As I said earlier, these are
somber verses, aren't they? Serious, weighty verses. It's one of the things that's
remarkable about the word glory. Glory in Hebrew is a word that
implies weightiness, heaviness. And I would imagine like Romans
9, this is a passage of scripture which is probably very, very
little dealt with, very little expounded in the churches. And these verses describe the
fate and the reason for the fate of countless multitudes. And it's talking about people
in these verses. It's talking about people who
are in churches. It's talking about religious
people. It's talking about zealous people,
the people who zealously were attacking and troubling and persecuting
these Thessalonian believers, were people who were in the synagogue
in Thessalonica. They are zealous, they are religious,
they are the many, they are the many. And here we see in the weakness, just as Paul is
strong when he is weak, here is this little church, this little
church which is the apple of God's eye. And Paul is caused,
he says he's bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren,
beloved of the Lord, because from the beginning God has chosen
you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. whereunto he called you by our
gospel to the attaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a remarkable description
of the protection. No wonder Paul finishes this
part of the Scriptures by saying, comfort your hearts. And our
God, our Lord, in verse 16, has given us everlasting consolation,
everlasting comfort and good hope. in the midst of this terrible,
terrible darkness. Isn't it extraordinary what these
verses are saying, like many other passages of scripture,
is that the churches, so many of the churches of this world
have standing behind the pulpit a minister of righteousness,
a satanic person, a person who is deceived and directed and
under the control of Satan. And so much of our flesh wants
to say, well, it's all very well to be in those places. The shepherd
might be deceitful, but the sheep will be okay. Not according to
this book. The sheep will be okay, and the
real sheep will be taken out of there. The Lord makes it abundantly
clear, doesn't He, in Matthew 15. He says they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind,
they both fall into the ditch. And these verses show us several
remarkable and incredibly important things. One is, of course, that
God is absolutely sovereign, that none of this comes outside
of His absolute sovereign control. He is Lord of all things. He is in charge of all things.
I love some of the things that Pink writes in this book of his,
the attributes of God. Just let me read this little
bit here. Men imagine that the Most High
is moved by sentiment. God loves everyone. God desires
everyone to be saved. Jesus died for everyone. Rather
than actuated by principle. It's an interesting point, isn't
it? God is moved by sentiment. rather than actuated by principle. I suppose that his omnipotency
is such an idle fiction that Satan is thwarting his designs
on every side. They think that if he has formed
any plan or purpose at all, then it must be like theirs, constantly
subject to change. They openly declare that whatever
power he possesses must be restricted, lest he invade the citadel of
man's free will and reduce him to a machine." How many times
have you heard that debate? They lower the all-efficacious
atonement. which has actually redeemed everyone
for whom it was made, to a mere remedy which sin-sick souls may
use if they feel disposed to. and they innovate the invincible
work of the Holy Spirit to an offer of the Gospel, which sinners
may accept or reject as they please." This was written 60
something years ago. It's remarkable, isn't it? how
things haven't changed. The God of this 20th century
no more resembles the supreme sovereign of holy writ than does
the dim flickering of a candle, the glory of the midday sun. The God who is now talked about
in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday school,
mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day, and preached
in most of the so-called Bible conferences, is the figment of
human imagination. An invention of maudlin sentimentality,
the heathen outside the pale of Christendom form gods out
of wood and stone, while millions of heathen inside Christendom
manufacture a god out of their own carnal mind. In reality they
are but atheists. for there is no other possible
alternative between an absolute supreme God and no God at all. A God whose will is resisted,
whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated,
possesses no title to deity, and so far from being a fit object
of worship, merits naught but contempt. As I say so often, when you hear
people blaspheming, you immediately ought to think that that blasphemy
had its beginning in a pulpit. That's where it had its beginning,
when we see immorality in this world. You must say that that
immorality had its beginning in the pulpits of this world
where God has been reduced. Reduced to a pathetic, wishful,
hoping God with a small g. This God here is a great and
awesome God. He's great and awesome in protecting
His church. He's great and awesome in controlling
every tiny wriggle of Satan and all of his people. It's wonderful,
isn't it? Paul begins this letter saying
he's bound to give thanks unto God for you, brethren, as it is right Bound to give thanks,
this is verse 3 of chapter 1, as it is meet, as it is right,
because your faith grows exceedingly. Where did their faith come from?
God had given them faith. God had grown them faith. And
the love every one of you has toward each other abounds. Where did that love come from?
God has taught them to love each other and to hold fast. There they are, this small and
persecuted band. And as we saw last week, there
will be a time when this man of sin, this son of perdition,
will be revealed. And he operates as Satan. He
opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or worship.
He's attacking the Church. Satan's one focus of attack is
the Church, always the Church, and really only the Church. Ephesians 2 describes the power
and the control that he has over the rest of this world. You were
quickened, you were dead in transgressions and sins, where in time past
you walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh,
works and works and works in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our
conversation, we lived our lives in time past, in the lust of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath as of others." And then
we have this great, but God. He sits in the temple of God,
showing himself that he is God, speaking of man's free will and
man's sovereignty, and man standing above God, man deciding, determining
the character of God, man deciding and determining the word of God
and how it is to be read and how it is to be tempted. to be
taught and how it is to be held on to and what is to be held
on to. Determining by man's judgement
who the Lord Jesus is and how He will work. There is, as verse
7 says, a time of restraining and that wicked one will be destroyed
with the Spirit of his mouth, the Word of God and the brightness
of his coming. He comes to gather his own and
in gathering his own he comes to destroy Satan. And Satan is
working, isn't he? He works according to all power
and signs and lying wonders and the deceivableness of unrighteousness. We've talked about that in the
last couple of messages. It's called lawlessness in Matthew
7. In so many parts of the scripture Satan is revealed as an enticing,
if you read Proverbs you'll see he's an enticing harlot. in seducing and drawing people
to himself. And He works in those that perish. They are perishing. As we saw
last week, God's judgement on them is absolutely just. They perish because they receive
not the love of the truth. They might give assent to the
truth, they might give acknowledgement of the truth in all sorts of
ways. They might stand up for people who proclaim the truth
and then They turn when there comes a point of crisis, a point
where there is a fork in the road, and then you'll find that
they're happy to join with those who hate that truth. You see,
verse 8 says in chapter 1, they do not obey the Gospel. They obey not the Gospel. They receive not the love of
the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall
send them a strong delusion. He'll send them a strong wandering,
that word means. that they all, that they the
many, as Peter says in 2 Peter 2.2, many shall follow their
pernicious ways. by reason of whom the way of
truth shall be evil spoken." Isn't that exactly what we have
right around us all over this world at the moment? That all
might be damned, that they all might be damned, they all might
be judged, they all might be determined, as Acts 13 is a remarkable
verse, Acts 13, verse 46, Paul and Barnabas again expelled from
another place of preaching and stirred up by the Jews. But in
Acts 13.46 Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary
that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but
seeing you, put it from you. the active, willful activities
of men, and judge yourselves, that's that word, this damned
word here, judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life. We turn
to the Gentiles. It doesn't stop the proclamation
of the Gospel at all. That all might be damned, that
believe not the truth, and but had pleasure in unrighteousness. They had made a determination
in the deceivableness of unrighteousness, but they are 100% fully responsible. They had pleasure in it. They decided they find it pleasing. pleasing to their flesh, pleasing
to other men, and people will exalt them and parade them before
others and say how righteous these people are, how holy. Look at the things that they
are doing. I don't know about you, but when
I was in religion, years ago, it was remarkable how often people
talked about the amazing things that other people were doing.
And people were paraded before other people all the time and
said, look at the great deeds this person has done. Shouldn't
you be like him? They were holding up men all
the time. The deceivableness of unrighteousness. Many shall follow their pernicious
ways. And then we have that glorious
but. I'd just like to spend a little time looking at these next couple
of verses tonight because they just give us... We have before
us in a sense two ways to live, for want of a better word. We
have the way of men left to himself, left to his own pleasures. and we have the way of God. Satan operates, as it were, behind
the scenes as someone who is deceiving and manipulating and
controlling and enticing and subtly drawing people away, causing
people to look to themselves and to look to their righteousness,
to look to their deeds. But here Paul turns the tables
and we actually are introduced to a God who is unseen by this
world, but seen by grace in the eyes of those who have new life,
who have been born again, who have had God himself. come and speak to their hearts. The shepherd's voice has been
heard. We are bound, we are We are held in bounds, we are
constrained to give thanks always to God for you. See there is
amongst the family of God, there is amongst this body of believers
throughout the world, there is a bond of love and there's a
bond of encouragement. And Paul's writing to these Thessalonian
believers, he's just saying, remember what happened. Remember
the Gospel that came to you, remember the character of God,
remember this Jesus that Acts 17 says, this Jesus, this Jesus
whom I preach to you is the Christ. We are bound, brethren. It's a lovely word, brethren,
isn't it? We have brethren throughout this world. We have the joy of
having brethren with us. Paul is bound to give thanks
for brethren. I don't know how many times each
day you give thanks to God for brethren. Cole heard from Clay
tonight. There are brethren over there,
and if all of you could be transported by some remarkable machine and
dumped into Princeton, New Jersey, you would find that you would
fit into the congregation there like a hand in a glove. And you
would have, as I did with David Burrows there in England when
we first met, and immediately there was this bond, this remarkable
bond, this remarkable unity. That's a manifest token, isn't
it? Gathering these people together
is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that you're
counted worthy, worthy of the Kingdom. We're bound to give
thanks. Brethren, Beloved of the Lord. What a great description of believers. Beloved of the Lord. Loved from
eternity. He says the same in 1 Thessalonians. We give thanks always to God
for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering
without ceasing your work of faith and your labour of love
and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of
God and our Father, knowing, brethren beloved, brethren beloved,
your election of God, because God hath from the beginning chosen
you to salvation. Isn't it wonderful? Love is the
cause of election. Free, sovereign, everlasting
love of God hath from the beginning, the beginning of all existence
in this universe, God has from that beginning That remarkable
beginning has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. Election is God's sovereign work. And when God works, He works
absolutely, He works completely, He works eternally, and He works
personally. Just look at that word there,
has from the beginning chosen you. chosen you unto salvation. All the chosen, all the beloved
of God must, must be saved. They were saved in eternity. They were saved from the foundation
of the world. I love when Paul's writing to
Timothy the way, the order he puts it in 2 Timothy 1 verse 9, who has saved us, saving
comes first, and called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. So let the rest of the world argue about election as much
as they like. Brethren, we are bound to give
thanks. We're bound to give thanks about
election. We're bound to give thanks to
a God who is absolutely sovereign. God has chosen you to salvation. It means he's chosen, it means
to take one for oneself. He's taken his people for himself. They were his delightful gift
to that son of his love and they were the son's delightful purchase
by his blood. They were the son's delight from
all eternity. chosen you to salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit. Salvation includes, always includes
and necessarily includes the regenerating work of God the
Holy Spirit to make us, I am amazed what Peter said, partakers
of the divine nature. There are just so many things
in the scriptures that describe God's children and describe His
relationship with them which are just beyond comprehension
and we are just left in awe and wonder and hopefully in delight
and worship. So you're chosen through the
sanctification of the Spirit. It's through the sanctifying
work of the Spirit. It's through sanctification wrought
by the Spirit. And see, Paul is contrasting,
isn't it? What these others are doing,
these other Jewish, Pharisaical, people in Thessalonica and others
who've joined with them. They have pleasure in their righteousness. It's unrighteousness according
to God. It is a deceivable unrighteousness
because it allows them to think that they have some hand in sanctification
by themselves. Sanctification. Let's just talk
about it for a few minutes. Sanctification has a couple of
meanings in scripture. One is to set apart, to consecrate,
to dedicate to a sacred service. And the other one is to purify,
to cleanse, to make holy what was not holy before. The Lord
Jesus says in John 17, 19, He said, He has sanctified himself. He set himself apart. consecrated
himself, and the Church is said to be washed, to be sanctified,
to be justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by the
Spirit of our God, 1 Corinthians 6.11. See, sanctification is
a Trinitarian activity. All of God is involved in all
of the activities of God. They are one in mind, they are
one in purpose. We are sanctified by God the
Father, says Jude 1. We are sanctified by the offering
of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ once for all, Hebrews
10.10. And by one offering He has perfected
forever them that are sanctified. 1 Peter 1.2 talks about the sanctification
of the Spirit. We live in a world, and I think
it's part of the deceivableness of unrighteousness, where people
talk about progressive holiness, progressive sanctification. If
they knew what the word meant, they would stop their nonsense
in talking to people about it. God, as we saw in those verses,
He chose all the church in one act, at one time, and when He
chose that church, that church was complete and perfect, and
God's decree is unchanging and never needs to change. It's God's
decree, isn't it? And the Son, by one act of redemption,
it says that He has perfected forever. affected forever, them
that are sanctified." When did He do that? When did He do it? It was done before we were born,
brothers and sisters. It was done before multitudes
were born. The Holy Spirit brings new birth. We are born again, not of corruptible
seed but of incorruptible seed that liveth and abideth, So to teach progressive sanctification
as we see all around us is to teach that the Holy Spirit's
work is incomplete. They might give a cent to what
the scriptures say and then they turn around and teach that sanctification
is an ongoing work that we must be actively engaged in to bring
it to completion. You see how he finishes this
section of the scriptures. He's giving thanks, he's talking
about how you have been given everlasting consolation, verse
16, and good hope through grace. You see, progressive sanctification
denies the gracious work of God as the sanctifier, denies the
very person of the Lord Jesus Christ who was made unto us sanctification. And so it takes away comfort,
doesn't it? Paul writes to these Thessalonians
and he's writing to people who he's concerned that they might
be shaken in mind and troubled. People are troubled, believers
and brethren are troubled, when the deity and the perfection
and the finished work of our God, our Triune God, is denied
and they are challenged about it. It opens the door for this
deceivableness of unrighteousness. You must, they say, add your
work to His work. What a comfort it is to know
what the Lord Jesus said and how true it is. That which is
born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of flesh is
flesh and it remains flesh. That which is born of spirit
is spirit. Regeneration is by the spirit.
on the Spirit, and that which is born of the Spirit is only
Spirit. Our bodies are unsanctified. In the Spirit is a new creation.
We are justified and sanctified by the Holy Spirit in Christ
Jesus. Christ becomes in the new birth
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And the flesh, your flesh and
my flesh, is subject to corruption and sin, and it's subject to
the buffeting of Satan and his ministers of righteousness."
That's why Paul has written this letter, to comfort these people.
And he comforts them by reminding them of the perfect and finished
work of God and the absolute sovereignty of our God and the
absolute deity of the Lord Jesus and the perfection of His finished
work. So there's no such thing as partial holiness. You are
holy. You are holy or you're completely
unholy. And our holiness is Him. Hebrews 10. We've got some amazing
verses in this, isn't it? He speaks of himself in verse
9. He says, Here he said, Lo, I
come to do thy will, O God. He takes away the first. He takes
away that mosaic covenant that he may establish. He may establish
it by his own work and his own person and his own spirit's work
in the lives of his people. He establishes it. By the witch
will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once. for by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified." When he does a sanctifying work
he does it perfectly and completely. There's no such thing as partial
holiness. The conflict between the flesh
and the spirit begins at conversion. Paul said he was alive once without
the law and the law came and sin revived. All of a sudden
when he met the Lord Jesus he knew that the standard of the
law was absolute perfection and he hadn't performed a single
thing. And 23 years later he can write
to those Romans and say, in my flesh dwells no good thing. Job can describe himself as vile. Isaiah was a man of unclean lips. David said sin was always before
me. The natural body This will be
Salaam, this natural body will be Salaam and it will be raised
to spiritual body when Christ returns. Paul is encouraging
these people to look away to Christ, the deceivableness of
unrighteousness says to them that you can do something now,
you can do something now by your flesh, by your acts of righteousness,
to add, to polish, to embellish the work of God. The answer to
the deceivableness of unrighteousness is in the very character of our
God. Let's go back to verse 13. God has from the beginning chosen
you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth. Belief of the truth about who
our God is. Belief of the truth about who
we are. Belief of the truth about how
God saves people. belief of the truth in what we
have just read in the previous verses about God sovereignly
reigning and ruling and God sovereignly causing people to be responsible
for their own disobedience and wickedness. God's children believe
the truth. God's children love the truth. God's children find delight in
the truth. Chosen to salvation. through
the merits of Christ's obedience and sacrifice, by the regenerating
work of the Spirit, by the everlasting eternal love of God the Father,
and belief of the truth. Jesus Christ is the truth. The truth of the Gospel is Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. And our God never leaves his
children. Read Ezekiel 34, it's remarkable. The shepherd goes over hill and
dale and he searches for his sheep. He knows where they are. He knows how to gather them. He knows when to gather them.
And he has means of gathering. I hear the shepherd's voice,
whereunto he called you. I hear the voice of God when
He calls, and He calls personally. He called you. He calls the yous
individually, and He calls the yous collectively, and He calls
all of His sheep by our Gospel. It's called God's Gospel, the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the Apostle's Gospel. It is just the Gospel, the one
and only Gospel. And as we see in Galatians, all
other Gospels that leave anything in the work of salvation in the
hands of men at any point is another Gospel and a deadly poison. There is and there will be in
the hearts of all of God's children an irresistible and effectual
and a personal call and it will come through the preaching of
the Gospel. This Jesus, I love what Paul
says in Acts 17, he says, This Jesus whom I preached to you,
he approved, and alleged, demonstrated, and showed from the Old Testament
Scriptures, and from the history that they knew of, that this
Jesus, this Jesus is the Christ. It's remarkable, isn't it? It
is in the world's eyes a foolish thing to preach Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. It is in the world's eyes a wise
thing to create big events and to create much emotion and to
stir the emotions of people, isn't it? So often these days
there's a huge temptation, because there's a huge movement, isn't
it, to make church attractive, to appeal to the flesh of men
and then somehow you can entice them. It's like baiting a hook,
isn't it, that you put something on it that's really enticing
and you reel them in and all of a sudden you've got them.
Then they had the Billy Graham crusades out here in Australia.
What they used to do is that Billy would preach God's love
for them and preach a whole bunch of Arminian nonsense and then
he would bring the whole thing to a crescendo and then there
would be a hymn that was sung and it would tug at the heart
strings of people. And then in the audience, in
these huge audiences, he had hundreds of people planted. And
what they would do at that critical time when Billy was saying, come
down now and pray the Synod prayer, all these men would get up and
women would get up and they'd all come to the front. Because
you've got to get people to do something. And when they arrived, and when
they prayed their Synod's prayer, if they were Catholics, where
were they sent? They were sent back to the Catholic
Church. the deceivableness of unrighteousness. God calls His own. He calls His
own by the Gospel. May God give us faith and courage
to be a place that just proclaims the Gospel and trusts what God
says about it. It is the power of God unto salvation. And the result of it, what's
the result? He called you by our Gospel to
the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Obtaining
the glory. He spoke about Him coming in
the glory of His power and coming with His holy angels, coming
to gather His elect to obtain. It's a purchased possession.
It's His, isn't it? It's ours by gift. Obtaining. He says in 1 Thessalonians 5.9,
we obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ and here we, as
a purchased possession, a similar word, here we obtain the glory
of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a remarkable thing. We use that word, and I use that
word, and it's here in the scriptures. What does it really mean, brothers
and sisters? How glorious is our great God. How glorious is our Saviour. How glorious is He to His people. What remarkable things, what
remarkable But what a remarkable person in heaven right now is
a man. A man in so many ways just like
us. And he sits on the throne of
that universe and he's worshipped by angels and worshipped by the
redeemed. glorious. Peter and John had
a glimpse of His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Paul
had a glimpse of His glory on the Damascus Road and had glimpses
of His glory beyond it. Such was the glory of heaven.
Such was the glory of the Lord Jesus in heaven that Paul said
he couldn't describe it. Words can't describe it, and
here he says we obtain the glory. He said at the end, in that last
supper, He said, I have glorified Thee on earth and have finished
the work which Thou gavest me to do. And now, Father, glorify
Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was. in us and we are glorified in
Him. And that was Paul's prayer, wasn't
it? It's interesting, isn't it? The
place where the glory of God, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ
is seen most clearly on this earth. is in little bunches of
people like those Thessalonian believers, and little gatherings. Turn to Ephesians 3.21 and we'll
just finish there. It is remarkable, isn't it? This is where, if you want to
see the glory of God, if you want to see the place where God
the Father has determined that He's going to glorify His Son
on this earth, if you're going to see the glory of God, I might just go back and read
the rest of the prayer. He bows his knees, verse 14, unto the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven
and on earth is named, that he would grant you according to
the riches of his glory. according to the riches of His
glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
man. Christ in you, the hope of glory,
that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with
all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height,
and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you
might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him
that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above, all that we
ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, unto
him be glory where? In the church. by Christ Jesus
throughout all ages, world without end. If you want to find the
glory of God, you want to find the place where the Lord Jesus
dwells in glory. Find a place where the Gospel
is preached. That's the place. It is remarkable, isn't it? The
world will never see it, and the deceivableness of unrighteousness
will never allow those who are deceived to ever see it.