As you turn in your scriptures
to 2 Thessalonians, I'm more or less struck by the fact that
this, which may very well be the first letter of the New Testament,
is such an accurate description of what has happened in the lives
of us individually and collectively as a church. I think I love the
way so much of 1 Thessalonians is about them witnessing, experiencing,
and being called to remember how the Lord came to them individually,
came to them collectively, drew them out, of religion, whether
it was Judaism or Paganism, drew them out and then put them together
and then nurtured them. And Paul, of course, is writing
this letter in response to the anxiety about what's happened.
He's gone from them down to Berea and he's gone from there to Athens
and from there from Athens to Corinth and he sends his longing
to see them. He's so affectionately desirous
of them. In verse 8 of chapter 2 he was
gentle. He talks about himself being
as a mother or a nurse that cherishes her children. He talks about
himself in verse 11 as a father. He exhorted and he comforted
and he charged every one of them. And then in verse 12 he says
that you would walk worthy of God who has called you into his
kingdom and glory. For this cause Also, we thank
God without ceasing, because when you received the Word of
God, which you heard of us, you received it not as the Word of
men, but as it is in truth the Word of God, which effectually
worketh also in you that believe." I love those ETH endings. I hope
you get to love them. It means that there's an effectual
working, and then there's an ongoing effectual working, and
an ongoing effectual working, and there's an ongoing effectual
working, until the door of heaven. is shut behind God's people.
It works and works and works. It's God who's working. For you,
brethren, became followers of the churches of God which is
in Judea and are in Christ Jesus. For you also have suffered like
things from your own countrymen, even as they have the Jews, who
both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and have persecuted
us. They please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding
us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved. to fill
up their sins always, for the wrath is come upon them to the
uttermost. These are the verses we're looking
at this evening. But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short
time in presence and not in heart, endeavoured the more abundantly
to see your face with great desire, Wherefore we would have come
unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us. For what has our hope, or joy,
or crown of rejoicing? Are not even you in the presence
of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For you are our glory
and joy. It's almost a parenthetical verse,
verse 18. Paul talks about him being taken
away from them. As you recall from the story
we have read in Acts chapter 17 several times, he preached
just for three Sundays, three Sabbath days, Saturdays in Ephesus,
and then there was a stirring amongst the people. The religious
Jews, The verse 5 of Acts chapter 17, but the Jews which believed
not moved with envy. They were envious of people coming
to hear the gospel. Took under them certain lewd
fellows of the base of sorts and gathered a company and set
all the city on an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason
and sought to bring them out to the people. Eventually, of
course, in that uprising, Paul has to leave. Verse 10, And the
brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto
Berea, who coming hither went into the synagogue of the Jews. So he goes from there and these
people show what religious opposition to the Gospel is like, isn't
it? Imagine the synagogue, those Jews in that synagogue. There
they were on Friday evening and Saturday, they're preaching messages.
What are they preaching messages about? The law of Moses, about
living morally. about being obedient, about probably
being circumcised men, sort of entering into Judaism and then
entering into being children of God via this and maintaining
their status as those children by their law keeping and their
obedience. There they are preaching messages and welcoming people
in church and then they turn around when Paul is there after
having finished that message, they go down the road and find
the hell's angels and say, will you join with us so we can kick
these people out of town. It's extraordinary isn't it,
the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of religious people in opposition
to the Lord Jesus. We saw in 2 Thessalonians 1 they
actually forge a letter from Paul to send it to those believers
there to try and unsettle them. So Paul in verse 17 says, that
when we were taken away from you, in fact that's a fascinating
word that says, when we were orphaned from you. Such is the bond that had developed
in these three short weeks that he was there in Thessalonica,
that to be taken away from them is like a parent being separated
from its child. It wasn't their desire to go,
as we've just read, but they were forced to be separated and
they were separated for a short time, for the season of an hour,
taken away quickly, without much time probably to say even goodbye. But this short sending them away,
that absence, even if it was an absence for an hour, is a
cause for longing. and it's a cause for a longing
which will continue until such time as the Lord takes all of
his children home and there is that glorious eternal and everlasting
union and reunion. So he's taken away from them
in presence. but he's not taken away from
them in heart. He carried these people that
he shared the Gospel with and God opened their hearts and they
responded to the words of a man who in his own estimation was
pretty ordinary. And wouldn't have seen much in
his speech, wouldn't have seen much, but they responded to those
words because they heard God speak to them and they were dear
to him, they were so dear to him. And there he is longing
and wondering what's happened. What's happened to this group
of believers? Have they been tempted? Have
they been, have they, in the presence of the persecution,
have they buckled under the pressure? his longing and his absence for
them caused him to be more abundantly endeavouring to see their faces,
earnestly desiring. And real love causes an earnest
desire that grows and it grows with a great desire. At the end
of that verse he has this great desire for these people. And
then in verse 19 he says, what is our hope? And we'll look at
these verses next week, Lord willing. But what is our hope
or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence
of our Lord Jesus at His coming? He longs for that time. when
these Thessalonian believers will be held up before all of
this world as trophies of the sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus
and they'll be gathered. And those precious believers
will be more precious. They are more precious, aren't
they? Believers are more precious than everything you see with
your physical eyes in all of this world, aren't they? The
only things that go from this world and go out of this world
to eternally and infinitely enjoy the pleasures of God and be His
delight and the delight in Him in each other are believers,
aren't they? They are precious. They are precious. They are precious in His presence.
That's what His hope is and that's what His joy is and that's what
He's proud of rejoicing. For you, He says, you are our
glory and our joy. He looks back on all those trials.
He arrived there beaten and battered and bruised. He left there and
battered and bruised again, and he went to be beaten, battered
and bruised somewhere else. And he looks back on it all and
he says, oh, it's worth it all. I look back and I look at those
believers. And you've experienced it, brothers
and sisters. We have had the joy of having
our friends come from afar. And when we see them a second
time around, if we see, if the Lord is kind enough to send Clay
and Melinda and the family here this year, this coming year,
it'll be a joy. It'll just be a joy to see them
again. When Peter comes back and Jill,
it's exciting to see them again. We just long to see our brothers
and sisters. It's a mutually encouraging thing
and it's a reminder, the gathering of God's people together, it's
a reminder to us of the great victory. And that's one of the
things that's lovely about this letter, isn't it, is that the
experiences that they've experienced are experiences that all of us
believers have experienced in this life. We have borne witness
to those things. We have been rescued out of what
is called the synagogue of Satan. We've been rescued. We've been
rescued by a Gospel. We've been rescued by a proclamation
of the glories of the Lord Jesus. I love what our brothers and
sisters write about the Gospel. This is from Peter Meaney. I'll
just read it to you because it's so good. Let's state clearly
our understanding of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Gospel is the message of God's love and saving grace to particular
sinners by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the God-man. Where there is no preaching of
substitutionary attainment, suretorship and representation of sinners
by the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no gospel. Salvation is a
completed work, accomplished upon the cross, sure and certain
for every adopted child of God. If sinners are required to do
something to activate, apply or secure the benefits of Christ's
work, there is no gospel and our Saviour's dying testimony
is finished, is bereft of all meaning. If Christ's work is
offered conditionally to all, Christ will, if you will, implying
grace is available to all upon the fulfilment of a condition,
work or action. There is no gospel in it. If
a duty to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation is imposed upon
the hearer as an obligation of the natural man, there is no
gospel in it, for the natural man receiveth not the things
of the Spirit. If any human effort is required
to obtain righteousness, holiness, sanctification or peace with
God, there is no gospel in it. If living obediently, giving
generously, doing diligently, praying passionately or evangelising
energetically is required to gain acceptance with God or to
please God, it is not the gospel, for it gives no hope to a lost
sinner. And where there is no gospel,
there is no salvation. The gospel is the good news that
everything necessary for the salvation of sinners was accomplished
and finished on the cross by the Lord Jesus Christ. Every
needed grace is sovereignly bestowed as a free gift of God, founded
in the eternal purpose of God the Father, secured by God the
Son, applied by God the Holy Spirit. Anything else is a false
gospel and no gospel at all. To preach the gospel is to preach
Jesus Christ. the only Redeemer and Saviour
of elect sinners. It is to preach Him as God and
Man in all His divinity and humanity, glory and humility, universal
dominion and voluntary submission. It is to bring a sword of division,
for it separates between those who belong to Christ and those
who do not." Our Gospel is a great Gospel. It's the Gospel of God. But here in verse 18 is, as it
were, a parenthetical statement, and I'd just like us to spend
a little bit of time pondering it, because it's an unusual and
interesting statement, isn't it? Wherefore we would have come
to you, even I, Paul, once and again. So many times he desired
to come to them. And then he says, but Satan hindered
us. Satan hindered us. We know from
Acts 16 that the Holy Spirit Himself forbid Paul to go into
northern Turkey. He says, you're not going there
twice, Paul wants to go. And the Holy Spirit says, no,
you're not going there, because He had for him this work that
we're reading about now to do in Greece. But here Paul says
Satan hindered us. So let's just look. at the activities
of Satan in hindering Paul. It may well be, of course, that
Satan hindered Paul by raising up such a storm of persecution
against him in Berea and in other places that it was difficult
for Paul to go back without even causing more problems. to himself
and to other people. But we know that Paul went from
one problem and marched straight into another city expecting to
have the same problem wherever and ever he went. He says in
1 Corinthians 16, an effectual door is open for me and I have
much opposition. The two things go hand in hand.
A door is open and opposition comes. And I'm pleased the Holy Spirit
gives us room to ponder these things. As long as we ponder
them with an open Bible in our hands and don't go beyond what
the scriptures do, we can think about these things. But he may
not have been able to leave because of the struggling churches under
the opposition that is stirred up when the Gospel came. You
read the letter to the Corinthians and you see that there was opposition
from within and opposition from without and there were these
super apostles and others that sort of stood up and opposed
Paul. He says of the Thessalonians
in chapter 1 verse 6, he says, you are followers of us and of
the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with
joy in the Holy Ghost. The much affliction is the affliction
I imagine that they suffered from those Jews. We must not
think that they stopped. When Paul left town that was
the end of the opposition. As this little church grew it
grew with opposition all around it. There was enmity from the
Jews, there was enmity from the Greeks, there was enmity in all
sorts of ways. And so Paul says to these people,
You shouldn't be moved in verse 3 of chapter 3. You shouldn't
be moved by these afflictions. You know that we were appointed
there unto. God has appointed the afflictions. The afflictions are going to
come. They come as the Gospel comes. Satan of course is raised
up in enmity against all of humanity. He despises humanity. because
humanity bears the image of God, but his particular hatred, of
course, is toward the Lord Jesus. And his particular hatred is
toward the Lord Jesus as he comes to take his people out of that
strong man's hand. So his forces are focused on
these three men, isn't it? It's almost extraordinary, isn't
it? He forces all of this entity of this prince of the power of
this world, all of it is focused on trying to disrupt and distract. and to hinder the activities
of three men, nothing in this world, a tent maker. Don't know
what the other guys were, Timothy Youngfellow, don't know much
about Silas beyond the fact that they weren't anything special,
they didn't have any titles or anything else. So while there
is no gospel, there can be all sorts of peace. There can be
religious peace, the Jews squabbled amongst themselves, But there
was a sense in which in these synagogues there was peace and
amongst the idol worshippers in Thessalonica there was peace
in some sense until the Gospel comes. Satan has a fierce hatred
of the proclamation of the Gospel. And he has a fierce hatred and
that's what his hindering here does, isn't it? His hindering
here is stopping Paul and Silas and Timothy getting back together
again with those believers in Thessalonica. Both to be encouraged
by their faith but also to go and encourage them in their faith.
Satan hates the gathering of God's people. And if you look
over in verse 5 of chapter 3, you see the one thing that he
finds extraordinarily distasteful and aims so many of his arrows
at. He says, when I couldn't forbear,
I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have
tempted you. The faith there is a noun. It's the faith. It's the faith
of this Gospel. It's the faith that declares,
as I've just read out to you, the declaration of who the Lord
Jesus is. It's what he says in Acts chapter
17. He came there that this Jesus, the Jesus I preach to you, is
Christ. the faith that looks to the Lord
Jesus, the faith that looks to Him and causes people to look
away from themselves and look to Him. See he attaches, Satan
attaches more importance to the Godly communion, to Godly communion
of the Lord's people than we possibly can imagine. He attaches
more importance to us gathering here than we can possibly imagine,
than we do it ourselves, brothers and sisters. All the enmity of hell is stirred
up when the Lord Jesus is raised up and lifted up and he's proclaimed
Of course, Colossians tells us one of the reasons why, doesn't
it? He came and he spoiled the principalities and powers in
Colossians 2 verse 14. Satan can come to every one of
us with the law of Moses and say, here they are, this is what
you should do. He has that in his hand as an
accusation and what did the Lord Jesus do? He blotted out, verse
13, He's forgiven you all your trespasses, so there are no sins.
There are no sins for Satan to accuse God's people of. And there's
also no law. He can't bring the law against
them. He blotted it out. We looked at it in Colossians.
He actually took it, it's like being on a whiteboard, and he
erased it so the whiteboard is perfectly clean. Took it out
of the way. by nailing it to the cross and
then verse 15, having spoiled principalities and powers, He
made a show of them, He made a public show of them openly,
He triumphed over them. You see, when we proclaim the
Gospel, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we are proclaiming
the triumph of our great Saviour over Satan. And Satan, who is
cast in one of the Lord Jesus' parables as a strong man. And
how can you rob the strong man's house unless someone comes along
and you bind the strong man? That's what the Lord Jesus has
done, isn't it? He's come and He's bound the strong man. and
then he's taken out of that strongman's house all of his goods, all that
belonged to him. They belonged to him in eternity.
They were just held there for a time in the strongman's house.
It's like when Moses was sent back to Egypt, he says, He brought a word from the Lord.
He says, let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me
in the wilderness. Let my people go. And the Lord
Jesus comes and he binds that strong man. And just as there
was that extraordinary opposition, those people did deceptive things
and Satan raises up that enmity against the declaration of the
sovereignty and the glory of our God in the redeeming and
rescuing of his people out of the hands of that strong man,
Pharaoh. How did he get that victory?
He bound the strong man. And he took his own out. And
what does he say in Exodus? He says, not a hoof will be left
behind. When I come to take my people
out of there, there's not even a hoof left behind. Not a tiny
little skerret. Every single one will be taken
out. And of course, Satan particularly
attacks the beginnings. When God begins a work, there's
an enmity stirred up against them at the beginning. That's
why he's called a tempter. The tempter might have come.
Satan would have stirred up enmity against these Thessalonican believers
in ways particular and special to them. And such as it is when
God's people are raised up. There is an enmity and we come
to the Lord Jesus, we come to salvation with Satan's darts
aimed against us in particular ways. After his attack the initial
beginnings, he then proceeds in subtle ways. So at the beginning
of the Lord Jesus' life he comes to him as a murderer, kill all
the babies in Bethlehem. And then later on at the beginning
of the Lord Jesus' ministry he comes as a tempter, in fact he
comes proclaiming scripture to the Lord Jesus and offering him
He was tempted, our Saviour, in all points as we were, but
without any sin. All through the Church history
we find at the beginning, when the Lord moves, Satan is stirred
up in extraordinary ways, and stirred up against God's servants,
stirred up against the proclamation of the Gospel. What on earth
stirred up Korah, Dathan and Abiram, 250 of the elders of
Israel in numbers, 16 and 17, you can read the shocking account.
There they were holding their censers and says, you have, you
Aaron, have no right to this priesthood. We're all priests
before God. We can all go and worship God
however we like. We don't have to worship God in God's way.
We'll do it ourselves. Here are our censers. We've made
our censers. We've got our incense. You can
read the shocking story. 250 of the princes, leaders of
the tribes, They were Levites, they were of that priestly tribe,
but they weren't of that family that God had appointed, and they
weren't representing the Lord Jesus, weren't representing Him
and His sacrifice. And the ground opened up. The
ground opened up and swallowed them and they went alive. Them
and their wives and their families and their little ones, they went
down to the pit alive. It's a horrible picture, a graphic
picture of hell, isn't it? People go alive to the pit because
they've rejected the Saviour, they've rejected the priest,
they've rejected His sacrifice. The early church, of course,
if you read in the early chapters of Acts, it began with much opposition. God did a work and Satan, it
always seems, can only ever respond to what God does. It doesn't
seem as if he has the knowledge to initiate things, he just responds. So where God does a work in someone's
life or does a work in remarkable ways in the Church, Satan responds. And he responds, as you know
from those early chapters of Acts, he responds by stirring
up opposition and putting to death the people of God. And
he stirs up people who want to pretend that they are part of
it all. He stirs up opposition from the
outside and he stirs up division and enmity and hypocrisy on the
inside. And Ananias and Sapphira, you
can read their story in Acts chapter 5, they came pretending. They came wanting to be seen
to be a part of it all. We don't speak much about Satan.
Sometimes the scriptures force us to look at him. We can read
his first encounter in chronological terms I believe in the scriptures
in Isaiah 14 and we have a remarkable picture of him before the foundation
of the world. He was an angel. It's in Isaiah 14. We'll just
read from verse 12 down. It says, How art thou fallen
from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou? Thou
cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations. For thou
hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt
my throne above the stars of God. I will sit upon the mount
of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above
the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High."
Read the I wills. That's what he says, isn't it?
I will ascend. I will exalt my throne. I will sit on the Mount of the
Congregation. I will ascend. I, ultimately,
I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down
to hell to the side of the pit." In the Garden of Eden this same
proud a proud being, an angel fallen who led a third of the
angels with him. In Genesis he comes to our first
parents and he comes as a liar and a murderer. He comes exalting
them. exalting them, the lusts of the
flesh, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the mind. We read about it often. It's
good to read about it and it's good to contemplate what he said. She saw that the tree was good
for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be
desired to make one wise. She took the fruit thereof and
did eat and gave also unto her husband. with her, and he did
eat, and the eyes above them were open, and they knew that
they were naked. You see, he came lying to her. Did God really say? And he puts her in a position
where she can stand in judgment of the very Word of God. What
a shocking indictment. What a shocking thing that we
see so often in this world around us. To stand in judgment, to
doubt God's goodness, to doubt God's judgment, to doubt His saving love for
His people. He's a liar and a murderer. He comes first as a liar. but
his intention ultimately is to murder. In Job we find him as
the accuser of the brethren. He stands before God. He has
access at that time in redemption history. He has access to heaven
itself. And God incites Satan by saying,
Have you considered my servant? And really what Satan is saying
is that the only reason Job serves you and worships you is because
you've set a hedge around him. You take away the hedge around
him. You take away his goods and you take away your providential
care and protection of him, and Job will curse you. Not only
does he act as an accuser, but as we see a little bit further
on, he stirs up Job's wife to act as his accuser in his distress. He adds more and more accusation
and more and more distress. He is typified as the one who
deceives the whole world. He is called the Prince of the
Power of the Air. He is the ruler of the darkness
of this world. a being that can enter into people. He entered into Judas. He put
it in Judas' heart to betray the Lord Jesus. And it says in
John 13, 27, he actually entered into him. What a shocking, shocking
place Judas was in. Look where he went. As I said
earlier, he's typified as a strong man, but he's defeated, of course,
by the Lord Jesus, who is the one stronger. The Lord Jesus
came for the redemption of his people. He came as a purposeful
saviour. For this purpose was the Son
of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. destroy them, not play games
with them, that he might come and destroy the works of the
devil. To destroy him who had the power
of death, that is the devil, and to deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lives subject to bondage. says Hebrews 2. There is more
and more pictures of Satan and his activities as the Bible goes
on. There's not a lot in the Old Testament about him. There's
not an awful lot in the New Testament but as you get closer to the
end you find in Revelation there are just pictures and pictures
and pictures and descriptions of Satan and descriptions of
his activities in this world. Now the Gospel has come. And
of course we have all through Revelation this remarkable picture
is that the enmity and the opposition of Satan to the Church and the
people of God is just a backdrop against which the glory and the
power and the success of our Saviour is revealed with greater
clarity. The Lord Jesus defeats him. He defeats Satan and then he
comes into the hearts of his chosen and he rescues them individually. He gathers each one like a lamb
in his arms and he carries them home rejoicing. He rescues them
from sin to salvation. He's transferred us, I love how
Colossians describes his activities, in seven remarkable works it's
described. The first one is a wonderful
one, he's actually qualified us, he's made us fit, he's qualified
us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints and idols, he's
delivered us. from the power of darkness and translated us
into the kingdom of his dear son, in whom we have redemption."
Transferred from the kingdom of darkness. That's what these
Thessalonican believers were like, weren't they? There they
were, in their religious ceremonies, doing their moral obedience,
as it were, to the law of Moses, living under those Pharisees,
teaching them. and they are in darkness. They
are actually in darkness, in a kingdom of darkness. And now
the Gospel comes and they are transferred out of that kingdom. No wonder the Jews were jealous. The Gospel comes and it says
that these people are perfectly fit. The Lord Jesus has made
them perfectly fit without them moving a muscle. They are perfectly
fit to be called the children of the Living God and they are
perfectly fit at that moment of adoption, they are perfectly
fit to enter into Heaven's glories. They didn't have to go back.
They didn't have to go back to Moses. They don't have to go
back to Mount Sinai. The one thing that Paul is writing
in all of these New Testament letters, he's saying, you look
to Mount Sinai, you look to the King, you look to Him crucified,
you look to Him gloriously reigning. this one who transfers and does
all those things with perfect ease and perfect sovereignty.
And this God of peace, he says at the end of Romans, will brew
Satan under our feet shortly. They overcame him, says Revelation,
by the blood of the lamb. They overcame him first by the
blood of the lamb, not by anything they did, and then the blood
of the lamb when it's supplied to the hearts of people by the
word of their testimony. That's what Paul's talking about
here to these Thessalonian believers. They have a testimony. They heard
the Gospel from Paul. They have a testimony of its
entrance into their lives. They have a testimony that this
declaration, that this Jesus is the Christ, is true to the
Scriptures and true in their lives. They have been witnesses
to it. The God's children, as I said
earlier, are brought. They are brought, it says, As
Daniel says, they are brought, they are built as a city, that
wall is built as we saw in... in our journey through Nehemiah,
when the wall is built, everything amongst the ruins of Jerusalem
is at peace. The enemies of God and the children
as it were of God, without any wall, they can go backwards and
forwards and these enemies Sambalat and Tobiah, they can live in
there and they can trade in there and they can intermarry with
these people. Someone comes along with the Gospel and a wall is
built. Daniel said to them before they
built the wall, the street shall be built again and the wall,
but in troubleless times. The Lord Jesus said, don't think
that I came to bring peace on this earth, but a sword of division. He was attacked and he was tempted
by Satan from his birth. He was attacked, his enemies
were on the outside and his enemies were within the camp. Even his
best friend can speak the words of Satan. Peter said to him,
you don't have to go to the cross, you can do it some other way,
there's got to be another way. get behind me Satan. Why? Because it's on that cross that
Satan is going to be defeated and it's on that cross that the
Lord Jesus came for. He was the Lamb crucified from
the foundation of the world. He was attacked again and again
and he promises that his people are going to be attacked again
and again. The early church began with suffering
from its beginning. And every time, as I said earlier,
every time he sees the Lord's sovereign hand, he raises up
and he roars viciously. and it might be from a Herod,
it might be from the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and it might
be from those who the Church had in it, as those who are pretenders. Paul in Acts Chapter 20 says
that extraordinary farewell speech to those people on the beach
at Ephesus, and knows that he'll never see them again. He knows that he'll never see
their face again and he warns them. He's not shunned,
verse 27. He says, I am pure of the blood
of all men, because I have not shunned to declare unto you all
the counsel of God. All the counsel of God is Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. Take heed therefore unto yourselves
and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseas.
Feed the church of God, which He has purchased with His own
blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous
wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock, No wonder
Paul wanted to go back to the Thessalonians and see how they
were faring, and to be there to stand alongside them in the
midst of this opposition. Grevious wolves will enter among
you, not sparing a flock. Also of your own selves shall
men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after
them." You can read about the success of these people as you
read the letters of 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. You'll see that
they formed their own congregations. They went out from us, says John,
for they were not of us. That didn't stop their activities.
Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years
I cease not to warn everyone, night and day with tears." And
then he commends them. He commends them to the grace
of God, to the word of His grace which is able to build you up
and give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. He has to leave it in the hands
of God. Satan hinders him. Satan roars. We shouldn't be
surprised if Satan roars. We should be troubled when he's
quiet. We should be more troubled when
he's not stirred up against us. as much as we want to be people
of peace as much as we wish for others to join with us in the
things we say about the Lord Jesus the reality is that the
promise of God is that they are not going to join The promise
of the Word of God is that they are going to be raised up in
enmity and it will be irrational. As irrational as those self-righteous,
law-preaching, good moral people in Thessalonica preaching their
sermon to their flock and having a cup of tea with them and then
going down the road and joining with the hell's angels to come
and beat the living daylights out of Paul and his friends.
Satan hinders us. Satan hinders. There are two
things of course in particular that was being hindered in Paul's
activities, wasn't it? One is to have fellowship. One
is to go and to be with these people and to join with them
in their struggles. The other one of course is a
temptation for them to be drawn away by false teaching and to
move away from the Gospel. And personally, how can we tell
if Satan is hindering us? be mindful that in this age of
so much religious tomfoolery, and that's about as good a word
as you can describe it, and so much religious nonsense. And
we have so many people, I met dozens of them in India who were
over there doing prayer marches and they would start the term
by having these prayer marches around where we were staying
and they were going to bind the demons that lived there. And
continually over there we were continually struck by these people
who had this power over demons and they had the power to know
what the demon's name was and then they had the power to release
people from the demons and they could tell you dozens of stories
about how heroic they were. And Satan just smiles. Where's Satan stirred up in this
Bible? He stood up when the Gospel was preached. If they don't have
a Gospel, they can go playing games with Satan all day long
and he just plays with them with utter contempt. It's only when
the Gospel is proclaimed. And people want to say that people
have to be released from the demon of this and the demon of
that and they name all the demons as if we in some way can particularly
deal with them. Paul gave these people into the
hands of the Word of God and His grace. We should remember
what James says. It's really clear in James 1
verse 13 regarding temptation. It would put an end to so much
nonsense in so many churches, wouldn't it? Let no man say when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted
with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted
when he is drawn away by some particular specially named demon.
What's it say? Every man is tempted when he
is drawn away, verse 14, of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust is conceived it
brings forth sin, and sin when it's finished brings forth death. Satan never hinders us. from any activity which sets
our flesh at peace. We can tell when Satan is hindering
us by the object. Satan's object is always God. and he can't get at God any longer.
The Lord Jesus says, I saw Satan fall from heaven. He has no access
to heaven. There is now no law to bring
against God's people. The Saviour sits there representing
all of his people, perfectly glorified and perfectly satisfied.
He's sat down. But Satan's object is to prevent
us from glorifying God and to turn us from a path, to turn
us from the right road to some sort of crooked way. It doesn't
matter which alleyway you go down, Satan is happy as long
as he can cause people to take their eyes off the Lord Jesus
Christ. If he can get them to take their
eyes off the Lord Jesus and put them on themselves, he's won
a great victory. If he can get them to take their
eyes off the Lord Jesus and look at other people, he's won a great
victory. We can tell if Satan is hindering
us by its object. Satan's object is to turn us
from God. As I said earlier, a great door
for effective work has opened and they are opposed on every
side. Satan hates the Gospel being
proclaimed. Has the temptation prevented
you from growing holy and more useful? humbled as it turned
you from righteousness to sin. And don't say it's come from
God. Satan employs bad motives. As we see in the scriptures,
he's a liar and he's a deceiver and he's typified as a snake.
He crawls in the dirt and he weaves his own way. God just always employs bad motives. Has he brought or does he bring
us bad thoughts or doctrine or teaching? Has he brought, has he hindered
us, has he hindered us personally by bringing some barrier to our
usefulness, some way in which we have become less able to do
what these Thessalonians were doing, which was gathering together
and standing firm in the Gospel. I love what I think it might
have been Spurgeon said, Satan never brushes the feather of
his birds the wrong way. He generally deals with us according
to our tastes and our likes and he puts motives in our lives
that fit with our carnal nature. Satan's enmity against us is
often stirred up in such a way that it dashes upon us in our
normal thinking as Christians with our Bibles open. It's amazing
how often when we come to prayer and we're reading this book or
we're witnessing to someone or we are just enjoying the delights
of who God is and then this extraordinary thought comes in, a blasphemous
thought will come in. And the number of times when
you're preaching or you're praying and you're reading the Bible
and you're just horrified, where on earth did that thought come
from? It just comes in in an extraordinary way. Satan wants
to have our eyes taken off the Lord Jesus. He hinders our activities. And the Lord says, we just resist
the devil and he will flee from us. One thing, the two things that
I said earlier that Paul was concerned and Satan had hindered
him from was to go and to be and to have fellowship with these
people. He wants us to think that fellowship is less important
than he knows it to be, otherwise there wouldn't be so much opposition
to it. He wants us to think that issues
of doctrine, issues of the truth about the character of the Lord
Jesus, about his person and about the declarations of his finished
work are less significant than they really are in the scriptures.
Paul was anxious to go back and see whether they had been tempted
to move away from the Gospel. You have a huge ship and you
get the rudder and you just turn it by half a degree and just
let it sail. It looks for all the world like
it's heading in the right direction. Give it enough time and it's
miles and miles off course. May the Lord cause us to stand
firm, may he cause us to stand firm as one, may he cause us
to look at the opposition that has come and see it as something
which is common to all of our brothers and sisters throughout
time and may all of his darts be causes for us to look to our
Lord Jesus. He suffered all of that. He is
victorious. He has won the victory. He's
seated at the right hand of God in heaven. Where are we now,
brothers and sisters? I'm seated in heaven. pretty
safe place he doesn't have any access there anymore one day
soon he'll be gone gone gone and we won't have to deal with
him ever again what a blessed time let's pray