God's children, need to hear it for us? You don't grow past it. You don't grow out of it. You are loved. We had that on a on a sign at our old campus before we moved here ten years ago. Last thing you saw, as you would drive out of the campus, was a sign to the side that said what?...you are loved. And it was a great reminder that however you felt going in and by the gospel of God's grace, ministering to you as a child of God going out, you might already be here the kids....we want burger, fries. No, we want chicken. It's everywhere you look around here. And you're like, oh, I got to deal with that. I'm loved. Okay, let's go kids. I can do this. It just brings out the best in us to know we're loved. That's the first ground that we stand on that is secure, is the love of God for us in Christ. And it almost comes out as just a by word at the beginning of verse 13.

 

Because he says, we should always give thanks to God for you brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because and then he gets to his first reason. But I didn't want to skip past...friend this morning, you are loved and that's your firm foundation. In Jesus Christ nothing can separate you from the love of God. You're loved.

 

Now that Paul gave you a spoonful of sugar, it's time for the medicine to go down. The second position of our firm foundation in God's providence. First is that we're loved. Next is that we're chosen. Paul says we should give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation. And that is known as the doctrine of election. If you want a good definition for the doctrine of election, use the Bible's definition for the doctrine of election. Underline it and to the side when somebody wants to know, oh, I've heard about the doctrine of election or predestination. They relate. They're not identical. Or we could call it God's sovereignty in salvation. So the best definitions are the ones that the Holy Spirit wrote. God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation. And there it is. You can't really improve upon it.

 

If you're new to Christianity election is God's choice of individuals in eternity past to receive salvation on the basis ofhis own good pleasure, with no account of seeing any good in them at all. Now, I gave you the Biblical definition...that was just a little expanded definition when you take in some of the other verses on election in the Bible. It's God's choice of individuals in eternity past to receive salvation on the basis ofhis own good pleasure, taking no account of any foreseen good in them.

 

And that is a controversial doctrine. Now, the interesting thing is that in the mind of Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit that it's paired ever so perfectly with God's love. Do you see that? That the doctrine of God's choice, irrespective of our actions, comes right on the heels of talking about God's love for us. And the interesting thing is, no one seems to be bothered by the idea that God first had to love us before we love him. In fact, when I was just talking about you being loved, we love that, didn't we? It's so encouraging. 1 John 4:19 says, we love because God first loved us. I don't find a lot of people arguing against that verse. Romans 5:8, while we were still sinners, God demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus to die. People love that. But yetwhen we read, God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation, it hits different. Or we read in Ephesians 1:4...right out of the gates in that magisterial letter. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. I already said that this morning. How wonderful it is to count all our blessings in Christ. And the first on the list is...just as God chose us in

 

Christ before the foundation of the world. John 17 the high priestly prayer...first thing off of Jesus lips, all that you chose to give me, I will give them eternal life.

 

So why is it that we can accept God loved us before we loved him, but we find it hard to accept God chose us before we chose him? Why do those two ideas seem to be in tension? The doctrine of God's love, everlasting love, as far as the East is from the West so far has he removed our sins from us. And as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love towards us. We love that doctrine. And yet it's hard for us to accept the doctrine of God's electing grace. Well, Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 here doesn't defend it. To him, it's just a fact. He just states it right next to talking about God's love. With no reason he has to stop and say, hey, I know you guys are going to be all maybe thrown off by this. We do get a defense of it if you want to turn to Romans 9. And we get a defense of it by an illustration Paul uses from the Old Testament in the story of twin brothers Jacob and Esau...Romans 9:6-29, you could turn there, is the extended defense of the doctrine of God's electing grace. But just a few verses in 9 to 13 focus the story on Jacob and Esau, where God chose Jacob over Esau for a blessing based only on God's sovereign will. It says in Romans 9:11, speaking of Jacob and Esau...the twins. Though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to his choice would stand not because of works, but because of him who calls. And Paul is using this illustration from the Old Testament, this physical illustration for the spiritual point, to say, look on the scales, that we like to weigh God's justice that some are, he's going to anticipate accusing him of injustice. He is just saying, here's what election is. These twins had not yet done anything good or bad. They're in the womb at the same time. Same parents...there's nothing that anybody could say, okay, to differentiate in God's purpose and God's choice will stand. And here's the issue...not because of works, not God foreseeing any good in the one, or foreseeing any evil in the other. But what was the reason God chose? Because of him who calls the older will serve the younger. Him who calls...who's that?...God in advance not based on anything other than God's, verse 13, electing love for Jacob.

 

Now knowing that some will say that's unjust. And Paul just knows to say, look, there is no injustice with God. May it never be in verse 14 is a way to say, God forbid. You could take out of the discussion that this is an issue of God's justice because God is just and therefore his decisions are just. Not because we sit there and evaluate him according to our fallen sense of justice. God is just. What we may not understand then, is that this issue that we are taking umbrage with is actually an issue of God's love, not justice.

 

Because all of them, everyone who is a sinner deserves to be judged. But he says, here's what I do. Verse 15, I have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I have compassion on whom I have compassion. And that probably answers the question of why we wrestle with God's love in verse 13, back in 2 Thessalonians 2. And then right after that, God's choosing, because it seems that we think it's a matter of injustice with God to do this, but yetreally, it's a matter of mercy. Verse 16, back in Romans 9, then it doesn't depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on the God who has mercy. This issue of God's electing grace is an issue of who God chooses to show love towards, who God chooses to show mercy towards, when none of them deserve it. Paul just established that...there was no foreseen, good or bad in Jacob or Esau that tipped the scale to one or the other. It was based solely on God, Verse 18, having mercy on whom he desires and hardening on whom he desires.

 

And then Paul anticipates the accusation. You will say to me, why does he still find fault? Who resists his will? And here's Paul's final answer, Verse 20. On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? If God chooses some for salvation and not others our fallen, understanding runs that out...that means he's not loving and he's not just. And Paul's answer was clear...God is merciful. And in his electing love, he has the freedom because God...Newsflash...is the only free being in all of the universe. Truly. Because to be entirely free, as we would think of it, is to not be affected or influenced or changed by any of the surroundings around us. We just do whatever we please and nothing can influence us whatsoever. And the only being that is described that way in the Bible is God. Psalm 115...our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Or back over to Ephesians one, the reason that he chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us to adoption as sons in Jesus was according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. It all goes back to God's good pleasure. It all goes back to God having the right as God to choose according to his own desires.

 

So firm Foundation number two, which to a lot of us isn't very firm. Just being honest because it's hard to understand, isn't it? And I hope you get from me this morning that I, nor Paul is making the case that we need to understand the doctrine of election completely in order to accept it personally. You don't need to say that you...in fact, it's a joke. If you actually want to tell me this morning, I completely comprehend it. Oh, really? Soyou can do something that even Paul at the end of Romans 11 said he couldn't do...fathom the riches of the wisdom of God. How 'unsearchinable' are his unsearchable! I think I've said that before here. That's twice in the last year. Unsearchable and unfathomable...put them together into one. Thank you, Jerry. He likes my word, the 'unsearchinable' riches of God.

 

So he's not saying that you need to be able to understand it in order to accept it. In fact, we could probably go down a host of issues through the Bible that we accept without completely understanding, starting with God...his eternality. Anybody can sit there and just be totally at ease and understand and cool with that He's existed before in all eternity and nothing created him. You just get the self-existent God. You can explain that. Come on down. Thanks, Jerry, once again. I don't get his eternality. I don't understand it. I don't understand it going backwards into eternity past or forwards into eternity future. But I accept it. My existence depends on him. His doesn't depend on me understanding his. Second, I could throw the Trinity into that. That God, one true God in three persons. I don't understand it completely, but I accept it. How I have the Bible in front of me...the perfect, inerrant, infallible Word of God, yet who wrote it?...man or God? Both. Do you understand that? Probably not completely, but you accept it. Your sanctification. God works in...you work out. You do something good. Who gets the credit? You for obeying...your God for working in...both. Do you accept it? Yeah. Do you understand it completely? Probably not. Soyou can go down the list of these things.

 

And rather than be dismayed by the doctrine of election, I choose. Or at least I think I choose to be amazed by it rather than debate it. Because this doctrine, as I stepped back this week and spent some time thinking about it, pushes my mind and heart to the farthest expanse of the sovereignty of God. We can say we love the sovereignty of God. You know, he's in charge of the fishes and the sea. And I don't think that offends any anybody...maybe the fish.  The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and nobody's offended by that except when it rains on you. We like God's Sovereignty with like a lower case 's'.

 

You know, the kind that we can accept without major implications for offending my sense of what?...freedom or choice. But the doctrine of election is the sovereignty of God. Capital S, capital O and however else you spell that big word. Election is at the farthest reach in the universe of God's providence, the hardest for the telescopes of our small souls to see to his outer edge. It's what I like to call...of all the doctrines, this one is at the heart of the 'Godness' of God. It is. I don't know any other doctrine that is at the heart of what makes God uniquely God, because he doesn't have to explain to me his choice. He doesn't owe it to me, and I will never find my way to the end of it, just like Paul in Romans 11. Now, it's not something to be afraid of, ashamed of, avoid talking about. But I would advise this. We need to respect it. Listen to this quote from a theologian advising when venturing into the realms of election and predestination to take caution. He writes this.

 

"First, let us remember that when we inquire into predestination, we are entering the sanctuary of divine wisdom. Anyone who pries into it and delves too brashly and confidently will never reach the point where he satisfies his curiosity, but will stumble into a labyrinth from which he will find no way out. For it is not right that the things which God has sought to conceal, and whose knowledge he has kept for himself, should be scrutinized in this way by men. Nor is it right that the lofty wisdom which he wished us to revere, rather than comprehend, so that we might wonder at his greatness should be made subject to our human mind. What God thought good to give to us was everything which he knew would be relevant and rewarding to us. Once we grasp the idea that God's Word is the only path which allows us to investigate all that we may lawfully know about him, and is likewise the only light by which we behold all that we may lawfully see of him. It will stop us from acting impulsively, for then we will realize that by going beyond the bounds of Scripture, we will be straying off into the darkness and will inevitably, with every step, wander, stumble, and trip up."

 

Now, that sounds like somebody very critical of the doctrine of predestination. Definitely couldn't be a fan of it, except it comes on page 463 of the 800 pages of John Calvin's Institutes. You know the guy, John Calvin that's the boogeyman of Calvinism. Two terms he actually wouldn't have recognized in his own day boogeyman or Calvinism. Calvin is seen today as those who don't understand him, one who wrecks the gospel with this doctrine of predestination. But in his own time during the Protestant Reformation, he was one who rescued the gospel from works based righteousness. And what drove him was the glory of God in Jesus Christ. You open those 800 pages in the institutes and right out of the gates he wants to impress you with Christ. You got to get two thirds of the way through the book to get to the one chapter...20 some pages on predestination. To which most people would ask, oh, if they don't like him...that's all that guy was about, predestination. May I encourage you, if maybe that was your estimation of John Calvin, in the spirit of the protestant Renaissance, not quite the Reformation...what Erasmus believed that led to the Reformation was the spirit of avantis...back to the sources. If you want to understand what John Calvin believed, you need to read him yourself. You don't need to read some blog critic taking pot shots and piling on, taking the quotes to misquote. So there's your assignment. For the first time in the annals of my five year time here, assigning you to read Calvin's 800 pages. I'll give you five years, and at my ten year mark, if I make it after today especially, you can read Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will.

 

But I really would just recommend, hey, being discerning and we've talked about growing in discernment the last few weeks. The best way to grow in discernment, especially of doctrines that don't sit well with us, is to read them in that own person's words, in their own time, give them that much credit. It was always drilled into me when I was going through seminary. Adam, if you're going to critique this position, do it in a way that the person that promotes it could sit in the room and say, yes, that's exactly what I believe. As in, you're not intentionally misrepresenting them to make your point.

 

So all this talk of election, the charicature of it is, if you believe it, you become part of the frozen chosen, as in, if God chooses us, why do we do anything?

 

I wonder if Paul has an answer for that in the next two phrases. Brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation...here's how you thaw out...through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. There's Paul's answer to the accusation that the doctrine of election is going to put us into some state of inactivity, because if God is in control of it all, we shouldn't do anything. He says...those who are chosen by God have these two qualities about their life that proves they're saved... sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth.

 

Now, that sounds exactly like the rest of the New Testament, particularly the letter of 1 John that the the mission statement of it in chapter five is...I write these things that you would know that you know Jesus Christ as Lord. And the qualities of a true Christian, according to the Apostle John in 1 John are...that you confess Jesus Christ as come in the flesh, that he is the Son of God. Well, that is right here...faith in the truth, the right confession. And then he says, and you can't go around saying you're a Christian making a practice of sin. And then he highlights one particular sin, a lack of love for your brother. And he uses the example of Cain and Abel. So, lo and behold, if you are chosen by God, sanctification and deepening convictions will mark your life, not you just being able to explain the doctrine of election. In fact, that's not going to get you anywhere. In fact, that will probably put a target on you. And it should...if you're going to boast in this amazing doctrine and it is, then these things should be true of you...sanctification by the spirit. You are becoming more like Jesus Christ rather than less, especially in the way that you want to tell people about the doctrine of election with a smile in love, because it's built on what?...God's sovereign love that he gave at his good pleasure in eternity past. You should sound like that, talking about it. You should certainly live like that. Proving the depth of your love for God and all of his wonderful truths in your actions. Second, you believe in the truth. He says. You have convictions. You believe more in the truth of God as your life goes on, not less.

 

So really, what Paul is doing in these, um, these few verses here, he's taking you from eternity past into the present. He took you to into eternity past, giving thanks to God for you. Loved by God because chose God chose you from the beginning. And then he brings them into the present for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. Present day believers in Thessalonica...how do you answer the accusation against this election?...look at my life and listen to what I believe. Sanctification by the spirit...you could see it. It's happening in me and through me. Deepening conviction in the truth of God. It's the same truth we read about holy living in Ephesians 1:4. Chosen in him to be holy and blameless before him. That's a wonderful defense against the accusation that if you believe in election, you will endorse antinomianism, the idea that we don't obey God's commands. These verses teach us the opposite, that if there's no obedience in your life, if there's no sanctification by the spirit, if there's no surrender of your life to the will of God, if there's no change of your affections in your heart, then whatever claims you make to know something theologically, there's reason to question whether it's actually changed you. On the other hand, if you have according

 

verse 13, heard and believed the gospel and seen the transforming work of the spirit in your life, you have good grounds to believe you are God's elect.

 

So he has put your feet on the firm ground in eternity past of God's choosing. He has brought you into the present of looking at your life and measuring it by those two standards sanctification in the spirit and faith in the truth. And then the last piece after loved by God, chosen by God, you're called to future glory, called by God. That's verse 14. He says, it was for this that he called you through our gospel, but he moves them from the past and present into the future that you may gain...see, it's still out there for you...the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've gone from past to present to future. And isn't that the nature of our great salvation?...from justification to sanctification to glorification? You see how when you understand these subjects in the Bible, they they come out of the text. You don't have to put them on it. You're called to future glory that God loved you believer and chose you believer and called you believers so that you would be conformed to the glorious image of Jesus Christ forever. And that's where some people get it wrong when they think predestination is only about going backwards. Right? Where does he go with the doctrine of predestination here? He goes forwards into your glorification.

 

And this is what we call from Romans 8:29-30, the golden chain of salvation. So you could turn in your Bibles there to see it for yourself. The Golden Chain of salvation is covering the whole sweep of God's unfolding plan of redemption in your life, from his first thought of you before time began, all the way until you are with him in heaven's eternal joys. That's the golden chain of salvation. Let me read it to you.

 

Romans 8:29-30, For those whom God foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And these whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified.

 

Each link in this chain is so connected to the next that it forms your unbreakable faith, and ought to encourage you today and bring you some comfort if you have a weary soul. If you're struggling with assurance and wondering, will you make it? You hold to the golden chain. This chain spans all eternity. It was forged in the flames of God's loving heart and hammered into form by the iron will of God Almighty. No one and nothing can break it. That's an encouragement to the Christian. And the amazing thing of this is it's all of God and it's all of Christ, and it's all of the Holy Spirit, and none of it rests on you. You rest on it. That's good news.

 

Now, one note on a common issue that comes up when talking about these verses is people that try to take that first piece of the chain and try to twist it a little bit when they talk about foreknowledge. And how some people do this is they say, well, that foreknowledge is at the front, because that's another word for God foreseeing, meaning he didn't actually do all this choosing and predestination. When he has foreknowledge, he can see into the future. And when he looks into the future from eternity past, he sees good in you and that you would choose Jesus. Well, there's a problem with that. Because if God has tolook into the future to see a move that you're going to make, he's no longer God. It takes away from the glory of his omniscience and omnisapience. As in, he knows everything and he is all wise, and there is nothing he needs to look into the future to know about you that he doesn't already know.

 

In fact, what God did know and does know about every single one of us, and it's true of every person in this room for all time and eternity, is that we are all damned sinners left to ourselves...headed for hell. There's actually a place in the Bible that does speak of God looking from heaven and God seeing. And this is what he sees. Psalm 53:2-3, God has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there is anyone who understands, who seeks after God. Every one of them has turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one.

 

Do you understand from these verses why God chooses? Why God must elect. Why God must set his sovereign love. Because in looking out as best as we can, pull it out of Psalm 53:2-3, and not put it on. Is there is no one looking out from the beginning to the end who would ever turn back to God. They're all running in the opposite direction, and God's justice would be to let them all perish because he's holy and they're not. And there is none who would have any inkling of goodness in them already to turn around and seek him according to the very words of God. So that's why foreknowledge being foreseeing...it doesn't work.

 

It also doesn't work because the effect of something cannot also be the cause. In Ephesians 1:4, it says, God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world, so that...effect, we would be holy and blameless before him. But if there was some good thing in us that was going to choose God, i.e. something in us that wanted to be holy and blameless, so God sees we're going to be holy and blameless, and chooses us so that we're holy and blameless. So the effect is the cause? Is that how cause and effect work in any realm, anywhere, any time? No. The reality is no sinner is or ever will be holy and blameless left to themselves apart from Jesus Christ. Therefore, the only way we changed is how? The only way we change is by God's electing love. That's the beginning and the end. And that's why we could say, like Paul did in Romans 11:36 about Jesus. For from him and through him, and to him are all things, in our salvation. To him alone be the glory.

 

Now some of you sitting here this morning. Might say, is there good news in that? Yeah, it's the good news of the gospel. It's the good news of the gospel this morning. You don't have to. One of the prerequisites to be born again, to be saved this morning, to be rescued from your sin, is not to figure out God, but it is to humbly accept the way he presents the gospel to you right now. Which is this...repent of your sins and trust in my Son, Jesus Christ, who came to take away the sin of the world. Turn to me. Turn to me from what? From whatever pride of thinking, you need to be able to figure God out in order tobelieve in him, that you first have to have understanding before you can have faith. It goes the other way. You humbly bow in faith and admit I don't understand it all, but what I do know that's burning inside my chest right now is that I don't deserve anything. Amen. And God and His son in love gave me everything. And if I know that much, I can be saved. And if you call upon that God, he will receive the humble and the weak. That's the only way any of us get in. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. The things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no man may boast before God. By his doing You are in who? By God's doing, you're in Christ Jesus, who then has become to us the wisdom of God and the righteousness of God and the redemption of God. It's all in Christ today. So call upon him to be saved.

 

And for those of us who know that gospel, we know that's the only gospel. It excludes all boasting, all works, any glory to us...all glory to him.

 

That's as far as we're going to get today. Uh, you'll have to come back next week to hear the other ways in which we stand, the weapons we stand with, and

 

the strength we stand in.

 

And I'll just wrap up by saying that today was a lot. And look, I put my afternoon of watching the first week of the NFL out there by doing this today. I understand there could be emails and long conversation. I'm kidding, I love you. This is a doctrine to rejoice in, and like I said already, it's something that we can accept, not necessarily understand. And your head may hurt right now trying to wrap your mind around these things. I've been trying all week and the weeks leading up to this to wrap my mind around it. Yesterday in the car I was on about my fifth sermon of the week, um, driving my son to his football game...poor kid. He wants he wants some thunderstruck to get pumped up. And I'm like, we're going to listen to a sermon on election. And so, um, it's 30 minutes away. We're about 20 minutes into the drive, and I hit pause. I have mercy on whom I have mercy. And so I hit pause and I turn to him and I say, did you understand any of that? And he goes, mm, not really. And so then I venture to ask, why is that? And he says, well, the preacher is just using a lot of words...go figure. And I think I understood that. So I said, oh, so maybe he just needs more illustrations. And without missing a beat, he replies, nah, just an easier topic. And friends, that's probably just the way it is. But it won't stop us from trying. And I'll try to make it easier as best I can.

 

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace and kindness to us in your son Jesus today. We have to hold in tension, trying to fathom the unfathomable. And not just that, but to turn it into praise. When sometimes these things we look into, we don't even have the words to form to praise you with. And we thank you that not all of the Christian life we approach this way. Some of it we just grasp so immediately. And your word says some of it is spiritual milk. Some of it is right there for the taking and then others of it even Peter can write about Paul. Some of those things he writes are hard to understand. Maybe he was talking ofthis, but all of it is yours. It's all your truth, and it's all the truth that comes out of your being. That what we believe about this is a reflection of you, who you are, perfect in every way. We thank you that we come most simply to you through your son, Jesus Christ, and the good news that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Thank you for the gospel. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Growing in End Times Discernment Pt. 2

Download transcript

Please turn your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. We'll pick up where we left off last week in verse 6, and continue to look ahead as these texts about the end times call us to understand them, to know them, to grow in them so that we can grow in our discernment and be capable not so much of predicting the future...that's not really the purpose of these texts, but to know that our future is in the hands of a God who is in control of all things. Last week we saw at the beginning of chapter 2 that a healthy church keeps growing in areas of discernment, and especially in knowing when we're talking about the end. Uh, the difference between God's truth and man's error, because it's a cover to cover issue in your Bible from the front part in the beginning, from page one day one Genesis one God is the creator of all things, all things seen and unseen on earth and in the heavens. He created it all. He owns it all. He knows it all. He keeps it all. And he is leading it all to the end that he is over to the last page, the end of the Bible, Revelation, the last days. All of it is still his. Not one thing is out of place in the perfect plan of God, where he is headed for all time and eternity. Isaiah 46:9-10 states this. Remember the former things long past. I am God, and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient timesthings done which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. What is God defining himself, or describing himself, or separating himself out from the rest of the pack? Well He says there's no one like me. Well, what makes no other God like him? He's the only one that knows the beginning from the end. He's the only one who can say, my purpose will be established and not in different purposes. As if he just kind of says I'm going to set it all up and leave it alone. No, he says, I will accomplish all my good pleasure. All of history, from beginning to end, is happening according to God's plan that he can be pleased with. He can take all things...as Romans 8 tells us, work all things for his glory and for the good of his people. And that is a rock solid foundation that we build our lives around. And it is also what we want to have in our minds as we talk about growing in your discernment, the ability to separate out truth from error when we come to think about the future from the end times. And one way that you can, even in the last week and this week, as you reflect on what we're learning here. You may not be the biggest fan of talking about the end times. Maybe not so much for fear of it, but because maybe you grew up in some church denomination that exhausted the subject and you never wanted to talk about it again, for whatever reason you might have.  But an effect of understanding what's to come...maybe the greatest effect is it works on your heart, and it does as Paul states at the end of 2 Timothy 4:8, in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. What's the first fruits of you growing in your discernment of the end times. I don't think it's you being able to predict. Sorry to let you down. If you want somebody who can predict things, talk to Kurtis. He sat next to a guy at the Hickory Motor Speedway last night. Apparently a pretty big race was going on. It was a packed house, and the guy Kurtis shared with me predicted the revenge that car 6 was going to take on car 19 for a sideswipe earlier in the match, and sure enough, it happens. No offense. None taken. Car 6 or 19 if you're here today, okay, not commenting on that. If you're into that kind of prediction of the future, great. But when it comes to the good fruit of a growing understanding of the future, it's the virtue of love that you would love...long for the appearing of Jesus Christ. And it's connected, even what we saw last week orsorry, not last week, but well, it is connected to last week because these Thessalonian Christians were shaken up in mind and their hearts were weighed down, thinking that the day of the Lord had already come and the worst of all possibilities...they weren't in Christ, and they missed their Savior. What I was meaning to say is they were in a time of persecution, in a time of affliction. And when Jesus comes, it says to be glorified in his saints...they will be relieved. They'll be with Him. They'll be with Him forever. A good fruit of a right understanding of the end is we get relief. We get to be with our Savior. And as Peter states in the opening chapter of First Peter, again a letter written to a persecuted people that you love his appearing, you rejoicewith joy inexpressible with the thought of seeing him. So those first fruits of a person who they're excited to see Jesus again, our love and they're of joy. And so that's something even this morning to say, Lord, give me a greater love for you and a greater joy in you. Not just in the present, but as I would think about you going into the future.  So we'll pick up where we left off last week in verse six, where last week you had some confused Christians, some disturbed Christians. They thought the day of the Lord had come. They thought they had missed Jesus. They thought they were in the end times. And what an awful thought that would be. You come to Christ just a few years earlier. You're taught by the Apostle Paul how wonderful it is to be a Christian. How wonderful it will be to be with Jesus forever. And then, in the absence of Paul, false teachers came in and said, sorry guys, you missed it. What a letdown. How disturbing it would be to live in that time. And that's really the air in which these Thessalonians have been breathing and they've been afflicted by people outside the church persecuting them. So it's been hard times. And Paul comes with a word of comfort. Last week we saw that they haven't missed the end because the man of lawlessness has not been revealed. The Antichrist hasn't come. And today we will see...and this is where it shifts today. The focus is on the Antichrist and what he and Satan will be doing together. And if we're not careful, we might miss the big picture that Paul is trying to paint when this bad day does come, when the day of the Lord does come and the Antichrist is revealed that it's actually not really all about him still. This is the big lesson for the day, for us now and into the future, that no matter what temporary scheme of Satan seems to be succeeding against the people of God, the eternal plan and purpose of God is always, always working itself out. That's the great hope he gives them today, that at every move the Antichrist could make on the chessboard of eternity, he is never coming close to putting God in check...not even close. It could seem that even for you today, you could say. But I have seen bad things. I read history books, I get it, so do I. But never once is Satan's ultimate plan through an Antichrist spirit to ruin the world, to destroy the world ever come close to succeeding. Never has before, and it never will outside of God's sovereign purposes. And we can take joy in that today, as Martin Luther said it. The devil is God's devil. He compares him to a bad dog on a chain. Luther was wonderful with words...which may bark, run here and there and tear at the chain. But because the devil is tied, it cannot bite you. That's the promise we have. That's the hope we have, and that's what we want to keep in mind today as we study this text. And it features more about the Antichrist than it seems to feature about God.  But His Sovereign plan and purposes are work out behind it. So read along with me...2 Thessalonians 2:6-12. Paul writes to them, referring to the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness. "And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains him will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to an end by the appearance of his coming. That is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness, for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence, so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness." This is the Word of God. May it be planted deep in our hearts and bear the good fruits, Father of love for the appearing of your Son. Amen.
So right out of the gates, verses six and seven, this first subsection of the bigger picture, that God's purposes, his eternal purposes and plans will be carried out no matter what temporary schemes of Satan seem to be succeeding. The first evidence of this is that the Antichrist is on God's time. He's on God's watch, verses 6-7. And you know what restrains him now, speaking of Antichrist, so that in his time he'll be revealed. And it seems, well he's working on his own time. No, he is on God's time because there is a greater power at work holding him back. Now notice what Paul says here that sets the table for us to walk gently into this text. What I mean by that is, um, they know something we don't know. Do you see that right there in verse six? And you know what restrains him...the Antichrist. They know. We don't know. And we could read on and still not know what they know. Have I lost you? Look at verse 5. Do you not remember that while I was with you, I was telling you these things? So he's writing to this church, whom he hasn't seen in a while, but has been writing to them. But he refers to a time when he taught them, when he first got there, and he taught them everything from cover to cover. He explained to them the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He taught them about the return of Christ. Hence, he has a lot to correct in 1 and 2 Thessalonians about the return of Christ. And he says, I have taught you already about this man of lawlessness. Do you remember this? I told you. And then he starts in verse six today. You know what restrains him. But we're standing here saying, no, we don't. We actually don't get what they got, which should humble us today. That as wonderful as it is to have a spirit inspired Bible, and we get to look back on it all and we get with these texts to look forward. They know things. They got to learn things we'll never learn until we're in heaven. I know I often say how wonderful it is with all the resources we have Bible studies and sermons and Bible colleges and seminaries. Praise God for it all. And yet we can be humbled to know that these first generation Christians in Thessalonica knew things that we won't know, especially when it comes to the big question that I know you're dying to be answered. What is this restrain? Or who is this restrainer? That's the question people ask about these two verses. Look in your Bible. He says, you know what restrains the Antichrist now that in his time he'll be revealed and then he goes on for the mystery of lawlessness...speaking of the man of lawlessness and mysteries in the Bible, when they're mentioned in the New Testament by Paul, are not mysteries to God. They're mysteries to us, which means they will not remain unsolved. There is complete understanding and knowledge by God of whatever is called a mystery in the Bible. He knows we don't know. But then in verse seven he says, this mystery of the man of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains.Wait a second in verse six, it was what restrains this Antichrist. And in verse seven it's he who restrains. And that's the main clue we have to work with today. When we think of what's restraining the definite article. You know, like when college football's upon us and annoying Ohio State fans who like to say THE Ohio State University when they talk about Ohio State and maybe other schools do that too. But when we're talking about the Antichrist, the one that he's mentioning here, this man of lawlessness back in verse three, the son of destruction who thinks he's God. Verse four...exalts himself like God. He's one that we have never seen before. And Paul is asking the question like, wait, what's kept this guy back? Because other ones have come. 1John 2:18...many antichrists have come. An Antichrist spirit 1 John 4:1-3. The Antichrist spirit is anyone who what?...denies that Jesus has come in the flesh...denies that Jesus is the Son of God. Well, there's been plenty of those throughout history. What's stopped any of them from succeeding to the plan of Satan? And we get the answer in six and seven. There's a restraining power in verse six...what...and person in verse seven, he. And you put those together and say, and this is what theologians and commentators have studied throughout the last 2000 years. It's a whodunit. Who is this who and he? Who is a he, and what and it in six and seven. And so there's been some possibilities put forth. Here's a little multiple choice for you today. You can pick the one you want and then debate it over lunch at Golden Corral. It's all you need. So you could stay there all day right. Do they kick you out? Great day to go to Golden Corral and talk the day away over these options for the restrainer. First option is many people have believed that the 'what' is the Roman Empire and the 'who' is the emperor. So again, if you're not tracking with me, just put those words into verse six and seven. And you know, the Roman Empire restrains him now. And then, verse seven, and only the emperor who now restrains will do so until he's taken away. So some people in church history, early church fathers, especially when the Roman Empire was still strong, a guy like Tertullian, which, by the way, great name for a boy. So time to time I offer my opinions. Tertullian, church father, lived in the two hundreds. The Roman Empire was still going strong. And the emperor, you know, he was in control. And as Romans 13 says, Paul wrote, uh, all these governments and institutions are ordained by God, and they don't bear the sword for no reason. So as long as the emperor can bear the sword, as long as there is an empire, uh, an antichrist might be held in check. Unless, of course, it is the emperor, which some people thought throughout time and history it had been. So he's saying maybe some people believe that's it. And Paul's writing in kind of clandestine language of a what and a he so as to not be found out by Caesar. Now it maybe seemed like a really good idea in church history until Constantinople fell in 1453 to the Ottoman Empire. And this idea that the Roman Empire was going to forever keep in check the bad guys kind of fell apart at that point, which this view then did as well. Not to say some still don't believe it. Moving on from that one, less a historical view and more of, um, a view that we would get from the pages of Scripture that what's holding back the Antichrist is the proclamation of the gospel and preachers like Paul, that as long as preachers and the gospel keep going forth until as we studied in Matthew 24:14, the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. So maybe Paul, in writing this to these people was saying, hey, as long as I'm around preaching the gospel, Jesus doesn't come back until then. And if Jesus doesn't come back to rescue the church, then the Antichrist can't come. So some people have believed in church history. That would be B on your multiple choice now...that it's the proclamation of the gospel and the preaching of it. And, uh, others have accepted this view. Most prominent, probably John Calvin. Third on the list, and maybe the most accepted view today is that the 'what' is the presence of the church and the 'who' is the Holy Spirit. So verses six and seven put those in and think about it. You know what restrains the Antichrist now...you know that the church restrains him now. As in, the church is doing the good work of the gospel and not just preaching the gospel, but the church is also, as Matthew 5:13-16 talks about the church is salt and light, right? Salt has a preserving quality. That's why Jesus uses it for an illustration that, you know, you're the salt of the earth. But if you're tasteless, you're useless and you're not making anything salty, you're not preserving, you're not adding flavor. And as Christians, we're to be that preserving and flavorful quality on our planet. So Christians stop wearing Crocs with socks, okay? We're to be a tasteful addition. Just once in a while, I want to make sure you're awake. But the presence of the church in the world is a convicting presence by what we preach and hopefully how we live, and that even our presence when we speak of God, and we do so in ways that honor him and glorify him and adorn the gospel of grace with our good works echoes what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2. This is this influence the church is to have in the world. Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For we're a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. So maybe Paul has that in mind, that the presence of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit are who Paul is talking about in six and seven. The only, I guess,the main detractor to that is why he wouldn't just say it. Why he wouldn't just say, guys, the personal nature of the restraining power is the person and work of the Holy Spirit, alive and active in all of you. Maybe it's because he just said in verse five, didn't I already teach you this? And he didn't feel like repeating himself. So we actually don't know. And I just tried to maybe give you some options for debate later. And you're like, man, I still don't think we have any idea. You're in good company. So did Augustine in the fourth century. Quote, "I myself, I confess I have no idea what is meant here." So there you go. One of the greatest church fathers of all time can say humbly, I just don't know. And I think we all can accept the possibility of it, especially the presence of believers in the church and the proclamation of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit. But if in all that you miss the point which is this, um, no matter what or who is this restraining power over the Antichrist preventing this Antichrist from coming...the whole point is that God is in control of his time, and he is not going to arrive and last a second longer than God ordains. John Piper wrote this about it. He said, everybody's guessing about this, so he would probably be in. We don't have any idea. Everybody's guessing. But what matters here was the Antichrist's time is set by God and the restrainer is preventing the man of lawlessness from crashing like a wave over the world, as though he were to come on the force of his own power, as if God were not in control. But the whole point of Paul here is God is in control of his arrival time. And that's the emphasis of six and seven that when we think about the times we live in, we step back and we see all the attempts Satan has made through Antichrist characters. As 1 John 4 described, these are those who come and they're false teachers and say that Jesus has not come in the flesh from God. They don't confess Jesus is from God. That's the spirit of Antichrist that John writes, you heard is coming and now is already in the world. And so the litmus test is always, what does this person have to say about Christ? And throughout history, no matter how powerful a leader has been to to come up and go down. Whether Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Nero, Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, the list goes on. They all come and go, dust to dust in God's vacuum cleaner of time just comes right through and sucks them up and they're gone. And that should give us pause today when we are maybe, like the Thessalonians, worried about the next four year or possible eight year bit part one line actor who gets just a vapor of time on the world stage and gone just like that. If that's been vexing you, weighing you down, confusing you, just put them in the category of Daniel 2:21. It is God who changes the times and epochs. He removes kings and establishes kings. He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. It is he who knows the profound and hidden things. That's good news for the world now and all time. Because think about it if God is in control of the worst of the worst world leaders, and we haven't seen the worst one yet, how much more can we have hope today? It always reminds me in talking about the bit part actors...like myself in a former life. At the end of Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray closes his novel, a whole novel about the vanity of man, and says at the end, come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets for our play is played out. God's box holds every single puppet. Cast your vote for one this fall. They will be put back in the box just like everyone else. That's what you're doing. I'm supporting a puppet, who's going to have their purpose in God's plan for a season, and then back in the box, just like the rest of them. That's not a fatalistic view. That's a faith filled view of our future. And if you don't understand that and embrace that and rejoice in that, you may stay in the cycle of shaken in composure and disturbed at heart, because you think the future might be headed somewhere outside of God's sovereign control. And it's not. It's 100% his time, and the Antichrist is on his watch. That's the summary of six and seven.  
Now let's move to verse eight. The Antichrist is not just on God's time. He is in God's target. God has this megalomaniac in his crosshairs from the moment this Antichrist breathes his first and yes, will breathe his last. Verse eight, the lawless one will be revealed. And so we feel like we're going to, you know, okay, we're getting more about this lawless one, he's revealed. And then the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of his coming. He appears and then God makes him disappear. It's almost like verse eight is an aside that he's been describing this man of lawlessness for the last five verses from verse three to verse seven. And maybe these people are getting worked up and they're thinking, this man is an awful man. And he is. He's the worst of the worst of all time. And yet, in just an aside, he says that lawless one who will be revealed. Two things...one, God takes him out. Two, with the breath of his mouth. That's it. No help from us as if he needs it. He just speaks. And this guy is done. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He upholds the universe by the word of his power, Hebrews 1 tells us. So, Genesis 1 when God said, let there be light, and there was light. And Psalm 33:6 echoes by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and the breath of his mouth all their hosts. By the breath of God, he turned the lights on in the universe, and by the breath of Christ he will turn the lights out on Antichrist. Gone...just like that. Slays him, wipes him out in a millisecond. It doesn't happen on a whim that God lost sight of him and then sees him again. Nope. God is carrying out his purposes on Antichrist from day one. In fact, it goes all the way back to Isaiah 11 that Jesus came the first time in Isaiah 11 that we learn about. He was the spring from the stem of Jesse, a branch from the roots bearing fruit. The spirit of the Lord rested on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. All these wonderful things we like to say about Jesus in his first coming. And they're all true. But then listen to the shift, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. But with righteousness, as in, he's not swayed by man like all these other false Christs are. But with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. So he's not here by accident, this Antichrist, but he is off the scene as quickly as you can pause in verse four between he will decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth...pause. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. I mean, that small space in your Bible is actually where all of us live. It's wonderful sometimes when we see that when Isaiah the prophet was looking forward in chapter 11 to the first arrival of Jesus, he didn't see the large period of time in between the first and second coming, called the Church Age. You have to turn it sideways to see it. He just saw it coming at him like this. And so he could write all of this all the way down to verse ten or verse nine, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. And in that day the nations will resort to the root of Jesse, and his resting place will be glorious. Isaiah sees it all at once, but we now are in between. And you say, where are we in between? You could just draw a little arrow in verse four where it says, he'll decide with fairness for the afflicted of the Earth...arrow, Church. He'll strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. His return. That's where you live, Christian. When we think we're like my significance, where I. Where I land, I'm just that little white spot in my Bible.  It's all about Christ.  It's all about what He came the first time to accomplish in salvation and what he's going to accomplish the second time in judgment. And in the second time we see corresponding with our text today, he does it all with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips. The wicked, including Antichrist, are slain. Corresponding to revelation four times it's mentioned the imagery of Jesus Christ in his second coming with a sword in his mouth, not one in his hand. He doesn't need it. Sorry if you've been jazzed up by like crazy renditions of the apocalypse, and Christians are standing behind him with our swords...He doesn't need us. This is how he takes care of all the wickedness and unrighteousness in the future. Revelation 1:16, In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp, two edged sword. Revelation 2:16 Jesus says, repent, or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against the wicked with the sword of my mouth. Revelation 19:15. From his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it he may strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. And he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. Revelation 19:21, and the rest were killed, the wicked, that is, with the sword which came from the mouth of him who sat on the horse. That's your future, secure in Christ, delivered from the judgment that he himself will carryout simply by speaking. That's all the effort it takes for Jesus to win. That's it. I know, strange movies about the end times have been made with fanciful imaginations, and here we just get in one verse how swiftly the Savior wins, because the Antichristhas been in his target all along.
Moving on from there to verses nine and ten. Paul moves from talking about the timetable of God's for the Antichrist, the target that the Antichrist is in to verses nine and ten...why this all is happening is because Antichrist is serving a purpose not of the Lord Jesus Christ as master, but Satan. He's against God's truth. That's the focus of nine and ten. And that's really the heart of this section is the Antichrist is coming, verse 9, in accord with the activity of Satan. What's the activity of Satan? Well, the main activity of Satan has been the same thing from when God pronounced judgment on the serpent in Genesis chapter 3. You struck at the heel. But that's one day going to strike you. That heel is going to stomp you down. And so Satan has been numbered, and Satan working through antichrists right from the beginning, all the way through those who's coming always is in accord with the activity of Satan. We have to remember when we talk about the activity of Satan, the limitations he has. He is, as Peter writes, like a prowling lion looking for someone to devour. But he's not omniscient. He's not omnipotent. He can't see the beginning from the end. He knows his end is sure. He's known his end is sure since God pronounced his judgment back in the garden. And so from that moment on, he's been working. It's not like he's waiting and trying to pick the best possible candidate for Antichrist. You know, they come before him and they audition.  No, whoever he can get and fill with wickedness in the heart and wicked plans of the mind he'll use. So first up on the list was. Who?...Cain. There's your first Antichrist. Why? What was he about to do? He was out to destroy. He was out to kill. Took his own brother's life. Why? Because Satan knew enough about the judgment pronounced in him in Genesis three, that it was through the seed of the woman that I'm going to be destroyed. Well, then I can just destroy the seed of the woman. So he tries by turning Cain against his own brother. And every time we see and it could be an individual case like that, or the crazy psychos who have tried to take over the world since then. Every time, at the behest of Satan, demon possessed, trying to kill, steal and destroy, trying to take people away from the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ by whatever means necessary. So yes, there is something to watch out for with him. I mean, he's been studying mankind since that very first day, and he's working in ways in Ephesians 6 to tell us strategies, principalities, arrangement, warlike in its structure. So he's good, but he's not God, and he's limited. Andso he can try all he can to fool people. Look at the end of verse nine. He'll do it with power because he has some power. And this power enables someone like the Antichrist to deceive with signs and wonders, to promote the false teaching, to keep people away from trusting in God. The activity of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders...it's not to say that the wonders and signs aren't real. It's that they point to error. It's they point to a lie. The NIV actually captures the best translation of verse nine. It says, he will use all sorts of displays of power. This is speaking of anti-Christ...through signs and wonders that serve the lie. Let me read that verse again. It's in the NIV, which I think shows that don't get hung up on like is it a false sign or a false wonder? No, it might be a real miracle. It might be a real evidence, something that he can conjure up through the limited but yet plausible power of Satan to deceive people with a false message, to pull them away from Christ. So he will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders to serve the lie. That's the danger of antichrists. That's the danger of false teachers who are led by the limited but persuasive power of the devil. They can do signs and wonders to serve the lies of Satan. He's not saying that these signs and wonders are like magician's tricks, but that signs and wonders promote false teaching and Antichrist spirit since the beginning till now. Think of the time of Moses, when Moses was sent to tell the people of Israel to follow him out into the wilderness. He was telling Pharaoh, a pagan man, let my people go. And God gave Moses limited power to do some signs and wonders. And so he could throw a stick down, turn into a serpent. He can make some frogs come. He could turn the blood or the water of the Nile into blood. But do you remember that Pharaoh's sorcerers were able to do the same things? It says that in Exodus 7:11,22 and 8:7, they were demon possessed wizards able to replicate. You know, what's really interesting about that is they weren't able to use their limited powers to reverse what God gave the power of Moses to do. As if to give the idea that they had more power than God. So Moses could throw his stick down, turn it into a serpent, and they could do the same, and they could turn the water into blood. And they were able to do the same, but they weren't able to undo what Moses was doing. Why? Because they didn't have more power. God was using that perhaps to sift out and say, hey, look, there might be some power here in Egypt. You really have to look and decide what's the message behind the signs and wonders. That's what it always comes down to. The message that Moses was bringing is Israel you need delivered. You are oppressed here. Come with me by faith into the wilderness. What was Pharaoh's message? No. You must stay. Trust me, it'sbetter here. Well, what's the message of the Antichrist going tobe in the future? Go with God? Put your faith in him? When times get bad, he'll bring you out of it. No, it's. Trust me. Look at my power. Look at my ability. Look what I can do on the stage of the world to lead people to what?...find happiness, joy, fulfillment away from God, Antichrist, away from truth, and all the ways in which Jesus came the first time doing signs and wonders. They rejected and crucified him as a blasphemer. In all the ways Antichrist will come and do signs and wonders with satanic lies, the world is going to do what? Rather than reject him and call him a blasphemer, they will accept him and call him God. It's not a great look for humanity, is it? When you think about getting the wrong guy. But that's the craft of Satan. That's how good he is. That the first time the Son of God comes, the real Messiah. Mankind sees the signs and wonders and Jesus knew what was in the heart of man. That's why it says in John two, right out of the gates. He does the miracle at the wedding turns water into wine. They see the sign, he manifests his glory. But by the end of chapter two, it says because of signs they were believing in him, but he wasn't believing in them. John 4:48 he says later on to the watching public, unless you too see signs, you will not believe. He knows how easily people are fooled with their eyes, which is the same for us today. Look around at churches today that talk the most about signs and wonders. Want to put out the most impressive displays for the world to watch. But this is the discernment you believers need. If whatever it is you're seeing doesn't match up with what that preacher is saying, Verse ten...a love of the truth. If sound doctrine and a clear gospel, not tainted with prosperity, not tainted with you can by your own speaking words manifest some power of God...word of faith. No matter what you see with your eyes. How big the church gets, how powerful it seems. You throw it out. That's what discernment does. Because you can say the message isn't backing up the magic...if you want to call it that. That's spiritual discernment. You have no time for it. It's rubbish. So who cares the size of that church? How many people in the movement, how many people they claim are coming to Christ because of the signs and wonders and miracles they're doing? You judge it by the test of truth. It's exactly what's there in verse ten. Why are these people perishing? They're being deceived by the wickedness of this Antichrist, faking them out because they don't receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. It always comes back to the truth and not just an intellectual agree or disagree. You see, sometimes we make it as if unbelief is just a matter of yes or no, right or wrong. But verse ten teaches us that belief is about a matter of the heart. Do you love the truth, or are you just getting caught up in the superficiality of it? Is it in your heart to love the God who first loved you by sending His Son to die for you, apart from any work of your own? The antichrist is against God's truth. I pointed out the similarities between the two and the powers and signs and wonders. But remember the difference between the real Messiah and the false Messiah. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The anti-Christ is the son of the devil. Jesus Christ is the way of truth that came down from heaven. Antichrist is from the father of lies up from hell. Jesus Christ was empowered his entire life and ministry by the Holy Spirit. The Antichrist will be empowered by the most unholy spirit, Satan. Jesus Christ was the perfect man of righteousness. Antichrist is the imperfect man of lawlessness. 1 Timothy 3:16 says, Jesus is the mystery of godliness. Antichrist is the mystery of lawlessness. Galatians 4:4 says that in the fullness of time God sent His Son to save the world. Satan has been working in all time to send an Antichrist to destroy the world. So how important is it for you to be able to discern between the two? Eternal life hangs in the balance. To know the truth. To hear the voice of Christ. And respond to the voice of the shepherd, not to a false shepherd. All the works of Antichrist will serve Satan's aim to keep people deceived and missing the message of heaven so that they perish in hell.
Last Paul wraps up in 11 and 12 is to say with somebody that is that against God's truth and in his target and his timeline is on. Clearly he's operating by his own prerogative. And no, 11 and 12 remind us that the Antichrist is being used as God's tool. Verse 11 and 12, Paul wraps up here stating a very grave consequence for those who openly reject Christ and willingly follow the lies of Antichrist, they will finally be given over to their unbelief. That's what verse 11 is about. Somebody that doesn't have the discernment to see between the two, to not get caught up on the power and signs and wonders of a false gospel.Verse 11 God will send on them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. What is Paul saying there? He's saying that God is using Antichrist as his own tool. He can use error as a tool, a tool to teach sinners who continue to reject the saving gospel, refuse to love Christ, but rather love their sin, who won't believe the truth but continue to accept lies follow a path to their own destruction. It's the path painted out very clearly in Romans chapter one. What Paul says in small part here in verse 11 about this deluding influence. He says in larger part in Romans chapter one, starting in verse 18, going all the way down to 32. It's an expansion of that simple truth there. What is it that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness of those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Those who have the clear sign, the clear message with that, to believe in Jesus Christ, to honor God, to give thanks to him. Verse 21. But instead this is the path that sinners take to their own destruction that God gives them over to. They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man. Just like we learned about an Antichrist, a person that's so full of himself puts himself on the throne and calls himself God. What is an unbeliever doing other than that every day of their life, an unbeliever who could sit under the teaching of the gospel and be told you need to be saved. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and knows oh, I trust in myself. It's an exchange happening all the time. But see what's happening. Verse 24, is God is giving over into the lust of their hearts to impurity. Exchanging the truth of God for a lie, that my life without Christ is better than with him. There's no passive rejection of truth without the active embrace of a lie. Do you know that? You don't just passively reject the offer of the gospel. It's a command. Repent and believe. And when you reject that offer of the gospel, what you're actively choosing is to live in the lie that your life is better without God. That you can make your own way without Christ. That you could be your own savior.That you have enough righteousness. And with every day that you believe that lie, you can be hardening your own heart, as it says in Romans 1:28. When you don't see fit to acknowledge God, you're given over to a depraved mind. And so what you think and how you act now become inseparably linked. So what Paul is saying in small part here is something that we need to be aware of today, that every time you sit under the teaching of the truth, but are persistent in your refusal to look to God, can lead to a permanent inability to see him at all one day, being given over in your unbelief. Because sin doesn't just want you to reject a statement of true or false, it wants to harden your heart. It wants to work on your desires. It wants to work on your will. That's back to verse ten. It wants to keep you from having a love for the truth so as to be saved. Sin wants you to be in verse 12 to not believe the truth, but continue to take more pleasure in wickedness. So I say to you who are not in Christ this morning, an unbeliever. You may think that just because you've probably heard me do this dozens of times if you've been here. Hey, look, Adam stands up there every week and tells me to come to Christ, and I'm still here. It could actually produce a hardening in your heart. A mockery like we read about in 2 Peter. Oh, yeah. The Lord's coming back. Sure. How long is that? When's that going to be? I mean, you could be getting hardened in your own seat in a church saying, oh, yeah, another Sunday has come and gone, and I'm still here. Just put another, you know, notch in your notes. Here comes another Sunday where I've waited, I got more time. I can live in my sin longer. But what you don't realize sin is doing is it's doing a hardening. It's giving you over, giving your heart over to your unbelief. But yet the offer of the gospel comes again today, where Christ offers you himself, offers you to be saved. And in that there's this softening, not a hardening. And the softening comes out of a love for the truth. And what is that truth?...that God sent his son to die in my place. There's nothing that could soften you more than the simplicity of the gospel that I, the sinner, deserve to perish. I, the sinner, deserve God's wrath. And this holy God sends his holy Son to suffer in my place, to be rejected, to be reviled, to be crucified on a cross. But he rises again three days later, and he gives hope to all who would die, put their faith in him...die to self...will be raised with him on the last day. Life eternal, forgiven sin offered to you right now on the person of Jesus Christ.
We're going to move to a time of communion after I pray right now, but I want to offer that warning to any here today before I pray that if you're under the burden of sin, guilt, apathy, or anger to God, don't turn the Lord's table into a time of judgment on you because you've been rejecting him, but turned it into a time of grace.  Because this morning you asked the Lord to save you.You cry out to him for mercy, and he gives you new life in himself. And you could celebrate his body and his blood broken and poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you this morning for your grace and kindness in Christ. And we see no better picture of it then in remembering in communion today, remembering that you offered yourself. It wasn't some other sacrifice that couldn't permanently take away our sin. You offered yourself in our place. Your blood, as we sang earlier, was poured out as a pleasing sacrifice to you, Father. You accepted it so that we could know today, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our sins are forgiven. And there's some in here today that don't know that. They need to respond to your call to come to you, that you stand at the door and knock, and any that hear your voice and open the door, you'll come in to dine with them. Therefore they need to be zealous and repent, and only you can grant that repentance to them. Today we ask you to do it. Help us now as your children, your sons and daughters who have invited you in. You do sit at the meal with us to take and eat, because you are the bread from heaven. You're the water of life. You're everything we need. We abide in you. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Growing in End Times Discernment

Download transcript

Please turn to 2 Thessalonians 2. And as you do that, I just want to get us thinking about the word discernment. That's what we'll see today in the text, as Paul is trying to help these Thessalonian believers grow in their discernment of the end times. But the emphasis I just want to put on it at the beginning is for us to continually see the need for growing in discernment. It wasn't just enough that this church, when Paul wrote to them, initially had discernment from the beginning, thanks to their attentiveness to the Word and growing in it. But they were growing in discernment. And if you're new to Christianity or just knowing what is discernment, it's the ability to distinguish God's truth from the error...error of man, which is rooted in the lies of the father of lies, Satan. And it's not just about the ability to discern it, to say, okay, that's right, that's wrong, that's true, that's false, but then to take it and apply it in your daily life. What good would it be to just recognize the error and recognize the truth, but not to actually put it into practice when those distinctions are made? So it's of utmost importance that we as individual believers and as a church, grow up into all that God would have us to be in Christ. That's Paul's words in Ephesians 4, when he says that we're to attain to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As in, God didn't just want to save us and then leave us pygmy Christians...to leave us as little toddlers. Why? Because if you look in verse 14 of Ephesians 4, we'll be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Well, that's the danger of not growing up, not maturing in your discernment that you're going to get knocked over by the waves of every wind of false doctrine, just like if you took your kid to the beach and your toddler ran out and just got crushed by that first wave. It happens, but worse would be to stand there and do nothing and not pull them out, but let them get swept out to the sea and just tossed to and fro. And that's a church that doesn't help its people grow in discernment doctrinally. It's that they're just constantly going to be taken back and forth with every wind of change that blows throughout society, from the prince of the power of darkness, from the father of lies...the prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2 calls him. When we're dead in our sins and trespasses, working in the sons of disobedience...how do we stand against that? We have to be anchored in the truth of the Word of God, and grow in our discernment. Throughout the Bible, the ability to discern is extolled as a mark of a mature person who is going to be useful for God. In Exodus 18, Moses a great leader in his own time was sinking, though in the quicksand of solo leadership. He couldn't lead the people of Israel by himself. So his father in law, Jethro comes to him and says, hey, you need a little bit of help. You need to find some guys to help you lead these people. But you can't just pick any type of guy. He says in Exodus 18:21, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God...a man of faith, men of truth, who hate dishonest gain, those you'll place as the leaders. He's looking for those who are going to be men of truth who could recognize right from wrong. Not just that...moving on to the life of David. Maybe the next greatest leader in the history of Israel.And as he is rising to power, Saul is on his way out. They're moving on from him. The tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes, are recognizing he is the one we need to follow. So they're sending David leaders even before he's anointed as king. And in 1 Chronicles 12, of all the 12 tribes, it says this about the sons of Issachar, verse 32, 1 Chronicles 12...Men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do. Those are the ones who were appointed in charge. So it's not just to be someone of the truth, Exodus 18:32. To mature and grow in the faith is to be somebody that knows the times that they're living in, can take that truth and apply it in their situation. Matthew 16, when Jesus is, uh, questioned by the religious leaders of his day, of his deity. They're wondering in Matthew 16 if He would show them a sign. And his response to them is a rebuke that he's been around for two years. They have seen his signs that he was the Son of God sent to save the world. And so this is his judgment on them. He says in Matthew 16:2, you know, when it's evening, you say, it will be fair weather. You know the sky is red. And in the morning there will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening. So you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times. Judgment over men in his age...religious leaders. The most knowledgeable of them all, who couldn't discern the signs of the days that they lived in. And then we get to 1 Thessalonians, what we've been studying. And in 1 Thessalonians 5, at the end of this letter, one of the final exhortations Paul gives to this church in verse 21 and 22. Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil, 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22. A mature church is one who can separate the good from the bad, the lies from the truth. People who are going to lead in the church and grow in the church into the fullness of Christ, have to know the truth. Know the times. Discern the days therein. And so Paul, here in 2 Thessalonians 2 moves onto a new subject, and the need to discern is about the end times. Because false teaching had come into this church in the few months that he had been gone, even after he had written that first letter, and had started to confuse the minds and terrify the hearts of these people. It was a threat. And that's what was at stake then, and it's still at stake today when we talk about having discernment and look to the scriptures. It's not just about knowing what's in here. It's about what knowing what's going on out there. Bishop JC Ryle said it like this. "The men of Issachar are set before us as a pattern to be imitated, and an example to be followed, for it is a most important thing to understand the times in which we live, and to know what those times require. Our Lord Jesus Christ blamed the Jews because they did not know the time of their visitation and did not interpret. Let us take heed lest we fall into the same sin. Next to our Bible on our own hearts our Lord would have us to study our own times." So that's what we're here to do today. That's what we're here to do every week. Hear from God's word. Let it examine our hearts so that we can rightly understand the days in which we live.
Let's read 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5 and see Paul address their need to be growing in end times discernment. "Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message, or a letter, as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has already come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first. And the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?" Jesus said in Mark 4, "he who has ears to hear, listen up. For what you measure out will be measured back to you. May we listen up this morning, Father.Amen.
In this text, Paul just described the threats regarding the end times that these people were facing confusion of the mind, anxiety of the heart, and deception of the soul.  Yet the solution was single...Biblical discernment. And as we walk through the text today, you see that breakdown between thinking and feeling and knowing. That's how the text progresses. And you have to ask yourself wherever you sit today, where has your thinking been? What have you been feeding it? Has it been shaken up? As you look at the decline in the society around us. And then your heart...where has that been? Has it been uneasy, irritated, agitated by what you're taking in here and getting down to there? And to fight these thoughts and feelings, Paul is going to take us to what we know. As he says in verse five, don't you remember what I taught you? Because you just can't live in the world of what you think is true or what you feel is true. It's got to be rested on what you know is true...your convictions. And that's the setup for the day. That's the way Paul is going to move it. But those actions then will lead to the way we live different in light of Christ's return. From thinking to feeling to knowing then to doing, to living it out.

And friends, when I say how we're to live in light of the return of Christ, I'm not talking about, you know, who has bought the five year supply of my Patriot survival meals. It's not going to be the application for today. The application is can you take what the text of the Word of God says? Let it minister to your soul this morning and as a result, live in light of the return of Jesus Christ. As Paul ends in 2 Timothy 4, loving his appearance, looking forward to the crown of righteousness that you'll receive for fighting the good fight, for finishing the course, for keeping the faith. Is that what you want? And we need to take heed today what Paul has to say. First, you must grow in discernment of your thinking and feeling, verses one and two. Paul moves to a new subject when he says, now, as in listen up, I request of you brothers and sisters. I've got something new to say here. And it's with regard to the coming, the parousia, the return. The personal appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him. Those are the same event. He comes back. We go to him. I've already taught you this back in 1 Thessalonians 4. You could even flip back there to be reminded of it, because he's having to remind them of it. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed back in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 about those who fell asleep who have died. You don't need to grieve for them because they're going to rise when he returns, and we're all going to meet him in the air at the same time. They were uninformed, they were ignorant, and he filled in their understanding. But since the time that he wrote the first letter, false teaching had come in and was twisting them up in their minds. And that's the word you get there in verse two, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure. That's a word for your mental capacity. You have gone from being reasonable to unreasonable...thinking about the end. You have gone from being rational to irrational because you've taken your minds off the truths of what I've taught you. Paul warns, your mind is turned on a dime. You have been swiftly shaken, quickly confused. And I need to flip this thing back around. That word shaken from composure. It's used also in Acts 16, talking about the jail when the earthquake came to free Paul from...it was shaken. That's the imagery here that your mind that should be guarded and protected by the Word of God, by the Word of Christ dwelling richly within you when you take your mind off the Word. As 1 Peter 1:13 says, when you don't tuck in the loose ends of your thinking, gird up the loins of your mind like a warrior going into battle so he doesn't trip over his robe. When you don't do that, this is the result. You're shaken. And we're the same. When our minds aren't planted firmly on the ground of God's Word, but in mid-air, we get blown by winds of deception quickly. Rumors are flying around...the 8 to 8. What's going in on 127. Hannah's barbecue bid us farewell. Sign goes up. Something new is coming to town. Rumors start to fly. Another Aldi, maybe a Trader Joe's. John Krick has plans to put in a Great Wolf Lodge. But my discerning wife jumps on the internet and pokes around. She finds out. We're getting four more Dollar Generals right in a row. Get my toothpaste there...paper towels there. I mean, just what a gift. But it's just the way we are. We latch on to a half truth and it sweeps us away. So the first thing to go in our lack of discernment is our thinking. Because we let those truths rain down upon our minds. But see, like water trickling onto that patchy roof, it finds its way down into the attic and then into the...and then it goes down...that's how it works here with these believers. They're shaken in mind, which leads them to be disturbed. And that word disturbed is now a word for our feeling. It's a state of fear. It's root verb was to wail or to cry. And so you could see that picture of the lies that pour over their heads and seep into the fearful caverns of their hearts. And that's how it works. It's a freefall...that 18in from here to here (head to heart). But when it hits, then you're flooded with all this anxiety and worry and concern because you hadn't stopped it where it should stop...right there (mind). You haven't been grounded in the truth. And so you're swept away, as Ephesians 4 said by some, some doctrine blowing into town. But then it blows up your heart and it doesn't come out of nowhere. There's a means to it. Paul identifies it there in verse two. It's either by a spirit or a message or a letter, as if from us. He's saying it could be any one of these things, or it could have been all three. I mean, the scenario could have been some so-called apostle rolls into Thessalonica. Self-proclaimed prophet might have been really charismatic, a good speaker, and when Paul was gone, in the absence of his presence and leadership, this 'anointed' speaker comes in and really interesting to listen to tickling their ears. And so his message was, hey, I don't know if you're paying attention, guys. The affliction, the persecution, the day of the Lord...it's already here. That was the message. He might have even is because it says even a letter said, hey, I've got I've got a letter here from Paul. Christ already came. So he says it could be any of these three. And later, at the end of this letter, Paul has to write verse 17...if you look at the end of 2 Thessalonians. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. And this is a distinguishing mark in every letter. This is the way I write. He has to put that in there. Why? Because there were false teachers, false apostles, self-proclaimed prophets coming in and saying, I got a word from Paul. Look, the letter is here. And he says, no, no, no, this is my mark. This is my letter. This explains what was going on in this situation. False teachers claiming a word from God about the end were misleading the Thessalonians, confusing their minds and confounding their hearts all because they thought they were in the day of the Lord. Now, if you remember when we talked about the day of the Lord back in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 5:1-11, the day of the Lord was not, as we might initially think, a good thing to look forward to if you're in it. Because in the Old Testament, particularly the Minor prophets, it was associated with...a preachers paradise of alliterated words that begin with D... Doom, destruction, devastation, darkness, all of it. That's how the day of the Lord is described in the Old Testament. Because now God is returning not for salvation and redemption, but in judgment and retribution. And we learned that last week...that those who will be here when Jesus Christ returns with his mighty, mighty angels in flaming fire, verse 8, dealing out retribution to those who don't know God and those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus. So imagine the Thessalonians now believing the idea that he's already come. They've been left behind. They're in the day of the Lord. Awful enough, right? But added to what they think now they're going to face when it comes to the judgment of God, is that they would be questioning their own salvation. Why? Well look back to 1 Thessalonians 5, because he's been setting the whole day of the Lord up like this. You're not going to see it coming, and people will think it's peace and safety. And he tells the Christians in 1 Thessalonians 5, brothers and sisters, you're not in darkness that that day is going to overtake you like a thief. You're the sons of light and sons of day. You're not of the night. So he's been telling them. They've been hearing from him. Hey, the clear line is you're in the light. You're in Christ, or you're in the darkness. You're not in Christ. So if you're left behind for the day of the Lord, what conclusion might you come to? That you're not in Christ. So on top of the anxiety of thinking, now you're in for the judgment, the tribulation...you no longer are saved. You were never saved to begin with because they would have just thought back. Verse 5:8...since we are of the day, let's be sober. Put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for salvation. But if I miss the day of the Lord, if he came back and I'm still here, then I haven't obtained salvation. And I am destined for wrath. So does it make sense now why they would have been so shaken up by allowing that false teaching of the return of Christ already happening to pervade their thinking, get into their feeling...they're stuck. So what could they do about it? How did Paul advise them to grow in end times discernment?

He addressed their thinking and their feeling. Verses three through five he gets to their knowing and doing. This is the way out. The way isn't to think your way out or feel your way out. It's to know what God has said about the return of Christ. So let's go into verse 3. He starts out and says, let no one in any way deceive you. That's the issue. It's always the issue with false teaching in the church...that you've let someone because of some credibility you've granted them, whatever platform this person has that make you think you can trust their teaching. He says, no, it's not about the man. So let no man, let no one. You don't show partiality. Doesn't matter who this guy said he was. You don't let the person and in any way deceive you. It doesn't matter the method. He says he's spirit anointed. He said he has a message...a word from the Lord. He could say that all he wants. He could say he has a letter from me. But if it doesn't accord with what I've already told you, it's out. Should we have any different attitude today towards the Word of God and what we hear proclaimed from pulpits? Can it be backed up with this? If it can't, it's out. It's out. It doesn't matter the man or in our day and age, the woman preacher that has some massive following, millions of followers, writing books, best seller. Generally speaking, I would have said like the best selling section in, you know, Barnes and Noble, but I would tend to say avoid that. Goto our bookstore not because we need the money, but we vetted those books. We're not just putting them up there because they're Christian by name. But that's the attitude we have to have. Let no one...it doesn't matter the person. In every way...it doesn't matter the delivery deceive you when it comes to how you are thinking about the return of Christ. And that word deceive...just let's pause there for a moment, because we are up against it when it comes to being deceived. But it's not unique to our time period. Deception has been the issue since day one. Or should I say the day that Satan came in the garden to deceive Adam and Eve...from the beginning. That was the first issue...deception. Satan is the deceiver. He's the liar. And we have to know that when we look at this word deceive, Paul uses it six places in the New Testament. He's the only one that uses it, and he uses it in four different ways. And we need to know these ways, because these are all the ways that we can be deceived. I just want to give you a brief, you know, pull the car over to highlight how dangerous it is to not grant that you could be deceived as a believer...when you realize how many different ways it works against you. Four ways. Six times he uses it and he highlights four different ways we're deceived.
The first one is we're deceived by Satan because he's the source. Lies just don't come out of thin air. He's the father of lies. He's been doing it from the beginning. So Satan, Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 11:3. You could write it down. You could turn there if you want. Paul wrote, I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. What's he saying there? When it comes to being deceived, the starting point is always trying to take a believer and pull them away from keeping their eyes fixed on who?...Christ. Christ is always the issue. And that's the last person Satan wants you to look to because he's the source of our salvation. He'll get your mind on anybody else, anything else except what Paul says here simplicity and devotion to Christ. He disguises himself as an angel of light. He fools us into thinking just like he did with Eve. Hey, is that what God's Word really said? Don't you want to be like God? You know that issue you're going through is a really difficult one. Maybe the Bible isn't the final word on it. You know, you're a 2024 person...educated. Are you really going to trust this ancient book when you have the spirit in you? You know...you're created in the image of God. How reliable is this? Taking you away from simplicity and purity and devotion to Christ and His Word? It's the first way we're deceived, according to Paul.
The second way...Romans 7:11 is we're deceived by sin. What's Satan doing when he's trying to deceive you with error? He's trying to lead you to sin and sin, Romans 7:11 says, sin takes an opportunity through the commandment deceives me and through it kills me. Wow. Think about that. Paul is saying that sin deceives us by doing the opposite with the law that we would expect, rather than us draw closer to God. Sin uses the law to distance us from God. So how does he do that? Well, back to simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. If you define your relationship to God by the law and not by Christ, that's where it divides. If you define your relationship to God by your keeping of the law, as if that's where your righteousness is found. Above being found in who?...Jesus Christ and his righteousness. That's what Paul is saying in Romans 7:11. Sin takes the opportunity through the command, deceives me, and through it killed me. Why? Because it takes the law and it says, yea, run after the law. Keep the law. You just keep all the commandments, just like that rich young ruler did and came to Christ and said, I've done it all. And he's staring in the face of the Son of God, the Messiah. But he doesn't see him. He sees I'm good with God because of how good I am. And Christ says no. You're good with God because of how perfect I was. It's not you. But that's the deception satanwants to use, even the Word of God. For some of you today that you've defined your relationship to God your whole life by the law and not by Christ. And so the more you keep it, the better you are with them. When you have a bad day, the worse you are with them. Never once thinking, where does Christ fit into this? It's his righteousness alone that I will stand before the throne one day. Just as what was heard in the testimony, Florence said it...I'm in Christ. He's my salvation. I look forward to seeing him.
Third we're deceived by self. 1 Corinthians 3:18...Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he might become wise. What's this foolishness we must become? It's not the foolishness that goes out and believes lies out there and acts foolishly on the weekends. He's saying the foolishness is the kind that says, wait, I'm going to believe that the Messiah willingly gave himself up to die? That message, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, is a message of foolishness to the wise of this world. It's a message of weakness to the strong in this world. But to us who are being saved, it's the power of God, and it's the wisdom of God. And if the rulers of this world would have understood that, they would not have crucified their Messiah. But we get deceived by our own self exalting pride. And if we don't have the Word of God to correct us and we don't have disciplers around us, perspective is the gift you can't give to yourself, friend. How do you know you're deceived? That's its whole point. You don't. But look how much is working against you. Satan, the father of lies. Sin using the word against you. Self thinking you've got it figured out on your own.
And then the fourth dimension. Maybe I can trust a preacher. I'm going to keep alliterating with S. So I'm going to say the fourth way we're deceived is speakers, not these kind, this kind. Romans 16:18...Paul's talking about false teachers. He says such men are slaves not of our Lord Jesus Christ, but of their own appetites. And by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. False teachers deceive us. Notice what Paul said there...by sugarcoated speech, not by the bitter pill of absolute truth.
So what are you up against when it comes to being deceived? Do you think it was a pretty simple matter...a true/false test? It's multiple choice. Which one are you going to pick?...Satan, Sin, self, speakers coming at you from four directions, the walls closing in. But if you're grounded in the Word of God, if you know, like Paul is saying to these Thessalonians, if you know and remember what I taught you when I was with you, and I told you verse five, you won't be deceived in any way. So then in verse three, he tells them two truths about the end that he had taught them, that they needed to remember what they needed to know in order to live rightly. And the first truth is there in verse three, under what you need to know, the day of the Lord will not come unless the apostasy comes first.

Truth number one, for the end...the day of the Lord won't come till the apostasy comes first. What's the apostasy? Well, just defining it Biblically. It's a word that meant to defect or to revolt or to rebel, whether on a widespread or personal level to rise up in open defiance of authority, with the presumed intention to overthrow that authority. It's the Greek word for toddler. It was heavy for a while there, so I had to lighten it up. I mean, we were we were moving. So the apostasy is this time period where the way of the world has just shifted entirely to a time of total rebellion and revolt against the law of God. If you want a longer treatment of this, I think it was last year. It was last week. We said the longer treatment of 1 Thessalonians 1: 6-10 is Revelation. If you want to take this section and spend some more time with it this week, you can go to Matthew 24. I'm just going to go to it briefly, but Matthew 24 would be really the teaching of Jesus himself about the end...called the Olivet Discourse. Which would have been the basis for the apostolic instruction going around to the churches about the return of Christ, which Paul would have been aware of. And so Matthew 24, you want to mark in your Bibles as something to be familiar with when you want the truth about the day of the Lord, the end times. And it was instigated by Jesus with his disciples. After he has called out the Pharisees, cleansed the temple, wept over Jerusalem because it was an empty grave. There was nothing left there. I mean, he was broken over Jerusalem. He looked at the temple and he saw nothing. Because all they knew was that they were right because of their law keeping. They didn't need one to keep the law for them. And so he's talking about the end. He says, hey guys, one day, verse two of Matthew 24, every stone here is going to be turned on one another. And his disciples say, hey, um, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? And so imagine this, the warning right there. Jesus says, see to it when you're thinking about the end, guys see to it that no one deceives you, misleads you. Many are going to come first and foremost in my name...notice that...how many false religions are out there today using his name? They'll come in my name saying I am the Christ and mislead many. And we've had people throughout history believe they were Jesus. They're all dead. Then he says, you'll hear of wars and rumors of wars. Don't be frightened. These all are going to take place. It's not the end yet. Verse seven nationagainst nation and kingdom against kingdom, various places, famines and earthquakes. Here's the key...all these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs. And after that is the day of the Lord. So Paul is telling these Thessalonians, look, until all of this is ramping up for my return. It's not the day of the Lord yet. So wars, natural disasters, fake religious teachers, false believers, it's all going to happen and it'll continue to happen. I mean, even today we hear about the calamity in the world and think, is this the end? And I mean, one thing we continually have to remind ourselves is we have 24/7 access to hear about all the bad news unlike any generation prior. Of course, we're going to be on edge. I remember growing up, there was a newspaper that I would go to the sports section, of course, and then there was on the back page, they would have a picture of the world, a map, and all it would have was these little symbols for like a hurricane or an earthquake or a coup or something. I mean, it was it was just the bad news section. And as a 12 year old, I was fascinated by it. And, it made me, like, try to find it. I was hunting it down this week and I thought it was USA today. So I go on USA today's website on Thursday and lo and behold, what do I find?...doom and gloom. I mean, what changes, whether it was 30 years ago, in my childhood or three days ago? This is it. You land on their page. Here's our headlines. I mean, save the world's oldest person dies at 117, smiling, free and satisfied. A bunch of bad news that you would have no idea what was going on unless you had what?...access all the time to hear it. And I'm not saying this to to make light of what's happening today. I'm just saying, I mean, in our lifetime, in the last few years, today, last week, last month, any given week, you could pull this up. And this is how it is. I was trying to find an article, even by a guy named Kevin DeYoung. I've referenced him before. He's a pastor down in Charlotte...great writer. And I remember reading an article a few years ago where he said, don't, don't catastrophize all the catastrophes. Okay. Relax...sort of. But he wrote it, so I found it and it was dated July 13th, 2016. And this was his intro to this article. "Last week was a hard week...a very hard week. Sadly, there could be harder weeks to come. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling a mix of sadness, exhaustion, fear and confusion. There is so much hurt, so much grief, so many layers, so many storylines, so many different voices clamoring for our attention. How can we possibly process everything that's going on in our world?" I was like, wow....July 13th, 2016. I couldn't think of one thing, can you? I mean according to Kevin DeYoung, and he is not a sensationalist. It was a very bad time. So I did what you're probably thinking of doing on your phone right now. What was so bad in July 2016? And I found an article with the headline ten World Changing Events in July 2016. Isis Attacks in Iraq, France and Germany, a mass stabbing in Japan, a cop killing in Dallas, a coup in Turkey. And brace yourselves...a Gallup poll that revealed Americans believe the US nominated the two least popular candidates in history. Relax. Okay. Eight years ago, we thought we had the two worst candidates in history. One of them's still out there. I say this with all love and sincerity. Like when you are given access all the time, to all the bad news and all the places of the world...this is how your mind. Right? It starts there. And then it gets to your heart. And you've got to be a good steward of what you let your little eyes see and ears listen to. Otherwise it's going to spin you out. But you get grounded when you know the truth about the return of the Lord, don't you? Now here's something that's pretty amazing in Matthew 24. Um, when you connect it to 2 Thessalonians 2:3, he says, the end isn't here until the apostasy. All this bad stuff, the world going to hell in a handbasket. But then listen to this in Matthew 24:14...the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. So the two points that we have to look for to identify when it comes to the end... apostasy and the gospel going to the ends of the earth...something unfathomably awful and unimaginably good. And they're going to coincide that the end is now here. That this apostasy and this man of lawlessness we'll get to is going to happen. But this really amazing thing is, in all that time, as bad as it gets, the gospel keeps going forth. And that's according to Jesus' words when the end will come. So I was just meditating on that picture...world getting worse...Gospel keeps going. Who wins? And my favorite moment of the Olympics came to mind. Sha'Carri Richardson gets the baton last leg of the 4x100 in the ladies race. She's behind and just cruises right on by. And then turns and gives the...humm... I gave the same face to Kurtis this morning. I was on 70 going past Walmart. I got the green light. He's coming up 4th.  He gets the red and I see his Honda to the side and I go mm. It's the only race I've ever beat Kurtis in.

But I love that juxtaposition, the contrasting nature of the time leading up to the end. The finish line is in sight and in one lane is apostasy and rebellion and persecution. And in the other lane is the gospel of Jesus Christ and his promises that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church. It's awesome...that it has to come down to the wire like that. It's awful for the world. But isn't that a sign of the kindness of God? That as bad as it's getting, he is pushing us to keep going. He's leaving us here, so it keeps going. And if we stop doing our mission, I mean, it's kind of one of those things I'm sure some of you guys, you know, like to. So wait a second. If we just kind of all stop preaching the gospel, like he'll never return? It just says the gospel has to be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end comes. So that's the order of operations, this great apostasy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, but also the proliferation of the gospel.
Truth number two, besides the Great Apostasy, is the apostate one, the worst of the worst, the man of lawlessness. Verse three. The son of Destruction, the man who thinks he's God...all of verse four. He behaves with complete disregard for the laws of society. He is driven by an idea of complete autonomy to do whatever he wants to do. He has no love for God, no love for God's law, no love for Christ. That is the God hating spirit of this man of lawlessness. He is the Antichrist of all antichrists. 1 John 2:18. John, writing 40 years after this letter, has seen some Antichrists come already. And what does he say? Children, it's the last hour which should give us pause. It's been the last hour since 90 A.D.. It's a small time, isn't it?...an hour. When we think of the return of Christ. And it's been that way, according to the apostle John, since a couple of decades after Jesus went back. He says, children, it's the last hour. And just as you heard, that Antichrist is coming. Yeah. The teaching of Paul back in 2 Thessalonians, Matthew 24, um, even now many antichrists have appeared and from which we know it's the last hour, and it's going to be people that go out from us that aren't really of us. And so this is who the Antichrist is. And we continually see attempts at guys like this in history. Demonic inspired dictators who think they're so-called gods and they're gone. God allows them to be raised up, but he also. They're gone...every one of them. But this guy is anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-moral, anti-law. His lawless behavior will know no end. He's called the Son of destruction. And that's the emphasis of Son of Destruction. Is not so much the destruction he causes, but that he will be destroyed. John MacArthur defines him this way. I couldn't improve upon it, so I'm just going to put it up. "The expression son is of a Hebraism indicating a close association or of the same kind, just as a son shares his father's nature. So this man is going to share the nature of destruction. The Antichrist will be so completely devoted to the destruction of all that relates to God's purpose and plan, that he can be said to be destruction personified. He, however, belongs to destruction as the one to be destroyed. He is fixed for punishment and judgment. He is human trash for the garbage dump of hell."  And we don't have to fear him. We don't have to fear the apostasy. We don't operate out of fear. Why don't we operate out of fear? Because John says we've come to know and believe the love which God has for us. By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment. Because as he is, so also are we in this world...protected...delivered. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. And the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. Is there any greater remedy for your mind and heart and soul this morning than knowing you are kept in Christ...protected, and nothing can pull you from the love of God in Christ...nothing. That's the confidence that the believer operates out of, no matter how bad it gets, how lawless society gets. If you wanted more Old Testament about this Antichrist, this lawless man, this son of destruction, if you want the language of the exalting of himself, we go back to Daniel. We were there last....I don't know how many years ago now. Daniel 7 says he'll speak out against 7:25. This this antichrist, this man of lawlessness will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the highest one, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in the law. Remember we talked about that then? He's going to be so bold as to want to change time itself. He's going to change all the laws. He's the ultimate defierof authority. There is nothing he won't tear down for the sake of his own exaltation, but he'll sell it to the people. And for three and a half years, have everybody duped because he will be the ultimate freedom fighter. That's appealing for people to hear that, isn't it? This...we're free people. Well, it has to come at the cost of some kind of law. No laws, no authority, noconsequences...a new society where nobody can tell me I'm wrong for following my corrupted desires. A lawless leader leading a lawless world with one result...pure what?...anarchy. A rebellion and riot like never before imagined. And you say that could never happen. People can never buy it. Really? Have you listened to some speeches of late? Highlighting, extolling freedom, but talking about a lawless way of society? Because you are about you. No we're not. We're Christs, all of us...body, mind and soul. We belong to him. So when you hear speeches that extol this idea of self exaltation, self-governance. What's it point towards?...lawlessness. But somebody could sign it off saying God bless America. I could use the name of God to sell a lawless vision for the future. Matthew 7:21-23 and I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. You can claim the name of Christ. You can sign off your words with saying, God bless. But if you have made a practice of lawlessness, if that's your vision for the future, if that's where you think freedom is found, you will hear in that last day...depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness, 1 John 3:4.
So I would just say to any in here today, if sin is the regular practice of your life, I'm talking about the regular practice...1 John 3:4. Then lawlessness is the word that fits your lifestyle. Now here's the reality. Romans 3 says that we're all guilty. We all fall short of the glory of God. We're all lawbreakers. But what you need to do is trace the fruits of your lawless, sinful behavior to the root of the biggest problem, which is your lovelessness for Christ. Because Jesus says, if you love me, you'll do what? You'll keep my commandments. So we're back to not letting sin deceive us with the law. Oh, so I just need to be right by keeping more of the law? No, you need to be right by recognizing the reason you don't want to obey authority of any form, let alone the highest authority. That's because you don't love the Lord. And if you love him, you want to keep his commandments. That's how it works. It comes from the heart. So is your heart devoted to Christ this morning? Do you love him? And do you love him because he first loved you? We're back there again, aren't we? It's recognizing what he did for you in the gospel that will drive out any fear you have this morning if you're not in Christ. Uh, this isn't a hellfire and damnation sermon. This isn't about scaring people into heaven. It doesn't work that way. You win them to heaven. You compel them to come in. That's the invitation. If you're not in Christ today, come in. All the preparations are ready, Luke 14:23. All of it's been done. Come now to Christ.  Everything is ready, Christ said.  The great marriage banquet of the lamb to the bride is going to be ready. He's prepared everything. Don't you dare think you can bring something. It would offend the master. You don't bring nothing. You come. You come to Christ saying, I've got nothing to bring to this. And he says, exactly. Welcome in. You come. You don't stay. He has everything, you have nothing. And he says, do it now. Don't wait. So come to Christ if you don't know him. Surrender your life to him now. Plead for mercy to forgive your sins so you can live forever with him. That's the glorious good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The greatest news there is. And if you are in Christ, when's the last time you've taken that same good news to people today who are anxious, who are confused, who are worried? And you sit and listen to them. You let them share their heart. And then can you say, I've got some good news to tell you? It doesn't have to end this way. You can come. I've got an invitation from the master for you.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace in our lives. The grace that we find in Jesus Christ alone, who delivers us from the wrath to come. We thank you that as your children, we have nothing to fear. We are held in you, protected and provided for eternally. So we praise your name this morning. Christ. You are our all. All of our salvation. All of our righteousness. You kept the law perfectly. You loved the Father perfectly. And you offer it to us in yourself. Thank you for your kindness and mercy and grace. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Growing through Affliction

Download transcript

This letter that we started last week, 2 Thessalonians, was written by the Apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonica. Silvanus and Timothy were his missionary buddies that he helped found this church in Acts 17 around A.D. 50, and it was the capital of Macedonia. It was located on a major east west highway cutting across the Roman Empire. It was a political and commercial powerhouse of the region, and it had immediate success. Paul gets there. Acts 17 starts preaching the gospel in the synagogues, and some Jews convert and then preaching to Gentiles...converted. And yet at the same time, quickly the enemy moves and the jealous Jews come and persecute Paul and his friends and to run them out of town. And so they weren't there very long, maybe just a few weeks. And on to the next city. Paul goes, and the gospel continues to go forth in their second missionary journey. And so we get 1 Thessalonians as a letter written by Paul to check on that church. And we studied that last spring, and then we took a little break this summer. And here we are back in 2 Thessalonians, picking up where Paul left off, which is to check up on this growing church  They're a good church.  They're grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're growing in him. They understand that the heartbeat of the faith is faith, love and hope. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, love for God and the saints, and hope of his return. However, there was opposition and that opposition is he's writing about in this letter came in two ways. The first one was persecution from the outside. And that's really what chapter one is about in totality, is the opposition that this church was facing by being persecuted and afflicted, as we left off in verse four last week. And we'll pick up today in verses 5 to 12. Chapter two then moves on, not to the threat on the outside, but a threat on the inside. And the church always faces threats on the inside by way of false teaching. And chapter two is dedicated by Paul to clarify some false teaching regarding the day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ. And so he has to deal with that matter and the rebellion of Antichrist in chapter two. And so if opposition from the outside or confusion on the inside, if either of those kind of suit your fancy for what you think about when you think about your place in the church today, and maybe some of the things that weigh you down, you'll find yourself right at home in this letter. Because those are the two major issues Paul is dealing with. And then for chapter three, that's more of an exhortation that comes out of the first two chapters by way of, hey, with this persecution and opposition and longing for the return of Jesus, don't be so heavenly minded that you become no earthly good. As in, if you knew Jesus Christ or believed he was coming back tomorrow, you might not show up for your job because you want to share the gospel with everybody. But if you're kind of living in a perpetual state of he is coming back, not quite sure, and you quit your job, you might be leaning on other Christians a little too much, and that's really what he has to address in chapter three. But we're in chapter one today. And so let's look there. And we looked at the greeting last week. It was a familiar greeting. And Paul's writing to a good church where he blesses them. He says he's thankful for them. He shows that connection between grace and gratitude we talked about...when you recognize God's grace in your life, the instinctual response that should be cultivated in us is a response of gratitude. Because when we see grace, we should want to say thank you. Thank you to God first and foremost. But we also can thank the people around us. And that's just a good principle in life to live by. It doesn't have to limit itself to the church. At your employment as a student, in your homes, with your parents kids, recognizing the grace that you've been shown and then saying thank you for it and looking for it, will bless you far more than being what?...ungrateful and a critic. That's not going to get you anywhere. That'll just leave you in this place of always feeling everybody owes everything to you...when you forget it, you know...what am I actually owed in the big picture of life? And yet, what has Christ delivered me from? And so that's Paul's heartbeat as he opens this letter. And then look at verse four. He said, therefore we ourselves, I'm so thankful for you. I'm spreading proudly the word about you guys growing to many churches. Why? And it zeroes in on this. And this is where we'll pick up today...for your perseverance and faith in the midst of persecutions and afflictions which you endure. And so that's where we'll pick up today from verses 5 to 12 is to say, what does it look like for a church to grow through affliction? I'm not talking about general suffering. The you know, things that are, you know, in the largest category of trials in life. Not to say those are unimportant, but that the particular language Paul uses here in verse four is about when Christians face persecution, which is the the opposition from the outside, and then he connects it to a word affliction, which is the actual challenge you face in your heart. What is it that afflicts you? What's the force of it that hits you? And he puts these two ideas together and he says, you're a growing church. And I know this because you're persevering in faith through it. So let's hear him encourage this church in their growing through affliction in verses 5 to 12. Follow along with me as I read.
"This", referring to persecution and affliction which they're enduring.  "This is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment, so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all, it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted, and to us as well. When the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God. And to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power when he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed for our testimony to you was believed. To this end, also, we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Father, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light unto our path, and in the present darkness of our day, how we need that light. So, spirit, illuminate Your word to our hearts. Enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we can behold Christ by faith, and be encouraged in him today to live for his glory. We ask in his name. Amen.
If you and I were to sit down this week in the comfortable environs of a Third Wave coffee shop and grab a nice single origin pour over. In those perfect environs in that comfortable setting, wouldn't it be most appropriate for me to ask you this poignant question coming out of the text today? Are you ready for it? Yes. What does it mean to be persecuted for Jesus Christ in America in 2024? And he would just take that nice long sip and say, um, let me think about that. Persecution in America in 2024. Uh, would you mind turning on the AC? Turn the AC up a little bit. You know, this heat wave is still going. Can we change the music? I'm ready to answer this question about persecution, but I need the right vibe. Look, I'm not saying we don't face persecution in America in 2024, but it is good when we talk about this type of persecution that the Thessalonians were facing...life on the line, persecution and affliction. That it does call us to attention...just a quick side route today, just pulling the car over to say, let's answer that question, remembering the greater discussion, because we don't want to go so off the path of like, let's talk about persecution across the world. But it does help us to remember what persecution and affliction is like in Paul's time by connecting it to countries today like Nigeria, where it's estimated by Newsweek, a secular source, that up to 7000 Christians were killed there in 2023 for their faith. Or if you go on a website, Open Doors and started by a man named Brother Andrew who just wanted to get into persecuted countries around the world decades ago just to bring Bibles to Christians. Brings out statistics. You know, over 14,000 churches in 2023 attacked by people opposed to Jesus Christ and the gospel. 1 in 5 believers face persecution daily in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia. Just to throw those things out by way of reminder, it's not a guilt trip. It's just to remember that even in us thinking about what does persecution look like for us...a teenager in a public school, getting mocked at lunch for stopping to pray before you eat, that's a real thing maybe you're going to do see you at the pole. That's still around. Kids in public schools around the country someday in September, gather around a flagpole to pray for their school. Kids pull up in the buses, laugh at them. That's persecution. It is. So I'm not making light of that. You working in the secular world at your job. And, you know, I hear from some of you when I talk to you about it, just hey this is the latest memorandum that went around the corporation that says we have to start including this language in how we talk to each other. And you want to stand up against it because you feel convicted by what you believe. So it's not to say those things don't exist, but it is good to just take in the whole right now to think about it on the widest before we narrow it down to our lives. And this is the entryway into thinking rightly about how Paul's talking to these people in this church, because what he wants them to know is this. And knowing this is everything for understanding how to deal with affliction in chapter one. That growing through it, and that's the point of Paul writing right here. He's encouraging. He's saying, you guys are doing it. You're growing in faith. But if you're going to continue to grow through it, this is what you need to know. That affliction that is experienced by believers vindicates the justice of God, while at the same time indicating the righteousness of God in you. It's doing both of those things at the same time. That Christians being persecuted, going through affliction is not a vindication that God is not there, which is the way we might think, right? Look at verse five. A plain indication of God's righteous judgment is that you're being persecuted. I mean, that's entirely backwards from the message of the prosperity gospel, an indication of God's righteous judgment for somebody that buys into the name and claim it...word of faith, health and wealth message would be the a plain indication of God being a righteous judge is that I get everything I want and my life is easy street...blessing...windows of heaven opened up, blessing...let it pour. And the moment I receive any conflict, any affliction. Well, I don't know if I signed up for that. No no, no. This verse five flips that idea on its head, doesn't it? Because he's saying the plain indication that God is a righteous judge, the anchor for us to hold to as Christians is that God wants us to grow through this affliction, and that actually vindicates God's righteous judgment. How does it vindicate it? Because it's showing these people who are experiencing that presently and will be delivered from it one day, that faith that is now shining through that I Peter talks about...that persecution that actually is the flames, that burns away the superficiality of a shallow gospel that gets preached today. It burns it away. And you see, you actually have something left that's worth something...that nobody, when you go through persecution and affliction for your faith, can sit back and say, oh, you Christians, you got it so easy. What's different about you than everybody else? You got the money. You got the success. You got the big church. Pastor drives a Escalade.  Whatever, you know. I don't drive an Escalade, by the way. It's a Subaru Outback. It's a fine ride, but you get my point. It's counter culture to the way the world thinks. And even false teaching in the church today. But the principle is growing through affliction actually shows the world it's his righteous judgment in the world that, look, my people didn't sign up for this to escape something down here, but to stand firm through it and to prove to the world that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And they will rise one day, too. And that's where their hope is.
So let's see how Paul breaks this down in these verses from 5 to 12. Uh, first way he breaks it down is he gives a principle for growing through affliction. And let's look at that in verse five. We already touched it shortly, but he says this is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment, so that you, Christian, will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. The first principle on which we build our faith is this  God is just, and he doesn't qualify that with anything. It's not a debatable point to him. God's judgments that we as believers, we look around the world. We believe he is sovereign in his providence. He rules over all. Our God is in the heavens. He does what he pleases. He is ordaining all things right now, everything in your life, so you don't have to feel like it's out of control. He's not even trying to defend that. He's just saying it's a plain reality. The persecution and affliction you're enduring, Thessalonians, is actually the indication that God is the righteous judge of the world because he has perfect character. There is no flaw in God that if you belong to him, that you could think maybe something is outside of his control right now. Or maybe because I'm going through some type of affliction that his justice is off. Paul would have known in his understanding of Old Testament, going back all the way to the beginning of Genesis. He would have known the stories of the men of faith of old, even prior to coming to faith in Christ on the Damascus Road, he would have understood the justice of God. What do you think drove Paul's passion? Even as a God fearing Jew before he believed in Jesus Christ. He believed that God was righteous. He believed that God was just, and he was opposed to any idea that God is pleased with anything less than perfection. So this idea that you could be righteous by faith. He wanted to kill the Christians, But he would have understood this idea of God being a just God. Going back to Genesis, the story of Abraham in Genesis 18, when Abraham is met by the Lord, the angel of the Lord, and they're standing outside of a wicked city named Sodom. And Abraham asks the Lord a question in verse 23 of Genesis 18, Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? That's a question of God's justice, isn't it? So you see this really wicked city. But if there are righteous people in that city, will you sweep the whole thing away, because he's setting it up? Abraham's really trying to understand something about how God works. He says, suppose there are 50 righteous people in that city. Will you indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of 50 righteous in it? And then listen to what he says about God? This is what Abraham knows about God's character. Far be it from you, God, to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly? I mean, from the beginning of Abraham's faith, if he understood anything, it was that God is just. But yet he poses this question to him to test that. Is he a just God? That if there are 50 righteous people in the city, you're going to treat them all like the wicked and just wipe the whole thing out. And so God, his response is, sure, if there's 50 right people, I will spare the whole place. And Abraham has now been called out. So he, if you read on this story, has to keep lowering the amount. And it wasn't just Abraham's life of faith. Moses at the end of his life, he has seen a great amount of injustice and injustice drove him to action early on in his life, when he saw one of his own people being mistreated. Drove him out into the wilderness. God brought him back to save his people. He has been through it all and at the end of his life. Deuteronomy 32. When all is said and done in Moses' life, and he might even be calculating in his mind when God tells him, because of the time you struck the rock, Moses, you don't get to enter the Promised land. What an injustice. I mean, this guy's been through it. He has dealt with grumbling, complaining Israelites in the desert, eating manna every day and people complaining to him. Hundreds of thousands, never got a break. And because of his one act of disobedience, that one time striking the rock prematurely, he's out. You would think if anybody might have had a problem with...is God just. It might have been Moses. Listen to his famous last words in Moses' song in Deuteronomy 32. Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distil as the dew, as the droplets on the fresh grass as the showers of the fields. For I proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God. The Rock, His way is perfect. All his ways are just. A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he. Has he made his point about what he believes about the justice of God? A guy that would have, we would have all said man if he had a if there was a case for maybe not believing that God was treating somebody unjustly, it could be Moses. And what are the first qualities of God's character off of his lips at the end of his life? His famous last words in his song...his work is perfect. All his ways are just, a God of faithfulness and without injustice. It's not just Moses, it's David. In Psalm 19 where he writes, the law of the Lord is perfect. The testimony of the Lord is sure. The precepts of the Lord are right. The commandment of the Lord is pure. The fear of the Lord is clean. And then listen to Psalm 19:9. The judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether. What does that teach you about the judgment of God? It's not just that they're true...His judgments. We associate with truth. They're valid. There's right and there's wrong and and God's right. His judgments are true. But there's actually a moral quality. It says in Psalm 19:9, that they're righteous altogether, that when we see the judgment of God, it's not just that we could say he's right. That's true. There's a wonderful quality about the truthful judgements of God. They're right altogether. All throughout every part of God's judgments, you can't find a flaw in them. That's unlike us, right? I mean, we can make true judgments. We can call a spade a spade. You know, we can differentiate between...that's true, that's false. But sometimes our judgments people question, they might not like the outcome of it, and so they would question its righteousness. You, maybe as a teacher, have some rules for your classroom or parent in your home and you've laid them out. And so the consequence comes and they would say your child or that student or as an employee. Yeah, that is in the handbook. I goofed up, it's true, but you might not like it for its moral quality. You might think and grumble in your heart. That's a stupid rule. I know it's true, and I know I broke it, but that's not the way with God's righteous judgments. They're not only true, they're righteous. They're moral...the quality of them. Psalm 119:160 says, the sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous ordinances is everlasting. The sum of it all in Psalm 119:160 is this...mark this down in your mind. This is what you have to believe that undergirds understanding affliction in your life if you believe it's ordained by the hand of God. Every judgment God has ever made is ever right every time. That's what Psalms 119:160 is teaching us. That's what the testimony of Abraham is teaching us,the testimony of Moses is teaching us, the testimony of David is teaching us and the testimony of Paul here. Every judgment God ever made is ever right every time. That's it. You either square with that or you don't. And you got to believe it before you see it. We don't play Monday morning quarterback looking back at the game film of God's judgments. And then we get to determine whether or not we agreed they were true and righteous altogether. That puts us in the place of God sitting over him. And that's not how the Christian faith works. It's that we come into it by faith. We believe the Word of God. What it says about his judgments, his ordinances, whatever you want to run back to. God's will working itself out in your individual life. It's righteous altogether. It's true every time, and it will never fail. So that's the baseline for verse five. And yet Paul tests it with a very challenging thought, the question of evil in the world. Why do bad things happen to good people? If you want to call it that. I mean, that is the test. Right. Why does God allow evil in the world? That's what Paul's saying here. But Paul's not questioning it. He's just saying, listen, this is the reality. Look at verse five. The plain indication, the evidence that God is a righteous judge and that you're being considered worthy of the kingdom is that you're suffering, but your faith is surviving. That's his answer to that question. He's saying, Thessalonians, your faith enduring right now through this affliction, is the proof that God is just. It doesn't maybe take the sting out of it. It's still affliction. It's still persecution. It's still painful. It's still pruning. But do know that these things are what is showing you worthy of the kingdom of God. Look at that phrase, worthy of the kingdom of God. It's not saying you have to prove your worth yourself. It's actually a passive, right?. You're being considered worthy. That means somebody is doing this to you. Who's doing it to you? Your haters?...No. The God who is allowing and ordaining the haters in your life. God is a righteous judge, using unrighteous people and unrighteous actions to prove the true worthiness of your citizenship in heaven. Do you believe that? If you're a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, what's a citizen of the kingdom of heaven act like an affliction? I'll read you your Bill of rights in Matthew 5:3-12.   You want to plead for your rights in today's society? You should know this better than you know the United States Bill of rights. Those may tell you what your rights are, but this tells you what your righteous response should be when you don't get what you want. This is how Kingdom citizens respond to a kingdom that isn't down here. The kingdom Jesus talked about that's not of this world. You want to know how you're to respond no matter how the world treats you. Go to Matthew 5:3-12. This is the character qualities of citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. First, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. How do you get into this kingdom? You go low. You don't walk in puffed up chest. Look at me, Lord. Paul tried that. How far did it get him? It got him flat on his face, bowed before the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, because he thought his credentials are what would get him into God's kingdom. They were what kept him out. He had to be humbled. And so do we. That's what it means to be poor in spirit. It has nothing to do with physical poverty. Poor in the inside. You can have a lot or a little, but if you don't understand, you got to humble yourself and bow before your Redeemer, your creator, your maker. You won't make it in. Attach to that. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. What's the response to that humility? It's brokenness over sin. It's weeping over sin. It's repentance over sin. It's turning from it. It's realizing. Wait a second, I thought I was good. I'm not good enough. I'll never be good enough. Woe is me, God. Be merciful to me, the sinner. That's how you get into this kingdom. And that's the mark of a true citizen of heaven. I mean, that's where you start. But it doesn't stop there. Then blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God. These are all qualities that these Thessalonian believers were displaying that Paul was exalting in saying, you are these people, you are being afflicted. But rather than fight back and demand your rights, you're being merciful to people that aren't being merciful to you. Why? Because you understand you've been shown mercy. You're pure in heart. Meaning how you're responding is from the heart. It's sincere. You're not just putting on some show. Who would be impressed by it? Paul's not even there to see it. Nobody's patting them on the back. There's no ulterior motive for how these Thessalonians are responding. Why? Because the pure in heart aren't in it for the applause, are you? When nobody's watching the sincerity of your response to how you're being treated. Is it pure in heart? It's coming from the inside? Hungering and thirsting for righteousness  meaning I'm satisfied with what God can give me, not what I can get from down here. Gentle, meek...all of these are qualities of Kingdom citizens. And then look at verse nine and ten. Or listen, if you're not looking, blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What's that saying? Even when you live this way, the world's not necessarily going to accept it. You could try to be a peacemaker and they could reject you. You can try to help, and they're going to persecute you because of your righteousness. And that's the proof that you're in the kingdom. So I ask you again, is that how you're living right now? In light of affliction, right now in your life. Do you understand that this corresponds completely with what the first Church understood right out of the gates? I mean, in Paul's mind, first missionary journey. Acts 14 he' getting beat up and kicked out of Iconium. Verse 19, Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. They having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. He pops back up, preaches the gospel to Derby, heads over to Lystra. What? To strengthen the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. He knew it. This is how it goes. This is how we live. This is who we are. That was the beginning of his journey. You think he changed even an inch by the end? Listen to his last letter, probably written mid AD 65. Around then. So over ten years past, when he wrote First Thessalonians. Listen to his words in 2 Timothy 3:10-12. "Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, sufferings such as happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, Lystra. He's talking about Acts 14. Beat up, stoned, left for dead. That was part of it. Does he try to explain it away and say, oh, yeah. You know, you hit some rough spots at the beginning. You just got to kind of get through the bumpy water? No, he says, the persecutions I endured. And out of them all, the Lord rescued me. The irony of that statement is he's actually in chains in jail, writing that, but he's chained to Christ. He's not chained to Caesar. I mean, he understands what his chains are for. They're for the promotion of the gospel. And then he says this. 2 Timothy 3:12...mark this down. Remember it today. Indeed, meaning this is true. All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. It doesn't give you a persecution complex. That could be dangerous, actually. That could actually be detrimental to the gospel. Do you know what I mean by that? That any amount of persecution or affliction, you feel the slightest touch. You throw the red challenge flag. And you actually twist it around and say, oh, any persecution I get for me, being me must mean that I'm living godly in Christ Jesus. Does it always mean that? You know ever since becoming a Christian, my family just doesn't like me. Did they like you before? Does Christianity have anything to do with it? Do you see what I'm saying? There could be a fallacy to this type of thinking. I read a guy's essay on it this week....a Christian writer. He was pulling apart this verse and saying it's a fallacy called affirming the consequent. If P, then Q if I'm a true follower, I'll be persecuted. I'm persecuted, therefore I'm a follower. It's not necessarily true. You know why? Because you got to underline one word in verse 12...godly. Godly...if you desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. And that godliness goes right back to Matthew 5:3-12. If you are belligerent in Christ Jesus, which is an oxymoron, you shouldn't be, believer. But if you are, if you're a pot stirrer looking to offend, going out of your way and then you're persecuted. Oh, me. If you can't tell, you probably won't find a sympathetic voice from me. I hope that wouldn't be the mark of our church in Hickory...in your job. I mean, just at the slightest touch calling foul. But being that person that's just grating on everyone else and thinking, that's what I'm saying. This verse is true. If you desire to live godly in Christ, you'll be persecuted. Acts 14:22...through many tribulations we enter the kingdom of heaven. But we have to just look and check our own hearts and say, am I actually receiving this type of persecution for being godly in Christ? Or am I getting it for some other reason? Am I doing something to bring this upon myself? So back to 1 Thessalonians 1:5. This is all proving the worth of your salvation for which indeed you're suffering. So question. When's the last time you've been under the anvil of God ordained affliction? I say that word. I stole it from Calvin, who writes in this about this verse. Paul is pointing out the way we are being polished under God's anvil as affliction teaches us to renounce the world and aim for God's kingdom. We're being polished under God's anvil. So have you felt that lately? When's the last time? I'm not saying you're going around looking for it, but has it found you? Because of why? Because of your desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. And then when you experience that this first verse teaches you to say, God, you are just, you're righteous altogether. And what I just...that hate I just received. That persecution I just received. That rejection I just received on behalf of Jesus Christ. You weren't looking the other way. You weren't falling asleep. You weren't indifferent. I didn't receive it because you're mad at me. I received it because you're growing me. You're showing me the true value and everything else gets stripped away. The true value of what it means to be found in you. So that's the first principle he builds it on. 
 
 
Now he moves to a promise. If you look in verses 6 to 10 and, um, it's a two fold promise, actually. The hope is in the return of Jesus Christ. That's in verse seven. Jesus will be revealed from heaven...His return. Just the return he talked about in Acts 1:9-11, when he left this earth and went up into heaven. And the disciples are standing around looking up. And as they were gazing in the sky, two men in white clothing stood beside them and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven. So he's going to come back the way he left. And that's the hope that the Christian has and that's the gaze he's directing them towards in this moment. It's a singular hope built on Christ being the judge. But there's two promises in it. It's a promise of relief to those who are being afflicted. And it's a promise of repayment for those who are doing the afflicting. So one hope for the Christian with two promises, and that's to encourage these saints. The bad guys aren't going to get away with it. And yes, in the end the good guys will win. So that's the hope he gives them. Now he goes back and forth talking about the afflicters and the afflicted. The afflicters going back to Acts 17, were those jealous Jews who were running Paul and his friends out of Thessalonica, and they were the afflicted. And these Thessalonians are the afflicted. But if you just look for that language, he kind of goes back and forth in these verses 6 to 10 between talking about the afflicters, the afflicted, the afflicted, the afflicters, back and forth between repayment to retribution, to relief. So I'm just going to simplify it here.  In these verses from 6 to 10, there's only two categories of people looking to the return of Jesus Christ. Those who should be excited for it, and those who should be terrified of it. Let's start with those who should be terrified of it...the afflicters. The first promise related to the return of Jesus is that the afflicters will be judged accordingly. Look at verse six. It is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you. So what's he saying there? Those who are doing the afflicting those who are persecuting the Christians in Thessalonica then, and Christians today, in God's justice he will repay, and the punishment will fit the crime. There is no injustice with God. We don't question his judgment. As Abraham was testing it, he wasn't questioning it, but he was testing God's judgment back in Genesis 18. Right. He was saying, well, let me just get this straight. How many good people have to be left there because he was getting down to the bottom line? Is there perfect justice with God? Yes there is. If there was imperfect justice with God, it's because he would show partiality. What is Romans two say? Verse 11. There is no partiality with God. All who sin without the law will perish without the law. All who sin under the law will be judged by the law. What's that mean? He is not personally prejudiced against anyone. He just repays the person exactly what's due to them...not any less, not any more. That same word repayment if you flip to Romans 12, Paul uses in the relation to us and why we don't seek to repay others for what they do to us. Paul says in Romans 12, if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God as is written. Vengeance is mine, I will, and here's that word I will repay, says the Lord. What happens if we try to take justice into our hands? Verse 21, don't be overcome by evil. Overcome evil with good. You'll get pulled into it. You will. You don't have the perfect judgment of God, the perfect character of Christ. That if you were to go around and try to even the score on everybody. Thinking, the punishment is going to fit the crime.  You can't do it. And the moment you think you can you'd be in the worst spot to be enticed by the appetite for revenge and not be able to hold yourself back. That's why Paul gives this strong admonition it's not yours to repay. Leave room for God to make it right. Instead, verse 20, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. And if he's thirsty, give him a drink. So we're to deal in redemption. God is to deal in retribution because you don't have that perfect, righteous judgment that only he has. And Paul's warning these Christians in Romans 12 against it don't pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. Go back to our text. Who's the one that's going to do the retribution? Look down to verse eight and nine. This is what those afflicters have to look forward to. And this brings a sense of justice to these suffering Thessalonians, as it should to us. If you've been mistreated or presently being mistreated, this is what's coming. This is the retribution. Here's how it's going to go. To those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. So God knows exactly who these people are. He's not confused. We might be confused. Who are the true believers today? Who are the unbelievers? There's people that say they know God. So in verse eight he says, here's who's going to be dealt with by Christ's judgment when he returns. One, they don't know God. They might know of him, but they don't know him. They're the ones in Matthew 7 that say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do these things in your name? And he says, I didn't know you. You may say, you know me. They don't know him personally. They don't know him through his Son, Jesus Christ. They haven't come by grace alone through faith, alone in Christ alone. They've tried to come some other way. They've tried to bring some works into it. And you see that in the next phrase that describes them, they haven't obeyed the gospel of our Lord Jesus which says nothing in your hands you bring. Those jealous Jews that were persecuting the Thessalonians in Acts 17. It was the jealous Jews doing it. It was the people that thought they were righteous by way of the law. So it could even be the religious people doing the persecuting. Not just those pagans, atheists, agnostics, humanists, hedonists. The most religious can do it. Why? Because they don't know God. Who says, you come only through the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ? It's right there in verse eight. When he comes back, this is how it's going to all go down. That verse seven gives us the picture of the scene. Jesus will come back. He'll be revealed from heaven. He's no longer concealed. We behold him by faith. We understand him through the word. Now the whole world is going to see them. He will be revealed. That word revealed is the same word for the revelation of Jesus Christ at the beginning of the Book of Revelation. What you're getting in verses seven through ten, right here is the sneak preview of the full length film of the Book of Revelation. That's how this connects over to revelation. If you want to watch the whole film. Go read revelation today if you want the sneak preview. Pay attention to this. It's short, but it gives you the scene just as it's going to take place. Jesus comes back from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire. This is the fulfillment of what Jesus said about himself in Matthew 16:27. The Son of Man is going to come, and the glory of his father with his angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. So what will those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus expect to get? Matthew 25:34. The King will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Verse 41 Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. Unbeliever, if you're not in Christ today, when he comes again to repay and for retribution, you will for the first time obey his command. But it won't be the command for those who says to come. It will be the command for those he says to depart. And you won't have a chance or a choice at that point. Your fate will be sealed. It's over at that point. It's done. You heard the gospel. You heard the good news that it's what Jesus Christ did on the cross and rose from the grave that you couldn't do to defeat sin, to conquer death so that you could be forgiven. So the obedience to the gospel isn't something you work for, it's the obedience to the command that comes with the gospel, which is, repent of your sins and believe in me. Come to me. Follow me, abide in me. Those are invitations to trust in Christ, but they are commands. And to not obey the command means you've been disobedient to the very call that would save your life forever right now. So when he says, then depart from me. What's that going to look like? this is verse nine. This is the penalty. Eternal destruction. You will suffer a perpetual death. For all eternity. If you're not in Christ today. You will no sooner have paid any of that penalty 500 million years into eternity, as you did the first day. Can you fathom that? That's what eternal destruction means. It means there will be no end in sight. You will enter into a night where there is no dawn that will ever break. You will be lost in a sea where you will never see the shore. That's what's on the line with your eternity. That's what's on the line with your soul. If you do not know God today in Jesus Christ, and do not obey the gospel call, which is come to me, come to me now while you can, or you will depart from me, then when it's too late. So if you're not in Christ today, he offers you this good news. He offers you him. He offers you his life. He offers you his grace. He offers you his love. How could you possibly reject it? So you cry out, be merciful to me, the sinner. I don't want to play that game. But you have to call on him right now where you are. That he has gripped your heart this morning. However you thought you came in here, you realize that's not really who you are. You're not as righteous as you thought. Or if you came in with this overwhelming sense of despair. You're not as far gone as you think. Because he offers the grace and salvation of His Son, Jesus Christ, to you this morning, will you trust in him? Will you? Will you ask him to save you right now? Can you imagine that eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power? No offer of the gospel extended to you forever once it's over. But it's not over right now. What grace. What grace? That you're in here today to respond. Ask him to save. And Paul is evidence of this. Nobody would have been more unlikely to receive the goodness and kindness of the Lord than Paul, who, when he did it, was on his way to persecute. And now he's the persecuted here. Now he's the afflicted. And so then look what he says for those who are the afflicted. Here's the hope, here's the joy. First there's relief. Verse seven, there will be relief for you who are afflicted. A great sigh of relief in your soul this morning. If you're in Christ and you're feeling that persecution, whether from friends or family. It'll end. It'll be glorious. If you don't feel that sense of relief, you know it does beg the question, am I living in such a way where anybody would even know that I belong to Christ? And we're not again, trying to develop a martyr complex and go out looking for it. It's just the reality of it. So pray for more courage that you're not just trying to duck and weave and dodge people that you know would disagree with you, but you bring them the gospel and you say, come what may. I want those people to know the goodness and kindness of the Lord. But here's the rejoicing. Look at verse ten. When Jesus comes to be glorified on that day, and the glory of his power to be marveled at among all who believe. And then he says, this is our testimony to you who has believed it's still true. He gave them that testimony when he wrote First Thessalonians and talked about the return of the Lord, and that those who die are with the Lord immediately, and you'll meet him in the air one day. That's the testimony they believed. And he's saying, look, don't lose hope just because things are hard, but keep your hope in Christ and it'll be a glorious day. You'll be glorified with them. He'll be glorified in you. That's hard for us to fathom. What does it mean that Christ will be glorified in us when he returns? Well, for one, 1 John 3:2 says, we'll see him for who he is. When he appears, we'll be like him. So that's part of the glory that we'll share in. I think we'll share in the glory of the victory, won't we? That it's over, that we made it and that we were part of it, that we weren't just, you know, spectators. This is the morning. You're a spectator. Kind of. I hope you're engaged, believer. But it's the race that you run out there that you don't give up, that you'll say it was worth it. Every effort I made to live a godly life in Christ, it was worth it in my home, with my kids and my marriage, at my job, with my neighbors. It was worth it, because the glory that's going to be shared that I did it, I lasted, I ran, I finished. You're going to share in that glory. And it's hard to comprehend something that amazing and unbelievable. But it's true. It's the longing of our heart. Romans 8 tells us that we who we have this longing that's been there since the beginning of creation. Romans 8:19. The anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. See, it's not just the revealing of Jesus for the first time that we'll see him by sight and not just by faith. It's faith. It's the revealing of the sons of God. We will be set free from the corruption we still have, and to the freedom of the glory of the children of God. That's what's coming to you. So whatever corrupting influences you still feel it might be in your physical body. It just might be that sin that you just so easily entangles you still that just burdens you down. You'll be free from it. But the point is, don't lose the hope. Keep running, keep going. There's a story of Douglas MacArthur. He was the, you know, the supreme commander general of World War II for the allies. And it was at the surrender on the USS Missouri, where Japan had to come and sign that it was done. And MacArthur was known as as a general, he didn't mind the attention. So it would have seemed fitting for him that day, as he came out to let the Japanese sign over their surrender. September 2nd, 1945. With all the cadets, all the troops on the Missouri watching. And he could have really reveled in that victory just for himself. But what he did was he invited two other generals. Who had been in captivity since 1942. One from Britain and one from the US. Just a few weeks earlier they had finally been freed. And they were, you know, emaciated, as you would imagine, treated harshly, you know, and MacArthur could have kept that time for himself. But he's sitting there on the deck and he's going to sign the victory, but he gets a couple of extra pens and he gives him to the other guys, and he brings them into it with him because his victory was their victory, and their victory was his. And so in all the pomp and circumstance of this wonderful moment of victory, he shares it with these guys who hadn't been able to do a thing for it the last three years. That'll be us times a million, but we'll be there with him. His victory will be ours because we're in Christ, and that's the hope he wants us to have. And then this ends with a prayer. Because to not seek God's power for us to persevere this way would be a fool's errand. So he ends with a prayer.  He says, to this end, we pray for you always, and don't just throw that away. I know we always hear Paul saying, I pray for you guys always. We say it to people, I'm praying for you always. But it really means something. Something, you know, if you're this afflicted church who daily are facing persecution daily, your life's on the line to know Paul remembers you every day. And it's a good call for us to remember the people we know who are suffering every day. So he says, we pray for you always. And he prays three things. First, he prays for their integrity. Look that he says, God will count you worthy of your calling. Do you want to know how to pray for your faith to grow through affliction? How to pray for somebody else? First, pray for the thing that matters most, that they would live with integrity, that they wouldn't drop the ball there. They may not get the supplies you're praying that they get. The money might not be coming in the deliverance from the affliction, But for them to stand strong in the faith and to be counted worthy of their calling is the highest honor, isn't it? So he teaches us that the first thing he prays for, that you'd be worthy of the calling of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what you pray for, the persecuted above everything else. Yeah. You want them to be released? Yeah. You want it to end. But don't forget the most important thing. Our lives and those people's lives. Second, he prays that they would fulfill every desire for goodness in the work of faith with power. That's a prayer for abundance. As in, it's not just that you're grinning and bearing it and barely surviving it. He's praying that God would fulfill those desires in these Christians for goodness, and to work their faith out with power. Because he says, Jesus does, that i have come to give life and give it to the full, that my joy would be in you and your joy would be made full. It's an ever increasing fullness that we have in the Christian experience, even in the midst of affliction. So it's not just praying for somebody to hang on by the thread of faith that they have. It's to say, Lord, give them some more strength. Keep them going. Help them to see that this affliction that they're suffering is actually a testimony to the world around them. So pray for abundance. I think that's the kind of prayer you see the result of in people who are full of zeal for the Lord. Take an action that's a reflection of that integrity on the inside. And then the third thing he prays for was, was really what it all leads out to in verse 12, he prays for God to be glorified. He prays for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be glorified in them. And we understand that, you know, even just in our own lives, um, maybe you're raised by parents who raised you to live the right way and said, hey, when you go out, you represent who? You represent me. You represent that last name you have. I remember in third grade, got kicked out of art class. Yeah, Randy, I know it wasn't a great painter. My dad was also a teacher in that elementary school, and he had a good reputation as a fourth grade teacher and of all days to get kicked out of art, walk out of class with my head down, look down the hallway, who just so happens to walk out of his fourth grade classroom at the same time, my dad and the disappointment I felt because I let down the name, you know, his reputation that I would be such a knucklehead. Some things never change, but that's what he's saying here. You want to live in such a way, with that integrity, with that zeal, with that practical piety, that the name of the Lord Jesus is glorified in you, and then who gets all the glory? Ultimately God does. And who gives you the power to do it? He does. When I think about somebody living this out, living for him, and loving people through a life of affliction, it makes me think about our brother Dwight Stone, who went to be with the Lord this past Thursday. One of the longest supported missionaries of our church. If you're new here, you've maybe heard us talk about them. If it's your first Sunday here, well, he's with the Lord now, but he served the Lord with his life for the last couple of decades, and it wasn't an easy service. He lost his wife to cancer about 30 years ago. Didn't stop him on his mission. Was over in Poland, then was in Romania. And the mission we have to Romania now is carried on by those he raised up and discipled over there. First time I ever had to meet him, I took this picture. We were in the German. Well, it was the German restaurant, like all things in Hickory, where the German restaurant used to be, is now on 70 across from Substation two, I think another car dealership, and it was actually a really good German restaurant. Dwight picked it. And so we're sitting there having, um, some brats, potato pancakes. They were fantastic. And I was just getting his life story. I was just eager to get to know him. I hadn't met him, had only heard about him, and I was going that year to Romania to minister with him. And then he told me everything he suffered, everything he went through. And all I could think to ask at the end was, what kept you going? And there was his answer. What keeps me going is knowing that I've been forgiven much. That's it. That's it. Christian. Going through affliction. That's your motivation. How much you've been forgiven. It goes back to the gospel. You ever lose sight of that? You're done. I mean, not for good, but until you get your eyes fixed back on the gospel, you won't figure it out because you'll think you're owed something else. And you won't finish your days out like Dwight did, right to the very end. I was with him Thursday. He died Thursday night. You know what he wanted to talk about? The mission. That's all he wanted to talk about. What's happening over in Romania. We went over. Chris and I talked about the trip that just went. He said, as he always would say, Adam, I'm praying for you. Keep going. I mean, that was his life. He is the embodiment of this prayer at the end. Encouragement to keep going. Dependence in prayer. Constantly praying but wanting to give God all the glory for it. Because when we endure affliction, it does not prove our self-sufficiency. It proves his. 
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace in our lives, in Christ. Help us to live for your glory, for the glory of your Son's name. Help us not to think we're self-sufficient in any way, but our sufficiency is in you. And it's worth it because of what you did for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that your son came and died and rose again, now victorious, coming back, and will be part of that victory when he does so. Help us to live that out today, by your grace and for your glory we pray. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

A Growing Church

Download transcript

I shared with you a few months ago when I was trying to figure out what to preach after we finished 1 Thessalonians...maybe it was like April or something, or it was coming, and a mentor of mine kind of gave me the look of like, why wouldn't you just go into 2 Thess? And at the time, you know, it seemed right. But then as the months would go on over the summer, you as a preacher, you kind of get into everything. You just, um, reading different books and you're reading your own Bible and everything seems like the next thing you want to preach. And one thing that was particularly on my heart that I was concerned about in light of, you know, certain moments in the time you're preaching in cultural moments is, you know, the political season we're in. And so the thought had crossed my mind of doing a mini-series on politics, thinking Biblically about it. And that's kind of what we call any series that we take topically. And really it did come down to a photo finish to call it that, of which I would do next and my heartbeat behind wanting to talk about politics...because we all can't get enough of it is, you know, with the election coming, just wanting to think rightly about it. But at the same time, it doesn't just terminate on thinking rightly about it. You can read a lot on your own. It's having the right heart disposition towards it. It's where is our faith and where is our hope? So that no matter what the outcome is, we love the Lord and our hope is in him, and our home is in heaven, and our faith will remain strong. And that's when it occurred to me in reading through 2 Thessalonians. Well, Adam, if that's what your aim is, the aim of our instruction is, is for our hearts to be changed, then, then preach 2 Thessalonians, because that's actually the aim of Paul. When he's writing this letter, he's aiming at this growing church, growing in faith, growing in love, and having an unchanging hope. And it's not to say we might not revisit that topic sometime coming down the road in the fall, but in the meantime, the heart work that can be done for us to be prepared for anything where it doesn't just have to be something happening in society that you feel is opportune time to speak towards. But whatever might be happening in your life, I don't know if there's ever a time in my Christian life that growing in faith and deepening in love, and having my hope in Christ remain as strong and secure as ever, is not a good season for. So we turn to 2 Thessalonians this morning. And perhaps the only question then that remains is, is it going to be as good as the first? Uh, because, you know, in life, maybe just in movies, I guess, the sequel tends to let us down a little bit. In the godly gathering of elders this morning when we pray before the 9 a.m. service, it came up about a sequel that an elder had just watched of a movie.  And I said, there's my introduction. I've been figuring, what should I talk about to kick off this series? And there it was, providentially, a discussion on has there ever been a sequel that's better than the original? Only one Air Bud 2, Golden Retriever. Everything else just went downhill. And maybe you debate that in your life group this week as an icebreaker or on the ride home. But what is wonderful about the Word of God is we know there is no letdown. That whatever truths and power to work in our lives, that we saw in 1st Thessalonians last spring when we started in January and it took us through the spring, we pick up here. And the great part is we'll have some familiarity with it. If you are new here and you weren't part of us going verse by verse through 1st Thessalonians for one, if you're new here, that's how we typically preach here...is we pick a book of the Bible, and then we preach it verse by verse and try to give you yourself the sense to see what is right in front of you, that you can follow right along in your Bible with us, uh, not just opening it and then closing it and moving on, but learning for yourself and even learning as we go, verse by verse, how to study your Bible. So we talked last week about being a a word-centered church. Well, really in the preaching is where you see the emphasis on that, and those that weren't here for 1 Thessalonians, the letter that comes right in your Bible before this, if you want to go back last January, we started it. There are 18 sermons. You know, I keep notching on the wall like a jailbird, uh, every time I preach through something. And so we got 18 sermons in. You can listen to them two times speed. Just cut the time in half. And then when you come in here on normal Sundays, you'll think I'm super slow because some of you Southerners are like, you talk too fast and trying to work on it. Okay, it's been a ten year project, but that's where we're going to be. And the the gnawing question that Paul is answering for this letter that hasn't really moved too far away from the first letter, is this...how then, should we live in light of the return of Jesus Christ? That's a question for any age as a follower of Jesus. How then should we live in light of Christ's return? Because from the time he was leaving, he was telling his followers, be ready. Be on the alert. Be watchful. And that's a two part question. If you just get right to the how then should we live part but leave out...in light of the return of Jesus. Uh, you might be moving to action without having the right motivation for that action. And that's really what 2 Thessalonians is covering that some of the believers here in Thessalonica, months after Paul wrote the first letter, were still living in a way based on false teaching that they were getting that he alludes to there in chapter two that whether it was a spirit or a message, you know, basically there's still some people saying, hey, you missed the day, Lord, he already came back. It can really throw people in a tailspin for how then they should live. Especially if you believe the return of Jesus already came. At the same time, if we look ahead to chapter three, there was a word for those who say, well, if it's so far, you know, if we're if we're just kind of waiting for his return, what's really the point of trying to improve our lot? And so he has to address that. But first on his mind and first on our minds that relates to where we are today in chapter one. Is that the reason Paul got run out of town and hasn't been able to come back to this wonderful church, is because of persecution. And that affliction, that suffering, though he's not experiencing it while he's currently writing this in Corinth, the people have been. They've still been feeling the pinch. And he cares for them. He wants to comfort them. He wants to write them something encouraging. He wants them to know the truth so then their life can follow. In that he teaches us as believers that simple principle that what you believe will always determine how you behave. What you're currently learning about who God is and who you are always is going to impact your living. If you fall off on either side, if it's just always about learning but never what you're living, then you run the danger of being a hypocrite. Truth without application leads to hypocrisy. In the same way, if you just kind of get moving in a direction and forget the ground on which you stand doctrinally and you're all just about living, but no learning, you run the danger of heresy. And so that's why we see the emphasis both here. Paul's going to get right at teaching them, instructing them before he gets to informing the way they should live, because that's the order we follow. It doesn't leave either out. We don't leave either behind because we know that that is the way God has wired us to grow. And this is a letter to a growing church. We talked about the theme of 1 Thessalonians being a good church, and we defined it as a good church is one that is, grounded in the grace of God and produces gratitude in God's people for spiritual growth around them. That was kind of our thesis statement of 1 Thessalonians. Well, it hasn't changed too much other than there's a little more of an emphasis in 2 Thessalonians on affliction and suffering. And so if you're looking for a big picture to kind of jump into this letter with, it would be this. This is about a growing church. They didn't just start good and tail off, kind of like what Paul had to correct with the Galatians. They were departing from the gospel. This church is holding its ground. So it's a growing church. And we'll hear that right away. But here would be the big picture for this letter as a whole. A growing church is a continued work of God's grace, rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ and bearing the good fruit of faith, love, and hope in the soil of suffering. That's what I want to have in your mind as we get into this letter. What motivates us to pay attention to it, Because we want to be a growing church, right? We just don't want to be a good church, you know, always kind of looking in the rear view, remembering the glory days.  We are a good church. But we want to be a continually growing church. And a growing church is one that reminds itself it is rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it is currently presently bearing the good fruits. Those sister virtues, as some scholars call them...faith, hope, and love. But what we see in this letter that I think is pertinent to the times we're in...back to why I wanted to do this...is because it's all happening in the soil of suffering and in the furnace of affliction, where the Christians here in Thessalonica aren't being just automatically accepted into their culture for what they believe and know. They ran Paul, Silas and Timothy off. But yet Paul is hearing a good report from them, and he's encouraged by them. And I think that's going to ground our hearts in hope and love and in faith this semester.

So follow along with me as I read. We'll just get into the greeting today, set the table with it, and then move out from there in the weeks to come...first four verses.
"Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater. Therefore, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God, for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all persecutions and afflictions which you endure."
Father, open our eyes this morning to see the wonderful Word. Spirit, illuminate it to our hearts and show us more of Christ, that our faith will be stronger in him. Amen.
So what are the marks of a growing church? Or if I could say it a different way based on what Paul says in there in verse four. What kind of church would God be proud of? You see that in verse four? He says, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God. Well, if Paul is carried along by the Holy Spirit and is inspired to write...we speak proudly of you among the other churches of God. Then what he's saying is, this is the type of church God would be proud of. And what he's about to say is going to describe to us a growing church that God would be proud of...acts like this, looks like this, behaves like this, and we want to be that kind of church. 
So let's see what he starts with today. First in verses one and two in the greeting, we see that a growing church is still rooted in the gracious gospel of Jesus Christ. We never move away from it. It's a continued work of God's grace, and we see just in Paul's introduction how he roots these believers and their only hope in the author and perfecter of their faith, and then the one who first loved them before they loved him...Jesus Christ. So look at the introduction. Paul and Silvanus and Timothy. We know them from their second missionary journey. Silvanus was somewhat of a peer of Paul's. We don't know his age, but we know from the book of Acts that he was a functioning elder, and he traveled with Paul. After the end of chapter 15, Paul and Barnabas decided to go different ways. Paul brings Silvanus along, who's also known as Silas and Timothy, which was his protégé, his disciple. They get to Thessalonica. We know this story from Acts 17:1-9, and Paul immediately goes into the Sabbath, Verse two of Acts 17, explaining and giving evidence that Jesus had to suffer and rise again from the dead. And he said, and this was his message, and this is preaching Christ and Him crucified in its glory and simplicity. This Jesus, who I am proclaiming to you is the Christ is the Messiah. And here's the fruit that God brings. Some were persuaded and joined them in a large number of God-fearing Greeks and leading women. So there were converts...Jews, Gentiles. But yet there was also conflict. Verse five, there were Jews who were jealous, and they ran. They formed a mob and ran Paul and Silas and Timothy out of town and said, don't ever come back here. And so Jason formed some kind of plea bargain with the city, that perhaps there was a pledge that Jason would be in trouble if these guys ever came back. And so this persecution leads to good things, as God is also in charge of everything. He's running all things. So even amidst persecution, the gospel goes out and gets to Berea and it gets to Athens, and it gets to Corinth, so we can see God's providence always reigning over persecution. It's not outside of his control. Paul doesn't make it back there, but he does send Timothy back to get a report. Timothy brings a good report. We learn that from 1 Thessalonians 1:3, that Paul had sent Timothy on a mission to find out how they were doing in the faith. And then he finds out, verse six, that Timothy has brought a report...good news of your faith and love, this faith and love and hope theme that goes throughout 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Paul has heard a good report and he's in Corinth now writing the first letter. Time goes on. He maybe hears that there's still some false teaching going on, and some people that, in light of that false teaching, aren't living the right way. So he writes this second letter, but to greet them, he doesn't just get right down to business. He wants to remind them that you never move past the gospel in the introduction to them. He reminds them who they are. A growing church always needs to be reminded of the most important thing, which is this...if you are a Christian, if you are a part of the church, the family of God, you are (circle) IN God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. IN is the most important preposition. Your Christianity hangs on this. Are you in God the Father in the Lord Jesus Christ? If you are, what does that mean? I mean, if you're just looking at our text alone, it's hard to understand that maybe if you're new to Christianity, if you're not a Christian here today, you might not even see the connection between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Are they related? Who are they? Well, you have to understand the gospel. Maybe for you, if you're a new believer, you need to find somebody to take you through the Gospel of John, who his whole driving goal and emphasis in the Gospel of John is said in John 20:31. I'm writing these things so that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and by believing have life in his name. Now, Paul knows these people have accepted that gospel. They understand the connection between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ came proclaiming that he was the Son of God, that he and the father were one. Go back to John 10. Some of you need to know this today about the Christian faith. There is no moving away from this. In John 10:27-30, Jesus says this to a listening audience, "my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father, who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one." So for Paul to open a letter about being in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, he is teaching them the most basic orthodoxy of the Christian faith. That you can't come to know the Father, apart from the son, and all who come through the Son will have eternal life in the Father. This is Christianity, friends. There is no separating that out. There is no taking one without the other. But the blessing and benefit of being in Christ then comes in verse two. The glorious grace of the gospel brings you grace, and it brings you peace. Grace coming by the death that Jesus died in your place. That is all of grace. It's grace that God the Father loved the world and sent His Son in it to die for it. That he demonstrated our love in this, that while we were sinners, Christ died for that. That is all a work of grace. You can't get any of your work into that. If you try to, it makes the gospel null and void. So that's the root in the gospel. But here's the fruit peace. You have peace with God. You have peace in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the great blessing of being in Christ, of having salvation is, you know, your life is safe and secure in him. That's why we never move past the gospel, because whatever you're encountering today, brother and sister in the Lord, whatever hardship, whatever affliction, whatever suffering, if you know verse one is true about your life, you are in God, your Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ...you have nothing to fear. I got an email this week from a friend of mine who's on the mission field in a closed country...a dangerous place to be...he and his family. But just meditating upon the power of being in God the Father and Jesus Christ the Lord, just made it clear as day to me that this man and his family, though in a dangerous country, are in no greater danger than I am, because we're all in Christ. Do you believe that? You better. Because otherwise your hope and your faith, it's going to ebb and flow based on the circumstances around you. And if suddenly we become a country closed to the gospel....Oh, we're in danger now... Are we? If you're in Jesus Christ today, how could you be in danger? John 10 said it...you're in his hand and no one can snatch you out of his hand. And if that weren't enough, he gives you double coverage. He says, you're in my hand because the father puts you in his hand and puts you in my hand. Who's going to separate you from the love of God in me? Nobody. So who are the safest people on planet Earth, regardless of where they live? Christians, because you're in Christ. You try to figure out what does it mean to be in Christ? What do I gain out of it? You gain security, safety, protection, provision that is yours forever and can never be taken away. That's how wonderful it is to be in Christ today. You have grace from God. You don't work your way to him. You don't earn anything. It's been given to you in His Son. And because of that, then on the inside you experience peace. You know you're justified by faith, Romans 5:1 says, having been justified by faith, trusting in Christ alone, you have peace with God. That's the only way you get it. It's the only way. So I ask you this morning, are you in Christ? Do you know you're at peace with God because you have trusted in Christ alone by faith, and you've trusted in Christ alone by faith because you understand something about yourself, the sinner, that you need, his grace, that you cannot earn your way to him, work your way to him, please him in trying to do everything you can to perform for him. It's all of his grace. So you cry out to him, God save me, a sinner, and he offers you his grace and His Son. And in that comes peace that surpasses anything you could have down here, where, regardless of what your surroundings are. That's why a growing church always goes back to the gospel. Because that's where our strength is found. That's where our hope is found. If it starts to move or depart from anything beyond that, that church is going to be sunk. If it needs to lean on some really wonderful, charismatic...I don't mean it in the, you know, tongue sense. I mean effervescent, extroverted preacher who fires the troops up. What happens when he goes? If your hope and your faith, trust were in him, where is your faith going to go? Or some programs that the church can run, some style of music, whatever it is that you think that really holds my faith together. This church had none of those things. It's a baby church. It's two years old. They didn't have probably hymnals to open...they had psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that they would have memorized by oral tradition. They had the teaching of the apostles. They had the Old Testament. That's it. No men's and women's Bible studies and life groups and youth groups and children's ministries...were thankful for those gifts. But their faith and love and hope went back to one person alone, Jesus Christ. And they were standing firm. And Paul could say, I'm thankful for you to God, and I'm proud of you in Christ. So that's the start of a growing church. It's rooted always in the gracious gospel of Jesus. But then it moves to the fruits. If it's rooted in Christ and never moves past that...being found in him, receiving grace and peace from him, then what does Paul see and say?   
That moves us to the second point today a growing church bears the good fruit of faith, love and hope in the soil of suffering. That's his greeting. He then moves to say, we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters. And it's fitting. If you go back to 1 Thessalonians just a few pages earlier, he gives thanks to God, always making mention in prayer. And how about that? He opens up in verse three talking about their work of faith, labor of love, steadfast of hope in Jesus. That's where they started. But they keep moving on in this. And so he moves from just giving thanks to underline the word ought. And as is fitting, there's a little more emphasis now as this letter was written a few months later, that he is so moved to say, look, it's not just arbitrary that you are living a life of faith and love and hope. This is a true work of God in you that you have stood firm and it promotes in me an ought. I should recognize this grace and give thanks for it. And there's the principle that I've said here from time to time, and I'll repeat as much as I see it, I'll say it. That the essence of Christian theology is grace. Therefore, the ethic of Christian living is gratitude. When I've said that before, I'm just not trying to pull some memorable one liner out of the sky. It's right in front of your face. Verses one and two are all about the essence of our faith. It's a grace based faith. And when you see the grace of God at work around you, you can't but help be what?...Giving thanks to God for it. And so, before we even get into the good fruits of faith and love and hope, could we learn from the Apostle Paul? Can we see him modeling an example to us that a that a growing believer and by certain a mature Christian is one that should be characterized by gratitude far more than grumbling. If you consider yourself a mature Christian, but don't find yourself often overflowing in gratitude to God for the work of grace in people around you, you are not a mature Christian. If you are characterized by complaining and criticizing brothers and sisters. If that's the the tenor or tone of when a name is brought up in the most private places in your heart or in your home, if in your heart is just this person that comes up in your mind, this other Christian, and immediately you have some flaw or fault that comes into your thoughts or in the privacy of your home with a friend or a spouse, and a person's name comes up and your instinct is to remember that flaw about them and say something about it is as much as you want to say it and gloss over it in a way that tries to make it sound less than what it is. It's criticism. It's complaining. I love you. You need to repent of that. If you want to consider yourself trying to imitate Paul as he imitates Christ, because the connection between us being thankful for the believers around us is you can't pull it away from understanding and seeing God's grace around you. It's not to say you don't see flaws, that you're ignorant to faults. But it's to say, what's the bigger picture you see around you? I mean, the person that just constantly has that refrain of, you know, church is just a bunch of loveless hypocrites and blah blah, you know, that I am certain they're in front of the line, because that's a person who now just lives in a world where everybody else is the problem but them. And what's happened there is they've just stopped seeing the grace of God. All they can see is the faults of people around. It sounds a lot like the problematic person in Matthew 7 that needs to be told by Christ not to judge. Not because judging is wrong in and of itself. Because if you're going to measure out to everybody, he says, Matthew 7:1-2, if you're going to be the standard, would you like God to apply that same standard to you? So he says, here's how you fix it. Before you go around looking for the speck in your brothers or sisters, eye find the log that's in your own. And when you find the log in your own eye...another way to talk about when you find the sin in your eye...the sin in your heart. If you're a Christian, you'll deal with that with the gospel. You'll recognize that I actually can come and confess to you, Father, that I have messed up again. Christ, thank you for the atoning work of the cross.  That you love me just the same. And then you take that same grace that you've now removed the log and help the person with their speck. That's how the gospel works amongst Christians. That's how Ephesians 4:32 and 5:1 work together. Forgive as you've been forgiven. Walking in love as beloved children of God. So it was meant to just be an aside. But if it grinds you up right now, like it did this week, me...Just is the instinct of my heart...gratitude, when I look around and see evidences of grace in your lives and people in my life. So that's maybe the preparation work. Um, that's the qualifying race before you get into the real thing this morning. You know, in the Olympics recently, you got to qualify in your heat. So Paul's qualifier before we move on was to say, hey, let's check our hearts. Are we thankful to God for the grace we see at work in other people's lives? And if we aren't, it's going to be hard for us to do anything with the rest of this sermon. In fact, if you were just corrected here by God's kindness in the work of the spirit through the word, I think it will help you then to say, you know what? Maybe I was thinking I was going to be looking for a lack of faith and love and hope in others, and I need to see it in my own life now and then move to help somebody else out. So first mark of a growing church in verse three, after we've had our sights adjusted, he says he's thankful to them because their faith is greatly enlarged. And again, we read already in 1 Thessalonians chapter one that they started with a work of faith, and that work of faith continues to grow. But it's growing. It's not plateaued, and it's not going backwards in the midst of the flames of affliction around them in Thessalonica. This faith is greatly enlarged, and he is, uh, layering words to try to give the picture to us that this is no small thing, though faith starts as a mustard seed. Yes, we're taught, but the mustard tree ends up being this massive tree. And he's saying, that's the way faith should work. It should grow to the degree it is greatly enlarged, meaning it's very obvious and evident that growth is happening. So you think about in your life. You know, looking at the mirror of the word, is your faith being greatly enlarged?, friend.  Now, I know we all go through different seasons of life and seasons of growth, and I would probably say most the most easy and obvious is when you first become a believer, when you go from darkness to light, I mean, everything changes.

So you meet that person that just becomes a Christian and it's wow, they were they were so harsh with their words and now they're so kind and they were malicious before. And now they're loving and they were impatient. Now. Yeah, those things boom. They change and they're obvious changes. Evident changes immediately. But as time goes on, now you've got to drill deeper and peel back further. And it could seem like we have plateaued, but we should still have a faith that's greatly enlarged, able to be seen. This word Paul uses, he borrows it from some other secular writings, where it was used for a politician who rises to the highest position in society, or a massive tree in its full maturity. Which I like that picture because that reminds me of Psalm 1. You know, a tree that is deeply rooted in the Word of God produces fruit in its season and leaves that don't wither and it prospers in everything. I mean, I think of how we grow analogous to how we grow in faith to, to our physical lives. And maybe this is why we have to work harder the older we get. We see physical growth in our kids very easily. And if your kid comes to Christ at a young age, you might see spiritual growth in them very easily. Just basic things. But then we get older, right? And then from age, I don't know, most people probably 18 till whatever it is, you start shrinking. You just kind of physically plateau. I mean, unless you take steroids and try to stretch every day to get that extra 1/100 of an inch. Physically, it's hard to see that growth. And I would say that probably in most Christians lives, it could be true that spiritually, it's hard to see that growth because you have to go down deeper. You have to dig harder to kind of stir it up. Otherwise you just get complacent and kind of like we do physically. I mean, there's a lot of parallels there. Whereas in our kids, I mean, a couple months go by, they grew another inch. You notch it on the wall. You're not worried as much. But as time goes on in our Christian lives, are we still applying that same excitement and energy to trying to grow as we do other things? Maybe that's the best way we can compare it this morning. Think of the thing that kind of gets you up and going the most. What are you really into? We  try to get better in things most of the time. The guy that's obsessed with, you know, fighting back his 40s, not to speak autobiographically, but I mean, you know the guy. He's got all the latest fads to kick up his health, to lose that inch around the waist, fit his pants from his 20s again, and he's got his phone linked up with some gadget watch so he could know while he's working out if he's maximizing the heart rate and he's got his macros and micros in his food measured out, and he'll do all that, he'll go to great lengths to see his physical health maintained. I wonder if he applies the same to his spiritual life, trying to dial it in, trying to observe. Look, how am I dealing with the sin in my life? And why was I not bold there to share the gospel and trying to figure it out and scheme that? Or it could be anything. Shouldn't we attack it with the same fervor?...we should, if faith is what matters most in our lives. Those other things are good things. But sometimes we just need to compare our lives and say, that effort I'm giving over here, am I giving it here? To see a faith greatly enlarged. And then it moves into a love that grows ever greater because these things are connected. You know, a faith that's growing. Well, there should be some obvious touch points and the one that Paul observes by way of hearing from Timothy and probably others, is the love of each one of them growing ever greater. You know that, it's not just people saying they really love God, but it's evidence in how they love their brothers and sisters in Christ. You know, it's really wonderful and encouraging to us in what we pray for, is to see that God answered this prayer. Go back to 1 Thessalonians 3. You know chapter three, where he was saying how he was longing to come see them and he couldn't see them, and he wanted to come to strengthen and encourage them in the faith. And then he closes chapter three with this request of God. Verse 12, May the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another. Did God answer that prayer? He did. Does he answer our prayers? He does. Are you praying for that in your heart? Praying for love for one another to grow ever greater. If the picture of I was saying, you know, some of these words that you find them in other areas of ancient Greek, if the picture of faith greatly enlarged, was like a tree going up and taller and stronger, this word for growing greater was a picture from agricultural life, but it was of an irrigated farm plot that the waters let in and the floods go further out. They cover more ground. And maybe those are two helpful images how for our faith and love play together? As that faith grows deeper and taller, it goes wider. It covers more. Imagine a tree with its bloom in full maturity. How much shade it can give and how much fruit it can produce. And the the number one fruit it's producing is the fruit of love...love for others. Because if it's not manifest, evident in love for others, John says in chapter four, what? If you hate your brother but say you love God, you're a liar. That is what he says. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For the one who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from him, Jesus, that the one who loves God should love his brother. Because John 13:34 this new commandment I give to you. It's the 11th commandment...love one another. Verse 35, because the world will know who my followers are by the way you love each other. So when you say, hey, that faith that I want to be greatly enlarged, maybe what would be the first fruits of it in my life? What should I look for this morning? Look no deeper than...are you harboring any bitterness, resentment, malice in your heart towards a brother or sister in Christ? It's a fruit. And you got to trace that fruit back to the root and say, That Father, that's an area of faith I need to grow in. You know, we talked about Peter a few weeks ago saying, Lord, save me. I mean, have you ever gotten so desperate to love a person that's hard to love a brother and sister in Christ that you have that's been become your prayer? Lord, save me from this bitterness I feel because I can't do it on my own. It's not blame shifting. It's not diverting it. It's just you admitting like Peter in that moment, Matthew 14, we saw a few weeks ago, I am going down here. I mean, it should be that desperate in you if love is that difficult for you. But it's a first fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in your life. So that's the second thing, I guess one other thing to mention is back to first John 4:20 connected to 1 John 4:7. We love because love is from God, and whoever is born of God knows God. It is a test this morning that the probability of your salvation can hang on how you love others, and that doesn't make salvation a work. It's saying when you're looking for the fruit, that first fruit should be a love for other people. And if I'm saying if the character, the nature, the regularity of your life is one of judgment, criticism, malice for Christians, let alone the world, but you call yourself religious. John would give you reason to question...do you know God? You say you believe that Jesus is the Christ, but whoever loves the Father and loves others has been born of him. So it's a question of probability, of salvation, let alone credibility, that the credibility of our faith hangs greatly on the way we love. So that's the second piece. And then back to 1 Thessalonians again or sorry. 2nd, I'm going to probably say that a bunch in these early weeks, go back to verse four. So he covers faith and love. And then we might expect, because of the amount of times he connected faith, love and hope together to see that word hope in verse four. And we don't, but we get the essence of what hope is. It's when we have such a trust, such a hope in who Jesus is, and that he is coming back, that our faith endures. And you see that in verse four. We speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance in faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure. That enduring faith, that persevering faith is built on hope. Hope keeps going. Hope doesn't give up. We learned in 1 Corinthians 13. Hope believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
So as we kind of get like to do a little triage in our hearts this morning of a growing faith of our church and as individuals, do you see how these three things play together? That hope keeps going and how can hope keep going? How can your hope keep enduring? How could you not give up? We'll go no further back than checking love in your heart and faith growing stronger. And if you find yourself losing hope, ask yourself, well, have you kept your hope and fixed it on Jesus Christ? Or are you or are you hoping for something else going on around us? In light of this letter, the affliction going on around is your hope that you know that things will get better and turn around in our country, and that's where this is going to be, I think, a helpful way for us to think about what's going on around us in the next few months is that we don't put our faith and love and hope in anything other than Christ. Doesn't mean we don't care about the direction of our society...of course we do. Of course we want love to be the way in which a society would function. But that love means we protect. We protect the things God would protect. So we care about life from the beginning, right from the beginning. Because it's he who gives life, and it's God who can take it away. So of course we care about political matters, but they have to come back to be grounded in the faith, what we believe. And then with what we believe, we may not see the outcome we want. But is our hope gone? No, because our hope wasn't in that. Our hope was in God, and that's what carries us through. And even if society gets worse around us, that persecuting affliction that they were experiencing, what we see here in these first few verses is that it actually melted them close together, rather than chilled them apart. That's a good image to think about. If you think about how does persecution work in the church when it's going on around the church, it actually has the effect of warming true believers, melting us back together when our hearts can grow cold, and the heart that grows colder and colder towards other Christians when the affliction comes, may find out they were never a Christian at all. Persecution perfects true faith, 1 Peter teaches us. As much as it reveals false faith. It perfects it. It removes the dross. And true believers will remain when the church is persecuted. Make believers fake believers...whatever you want to call them will flee because it's going to cost them something. And the true believer, though vexed and discouraged, and as Paul addressed in 1 Thessalonians 5, there's weak ones and faint hearted ones, but they don't walk away. And when the church is loving each other well, they actually strengthen one another and build each other up. So ask yourself, the question is, is that how you see affliction around us? Do we see it like Paul? Do we see affliction as an opportunity for our faith to be authenticated and our spiritual maturity to be accelerated? Is that how you view suffering, affliction, persecution for being a Christian? Do you actually see how God could use it to accelerate your spiritual maturity? And that's what he wants to use it for. He's not allowing it for you to shrink back. He's allowing it for you to move forward and to grow. That's how it worked for Paul. And that's why he could say in 2 Corinthians 12 that when he's weak....he's strong. Because the Lord said to him, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Power is perfected in weakness. That's counterintuitive to us. We think power is perfected in strength. You know, I just need to keep getting stronger, and I have more power. And that's the way I win. And he says, no, God is going to put you in the in the crucible in the vise and squeeze out that which is remaining that's got its hope fixed in it's its faith and its love on something other than him, because he's producing in you through the pruning, what?...more fruit. John 15:1-2, it's producing more fruit, bearing greater fruit. That's what he wants in our lives. So if your faith is weak today, maybe rather than thinking, okay, what do I do to strengthen myself, Adam? First and foremost, ask God to bring you strength. And if your love is cold, run back to the gospel, remembering God's love for you in him. If your hope has diminished, remember that our hope doesn't rest on avoiding all hardship and adversity and just trying to find prosperity all the time. That's why the prosperity gospel is the plague on the church because it can happen...prosperity comes your way. You praise God for it, but you don't live for it. Because that prosperity, when it gets its way into the church and makes its way into doctrines, it'll do more damage than adversity ever would. It makes church easy, entertaining. It makes it about our preferences. It makes it about our priorities. We get caught up on superficial things. This is what Spurgeon said about when the church goes through tribulation. He says, "the church, when subject to constant tribulation, will grow exceedingly. Has it not often been so with the Lord's people?...times of cloud and rain. Pharaoh dealt harshly with Israel, he said, but the more he oppressed them, the more they multiplied, the more the Church of God is downtrodden, the more it rises in power. The bush burns and is not consumed. Nay, it flourishes in the flame." Do you believe that about the church that it does its best flourishing in the flame? And it won't be consumed, because we believe in the promise that Christ will build his church, and nothing, nothing can stand against it. Firm faith, fervent love...they combine for an enduring hope in the Lord today. Now, as we wrap up and as we get into this letter, I wanted to give you a homework assignment. It's that time of year...back to school. I only do this once in a blue moon to give you, like, real homework to take with you. Um, a lot of times I trust you're finding it for yourself. But there's a few things that came to mind. Um, going back to Christ is always where our faith and love and hope are found. But sometimes we also need some kind of things to motivate us and fanning the flame, faith, hope and love. So here's a few things that came to my mind to do this week. And, um, they're just there for the taking. First one, when it comes to our faith, uh, dig deeper roots into the word this week by reading 2 Thessalonians each day, five minutes out loud. I timed it shouldn't take you more than five minutes, and I think you'll get more out of it reading out loud. You'll hear it each day. Maybe read it with a friend or spouse or whoever and just read it out loud. Take that five minutes and familiarize yourself with it. So when you come in here, there will be a little, a little more for you to engage with, starting with what you remember reading. So that would be my first. And I think that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Uh, being that Psalm 1 person, I think you'll be blessed by just intentionally engaging 2 Thessalonians this week for five minutes a day. That's the first five. Then my next thing for you is when it comes to love. Let's follow in the footsteps of Paul this week. And here's the assignment. If you're wanting your love to increase, maybe it can be kind of kick started by gratitude. So I want you to think of five people maybe take today to do this that you could reach out to one person per day, Monday to Friday. They don't have to be in our church. And just write them a little thank you note. Send it to them, write it. Send them a text, a thoughtful one. Um, which means more than like three words and an emoji. Something that you put some thought into. Maybe a scripture that came to mind when you thought of them. But pick five people that you're thankful for, and maybe try to pick the people that you normally don't pick. Maybe pick the person that you find yourself grumbling against often, repent of it, and then kick start your love to increase by what is the thing, what's there's something in them that you could be thankful for in Christ. So I think that'll promote a little bit of love, but maybe, you know, stoke some of those fires, those embers that have cooled. And third assignment in regards to hope has to do with prayer. I challenge you to commit to pray this week. Five minutes to read and then five minutes to pray about the things you are least hopeful for. I mean, what better place to take them to than to the Lord? I mean, really challenge yourself. What am I almost at the brink of hopelessness about? I've prayed about it...commit this week, five minutes a day to pray for that very thing. Say, what am I most hopeless about? God, I'm going to bring it to you. And I'm going to commit to pray for this this week. Because putting your hope in the Lord this week is putting these things in his hands, isn't it? And I think the combination then of faith, love and hope will bring us back together next week ready to jump into verses 5 to 12. That's where we'll be and get the most out of it for our good and God's glory.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your Word. We thank you that as we endeavor to study this letter that Paul wrote to a good church, and as he saw fit to thank you for a growing church, that he was proud of, that we would aspire to be the same. And we thank you that this doesn't have to be some big, uh, try something here in this church we've never tried before. But when we just see it in the Word, that you would just grow it in us to respond in obedience, to take the word and apply it to our hearts, to ask for your help, to do what Paul says...is to work out what you're working in. No one in here, Lord is here by accident today. You've intended them to hear this word from those verses, grounding them back in the Gospel of Jesus and how we need that, but also then pointing them, their sights, to growth, to growing in faith, love and hope. So we  thank you for the opportunity to do that today. Now as we sing and may the affections in our hearts move our lips, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

What Is the Mission of HBC

Download transcript

Matthew 28, we're going to look at today and talk about what the mission of the church is, kind of in the light of being back. And before we jump back into Thessalonica. Going into 2 Thessalonians. In fact, the break between what commentators, scholars believe was between those two letters potentially could be about the amount of time we spent away from 1st Thess and now going to second. So, um, I don't know if that'll make a ton of difference in our lives, actually, but I thought it was neat and I could be wrong about it. But anyways, we'll be there next week. But this week I wanted to take a little time, seeing as the Lord has added to our number with with all these California expats fleeing to the New Jerusalem of Hickory. Uh, you know, some of you are ending up on our shores and we're happy to have you. And being new to our church, just wanted to make sure we spend some time talking about, um, the mission of Hickory Bible Church. And it really is the mission of every church. It's the mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ to the glory of God. That's our mission statement. Um, and it comes right out of Matthew 28:19 to 20. So it's not as if we have, um, come up with anything that is profound when you read your New Testament, particularly the Gospels, and try to say, what is it that Jesus was leaving for his disciples to do to carry out until he says, I'll be with you till the end of the age I am coming back. Um, but he didn't leave his disciples, nor any who would come after them, guessing as to what they should be doing while they're still here. And we are thankful that it is the same for us today. And so we will read Matthew 28:19 to 20. And I think for the believer, for those of you who are members here, it will be a good refresher. Good reminder for us to all be moving in the same direction as we want to be like minded and right hearted and mission driven and what we're doing here. And if you're new here, you'll know what we're about pretty quickly after today. And if you're not a believer, if you're not in Christ today, I think this is a wonderful opportunity for you to hear some, uh, foundational passages in the Bible of what Christianity is all about. If you're a skeptic to the faith, if it's, uh, not quite clear to you what are Christians all about? I would hope after today that God would use it to open your eyes to see that it is all about the magnification of Jesus Christ. And we'll look at that today. So let's start first in reading Matthew 28:19-20, and then we'll go from talking about our mission to what our values are. So follow with me as I read. I'll start in verse 18.

"Jesus came up and spoke to them, the disciples saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Father, your word is truth. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word endures forever, and your promises, Christ, are true. So open our eyes to see the wonderful promises we have before us today. Amen.

Well, there it is, right there in Matthew 28:19 to 22 a phrase, great commission, that if you've been around the church long enough, you know, that's kind of a a summary statement for the the call that Christ put on those disciples to not just stand around and wait for his return to not twiddle their thumbs and say, what are we supposed to do now that our our leader is gone? He gives them a commission, and it really is comprised of four great words. It's a great commission because there's four great words here four action verbs...going, making, baptizing and teaching. Those are the four verbs you see in verses 19 and 20, and you could underline them if you are new to this, and maybe you hear that phrase great commission and you're not familiar with it.

And I don't want to assume anything. In fact, just this past week, I was googling, you know, what is the Great Commission to see if I could figure it out? Just kidding. I'm just always looking for fodder. And I found a Barna study back in 2018 that asked professing believers, church goers what the Great Commission is...and the results were as follows 50% of them didn't know. That's like regular church going people. And I get we you know, surveys aren't always the most reliable, but it is pretty eye opening to think in people that would say, yes, I'm a follower of Jesus. And yes, I go to church, know half of them, one out of every two didn't know what the Great Commission was. Which, when you think about that and what I just said about having a mission statement, something driving you, something directing you as a Christian, if you don't know what that is, how are you supposed to fulfill it? And then you had 25% said, oh yeah, I know it. Okay. What is it? Um, yeah. I'm not sure. It's great. And it's a commission. Great. Thank you. You just told me what I just said to you. Um, sometimes that's like when you ask people, you know, around here, you know, some just skip right past the whole idea of, you're a Christian, you know, because we're in the Bible Belt and everybody is to where do you go to church? And you're like, oh, yeah, I go to church. Where do you go to church? Well, it's that one place. And I'm like, brother, like we are in a town of 40,000 people. You go to church and you don't know what church you go to. Just tell me you don't go to church. Let's just cut past that and get right down to it. So this is discouraging. If it is true that when asked, only 17% would say yes, I know the Great Commission and here it is. So Barno, the kind people that they are, then said, okay, how about if I give you five verses and you can tell me the one you think is the Great Commission? So that was the next question they asked. And so they gave five different verses in the Bible and said, pick one. You know, because multiple choice is the best of ways to give tests. And a third got it right. And then the rest, you know that second one love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, mind and strength. I could see where some might think, well, that's a pretty great command. In fact, some call that the Great Commandment, the Great Commission is going and making disciples, baptizing and teaching. And we even have said around here that the mission of HBC is to make disciples in the fulfillment of the Great Commission in the force of the Great Commandment. So that's not too bad. But you know, when a third of them say, I'm not sure of any of these passage are the Great Commission is discouraging. And then they broke down the survey by generations, which for more than anything, maybe if there's anything to glean from that, is that maybe the prior generations, it was taught to a greater degree because the elders and boomers are coming through. They're also more honest because they will just at the last piece say, I don't know it, where if you notice those millennials, 41% say, yeah, I've heard of it, but I actually don't know it. Well, what good does that do millennials. So it's that classic like yeah I'm totally down with that. Yeah I'll be there. Like where'd you go bro. Ghosted me. So they're ghosting the Great Commission. They've said they've heard of it but they don't really know it. Um, what I found fascinating just on this page. And you might be able to see it at the bottom where it says those with higher levels of New Testament knowledge are more likely than those with less knowledge to say they know the Great Commission. Wow. So people that are familiar with the Bible have a greater chance of knowing what the Great Commission is, and vice versa.

And I share all that just to kind of paint the context when we say, hey, we have a mission statement here and we're we're driven by it. We're holding to it. Uh, we just don't do that because we feel like we got to join the crowd of churches that have mission statements to put on their websites to try to attract...no, like we really actually want to have it so we as leadership and members know exactly who we are and what we're about. Because when you know who you are and what you're about, especially in and it's true in life in all categories.

But I would just say particularly in the church, then you are not prone to the passing trends and whatever it might be that comes along. And if you're just looking at it in plain sight, you would just say, well, whatever. Churches are growing the fastest with the most people, ask them what they're doing and just copy it. And that's pragmatism. They could be doing a lot of stupid things or unbiblical things or whatever you might. But if they're just building a crowd, if that's what you want, then you really don't know who you are or you're just following whatever it is that makes sense to you for growth. But to know who you are and what you're about protects you against that. It's not to say you can't continually wanting to be improving. I mean, when we say at HBC, we know who we are as followers of Jesus Christ and what we're about. We're about making disciples of Jesus Christ to the glory of God. That doesn't mean we're not still trying to improve just because we know the who and the what doesn't mean we don't care about the how, which is how are we doing that? And we can always get better at that. I'm asked from time to time by friends, I think their friends, uh, who say like, you know, Adam, are you trying to get better as a preacher? Um. What is. Yes, yes, I am. And then, you know, even. How do you do that? And so that's really a question of, hey, are you continually trying to excel still more? And I totally receive it. I think as a church we always can ask the how, how are we doing at this and can we do it better? Uh, because we want to give our best to God, but we're never coming back to the drawing board going like, what are we? What are we trying to do here again, as a church? We're doing what Matthew 28:19 and 20 makes very clear. Going therefore making disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son, and the spirit teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded.

Now within that you have those four verbs, and the one is the main verb...making disciples, and the other three going and baptizing and teaching. Fill it out. And that's just how the Greek language works. The main verb is the driver of the action. It calls your attention to it. And then those other verbs are actually participles, which in grammar speak is verbal adjectives, meaning they are verbs describing that main action. So just picture Jesus saying, look guys, making disciples, followers of me, those who will believe in me, those who will trust in me, those who will go out for me, abide in me. That's what this is about and the way in which that's going to be accomplished would be going, as in your life is continually committed to this. It's your head's always on a swivel. You're always looking around. You're always at the ready to to look for the need around you, spiritually speaking, and to meet it. And then when you meet somebody, as you're looking around your life, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and spirit is meaning they are in Christ. They've come to Christ. You've shared the gospel with them. They've believed on it. And being baptized is the evident fruit of that, that they are taking their faith public. They're making it known. And then that last piece, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, that's that they are now living under the lordship of Jesus Christ, that what he says goes. And that's part and parcel of becoming a follower of Jesus.

So that's the Great Commission. That's that's what it's all about. And that's what we're all about. Now to check us and to say, like, how do we know we're doing that? We have taken that verse, that idea of making disciples of Jesus and saying, how do we break that down into what priorities to pursue, what values? And that's where we have core values of our church. And that'll be the outline for today. Is that Hickory Bible Church, in seeking to make disciples of Jesus to the glory of God, is a Christ exalting, word centered, disciple making, mission driven church. And really, those flow in four directions. We go up. I mean, that's the start of it. We're looking up. We're looking to Jesus Christ, to exalt him, to magnify him. And then we're looking down to his word because we're anchored in it. And then we're looking in within the body of Christ here, ensuring that before we care about the quantity of disciple, we want to care about the quality of it. And then as we strengthen disciples here, our mission goes out. So you can think of up, down, in, out if you need directions to go with it.

And so let's start with the most important one out of them all. If we're going to make disciples of Jesus to the glory of God, it's important we really understand who Jesus is and what our lives should be about. And that's we are. Christ exalts us. Go to Colossians 1:28. It says, "We proclaim Him", Jesus Christ, "admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ." That that is the high point of of our mission statement. It's Jesus, because he alone is worthy of our praise. What motivates us and moves us is that Christ alone is supreme. Christ is all. Christ is everything. He's Lord of universe. We saw that the last few weeks studying in Matthew 14:22-30, the greatness and goodness of our Lord. And you see it in example in the Gospels. But then you have in the epistles, writers explaining his greatness. Listen to why Paul could say in verse 28 of Colossians one...why should we proclaim Christ? How about just listen to the supremacy of Christ in Colossians 1:13-20? And that'll answer the question of why is Christ supreme? Why should we exalt him? You can follow along or close your eyes and just listen to how wonderful and glorious...He is without equal...Christ. Here's why. Here's his resume.

"He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in the heavens and on earth, invisible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

Amen. Amen. Your life is held together right now by the supremacy of Jesus Christ. The breath you just took, your ability to comprehend...understand...it's because he holds all things together. Furthermore, for the church, "He is the head of the body, the church, and he's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will have come to have first place in everything. It was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven." So ask yourself, how could you as a Christian, or we as a church, not be about the exaltation of Jesus Christ? What else could we give our lives to? Who else could we live our lives for other than Christ? And this is just one passage, a few verses amongst the entirety of the Bible that all point to the same message.

He's the hero of the whole story of redemption. So you take the 66 books of the Bible written by 40 different authors over a time period of 1500 years across different cultures and three different languages. And you put those all together and only in the miraculous wisdom of God, He could do that. And they all point to Christ as supreme. There's nothing like that. There's no other story that comes together like that that explains why you exist and who you exist for. And so left without the exaltation of Jesus Christ, man is stumbling around in that domain of darkness looking for an answer. And it's everywhere. When you see the world through the glory of Jesus Christ, when it illuminates everything around you. As C.S. Lewis says, I believe not because I stare into the sun, but because I bask in the glow of the sun and it lights up everything else. And you see the world correctly when you see Christ. It came to my mind just watching the, uh, the beginning, the ceremony of the Olympic Games. And as the commentators were trying to make something as, you know, invigorating as sporting and athletics profound. They were talking about whenever the lady was with the guy on the piano, floating down the river and singing John Lennon's Imagine, you know, because the world would be better if there was no God. We'd all just get along really well, if man is the measure of all things. And they said, you know, imagine that's the song that has been chosen over the last few decades is as the song of the Olympics, because it embodies how we really are good people and we all can just get along. Really? I mean, if you don't pay attention to anything else going on in the world and say, yes, um, if life is as trivial as throwing a shot put and doing 15 spins in the air...props to Simone, then. Yeah, we could say, man, is the measure of all things, if that's all that matters. Sure, we can get along. Except the irony is, like right after they were pontificating, they cut to commercial. And it's the Nike commercial that says winning isn't for everyone. Why? Survival of the fittest. These people don't come here to lose. They want to win. And we watch the competition and as united as we are, we're cheering for a country we support as if that person's victory does anything for our everyday life. But that's it. If you have no God in the equation, if Christ isn't supreme over your life and Lord of your life, what are you left to make sense of?...what you see day to day. And that's what it means to be a Christ exalter. There's no one else that comes close to give your life to and live your life for than Christ.

So Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:5, we don't preach ourselves as Lord. What a joke. We preach Christ as Lord, who just is following in the footsteps of John the Baptist when he was told by his disciples, they're all going to Christ. And he says, of course they are. You want to hear the voice of the bridegroom, don't you? Yes. He has to increase. I'm decreasing. A man can't say anything unless he can say it from heaven. And only he has the words of life. So that's it. That's where we start today. When we say, what's our mission as a church? We're here to make disciples of Jesus. Why? What's my motivation? Christ is all. He's your motivation. He alone is worthy to be praised and give everything in your life, for...so have you? If you're in Christ, it's just being able to find more to give to him. His Kingdom is all, his mission is all, and his call on our lives is to give all of who we are, because he gave all for us.

If you're not in Christ today, just go back to that first verse I read in verse 13. He rescued us from the domain of darkness. Is that where you still are? You say, I'm in a very bright room. My life's actually pretty good. What domain of darkness am I in? No. You're blind actually. You couldn't tell if you were in the darkness or not. You're blind to the light of Jesus Christ, and the domain of darkness you're in is sin, and it's on the inside of you. So I don't have to know anything going on outside of you if you're not in Christ. I can't speak into your life and know what you're going through. Some of it probably is really hard, but you trying to find your way out of that on your own is going to get you nowhere. You'll get further away the harder you try. But when you realize that Jesus Christ can rescue you from that domain of darkness, well, how does he do that? You say, well, verse 14, he dies in the place of a sinner on the cross and offers forgiveness of sins. He takes your sin away and he gives you his righteous life. God is just and that if you're not in Christ, you'll be punished and perish forever away from him. But he's also the justifier and not wanting any to perish, but all to come to eternal life sent his very own son to die in your place. So for you to recognize that and call on him to save you, call on him as Savior and call on him as Lord. What else is he? He's. He's everything, we just saw...all things from him and to him and through him. He's Lord. And so you give your life to him. You hold nothing back. You trust him for everything. That's what it means to exalt Christ with your life.

And that's what we want to do as a church. We want to be a church of Christ. Exalt us. Not to us, not to us, but to your name be the glory is what we live for. How do we check ourselves in that? Well, that's our second value. It could be easy to say it, but is there a way for us to test it? And that's where we go from looking up to looking down to the word. We're a word centered church. Because it's not uncommon for churches to put like a slogan about Jesus on their website. I just kind of perused the internet this week, just looking around churches in in our area, the 8 to 8, and found slogans like beholding and becoming like Jesus, representing Jesus, Jesus is our message. So I don't think that you come to our website and see making disciples of Jesus to the glory of God, that if people are comparing just by landing page alone, well, you know, you know, HBC is really in its own category. I'm not going to say that. But you know what? You can test our profession by...where do we look when we need to know what it means to exalt Christ? Who's the guide, who's the guard...the Spirit...the word. We're just not making it up as we go along. That's what differentiates between churches beyond mere words. And if we want our exaltation of Jesus Christ to rise higher, then we need to plant our lives deeper in His Word. That's where the life is. That's where the tree that produces the good fruit in Psalm 1 finds its nourishment going down deep to the Word of God. That's where life is found. So when life is hard, the leaf does not wither, and in everything you do, you prosper spiritually even when you're not prospering physically. That's what means to be a word centered church. We get that out of 2 Timothy 3:16-17, where Paul writes, "All Scripture is inspired by God." So there's a perfect word why would we be so committed to being word centered? Because it's a perfect word. It's it's breathed out. That's what the word inspired by God means. He breathed it out. So it's without any error, completely perfect in every word, every last letter. It's inspired by God. It's not just a perfect word, but it's a profitable word. I would call it. It's perfect. And it's powerful because look at everything it can do in teaching it. It can reprove us when we need it in our sin. It corrects us when we're not seeing things correctly. It trains us in righteousness to stay on the right path so that we can be adequate. All that he has designed us to be equipped for every good work...every good work out there to do. If it's good, if it's for God, the Word of God can instruct you how to do it. It's a sufficient word. There's no lack in it. And that conviction in me can get tested all the time as a preacher, when it could be easy for me to think. Is there is there something more to say besides beyond the word? And I sometimes sit up there and think, Adam, if you didn't have anything to say from the Word of God today, what would you talk about? And then I chuckle because I imagine you all leaving within 30 seconds when I'm like, well, guys, let me tell you my views on...fill in the blank, and you're like, peace. You're no expert in that. Why would I want to learn that from you? But to come to the Word of God that has the power within, it's perfect from him. Of course we want to listen because it's not about the person preaching it. It's about the perfect word that's being preached. And you come to it humbly and you say, teach me, Lord. So it's a powerful word. It's a perfecting word. It gets tested when I come up here to preach. It gets tested in all our lives when people question us. You really think the Word of God is sufficient? I had somebody challenged me on that this week as I was telling him about why, in our church, we are committed to raising up Biblical counselors here. People that are able to take the Word of God and do what it says in 2 Timothy 3:17. Equip equipped for every good work to help people. And so. Oh, really? So they asked the question. It was sincere. Um, as I explained, like what our efforts are to to invest the Word of God into people's lives and raise them up. And it's not the exclusive job of the teacher of the preacher here. And he asked me the question, why would you reinvent the wheel? As, as as in, hey, there's professional counselors out there to do that. Why? Why would you guys why are you reinventing the wheel? Um. There was a lot of things I wanted or could could have said, but. But what really strikes me as is, is just that picture. Why reinvent the wheel and say, listen, friend, us wanting to equip you with the Word of God so you can use it isn't reinventing the wheel, it's using the wheel. We're not reinventing anything. It's it's here's the wheel. Like go. The thing moves down the road when you actually know, like the tire, it's sufficient. It's going to roll. We're not reinventing anything coming up with anything new.

But the beauty of it is when you understand it and you grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, you can use it. But you have to believe in its power. And that's sometimes what my burden is when somebody has that kind of like view of, oh, the word is sufficient, A, and then they, you know, throw down the gauntlet for you to answer. Sometimes, you know, in, in petty things like, oh, the word sufficient. Um, where does it tell you in the Bible how to change your oil in your car? Checkmate. It doesn't. But as all things pertaining to life and godliness, 2 Peter 1:3, meaning all things necessary for salvation and sanctification. That's much more important than me knowing how to change the oil of my car. In fact, the Bible gives me the wisdom to know I have no idea how to do that. I ask Mark Ikerd to help me. I know to call Casey Dippel if stuff breaks on my lawnmower. You know what the Bible tells me? There's people wiser than me so that I can then say, hey, I've got a sufficient word for all the spiritual stuff, but all the other stuff out there at least, says Adam. Humble yourself. Find help. It's sufficient enough to do that for me, that I don't go through life thinking that I can just operate according to Adam's world and know how to do everything. And you know, you can know how to do everything else. But if you don't know to go back to this for your sufficiency, you don't know anything.

So that's it means to be word centered, because we believe in its perfection and its power. So my question to you, new here or been a while, is the word central in your life? As John Piper calls it. Are you tethered to the text? You know, the game tetherball just always, no matter how fast and far that ball swings around the pole, it's always tethered to it. And that's what he says. The preacher always must be in the person of God, must be tethered to the Word of God, never drifting away.

Now, if the word is central in our lives, it may bring up the question, well, hey, you love God and you love His Word, but you may not love people. You know that straw man argument that you know, there's just a bunch of people who love studying the Word of God, but there are no earthly good. Well, sometimes stereotypes can exist for a reason, as in, if we aren't equipping you, the saints for the work of the ministry to the building up of the Body of Christ. If you're just getting big heads, but you're not having active hearts and bodies to be used for other people to grow in Christ, then we're not a disciple making church.

So go to Ephesians 4:11-16. Our third value, being a disciple making church, is that we don't just learn it for our own good, but we follow the script of Scripture that says in Ephesians 4 that the gifts that Christ won and gave in the spirit, the gifts of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers weren't just for those people to be exalted over all. It's actually look at verse 12, the gift of teaching, taking the Word of God, explaining it to someone else, helping them understand it and apply it is what we call equipping the saints for the work of service. And here's the end of it...to the building up of the body of Christ. That's being a disciple making church, meaning it doesn't terminate on you. It's always you're taking it, you're learning it, you're growing from it. And you're saying, who is it that I can strengthen now? Because as I get stronger as a follower of Jesus Christ, disciples made stronger then to be a disciple means I'm a true disciple is I'm turning it around and pouring into someone else. I mean, that's just how this whole thing works. We have to continue to pass it on. Otherwise, we're not fulfilling the call of the Christian to tell others about Christ to lead others to tell others about Christ. Lead others to Christ and help them grow in Christ. I mean, discipleship is you following Jesus Christ. Discipling is you helping others follow Jesus Christ. Are you doing that? Otherwise, you know, we we might say we're a disciple, but if we're not discipling other people, we're not a disciple because inherent in the name is you're doing it.

I was thinking about that as, um, my family went to the YMCA this week, and, uh, I was just watching how many people seemed to be inspired right now to swim laps. Thanks, Katie Ledecky. I mention her because, I mean, she's flying through the water, but at least it seems attainable. Whereas, you know, those who can write the 50 meter. And it made me think about what we call ourselves versus what we really are. Many of us could be watching those swimmers and be like, I'm a swimmer. No you're not. But I'm a swimmer. Just different in degree. I jumped into that 50 meter pool at the Y and I was like, goggles on Challenged my 11 year old son to a race. He even gave him a head start. And, um, I was a swimmer...a slow 50 meter swimmer, a struggling. Some might call me a Shamu. I mean, just just plowing through the water. And as I got to the finish, my goal was actually just to swim it and not touch the bottom. And that enough was a victory for me. So I get done and I'm gasping for breath, and then the worst thing happens. My son says, hey, do you see some people from our church over there? Oh. Yeah. But it made me think about calling myself a swimmer. I. I at least jumped in and tried it. I'm not a good one. But to say you're a disciple of Jesus Christ and never make a disciple, you know you're watching it on TV. You're inspired by the people, even, but you're not a swimmer unless you just get in there and do it. And so it is in discipleship. You got to be doing it. I'm not saying you got to be whoever it is we admire and uphold his great disciple makers. But like who are you at least jumping in and trying with? That's what it means to be a learner of Christ and a follower of Christ is to take it. And as he said, teaching others to observe all he commanded. Just try it. Just go for it. Opportunities abound everywhere we are, and that's the whole idea of going. We're just looking around all the time. Where's the opportunity around me? It doesn't matter how old you are or young you are. You can tell somebody about Christ, you can share a Bible verse you know, you can of course progress in that. And like I mentioned before, Biblical counseling, but you got to be doing it. And throw aside this idea. Well, Adam, that's because there's Christians and then there's disciples. That's that's nothing. That's not that doesn't exist. If you are a Christian, you are a disciple. It's just, what kind are you? An obedient one that's doing it in your own life and others or not?

And then last but not least is we strengthen our church. We want to make an impact on the world around us, and that means for us to be a mission driven church. Acts 1:8, a very simple text, but one that's a good guide for us. Just when we see the simplicity of the words of Christ. When he told his disciples, standing there as he was about to leave, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, and to the remotest part of the earth." So last but not least, as we as disciples of Jesus get stronger we want to see the mission go farther and praise God that someone these disciples to start and then throughout history didn't keep the gospel just in Jerusalem. Are you thankful for that? It made it to our nation, and then it made it to our nation, and it made it to our fair state of North Carolina and somehow made it to your street, made it to some person who shared the gospel with you. But it's because the mission is always moving forward. It's never standing still. It's never staying put unless we're not doing it. And, um, even at HBC, when we define how we do missions, whether local or global, um, we locate it in its relation to the local church. That we're never just trying to kind of run lone ranger missions, but it's always to say, hey, no matter who we are, where we are, what we're doing, are we connecting these people, not just trying to get a decision from them? No, we want to make a disciple of them. And a disciple is going to be connected to a local church. So we define our missions here in three ways. The missions we're going to get in with or we're going to join up with are either starting, strengthening or supporting churches. That's how we decide where to go and what to do. I mean, it's evident even in the three trips we took this summer. Starting churches...the mission we took to Romania. I mean, you've got some new churches there in Budapest and Kirchen...George and Christi. And so when we go there, our desire in trying to support and strengthen is really because we see the need for more churches to be started amongst the gypsy people. And so that'll keep driving us to do that mission. And then who knows where it'll go from there. And so we could see it in the Romania team. Or then we think about Team Mexico that went there. It was a smaller team, and their particular focus was to strengthen that church by investing in the leadership there to build up deacons and elders. And I know it doesn't always get the pictures of hordes of kids and VBS and all that wonderful stuff, and it doesn't always show the immediate results of we built something and painted it, but the effort that the people made to get down there and for hours, open up the Word of God together and say, hey, Capps, you've been here for a couple decades, and after you're gone, we want this thing to keep going. So we got to get this leadership thing built up. It was worth the time. And then the team that went to Uganda supporting, as in it wasn't starting anything new there. Shannon Hurley's ministry S.O.S. Blessed by the the work of Shannon and teams have gone there over decades. You have a healthy, strong church and even connected to that is now a Christian school. And so we were really supporting that school, working with the students there. That was what?...part of that local church.

So whether it supports or strengthens or starts, it's down the line. The mission of it's always going to be about making disciples to the glory of God. And we see the most effective way to do that is connected to the church. So whether those trips have different focuses, it all comes back to our mission statement. Are we engaging our world, evangelizing the lost and equipping the saints? When you think about going, baptizing, and teaching, all pointing back to making disciples, think of those three E's. The going idea is just engaging everywhere you are all the time. And we have people far from Christ here, just like people have, far from Christ in Romania, Mexico, Uganda. We don't necessarily have to go there. We desire to partner up. But like Eric was talking about in the ministry, he has, you know, that there's people from 60 different countries coming to the church they have. So they get built and strengthened. They go back to their home countries. And now you have disciples there. Instead of trying to go to all 60. I mean, I think of the ministry that some of our young people here have at Lenoir-Rhyne University to the international students, I've seen them sitting right there in that row when the semester comes along. You know, what's awesome about that is some of those students that have come to Christ while here have gone back to their countries.

Now they're a missionary. Now they're taking the good news. Why we're excited for Erin Cox. Why she's proven herself. Why can we think that she's going to do an effective job overseas? Because she's been doing it here. She was mission driven here the last five years I've been here. And before that, she was the one inviting international students to come and hear the gospel and then discipling them. So when she came a couple of years ago about being sent out, we said, yeah, that's the thing we want to export because you've been importing the right thing. I mean, why would anybody think they're going to go and be effective somewhere else in the world, and they're not already doing it right here, right now? I mean, it doesn't make sense. It's not a switch you just flip on. It's a passion inside you. to say, I'm going to share the gospel with people. I want lost people to come to know Christ. So if you're a college student, a young adult here, and you're thinking missions, one day. You got people from all over the world in this community, particularly on those college campuses. Are you reaching them? Are you inviting them here? That's just who you are. That's why you do it. But that's true for all of us in here. Our neighbors on the street. I mean, I joke about people moving here, but that's happening. So will the first person they meet when they move into town be you, the Christian making disciples, inviting them to church, welcoming them, bringing them something. Hey, I saw you just moved in in the neighborhood here. I just wanted to come over and meet you. It means taking some risk, maybe some rejection. But as Hudson Taylor said, unless there's an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith, right? I mean, that should hit us in our mission driven minds. Unless there's a little bit of risk in the exploits we make for God, why do we need faith. If there's not something at stake, something to gain, or be lost or gain is there eternal soul lost might be we get some persecution. We get some rejection. In the bigger scheme of things, those don't compare.

So when we think about up, down, in, out mission of our church, we're accomplishing all those things. And really all of them are driven by our affections. We want to exalt Christ because we love Christ. We stay centered in the word because we love His Word as Psalm 119 says. We make stronger disciples because the world's going to know us by how we love one another and invest in each other. And we're mission driven because we love the lost. We may disagree with lost people on a number of things, but that doesn't deter us. That doesn't stop us. We don't turn the mission field into our enemy. We reach them because they need Christ. We pray you would join us with join with us in that. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for your grace to us in Jesus Christ this morning, and that we would take all this in just a simple look at the mission of this church that you have been gracious to over the years, over the decades, your faithfulness to HBC far outdistances our faithfulness to you, and we praise you for that. Thank you for keeping this church through all all the ups and downs and Lord, we just stand back and we're thankful. And out of that gratitude, we live our lives. We get back to the foundations of what we're about here, who we are as your followers of Christ, your supremacy, your lordship, your worthiness, your glory. And it motivates our hearts. And so now, as we turn our attention to the Lord's table, we get to the heart of why we're thankful what he did for us on the cross. And so may this time of communion be just that our communion with you, Christ, would be closer. Knowing we are united to you, wholly bound to you...forever yours. That this, this time is a great reminder of that promise to always be with us. And then we live our lives out of that. Help us we pray. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Worshipping the Son of God Pt. 2

Download transcript

Please turn in your Bibles back to Matthew 14, where we were last week in part one, talking about worshiping the Son of God. And we're back in the boat. And maybe I just chose this as the summer series and the Jack Sparrow in me, or the Quint from the orca that I like being on the water, at least fictionally, I do. Um, maybe not in reality, but, um, you know, I guess what captivates me about this passage that's so well known is that, you know, with the amazing way our imaginations can work in whether it's a fictional book or a character from a movie that we can latch on to and amazes us. The amazing thing about Christ is he is all the best of all of that...that your imagination could fathom, with the singular difference being he's real. I mean, just think about it...all the stories, um, the ones that keep us fixed to the screen. Some are blockbusters or, you know...read a book. Imagine that long book and it just keeps you turning page after page. But it's made up. And that character you so identify with...never existed. And yet we open the pages of Scripture here and here we have Christ, the God-Man. All of the best that we could imagine and fathom in a hero is found in Christ, and none of the worst, no flaw. We find a flaw in every hero, don't we? It's maybe why we can identify with them. Because they're not just perfect all the time. They have something that they can't do. And that's usually the twist, isn't it? They can do everything but this one thing. But not Christ...completely man, completely God. But not just any God. Not one distant, far away, transcendent overall, but no interest down here. But a good God who comes down and comes to his creation, made in his image, who has rejected him and becomes like them in all ways, and restores that which was lost through the fall and through sin. And that good God made us in his image for a particular purpose. And in Christ it's restored. He made us in his image not to make much of ourselves, but to make much of him, to worship him. And he's such a good God that it's not just this worship that's one way. As in, it's purely I just fix my eyes. He actually then allows us to enjoy him. It's reciprocal in that we can enjoy him because we start to realize that restored in Christ how much he enjoys us. That that's what he wants is a relationship with his creation that was broken by sin. And in restoring us through His Son Jesus, it's not just that we enjoy him. We recognize and part of our worship is recognizing he actually enjoys me, flaws and all. Fallenness, but forgiven in His Son Jesus Christ. He loves me as he loves His Son. And that's the height of our worship. Not ignoring our fallenness not forgetting about it, but seeing the vast distance between who we are and who he is, and that there's no way we work our way back to him. But we are brought to him by His Son, and so we truly can enjoy Jesus when we worship him for who he is and who we are. I think last week what we were trying to see, at least I was trying to show, is true worship...enjoying him as he should be enjoyed has to start with a right view of him. And what we saw in two pictures in verses 22 to 27 was when we don't see him as he is. In the beginning of the story, when he had to send the crowds away and put the disciples on a boat, it's because they weren't seeing him as he really was. They were just seeing him for an earthly king who could give them the power that they wanted, who could heal, who could feed, but they didn't get it. And so he sends them away, and they didn't quite see him rightly because they didn't see their absolute need of him spiritually. This thought...we have some temporal needs we need fixed. Give us our king. And then we saw secondly, when he is coming to the disciples, they don't recognize him thinking he's a ghost. They can't see him rightly there either. Fear distorts their vision of Christ as it does all of us, doesn't it? That the Christ we think we see isn't the Christ that really is. And they turned their God into a ghost and their Savior into a specter, and they were fearful of him. And so that sets up for this week. If we're going to enjoy Jesus rightly, we have to worship him as He is. And we saw last week how we get that image restored when we see him rightly to worship him rightly. But this week we turn from just his person to his work, that when we are worshiping Jesus rightly, it's bound up in who he is, what he does. We worship him as Lord and Savior because he is the God who saves. And that's what we will see in our text today. That to enjoy Jesus is to see him as King of earth and heaven, authority in the seen and the unseen, commanding crowds on earth and commanding clouds from heaven. He's God. And so this week we get to see a picture of his work. He's good, and he alone deserves our highest worship and gives us our deepest joy. So follow with me. We'll read the entirety of the section again, but focusing our attention now on the second half of it, from verses 27 to 33. Let's go back to verse 22, the beginning of this stormy situation.
"Immediately, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he sent the crowds away. After he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. And when it was evening he was there alone. But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid. Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And Jesus said, come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water, and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened and began to sink, crying out, Lord, save me! Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, you of little faith, why did you doubt? When they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, you are certainly God's son."
Father, help us see your son. We believe. But we also need help in our unbelief. So help us to see you rightly today, Christ, through your Spirit's work in the word. Amen.
If we're going to worship God and enjoy him forever, we have to see him correctly. But this week we need to get to the heart of the gospel message...his person and his work. And what was his work to do on earth? It was to save. And so we will see, as I outlined this section, that we see the work of Christ here, a work that is by grace alone, through faith alone in him alone. And that is the heart of the gospel message that we never want to forget, that salvation to the sinner is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And when you believe that, you can worship him to the glory of God alone. And so I pray you can see this with eyes of faith today, because the cry of "Lord, save me" is not the exclusive property of the first time professor of faith. If you think that is, you're in a world of hurt the rest of your Christian life. If you think I just needed the gospel at the beginning, I just needed to cry out, Lord, save me once and I'm good. Well, you are justified once and for all...declared righteous. But on a daily basis, when the storms of life and the waves are crashing against your boat, what else are you going to cry out besides, Lord, save me in those moments. Do you have something better to say to your Lord and Savior when life is hard? Things aren't going the way you thought they're going. Other than that simple cry of faith that Peter, a man of faith, still has to say here...Lord, save me, help me, deliver me, rescue me. And that call out to our Lord is always predicated...what we'll see first...on his grace.

So let's see that in verses 25 to 27, we cry out to him to be saved by grace alone. To worship and enjoy God forever begins with God's grace coming to you. We saw last week the action of a sovereign Son of God coming to a scared group of men. Verse 25, in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them. And we learned in Mark 6:48 the parallel passage, that when he was up on the mountain, he saw them struggling at the sea. And we asked the question, how could how could he see them struggling in the sea in the fourth watch of night in the darkness? Well, he's God, he sees. He knows. He's not indifferent. He's not not paying attention. And so he comes to them and he comes seeing them, seeking them, striding over, wave after wave to save them. That is an act of what? It's an act of grace. It's grace alone that compels Christ to come to them. They hadn't cried out for anything yet. I mean, it hasn't registered to them. They're just at the sea. Doing what, I mean, these are rough men, tough men, sea tested. And yet we don't see them falling on their knees in the boat. It's not reported in any of the three accounts. Whether John's account in chapter six or Mark's account in chapter six. They're just three miles or four miles out to sea. It says in John 6. They have drifted from the shoreline, but they're not crying out yet. They're still seeming to try to figure it out on their own, straining against the oars. And so Grace comes to them. But as we saw last week, verse 26, in coming to save them by grace alone, they don't recognize him.  In a state of fatigue and fear due to the winds and waves they see a body moving to them on the water, and their minds go to the irrational. It goes to the supernatural, but not in the right direction, the entire opposite direction of the supernatural. Rather than think this is, of course, our Savior coming to rescue us. They think it's the opposite. Their mind gets the best of them. They think it's a ghost, and it's the furthest thing from the truth. So picking up in the action today, Grace comes to them in a quick response. That word immediately we saw at the beginning of verse 22, when Jesus gets the disciples into the boat and gets the crowds away, not wanting them to come and make him a king by force to soon. Immediately, when he recognizes things are going bad, he is not moving to action quickly because things are going bad outside of the boat. He's in control of all of that. He sees how bad it's going in the boat because they think he's a ghost. So it says immediately Jesus speaks a word of grace to them. Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid. His voice cuts through the sounds and swells of the raging sea. He does not keep them in suspense a moment longer. These phrases are connected, each grace-filled in their own right. First, take courage. It reminds us of that call throughout the Old Testament to the people of God. Be strong and courageous. Be bold. Be of comfort. And I mean, if there wasn't just a rapid fire to his phrases, they might hear that. Take courage from this ghost like appearance in wonder why should we be bold and not afraid? Because we've been out here six hours in the dark, we're tired and now death is coming for us. Some form of a ghoul. He says, don't be afraid. Take courage. Because second phrase, it is I, Christ, the everlasting God. Why do I say that? Because this phrase, it is I is actually 'ego eimi' which is transliterated in the Old Testament in Exodus 3, when God has to strengthen who?...Moses for a great task in front of him. It's the same phrase. God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus three to strengthen him when his faith was weak. He wasn't going to go back. He wasn't going to try to rescue his people. He didn't feel like he could do it. And he says to God in the burning bush, behold, I am going to the sons of Israel. And I'll say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. Now they may say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am. It's not in our English Bibles the same, but it would be in the Greek of that Old Testament verse as well as this one ego eimi, I am, it is I. It's revelation meant to encourage, meant to fortify them. So it wasn't just an empty take courage, be bold. Come on, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Except that they've come off in the waters in the boat. He strengthens them by just saying it's me, the I am. And then he says the third thing, don't be afraid. And the force of this command isn't so much...don't be afraid. It's...stop being afraid right now. They were already afraid. He's not saying to not start it. He's saying to stop the thing that you've been doing for the last few minutes. Why, they may ask again. And it's back to the middle. It's the, I am. The key to these two commands if you want to think of them this way, the key to taking courage and not being afraid is where?...it's in the middle with the I am. I know everywhere I look I see a sandwich. But that is a grace sandwich of strength that. you know, Biblical counselors, you know, the put off and put on principle. Some of you who operate out of Ephesians 4 a lot, you know, put off the old man, put on the new. How does Paul actually recommend that we do that? He says we have to do that by the what?...renewing of our minds. And how do we renew our minds in Ephesians 4? You have to remember that you've been created in the likeness of God, in righteousness and holiness in truth. You just don't go putting off and putting on by your own strength. What allows you to put off in this case, fear and put on courage is nothing in you....except for the one who is in you. You have Christ in you, the hope of glory. So anything else just can veer into the abyss of self-help, self-actualization. I can just put off fear. Yeah. By doing what? Well, as a Christian, you renew your mind. And what do you renew your mind with? It's right here. The first biblical counseling put off, put on in the Bible wasn't from Paul. It was from Jesus here in verse 27. How can you put on courage and take away fear? Recognize the I am is with you...that you have Christ in you, Christian, for whatever sin problem you're struggling with. And yes, fear is a sin problem. It is. I mean, like all sins, they come to us as temptations, but sometimes over, you know, the anxieties that we could feel in life take over and they override what we should be doing is living by faith. And we just get stuck in that, and we just can't get out of it by somebody coming up and shaking us up, saying, snap out of it already, okay? Quit being so afraid. That's never helped anyone. But to take them to the reality that if you renew your mind, Romans 12:1-2...be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don't be conformed to the world. That's going to say, oh, it's all outside of you. When you say no, the answer is in me. It's Christ in me. I can have courage. I can be bold here. Why? Again, it's not because anything in me. It's because of who I have with me. That's what Jesus is trying to say to these guys, to snap them out of it. And this power of God to not be afraid is a work of grace. And that's why it's for the believer today. It's not just for the unbeliever to remember the work of grace in salvation. It's for us as well in Christ. And it teaches us that working at the oars harder was a losing battle, resisting recognizing the grace of God that we need daily.  These disciples aren't just to keep paddling harder and fighting against the wind that they were never going to win against. How much is that a picture of our lives striving and working and not recognizing that we need his grace, his sustaining daily grace. He comes to us by his sovereign grace, not our straining efforts. That's the first lesson we see in 25 to 27. He comes by grace.
What's the response if we want to worship, enjoy God forever? It begins with grace as Christ moves to the needy. But what is expected of us in return? What's our response? It's faith. Look at verses 28 and 29. Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Peter responds in grace, the only one out of the 12. It's as if he was sitting there, and while the rest of them are still caught up in themselves and in the turmoil of their hearts, it is if Peter goes, no, I recognize that voice. I know that name...I am.  I've heard it before. His are the only ears of faith that pick up on it, though, and it just moves him to action. And we see how faith, when it recognizes the voice of our shepherd, cuts through fear pretty quickly, doesn't it? How quickly? Just as quickly as Jesus's words to take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid, Peter responds in faith, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. At that moment it didn't matter what he could see or not see with his eyes. It's what he could hear. It's what Jesus says all his sheep will hear. They'll hear his voice. John 10:27, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Can't argue with that. Why did Peter do it and the rest didn't? In faith he recognized the voice of his shepherd, and he followed him. He said, if that's you, command me to come to you. Now, Verse 28, some of you may say, and rightly so, is the word...if it is you, is that faith, or is he hedging his bets? Um, I think two things help us to maybe understand in our English Bibles the kind of the the way in which he's asking this. The first is the "if" it's a part of a conditional clause, and we're used to if then statements. But in in the Greek language there are four conditional clauses. This is the first class condition where when if is used by a speaker, it's saying it, but it's saying it from the point of belief. It's kind of the if hypothetical, assuming the truth of a reality. Don't get too lost on that technical jargon. But all I'm saying here is he's not saying that if out of doubt...it's, if...assuming this is you, then command me to come to you. And so he's really just saying I believe. But for the sake of argument, he gives it an if. Now it's not just maybe I'll call that a lexical argument. Think also about the logic of this situation. If there is any chance it's a ghost, why would he say yeah, command me to come to you. As if this is going to be Casper the Friendly Ghost. He's going to take his chances on a goul? Oh, you know what? If it's really you, Lord, and I know this could be a ghost. Well, then that ghost is going to say, sure it's me. Come on out. It doesn't make sense logically, that he would do it that way. As my hero pirate says, a dishonest man or a dishonest ghost you can always trust to be dishonest. And that's why, Peter, I don't think would be saying this if he had any amount of doubt that it really was Jesus. So he was just it was just a hypothetical. I do believe, but I'm going to kind of phrase this for the sake of argument. If it is, you command me to come to you on the water. And that's beautiful, because what it really is saying there, and there's no evidence in this text, and this is the only of the three that talks about Peter going on the water, that he's just wanting to kind of like surf, you know? No, it's just all the text commends to us is that he just wants to be near his Lord. That he recognizes, I want to take my chances out there and next to my Lord. Why would I want to stay in here? If that's you, Lord, then just tell me to come to you. Notice there's no presumption in that, is there? He's asking permission. He's saying you command me to come to you. I'm not going to venture out into this ocean, these waves, because he understands in any other situation, without walking towards the Lord, he would step out there and be done. There's no life vests in this boat. The other guys are afraid. So nobody's jumping in to save him, especially Peter. So this is an all in proposition, and all he wants from the Lord is, just tell me to come to you and I'm going to come. That's faith. That's the response, okay? The grace. He's come out to me this far and I hear his voice. So just tell me to come and I'll come. And Jesus didn't have Peter come any further. You know, he just hears his voice, sees him, says, can you command me to come to him, to come to you? And then Jesus just says, come. It's not...there's no bargaining here. I'll come a little further. You come. No, it's just command me to come to you on the water. And he says, come. And so Peter gets out of the boat and walks on the water and comes toward Jesus. And I think that is such a beautiful picture of faith in the simplicity of the way that Matthew describes it. Look at it in your text. It's just rapid fire. He gets out of the boat. He walks on the water. He comes to Jesus. Matthew would have been in the boat recording this...just sees it as so simple. It's probably I don't know what else I could say about that. He doesn't have any detail of like putting his toe in and kind of testing the waters first...the winds. No, when he says come and it's a beautiful, simple command with Christ, isn't it? As simple as it is then it is today for you. Come. And I said this before. I'll continue to say it. Christianity is not complicated, but it is hard. It's very hard because it takes faith. Everything else that's hard in our lives, we can just feel like, you know, if I just have faith in myself and work hard enough, I can do it. And Christianity is hard. Not just because the world, the flesh and the devil and all of that coming against us, but it requires us to completely put our trust in Christ and not in ourselves. I was just with a brother in Christ this week... he's had a hard year. But he's in the fight and we're driving in the car to lunch, and he's wanting to go see another brother to encourage him with me. And he just says, Adam, Christianity is hard, but it's worth it, because he's loved us. And I love him. And he's worth it. See, that's faith. Because he ends up by saying he's worth it. It's the relationship this brother has with Jesus Christ that makes it worth it. But he's not going to sugarcoat anything. It's been a hard year for this guy. But he's not losing faith. He's just taking it head on. And when Christ tells him to come, he comes just like Peter gets out, walks on water...no hesitation, little explanation. And I think that's also a precious picture of our faith. It, uh, the clearest evidence of our faith is the action of it. It does something. It moves, it walks, it responds. Faith works. It does. James says 2:17...faith, if it has no works, is dead. So it shows itself in the action, in the doing. Otherwise it's all talk. And Jesus even says in Matthew 7:16, you'll know them by their fruits. A good tree has good fruit. So we see the fruit of Peter's faith here. It moves him to come to the Lord, to want to be with the Lord, to be close to him, to abide with him. And it's a great story, a great picture of faith, until, of course, the payoff here, verse 30. But seeing the wind, he became frightened and beginning to sink. You know, it's interesting the kind of parallels between 29 and 30. There's just like three parts in each. Peter gets out of the boat, walks on the water, comes to Jesus, and then boom!...next moment, seeing the wind, becomes frightened, begins to sink. And isn't that just life for the Christian? The high to the low...back to back. One preacher stated, our trophies are never won without troubles. The way to heaven is uphill and downhill, and that's what we see right now with Peter. He was he was just thinking, maybe I've got this thing in cruise control. This is pretty awesome. The disciples would have been amazed to see this. Nobody's ever walked on water. They've seen Jesus walking on water. But then, of course, you put that together. He is God. But to see Peter walk on water? Uh, no. You just can't do it. And now he's doing this. And Jesus did say in his life that you'll do greater works than me, as in, the faith that you have in me is not just a faith to kick over an ant hill. It's the faith to move mountains. And so you see a picture here of walking on water because it can't be done unless you have God with you. And Christ was with him. And so he does it. And there's no magic tricks here. The disciples saw him get out of the boat, walk on the water. But next moment, seeing the wind, he becomes frightened and begins to sink. And here we have the situation. The main verb here, just to note, is he became frightened. There's a lot of action there. Seeing wind, beginning to sink. But the main verb that the two other verbs kind of orbit around seeing the wind beginning to sink is the main verb is...he becomes frightened, which tells us that's the heart of the issue. It's his fear. The heart of his problem isn't seeing the wind, as in he sees the effects of the wind and the waves. It's not beginning to sink. It's that his fear has been reduced or his faith has been reduced down in this fear. And so he is going to sink. And why I say that is because wind and waves aren't his biggest problem or ours in life, are they?..if Jesus is the one in control of them. I mean, you really have to live your life in faith that way, picturing your life as a story in this moment that Christ is there and there is all this stuff going around him. Just picture it in your mind. But picture you as Peter and it's waves in front of him, waves beside him, waves behind him, darkness crushing all of it. But you have to see in this story that the biggest problem isn't all of that, because he's the one in control of it all. It's the fear to stop believing that if he said, come, I can come and I'll be okay. And I have to not act like the rest of the stuff doesn't exist, but see it in relation to the one who is sovereign. Whatever trial it is in life, whatever thing is tormenting you, whatever thing is bringing you down, whatever makes you feel like you're about to sink. Look, I mean this truth here about the sovereignty of God over the storms of the sea and Peter sinking out of fear and not faith. The doctrinal power of this moment gives, gives you a million different applications for you personally that I couldn't possibly think of them all. But you know what they are. You know where you stand on the water or you're sinking in it right now. And what it is that's causing you that fear, that thing that makes you not be able to trust him as you should. And, so what is the true believer do when he comes to his senses? He cries out, Lord, save me! Because in a true picture of faith's dependence on Christ, you can't do anything but plead. He can't. He can't do anything but cry out.
Which brings us to the third aspect of saving faith, which is it's in Christ alone. It's by grace alone, of course, that Christ comes to Peter in the disciples. It's through faith alone, peter responds, I want to come to you, okay, I'll come. And as he starts to sink, his faith has to go back down to the absolute source of it all...in Christ alone, Verse 31. What a picture here of anyone that reaches out to Christ that calls for Christ and Christ saves them. Verse 31, and there's that word immediately, no hesitation. Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand took hold of him and said to him, you of little faith, why did you doubt? Where does the cry of faith lands?...simply in the object of our faith, Jesus Christ. And you hear it in the simple call, Lord, save me. First, it's a call on the name...Lord. Proper title for the Son of God, King of kings, Lord of lords, sovereign over heaven and earth. So his theology is right in that he sees that's my master. He's my hope. But it's also a proper term related to what Jesus came to do as I said at the beginning. It's not just his person that he is the Son of God, but it's his work. This simple phrase, save me, summarizes what the Son of Man came to do, doesn't it? He came to save. He came to save. It's even in his name. That the name, the Hebrew name Yeshua means Yahweh saves. And that's what we found out about Jesus back in Matthew 1:21 when we first met him. And what were they to call the child? They were going to call his name Jesus. Why are we going to call his name Jesus? 1:21, she will bear a son. You'll call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. You know, this is just a helpful, apologetic at the end of verse 30, Lord save me. Why is it a helpful apologetic? Because in there you can if somebody man on the street comes up and says, Who is Jesus? Well, he is Lord. He's sovereign, King of kings and Lord of the lords of all. And what did he come to do? He came to save. When you tell them this little story and you make it simple. Parents to your kids... Instill in them that basic truth about who Jesus is and what he came to do. He is Lord and he came to save. That's why we say we call upon him as Lord and Savior. Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of my life. There's so much in that statement. He is Lord. He is sovereign. He's in control. He's in authority. He has all power. He can do anything. And he's my savior. As Luther would say in the personal pronouns. It's where salvation is found. He's my savior. He came to save me, the sinner. And how does he do it here? Well, when it's we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. All of the work is in Christ's saving here. Immediately Jesus stretches out his hand, takes hold of him. What is Peter doing here other than drowning and crying out for help? It doesn't say that peter reaches his hand up. All it is is his voice. And notice in Jesus stretching out his hand in the desperation of Peter, it's not met with any further challenge from the Savior. He doesn't call upon Peter to have more faith. He doesn't say, oh, if only your arm can stretch a little farther, Pete. I'm talking to you, word of faith movement. Right? Oh, you know, you can just get out of that situation that you're sinking in if you just have a little more faith. How demonic and diabolical...call it for what it is that you're the one that can get you out of the situation you're in. You have the power to save? You have the power to heal. If only you could say it with your words. It's a lie. Jesus is the only one doing the saving here. It's his hand that stretches out and takes hold of Peter, not Peter's. The saving is in Christ alone. The cry of helplessness is in Peter alone. Word of faith, false teachers are not interested in you stretching out your hand to God. They're interested in you stretching out your wallet to them. So just call it for what it is and call them for who they are. Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Steven Furtick...call them out for what they are because that's what they're doing. They're saying the power is in you. You just got to say it. You got to believe it. You can make it happen. What is Peter making happen here?...nothing. He's desperate to be saved. He has nothing to give Jesus. It doesn't even say he can give him his hand. If you're an unbeliever here, this is the only way Christ saves. If you're not in Christ today. Because if you're not in Christ today, you are not Peter flailing at the surface of the water. If you're not in Christ today, Ephesians 2 says, dead in your sins and trespasses, where are you actually? You're actually at the bottom of the sea, lifeless, motionless, completely unable to save yourself. That's the picture of the unbeliever. And so that unbeliever has no ability in and of themselves to reach out towards God. Christ has to dive down and pull you up from the deepest and darkest part of the ocean floor. So what I'm saying to you today is what can you do sitting there knowing that's you...accept in your heart, cry out to him to save you that way. You're not where Peter is in this story. You're down below 140ft to the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. You have no hope apart from Christ coming down to pull you up. So call out to him from your heart this morning, right where you are, and ask him to save you from your sin, from the wrath of God that abides over you. Call on him, and he will save, and he'll save to the uttermost. And he's not asking you to do anything, but what you can do in your heart is recognize your need. That's for the unbeliever. For the believer, I think we pull away from this story at this moment. I mean, who are we? Other than the Peters of life struggling at the surface we haven't sunk down to? As we sometimes say, we haven't hit rock bottom. But I think this story is good for us to stop and think. Um. What type of sea might I be in that, uh, I might be reaching for someone else or calling for someone else other than Christ even as a Christian. Some of us are in the sea of self-pity. Right? You're the victim. It's always being done to you. Life's not what you want. You feel bad for yourself. But instead of crying out to Christ, you reach for some other savior...alcohol for some people, drugs for others, relationships for others. Solving it through working harder, making more money, entertainment, whatever it might be...distraction. And in that sea of self-pity you just don't recognize...what I don't need more of is myself here and trying to meet my own needs. I need a Savior to save me from myself...As a Christian, because I'm just here thinking woe is me, rather than just crying out Lord, save me! That's what I mean for the Christian, like the problems you have, whether they're outside of you and oh they're in you because of the sin still in your heart that wants to think it's all against you and it's all everybody else's fault as a Christian and you say, Lord, save me from that. In this moment, as in, I need to get my eyes off of me and back on you. Back on you and help me to do that. Or some of you are skimming...you're not sinking in a sea of self-pity. You're just skimming on the surface of self-worship. You're not out in the deep where faith is meant to dwell. I love this quote by Spurgeon. "Faith is a vessel expressly built for the deep seas." But sometimes, as believers, we just want kind of the sea to carry us into the shore and just play around where it's nice and safe...self-worship. Entertain myself to death. Keep myself happy by the frivolous, passing things of this world. When your faith is meant to be back out on the water. Because one step closer to the shore is where Jesus left those crowds who were after the wrong type of Savior. And we can easily drift into there...riding the waves. So you find yourself in this story maybe in a number of places, but you know what the solution is still the same, isn't it? It's to cry out to Christ, to save. 
And then when he does, where does your life end up giving him the worship and praise he deserves? 32 and 33, we're saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Verse 32, when they got into the boat, the wind stopped, and those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, you are certainly God's son. See, now we arrive where we should have been at the beginning, worshiping him, enjoying Christ, praising him for who he is and what he's done. Cool thing to note in John 6:21, not just when he steps into the boat, the wind stops, but John 6:21 says, maybe when the disciples looked up from worshiping, it says immediately the boat was at its destination. And just, you know, he's God. So out of his goodness, he's like, these guys are so sick and tired of...that by the time they look up there where they should have been, just like the cherry on top to the miracle that he has stopped the storm, and they're where they were trying to be and couldn't be on their own. Saves them from the storm and any more struggle, he cuts them a break.  And they've moved from fear to faith again. Peter led the way. But it's what faith is designed to get us to even this morning...to the source of true worship and the source of our true joy in Jesus Christ alone. And I think this story should inspire us to greater faith. To know that if we really, truly believe, truly believe that as the message of Matthew from Matthew 1:23... Emmanuel, God with us to Matthew 28:20...and lo, and I will be with you even to the end of the age. The message of Matthew is just that...God is with you, believer. He's with you from beginning to end. And so what can't you step out in faith, step forward in faith to do? That's where he wants you to live your life today. In the words of the great missionary to India, William Carey, attempt great things from God. Expect great things from God. That's the life of faith. Faith is drawn to that. That's why he leaves us here, that we shouldn't just be sitting back bored as a Christian, because faith is meant to endeavor things that you can't do on your own. So what is it you're not doing today? I mean, exciting, adventurous type things, bold things, people you should, you know you should talk to. That fear has kept you...not.  I got to do it. I got to do it. I got to get over it. I got to say it. I got to speak up. That person needs Christ. And you know, when you start living that way and doing that with what you measure out to be measured back to you, and, oh, the promise of John 3 that he gives the spirit without measure. So if you're just measuring out a little bit right now, maybe that's why you're sitting around kind of bored by your faith, whatever is left of it. But he wants you to endeavor great things for him. I mean, our last week of one service and then we split off, and then we'll see a lot of empty rows, and they won't be filled unless we endeavor to do great things for God. They won't. I mean, sovereignly, can he bring people here?...absolutely. It's because Hickory is the new epicenter of the universe. You know, everybody wants to move here. Because, you know, there's no truth to that. This place will fill as we endeavor to do great things for God, to talk to the people that we have been afraid to talk to, and let God work in that person's life when you have told them the hope you have in Christ, and your life is a life of worship, and they see it in you. You enjoy him and it makes them attracted. He's the explanation from it. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you this morning for your word. I pray you would help us to rightly apply it. And there are so many different ways to apply it for every person in here. But just help us to be more zealous for you, Christ. It takes faith to be bold and to be courageous. And it's not to say that the storms and the waves and the winds of life aren't real. They're right there in front of us. They're all around us. But you are there, and you're with us. And with that promise to be with us to the end of the age, we can attempt and expect great things from you so that you get all the praise and all the honor and all the glory. That's where our heart is this morning. Help us now as we sing to sing for your glory, Lord, because you've been so good to us. Receive this praise back from hearts...thankful. We ask in your Son's name. Amen.

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Worshipping the Son of God

Download transcript

I'm thankful for the series that I get to finish off...Enjoying Jesus Christ. I guess it's self-serving because I was the one that picked it and then said, hey elders, how about we do this? So it's nice to get to preach it myself, and I'm thankful for each brother, some of the elders and Ronald and Kurt.  They're doing a wonderful job of helping us to see through their eyes what they enjoy about Jesus Christ. Uh, what's been on my heart for a few weeks to preach is Matthew 14:22-33.  And it's a well-known story from the life of Christ that probably will come as no surprise to many as in the familiarity with it. But I chose it maybe for a different reason than the obvious, maybe which you've heard preached before and not actually wrong. You know, the faith it takes, you know, to follow Christ, to walk on water and come to him. But I chose it for a different reason, because that passage gets to the heart of what enjoying Jesus is about, both when he walked the earth, and now for us as believers. If I asked you the question, how do you enjoy Jesus...at the heart of it...what is enjoying Jesus about? And you might need a little bit of time to think about that. I know there's a subjective element to that what you enjoy about Jesus in particular. But when you say, uh, beyond my own subjective desire of what I love about Jesus, what I enjoy about Jesus, if you had to answer that question in front of a group of believers, would you be able to put your finger on exactly what enjoying Jesus is about? Well, it's here in our passage. The heart of enjoying Jesus is about worship. To summarize, our enjoyment of Christ is because we worship Christ.  As when we are enjoying him to the most for who he is and what he's done...we are enjoying him to the most. For everything he has done, for all of who he is and all his magnificence and all of his wonder. Enjoying Jesus is about worshiping him, and at the heart of our worship are the affections. He's designed us that way. We love him. Why? Because he first loved us. And we rejoice in him, why? Because he promised in John 15:11 that my joy will be where?...in you, and your joy will be what?...to the full. See, our worship is nothing less than our affections of love and joy. But all those things come because we're recipients of his grace, of what he has done for us. So to truly enjoy him, we must worship him then for who he is, the Son of God. And we see that in our text today. So if you're not there, I hope you made it by now...Matthew 14:22-33. Follow along with me as I read.
"Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side while he sent the crowds away. After he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray, and when it was evening he was there alone. But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid. Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water, and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink. He cried out, Lord, save me! Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, you of little faith, why did you doubt? When they got into the boat, the wind stopped, and those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, you are certainly God's Son."
Open our eyes this morning, father, we pray to see the wonderful things about your Son in your Word.
Remember that last verse today throughout this sermon? Because if we're going to enjoy Jesus, it's because we understand what it is to worship him. And if we understand what it is to worship him, we say, like those disciples, he is certainly God's Son. It's identifying him correctly. To worship him as He deserves, we must see Him as He truly is as these disciples saw him. And in the day of misinformation that we live in about Jesus. I can never take for granted that in a room this large, with this amount of people, that you are seeing Jesus for exactly who he is. Sadly, stats, surveys that I read...one from two years ago done by a trusted source interviewing those who claim to be evangelicals. Less than half of them polled believed that Jesus was sinless. So what good does a sinful Savior do you? I'll tell you one thing he can't do. He can't be the sacrifice for you because he's the same as you. But isn't that what we really want to sell? A Jesus that's just like us, that gets us, rather than one that's entirely different from us...absolutely sinless. Or a different survey two years back that just said Jesus was a great moral teacher and he was a wonderful, ethical man, but he wasn't God. 50% of evangelical Christians surveyed said that. This time of year, the month of July, um, I get inspired to read about the history of our country. And so my wife's a fan of, um, books about our presidents, and I buy her the biographies like David McCullough's John Adams and, uh, 1776 and Chernow's George Washington and um, because I have to read theology the rest of the year I never get around to those books. But this time of year I get inspired. July 1st comes and I pick one up and I read 20 pages, and then it's the end of July and I'm over it. But the beginning of all those books are the same George Washington or John Adams. The preface and the endorsements all say this is this is the premier book on this person. And if McCullough writes it, they're right. Um, this is the true George Washington. You know, all other biographies about him throw away. So on and so forth. Or I remember my feed on my phone a couple of weeks ago, something about Robert F Kennedy came up. Who was the real Robert F Kennedy? Can we really you know? Was he who we thought he was. And that was all the while that this was a brewing, this passage in my mind. But it made me think. We probably get everybody wrong. We do. There's no infallible source of information for my life or yours, or anybody in history, except for one... the inerrant and authoritative and infallible Word of God. And so you could get George Washington completely wrong. Whether or not he chopped the cherry tree down or his teeth were wood or ivory will make no difference in your eternity. You could be the expert on every famous leader in history, and you can know their life inside and out. Or you could be ignorant to the nth degree about the most important men and women of history and your eternal destiny would not change what?...one bit. But if you get all of them right and Jesus wrong, where are you left? Where are you left?...perishing. Perishing without knowing the real Christ. That's what's at stake with seeing Jesus for who he is. So you can worship him as he deserves. So you could confess, as those disciples did in that boat...certainly you are the Son of God. Does that give us reason to give attention to the person of Christ?...absolutely. Not saying you shouldn't pick up the biographies. I will try again next year. Maybe I'll start mid June. But to get Christ right or wrong is everything to me. And as it should be to all of us here today.
So let's look at him. First, let's see him as the Son of God, King of the earth...in the first two verses there that we read verses 22 and 23. We want to see him as if they're going to buy the end. That last verse, confess him that you are certainly God's son. They hadn't done this yet in the two years that they had followed him.  The Father had said it about the Son at his baptism. The demons that he was casting out said it about him. But the disciples had never identified him, yet, at least with certainty. So what changed here that opened their eyes to see him as he was? First, he's king of the earth, and we see this in the chaotic and frenzied scene that we are parachuted into with that word immediately. If you remember when we when we went through the book of Mark, how often Mark moved the action by the word immediately. And Matthew doesn't do it the same, but he's wanting to show that there was something happening in this moment in the life of Jesus, that, uh, urgency was important. And what was it? Well, he urgently and immediately says to his disciples to get into the boat, they're on the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee, and he wants them to go ahead to the other side, somewhere on the northwest shore. And he's urging them to get in there while he's also quickly sending the crowds away. Well, what's the context here? Let's paint the scene. Chapter 14 begins with sadness, a flashback to John the Baptist, the greatest man among men Jesus says to be born has been beheaded. And Jesus, when he hears about it later, it says he was withdrawing to a secluded place in Matthew 14:13. He needed time to process this because he was like us in his humanity, loved John the Baptist, the greatest of men. And yet, as he's trying to seek seclusion, the crowds find him. And they're ready to be captive to his teaching and what he's doing. And so he's teaching them, and he's also feeling compassion and says they're going to be hungry as we send him away now. So let's feed them. And so chapter 14 is the famous miracle recorded in all four gospels of the feeding of the 5000 men. But you multiply that out by women and children, and it could be upwards...at least double that number 10,000. Some would suggest, if there is a few kids, a gaggle around, some of the people that came, like the Ashoffs....seven of us rolling deep. You could have 20,000, who knows?...massive crowd. And, um, they want healed. They want fed. And so he performs this famous feeding, and he does it and they're so satisfied. Verse 20, they're so excited that they, um, they think they have this long awaited king, especially for the oppressed and the outcast of Israel's people under the Roman rule. They've never seen a king like this. They barely could remember the good old days that they've been told about and read about from the Old Testament of the days of David and the days of Saul. But they've never seen anything like it since then. If you turn over to John 6, we get an added detail that makes the urgency and the immediacy of the action of Jesus in this scene so important. It's after feeding them when they have been satisfied and they've seen Jesus take the food and right before their eyes become Sheetz and just food everywhere you look. MTO order your sandwich. Boom! It comes out. I'm a big fan of Sheetz, if you can tell. John 6:13 they gathered up and filled 12 baskets with fragments and five barley loaves which were left over. There's more than they could use and eat. And it says, verse 14, therefore when the people these crowds saw this sign, they said, this is truly the Prophet capital P, who is to come into the world. That promise goes all the way back to the time of Moses, a greater prophet than him. Maybe this is in their mind, uh, going back to manna coming from heaven. Could be that. Or we think of the prophet Elijah and the widow and providing oil when she needed it, when everything was going, whatever it might have been that could have triggered in their mind. This is the one we're waiting for. But look at verse 15 in John 6. Or listen, if you don't have your Bible open, Jesus, perceiving that they, the crowds, were intending to come and take him by force to make him king. Talk about a landslide election. No speech is needed, right?...no democratic process here. He's it. Imagine they're going to pick him up two years into his ministry, though, back in Matthew 14, we see he has been rejected by the Jewish leadership. Because back in Matthew 12, they accused him of having a demon. He's done with them. They're seeing his works, the leaders of the day in Israel, and they're accusing him of being led by Beelzebub himself. So he's moved on from them.  In Matthew 13, the parables describe this. But they also describe a fickle crowd who's really just there, like that second soil to immediately pop up and look good. But then the sun scorches it and it's done. He's talking about what's about to happen in Matthew 14 with these crowds. They immediately receive him with joy. Why? Because he's giving them everything they want on earth and entirely missing the point in heaven. They are thinking his kingdom is just of this world. So they intend to make him king by force. And John 6:15 says that's when he withdraws to the mountain by himself. So back to our text in Matthew 14:22. Now you can see why immediately he made the disciples get into the boat. He didn't even because they weren't to go to far away. When you put together the two other accounts in John and in Mark, this was just probably a spot in the northeast side. They were going to go to the northwest side. That maybe would have been a mile and a half, just kind of sticking by the shoreline, they’re not going to plunge out into the deep to go there. Truthfully, if it maybe weren't for all these crowds there, he would have just told them to walk it. But there was their fishing boat. And so they get in the fishing boat. And then he also just as quickly sends these crowds away because he is trying to not let it get out in front of him, let the momentum pick up too quickly where he becomes king only down here. Because he knows the will of the Father and what he's here to do...to be the Savior of the world. But they don't get it. The crowds want him king now, and he could see how his disciples could easily be swayed by that populism, just like we can today. A crowd builds what?...a crowd. And if we are only seeing with eyes not of faith and say, that must be a big movement over there. That must be the real thing. Why? Because a bunch of people are having their needs met, their felt needs, the things they like. It just gets you excited. And that's what's happening with Jesus here. They're seeing him as a king and even a king of earth, but they're not seeing him as the Son of God. But he sees this tide of populist appeal, senses the danger not just for his disciples, but even for himself. So he tells them to get out of here. Go. I'll catch up later. It wasn't his time to be king. He's not looking for earthly power. If he just wanted earthly power He could have gotten to it really quickly. Couldn't he have? Back in Matthew 4, he was already offered it. If you flip back to Matthew 4:9-10. Satan had come to tempt him. And Satan said to Jesus, all these things I will give you. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and says, all these things, all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory I will give to you, if you will fall down and worship me. Satan already offered it a year and a half earlier. Jesus didn't take the bait. Jesus said to him, go, Satan! For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him. Luke 4:13 adds, Satan withdrew until a more opportune time. When was that opportune time?...right now. He didn't have to bait it the same way. He didn't have to show up, but he could put it in the minds and hearts of these people. Here's the ticket to the top. This guy, thousands walking into Jerusalem saying, here's our new King...mob rule. We're going to put him into power. See you Herod. The long awaited king. He could feed us. Surely he could heal us. Who's going to stop us? And so he sees all this coming. But we know just a chapter later in Matthew 16, His call to discipleship doesn't include a call to you becoming greater. It's you becoming less. It's not you taking up the crown, it's you taking up the cross. Matthew 16:24 Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Jesus was practicing what he preached in Matthew 14. Listen to this verse. Matthew 16:26, for what would it profit a man, even the Son of Man, even the Son of God, if he gained the whole world and forfeits his soul? You think that was just for the disciples? You think he didn't recognize that for himself? What would it have profited, the Son of God, to gain that whole world in that moment? But what would have been lost?...salvation. You and I, no hope if he takes the bait. So he sends them away. A crucial test of his authority and humility. Protecting himself and his disciples from the sway of the crowds. And what it shows right here about him as being king of earth is that he was still the Son of God all this time. He wasn't just able to be recognized with eyes that his disciples or crowds could see with. He saw something that none of them could see. He saw the trap. He saw what Satan was trying to do, what the crowds wanted, and he sent it away. His popularity, though with the Jewish rulers....they were trying to kill him already. But the intensity and the expectancy with him was nearing an out of control moment. And yet he is in complete control right here, isn't he? I mean, he had the authority. Think of this as the Son of God. Authority He taught with that nobody else had, to tell those disciples who have been kind of living hand to mouth at this point. Right? The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. We've given up everything to follow you. And now they're seeing, Hey, all these thousands of people. It's now. And he says no, get in the boat. And do they resist? They don't. Why? Because of his authority. They were willing to do what he said. And the crowds could have stayed there and said, no, we're not going to go away. But they listened. He had an authority unlike anybody else. He's in control of all things. It wasn't flying out of control. He wasn't tempted just because he saw it right there in front of him in that moment to think, I've got the votes because it wasn't going to be by the people giving him the power. He already had it. By his what?...by His title. By his person...He was the Son of God. He was sent from God. He knew exactly who he was....the greater prophet promised in the Old Testament, the longed for Messiah, the Holy One of God to lead his people. But he understood about these crowds. They only wanted him for the food. They liked him for the fame. I mean, if you look back to John 6, when they came back the next morning to that same spot, they showed up, they wanted breakfast. And Jesus sees them and he says to them, truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Don't work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him the father God has set his seal. What shall we do?...they said, so that we may work the works of God. They don't get it, he says. Here's the work. John 6:29 that you believe in him whom he has sent. He's not calling them to work. He's calling them to faith. But see, they are so into only what they can see with their eyes, what they could taste, what they could hold on to. And it's not much different today, is it? When churches get into this idea of figure out what the people want and give it to them and they'll show up. You figure out what the evangelical voters want and promise them that, and they'll vote, right? The felt needs, the physical needs, the things down here...Jesus sees right through it. Do you? Learn from his example. What does he do at this time? Is he sucked into it? No. He steps away from it. He sends them away. Verse 23, after he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Why does he do that? Because he's not going to let anything get in between him and communion with his Father. He knows he needs it. I mean, we just have to get the idea out of our heads that Jesus has the Son of God cheat code, that he's never really tempted by anything. I mean, he's God. So he just kind of cruises through life with no problems and can't understand anything of what we face. No, he was tempted in all ways like us, but never gave in and tempted in the really nefarious ways, like wanting to have more than we should get at that moment. Like seeing that success in victory in higher life that some prosperity preachers promise in reaching for it. And he says, I don't want any of that. I just want to be with my father. That's a lesson for us not to be fooled by following a crowd...in the church and in Christianity. If you're not first willing to follow him individually, if you don't seek devotion and intimacy and relationship with God through Christ, you could just be in this room riding the wave. I don't know what wave it is, to be honest. I mean, if you're in here, like, yeah, I'm part of this thing. Look around. What do I have to offer you other than Christ? Nothing. Advice on how to get a good sandwich...coffee. That's it. But if I or anybody else preaching here or making disciples here can offer you Christ, you're offered everything. Everything, but the world's going to give you everything else. And sometimes the church apes the world. So ask yourself, do you like Christ understand what you're seeing going on around you, not just seeing him as king down here with the power, with the authority that could start a kingdom down here. But like he tells Pilate, right at his hour of death, John 18:36. My kingdom is not of this world. So back to our text. Where was the kingdom? It was up on the mountain praying, and it was in seed form, down on a boat with about a couple guys that are shivering and about to be really scared. 
So let's move with the action from 22 and 23 about this King of Earth now to the King of Heaven. 24 to 26 the action moves by moving us to look at the boat. The first two verses, it ends. I mean, it starts a little bit chaotic with the crowds going away, but then it gets peaceful and Jesus is up there and he's praying to the Father. But what's going to be happening down on the sea is anything but peaceful. Verse 24 the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. I'm reminded of my wife's favorite line down here when we moved to the south. Growing up in LA, she didn't see much rain, I guess. Just call it what it is...rain...especially a thunderstorm. So one of her favorite things to do for the last however many years we've been here is, you know, whatever that time is of the day in the summer, sky gets a little bit dark. She turns to me and says, it looks like a storm's a brewing. She gets a kick out of it every time. And that's this section. Looks like a storm's a storm's brewing. There's a few details here that kind of pull us into the action. The boat's a long distance, and that's translated from a word stadia, which was about eight, 6 to 800ft in that time. John 6:19 breaks it down into detail that helps us to know just how far out were they? Well, it says the sea began to be stirred up in John 6:18. A strong wind was blowing, and then when they had rowed about 3 or 4 miles. So they're rowing, but they end up rather than just hugging that shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. If you could picture it, it was it was shaped. It's shaped kind of like a harp. That's how it got its Old Testament name, Kinneret. Kinnor is the word for harp in Hebrew. So Kinneret sea or the Sea of Galilee is this harp shape, and you imagine that widest part of the harp at the top. Sea of Galilee is about 13 miles from north to south, and eight miles from east to west at its widest point. But they're may be trying to get across at that 3 to 4 mile distance. They couldn't stay along the shore because this wind has come from the Mediterranean blowing from west to east, and it's just pushing them back. So they've been pushed out 3 or 4 miles and then it says, they've been battered by the waves. And that's a word battered, that's used elsewhere in the New Testament for a demon tormenting someone. So it's almost like in this action that these waves were coming to life personally attacking this boat. And if you've ever been in a similar situation on the high seas, or one time when I was a camp counselor and took out one of those little one person, I don't even know what you would call it.  It had a little bit of a sail.  I was not raised on the sea. And I was out there one afternoon enjoying time with the Lord, of course. And then the wind starts blowing and there goes me, trying to get back using the sails. So I take it down and just have to paddle. But those waves, those little baby waves were enough to stop me. And I'll admit I panicked. I just thought, you know, here I am in the middle of this...pond. I'm never going to get back to shore, you know. Now this is much different. So they they're out and in verse 24, they're being battered. And then it says the wind was contrary, meaning it was blowing directly against them trying to go west. And all the while we get a piece of information about what time it is. It's the fourth watch of the night. So from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the ancient Near East, time was the night watch and it was divided into four sections. The first watch would be 6 to 9, second watch 9 to 12, third 12 to 3, fourth watch 3 to 6. So if Jesus dismissed the disciples when it was evening, as the accounts tell us, at least they've been out there 4 to 5 hours at this point, straining at the oars, tired, beat down, and just trying to go relative short distance. That's a bad spot. They're wet, tired, scared. And unlike the earlier story where Jesus was at least asleep in the boat, he's nowhere to be seen. It's pitch black. Put yourself in their sandals. I mean, there was mythology in this time about the dangers of the sea. The one occasion I had of feeling stranded at sea was one thing. But this summer at the ocean, one of the nights, got kind of stormy. And it had nothing to do with this. But I was just curious. Even after the big part of the storm went away, um, I had a nephew who refused to sleep and kept me up. So I would go outside and look around, and it was maybe midnight or so, and it was dark, and that ocean was scary. When there was a storm that had just passed. You couldn't have paid me any amount of money in that darkness to walk out even five feet. The crashing of the waves and it's just a brooding, menacing sea. And you think of these guys. They're not wimps. I mean, this is what they do for a living, but it says they're terrified and they're wet and they don't know what to do. And then look at verse 25 in that fourth watch he comes to them. In Mark 6:48 it says that Jesus saw them straining at the oars, literally being harassed in their rowing. And it starts making you ask questions. How does he see them in the pitch black? How does he see them in the storm? He's up on the mountain. They're 3 to 4 miles out. How does he know where to go? You know, the believability about the Bible is often in what it keeps back and explains away. Why I love these stories is because they don't tell us. We just know he's God, so he sees them right in the midst of his praying. He just knows. He knows what's going on with them and he's going to get out to them. And this is where we see he's not just Earth's king, he's heaven's king. He's in control of everything here. They're in control of nothing here. Look at the details of what the disciples are going through in verse 26. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea. At first it says, they're terrified, and that's a word for being agitated, stirred up on the inside. And then they say it is a ghost. All 12 of them come to that conclusion at the same time. It tells you what was believed about the sea at that point when I said, in that time it wasn't just these guys that believed it. If you read other mythologies around other false religions, at the time, the sea was home to the undead. And so they, though having been around Jesus and seen his miracles and seen his power, they've never seen nor heard of a person walking on the water. So they come to the only conclusion they could, which is...that's a ghost. Rather than get on their knees and pray and say, we've been in this situation before, guys, maybe we should. We know Jesus is somewhere around here. We should be praying. No, they start screaming. Middle school boys screaming in a pillow fight or watching a scary movie or something. Just terrified. Crying out in fear. Grown men, sea worn men scared out of their wits. And all coming to the conclusion that it's a ghost. Why the madness? Why the hysterical responses? Well, they've been in a lot of storms before, but now they're in a storm, and now there's a ghost coming at them. What would you do?...be just as scared. And yet, you think about this, uh, situation being tossed in the sea and how that could mess with one's discernment. Maybe you haven't had a situation like this, but you've ever been on an airplane late at night in the dark and there's turbulence. Remember, they've been out here for a few hours. Uh, how stressed out, whacked out, lack of discernment do you have if you were in some turbulence on an airplane for ten minutes, you freak out. You're clutching the sides of the chair. You're thinking all is going down...five minutes, one minute. We're talking hours of this. You think it might have messed with their ability to understand and just even have level headed thinking right now? Gripped by fear and losing faith, Jesus Christ appears to them an unholy ghost. Fear blurred faith's vision, turning their Savior into a spirit. I mean, that's what happened. And it makes us think about our own situation that, when we start to despair like these disciples, how inaccurate our view of God can become. C.H. Spurgeon wrote, "The nearer Jesus was to them, the greater was their fear, Lack of discernment blinds the soul to its richest consolations. We should plead for the Lord to be near us, so we may know him more." And rather they're going in the opposite direction. The last thing they want is that perceived spirit, because of their state of despair, to get any closer to the boat. And I think it teaches us something about our own situation of when we are going through something traumatic like this, something that would produce a sense of despair, despondency, distress. You're probably not your own best source of judgment, are you? No matter how strong in the faith you think you are. Why you need the body of Christ around you is because you're just not like these disciples going to be able....you might be reading the situation rightly, as in it's bad. They're not wrong about being afraid of the storm itself, but they make the jump to then thinking they see something that's not there that they have no reason to believe should be there. And in a takeaway of a spiritual lesson from a physical one here to take the source of their consolation, as Spurgeon says, and then to turn it into their worst fears. They can't even recognize their Savior. Have you ever been there? Going through despair. Shaken up by some circumstance in your life. How accurate were you in really even understanding your situation, let alone where God was in it? Makes me think of, Psalm 77. It's a psalm about somebody crying out to God in the midst of their distress. It says, my voice rises to God and I will cry aloud. My voice rises to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord. In the night my hand was stretched out without weariness. My soul refused to be comforted. But listen for the similarity to what this writer is saying, and where the disciples were. When I remember God, then I am disturbed, as even in the thought of God and this psalmist's low point, thinking of God is a disturbing thought. Why is that? Because he says, verse 7, will the Lord reject forever? Will he never be favorable again? Do you see what he's starting to question here? He's starting to question the goodness of God in his despair.  Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?  Has His promises come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious, or has he, in anger, withdrawn his compassion? Psalm 77:10, then I said, it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed. Wow. That could put you in a bad situation, can't it? When you were overwhelmed with life's troubles and the time you were close to God seems years ago...long ago. That song in the night is gone. Your spirit ponders, do I even know God anymore? Because I surely can't understand him. How does he right himself? Verse 11, I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I remember your wonders of old. Would that have helped the disciples in that situation? To just one of them say, hey guys, we're freaking out! But do you remember the last time we were on a boat in the storm?...what Jesus did for us. He just woke up and said, be quiet. And it was quiet. And when we were astonished. Do you guys remember that? Do you remember what he just did earlier today when he took the loaves and the fish and multiplied them and fed thousands of people? None of them were going there. They were letting their circumstances overwhelm them. And so they were forgetting this God. But the psalmist doesn't. He says, I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work and muse on all your deeds. And then he rights himself...first character quality of God that he gets to in verse 13. Your way, O God, is holy, different. Unlike me, in all the instability that I go through, you are not like me. And then he says, what god is great, like our God. Forgetting the greatness of God...Jesus, the King of earth and King of heaven in that moment, completely forgotten by these disciples. You are the God who works wonders. You have made your strength known among the peoples. You have by your power redeemed your people. You read on in Psalm 77 and he starts talking about something he doesn't even know is going to happen hundreds of years forward. Listen to the end of Psalm 77. The waters saw you, O God. The waters saw you. They were in anguish. The deeps also trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth a sound. Your arrows flashed here and there. The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The lightnings lit up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was in the sea. And your paths in the mighty waters. And your footprints yet are not known. It's a prophetic look forward to this moment where Christ walks on these waters. But maybe they didn't remember Psalm 77, that his way can be in the sea because He's God, and he could plant his feet on the water and walk across it because he's God. Or like in Job 9, who at the end of that book says, I had heard of you with my ears, but now I see you through eyes of faith. But he does say, Job in his distress...were he to pass me by, I would not see him. Were he to move past me, I would not perceive him, even though he could say who alone stretches out the heavens and treads upon the waves of the sea. Verse 8. You see, it's in us to know God, and then to completely miss him because of our human condition. To be able to say true things about him and then not recognize them, that he's right there with us the whole time. John Piper says of how despair can fool our eyes of faith. He said, "despair is relentless in the certainties of pessimism. It's a good line. Despair is relentless in the certainties of pessimism. Our fearful certainties should not be our sureties. So it will always be with deceptions of darkness. Let us know, while we have the light, to cultivate a healthy distrust of the certainties of our despair. What is he trying to say there to us? That while you are on the land and the sun is out, shore up in your heart...trusting God, knowing who he is and what he's done for you. So that when the darkness falls and the storm comes, you will not be tricked. You won't be fooled. You won't think that the one who comes to save you is coming to scare you like these disciples did. Maybe not understanding in the full picture of who Jesus was. That the Savior in the storm was also the one who sent it. You know, because again, we just kind of like a half picture of God, don't we? We just get sold this idea that if you come to Christ, never a storm again. Well, he will deliver you from the storms, but he also is the creator of them. And often he'll create the storm to come to you, to rescue you on it, to stretch your faith, to teach you in a way that prosperity can't and only adversity can. Never more than you can handle, beloved. But in this case, certainly right up to the point that you could be screaming in terror. Well, if you want to know how the story ends, you have to come back next week. But this is what it is to enjoy Jesus, to be able to worship him is to worship him in faith when it's dark, when we're afraid, remembering that as the King of heaven, he's not off on a mountain unaware. William Cooper was an Anglican hymn writer in the 1700s, and one of the most widely read English poets of his day...lived from 1731 to 1800. He grew up in a Christian home, but it was a sad home. He was one of seven children. Five of his siblings died before the age of two. I mean, that's how life was then. And, uh, the only sibling that lived...a younger brother, five years younger. His mother died a few days after giving birth to. So by six years old, no mother. Dad sends him away to school and has no relationship with him essentially the rest of his life. So Cooper struggled with despair his entire life. After a failed attempt at suicide at age 32, he is put in a mental asylum and he comes to Christ after hearing the gospel from a visiting doctor and reading of Christ in the Gospels, raising Lazarus from the dead. And for the first time seeing the compassion of Christ, understanding who Jesus really was, and then turning to Romans 3:21 and understanding that his salvation was secure. Not of good works of his own, but because of the sacrificial life and death of Jesus. We would like the story to end there and it just be one happy tale. But he struggled with despair and depression the rest of his life. Fortunately for him, he became good friends and a disciple of the great John Newton, writer of Amazing Grace. And they were hymn writers together, and in the many times after he became Newton's friend, he had to come back again and again, struggling through depression. Cooper's most well-known, maybe most well-known work was a poem he wrote called, Light Shining Out of Darkness, but it was adapted into a hymn called God Moves in a Mysterious Way. And I want you to enjoy more of Jesus this morning as I read this to you to close.
He wrote, "God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep and unfathomable minds of never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works His sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy. And shall break in blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face. His purpose will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.
Friend, if that doesn't resonate with you...do you know Christ? Can you understand that whatever you might feel has been a frowning countenance of God towards you, as if he has been against you? It's not that way with God. He has sent his Son to die on the cross, so that you could see beyond the circumstances of your life, as hard as they might have been right up to this very moment, and this might be the last time you were going to give church a try.  The last time you were going to give God a shot today.  And you are wondering what he could do to change your mind. He certainly couldn't in a sermon by me, but he can by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, His Son. He could change you right now if you look to Christ and not look to the Christ of your own imaginations and expectations, but look to the Christ of Scripture. Look to the one who is well acquainted with grief, who bore your sins on the cross so that you could be forgiven. Look to him with eyes of faith and trust in him as the Son of God, King of earth, King of heaven, sent to save sinners like you and me. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your grace in Jesus Christ today. We thank you that as your children, what Cooper wrote is true of us that we may suspect in our circumstances and situation, even right now, that there's some something we've done to make you disappointed with us. But if we could only see your smiling face, the one that loves us and you proved it by sending your Son for us, and to hold on to that singular thread of faith this morning is all we need. That you would minister Christ to us this morning through your word and by your Spirit's illumination of this word. We ask in your name, Christ. Amen.