Very good. Well if you turn with
me in your scriptures to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3. The context of course
is, as we have seen many times, that Paul has sent Timothy and
at some stage later Silas, both of them ended up in Macedonia. Thessalonica is the capital of
Macedonia. It is still there today. It is
a city called Salonica. It's still Salonika, it's still
a famous great city. And Paul had heard news, and
he gives them the reason he sent. Timothy. He talks about them
being his glory and his joy. Then he says, Chapter 3, verse
1, When we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left
in at Athens alone, and sent Timotheus, our brother and minister
of God, and our fellow labourer in the Gospel of Christ to establish
you and to comfort you concerning your faith. That no man should
be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that
we were appointed thereunto. For verily when we were with
you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation,
even as it came to pass. And you know For this cause,
when I could no longer forebear, I sent to know your faith, lest
by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be
in vain. But now when Timotheus came from
you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity,
love, that word means, and that ye have good remembrance of us
always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you. Therefore, brethren, we were
comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your
faith. For now we live if you stand
fast in the Lord. But what thanks can we render
to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for
your sakes before our God, night and day praying exceedingly that
we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking
in your faith. Now God Himself and our Father
and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you, and the Lord
make you increase and abound in love, one toward another and
toward all men, even as we do toward you. To the end that He
may establish your hearts, unblameable, in holiness, before God, even
our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all
His saints." Again, one of the things that's really fascinating
about these New Testament letters is that Paul is actually writing
to people and reminding them of what they've experienced.
He reminds them of what they witnessed when he preached the
Gospel to them. He reminds them of the impact
of the Gospel upon them. He reminds them of the impact
of the Gospel upon others. And here he is reminding them
of the impact that Timothy had upon them. It's very interesting,
isn't it? When the New Testament letters
are written, you've got to remember these people are just being reminded
of what they've experienced. When it comes to the so-called
moral teaching of the New Testament, all the so-called the law, the
passages that people turn into law now, again they're things
that people have experienced. The love of God compels and constrains
and the response of the hearts of God's people to the work of
God the Holy Spirit in them is huge and profound. And so He's
just reminding them of what is actually happening in their lives.
And here He's reminding them of this event. where Paul, because
he longed for them, because he delighted in them, because he
found himself just rejoicing over them. And why is he rejoicing
over them? He's rejoicing over them because
they are evidence. of the victory of the Lord Jesus,
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and His reigning in Heaven
and the Spirit going out and the Spirit testifying to the
Lord Jesus and the Spirit working in the hearts of God's people
and their experiences are Paul's experiences and they are bearing
witness to this and we have seen again and again that Paul establishes
why again and again he calls them to know that they are beloved
brethren, and they are beloved brethren, and they are elect
brethren. So Paul sends one who is dear
to him, sends one who is incredibly dear to him. He sends the closest
and the dearest to him, of course, so that they might know that
he takes what's happening in their lives with the greatest
seriousness and he has great affection for them. Timothy,
who was useful to him, Timothy who was a fellow labourer with
him, He's sent all the way back from where he is in Athens. He's
sent all the way back up to Thessalonica to bear witness to what's happened
in the lives of these people. And he sends him and he gives
him these designations. He gives him the designation,
our brother. and then he calls him a minister
of God, and then he calls him our fellow labourer in the Gospel
of Christ. And he sends him for these two
reasons, to establish you, to comfort you concerning your faith. And for those of us who pray
that prayer so often don't we, I believe, Lord help thou my
unbelief. It's very comforting to know
that the word faith in the scriptures is a verb. It's a doing thing,
it's a faith. God gives us a faith and he causes
that faith to be exercised. But very, very often in the scriptures
it's a noun. It's a noun. It describes the
faith of the Gospel. It describes the one who is faithful. It's concerning your faith. It's
concerning. It's a noun. It's not a doing
word. It's a being word. It's a word
that describes what has come to them through the work of the
Gospel. And God's people need to be established. And God's people need to be comforted
regularly, and they need to be comforted in special ways. That word established also means
to confirm, it means to support, it means to strengthen, it means
to make firm. Now why? Why do God's saints
need this in special ways. Why was Timothy sent all that
way, away from what was no doubt fruitful ministry? Why send him
back there? Why do God's children, why do
you and I need establishing and comforting again and again? The
answers are evident. because of the Spirit's work
in the lives of His people. So God's children are wounded
children, aren't they? Lord Jesus quoted those verses
from Isaiah 61 in that first sermon that He preached in Nazareth,
didn't He? God's children, according to
Isaiah 61, have the Spirit of the Lord has come upon them.
I've come upon Him because He has anointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable
year of the Lord. The thing that's remarkable,
as you know from the story in Luke's Gospel, in Luke Chapter
4, when he declared this and declared himself to be the Messiah,
declared himself to be the one that fulfilled these things,
the reaction of the people in Nazareth, his hometown, was to
take him outside of the town and to throw him off a cliff
if they could, to kill him. The thing that's remarkable is
amongst that crowd of people, They didn't seem to be one that
was meek. They didn't seem to be one who
was broken hearted. They all responded in remarkable
ways to these words of God from the lips of His Son. Not one
of them seemed to be a captive. Not one of them seemed to be
bound. that when Paul comes, when the
Gospel comes in power, it comes to people who are bound, who
are captives, who are broken hearted. Broken hearted because
of sin, because of the world, because of the devil, because
of their captivity. A sinner is a special and rare
person. A sinner is a sacred thing. I
think it was Joseph Hart who wrote the hymn, A sinner is a
sacred thing, the Holy Ghost has made him so. The only sinners
in this world who know themselves to be real sinners are God's
children. The only people who really are
broken hearted are God's children. The only people who need this
comfort and need this establishing are God's children, because they
suffer in special ways. They are a special, a peculiar
people. And he says in verse 3 of this
chapter we're looking at, he says, He talks about these afflictions. He doesn't want them to be moved
by these afflictions. He doesn't want these afflictions
to move them concerning the faith, for you yourselves know that
we were appointed their own too. That these afflictions that Paul
has suffered in their town, before he came, in the next town, wherever
he went, and Timothy went back there reporting these things,
but they go back there reporting that these afflictions are things
that are appointed to God's children. God's children have sufferings
that other people don't know about. God's children suffer
pangs of guilt that the world is not aware of. When we know
the Lord and we know His grace and we know His mercy, we know
sin differently. We know what it is to let Him
down. We know what it is to sin against
our brothers and sisters. We know differently. We feel things differently. They are appointed afflictions
for God's children. They don't come by accident to
the children of God. Psalm 119 is a remarkable psalm,
isn't it? A remarkable psalm describing
our Lord Jesus and describing His faithfulness and describing
His love for the law of God. Just let me read some of these
verses in Psalm 119. The psalmist says, it's good
for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. Verse 75, I know, O Lord, that
thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast
afflicted me. Turn over to verse 107, I am
afflicted very much, quicken me, make me alive, O Lord, according
to Thy word. Verse 143. Trouble and anguish have taken
hold on me, yet Thy commandments are Thy delights. It's not necessarily
because the afflictions and troubles that come upon God's people are
not always necessarily directly related to the sin. that is so
we become entangled in or we stumble into. I beheld the transgressors,
verse 158, and was grieved because they kept not Thy word, verse
161. Princes have persecuted me without
a cause, but my heart stands in awe of Thy word. The psalmist is afflicted and
yet we read again and again, he says in verse 111, Thy testimonies
have I taken as a heritage forever, for they are the rejoicing of
my heart. So his heart is rejoicing and
yet he is afflicted. Thou art my hiding place and
my shield, I hope in Thy word. Just read that psalmist's remarkable
picture. All through the scriptures we
have pictures of God's children suffering affliction. And God's
children suffer special affliction because God's children have two
natures. They know the anguish of Romans
7. They know the anguish of having
God's law written on our hearts and then seeing that we do nothing
but sin against it again and again and again. People of this
world who do not have the Spirit have one nature and they don't
see these things in the same way. God's people with two natures,
they view the Lord Jesus in new ways, don't they? They view Him
through the eyes of love and faith and deep gratitude and
they view Him through the eyes of reverence and they see the
sin and the rebellion of men against Him in different light,
don't they? We actually are talking and dealing
with eternal things. And so Paul writes that remarkable
and powerful and important chapter of Romans 9, but he writes it
with tears streaming down his face. He's not a machine. He's
a man and he feels, he really feels. I say the truth in Christ,
I lie not, my conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Ghost.
I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could
wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren,
my kinsmen according to the flesh. He saw that the rebellion of
these people against God was hugely significant and had eternal
consequences. And the same happened in Paul's
life, happened in the lives of God's apostles and God's saints
throughout time. These Thessalonians needed comfort. They had brothers and sisters,
mothers and fathers, according to the promise of God, children
that they loved, who stood opposed to them because of the work of
the Lord in their lives, because of the Gospel coming, coming
not in word only but in power and the Holy Ghost and much assurance. They became assured that this
word from Paul was the word of God. They had it witnessed in
their hearts and they had it witnessed in their experience.
Paul is anxious to these people. This little group that he'd been
with for three weeks, it's interesting as you read the letter and you
keep reading, you find that he talks He talks to them about
them respecting those who are over them in the Lord, but there
is no seeming pastor in Thessalonica. There's this little group and
he's left them and he's only been away for a little while
and he knew that they had been witness to the fact that the
Thessalonican enemies to the Gospel followed him to the next
town and caused him grief there and followed him on and followed
him on and here they are, just this little group, this little
group. this little garden of the Lord,
this little vine, and he's just anxious. He's anxious for them
and he writes this letter with rejoicing in his heart. He's
reminding them of his experience and their experience and now
he's reminding them of their experience with Timothy. Paul
sent Timothy. God has blessed our fellowship,
hasn't he, ever since almost the beginning. He has sent people
from around the world. He sent them at the appointed
and perfect time and with the perfect and appointed message
for God's people here. You just think of the encouragement
that we've had from people like Clay and Peter and others coming. Jerry just turning up out of
nowhere. Fancy God sending Jerry from Florida. to the closest
convention place he could get to us here. And him coming for
those couple of Sundays and going down to Bermagui with us and
just an amazing encouragement. And it was a mutual encouragement.
Paul is anxious when he's going to the Romans that he would go
to the Romans, he would go to Rome for the very first time,
but he was there because he wanted to be mutually encouraged. He gets encouragement. That's
what he says, isn't he? You are our glory and joy. So
he sends Timothy and later on he sends Silas. And he calls him our brother,
he calls him a minister of God, he calls him a fellow labourer
in the Gospel of Christ. But personally for him in 1 Corinthians
4.17 he says, he's my beloved son. and faithful in the Lord. In Philippians 2 he says, as
a son with his father, he has served with me in the gospel. Paul, as a longing father and
as an anxious nursing mother, sends one who is dear to his
heart, dear and useful to him, someone who has laboured long
so, to show how significant this little group of believers in
Thessalonica are. They are dear to God and they
are dear to Him, and He bears this witness. I just thought
we'd finish by looking at what it is to be established, and
what it is to be comforted, and what it is to be in the faith. He sends him to establish, and
as I said it means to confirm, to support, to make firm, or
to strengthen. Gospel churches are established
by the gospel, and then they find that having been established
by the Gospel, the things that were laid as a precious foundation
in their faith are things that they long to return to. It's our food, it's our milk,
it's our life. It's vital. It's a description,
of course, again and again to the hearts of God's people of
who the Lord Jesus Christ is. That's what Timothy went back
there. He went back there to do exactly what Paul did. He
went back to preach the Gospel to these people. That's the comfort.
That's establishing, isn't it? You shall call his name Jesus,
for he shall, he will save his people from their sins. Did he
do it or did he not? Did he try? as people say, or
did He do it? God says He did it. He will save
His people from their sins. God the Father looks to His Son
in that great eternal covenant wherein is all of our salvation
and all of our desire. And as David lays dying, he says,
this is all of my desire and all of my salvation, even though
he make it not to grow. And I pondered those words, and
I pondered those words, why doesn't he make it to grow? He doesn't
make it to grow because it was finished from the foundation
of the world. He doesn't have to make it grow. It's finished,
it's done. Our salvation is complete. God the Father looks to his Son
for everything, to provide an answer for everything, for all
things, for anything required of me. See, God's people find
their satisfaction and find their comfort where God Himself finds
it. He finds it in His Son. That's why Paul reminded these
people that this Gospel that he preached is the Gospel of
God. He says it's the Gospel of God,
the Gospel of God and the Gospel of God, three times. He reminds
these people that this is a message that has come from God and they
are people who are born witness to it. They are born witness
to these established facts. He bore witness from the Scriptures. The Word of God that he preached
was the Word that came from God. Just follow through with me.
There are just some fundamental things of the faith. I've just
got nine of them down here and I'll just go through them very
briefly. But Paul is reminding these Thessalonians that this
Bible, these Scriptures that they had, is wholly inspired. It's completely inerrant, it's
completely infallible. And it is a word from God. That's how they heard this word,
didn't they? And then in that word... that
came to them not only in words, just in physical words, it came
to them in power and the Holy Ghost and in much assurance,
which means they had much assurance that this was true because it
had worked in their hearts. And they came to know these religious
people, drawn out of what we would today call a Christian
church, they came to know that their God is sovereign, is absolutely
sovereign. It came in power. God's power brought the Gospel
to them. God's Holy Spirit brought joy
into their hearts as they looked at that Saviour and heard those
words, it is finished. And they learned of that resurrection
and God put him to death. And God raised him because of
their justification. They learnt by the Holy Spirit's
work in their lives that man, all of them, is totally depraved
and completely dead in sin. And as verse 10 says, they were
there under the wrath of God. They were fully deserving of
the wrath of God. and men spitefully and shamefully
treated them, and they killed the Lord Jesus. The mark of human
depravity is the treatment of the Lord Jesus. They killed the
Lord Jesus, they killed the prophets. Man is completely and utterly
depraved and completely and utterly dead. Either that is the case,
as the scriptures point out, or he has no need of a saviour. People who aren't totally dead
have no need of a saviour. The little tiny grain of goodness
that they continually see inside themselves is the little grain
that they can plant and water and grow and it will be their
salvation. God's children. No. They know from the experience
of the Spirit in their hearts that they are completely and
utterly depraved and dead. And they do nothing but sin.
They have no good deeds. Paul called it done. That's what
he called all of his good works. And God's children know that
there is an elect in God. God chose some of them to salvation. Just listen to how he opened
his letter, and it would have been something they preached
on again and again. He says, the church, the church,
verse 1 of chapter 1, the church which is in God the Father, the
church which is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why he can say
to the church in Thessalonica, knowing beloved brethren, your
election of God. God did not appoint us, it says
in chapter five, verse nine, God did not appoint us to wrath,
but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. And, of
course, when it comes to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ,
we rejoice to proclaim that He came and did exactly what the
Old Testament promised was going to do. He was going to save His
people from their sins. He was a Redeemer who really
redeemed. He is a Saviour who really saves. He does have a beloved Bride
who He really loves and effectively and powerfully loves. You see,
He says in verse 10 to them, He reminds them of what He preached.
The Lord Jesus which delivered us, not tried to deliver, He
delivered us. Who's the us? The church. Paul
and the believers with him and the church is the us. The Lord
Jesus redeemed all that He came for. He delivered us. And you
can go on and say that those who have died in chapter 4 verse
30, they are just asleep. Death has been passed for them,
and He keeps reminding them, this Lord Jesus, chapter 5, verse
10, He died for us, and He knew that there was an us, an us that
God had numbered and named and preserved and was in that covenant,
that eternal covenant. And Paul the priest, in this
gospel that he brought, was a regenerating gospel. It's the power of God
unto salvation. People are regenerated and born
again by the powerful operations of God the Spirit in their lives. And God the Spirit can enter
their lives, why can't a Holy Spirit enter the lives of a rotten
sinner? A Holy God living with a filthy
sinner. It's because the sinner has no
sin. Because the sinner is as holy
as God himself. And that is the work of the Lord
Jesus. He says, in 2 verse 12, He says that you as
is called you, you would work worthy of God who has called
you unto his kingdom and glory. The Gospel came in power and
much assurance. And these people became in that
call, that voice from heaven that speaks of the Shepherd,
speaks the Shepherd's words. They are words that cause His
people to become followers of us and followers of the Lord. They're called, they're regenerated.
And God's people are entirely and completely free from the
law. What stirred up the Jews in Thessalonica? What stirred
up the Jews in Galatia? What stirred up the Jews in Jerusalem? What stirred up the Jews everywhere
is that they preached a gospel which is free from the law, but
a gospel that honours the law and honours the holiness and
justice of God, because one man kept that law perfectly and one
man suffered under that law completely. He died. He died. God's children are free. God's children are energised
by the Holy Spirit. They're given life, a new life,
a life from above. And that new life is a life which
works in the hearts of God's people. God's people don't need
to be whipped by the law. The Gospel, the love of God,
compels us and constrains us. How does he describe it? He says,
touching brotherly love, you need not, verse 9 of chapter
4, you need not that I write unto you, for you yourselves
are taught of God. You're taught of God. If you
are God's child, God says he's going to be your teacher. I figure
that when he teaches, he's a good teacher. And when he teaches,
His people get the lesson. Is that right, John? They get
the lesson. He's a teacher. He's a good shepherd. He's a good teacher. And every
sinner that comes to Christ is saved and saved perfectly and
completely and forever. And they are saved from the foundation
of the world and they wait for His Son. We've been delivered
completely from the wrath of God and we've been called into
His Kingdom. Brothers and sisters, God's children
dwell now in a new kingdom, and they will be preserved, perfectly
preserved forevermore. He finishes the letter, doesn't
he? He says in chapter 5, verse 23, he says, and the very God
of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming. hidden in the rock, hidden in
the rock, resting in the Lord Jesus. Faithful, he says in the
next word, faithful is he that calleth you. How faithful is
God. completely and perfectly faithful. Faithful to his character, faithful
to his word, faithful to his covenant, faithful. Faithful is he that calls you,
and who will also do it. It's amazing to think, isn't
it, when the Lord Jesus says, it is finished. It's interesting
to spend some time pondering what the it is. It's only a little
word with two letters in it. But what is the it? It is finished. Everything. Everything in that
eternal covenant of grace is finished. See, Timothy just went
back there and preached this Gospel to them. That's what he
did to establish them, didn't he? He just reminded them, this
is what the Scriptures say, this is who the Lord Jesus is, there
are witnesses, eyewitnesses to His resurrection. Paul was an
eyewitness to His resurrection, 500 brethren at one time were
a witness to His resurrection, all the apostles, Mary, all the
others, again and again. They were eyewitnesses, eyewitnesses
of His resurrection, eyewitnesses of His death, eyewitnesses of
His burial. And they are just bearing witness.
This is what the Scriptures say about our God. This is what the
Scriptures say about our Lord Jesus. So these people, as Paul
well knew, that they were eternally stable in the Lord Our God. And the arms of Christ enfolded
them and they were set upon a rock, that rock that was tried and
tested. And he knew that this church
was regenerated and justified and adopted. But he knew from
his own experience of just being a sinner, a Roman seven sinner,
he knew that he needed encouragement. And he knew that these people,
in the circumstances that they were there, would need encouragement. And the encouragement was that
Timothy went back there and he just proclaimed that Gospel.
And he proclaimed that Gospel to them again. to establish them,
to stabilise them, to strengthen them, and he proclaimed their
gospel to them to comfort them. What a great word that is, isn't
it? Comfort. What a great description of the
Holy Spirit. another comforter will come. But the comforts come obviously
from God, but the comforts come from God's hand in the lives
of these people. Paul talks in Colossians 4 about
these are my fellow workers under the Kingdom of God which have
been a comfort to me. Timothy was a comfort to him.
These believers were comforting him. And the preachers of the
Gospel Instead of being asked to get out the whip of the law
now, I called upon, as Isaiah thought he says, comfort ye,
and then to remind us that we have to do it, comfort ye, comfort
ye, my people, says your God. Speak comfortably, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished,
finished completely. peace and reconciliation with
God, that her iniquity is pardoned, gone altogether. and she has
received for the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare the way of
the Lord, make straight in the desert, this desert world, a
highway for our God. And every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough places are plain. And the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. What a great description. Paul
again and again calls these people brethren and beloved. What a
great word from our God, my people, my people. This church in Christ,
in God the Father, my people. knowing brethren your election
of God are created, they were His in covenant love and they
are His by special purchase and now they're His by effectual
grace, my people." And he describes himself, doesn't he? He says,
you're God. a song of song that says, my
beloved is mine and I am his and his desire is toward me. He owns his people. He says you
ought to call him my God, your God. He goes to his father and
to your father. And here the Lord expresses in
Isaiah 40, expresses his desire that his people should receive
the comfort that steers them. They are vulnerable, they are
hungry, they are thirsty, they are needy, they're in a wilderness
world, but they're comforted, they have a comfort that comes
from God. The Gospel is a comfort, isn't
it? In our flesh. In our Adam flesh that we carry
about with us all the time, we continually are caused to live
as Adam and Eve were poisoned by Satan. And it's just a simple
thing, isn't it? Do this and live. And continually
we're caused by the circumstances of our lives to look to ourselves,
how have I performed? How have I performed compared
to, just name anyone. You look at the greatest, I love
reading the biographies of these amazing people and you look back
through history and you think Hans Ferdinand was dead for six
years by the time he was my age. Murray Machaen died at 28. David Brano died at 27. Just
remarkable people and they achieved so much. And you're just so inclined
to compare yourself with others. You're so inclined in the other
way of course to compare yourself with sinners and think, there
I do, look at that sinner over there. I'm just not quite as
bad as that sinner. It's a constant thing, isn't
it? It's a battle. We need to be established and
we need to find our comfort. And the only comfort for God's
children is a comfort from someone outside of us. Someone that comes,
as it were, out of that garden and does a work for his people
and takes them back into that garden out of this wilderness
world. The Spirit is a great comforter
of God's people. I remind you of that verse in
John 16, that great promise. He takes the things of the Lord
Jesus and He reveals them to us and He reveals them again
and again and again. And we continually need the comfort
of the Gospel. We need to know that our God
is absolutely sovereign, that in sovereign providence and eternal
election and His particular call on His people. There is this
just remarkable, amazing unfolding of all the promises of this scripture
and we find that what are they? Yes and Amen. They're promises
of affliction in so much of the New Testament, aren't they? That
God's people struggle and yet we find God's people being encouraged
and comforted and strengthened. And they are strengthened as
Timothy was sent there by Paul. They are strengthened by what
God has done in the lives of other people. Paul says his life
is a pattern, a pattern for all believers. We all, as God's children,
will suffer, and so often we'll suffer in ways where we can't
explain it to others, and it's just between us and the Lord. And we're encouraged again and
again just to lay our lives before Him, to take The accusations
and allegations and the testimony against us, like Hezekiah took
that letter and he just took it into the temple and he laid
it out before God, that letter from all of these people saying,
give up, give up Hezekiah, you can't win, we've just marched
all the way down, a thousand miles we've marched and we've
taken every city, we've destroyed every God and here we are outside
your city and Hezekiah just takes that letter and says, this is
too big for me. You deal with it. You deal with
it. You can read that story how God
remarkably cared for his people. As I said earlier, God's saints
don't need a flogging, but they need to have the Gospel again. Our God is a God of consolation
and the Gospel causes us to lift our eyes away from our flesh,
causes us to lift our eyes away from the world around us, causes
us to lift our eyes even beyond what's ahead of us, causes us
to lift our eyes to Heaven, to look to Him who sits on that
throne, who's finished His work. who carries his people into the
Holy of Holies. So God's people are not comforted. by lies. They're not comforted
by deception. They're not comforted by having
their emotions manipulated and tickled because they reach a
high and they turn the corner and turn away from those circumstances
and they are as low as they ever were. God's people are comforted
by the truth. That's why He says He came, He
sent Him to establish them and to comfort them concerning your
faith. He came to preach the gospel
to them again. And these Thessalonians were
witnesses. They were witnesses of the Gospel coming. They were
witnesses of the Gospel coming with power into their own lives.
They were witnesses to the Gospel coming and all of a sudden the
words and the phrases and especially of course the life of the Lord
Jesus leaps out from these pages and it's no longer historic figures,
no longer history lessons. It's a living Lord. is here and it lives in his people. A living Lord who reigns. A living Lord who has made a
covenant, established and secure in every detail. A living Lord
who knows the afflictions that they are suffering at the moment
and has promised to comfort them in those afflictions. A living
Lord who they can look to and they can see that they have been
delivered. They are delivered out of that captivity, that religious
captivity that they are in. A living Lord who in sovereign
providence has sent another brother to preach the Gospel to them. Another brother who reminds them
of what happened on Calvary's tree. That great, great event
in all of history, the centrepiece of all of history is that great
and glorious victory. He who knew no sin was made sin
for us. He who knew no sin. And God the Father made him to
be sin for us. who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him." Made. Made by God the Father. And also, this great God is not
left without a purpose. And he's coming back. He's on
his way. He's on his way to take his people
home. Let's pray. Now, it hadn't occurred
to me