16-03-25 - WHEN DARKNESS CLOSES IN - 2 Thessalonians 1

MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG

   FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC.

I invite you to pray with me: O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servants for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon them with the eyes of thy mercy (Gaby P, Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G, Fega G,  Rosy Ch, Patricia L. Lina J. Manuel D. C, Yuya N. Mercedes L. )   Comfort them with a sense of thy goodness; preserve them from the temptations of the enemy; and give them patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore them to health, and enable them to lead the residue of their life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally they may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

You can add names of your family and friends whom are in need of pray

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God the Father, we thank you for your answer to our prayers with 

The good news, with the recovery of health for some

Strengthen them so that they may regain their faith in you

And that they may be witnesses that you love them and 

that you respond when we trust and believe in you

Thank you Father God in the name

of Jesus our Lord of Lords and King of Kings

Praise be to your name

always and forever, AMEN.

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This morning I want to look at Scripture written to people whose lives have been turned upside down. Only a short time before they were no different than those around: engaging the same lifestyles; pursuing the same pleasures; serving the same gods.  And then, everything changed.  

You would think those living within Thessalonica would accommodate the changes these people made.  After all, they were known for being tolerant, open to a wide diversity of belief.  For some, Dionysius was their god of choice.  For others Zeus, or Apollo.  It was - choose the god that fits the lifestyle you wanted to live.  You wanted power, bow to Zeus.  You wanted good harvest, follow Demeter.  You wanted debauchery, go with Dionysius.    

Within this Greco – Roman world, there was also accommodation for other gods.  Egyptian deities like Isis were prominent and Jewish faith was also accepted.  So freedom and ‘tolerance’ for all made sense. Thessalonica was the major port city, and extending from that port was the major highway to the rest of Greece.  So people came from all across the known world.  But tolerance only went so far because there was one belief that wasn’t about to be tolerated.

Rationally, that exclusion made no sense.  You would think this new message that didn’t enslave, it freed; didn’t demand, it forgave; didn’t oppress, it loved.  Simply put, this new belief was unlike anything they had heard.  No petulant god to be pleased; no payment of money to be made.  Instead, the offer of new life in Jesus. And the reception of this?  furious opposition.  Acts 17 tells us that hearing what they had, the city erupted in a riot.  The message was clear – while Thessalonica embraced all, that embrace required the elimination of one.  What followed were persecutions, trials and arrests.  

The dangers became so intense, Paul was forced to flee the city after only being there a short while.  Now in Corinth, he writes and with that we get a good look at what these new believers were facing.  II Thessalonians 1:14 says,   persecutions and afflictions trials, :5 sufferings :6  troubles.  And 2:14 -16  you suffered from your own countrymen the same thing, Christians suffered in Judea from the Jews.  And that meant beatings, imprisonment, and death.  

In the context of this suffering Paul writes, Paul, 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 our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers :1-3  

With these opening words, these believers who have lost much, are given strong statements of encouragement centered on the new identity that is theirs.  I want you to notice 4 things Paul highlights  revisioning them from what they have lost, to focus on what they’ve gained, 1st You’re not alone.  You are part of something transformationally new – the ecclesia ec–out/clesia–to call. This  may not seem like much but consider how you might read these words if you had been driven from your home; fired from your job, torn from your relationships – your previous identity left in  tatters.  Those who once called you friend, now saying: Get out and God’s response, Seen and Called out by ME.  That message is reinforced in the 2nd encouragement to Take Hold of the One To Whom You Now Belong. As believers who are being driven out, you are IN God the Father and IN Jesus Christ the Son.  In the Father who declares you His son and IN Jesus who brought you into that relationship.  Their action initiated by love.  Closely aligned with this is the 3rd thing Paul focuses on - What Your New Identity Now Means - Vertically to Whom you are called: to God your Father.  Understand this in the context of those who come to saving faith in Jesus in countries where other faiths dominate.  For these, following Christ means being disowned – you’re name taken, your inheritance gone, your existence denied.  Despite genetics, a child disowned, but who will never be redemptively disowned by God, his or her Heavenly Father.  He - not a father who disappoints or demands; not a father who accepts one moment and rejects the next; not a father who hurts or discourages but a Father whose love never wavers, never critiques, never withdraws.  But What Your New Identity Now Means - Vertically is also rooted in the relationship you have been given with a new King, a new Lord.

In Thessalonica there was another factor why persecution was on the rise for believers.  Thessalonica was the first city where emperor worship was instituted putting Christians even more out of step with their surrounding world, the command clear - bow and pledge allegiance to this Roman god. But here Paul makes clear, as a follower of Christ there is only one to Whom we bow.  This King rules over all and His rule is always for our best even though there will be times when we may not understand what His rule is doing.

And among the many things that come from this new relationship?  Grace and peace.  Grace means being given love and forgiveness we had no hope of receiving.  Grace not because it was earned but because it was given from Jesus’ outstretched hand.  Unmerited favour from the King whose supply of what He gives is free and unlimited.  That grace means peace. 

And grace and peace were desperately needed for these believers who were not only suffering for their faith, they were also being deceived with troubling lies that threatened even more than persecution.  Those lies if true, would destroy.   

Before looking at these lies, Paul gives a 4th thing to encourage, What Your New Identity Now Means – Horizontally You are among brothers :3.  Not just DNA connected brothers but brothers united in attractive, growing and strong faith.  Faith introduced to them by Paul that was examined, argued, studied and finally uniting them in what they found to be true. This faith tested in the fire, its truth refined and strengthened under pressure.  Faith worth living for.  Faith our children see us living for in how we live, how we talk and how we prioritize so they  don’t settle for a watered down faith of nice stories and helpful teachings.  

And flowing out of that faith, increasing love for one another.  Love for every one of them not based on shared interests or compatible  personalities but love as Jesus instructed, A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By THIS shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another  Jn 13:34,35.

Love centered in Jesus’ love for us.  He pursuing us – the undeserving - finding us in our mess, choosing us when there was nothing in us worthy of that choice.  And because of that love, giving from lives that have received.   

So this is where Paul begins.  So let’s take a closer look so we better understand the lies that have added emphasis to the need.  For that we have to read the 1st few verses of chapter 2, Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction  :1-3.

We’ll get into this more fully next week but for now just a few things to note.  What Paul is speaking to in 2 Thessalonians is the 2nd Coming of Christ – what that will look and what it will mean.  So important stuff but as :2 tells us, someone is messing up the waters of what these  are hearing.  In short, they are the lies to which I earlier referred - the messages they have received, whether by prophecies, compelling preachers and yes, by a convincing letter supposedly written by Paul, that Jesus has already come to rapture the ‘church’ and that they were now suffering because they’d missed His coming.  

So 2nd Thessalonians is his corrective letter to set things right and to correct wrong beliefs.  In what he states, he makes it clear, false teachers will arise, the antichrist is still to come and those who follow Jesus will experience times of difficulty and even times of tribulation.  

So in :4 he commends them for their perseverance in the face of trials and tribulation more or less echoing Peter’s words, Don’t be surprised when fiery trials come upon you to test you as though something strange is happening to you 1 Pet 4:13.  The afflictions the ESV refers to in :4 what the KJV refers to as tribulation which is probably more accurate and definitely more descriptive.  The word tribulation is taken from the Latin – tribulum, which describes a plank of wood, its underside embedded with nails that would be drawn back and forth over a piece of land tearing up the earth to separate wheat from chaff of to ready the soil for planting crops.  This scarring and tearing is their experience that takes us into :5 where we are introduced to the righteous judgment of God.

Now don’t disconnect what we are about to read from the context just laid out – the suffering of these believers who have been told, the day of the Lord has come.   

Freeze frame for a second to better understand this.  Take a look at something we visited when we went through the book of Revelation – specifically the day of the Lord,  something the New Testament  also calls it a day of “wrath,” a day of “visitation,” and the “great day of God Almighty”.  

CHART :

1:7 tells us this day will not be Jesus meek and mild.  There’ll be no angelic songs, no pasture land walks, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.  In Jesus’ Second Coming He comes in judgment - in flaming fire, inflicting justice on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of Christ.  This is Jesus coming in all His glory and power.  

Here in his corrective, Paul wants these believers to understand, this day has not yet come but when it does, justice will be delivered for all the wrong done, all the pain endured.  This day will be the righteous judgement of God. This is some hard truth that doesn’t sit well with many modern day thinkers who want to believe something else. Take what Rob Bell, a one-time prominent pastor asserts in his book, Love Wins that, “Given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance  and turn to God.”  

To him, the idea of Hell, punishment and everlasting separation from God is incomprehensible.  And because it is incompatible with ‘his’ view of God, he just discards the possibility of judgment and hell.  Instead, everybody will one day see the light and be given arms wide open invitation into Heaven.  His dismissal of God’s judgment requires the removal of very clear teaching of the Bible that says things like what we read in :9, They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might or Jesus’ words that some, Will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth  Mtth 8:12 or what Revelation 20:10 tells us about, The lake of burning sulfur where the wicked are tormented day and night forever and ever.

This teaching also doesn’t fit well with universalists who believe that God will accept everybody in the end with no one going to hell.  Megachurch pastor, Michael Walrond’s states, Belief in Jesus as the only way to heaven is insanity.  He and his fellow worshippers self-describe as, An ever evolving community of visionaries, dreamers, and doers who have been called by God to live the lives we were created to live. Actually, I’m certain his perspective and those who hold these same views, will be unpleasantly surprised when they stand before the One who made this apparently, ‘insane’ comment. 

It also should call into question why this, so called, loving God would put His Son through the horror of the Cross? Why the scouring?  Why the thorns?  Why the nails?  

The truth is there is a hell and it is for this reason, God sent His Son so no one will have to be separated from God’s love.  God tells us clearly that, God does not want anyone to perish but all to come to repentance 2 Pet 3:9 that He desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth 1 Tim 2:4 and that, God does not delight in the death of the wicked Ez 33:11.  

Throughout Scripture we see those who don’t know Christ often described in very compassionate ways.  They are portrayed as the blind, the lost, the enslaved, those without hope, and sheep without a shepherd.  It is to these we are reminded Jesus came, To seek and to save the lost Lk 19:10 and all who are far off Acts 2:39.  John reminds, God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved Jn 3:17.  

These and so many others showing us God’s heart of compassion.  Yet these who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus are also those who are described as those, Who raise a fist against God, who are defiant, who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, who love darkness rather than light. And here in :9 we are told, They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

This reaffirming that while God IS a God of compassion, He is also a God of justice.  And as we are reminded here in :5, His justice is righteous which is to say, no one will be treated in a way that is wrong or unfair. And with that, the Bible telling us hell is real terrible and despite what some would also have us believe, eternal.  

The eternal reality is that we are forever, removed from the presence of God.  This week I had a very small, admittedly hugely inadequate representation of this because of a brief power outage. At first, the outage inconvenient, the hope? soon rectified.  But it got me to thinking, how different might it have been if I placed that outage as I watched the last minutes of a tied Super Bowl or a Stanley Cup 7th game final?  At first momentary frustration; after passing minutes, mounting despair.  For heavily invested fans, fist shaking outrage and fear trembling knees.  But let that outage go on - where the freezer no longer freezes and the heat no longer heats, where hours turn into days and days turn into weeks, the scores of those games are soon irrelevant.  This outage is not sourced in a broken substation that can be repaired.  

Because cosmically, the heavens have changed.  Now the sun no longer shines, stars no longer come.  No daylight comes to dispel the black of night.  No capacity to enjoy the once enjoyed.  All those have been taken away.  Just the promise of everlasting dark with no hope for more.

On a pitifully small scale, this captures in a minute way what being separated from a loving, every-good-gift giving God will be like but Scripture tells us it will be so much worse than this.  Jesus tells us, It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire …..Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels  Mk 9:43, Matt 25:41.

Though judgment isn’t God’s desire we’re told, He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  Jn 3:18,19

But for the Christian, a very different future that we will have already been taken into, The presence of the Lord, we will witness the glory of His might when He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marvelled at among all who have believed. :10.

At the risk of again turning to the mundane, let me take you once more into the athletic arena.  No matter the sport, any serious athlete wants to be on a team where they can achieve the highest award.  While athletes are richly rewarded for their efforts all too often with obscene amounts of money, the true athlete is primarily driven for the prize not the money.  It’s because of the prize they will push their bodies farther than there are meant to go. It’s why weights are added to weights to take them past limitations they thought could be reached.  So they run the stairs, push the weights, ride the bikes, complete the circuits, deny the Thessalonic.

Ancient city of Thessalonic - Reconstruction in Roman Times

It's what Paul says, Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.  But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I should be disqualified.  Phil 3:13,14, 1 Cor 9:24-27.

And the prize – we will marvel at His coming – the coming of the King.  We will be partakers of His glory.  We will lift high the trophy.

Fixed on that Paul tells us, Walk worthy of your calling so that the name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified in you :11,12.

Living out the worthiness of your calling knowing the reward that is ahead.

Living it out in your workplace  

Living it out in your home   

Living it out in the place you were done wrong

And yes, 

Living out the worthiness of your calling, repenting and moving forward one after the wrong you have done 

Living worthy – though afflicted still faithful

Living worthy –in the assurance you are called and immensely loved 

The name of the coming Lord Jesus glorified in you.  

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