It's nice to see you here, Isaac,
too. Welcome. It's good for us to be here,
as Peter said, on that Mount of Transfiguration. We've been
studying together First Thessalonians, so if you turn to First Thessalonians,
we've looked at this last couple of weeks at the coming of the
Gospel to these people. And wouldn't it have been lovely
if that fellow had stayed and listened. Because the Gospel
comes. We've looked at the Gospel coming
and we looked a couple of weeks ago and how the people who brought
the Gospel came and we saw that Paul calls on these people in
Thessalonica to actually bear witness to the character that
he and Silvanus and Timothy showed, to look at what sort of people
they were and look at the way they spoke. They talk in verse
9 about this report of the way they entered in, and we looked
at them entering into Thessalonica. You can read about it in Acts
chapter 17. We saw how they came into that town after having been
abused in Philippi and beaten about, and so they came to Thessalonica
wearing the wounds, the marks on their body of them proclaiming
the Gospel. And then we looked last week.
at the coming of the Gospel into the hearts of people, how it
came and it brought into the lives of the chosen ones at that
time out of this church in Thessalonica. It came with power, in verse
5, it came in power and the Holy Ghost and in much assurance.
And these people in verse 6 became followers, and in verse 7 they
became examples, in verse 8 they became proclaimers, they sounded
out the word, they became known, in verse 8, for their faith.
And there they are, as people, in verse 9, who turn to God from
idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His
Son from heaven. It came into their hearts. It came It came as a word from
God. And three times in 2 Thessalonians
2, it's called the Gospel of God. The Gospel of God in verse
2, the Gospel of God in verse 8, the Gospel of God in verse
9. And it's the Gospel of God because
it is the word of God. God himself is the author of
it. The Gospel comes from Him. The Gospel is ministered by His
authority. It bears testimony to the written
word, as we read in Acts chapter 17 a little time ago. He reasoned
with these people from the Scriptures, proving that this Jesus, this
particular Jesus, the Jesus that He proclaimed, is Christ. It bears testimony to what the
Old Testament says about the Christ of God. It bears testimony
to what the Lord Jesus said about himself, fulfilling the prophecies. And its subject matter is from
God, isn't it? It's about His grace in choosing
a people, His grace in redeeming a people, His grace in justifying
and pardoning, adopting and regenerating and calling and giving eternal
life and preserving that life. and rescuing His people, all
to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, delivering His people
from the wrath to come. It's the Gospel of God because
it declares God's will and effectual purpose. And it guarantees, it's
a proclamation of God, they're sitting on a throne, guaranteeing
exactly what He's promised will come to pass. He does all things,
He works all things according to the counsel of His own will. And it's the Gospel of God, because
He sends, He blesses the sending. Paul didn't go in his own strength. He went, if you read earlier
on in Acts, he went as the church and Adiog gathered together and
sought God's direction about where to go. He wasn't just someone
who was sent of his own accord or went on his own accord, he
was sent by the Church, and then having been sent by the Church,
he was directed by the Holy Spirit. And the reason he was there preaching
at Thessalonica is because God sent a man from Macedonia in
a vision to Paul and said, come over here, and he stopped him
going to the northern regions of Turkey, as it is today, and
he sent him across the sea into Greece, and he sent him to Thessalonica. Why? The simple answer is because
God has His people in Thessalonica. That's why Paul went there. It's
all God blesses the sending, God blesses the receiving of
it, and He blesses it in the hearts of His people to comfort
them. It's the Gospel of God because when the Gospel is proclaimed,
God is heard. God is speaking through Gospel
preachers. Dry bones are given life. They're given light. Ears and
eyes to see. What does the Lord Jesus say?
He says, My sheep, hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.
He calls his own sheep by name, individually and personally. He calls them and He leads them
out, which is exactly what happened to these Thessalonican believers. They heard the Word. A whole
bunch of people in that town, many, many people heard the Word
and some of them heard the Word as a Word from God. So this Word,
as we saw, the reception is powerful, inward, impact and God writes and God
teaches. It came with power. It came in the Holy Ghost and
it came in much assurance. They had much assurance that
the word that was being proclaimed to them was the word of God.
It was received. It was received. It was as factual
as we saw. It brings faith and hope You
see, in verse 13, for this cause 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. effectually works in them. Faith,
hope, love. The Gospel came with power. The Gospel came in such a way
that these people became followers of us. and the Lord, which is
why Paul talks about the character, the way they came, the way they
came without guile, without deceit, without flattery. They came with
one purpose. They came with the purpose of
pleasing God. And these people followed us
and the Lord, it says, and they received the Word in much affliction
with joy in the Holy Ghost. They were examples. They were a living testimony
amongst themselves to witness the power of the Gospel of God.
They turned, in verse 9 of chapter 1, they turned to God from idols. to serve the living and true
God. They turned from what was dead, they turned from what was
deceitful, and they turned not only from slavery to idols, but
they turned to be servants of the living and true God. Paul
came, as I said a little while ago, he came bearing the wounds.
He bore the wounds of his shameful treatment and his suffering.
And in verse 14, these people became followers of the churches
of God which are in Christ, in Judea. They are the churches
of God in Judea that are in Christ. So the churches are not national. They're not regional bodies,
they're not ethnic bodies as much, they're congregations.
It is the household of God, where God reveals himself and manifests
himself and speaks to his family. It's where his children gather,
it's where his family gather. We had looked earlier in verse
5 of chapter 1, it talks about, knowing therefore brethren your
election of God. And there are several markers
in chapter 1 that show that these people are the elect of God. And here in chapter 2 verse 14,
we have another witness. of what happens when the Gospel
comes and another sign, another sign that it is a genuine Gospel
that comes. One of the marks of this entering
in of the Gospel is the response to those people to whom the Gospel
has come and come with power. How do the heathens and how do
the religious people respond? In Acts chapter 17, we've read
it several times. In verse 5 it talks about the
Jews which, believe not, moved with envy, took under them certain
lewd fellows of the base of sort, 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. They found them
not. They drew Jason and certain brethren
under the rule of the city crying. These that have turned the world
upside down have come here also whom Jason has received. And these all do contrary to
the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another King Jesus. They are so right. There is another
King Jesus. They troubled the city and the
rule of the city when they heard these things. and Paul was sent
away. He was beaten and put in jail
in Philippi. There is an uproar in Thessalonica
and they are sent away. But he says in verse 14 of chapter
2, he says, you became followers. What happened to you in Thessalonica
from the Jews and from the Gentiles all stirred up? all stirred up together. These
things happened for you have suffered like things. You have
suffered the same, the same reception to the Gospel that happened in
Jerusalem and happened in the life of the Lord Jesus is the
same reception that happened in Philippi, happened in Thessalonica,
happened throughout the world, happened in Nauru, brothers and
sisters, and will happen again throughout this age. both the
natural man and particularly the natural religious man find
the Gospel of Sovereign Free Grace an offence. It offends
the pride of man, it offends their sense of their self-worth,
It offends their self-righteousness. It offends them because it dethrones
them. Man is happy as long as he's
sitting on a throne, and he's happy to have anyone, and especially
God, prop him up and put him on his throne. But sovereign
grace, sovereign electing, predestinating grace, leaves, puts our God on
the throne. They were right, weren't they?
There is another King. There is another King, this one
Jesus. He is King. He is King over this
universe. He is King over the hearts of
men. He is King over the responses
of these people. Read in verse 15. They will suffer
the same things as their countrymen, even if they have the Jews who
both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and have persecuted
us, and they please not God and are contrary to all men." They
killed the Lord Jesus. Such is the state of the natural
heart of every child of Adam. Until grace takes away a heart
of stone, until grace gives a heart of flesh that causes people to
love the Lord Jesus, we have a natural enmity against God. a natural hatred of Him. What does it say? It says in
verse 23 of Acts chapter 2, Peter said, Him being delivered over
by the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God, you have
taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. It was wicked hands. God does
not hide the wickedness of the hands that killed the Lord Jesus.
He promised that this was going to happen. He told them a parable
in Matthew 21 about the owner of the vineyard and he said,
when the sun comes these people will say, this is the sun, this
is the air. This is the heir. Come. How do you respond when the heir
comes? Come, let us kill him. Let us seize on his inheritance. Let us take. Let us seize. Let us take what is his by right. And they killed their own prophets.
The Jews have behaved in exactly the same way all through their
history. In Hebrews it says, It talks
about the suffering that the Lord's people have gone through.
He says it's a fearful thing in verse 31 to fall into the
hands of the living God. But call to remembrance the former
days in which after you were illuminated you endured a great
fight of afflictions. Verse 33, partly while you were
made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions and partly while
you became company of them that were so used. For you had compassion of me
in their bonds and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing
in yourselves that you have in heaven a better and enduring
substance. The history of God's people is
a history of the afflictions of God's people and the sufferings
of God's people in this world. They killed the Lord Jesus, they
killed their own prophets. one generation to another, kings,
priests and false prophets and all the people. They stood, this
remarkable group of people, they stood as ongoing enemies of God
and His Gospel. The Lord Jesus described them
in Matthew 23. they have been partakers with
them of the blood of the prophets. And he says of them, you are
witnesses to yourselves that you are the children of them
which killed the prophets. Fill you up then the measure
of your fathers, you serpents, you generation of vipers, how
can you escape? the damnation of hell. Therefore,
behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some
of them you shall kill and crucify and some of them you shall scourge
in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city." So all
of what was happening is the fulfilment of the promises and
the prophecies of our great prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ. One of
the marks of the elect of God, one of the marks of the coming
of the Gospel, is that religious people will find it deeply, deeply
offensive. And Paul, writing by the Holy
Spirit here in 2 Thessalonians, says they please not God. They are highly displeased with
God. They are haters of God and now
They are hated and rejected by Him. You see, remember the man
who is writing these words. He was a hater. He was a violent
man. He was a murderer. You see, no
wonder he says in verse 10, he says Jesus, even Jesus, verse
10 of chapter 1, which delivered us from the wrath to come. These people, like Paul, they
had so many privileges above other men. Romans 3 says that
under them were committed the oracles of God. They had the
very word of God. They had the very history of
God. They had the revelation of the
character of God. And yet, as a nation, they became
so blinded. blinded by their own sin, that
they fail to see anything of grace and anything of the glory
of God in it. The Lord Jesus said to his disciples
on that last night that these men are so blind that they will
take you and they will kill you, and in killing you they will
think that they are serving God. They preached sermons, brothers
and sisters, when they burnt our brothers and sisters at the
stake 400 years ago, 500 years ago. They preached sermons as
they burned. They thought they were doing
God's service, serving God. They are contrary to all men. 15. They please not God, and
they are contrary to all men. They want to shut up the Word
of God from being proclaimed. It's exactly the response the
Lord Jesus had in the synagogue in his own town in Luke chapter
4. He came there and he preached
to them electing sovereign grace of God. How God can take a sinner
like Naaman, an enemy of the people of God, and he can bring
him to Israel and bring him to the foot of one of his prophets
and bring him healing by grace. not because of all the money
that Naaman had in his saddlebags, but purely by sovereign grace.
And the response of these people who had grown up with the Lord
Jesus was to take him outside of their town and attempt to
kill him. They forbid the proclamation
of the Gospel. It's interesting as you look
back through 1 Thessalonians you'll see that it was the Word
that came, the Word that came with power, the Word of God came,
the Gospel of God came, the Gospel entered in. You sounded out the
word of God. The word came into their hearts. It came not just in word only,
verse 5, but in power and in the Holy Ghost and much assurance.
You see, those who do Satan's bidding in this world want to
shut up from coming to people with its power and with its grace
and with its Christ-honouring glory. They hinder the proclamation
of the Gospel. As you read through Acts what
do you have? You have a continual enmity against the Word of God,
hatred from the Jews and hatred from other people. They forbid
us to speak to the Gentiles. These Jews were determined to
try and stop the Word of God. Satan, working in the hearts
of people, wants to shut the Word of God up from them. And
it says they fill up their sin always. They're filling up their
sin. It's remarkable, isn't it, when
one of the reasons for the people being all that time in Egypt
was that the sins of the Canaanites were to be filled up. They were
to come to full measure. They were to come to the end
of their sins. And then it says something remarkable
in verse 16, they forbid us to speak to the Gentiles that they
may be saved. They fill up their sins always for It's a remarkable
word, isn't it? Because the wrath is come upon
them to the uttermost. The wrath, the wrath of God is
come upon them to the end. We are so inclined aren't we
to think that the wrath of God is something which is only going
to be seen at the end. Romans 1 and other places in
the scriptures remind us that the wrath of God is being revealed
now. Just read it with me in Romans
1.18 He talks about the Gospel. He's
not ashamed of the Gospel in verse 16. It's the power of God
unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and
also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith, from God's faith to the faith that
He plants in the hearts of His people. The just shall live by
faith. The just shall live eternally
by faith. The just shall live in the presence
of God forever by faith. The just shall have their hearts
purified by faith, Acts 15. 4. The wrath of God is revealed
from heaven. against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." That word,
to hold, means to hold down. This world, we saw an example
of it today, you can walk down the streets of this town, turn
on the television, you will find mankind holding down, holding
down. They're trying to bury. They hold down the truth. They
want to suppress it. They can't suppress it. It keeps
bubbling up. It's like being in a swimming
pool with three or four balls and you try and hold them down
and they keep popping up. They pop up in our conscience
which reminds us that there is a holy God and we are responsible
and accountable. They pop up in creation again
and again. These people that say that they're
atheists are just telling lies. God says they know. Just read
on in verse 19. that which may be known of God
is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. So they
cannot say they do not know. There is no such thing as an
atheist according to this book. For the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world clearly seen. So this is God's
judgment. God's judgment on these people
in Thessalonica who are persecuting these people who became Christians.
God's judgment on this world around us today. Clearly seen.
Next word, being understood. So it's manifest in them, verse
19, It's clearly seen in verse 20, being understood by the things
that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead so that they
are without excuse. On that great day there will
not be a child of Adam who has lived in this world who will
have an excuse before God. That's just what he says, isn't
it? They are without excuse. They are not my words, they are
his. Because of that, when they knew God, they glorified Him
not as God, neither were they thankful. So there is no glorifying
of God, there is no thankfulness to God. But became vain, became
empty in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. and they professed themselves
to be wise. Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible
God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds
and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave
them up. to uncleanness through lust of
their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves,
who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. the wrath of God is being
revealed. The wrath of God in this verse
here, in verse 16, the wrath is come. And these people who have rejected
it and treated these Thessalonian believers with such contempt,
They've rejected the Word of God, but they've rejected God
Himself. To reject His messenger and to
reject His message is to reject Him. And their rebellion is more
culpable than those who are born in the jungles, those who have
never experienced these things. because these people witnessed
God working in the hearts of people. They saw what had happened. They saw what happened to the
Jews in Thessalonica as they were drawn out of that synagogue
and drawn into the church. They saw what happened to the
pagans there who worshipped idols and four-footed beasts and those
things we read about in Romans 1 and they worshipped and they
served the creature rather than the creator. And yet they saw
these people Lives transformed. Paul is writing to the sister,
you remember, he says, you were witnesses, you saw these things.
They were witnesses, so were the people who were the enemies
of God. You see brothers and sisters,
we are here to bear witness to a Gospel. But we are here also
to bear witness to the Gospel amongst ourselves, to encourage
ourselves. But we are here by God's ordination
and God's purpose and God's plan to bear witness to that world
out there. They have seen a transformation. They have heard a declaration. They know that the hearts of
people here hunger and burn to be able to share a gospel of
a sovereign saving saviour with them. Just like these people
did. They're witnesses, aren't they?
The Gospel came, the Gospel impacted these people and they became
followers and they are examples and they sounded out and they
show, they reflected in their lives the entering in and they
saw these people. Not only did the believers see
Paul and his behaviour, just for that three weeks in this
city, But all of the church of God saw it, and the rest of the
city saw it. There was a witness from God,
a witness in his gospel, a witness in his people, a witness in his
messengers, and these people were witness to that. And their
response was enmity against God and enmity against his people. The wrath of God. Paul, of all
people, knows what it is to be in those shoes. He knows what
it is to be rescued from it. The Lord Jesus, of all people,
knows the most about the wrath of God, and He speaks the most
about the wrath of God of anyone in all the Scriptures. He speaks
more about hell than anyone else. He speaks more about the realities
of its being and its existence, and he speaks more about the
realities of why people are there. The wrath of God has come. Several
things about the wrath of God. The reality is, my friends, we
all fully deserve it. That's what we earn in our Father
Adam, the wrath of God, and we come forth from our mother's
womb speaking lies and we join in their sin and rebellion. God hates it. We are fully deserving
of it. The other thing, of course, is
that there is a rescuer. There is a deliverer. That's what he's called in Zechariah,
isn't it? Deliverer will come. In verse 10 he says, Jesus which
delivered us. So he's a deliverer who really
delivers. He's not a deliverer who comes
and tries to deliver. He's the deliverer who delivers. He is the only refuge. There is no other place of safety. This whole creation has a condemn
sign over it. Hide. Hide in the Lord Jesus. Stay in that rock. The other
thing of course is, as I just said, the Lord Jesus really delivers.
Those who trust in the Lord Jesus will never experience the wrath
of God. We will see it coming upon other
people. We see it coming upon this land
and this world that we live in. But we will never experience
the wrath of God. Believe and we will be delivered. For those who refuse to trust
Christ and continue persisting in their sinful rebellion, they
will, by God's decree, be shown no mercy. You see in the scriptures
God speaks more about His wrath and His anger and His fury and
the righteousness of it than He does about love and those
other words that we speak know much better. God makes absolutely
no attempt to hide His wrath. There in this great book of Romans
right at the beginning He speaks about that. See God's wrath is
a divine perfection. There are no blemishes in the
character of God. All of God's character needs
to be held all together at the same time and all of it is completely
perfect and completely glorifying Him. You see, we have the same
attitude, don't you? You read on television that some
person has done some dreadful thing and they get a slap on
the wrist and a fine and let back into society. And the families
outside court, we see it on the news night after night after
night. What do they say? No justice
was done here. There was sin and there wasn't
sufficient retribution. See, to be indifferent to sin,
even in our perverted minds, is a moral blemish. God cannot
be indifferent to sin. Not to hate sin is to be immoral. Our holy God must deal severely
with sin. It must be dealt with with severity.
He who loves what is pure must hate what is vile. He who loves what is holy must
despise what is unholy. Hell must be as real as heaven,
and it is as necessary. The wrath of God, says Arthur
Pink, is His eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is His holiness stirred into
activity against sin. It is His just sentence. Those who oppose the Almighty
will come to know, they will come to know in that great day
His sovereignty. They'll come to know in that
day His majesty. They'll come to know in that
day that His word of promise is true. They'll come to know
on that day that His Son is Lord. What does Psalm 2 say? Apparently
it was a psalm that the early church preached on all the time. It talks about the heathens raging,
the people imagining a vain thing, the kings of the earth set themselves
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against
his anointed, against Christ, saying, let us break their bands
in thunder and cast away their cords from us. He that sits in
the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in
his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet I have
set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree.
The Lord has said unto me, Thou art my son. This day I have forgotten
you. Ask of me, and I shall give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the
earth for thine possession. Thou shalt break them with a
rod of iron, Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's
vessel." And then he says these words of instruction, Be wise
now, therefore are you kings. Be instructed, you judges of
the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and
rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry
and you perish from the way. When his wrath is kindled but
a little, blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
We cannot know the depth of the reality of hell and the wrath
of God because we have no conception of it. But the one place to go,
brothers and sisters, the one place to see it with some clarity
is to go to the cross, to go with the Lord Jesus on that last
day of His life here on this earth. as a man, go to Gethsemane. Spend a little time with him
in the garden as he's sweated those great drops of blood. And
he asks for this cup, the cup of God's punishment of sin to
be taken away from him. And then he pleads and lays himself
in his father's hands, your will be done. You can take me, he said, to
those enemies that came to capture him. You can take me, but these
go free. His people go free. You can take
me. God swears by his wrath. He swears by his holiness. He
swears by his wrath. You can read about it in Psalm
95 verse 11. It's good to think about it.
The Bible wants us to think about it. It has so much that causes
us to meditate on these things. We always treat sin too lightly
and we are so good we spend our lives making excuses. We spend our lives cultivating
refuges of lies for ourselves. The prayer of God's people in
Hebrews 12 is, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably
with reverence and godly fear. Why? Because our God is a consuming
fire. When we contemplate something
of the wrath of God, it will cause the people of God to be
thankful for deliverance, to be saved from the wrath to come. When we contemplate as these
Thessalonian believers were caused to contemplate, that the wrath
has come upon those who oppose the Gospel. It should cause us
to be humbled and to be thankful and to pray more earnestly for
those around us who may be in that state. It will keep us from
idols if we contemplate it. It will cause us to look for
His return. We are encouraged to speed His
coming, to be anxious about Him coming, but when He comes, He
comes in judgment, He comes in vindication. The Bible warns
us that His wrath is sudden. These Thessalonians are reminded
in chapter 5, they are told, that people will be saying, preachers
standing behind booklets will be saying, and people will be
saying in their hearts, you go, test it, go to the churches of
this town and ask the people when they come out on Sunday,
have they heard of peace and safety? See, when they shall
say, 1 Thessalonians 5.3, when they shall say, they'll say to
themselves, they'll say in their religion, they'll say in their
understanding of their own righteousness in the world, they'll say, peace,
peace and safety. That's what they'll be saying.
That's what the preachers will be preaching to them. Then sudden
destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with
child and they shall not escape. What a remarkable thing it is,
brothers and sisters, to suffer the insults and the persecutions
of men in this world and to have peace with God. What a shocking
thing it is. A shocking thing it is for people
to be saying peace, peace to themselves. Peace, peace to themselves. And they do in Matthew 7.21,
they say peace, peace to themselves right into the very throne room
of God on the Day of Judgment. Many will come to me on that
day, and what will they say? Peace, peace to themselves. Look
what I've done. Look what I've done in your name.
Look at all these things. Look at all these things that
cause me to be esteemed among men. Sudden destruction will
come on them. We have a city of refuge, brothers
and sisters. The one word of the Bible is
flee. Flee to the city of refuge. Don't
rest. Don't rest in the peace of men
and the peace that men will give you until you find yourself in
the city of refuge. That's a prayer.