first chapter of 2 Thessalonians
and not quite half of the first half of chapter 2. What do you believe? You ever
had that question? You ever been asked what it is
that you hold as truth? You asked yourself that same
thing this very day. What do you believe about life?
What do you believe about Christ? What do you believe about truth? Teaching critical thinking, I
start those classes in the day when I taught those in Oakland
with this premise. If you do not have your own belief
system, In other words, if you can't say that you believe this
because of this, if you do not have your own source from which
you find your truth, then you are a slave to another man's
thinking. Are you a slave to someone else's
thinking this morning? About anything. It's like the
old joke that you used to hear of this woman cutting the end
off of her ham. and her daughter saying why,
who calls her mother and says, I don't know, let's call your
grandmother. And the grandmother says, my pot was too small. Sometimes
we do things, we believe things, we say things, we live on truth
claims that we don't even understand why we believe them. Some of the old adages of God
helps those who help themselves. That's not true. God helps those
who are helpless. That's true. Those who can help
themselves, the scripture teaches that God humbles them, condemns
them, pushes them aside. God gives grace to the humble,
but overcomes the wicked and the proud. What do you believe? And of course, we're gathered
here as the church this morning. What do you believe about the
gospel? The good news of Jesus Christ. What is it that actually
stirs in your heart to such an effect that it transforms your
affections? It transforms your movement.
It transforms your treasures. Many people say this very day,
I am a Christian. There used to be a running gag
from the time I got to California to the time I left the East Bay.
Why did you leave Georgia, or at that time, Virginia? Why did
you leave Virginia to come to the West Coast? Or as so many
people would call it, the left coast. I'd say because everyone down
south is saved already. And if you don't believe me,
ask them. Oh, I'm a Christian. I've never met an unbeliever
in this area. A professed unbeliever. I've
met a lot of unbelievers. But I've never met anyone who
just flat says, you know what, I'm an atheist. I've seen people
try that. but they're not. For the most
part, everybody here, everyone this morning that's waking up
in their homes to live their lives for themselves, who've
not darkened the doors of a congregational assembly in a decade, will say
at lunchtime when they're at the local restaurant, when the
church people come in and they say, the Lord is good, they'll
say all the time. And then it just becomes this
ping pong fodder of ridiculous proportions. It never quits. It's like the wave that just
doesn't stop. Yet these people in their minds believe that they
are Christians because of the proximity that they live to a
church, the proximity that they live and abide in a spiritual
community, the proximity of their own morality, And they will tell
you that they know they have eternal life because they have
believed on Jesus Christ. But when you press the reality
of how they are certain and what that good news of Jesus actually
is, these people cannot give you an answer. They cannot give
you an answer. Beloved, can you give an answer
today? Can you answer the question, what you believe about Jesus?
I know there are many of you who are still holding on to the
membership packet, the petitioning membership packet, because there's
a questionnaire there for your own evaluation, and it takes a long time for
some of us to fill them out. Remember the Coleman's? How many
of you remember Zeke and Jamaica Coleman? I mean, they typed theirs
out and they stapled it together. It was that thick. I was like,
wow, brother, I think we need to add what you said to our doctrinal
statements. It's our new confession here.
It doesn't have to be like that. It can be simple. What's the
point? The point is do you know what
you believe? Is it your faith? Is it your belief? Is your Christian
faith your Christianity or is it someone else's? Are you living
on the wings of the popular idea that being in a church is what
Christianity is all about? Of staying away from grievous
sin and debauchery and just being in your fellowship a couple of
times a year. That does it. Maybe you write
a tithe check every few weeks and that satisfies your greed.
Maybe you pray at lunch. Thank you God for this day and
for the food. We give the nourishment of our bodies in Jesus' name. Amen. Man, you
took too long. It's like there's a stopwatch
for that thing, you know. What puts you in right standing with
God? Oh, I know a lot of people say
because I've believed. Great, right answer. What does
it mean? What is belief? What is belief? Is belief that
you have exercised the right cognitive expression? I know
it's true. I'm saved. I know it's true. Satan knows it's true. All the
devil's angels know it's true. Judas knew it was true. Yet his
belly filled himself with greed. You don't have faith in your
faith. You can't say that I'm right before God because I have
done the right thing, believed the right stuff, followed the
right path, walked the right aisle, said the right prayer.
You cannot be saved by the works of your flesh. You cannot stand
justified before God because of the expression of such things.
You alone are saved because God has ordained and purposed and
effectually established salvation for you in the person of Jesus
Christ, who is the God who created all that there is. And He came
to earth through the womb that He created and He was born and
He lived obediently, holy, fulfilling the commandment of God for humanity.
And He obediently and willfully went to the cross to be sacrificed.
as a worthy lamb, and He took our sin, He who had no sin took
our sin, that we might be the righteousness of God. And beloved,
if your faith is not on the fullness of Jesus Christ every single
moment, you have no hope of eternal life. What do you believe? Who told
you what to believe? A lot of people are like, oh
yeah, that's what I believe. How do you know that's what you
believe? My pastor said, wrong answer. Wrong answer. Well, John Calvin
said, wrong answer. Be like the debates, wrong. I knew that'd come in handy sometime.
I'm going to do that next time we have a debate. We're just
going to do that. It's wrong answer. Well, Bavick said, wrong. Horatius
Bonar said, eh. Jonathan Edwards, get away from
me. I love these guys. They're all right, by the way.
But how do I know they're right? How do you know I'm right? Because
the word of God should tell you that I am. It's a fallacy beyond expression
to say that we are in Christ, yet we have no time in Christ.
It's a fallacy beyond comprehension that we say we walk in the light
of the glory of God in Christ, but yet we have not darkened
the pages of scripture in weeks. What are we looking for? Well,
I just can't get my life together here. I can't get my attendance
at church here. I can't get my intimacy with
God's people here. I can't get prayer life right.
I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't. I can't
get the sin out of my life. You know why? Because there's
no Christ in it. How is a Christ in it? I closed
out our sermon last week before last. Answering that question
is that the glory of Christ standing and glorying in Christ is to
keep our eyes affixed upon Him, and doing so is to be in His
Word. Friends, if you want to see Jesus
and you want Jesus in your circumstances, the only place you're going to
find it is the Scripture. Now, I find it odd, too, that a lot
of times people will talk to me and I'll say, show me that
argument, even if I know where it is. I'm like, man, that's spot on.
Who's teaching you this? Show it to me. And they want to send
me a Google video, a Google link, I mean a YouTube link. They want
to send me an internet forum. They want to send me something
to say, see, look what so and so said. Look at this video.
Look at Paul Washer. Look at this guy. Look at that
guy. Look at this. I don't want to see these guys. Is that how heaven's
going to be? We're going to have like a slew
of really good theologically based guys who are going to be
the surrogate for Jesus Christ? Maybe Romanism is true. Maybe
the vicar is right. No, it's not. It's abomination. No one's gonna stand between
me and Christ. And my brother Jesse has now
adopted my status of frontline defensive offensively, clothesline
and anybody that's between me and Christ. Grandma, step on
her. Children, kick them. They're
still little maybe, I don't know, we don't know. I'm being funny,
but nobody's gonna stand in the gap between me and Jesus. Nobody's gonna stand and tell
me what Jesus is saying. I'm not gonna need to hear a
translator. You ever tried to talk to a large
group of people and have someone translate at the same time? We
thought we'd be really creative in Cali, and we had a lot of
languages in our church, but one of the dominant languages
was Spanish. And so I'd preach a little bit, and then my elder
who spoke Very good Spanish. He grew up and born and grew
up in Mexico. He would talk a little bit, and I'd talk a little bit,
and then he'd talk a little bit. And after that, we decided that
I would transcribe my sermons, and he would translate the sermon,
even if it wasn't word for word, he would read it, rather than
try to think about what. It is impossible. You could see
the people going. It's like a tennis match. It
was awful. Our relationship with the word
of God and our relationship in our Christian faith is just like
that. We want to know something, so we search it. We want to hear
something, so we listen to someone else tell us about it. And I'm
not saying these things are bad. By all means, I'd rather you
go dig into the cavernous beauty of church history than go dig
into the sitcoms of today. I'd rather you spend your time
and your energy and your money investing in good resources and
good books that give a picture of the truth of scripture and
the glory of God rather than go out and spend time on vacations
and spend money on sporting events and spend money on things that
are supposedly giving you peace when the only thing gives you
peace is Christ. But friends, it cannot feed you. I cannot
feed you. I can whet your appetite through
the preaching of God's word. But ultimately, many of us, many
of us, the reason we come in and we say, oh, that's great.
Why can't every day be like this? Because we're not in the word
of God every day. I said, well, what are you preaching
about today? The second coming of Jesus and the reality of its
significance. Because that's what Paul gets
to. And I'm here to tell you that many of us in this room
today, as we start into this, just like on Tuesday nights,
we're learning that as we read the letters, we have a lot of
knowledge and wisdom and facts about these circumstances and
about these doctrines that are not from scripture, but rather
from history, from the traditions of men. I mean, as you see tweets throughout
the week, I'm either live tweeting when someone's preaching. Sorry
about that last week, or I'm sending myself little reminders
that go everywhere so that I don't forget a specific key thing. And I tweeted something a couple
of days ago so I could remember it. I asked the question in myself,
who is my source? Who is the source document of
my theology? To what theologian or pastor
or historian do I go to? And the answer is nobody. Nobody
but Christ. Nobody but the Word of God. That's
what Sola Scriptura has all embroiled in its purpose, in its reality. Who do we listen to, church? This sermon today has been prayed
and labored for your sake. And if the teaching is accurate,
anybody else who exposes scripture, you'll see that there are similarities
in the points that will be taught today, no matter where you go,
if it's solid. If it's twisted, you're like,
where'd that come from? Out of somebody's brain. Not out of truth. Who do we listen
to? This sermon, though many people
will listen to it over the courses of the years, it's not to them,
it's for you. And God has prepared your hearts
this day to receive this message because your joy needs to be
full. Your hope needs to be secure.
Your Christian life needs to be challenged. If you've never heard of psychology,
you probably won't understand what I'm trying to say right
here. But most of us understand that there is such a thing as
psychology, and I'm not necessarily a fan of it. But psychology says
this. Psychology says, that there are
things that influence us by what we see, hear, and observe. And those things create pictures,
and thoughts, and feelings, and actions. That's what psychology
says. I'd say psychology robbed that from scripture. And it looks something like this.
If we have a source of information, and we take that source, it produces
all of these things in us, and it produces a belief system.
I believe that Jesus Christ is fill-in-the-blank because, and
some of us don't even know where the because comes from. Some
of us, as much as I teach every single week about the right ecclesiology,
understanding that we're not here gathered so we can say we
got our church done, but we are the church. Church. And the 19, 20 so people who are not here today
are missed. We are the church, but even though
I preach it every day, every Sunday, I mentioned something
about it. It still doesn't hit us, does
it? We think, yeah, you know what? I need to do something
about that until we hit the sidewalk. Man, I really need to be considering
that until we get in our car and crank up and say, where are
we going for lunch? And we never think about it again. Why? Because
the reminders come through the hearing of God's word. And we'd rather have the fix
of right doctrine and good preaching rather than shepherded pastoring. We'd rather have knowing, oh,
we're eating healthy stuff, but we're going to sit in a box and
never move our muscles. What good is it? It's worthless.
Just go and eat junk. I have the words of eternal life,
but I'm not concerned with telling anyone about it because that's
not my business. Really? But yet, my goodness,
if JCPenney has a sale, son, it's everywhere. If the so-and-so wins the World
Series, you have to turn your phone off. World Series, what
does that mean? They get a hole in one, what's
up? I mean, you know, that's my idea around it. Somebody aggravates us, oh my
gosh, that ambiguous, passive-aggressive flame on the social media. Friends, our thoughts and actions
and affections reflect what we believe. And those beliefs are
influenced and developed by what we put into our minds and hearts. If you've never heard of the
parousia, a parousia, a parousia, or however you want to say it.
It's a Greek word, which means arrival. And it is the theological
term for those who like to say big words about the second coming
of Jesus. The arrival of Jesus, the second
coming, is an important thing. In chapter one of 2 Thessalonians,
Paul has been encouraging them to endure in this suffering And
He's tried to help them see that there is a time that is coming
when Jesus Christ shall come back and set the record straight
and bring recompense with those who have caused their affliction,
as well as the time will come when they, we, others who are
suffering at the hands of wickedness will be given peace. When is
that? The day of the Lord Jesus. Now
imagine this. How many of us in this day have
heartaches, or troubles, or trials, or frustration, or suffering
of some kind? Just raise your hand. Raise your
hand. All right. Now, the rest of you,
raise your hand, because I'm going to ask this question. How
many of you lied? We all have suffering. We all
have trials. Even if it's, I hate my shoes.
That's a trial. Well, I didn't know that was
a godly thing. It's not. It's called selfishness. My yard's just got too many weeds
in it. I mean, that's suffering. But the trial in it is to not
be materialistic, to give Christ glory and not a yard glory. And
these are silly little examples, but I'm just showing you we all
are fighting the good fight of faith if we're in Christ. But
more or less, we have a lot of harder things to worry about
in life. Now, what if I told you that there was peace and
comfort coming and that it's on the way? Just hold fast. It's
almost here. And then all of a sudden, a month
later, somebody says, oh, you missed it. And you're like, I'm
still in my fight. I'm still in my suffering. I'm
still in my trials. What do you mean I missed it?
What do you mean I missed it? This is not good. That's what's
happening here. We know you're hurting. You're
hurting for the sake of Christ. We know you're hurting. And we
know that Christ is your sufficiency. His grace is enough for you.
Hold fast. There will come a day at His
return where all these things will be made right." And we're
like... And two things happened. Some
people were worried about what that was like. And that those
who had died before, remember the first chapter, the first
letter? Those who had died before them were going to miss the comfort. Paul said, Don't worry about
that. They're not going to miss anything. You will be together. Those who have
gone to sleep. They'll be resurrected at his
coming. They won't miss it. And now Paul is coming against
this problems of false teaching that has invaded the church here
that the second coming had already taken place. Now, there is a
lot to deal with in this text. Chapter 2, there's a lot of stuff. Church, I would ask that you
read chapter 2, or that you'd read this whole letter. It'll
take you 15 minutes. Every day. Make it your, before
I go to bed, read. Read 2 Thessalonians every day,
that the language, and these long, I can't take a breath,
sentences, will be in your heart. so that you will begin to see.
what it is the Bible teaches about these things because when
you read it now and when you see stuff about the son of lawlessness
or the man of lawlessness and when you see things about seated
on the temple of God, all of a sudden we start thinking, oh
yeah, I know what that's talking about. I remember I hear so and
so talking about that years ago on TV. I remember this guy that
came to my church and he was a prophet and he taught us about
this and that's gonna happen there and this is gonna be in
Russia and this is gonna be in the US and this is gonna be in Turkey
and this is gonna be here and this is what's gonna happen. He's gonna walk
in, he's gonna be wearing this, his name's gonna be like this Boom! We're waiting
on that and we sit on our hands and we do nothing. Paul is going
to say that those who don't work don't eat. In this text right
here. We are not to sit on our hands
and wait for the day because it's going to come when God wants
it to come and no man is going to be able to even see or be
ready for it except he be found in Christ. So the way our popular
culture has brought the second coming to lie is sinful. It's sinful. Because we have
fallen prey to people who are mad hungry for money and popularity.
Nothing's greater than getting popularity in this Christian
world than to tell people they can continue to sin as a believer
and don't worry about it. Or that if they give God a bunch,
then He'll give them a bunch. Or that you better be ready and
give everything away and do this and do that and do that because
Jesus is going to be here by May 21st. There's a lot of other ways,
but these are popular things and they make mad money for the
men who purvey them. It's not the case here, as you'll
see. And as we read through this over the next few weeks, I want
you to ask yourself, what's my source? Where am I getting this
information? Don't Google search it. Don't go to YouTube and watch
these things. Read the Bible and write your
own notes. Let the Lord teach you something. Paul instructed this church to
be strong and now he's instructing this church to have right judgment
and remove the error of their thinking. Look at this, verse
one and two, it's all we're gonna do today. Now concerning the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together
to him, we ask you, we beseech you, we implore you, brothers,
not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by spirit or
spoken word or letter seeming to be from us to the effect that
the day of the Lord has come. I mean, imagine that. As I've
already given the example, if you knew peace was coming but
you missed it, then your peace is not coming. It would be a
tragedy, wouldn't it? Now what? If I miss the second
coming of Jesus and my suffering is still here, what hope is there
for me? That's one reason why we believe
in the physical second return of Jesus Christ in a culmination
of the end of all things and a reestablishment of all creation
and there is no sin and no death and a resurrection from the dead
with glorified bodies. We believe that as Baptists.
Why? Because we look at Scripture
and we believe that holistically and specifically and explicitly
that it teaches that wholeheartedly. There are brothers and sisters
in the faith who believe that the resurrection is a spiritual
one only and that the second coming of Jesus Christ came at
70 AD. and that there is no resurrection from the dead and the body that
they're called preterists. If you want to learn a little
bit more about that, come on Tuesday nights where we're going
through our reading of revelation as we get later into the letter
or look at that on the church website. But here's out of the
blue. It's okay. God's coming. Christ
is coming. He's going to bring things. He's
going to bring recompense. He's going to bring peace. But
now, out of the blue, Paul says, the second coming of the Lord
Jesus and our being gathered to Him, don't be shaken. Why? Because Paul was greatly
disturbed at the fact that this false doctrine had poisoned the
hearts of these Christians. Have you ever had false doctrine
poison your heart? Maybe the first time you ever came to see
the doctrines of grace in scripture. Or even before that, maybe someone
told you about it. Maybe someone told you that salvation
is all of Christ. And you went, no, that's not
fair. Or no, I don't like that God. Or no, it seems like poison,
doesn't it? But when you go to the Word and
you see it, it's beautiful. This poison was changing the
attitudes, the affections and the emotion and the actions of
these Christians. Being told that Jesus had already
come and they missed it was something that was too much for them to
bear. It was too difficult for them to get right in their minds
that there must be something greater than this. It poisoned
the church. So Paul then says, we beseech,
we ask you. These are words of urgency. These
are words of instruction for their joy in the truth. It's
not like being asked, hey, would you mind if you have time? Get
me a glass of tea? No. That's not the point here. Don't read this as though it's
just a good uncle trying to give you some good wisdom that you
can or cannot take. Paul is commanding these people
commanding these people to not be shaken, to not be alarmed,
to not be deceived. Now, most of us would sit here
today and say, well, I'm not deceived about these things. Well, at
best, maybe we're not deceived, but I would say that we are at
least misinformed. And I think that's what's happened
here. Paul, that's too Paul knows that he taught them correctly.
Paul knows that they have been given the truth. But somewhere, from some place,
from some people, they've taken that truth and they've twisted
it and they've turned it against the church. Let's look at it. These urgent issues in the hearts
of these Christians, is that Paul wants to correct this error.
Well, let me say this. A lot of people believe that
the second coming and end times and things of that nature, and
I'm not saying every aspect of these things is necessarily essential,
but the second coming of Jesus Christ is an essential part of
what? The gospel. The second coming of Jesus Christ
is an essential part of the redemption plan of God, the story of Christ. So what we believe about what
happens after death and what happens when Jesus Christ comes
again is directly relative to our joy and to our understanding
of heaven, to our understanding of eternal life, to our understanding
of how our circumstances apply today and all of the above. Paul
made sure that these Christians were corrected because it's that
important. So for someone to say this is
just an academic approach to a theological position that's
not really important to the merits of salvation, I would say maybe
not all the way effectually to salvation, but it is so vital
to the outcome of our joy that it is an essential doctrine.
I don't know about you, but if I hold to the fact that I'm just
going to be a spirit the rest of my life in some different
weird state, and that life here on earth is going to perpetually
continue, Does that bother you? It bothers me. But because it
bothers me doesn't mean that I'm right or wrong, or that the
antithesis of that is right or wrong. But I've got to ask myself,
what does scripture teach and why? Does it matter? Here, as
we understand we are a product of what we believe, and as we
understand we believe, and what we believe is influenced by what
we listen to, and what we listen to really is a reflection of
what we love and what we hold to the highest affection, is
it not? And then what we love reveals
on how we act and where we go and what we do. So the chain
just continues to go. Paul says in these two things,
there's two things I want you to understand. The coming of
Jesus and our being gathered with Him. Concerning the coming
and our gathering with Him, we ask you, do not be shaken. This
is the point. Why does it matter though? Well, sadly, Paul doesn't have
time in this little tiny letter. Mine is like that. Is yours one
page? That's it. That's it. This little tiny postcard. He wanted to get to the point
here. He didn't have time to say, this is why it should be
important. He knew why it was important. But why is it important?
Not just the fact that they were missing the joy and the hope
of being relieved and being set right and that wickedness would
be judged. But why should the second coming
of Jesus Christ be so vital? Because it is a vital issue.
Think about this for a moment. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy
4, he says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ
Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by his
appearing and his kingdom. So here's Paul referring to the
coming of Christ and to the coming and to the second coming of Christ.
He charges Timothy, because these things are imminent and true,
preach the word. So if the second coming of Jesus
Christ is not a reality for the church, what are we doing here?
Let's go fishing. Let's go shooting. Let's go to
the beach. Somewhere way down south. Let's
do something else. But because Paul puts an emphasis
on the gravity of the necessity of believing in the second coming,
he says that preaching is tied up in this. Be ready in season
and out of season. Rebuke and exhort with complete
patience and teaching for the time is coming. when people will
not endure sound teaching, but they want to hear what they desire
to hear, what their affectionate hearts want. Paul calls those
itching ears, and they will gather up teachers for themselves to
suit their own lusts, and they'll turn away from listening to truth
and wander off into myths. As for you, be sober-minded,
endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your
ministry. Paul is saying the appearing of Jesus Christ and
His kingdom is a grave situation that affects all of Christendom.
It affects all of the church. It affects everything. The whole
point that Paul wrote these letters was to give encouragement that
though we are dead in our flesh and suffering in our flesh and
hurting in our flesh, there is a greater reward and abiding
reward. See, that sounds like Peter, doesn't it? greater than all of this, it
will never be rotted, it will never rust, the moss will never
eat it, it will never die, it will never decay, but it is eternal.
And you, beloved, as Peter would say, are being kept in heaven
by the power of God. And we are looking for the day
when God takes us to Himself. So it should be important because
it's a grave issue. All of ministry wraps itself up in the second
coming of Jesus. Secondly, I believe it's an important
issue and it's vital because it is the point, it is the final
experience of all believers in time. Now think about it. Of
all of time, from let there be light to I'm back, is time. Time is not existent outside
of this created universe. God is transcended. He sits above,
He created it. It's not me making a snake out
of Play-Doh and saying, I have to exist within the confines
of what the snake does. No, it's my snake. I can ball
it up, turn it into a ball. I can roll it up, make it into
a cup. I can step on it, I can burn it, do whatever I want to
with it. God is not bound by time, He created it. So the final
experience of all believers, the final point of all experience
in time is the second coming of Jesus Christ. It is the culmination
of all time. It is the end of all human history. It is over. Well, you get that? We learned that in the last chapter
of 1 Thessalonians, did we not? Now, concerning the times and
the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written
to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the
Lord will come like a what? Thief in the night. While people
are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction
will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman
and they will not escape. This reality is that it is coming
and not only is it a point in history and the final culmination
for the church, it is the day of judgment for the reprobate.
It is the day of judgment for the unbelievers. But it's also
vital because it is a treasure for us. It's not just an opportunity
for us to be free of our suffering. Heaven and eternal life and the
resurrection is not just, woo, no more arthritis. Wow, no more
neck pain. Oh, no more allergies. Oh, no more blindness. I mean,
no more, oh wow, my foot. Now everything I can think about
is hurting on my body, I can list them. No more heater problems,
no more coldness, no more nothing, no more tears. That's not the
joy of it all. It's a good benefit of it. But
the joy of it all is Jesus Christ. Paul tells young Timothy, for
I am being poured out already as a what? Drink offering and
my time of departure has come. What does he say? I fought the
good fight. I have finished the race. I have
kept the faith. Henceforth, what is it? We finished
this and the time has come and I'm about to leave. Henceforth,
there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous judge, will award me on that day." What day? The
day of His coming. The day of His coming. And not only to me, but to all
those who have loved His appearing. That's what Paul says. Are you
loving the appearing of Christ? Are you longing for the day when
Christ comes to bring us to him, to take us to him, to bring all
wickedness under his feet, to establish peace, to establish
rule, to establish judgment and righteousness? I am sad to say
that there have been many seasons of my life where I cared more
about retirement, savings, 401Ks, 403Bs, and ABCs, 123s, than I
did about the second coming of Jesus. I pray that's not this day for
you, beloved. I pray that your life and your work and your future
and your family and the hopes and dreams of a better tomorrow
are not on your radar. Because God in his infinite mercy,
if he loves us greatly, as he says he does, he will bring suffering
to the point where those things will no longer matter. He will
bring joy to us through the trials of life. He will bring. Discipline
that we might be strengthened. As we strain, as we fight, as
we labor all for nothing, effectually, because Christ has accomplished
it all for us. but all for preparation of a glory that is not even ours
to behold, but yet it is given to us, and we are called the
glorious ones. Because we stand with Christ.
It's a treasure for us, church. And it is a fact that He's coming,
and it is a fact that we will be with Him. That's what Paul
is emphasizing here in this first verse. Have you ever thought
that much about the second coming? Oh, there's a lot to talk about.
There's more, as we'll see. Just in the first chapter, we
saw, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from
the presence of the Lord and to the glory and from the glory
of his might. And when he comes on that day,
why? In order to be, verse nine, I
mean, verse 10, glorified in his saints. Do we glory in Jesus Christ? We do because we marvel over
Him, because we have believed the testimony of His Word. And
so when we find ourselves this very moment going, I'm not really
excited about the second coming of Jesus, it could very well
be, listen to my voice, it could very well be you have not believed
the testimony of God concerning His Son. Did you hear me? Do
not play games with God. Do not put your rest in a task
or a time. So, yeah, I'm good. Look at me. Oh, for heaven's sake, no man
can say, look at me, I'm good. As Paul grew in the faith, he
did not say, of course, I'm in Christ, look at me. No, he said,
look at me, I'm perfect beforehand. And then he said, I'm the greatest
of sinners. When we look into the mirror
of our soul, we see the greatest of sins. When we look into the mirror
of our relationship with Jesus Christ, we see an unworthy recipient
of an incredibly glorious love. And friends, to miss Christ should
be our greatest fear. Our greatest fear should not
be the judgment of righteousness. Because even heathen and reprobate
people know they deserve justice. Our greatest fear should not
be condemnation. Our greatest fear should not
be rejection. Our greatest fear should not
be the recompense of God, the winepress of His fury. Our greatest
fear should be that we miss the beauty of His coming. It should alarm us to consider
that reality. It should alarm us as we strive
in this life to believe on his righteousness. When we look at
our lives and there is no growth, it should alarm us when we don't
see ourselves worthy of the kingdom of God and salvation. It should
alarm us when we sit complacently in our everyday lives without
any fire or fervor or desire on spiritual things. It should
alarm us when we're able to bake a cake without worshipping Christ. Put on our shoes. And when it
alarms us, we're able to see, wow, if it were not for the grace
of God, I would not stand. But because of Him, I stand. There's many places in scripture
that show that the coming of Christ should be our greatest
desire, our greatest anticipation. It's not even for Paul. It wasn't
even heaven. It wasn't even the temporal relationship
with Jesus, though he longed for. He says, it'd be better
that I go. I mean, it's better for me that I go and be with
Christ. But he knew that that wasn't
it. There was still one more step when Christ would bring
him back to bring the others with him and that we would all
be raised to life. Peter understood it when he says
in 1 Peter 1, one of my favorite places in Scripture, when I'm
really feeling depressed. But he goes on to say there in
1 Peter, though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him,
you believe in Him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible
and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the
salvation of your soul. See, Peter, knew that Jesus Christ
returning for his church was the greatest moment, the greatest
moment that we all should long for. Jesus says about Abraham
in chapter 8 of John in verse 56. And he's arguing with the
Pharisees and they're talking about how their father and their
father and their father and Jesus says, your father Abraham rejoiced
that he would see my day and saw it and was glad. And they wanted to kill him for
saying that. Why? Because he basically said that
before Abraham was, I am. No, he didn't. Basically, he
explicitly said that. You're not yet 50 years old,
man, how can you say that before Abraham, before Abraham was,
you were. And he was saying that Abraham
longed to see the day of Christ, longed to see the advent, longed
to see the crucifixion, the resurrection, and he was glad in it. He was
glad in it. In Revelation 22, I don't want
to do too much here, but in Revelation 22, we see the scripture where
the Bible says the spirit and the bride say, come and let the
one who hears say, come and the one who is thirsty, come into
the one who desires. Take the water of life without
price. That's verse 17. The Spirit of God draws His people
to Himself. The Father gives all of His own
to the Son. And all who are given to the
Son, the Son will never cast out. Those who belong to the
Son know His voice. It's like a child lost in a shopping
mall crying for mama. Mama, mama, mama, mama. And every mama in there answers.
Oh, we're going to have to find your mama. The child continues
to cry and to cry. But then when the child hears
the voice of its own mother. It's at peace. Do you know the voice of your
shepherd? You know, the voice of your God, you know, the voice
of your Lord, you know, the voice of your father. Are you looking
for him to come home? Are you longing for that church? Paul clearly, as I've already
alluded to Philippians chapter 1, for to me to live is Christ
and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh,
that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose,
I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the
two. My desire is to part and be with
Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is
more necessary on your account. Paul was conflicted, but yet
at peace either way. I believe that's how our life
should feel. That should be the song of our
hearts, the song of our mornings in preparation for our day, the
song of our evenings as we go to rest. Oh Lord. I'm ready to
get away from here, but Father, oh, You are fulfilled in all
that I am experiencing this day. All, even the suffering of this
life is for my good and for the sake of Your name. May I be an
instrument of grace and an instrument of peace, an instrument of blessing,
an instrument of affection for those people in this life, for
my Christian brothers and sisters, and for the lost. What's the
antithesis of that? Live for yourself. Live for yourself. One of my
good friends, Adrian Duprey, used to sing a song. He said,
It's all about me. Go on and on. It's pretty funny.
That's not the hymn we sing. All I have is Christ. Come thou
fount of every blessing. It is well with my soul. Why?
Because Christ, what's the last stanza? Well, the one we sing
last. I hear there's like 30 stanzas. And that day when the
sky shall be rolled back as a scroll and the trumpet of the Lord shall
resound. Why is it well with our soul?
Why? Because Christ has come. Because
our Savior has come. Because our Lord has come. And
we are fine. All is well. The world is burning
down behind us. And we're at peace. Do you love Christ? Do you await
for his coming? Do you live according to that
affection? Do you worship Christ with this in mind? So what does
he What is he telling us to do? How is it that we stand here? Look at verse two. Do not be shaken in mind or alarmed
either by a spirit or spoken word or letter seeming to be
from us to the effect of the day of the Lord has come. Beloved,
you have not missed the coming of your Christ. That's what he's
saying. So no matter what people tell
you, do not be shaken, do not be resolved. Beloved, you this
day have not missed the peace that comes from Christ. You have
not missed the blessing of rest. You've not missed it. But until then, how do we maintain
that state of peace and rest? We long to that day. See the
point? We look to that day. We look
to not the temporal but the eternal things. We look to the point
when all of reality as we know it today will cease and the true
reality which is still alive today but unseen is Christ forever. He says, I want you to stand
firm in what you know. Do not be shaken. Do not be troubled. Do not be doubtful. Paul is saying don't
move on this. Don't move over here. Don't join
the group of semi-parousia. Don't jump into
the bandwagon of a of a preterist family. Well,
it makes sense. We'll just go with it. I have
no hope. Eat, drink and be merry. I had one of those guys come
into a conference in California and try to hand out literature,
and we actually had to get strong on him. Put our hands on the
guy and escort him out. Thank God I had a minor league
baseball player that was six foot eight. His pinky toes the size of my
neck. He smiled at God. He says, Sir,
I think it's time you leave the building. And the guy went, Why? Because I don't want anybody
poisoning my sheep. I don't want anybody poisoning this sheep.
I don't want anybody telling the church that there's no need
to worry about the second coming because it's over. Just live
and die and be at peace. See, that's the devil. That's his lies. That doesn't
mean that all preteristic ideas are like that. So we'll talk
about it on a Tuesday. But to say the Lord Jesus has
come would give these Thessalonians no hope. Paul says there is hope
to look forward to. Don't move on this. Do not be
shaken in spirit or by spirit or by word or by letter. Now
let me tell you something, church, and it may not be on this issue,
but I'll close with this. I mean, a lot of us get shaken
because we do exactly what these Thessalonian Christians did.
We begin to listen to all of what's being said rather than
what has sufficiently been said. We begin to listen to our own
minds and our own philosophies and our own theologies. We begin
to listen to our flesh and say, well, if I do this, it'll be
okay. I can run after my own lusts. God is a forgiving God. I mean, Paul says in Romans 7,
please, no, don't do that. So it may not be about the second
coming, but let me tell you something, when you know that Christ is
coming, it is one of the drives through which the Spirit of God
gives us to stand firm in righteousness and to pray for God to take away
our temptation. and to stop snuggling with our
flesh, but to struggle against it. Don't move. Don't listen to your
inner voice. Don't listen to the way you talk
to yourself. Don't listen to what you feel.
But take what you hear in your mind, how you talk to yourself,
what you feel, take those things, your thoughts, and run them through
the filter of absolute truth, run them through the words of
Christ, and when they fit, they fit, and when they don't, trash
them. God would understand, some people
would say. God understands because I'm just not happy. So you're not happy, so you run
to sin. And you think because that gives
you temporal joy that it's godly. Wrong! Well, God will understand because
I'm just powerless. Well, that's the whole point
of the good news of Jesus Christ is that God worked power in you
who were powerless so that we would not be slaves to sin. Don't be shaken. See, what had
happened here, some people argue that they misinterpreted Paul's
letter. I don't really hold to that position, but it doesn't
really matter. I believe that somebody took
Paul's letter and twisted it a little bit. I don't think they
misinterpreted it. I think that they got it equally and perfectly,
because he says, I've already told you these things. Nobody
has a reason, a need to write you about these things. I've
already told you. I believe that somebody else
started writing letters. Now see, we get a letter in the
mail today, we call the FBI. What is this? Handwriting on
the front of it? It's either anthrax from a great-grandmother
or a chain mail or from Comcast. We don't know what to do with
it. But in that day, if a letter came, it was of vital importance.
And the only way Paul and the apostles communicated with the
churches is to write a letter. And the letter came by messenger.
The messenger had it. So imagine a messenger coming in. Imagine
the recipients of this letter seeing and hearing, wow, Paul
has written to us again. And then all of a sudden, that
which Paul wrote in his first letter, another letter shows
up and it says, you missed it. And it began to be spread and
that rumor began to start going through the city. And they were
distraught. They were distraught. And there
was nothing for them to do except grieve and wring their hands
and hope for the best. Paul was saying, don't listen
to a letter that you think was from us. And you're saying, well, how
do I apply that to my life? Let me just give you this little
segue here. This little rabbit chase. Let me chase him out of
the bushes for a second. How many times do we listen to something,
read something, or share something that's directly contradictory
to what we know the Bible teaches? A sermon comes along. Hey, it's
on sermon audio. Listen, Steve and them can't
look at every sermon that comes up there. Well, it's so-and-so. It's Dr.
So-and-so. Must be right. Nah. Go work on
a PhD and you see 6,000 people doing the same stuff. And the
whole idea of that kind of work is that you can argue your point
of view and make it work through research. That's a statistician
on paper without math. That doesn't prove it's right.
Does it align with the word of God in context? Is it true because
the scripture testifies to its validity? Paul's saying don't be moved
by a word. Don't be moved by what you hear. Don't be moved
by how you think. Don't be moved by how you analyze what you're
thinking. Don't be moved by a letter, by
a sermon, by a television preacher, by a podcast, by a radio show,
by a neighbor, by a friend, by a church member, or by a pastor.
Do not be moved apart from the truth of the Word of God. Beloved, it is a tragedy. of
eternal proportions at the amount of so-called shepherds who teach
everything but scripture in this world. They are the abundance. And it is even fewer, it is even
rarer to find a congregation who will test what is said in
front of them. Are you listening to what I'm
saying? Are you hearing what I say? Are you proving what I
say? Stand in Christ, Paul argues. Stand in the reality that he
is coming and he has not come. Stand in the sufficiency of His
grace and His gospel and His power to transform you. Stand
in His Word. Stand with His people. Stand
on the promises of His gospel and stand on His power. Do not
be moved, beloved. Do not be moved. And do not apologize
for standing on truth. My prayer for you this day is
that you would evaluate your heart. To ask yourself, do I
stand on Christ alone or is my position and my root and my foothold
what I'm standing on? Do I have an affection for Jesus
Christ the way the Scripture shows the church to have? Do I have the mind the way the
Scripture shows the church to have? What must I do To see these
things work in my life, beloved, you can do nothing except to believe on everything
Christ has done. And when you and I find ourselves
weak, hallelujah, that's the point where the gospel then is
so alive in us. Where we don't come to our neighbor
and say, what shall I do? We come to our Savior and say,
oh, show me again what you have done for me. Show me again who
you're making me to be. Show me again all these things
of your power that relate to salvation and righteousness and
sanctification. Bring this to me. Change my heart,
O God, for if it is not your power in me, it is powerless. That's my prayer for you. To
be those people. Because friends, when we stop
holding to our self-sufficiency, when we stop holding to our zeal,
when we stop holding to the love of our flesh as believers and
trust in Christ every second, God will effectually change us. And friends, if you were hungry
and had no food, you would eat. you would find something to eat. Maybe if you're not hungry for
Christ, you need to cry out to Christ. That He would bring that hunger. That He would bring salvation.
That He would bring joy. Because if He doesn't, There's
no hope for you. There's no hope for me. And the
coming of Jesus is not a gift. But a grave. Forever. Beloved, we are not in darkness
because God has shown in our hearts the light. Be satisfied
in Christ. And rest in his gospel. Let's
pray. We thank you, Lord, for your
everlasting goodness. We thank you, Lord, for your
great salvation. We thank you, Lord, for your
grace and your love and your mercy. We thank you, Lord, for
your righteousness. We thank you, Lord, for your
judgment. We thank you, Lord, that you
place that judgment on Jesus Christ, the righteous. And because of that, Lord, we
who have faith in Him stand before you clean, worthy,
righteous, and justified. So until that day comes where
we sit before you, until that day of the Son is before us, Lord,
keep us, for if you do not, we shall fall away. Lord, seal us. As your spirit has done. Lord,
sanctify us. That we might be. A praise to
your glorious grace. In Jesus name. Amen. Let's sing.