arranging my technology. Make your way back over to First
Thessalonians, Chapter 5. One of the things that I was
thinking about this week was the amount that of changes. Wondering if this one was open.
Sorry, I'm not trying to get too distracted, but just thinking
about the amount of changes that have happened even in our lifetimes. While some of us technologically
live in the past, waiting for my wife to look up, but she didn't.
While some of us technologically live in the past, It really was
not that long ago that the internet was not really a big deal in
our lives. Some of us remember the Dewey
Decimal System and card catalogs. That was a Google back in the
day, right? And if I say scroll to some of
you, you think swipe up. But if we go back to the days
of this book being written, it wasn't typed out. He didn't have
Microsoft Word to do the work that he did. Paul Silas and Timothy
didn't have that. More than likely, they had a
papyrus or possibly a parchment, and typically it would be rolled
up And as they were writing, they would notice that they were
getting to whatever size parchment they had, they were getting close
to the end. And I don't have proof that they were thinking
that, but I believe that there was a certain point where, while
they were sitting around, that Paul, Silas, and Timothy thought,
what else do we need to say to this church? And the title that
I came up with, and I don't always have titles, but for this one
I thought, Parting Thoughts to a Suffering Church. And really,
they were at the end of their scroll. What else do we need
to say? What thoughts do they need to
have? And keep in mind, remember, this
was a church that was not very old. This was a church that had
endured heavy persecution, people specifically seeking them out
because they were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and persecuting
them. And while they were undergoing
this persecution, it got so bad that Paul, Silas, and Timothy
were run out of town, perhaps as little as a couple of weeks,
three weeks after being there. And Timothy came back, if you
remember. Paul talks about that in chapter
three. Timothy was able to come back, and we don't know how long
he was there, but he was there for a while. And he was there
long enough to talk to them and to get some questions back, and
that was what Paul, Silas, and Timothy were doing. They were
in the aftermath where it was too dangerous for Paul to even
go back into town. Timothy brought these things,
and now they're concluding this message back to them. And without
getting into all the things that have been said up to this point,
I think there's a certain amount of repetition in this latter
section of things that have come up before, some themes that are
there. And if God brings it to my remembrance, or if I look
at my notes enough to see it, I'll bring it up. But I think
there's two points that come through in this latter section.
I think Paul wants to talk to them about, once again, about
things that they need to remember as a church, as a local gathering. And I know Brother Drew talked
a little bit about that last week. Things to remember as a
church. And then the second part is things
to remember as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's not
exactly chronological, and here I'll jump around a little bit,
or I should say linear, in how it's written down, but I think
those were the two thoughts that were in their mind, you know,
what are these two things that we need to do? So the first thing
that comes up in the things to remember as a church, If you
remember Joe talking about this, things that matter versus things
that count. I think these are things that
matter as a church. If you want the church to go
well, if you want the assembly of believers to go well, these
are things that you need to remember. Church in Thessalonica, and I
think Paul would say, these are some things to remember, I don't
think it's an exhaustive list. Church in Rock Valley. So the
first thing in that is in relationship to pastors and teachers, and
it's interesting, and Joe would say to me, go figure, you know,
people want to argue, were there actual appointed elders at this
time, were they ordained? at that time, that's the sort
of things that commentaries like to talk about. We don't know
if they were, certainly Timothy later on, remember this is probably
the first New Testament epistle written, but later on Paul would
write to Timothy and to Titus and say, go into these places
and appoint elders, but certainly there were men in the church
who were teaching in the church, whether or not they were officially
ordained or appointed elders, and Paul's first thought to them
in his final instructions, as it's titled here in the heading
in the NIV Bible that I have, is, we ask you to respect those
who work among you, who are over you in the Lord, and who admonish
you. Now generally speaking, I know a lot of us have NIV-84s
and I've taken to using one as a matter of course, knowing that
people here use them, but there's a little bit of trouble with,
at least in how I see how this is written. But rather than go
into all the individual words, I'm just gonna tell you what
I believe he says that they need to do. So first of all, they
need to recognize. Second of all, they need to listen.
And third of all, and this is down in a separate section, I
believe that Paul also wants them to pray for them. So recognize. So if you see this
word here that's translated respect, it's a possible way to understand
this word, but literally it means to know. And again, I wanted
to bring up the thinking about what had happened in this local
body, how they had come about, And realize we're talking about
weeks in. So we're not talking about, well,
your pastor's been here for 37 years and you need to respect
him. No, more than likely what was
happening, based on what we'll see here as we go through this,
There were men, various men, who perhaps Paul and later on
Timothy had encouraged to teach in the church, saw that they
had gifts to do so, and what I believe is happening here.
He's saying that you need to acknowledge them. You need to
see them. You need to know who these men
are. It's a, I believe, one of the
ways that churches need to operate is they need to see and respect. Certainly you can use respect
in that way, but it has a different connotation, at least for me. I know I grew up in a authoritarian
era with an authoritarian father and then I went into the military
because I wanted a break and I picked the Marine Corps because
I wanted it easy on me. But all kidding aside, when he
talks about respecting people, I think it's, you know, you salute
them. Whether you like them or not,
you respect the rank. If you have that idea from this
word, please don't have that idea from this word, this translation
here. There's a sense of respect where
you look at somebody and you can say, you know, and I said
it this morning, and sorry Eric, I'm gonna bring your name up
and you're not here to straighten me out later on or to give me
a look from the pews, but you don't realize how much Brother
Eric has done for this church until there are weeks where he's
not here. And I can see and acknowledge
and respect that. And that, I think, is the idea
that is behind the word here that Paul and Silas and Timothy
have here is recognize them. Recognize them for their work.
And that's the second part here. Know who they are, but make note
of their work. Make note of their work. And
if you look down here a little bit further, it says, hold them
in highest regard and love because of their work. And then it also
says, respect, in verse 12, respect those who work hard among you.
Those are actually two, it's translated as work both times
in our translation here, but those are two different words
in the original language. One means to do your task. I don't know, there are business,
at least in the world that I live in, there are business statements
that people like to make. One of the things is stay in
your own lane, right? So you have a job. It has certain
duties related to it. So don't try to do somebody else's
job for them. Stay in your lane and do your
job. And the idea here is these men
are working at their appointed task. They're staying on task. And I think that is a danger
amongst those who preach and teach, is they lose sight of
what it is they're called to do. So he says, one of the things
you're to see, to know, to acknowledge, to respect in the right sense,
is if they're sticking with what it is they're called to do. The
other word that's translated work here means to toil. It means
that they do hard work with difficulties and trouble. And in that sense,
he's saying, understand there's a cost to it. And there's some
people, I believe, who enter the full-time ministry because
they think it's an easier job. It's something where you don't
have to get your hands dirty. You don't have to do any real
work. Well, for those who are doing the job the right way,
who are staying to their task, God will providentially bring
difficulties and troubles along certainly, but if they're doing
it right, they're doing it, they're doing work. They're actually
laboring at it. So you're to know who they are,
you're to make note of their work, but you're also to love
them. And again, he's talking to this
church, you want things to go well, see who those men are who
are doing the work, acknowledge them as such. And then in verse
13, he says, hold them in highest regard in love. And the Greek
that's used here that is translated highest regard is like a compound
word that means to, to go beyond measure is a way that I would
look at it. Love them with a love beyond
measure. Do we do that? I know, like I
said, I don't realize how much Eric does until he's not here.
I look at it as something that definitely makes things go better,
but secondly, Beyond recognizing them, and I'm going through this
fairly quickly because I want to get to the second part of
this, you need to listen to them. Verse 19, if you go down to there,
our translation says, do not put out the spirit's fire. If
you have an older translation, it might say, do not quench the
spirit. Depending on theological background,
this could mean a lot of different things. There are some people
who would take this to say, You know, we're charismatic and there's
these, you know, works of the Holy Spirit as they understand
them. Don't quench it. Don't, you know,
don't put out the Spirit's fire. I think looking at this in the
broader sense of the context, what he's saying is don't be
a wet blanket when these men are up here teaching. Because
he says in verse 20, don't treat prophecies with contempt. When
you see that word prophecy, a lot of times we think future telling,
but sometimes, and I think in this passage, it can also mean
telling the truth or proclaiming the truth, setting it forth.
And if you notice, he says, test everything, hold on to the good,
avoid every kind of evil. He's saying don't discount, the
way that I'm bringing this together is don't discount because in
the flesh you don't accept or like how one of these men is
teaching or all these men are teaching. Because face it, they
had the Apostle Paul come into town, right? And I'll say this,
if I could bring anybody back, you know, I miss Joe, I love
Joe. The Apostle Paul probably would
be somebody above Joe in the sense that he would be able to
explain the scriptures in a way, and give insight that I don't
know that very many men could do. So they're going from the
Apostle Paul to somebody who has a whole, let's say, three
months of Christianity behind them. Have you ever been around
brand new, never exposed to Christianity before, brand new believers? You realize how rough this could
be. So they're going from Paul and Timothy and Silas, and they're
listening to local men in the church, and in their flesh, I
think, there was some contempt. There was some wet blanket-ism
going on where they're like, well, you know, I guess. Paul's
not here. Timothy had to go again. I guess
we gotta listen to this guy. And Paul and Timothy and Silas,
after the reporter saying, don't be like that. Certainly you need
to test things. Just because somebody's here
standing behind this pulpit, even if it's with the authorization
or agreement of people, it doesn't mean you turn your mind off. And I find it a bit ironic, if
you remember from Acts 17, in the chronology of what had happened,
and Acts would have been written after this, Luke writes, that
the Bereans were more noble than those at Thessalonica. And if
you remember why, you understand why this is especially interesting
is because they tested everything against scripture to see if it
was so. And if this had been written
after Luke and Paul and Silas Timothy knew about it, they could
say, be Bereans, right? Be like the Bereans, test everything. So you need to listen to those
who God appoints and places in a position of leadership and
is recognized as such by a local body, not in the flesh but in
the spirit, with respect but not contempt, and with discernment. And again, I'm thinking about
the technology thing. Depending on who you talk to,
maybe 20 or 30% of the people in the ancient world, in bigger
cities the numbers are probably higher, but no more than 30%
of the people were literate. And if you look later on in verse
27, he says, I charge you before the Lord to have this letter
read to all the brothers. It's very possible that when
this scroll, this papyrus showed up, that was it. That was their
Bible and it was shared and only a handful of people could actually
read it. And Paul, and Timothy certainly
had passed some things along. Maybe they had some scraps of
scripture that physically they could leave behind, but they
didn't have a whole Bible. They could only go by and you
see it in what Paul wrote earlier, remember when I said this, or
remember when we told you that, or don't be discouraged because
we told you these things were gonna happen. They didn't have
the benefit of this, that they could go and check what somebody
was teaching on, they had what Paul instructed them on, and
in many cases, they had it read to them. So he's saying don't
be a wet blanket. Don't judge people in the flesh. Treat them with respect, not
contempt. Have discernment, certainly.
Don't just accept what they're saying. Make sure it lines up
with the truth. But then he says, pray for them.
Well, you might say, well, he says here, verse 25, pray for
us. I don't think that he excluded
those men in that. But even if he did, I think even
as we think of our larger group of brothers who we've had the
blessing of having come preach to us, and some hopefully in
the future, are you praying for them? Am I praying for them?
They need it. In 2 Thessalonians, he expands
on this a bit. He says, pray for us that the
word may go out from us with power. There's nothing in me
or any other man who stands up here, be they so eloquent and
able to exposit the scriptures that will make a dead, lost person
understand the truth. The only way that that'll happen
is if the word of God goes forward in power. Well, I went a bit longer on
that than I expected, but we'll press on here. So as a church, remember your
pastors. Remember those who are teaching
the word of God to you. In relationship to one another,
There are a couple of things that are said here. I believe
that live in peace could be part of what comes in verse 14, or
it could go with what's in the beginning, but live in peace
with each other. Well, Christians never fight
with each other. Nobody ever gets in a place where
they disagree on anything, not if they're true believers, right?
Well, those of us who have been around for a while know better. And he says, I urge you brothers,
warn those who are idle. Well, a couple things that I
want to point out here. The word that is translated admonish
in verse 12 is actually the same Greek word that is translated
warn here. So he says to admonish them,
and actually the word has as its root the idea of mind. If any of you are familiar with
J. Adams and euthetic counseling,
it's that Greek word. It's to use, to reason with somebody,
reason with their mind. So he's not going, you're not
pulling your weight. You know, it's not for people
to point their fingers saying, you're not pulling your weight.
It's to encourage them and instruct them and reach to their mind.
If they're fellow believers, you're talking to their mind,
not to their emotions. And this word that's translated
idle here actually could be rendered, and I don't have it in my notes,
Trying to remember here. I'll come back to it in a second,
because I'll remember it here. But strictly speaking, it doesn't
mean idle. I think it means disorderly. And having come from a fundamentalist
background, and I know some of you may have the same sort of
feeling. Maybe disorderly is even worse,
right? It's like you need to be in order. But I think the idea behind the
word is you're bringing disorder into the church. Instead of actually
helping the church in its mission and going along with your brothers
and sisters in Christ, you're actually holding them back. He's
telling everybody this is not written to the pastors and elders
of the church the leadership of the church He's saying every
believer needs to to admonish to counsel those who are Disorderly And he says that They are to
encourage those who are timid and to help those who are weak
and to be patient with everyone. So live in peace and in patience. And I've always said, you know,
my prayer is, Lord, give me patience and give it to me now. I don't
know why that never gets answered, but apparently in the asking
of that in that way, I'm exhibiting that I don't have patience like
I need to, but in the church we need that, because it's easy
for us, not being somebody else, to look at somebody and go, why
are they doing what they're doing? What's wrong with them? Well,
I think if we all exhibit some love and patience for one another,
we're going to see that we don't understand their circumstances
like we need to. And verse 15, certainly we don't
need to say this in a Christian church, make sure that nobody
pays back wrong for wrong. Well, he did this to me, so he's
gonna pay. Well, that's the flesh coming
out. But Paul says, always try to
be kind to each other, and he's talking about the church, and
then he adds, and to everyone else, knowing that the world,
the unsaved world is going to treat you poorly as well. It's
bad enough being treated poorly by the world, but it's also difficult
when we're treated poorly by one another, who are fellow believers. And then in relationship to our
circumstances, he gives these short admonitions. And he says,
literally, always joyful, continually praying, always thankful. So in every circumstance, in
every place that we find ourselves, we're to turn from our fleshly
tendencies, to, by the Spirit of God, in those circumstances,
not necessarily for those circumstances, to be joyful, to be prayerful,
to be thankful. If we didn't think those were
emphasized enough, he says, this is God's will for you. Now, when I think about these
things, And as I wrote some of these things out and put the
notes that I had down, I thought, I don't come anywhere near where
I'm at. And there are some people in
some places where they're able to like outwardly kind of beat
people into submission on these things. And at least outwardly,
it looks like a really coherent, loving group. But when you scratch
a little bit beneath the surface or something comes up that doesn't
fit their keeping busy to keep holy paradigm, what you end up
finding out is they're just doing this in the flesh. So I think
it was with that in mind that Paul prays for them in verse
23. And these are the things to remember
as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So I think the most important
thing that we need to remember is God is the one who makes us
holy. and God is the one who keeps
us holy. Because whether you call it sanctification,
the Christian life, or being holy, really what Paul is saying
is the more Christ-like you can act by the Spirit of God, the
better things will go in your church there in Thessalonica.
And the same would be true in our church here in Rock Valley.
The more we can be like these things, and it's not an exhaustive
list again, the more we can be like this, the better things
are gonna go. But when you look at that and
you think, what's the point? I mean, I'm
nowhere near that. We need to understand God is
the one who sanctifies us. God is the one who makes us holy.
And holiness is absolutely necessary. If you turn back just a page
or so in your Bible to chapter four, verse seven, God did not
call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. And then he
says right after that, therefore he who rejects this instruction
doesn't reject man, but God, but who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Holiness is absolutely necessary. Hebrews 12, 14, without holiness,
no one will see the Lord. So, There are those who, when they
talk about grace, what they want to do with scripture is they
want to cheapen what is expected by God. And hopefully you agree
and believe and have been taught repeatedly, and I know Joe had
taught on this quite a bit, that that is not the way that this
gets done. It isn't that God lowers the
bar enough so we could get in, because there's no bar low enough
that we can jump over. We could have a bar that was
one molecule high, and we're powerless in our flesh to meet
that. We're unable. Matthew 26, 41, Jesus said, the
spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And Paul in Romans 7,
18 says, there is nothing good that lives in me that is in my
flesh. I have the desire to do good,
but I can't do it. No, the problem, the solution
to the problem is not to lower holiness, because we're not able
to do it. Holiness is necessary, and we're
unable to meet it in our flesh. but God himself needs to do it. Our passage here says, and Paul's
prayer is, that the God, may God himself, the God of peace. Really, you have there three
times, God, and in the translation, they're being, I wouldn't say literal, but they're
emphasizing here what's going on. If I say, Joe, well, I won't use Joe. Donald Trump himself will come
here. I'm saying it's an emphasis that's
saying that's who I'm talking about. And he's saying this is
the God of peace, which is good news to us. He doesn't say the
God of holiness. Certainly he is the God of holiness.
He says the God who's here to make peace. God himself, the
God of peace, will sanctify you. At the end of verse 24 he says,
he will do it. He will do it. So God himself
is the one who needs to do it. Well, he needs to do it. The God of peace himself will
do it. And he needs to do it completely.
And we have that here. He says, sanctify you through
and through. Now, if you talk about somebody
who gets shot or whatever, they say it's a through and through
wound. It means it went all the way through. And then he says, and if you're
a theology geek, you're gonna see, is man two parts or three
parts? That's not really the point of
what Paul is saying here. He says, may your whole spirit,
soul, and body be kept blameless. What he's saying is there's nothing
going to be left. God doesn't get us 99.99999%
of the way there. He does what he needs for us. He sanctifies us completely,
through and through. And every aspect of our being
will be, and this is a future thing, because I don't know about
you, I'm not quite there yet. I mean, we have the promise,
and in our spirit we see some of these things, but we don't
have it completely. He says, may your whole spirit
and body be kept blameless, at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Well, I didn't forget what Sunday it
is. Kind of hard to do it when you drive down, and we actually
talked about this last night. It's like, well, are we gonna
go to Subway, or are we gonna splurge and go to A&W? It's like,
we're gonna do neither, because it's Easter, and everything's
gonna be closed. And I was raised, Roman Catholic,
and I remember elements of things that were said as part of the
liturgy there. So, I don't know in the Reformed
tradition growing up, but you probably had people saying Christ
is risen, he is risen indeed. Well, one of the things in Roman
Catholicism they would say is, Christ has died, Christ is risen,
and Christ will come again. And maybe they did that in the
Reformed tradition as well. But as you think about Easter,
and there's, as Joe said often, there's nothing wrong with the
day or remembering the day, as long as you don't make an idol
of it. But as you think about Easter, it's not just that Christ
is risen. It's that he himself will sanctify
us wholly through and through, and that when he comes back,
God's wrath won't be visited on us. His death and resurrection
and ascension and second coming, none of that
will disturb that. The Lord Jesus Christ will save
us completely. And then lastly here, and I am
watching the time, and hopefully lastly doesn't mean 30 minutes,
but lastly here, he says, Paul says that he does this dependably. The God of peace, the one who
sanctifies you, the one who calls you, verse 24, is faithful. And he will do it. Again, if you think about it,
you need somebody who's able to do the job. So if a basketball
team needs somebody to be a center and play in the NBA, I'm not
eligible. I'm taller, I'm not as short
as some people, and I used to know how to play basketball,
but I can't get the job done. And some of you may know, I won't
bring up his name, there was a basketball player, I don't
know, probably 15, 20 years ago. He was very unwilling to show
up at practice. He would not be dependable. So while he was a great basketball
player, he wasn't dependable. So we need a savior who's able
to save us we need a savior who is able to save us completely
and we need a savior who is dependable and willing to do it and we and
scripture here paul's Comfort for them in his closing words
here is The one who's calling you is faithful and he will do
it I mean, think of all the things that we've gone through in this
last year, and some of you may be going even further back than
that, some of the trials that you've gone through. Certainly,
this young church had gone through a number of trials, and Paul
had talked to them about the second coming, and they're like,
man, that's gonna be worse than this. What hope do I have to
make it? I'm not gonna be able to make
it to that. No, Paul says, the one who calls you is faithful.
He will do it. Hebrews 10.23 says that we should
hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. Why? Because he who promised
is faithful. John 10.28, Jesus says, I give
them eternal life and they shall never perish. Why? Because he's faithful, no one
can snatch them out of his hand. And even 2 Timothy Paul writes,
if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot
disown himself. There are many things that can
interrupt our joy in Christ, and these words are written to
believers. They cannot be appropriated by
anyone who doesn't believe that they are a lost sinner needing
complete salvation from Christ. But if you're here today and
you're struggling with the Christian life, if you're struggling with
things that are going on in life, remember that God is the one
who sanctifies us and he does this completely and dependably. I came across a song, and we
don't have it in our hymnal or our chorus book, but I'm gonna
read a little bit from it, and then we'll have James come up
here and lead us in a closing song here. But Jesus is our great
salvation, worthy of our best esteem. He has saved his favorite
nation, joined to sing aloud of him. He has saved us. He has saved us. Christ alone
could us redeem. When involved in sin and ruin
and no helper there was found, Jesus our distress was viewing. Grace did more than sin abound. He has called us. He has called
us. with salvation in the sound.
Lord, let us never, Lord, forget thee. Make us walk as children
here. We will give thee all the glory
of the love that brought us near. Bid us praise thee, bid us praise
thee, and rejoice with holy fear. Free election is known by calling. And I just want to remind you
here of what our passage says. The one who calls you is faithful.
Free election is known by calling and it's a privilege divine.
Saints are kept from final falling. All the glory Lord be thine.
James.