MARTIN LUTHER once said: "My hope despairs; but my despair keeps me hoping!" A similar philosophy seems to govern the masses of men and women today. It is a spreading miasma that has even seeped into the hearts of many Christians who evidence it by giving up once-held moral standards, who look for more and more governmental subsidies to replace honest earnings. While the world grows hard and cold to spiritual matters, church members feel a loss of personal faith and find their churches less and less relevant to the issues of modem life. These same threatening clouds gathered about the young church at Thessalonica in the fifth decade of the first century-that body of believers which the apostle Paul and his companions had seen spring into vigorous faith but two short years before. In response, Paul wrote two letters to the Thessalonians, and the help he gave them is exactly what many Christians need today to help them live amid the pressures of our times. The Thessalonians needed a father's faithful concern; a mother's tender, understanding words; a brother's readiness to stand by to the end; and, above all, a realization of the resources they already possessed in the Spirit's inner strengthening. They needed to realize anew that the dark powers they faced were being kept within rigid limits and that relief was certain to come in God's time from their returning Lord. These two letters speak as clearly and powerfully in the late twentieth century as they did in the first. Let us read them as eagerly and avidly as Paul's converts must have read them fresh from his pen.
CONTENTS
1 THESSALONIANS
1 CHANGED LIVES
2 WHATEVER BECAME OF INTEGRITY?
3 THE MYSTERIOUS WORD
4 A FATHER'S JOY
5 HANDLING YOUR SEX DRIVE
6 COMFORT AT THE GRAVE
7 THE FATE OF THE EARTH
8 LIVING CHRISTIANLY
2 THESSALONIANS
9 THE FIRE NEXT TIME
10 THE MAN WHO CLAIMS TO BE GOD
11 STAND FIRM
12 IS WORK A CURSE?
APPENDIX 156
THE THESSALONIAN letters of the apostle Paul were written to a young church struggling to survive in an extremely dangerous world. Within twenty years of their writing, the whole of the ancient East was convulsed in warfare and rebellion. In A.D. 70 the armies of Titus surrounded Jerusalem. Following a bloody siege the city was overrun, the temple destroyed, and the Jews taken captive. The movements that culminated in these events had already begun when this first letter was written. Thus it is clear that the Thessalonian Christians were facing perilous times.
We too are living in dangerous times. Many years ago, Dr. E. M. Blaiklock, who was then Professor of Classics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, said something I have never forgotten. This renowned biblical historian declared: "Of all the centuries, the twentieth is most like the first." We can, therefore, feel very close to this young church in Thessalonica.
Many today sense an approaching world crisis. A nervous, jittery stock market; a growing sense of cynicism and distrust of the political process; an increase in drug and alcohol dependency, with the resultant physical and mental toll in human lives; scientists tinkering with our genetic make-up and actually developing a business of selling fetal tissues; all these portend a frightening crisis looming on the horizon of our times. Add to this the now familiar threat of AIDS, the spread of famine in many countries, and, of course, the ever-present threat of nuclear warfare, and it is clear that something terrible is about to happen. We are living in a world in chaos.
In 1980 leaders from all over the Western world attended the First Global Conference on the Future, held in Ontario, Canada. The chairman of that conference spoke these sobering words: "The bad news is that the end of the world is coming. The good news is, not yet. But the decade of the 1980s is going to be the most important in human history. If we don't make the right decisions, the odds of our going beyond this decade are very slim. The danger of war and the collapse of Western civilization is a very real possibility."
Even earlier, in 1972, a group of international industrial leaders and thinkers, called the Club of Rome, suggested six proposals that humanity must put into effect if we are to survive on this planet. I will share only the first, but very significant, proposal: "The survival of this planet necessitates new forms of thinking that will lead to a fundamental revision of human behavior and, by implication, of the entire fabric of present-day society." That simply says that if we cannot discover how to change people, there is no hope of saving the world from ultimate collapse. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." There is no way out unless society can find a means of fundamentally changing human beings.
Right here is the glory of our message, for the gospel changes men and women. Paul wrote letters to the young church at Thessalonica because people there had found in the good news about Jesus a way to be changed. The focus and purpose of their lives had been drastically altered.
Paul himself founded this church in Salonica (as it is now called). It is today a bustling center of northern Greece, one of the few New Testament cities that is still flourishing. The ancient gate through which the apostle entered the city spanned the Egnatian Way, the Roman road that ran from the Adriatic to the Bosporus. After Paul and his friends had been treated shamefully in Philippi, they journeyed on about 100 miles west to Thessalonica. Paul remained there at least three weeks and probably longer, but he was able to minister in the synagogue for only three sabbaths.
The Jews of the city became so enraged by his teaching about Jesus that they created a riot and captured Paul's host, Jason, holding him responsible for the apostle's behavior. Paul left the city, traveling south to Berea and there began to preach again. The Jews from Thessalonica, however, followed him, causing another uprising in Berea. Finally, Paul was sent on alone to Athens. He remained there a short time and then moved to Corinth. It was from that city, in A.D. 50 or 51, that he addressed this letter to the Thessalonian believers, only a few weeks old in Christ.
A DUAL ADDRESS
In the salutation Paul gives a double address for the church: one, geographical, the other, spiritual. The new believers lived in Thessalonica, but they were also found "in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (1:1). Of the two addresses, the latter is the more important. If we have come to Christ, we must see ourselves as primarily new creatures "in God the Father" and "in the Lord Jesus Christ."
Paul is continually thankful in prayer for three things these believers possess: their faith, their love, and their hope. In the New Testament, these are always listed as fundamental characteristics of those who have come to Christ. At the close of that wonderful thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul says: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (13:13). And, he reminds us, these three qualities will never end.
In reading Paul's letters I never tire of noting how his mind works. He has a marvelous ability to summarize many points in a single verse and then amplify them again in easy-to-follow steps. As we see in these early verses, Paul is not speaking of mere faith, hope, and love. He is very careful to be specific--a faith that works, a love that labors, and a hope that endures--the great motives of the Christian life. If you have true faith, if you have love born of the Spirit, and if you have hope in the coming of Christ, you will be motivated to live as you ought today.
THE WORK OF FAITH
What is this "work of faith" that Paul mentions? He sums it up himself in verse 9. There he recognizes that the Thessalonians had "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." That is faith at work. Faith is not merely belief; faith works. It has the power to change. Faith enables you to turn from what is wrong to what is right, from dark and hurtful things to right and true and healthy things, from the worship of idols to the worship of God.
Notice the direction of this action: to God from idols, not the other way around. You do not leave your idols for some reason and then painfully try to find God. What happens is that you discover something of the beauty, the glory, and the greatness of God; and, seeing that and wanting it, you are willing to forsake the cheap and tawdry things you once believed could satisfy.
Modern America is surely one of the most idolatrous countries the world has ever seen. We are surrounded with idol worship. I once heard of a Chinese man who visited here and was asked upon his return to China whether Americans worshiped idols. "Yes, they do," he reported. "They have three of them. In the winter they worship a fat man in a red suit. In the spring they worship a rabbit. And in the fall they sacrifice a turkey!" Although there may be a shade of truth to this clever line, these are not true idols; for the most part they are myths and legends we pass along to each generation.
Television might properly be labeled an idol. Too many spend far too long glued to that staring eye, which feeds all types of ideas and emotions into their minds. But I don't think that television is really an idol. It is, rather, an altar upon which we spread offerings and sacrifices to the great god of Self. Television panders to our lust for comfort and entertainment. It lures us to think always of our own comfort, our pleasure, our fear of boredom, our desire to be either thrilled or terrified by watching some spectacle or event. It encourages us to focus on ourselves. But Self is the true idol.
The Habits of the Heart, a book written by a group of contemporary psychologists, develops the thesis that television causes Americans to forget how to serve. Perhaps this is not nearly as evident in Christian circles as it is in the world at large, but we face it also in the body of Christ. Jesus said that He came "not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give himself." This is the source of true richness and fulfillment. When we demand to be ministered to, when we must always have something titillating our senses, the end is loneliness, emptiness, and ultimately despair. The proof is visible everywhere today.
America obviously also worships Eros, the goddess of sex, and Baal, the erotic deity associated with fertility rites. Baal worship in the ancient world promoted degenerate practices of the most licentious kind and is behind many of the loathsome practices in our country today. Baal worship is manifested in the rise of homosexuality as an acceptable life-style. It is behind the pornography that pervades almost every aspect of modem life. More than that, Americans are worshiping Molech, the terrible furnace god into whose fiery mouth parents in ancient times threw their children, destroying them to relieve the guilt of their own consciences. The evidence for it today is rampant in the skyrocketing cases of child abuse and child molestation, not to mention abortion murder mills.
Paul tells us how to turn from these degradations. He addresses the Thessalonians as "loved by God" (1:4). The answer to idolatry begins with an acceptance of God's love. Everything starts there. The world at large perceives God as perpetually angry, looking upon His creatures as a defiant, rebellious lot who refuse to have anything to do with Him and who ignore His teachers and suppress His Word. But God does not look at our lost race that way. The truth is found in John 3:16: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." He sees us as victims, deluded and deceived. Alluring philosophies have throttled our love and captivated and gripped our minds. Almost in total ignorance we pursue the things that destroy us. Most of us have already seriously messed up our lives. But then we learn the incredible truth that despite our failures God loves us, and that He gave His only begotten Son for us. It is in the cross that we see the love of God on exhibit. Paul so states in Romans: "God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8 KJV).
It is also in the Scriptures that we learn "he has chosen" us (1 Thess. 1:4). How do you know that out of the millions who have lived on earth He chose you? The answer is, you began to be drawn toward God, to sense a desire for Him. The calling of God by means of the Spirit awakens a hunger within. If you are longing to be different, if you want to be more than you are now, if you have tried to change and cannot, but you want to change, if you find the words of the gospel, the songs and hymns of Christians attractive, you are being drawn by the Spirit! Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" ( John 6:44).
When the good news came to Thessalonica, people began to feel inside themselves a desire to have this Jesus who would make such a tremendous change in their lives. They responded to love and thus revealed they were the elect of God.
Paul goes on to detail the steps necessary to God's call. First, the gospel "came...not simply with words" (1:5). The Scriptures were preached, the truth was declared. The apostle spoke to them about the promises of God in the Old Testament. The seventeenth chapter of Acts contains a record of Paul's preaching in the city of Berea. He believed the Bereans to be more noble, more open than those in Thessalonica in that they "received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (17:11 KJV). It is through the Word of God through the declaration of these great promises and the simple narrative of the story of Jesus--that men and women are awakened and moved toward God.
The second factor in God's call is His power. "Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power" (v. 5). The Word becomes real, compelling, gripping. The gospel has the ability to compel because it is no mere legend or myth. Christmas is much more than a beautiful story that entrances people and helps them forget the ugliness of the present. It speaks of real events. Jesus was indeed born in Bethlehem. The shepherds did come to worship Him. The angels sang their great promise of hope. A flaming star lit the heavens with glory. All of this actually happened. Jesus did live. He did move among men. He died a felon's death upon a cross. He was raised from the dead. When the Thessalonians believed, they sensed the historicity and the power of these events and were changed. They became different people.
Also, says Paul, the gospel came "with the Holy Spirit" (v. 5). Behind the power is the reality of God Himself. His Spirit can touch and fill the human spirit. He begins to minister to our minds and our hearts from within, opening them up to understand these events.
Finally, the gospel came "with deep conviction" (v. 5), moving the wills of the Thessalonians. They acted, they did something about it: They yielded their lives to God. You may have been attending church for years. You may have been hearing the gospel, but have never opened your heart to God. That is the final, necessary step. Ultimately, the will must be moved. Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door [of the heart], and knock: if any man hear my voice [feels desire], and open the door [invites Him to come in], I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20 KJV). That is what happened in Thessalonica.
This, then, is "the work of faith." Until you have actually received Christ, you have not exercised faith. You can believe the story to be true, but until it moves you to accept the Lord, to invite Him into your heart, you have not exercised faith.
THE LABOR OF LOVE
The first sign of love at work is a changed attitude. Instead of wearisome complaining about their afflictions, the Thessalonians found "joy given by the Holy Spirit" (v. 6). Not that there wasn't good reason to complain! These young believers were ostracized at their work, hounded out of their homes, arrested, and put into prison because of their newfound faith. But, says Paul, they had learned to see these afflictions in a new way. They saw them as privileges, given to them for Jesus' sake. The result was joy! They responded to God's love by loving Him in return and welcoming the opportunities to bear suffering for His name's sake.
Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God. But there is always something that must come before that, something many people do not seem to understand. God asks us to love Him only because He first loved us. When trials, pressures, and hardships come along, we are able to see for ourselves what kind of solution God can work out. The Thessalonians had stopped complaining and started rejoicing because they saw God working through their trials. If only we could understand that afflictions are opportunities for God to demonstrate His sustaining grace and show His work in our lives today, we could experience the same joy they knew.
The second mark of love's labor is sharing. The Thessalonian believers shared the good news throughout Macedonia and Achaia (v. 7). They did not do it by means of great crusades or campaigns. There were no citywide meetings in rented stadiums.
We can do that today, and thank God for it, but that is not what the Thessalonians did. They simply told their neighbors and friends what God had done for them. They explained the new joy and peace that had come into their hearts. Then, when their friends began to ask questions, they invited them over and opened the Scriptures. Through the quiet, almost invisible, network of what we would call home Bible studies, they shared the good news. Silently, without fanfare, the gospel spread throughout this whole area of the Roman Empire. The entire countryside was stirred by what was taking place in people's lives.
In Thessalonica the city fathers described Paul and his friends by saying, "These men who have turned the world upside down, have come here also" (Acts 17:6 RSV). In this way the good news eventually filtered into all parts of the known world.
The third proof of love's labor was displayed by the Thessalonian believers in their daily trust in God's care. "Your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything," Paul commended them (v. 8). They believed that God was their Father and would take care of them no matter what happened.
Recently I received a letter from two missionaries in Guatemala, Ron and Gretchen Bruno. Gretchen wrote of an incident that had encouraged her greatly. A poor widow in one of the congregations in Guatemala was down to her last twenty cents and without food. She began to pray about her problem. As she was praying she felt a deep conviction that God was telling her to go to the large supermarket in town the next day and fill up several carts with groceries and take them to checkout stand number 7. This was not just a vague feeling on her part but a deep, Spirit-born conviction. She went to the supermarket the next morning, loaded enough groceries into carts to last two or three months, and took them to checkout stand 7. Just as she got there the cashier closed the stand to go for lunch. She suggested that the woman take her groceries to another stand, but the woman said, "No, I cannot. My Father told me to take these through stand 7." So she waited until the clerk came back from lunch. The clerk was surprised to see the woman still there but started to check out her groceries. Just then an announcement came over the loudspeaker: "Since this is our seventh year of business, we are pleased to announce that whoever is checking out at checkout stand 7 will receive free groceries."
Now I am not telling you to go to your local supermarket and stand in checkout lane 7, but I am telling you to do what this woman did: trust God. Believe that He cares for you, that He is a loving heavenly Father, and that He has a thousand and one ways of meeting your needs. Although He seldom does the same thing twice, the unchangeable fact is that God loves us. We belong to Him.
The Thessalonians demonstrated that belief so effectively that their faith had been reported everywhere. They had an invisible means of support, but it was evident in their confident behavior.
THE HOPE THAT ENDURES
A striking feature about the Thessalonian letters is that each chapter in both letters ends with a reference to the coming of the Lord. We look back to His first coming, but among these early believers the great hope lay in His coming again. They believed what the angels had said to the disciples on the Mount of Olives: "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way " (Acts 1:11). It was the ever-present hope of the early church, and that hope became the dominant theme of the Thessalonian letters.
Their answer to the threat of personal death was a firm belief in Jesus' resurrection. Jesus had said, "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19). Now they were to "wait for his [God's] Son from heaven" (1:10).
The Thessalonians were confident of their victory over death, and they did not fear what Paul calls "the coming wrath" (1 Thess. 1:10). This is not a reference to hell. In John 5:24, Jesus had said: "Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." These faithful believers had learned from Paul that they would not face that judgment. Here, he is referring to a coming period of wrath on earth. The use of the present tense indicates that it is a future event from which they could also be assured of deliverance by their Lord.
In the Old Testament this period is called "the terrible day of the Lord" (Joel 2:31 KJV). It is a time when God's judgments will rain down upon the earth. Jesus Himself described it as the "great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be" (Matt. 24:21 KJV). That time is yet ahead. But throughout these letters we learn that God has a plan to deliver His own from that "coming wrath." Christians shall have victory even over the approaching crisis of the world.
More important than the certainty of heaven or escape from the agony of living is the promise that He who is coming again even now rules in the affairs of men. Intertwined with the promise of John 14 is the assurance that He will come to live within us. "I will not leave you as orphans," He said, "I will come to you" (v. 18). The wonderful paradox that Christians possess is that though the kingdom of Christ is yet coming when Jesus will return to this earth, He is already here with us now. He is leading us, fulfilling us, ministering to us, guarding us, and, even now, ruling in earthly affairs. What does this mean to us today? Simply this: Christians have no business being discouraged, defeated, or despairing. If we succumb to any of these moods, it is because we ha ve forgotten the grea t truths proclaimed in Paul's letter. But there in troubled Thessalonica these truths were living, vital, and fragrant in the hearts of the believers. Surely, in our dark hour of history, God is calling us back to the fundamentals of the Christian life--faith, hope, and love.
A NEW PHENOMENON in America is the rise of the mega-church. When I was a boy, a church with two or three thousand members was considered rare and enormous; today, however, there are dozens of them, and they are regarded as moderate-sized. It is not uncommon to hear of a church with a congregation of ten thousand or more meeting every Sunday. In one such church, 3,500 people come together on Wednesday evenings, many of them untouched pagans. It is exciting to see the Lord at work in their midst.
Recently I attended a conference where thirty Southern California pastors met together; among those attending were both young and old men, both outgoing and retiring personalities. But their common bond was their deep concern for people. These men were real pastors and shepherds. Guest speaker Peter Drucker, an expert on business and management, offered some comments on approaches and organization, but the main emphasis of all the discussions was how to minister to people.
In the first twelve verses of 1 Thessalonians we find a great model for ministry. The apostle Paul was a master shepherd, and while there is no doubt that Paul is here defending himself from some criticisms that had arisen after his departure from Thessalonica, there emerges in this passage a marvelous picture of the work of a good shepherd.
You may be asking, "How does this apply to me? Pastors are a special breed. Does Paul have anything to say to me?" One of the young men at the pastors' meeting commented: "Jesus was so human nobody would believe He was God, but we pastors are so godlike nobody thinks we're human!" There is an element of truth in that. But may I remind you that every believer is in the ministry. If you are a parent, you have a little flock at home. This passage will help you minister to them effectively. You may meet with friends at breakfast or lunch; you may hold a Bible class in your home. This passage teaches how to be effective in any ministry, how to touch and change people, how to shepherd them.
PROFILE OF AN EFFECTIVE PASTOR
The first six verses reflect one of the primary qualities of a good shepherd--Courage!
Courage is the first essential for helping somebody else, especially when they don't want to be helped! Do you sometimes find it hard to bring up a painful subject that needs to be discussed? Some people are very sensitive and do not like to be reminded of shortcomings and weaknesses. That is when courage is required.
Paul, of course, is referring here to physical courage. He really is understating the case when he says he had "been insulted," and that he had "suffered" in Philippi (2:2). Actually, this was one of the three times he was beaten with thick rods and then thrown into prison, a Roman form of punishment. There, although he and Silas were thrust into stocks and held immobile, they began to sing praises to God.
Furthermore, Paul had suffered insult and mockery by being stripped of his clothes in public by order of the magistrates in Philippi. His Roman citizenship had been ignored. Even when he was freed by an earthquake, he was summarily ordered out of town by the authorities.
Yet he went bravely on to Thessalonica knowing that the same thing could happen there. When a riot broke out in Ephesus, he actually tried to face down a howling mob who were bent on taking his life. He had to be restrained by his friends to keep from sacrificing himself to the mob's fury. One cannot read the life of Paul and fail to see the tremendous courage he demonstrated in his ministry.
Where did he get such courage? Some say that Paul was bold by nature, that he would take on anything or anyone. But certain verses indicate that was not true. When he came into Corinth and began to preach, he did so "in weakness and fear, and with much trembling" (1 Cor. 2:3) The Corinthians intimidated him.
Some of you who want to reach out to your fellow workers feel intimidated at times by the pagan atmosphere of your workplace. Paul felt that very strongly. He had "conflicts on the outside, fears within" (2 Cor. 7:5). No, Paul was not naturally courageous. He was like most of us. The few times in my life that I have shown courage were simply the grace of God at work.
PAUL'S PLATFORM FOR MINISTRY
In these next verses, Paul declares very clearly, both negatively and positively, what lay behind his courage.
1. Paul did not come preaching some private revelation; he did not preach out of "error or impure motives" (v. 3). Today we are confronted with a parade of gurus, prophets, seers, avatars, and others, peddling their peculiar forms of doctrine. The Hare Krishnas confront you in airports; the Moonies, under the leadership of Sun Myung Moon, who claims to be the Messiah, boldly proclaim their doctrine across the country and around the world. On the surface they appear to be bold and courageous. They seem to be driven by conviction-but it is wrong conviction. Paul's message was the truth of God, confirmed by the prophets and by Jesus Christ Himself.
2. Paul did not preach an easy gospel, nor did he preach out of impure motives (v. 3). Some, like Jim Jones, attract great crowds of followers by encouraging them to indulge themselves, to throw over all moral restraints and do whatever they wish. The Bhagwan commune in Oregon participated in sexual orgies and people flocked there, attracted by that kind of degenerate teaching. But this was never part of the apostle's doctrine.
3. Paul did not use guile nor flattery to win converts (v. 5). I appreciate his words along that line, when so many teachers today are appealing to our egos, to the macho instinct in us. They seem to be bold and uncompromising in their approach, but they manifest every indication of sheer ego and disguise it by appearing to be simple teachers of the Word. What they are teaching has a degree of truth to it, but it is mixed with a great deal of error. Tragically, many succumb to that kind of appeal.
4. Paul did not promise prosperity in exchange for discipleship. Some entice followers with the offer of a formula for success and wealth. This was not Paul's method. "Nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed" (v. 5). What an apt description of much we hear today!
Paul would have nothing to do with this type of appeal. As we will see, he refused even to accept financial support from the Thessalonians, earning his own way as a tentmaker. He concentrated on giving them what they desperately needed--the message of the gospel--and he supported himself until they had received it.
5. Finally, Paul did not come to seek praise or status in the eyes of man (v. 6). He could have played upon his position as an authorized spokesman of Jesus, but he did not want anything for himself. He did not slant his message, slurring over some of the unpleasant aspects of the truth, to appeal to the popular mind. He was honest and faithful, and ministered to them truthfully, regardless of whether he received any praise, glory, or thanks. None of these motives lay behind his preaching--not error, uncleanness, guile, flattery, greed, or ambition.
TO PLEASE GOD ALONE
What did motivate Paul, then? What produced his kind of courage? We learn the answer in verse 4: "We speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts."
First, he is intensely grateful for the sheer honor of proclaiming the gospel, the good news about God. Four times in these verses (in vv. 2, 4, 8, and 9) he mentions the gospel of God. He gloried in the fact that God had called him to deliver a message that people needed so desperately.
Why do people suffer heartbreak, loneliness, misery, and agony of spirit day in and day out throughout their lives? It is because they do not know the truth about God. They do not know the delivering power of Jesus Christ. They do not know the inner warmth, strength, and encouragement that can come from Christ living in them. God committed that message to Paul, and He also commits it to us so that we might share it with others. What an honor that is! In all my years of preaching nothing has been more encouraging to me than to remind myself that I have already been given the greatest honor that can ever be given to a human being: to proclaim what Paul calls "the unsearchable riches of Christ." Could there be anything greater than that? That is how Paul felt, and it continually motivated him.
More than that, Paul was energized by a desire to please God. Now the only reason anyone has a desire to please God is because he has learned to love Him. You never truly try to please God if you do not love God. You may try to please Him to get something for yourself, but if the impelling force within you is to please Him, it is because you have learned that God already loves you. That is why we sing so many hymns that speak about the love of God for us. Every Christian ought to recall regularly that fantastic deed when
On Christ almighty vengeance fell,
That would have sunk a world to hell.
He bore it for a chosen race,
And thus became our hiding place.
That is what drives us to want to please God.
Certainly love was always Jesus' motive for performance. He said so Himself: "I do always those things which please my Father." He did not live and act as He did because He wanted something from God--all the treasures of heaven could have been His at any moment--but because He loved the Father and wanted to please Him.
Bold, blustery Peter had a powerful experience with the Lord after the resurrection when he met Him by the Sea of Galilee. Three times Jesus asked him the searching question: "Peter, do you love me?" Finally, all Peter could say was, "Lord, you know that I love you" (John 21:15-17).
Love brought Peter back from the moment of his disobedience and weakness. He knew that he loved Jesus, because Jesus had first loved him. Love is truly the wellspring of courage. Do not try to summon courage from within yourself. Think about the love of God, the honor of walking with Him, and speaking the truth to others. Soon you will find yourself driven--or compelled, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:14--by "Christ's love." That is the secret of his courageous activity.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
In addition to courage, there are other qualities necessary in one who shepherds people. Paul's words reflect his own shepherd heart.
Gentle Nurturer
The apostle uses a beautiful metaphor in his next words when he describes himself as a mother "caring for her little children" (1 Thess. 2:7). There is a time for tough love, of course, but even then the sensitive shepherd finds ways to administer it gently. This love deeply desires to bless others and expresses concern tenderly.
When I was a young Christian, I came under the ministry of Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators. A strong personality, Dawson could be demanding. He was self-disciplined to an enormous degree, and he expected self-discipline of those who worked with him. But when I met alone with Dawson, he was always gentle. He spoke directly to me and seemed aware of my need and my capacity. I often thought of him as being like the apostle Paul. Paul could be stern and sharp, but when he was with someone alone, he was gentle. Gentleness is a mark of a true shepherd.
"Being affectionately desirous of you" (v. 8 RSV) is an unusual phrase, not often found in Scripture. Literally it means "a yearning, a longing for you." I sometimes feel this myself, especially when I am talking with a young person. I feel my heart longing to help them, to bless them, to teach them, to lead them, to fulfill them. That is how parents feel about their children. There is a yearning after them, an affectionate desire to see them blossom and grow in the right direction.
Diligent Laborer
A shepherd's life is not an easy life. "You remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone" (v. 9). Paul knew the meaning of hard work. Every Jewish boy had to learn a trade, and Paul's trade was tent making. Rather than take offerings from his new converts, he worked long hours into the night to earn his own living. Perhaps as they listened to him teaching and instructing them during the daytime, the Thessalonians noticed that Paul's hands were not the cultured, soft hands of a rich man who had never done manual labor. They were, rather, the calloused hands of one who worked hard at his trade.
My wife thinks her hands are ugly because they are not as smooth and soft as they once were. But to me her hands are beautiful because they represent self-sacrificing labor. Long hours doing dishes and mopping floors may take their toll, but work-worn hands reflect a loving heart.
Faithful Servant
Faithfulness is probably the most important mark of a good shepherd. The modern term integrity accurately expresses this. Paul was not boasting, only reporting fact when he claimed to be "holy, righteous, and blameless" (v. 10).
Holiness means "separate, intended for a single purpose." In this sense, "single-minded" would be a good translation. The Old Testament speaks of the beauty of holiness, of someone who knows to whom he belongs and is satisfied. Many think Paul was an egotist, a boaster who claimed things he had no right to claim. But whenever he spoke of his own holiness, Paul made clear that he was not responsible for it. It was the grace of God at work in him.
Also Paul was righteous before others. He behaved himself, resisting activities that could be misconstrued or would tend to mislead. In Corinthians he wrote that if his drinking wine or eating meat offended, he would touch neither again. He was upright in his public behavior.
Finally, Paul was blameless in his own eyes. Do not misunderstand. Paul was not claiming sinlessness. What he meant was that he was honest. He had dealt with all his sin. Aware of it, he had not engaged in a cover-up, but had confessed it and received the forgiveness of God.
Recently a group of Southern California pastors met in small groups to discuss and share with one another how we keep ourselves vital and spiritually alive. One of the pastors I met with particularly intrigued me. Only thirty-five years old, this man ministers to more than ten thousand people every Sunday morning. I was interested in what he had to say about maintaining his spiritual vitality. Every morning he sits at his desk and writes across the top of a sheet of paper the letters A-C-T-S. The A stands for adoration; C, confession; T, thanksgiving; and S, supplication.
Under the letter A, he writes down all he can think of about the majesty, greatness, and glory of God. He does what Jesus teaches us to do in the Lord's Prayer--to turn our thoughts to God first: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" (Matt. 6:9). Then he contemplates the majesty of God, the greatness of His being, the love of His heart, the mercy He has manifested toward him, and the young man lists all those qualities. That is what the Psalmist did: "Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." (Ps. 103:2).
Next he turns to confession, under C. "I write down the sins that I am aware of committing yesterday," he said. "If it is Monday morning, and in my preaching Sunday I exaggerated in an. illustration--I said it was a nine-car pile-up when it was only a six-car pile-up--I do not write that I exaggerated, but that I lied to the people. If I inadvertently kept some change that was given to me by mistake, I do not write down that I kept some money yesterday. I want to be hard on myself. I want to put it down in the worst possible way so I will face in myself these tendencies. I write, 'I stole some money.'
"Next," he said, "1 turn to thanksgiving, under T, and I begin to give thanks that I am forgiven for these sins. One by one I cross them out and write, 'forgiven, forgiven.' Then under supplication, S, I pray and ask God for the strength not to do it again, but to be honest, careful, and thoughtful."
No wonder that young man is being greatly used of God. My heart was delighted that such a young preacher would have such integrity. That is what we see here in Paul--thorough, ruthless honesty.
From that base of a faithful personal life, the apostle does three things for the Thessalonians. He exhorts them, he encourages them, and he challenges them.
Exhortation usually takes the form of a rebuke. As I look back on the days when my children were growing up, I recall times when I had to sit down with them and say, "You are headed for trouble. If you go down the path you are traveling now, you are going to hurt yourself and your family. You are going to destroy things of value in your life." A father has to do that So does a pastor at times. And so will you if you want to minister to someone's needs.
But along with exhortation come encouragement and challenge. I have to confess, as I look back on my relationships with my children, there was not enough of that. Encouragement says, "Y ou are doing better. I can see changes. You are going to make it. I am with you. Keep on." Encouragement is pointing out the positive: "You are meant for better things. You do not have to live like this. There are great possibilities before you. God is leading you and calling you and urging you to lay hold of those." That is what Paul does here, pointing out that it is God who calls us into His kingdom and glory
These are surely the "times that trey men's souls." But these are also times of great possibilities. What a challenge to live today as Paul lived and ministered in his day! As I review his record and see his courage, his loving, gentle spirit, and his faithfulness, I have to pray, "Lord, make me a blessing in my own time."
IN THE MIDST OF flux and change, one thing remains absolutely unchangeable--the Word of the living God. The message of the Bible never alters. It is always up-to-date, speaking to the issues of every age. The Bible is like a solid rock in the midst of a desert of shifting sand. It is the most precious object on the earth today. Abraham Lincoln called it "God's best gift to man." Daniel Webster said, "If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prosperingBut if we or our posterity neglect it and its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Those are prophetic words for these times.
Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians contains a profound statement of truth about God's Word: "That you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe" (2:13).
In parallel with other passages, this verse declares that the Word of God is indeed a most remarkable instrument. No other verse in the Bible states so clearly and obviously that the Word of God comes to us through ordinary human beings. God's Word became flesh, became a man, to communicate with us in terms we can understand. Throughout history, God has always communicated through human beings who look, talk, and behave just like we do.
The Gospels report only three occasions on which God spoke directly to people, astounding those who heard and paralyzing them with fear. When Jesus was baptized, God spoke aloud. When our Lord was on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, God spoke to them directly. Again, during that fatal last week in Jerusalem when Jesus announced that He was about to die, the Father spoke from the heavens.
But more often He has used human instruments.
Jeremiah said that the Word of God came to him like a "burning in his bones." He was compelled to utter the message; he could not keep quiet about it.
Elijah declared that the Word of God came to him like "a still small voice," though it probably was not a voice at all but a quiet realization that God was speaking within.
Daniel said that God spoke to him in "visions and dreams in the night," and he went on to interpret those strange and marvelous visions. Moses said that when God addressed him, it was "face-to-face, like a man speaks with his friends"--a communication so clear that it seemed as if God were speaking directly to him. As a result, Moses wrote the first five books of our Bible.
The apostle Peter proclaimed that "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).
It was this kind of experience that confronted the Thessalonian Christians. Paul stood up and began to speak, and as he spoke his listeners were conscious that what they were hearing was far more than the words of a mere man. They were hearing the Word of God, and they received it as such.
The greatest of all revelations, of course, was that moment when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. A great star hung over the sleeping village, dropping its silver glory upon the waiting earth. The shepherds heard the voice of angels. Troubled and puzzled, they came to a dark cave in the hillside and found a mother and her child. John writes that it was then "the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory" (1:14). The book of Hebrews declares this event to be the final and ultimate revelation of God to man: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (1:1-2). Nothing can supersede that ultimate revelation.
This raises a problem, of course, because if the Word of God comes through ordinary people, it can easily be imitated. False prophets can claim that their phony, fraudulent expressions are also the Word of God.
History catalogues a long parade of false prophets, charlatans, and kooks, all of whom have claimed to speak a message from God. The Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, insisted that an angel named Moroni appeared to him. Later, he said he was given special spectacles to enable him to read a language written on golden tablets that he would find buried in a hillside. Many people believe him, even though the book he wrote is vastly different from the Bible in its teachings. In our own day, thousands of people claim that God speaks directly to them and gives them a so-called "word of knowledge" about what is going on in someone else's life. This phenomenon has even been displayed on television.
GOD'S WORD IS ABSOLUTELY ACCURATE
How can we tell when God has really spoken and when we are hearing from a false prophet? The Scripture does not leave us without help in discerning the true from the false.
First, we must remember that God's actions in the world always agree with His words. The Bible states that God is its author, and that He is also the Maker of the physical universe and all the forces that are at work. He is the Controller, the King, the Lord over all of history and the affairs of men. If this is true, then we can expect experience to confirm what the Word says. History testifies to the fact that God never acts contrary to His Word. Thus, if someone promises something that the Word of God does not promise, we can know immediately that we have heard false teaching.
Furthermore, when a prophet, man or woman, predicts that a certain future event will occur and it does not happen, the Bible declares that person to be a false prophet; the prophecy is to be disregarded, since it is not the Word of God. Yet the Bible makes the amazing claim that every one of its predictions is 100 percent accurate. Measured by that standard, some of the secular forecasts we hear today are rather ridiculous.
Every year the National Enquirer publishes the predictions of contemporary psychics for the coming year. I buy and keep that edition of the paper just to see how many of them are borne out. You may be interested to know that included among those made in January for the year 1987 were the following: One psychic predicted that the Russian leader Gorbachev would be assassinated on May 1 during a celebration of the Russian Revolution. Another claimed that Khadaffi, the Libyan dictator, would be shot by one of his own guards and left paralyzed. Still another forecast that Michael Jackson would leave his musical career to become a TV evangelist. Those false predictions mark the prophets who made them as phonies who are not to be trusted. Many people have followed Jeanne Dixon, but her batting average is only about 40 percent; the same measure of accuracy could be attained with good guesses.
One of the clear marks of the Word of God is that it is absolutely
accurate. It accords with reality. Recently a young man said to
me, "I recommitted my life to Christ this year, because I
have come to see that the Bible is true. This is the way God runs
His world. Anything less is not to be trusted."
GOD'S WORD PRODUCES CHANGE
The apostle Paul suggests another way to test reality, found in the phrase at the end of verse 13: "the word of God, which is at work in you who believe." Merely to memorize Bible verses or even to mentally accept the truth found in them does not change anyone. It is only as people begin to act on the Word and to obey it that they are radically and permanently changed. The Word will then make them into different people. The Bible itself makes that claim: "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Heb. 4:12).
God, through His Word, analyzes our motives, enables us to confess to wrong thinking, then corrects that thinking. "All Scripture is inspired by God [breathed out by God] and is profitable [useful] for teaching [instructing you about things you could never know otherwise], for reproof [telling you what has gone wrong in your life], for correction [helping you make necessary changes], and for training in righteousness [the practical guidelines to truth: how to react to situations, how to handle your anger, your sex drive, etc.]" (2 Tim. 3:16 RSV).
Most of us are familiar with the story of the mutiny on the Bounty. In the nineteenth century, crew members of the HMS Bounty took over the ship, set their captain adrift in a lifeboat, and ended up at last on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. But that is only part of the story. What happened to the mutineers after they landed is something else altogether. These rough, tough, godless sailors, together with the wives they had taken with them from the island of Tahiti, spent their days on Pitcairn drinking, gambling, carousing, and fighting among themselves. Soon the fighting led to battle. One by one they killed each other off until the colony was reduced to a handful of people. Among them was a man named Alexander Smith. Rummaging through his trunk one day, Smith found a Bible that his mother had put there. He began to read it, and his life was changed. As he read to the survivors a dramatic change began taking place in their lives as well, and when that island was discovered by outsiders some years later, the inhabitants had become a model community. There was no jail because there was no crime. The citizens loved God and each other. The Book had totally changed their lives and their society.
GOD'S WORD AROUSES OPPOSITION
The apostle says that this wonderful life-changing Word has another remarkable power-the power to arouse violent opposition: "You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved" (2:14-15).
Throughout history, every generation of Christians has known persecution and martyrdom. Christians have been bound in animal skins and left to die in the hot sun, thrown into lions' dens, burned alive, and exiled. Why such violent opposition to this remarkable Word with its power to bless and transform? There are three major reasons.
First, it is clear from the Scriptures that the gospel ignores all human achievement. God is totally unimpressed with degrees, awards, position, tenure, wealth, or any other trappings of power. Even religious achievements, a good set of moral values, and a strong belief system are not sufficient to earn spiritual merit. All must come to God in the same simple way: by admitting they cannot help themselves and by accepting salvation as a gift from the hand of God through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself declared, "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). You may believe in God, but you will never know Him as Father unless you come through Jesus. As the old hymn puts it, "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling."
Other religions find this claim to be offensive. Why I do not know, because much of life is lived out on that practical level. We cannot make up our own rules about many things. The laws of electricity must be carefully observed before we dare to tinker with electrical current. Telephone numbers must be dialed in the correct sequence before a connection is made with the party we are calling. We do not have the freedom to arrange the numbers to our own liking; we must get them just right.
God insists that there is only one way to be reconciled with Him, and that is through Jesus Christ. That makes a lot of people very angry. But whether Buddhists or Muslims, Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians, religious performance does nothing to impress God. Neither will it change us. The only thing that can change us is the Word of God, received by faith.
The second reason the gospel arouses violent opposition is that it exposes human pride. There is a terrible evil in all of us that we try to hide. I find it in myself. For example, I am stubborn at times, and I excuse myself on the grounds that people need to be stubborn occasionally. Besides, I am half Scot and the Scots are known for stubbornness. But that is nothing but pride-an independent spirit that says, "I don't need any help. I can make it on my own." We are all guilty of this in varying degrees, but we keep it under control for fear of recrimination or out of a desire not to be known as prideful or stubborn. If the restraints are removed, however, that pride will suddenly break out in the most terrible form of viciousness and vindictiveness.
What a vivid demonstration we had of this in the destruction of PSA Flight 1771 in California, between Los Angeles and San Jose. In this instance, an individual whose heart was seething with hatred for another man, whom he imagined had wronged him, took a gun and murdered the man. In the process he also killed the pilots of the plane, causing the plane to crash, and forty-two other passengers perished in the crash.
That is how terrible human pride can be. But the gospel exposes that sin in us and shows us how hideous it is in the eyes of God. The book of Proverbs tells us that there are seven things God hates, and number one on the list is "a proud look"--a self-sufficient spirit, an independent trust in one's own powers.
Perhaps an old hymn best expresses how we must approach God:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
"Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink, and live."
I came to Jesus and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my heart revived,
And now I live in Him.
The key is the phrase "stoop down." You cannot receive living water unless you are willing to stoop down, to humble yourself and admit you do not have it yourself. There is no other hope, no other way. You must admit you cannot save yourself.
A third reason the gospel arouses opposition is because it forgives blatant sinners--those who richly deserve death and hell in the eyes of the world. The Pharisees were very offended because Jesus received adulterers, prostitutes, swindlers, and outcasts, while they themselves, respectable moral people, were excluded. That is why they finally killed Jesus.
Many oppose the gospel because it makes appeal to the disreputable. But that is its glory: it can change anyone who will receive it in humility and contrition.
THE CUP OF WRATH
God sometimes takes severe measures to awaken people to their situation before "[his] wrath comes upon them at last!" (v. 16 RSV).
Paul knew what was coming. He makes reference to the dark cloud of national disaster that was hanging over Israel at this time. As he wrote this letter the Roman armies were already being hassled by Jewish rebellion. Before long the soldiers would lay siege to Jerusalem and finally break down its walls, destroy the temple, take the Jews captive, and lead them out into dispersion among the nations of the earth. God had patiently waited while His stubborn people heaped "up to the limit their sins" (2:16).
God is not an angry, vindictive Being who hurls thunderbolts of judgment at the slightest provocation. No, He gives us a chance to wake up and see what is happening to us; He patiently, mercifully waits for us to change. But if we do not, there comes a time when He forces us to live with the consequences as a last-ditch measure to open our eyes to reality.
That is happening in our world today. In response to the AIDS crisis, we are hearing much about so-called "safe sex." People are being told that it is possible, by using certain safeguards, to have what is called "safe sex" and avoid pregnancy or disease. But according to the Scripture, there can be no such thing as "safe sex" outside of marriage. Though pregnancy and disease may be prevented by taking certain measures, what cannot be evaded is the moral disaster brought on by sexual promiscuity. "For because of such things," the apostle says, "God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient" (Eph. 5:6). It cannot be avoided; there is no way of escape. There is no way to "have it all" and yet avoid that final reckoning of God's judgment. There is no way, ultimately, to escape the effects of individual promiscuous living upon society. Instead of finding liberty and freedom, as is promised, what we have instead is child abuse, rape, violence, serial murders, drug abuse, and rocketing teenage suicide. These are sobering words, reminding us that we live in perilous times. Those of us who know the Lord Jesus must not allow ourselves to become caught up in the shallow expressions of the world. Let us continually give grateful thanks for the gift of Jesus Christ our Lord. And let us continually spread the good news: To you who cannot save yourselves, to you who are already perishing because of the forces at work in your life over which you ha ve no control, "to you is born this daya Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11 RSV).
REAL FATHER LOVE is in short supply in our world today. What we see is a frightening increase of child abuse, of fathers actually attacking their own children. Some time ago I read the sad story of a four-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his stepfather because the boy had wet his pants. When the small body was dug up, a tiny cross was found clutched in his hand.
No aspect of Christian faith warms my heart more than knowing that God is my Father. Since I lost my own father when I was only ten years old, it has been a tremendous encouragement to know that the church is, after all, a family, and that God is our great Father and tenderly cares for us. On one occasion when Jesus was informed that His mother and brothers were waiting for Him, He said of the disciples He was teaching, "These are my mother and father and brother," thereby indicating that a spiritual tie is as rich and as deep as a physical tie.
A FATHER'S CONCERN
First Thessalonians 2:17 is a great testimony to a father's love. Here the apostle, as their spiritual father, pours out his concern for the new Christians he has left in Thessalonica. "But brothers, when we were torn away from youout of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to youagain and again" (2:17).
How can anyone reading these words believe that Paul was stern and cold? His letter overflows with the warmth of his heart and the depth of his love for his children in the faith. At the time, Paul was ministering alone in the city of Corinth, no doubt feeling lonely and distant from those he loved so dearly. Forgetting the danger that had driven him from Thessalonica and the cruelty he had experienced there, he longed to be with those friends again. Still, when he tried to see them, "Satan stopped" him.
Satanic Hindrance
Have you ever experienced a frustrating time in your own life when again and again you tried to do something you knew was right and found it hard going? Perhaps the opposition came from your own family or even from members of the family of God, the church. That is satanic hindrance: the psychological manipulation Satan uses to plant obstacles in your path. On a visit to Northern Ireland, my wife and I spent some time in a wonderful church where a young pastor and his wife were beginning to teach Body Life and Spiritual Warfare. Once theirs had been a lifeless church; now it was thriving, filled with young people and young couples. But while we were visiting, we learned that the best friend of the pastor and his wife had suddenly turned against them and had begun to spread lies about them throughout the congregation, upsetting the whole church. It was a terrible time of pain and suffering for them. We have since learned that God has cleared it all up and the pastor has been vindicated. But what caused such a state of confusion in the first place? It was satanic opposition, the Devil using his clever ability to work through people to stir things up.
The Bible is the only book that explains the persistence and malevolence of evil. Why do we struggle so in this life? What are we up against? Jesus tells us that it is the Devil. "He is a liar and a murderer." He deceives and he kills. The satanic mind is responsible for all the murderous violence, the widespread deceit, and the false philosophies that confront us today. Paul himself tells us, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12). No other book reveals this truth: that it is not people who are the problem, but the spiritual forces of evil that prevail in the world.
Paul suggests in his writings that there are three things we need to know about this reality. First, and perhaps most important, satanic opposition is permitted by God. In the book of Job we learn that Satan had to ask God for permission to afflict Job's body. Job lost everything--his family, his home, and even his health. But God allowed it to happen. The end of the book reveals what was accomplished by that suffering, but for the moment it was all hidden from Job's eyes. So, too, the purpose of suffering and opposition is often hidden from our eyes. But the Bible reveals that there is a malevolent power of evil at work. There are demonic beings, master manipulators, that are permitted to lead people about, putting thoughts in their minds and planting obstacles in the path of the gospel.
Satanic opposition is permitted for this reason--to be used by God. Opposition is an effective method of training. Affliction, suffering, pain, and heartache are often God's way of getting our attention. You may have paid little attention to Him until you suffered a time of great distress; then you began to hear what He was saying to you. God uses opposition not only to train us, but to give us an opportunity to overcome trouble, to rise above it.
Satanic opposition underscores the value of believers. "For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy" (1 Thess. 2:19). Whatever else those words may mean, they are saying that Paul considered the spiritual maturing of these believers in Thessalonica and other places his most important work. He was saying, "I have invested my life in you and your growth into mature, whole people. This is the most important thing in the world. When the Lord Jesus comes, I will glow with pride that you have achieved the changes in your life that I so longed to see brought about."
Toward Christian Maturity
Every morning my wife and I read a fine devotional book which has been collected from the writings of Dr. J. I. Packer. Recently we read a section where he quoted what a psychologist had said about the six marks of maturity--what it means to be grown up, to be whole, balanced, sane, and able to cope with life.
The first mark of maturity is the ability to deal constructively with reality, to face facts, to resist covering, or calling reality something else, to deal with it as it is. Mature people do not kid themselves.
The second mark is the ability to adapt quickly to change. We all experience change, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, relational, or vocational. Immature people resist change; it makes them nervous. But the mark of maturity is to adapt to change because change is inevitable.
The third mark is freedom from the symptoms of tension and anxiety. The worried look, the frown, the ulcers, the palpitations of the heart-all come from anxiety and worry and lack of trust. Maturing means you have begun to see that God is in control of this world. He is working out purposes that you do not always understand, but accept. He will take you through the deep water, not drown you in it. Maturity means you are learning to trust.
Fourth, maturity is being more satisfied with giving than receiving. When you find greater joy in the thoughtful planning of gifts and surprises for others, anticipating their happiness rather than your own, it is a sign you are growing up. You are discovering the true values of life.
The fifth mark is the ability to relate to others with consistency, helpfulness, and mutual satisfaction. Maturity is learning to get along with other people, to be a help not a hindrance, to contribute to the solution and not always be a part of the problem.
Finally, maturity is the ability to sublimate and redirect
anger toward constructive ends. Maturity is the ability to
use the adrenaline created by anger in a positive way, rather
than to lose your temper and add to the problem. That is what
the apostle longed for in these believers in Thessalonica.
A FATHER'S COMMITMENT
As this passage makes clear, Paul's concern for the Thessalonian Christians also took the form of a deep commitment to them.
Twice the apostle refers to a time while he was in Athens when he "could stand it no longer" (3:1). That does not mean that he was anxious and fearful. Rather, he had not heard from his friends for so long that he felt he must take some action to find out what was going on in Thessalonica. To his own personal deprivation he decided to send Timothy to them while he remained alone in Athens and then went on to Corinth.
In 1960 I spent the summer in the Orient. In company with Dr. Dick Hillis I was scheduled to speak to six hundred Chinese pastors on the island of Taiwan. This was a difficult assignment since my messages were to be interpreted into two different languages, Mandarin and Taiwanese. It is hard enough speaking through one "interrupter," but with two, by the time one sentence has been interpreted twice you have forgotten what you just said. But I was comforted by the fact that Dick Hillis, a veteran missionary, would be with me. The day before I was due to speak, however, Dick received a telegram saying that his mother was ill and he had to return home to California. I have never forgotten the depression and loneliness that came over me.
I am sure that is how Paul must have felt as he was left alone in Corinth, that cultured, decadent center of Roman life. He had to face the city by himself, but he was willing to do it so that these Thessalonian believers could grow in their faith.
In sending Timothy to them, Paul had three things in mind, he tells us. First, "to establish you in your faith" (v. 2 RSV); that is, to teach them the great realities their faith rested upon--the coming of Jesus, His life and ministry, His death upon the cross, His resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and thus the availability of a new resource in God that the world could not know anything about. The Thessalonians needed to be established in that truth, and that was Timothy's mission.
Second, Paul hoped that Timothy would "exhort" them to steadiness, so "that no one be moved by these afflictions" (v. 3 RSV). They needed to know that panic was not the appropriate response to problems, and that suffering and affliction could be overcome. These believers had a new source of strength, so there was no need to fear. They could now lean on God. He would take them through everything and use it for their benefit.
Paul had already laid the foundation for this truth when he was with the Thessalonians. He had warned them "beforehand" (v. 4 RSV) that the human race was contaminated with a terrible pollution that the Bible calls sin.
The great plague of our day is AIDS, an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I think that sin, too, is an acronym. It stands for Self-Inflicted Neurosis. Sin is a problem that arises from within. Jesus said, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matt. 15:19 KJV). Sin is an internal contaminant that we inherit at birth. The bad news is that "the wages of sin is death"--pain, suffering, anguish, alienation. But with it always comes the good news: "The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).
We cannot evade the painful results of our sinful choices, but we can find love, joy, and peace even while working through them.
This is the good news! This is what Paul had taught the Thessalonians, and Timothy was sent to remind them of this and to encourage them to remain steadfast in the face of adversity and affliction.
The third reason Paul sent Timothy was that he himself needed to know what was going on. When Timothy returned with such a good report, the apostle was filled with joy. 'We were encouraged about you because of your faithFor now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?" (vv. 7-9).
To Paul's great relief, his work had not been in vain. It stood solid and sure. The faith of his followers was intact; their love was evident; and best of all, their trust in God was secure. They held cherished memories of the apostle and longed to see him. He was filled with thankfulness and joy at this good news--always the effect upon a father's heart when he receives good reports of his children in the faith. John, too, wrote of this in his third letter: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth" (v. 4).
I can testify to that fact. My wife and I have been observing a dear young man who is going through the possible disintegration of his marriage. It is a painful time for him. His home is broken, his children have been taken away, but that very suffering has brought him to an awareness of his own contribution to the problem. He is seeing himself in a new light and is becoming aware of his mistakes. Though our hearts ache for him, we are also rejoicing because we see that he is discovering a new plateau of faith. In the midst of his agony he is experiencing joy. He has even expressed gratitude that this tragedy has happened, since it has brought him to his senses and into a new relationship with God. Paul must have felt much the same when Timothy reported on the trials and testings of the Thessalonians.
HOW TO PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN
Do you ever wonder how to pray when you, your family, or your friends are going through deep struggles and sorrow? Romans 8:26 reminds us that at times we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit helps us! God has promised such help. Here we have a good example of how the Spirit helped the apostle to pray for exactly what the Thessalonian Christians needed.
Paul prayed "earnestly" (v. 10). He did not get down beside the bed at night and glibly say, "Bless my friends in Thessalonica." Many people pray like the man who said, "Bless me and my wife, our son John and his wife; us four and no more." But Paul considered seriously what these people were going through. He set the problem before God, and reminded Him of His promises. He took time to meditate on their needs.
Paul prayed frequently--"night and day" (v. 10). Morning and evening, while he was working on his tents, while he was walking the streets of the city, his prayers flowed out of a heart of concern and love. The believers in Thessalonica were seldom out of his thoughts, and whenever he thought of them, he prayed.
Finally, Paul prayed specifically (vv. 10-13). He had some definite prayer requests--five of them, in fact.
1. He longed to see them "face to face" (RSV). He desired to get back to Thessalonica once more to have the joy of seeing his dear friends.
2. He wanted to minister further to them "that we maysupply what is lacking in your faith." The Thessalonians needed to know a great deal more about the Christian view of the world and of life. When we understand how to look at the events of life from the perspective of the Word of God, we are being realistic. All the confusion and illusion disappear and we can begin to see things the way they really are.
3. He prayed to overcome satanic hindrance: "Our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you." Are you finding it difficult to get where you want to go? Paul shows us how to pray: that God will open a way, either physically or spiritually, to the intended goal. Jesus said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matt. 7:7). That is how Paul prayed. He knocked on this closed door, asking that he might get back to Thessalonica. Later accounts reveal that God answered that prayer and he did return to these believers.
4. He prayed that their love might increase. According to the New Testament, this is the mark of a successful church.
I meet frequently with pastors from all over the country, and they often talk about success in the ministry. But their measure of success is often the number of church members or the size and design of the church building. There are some famous church buildings in this country that are advertised all over the land, and people travel far just to see them. But in the New Testament, success is gauged by how much people learn to love each other, forgive one another, listen to one another, support and pray for one another, and reach out to those in need around them. That is what Paul prayed for the Thessalonians.
5. He prayed that they might continue to live righteously until the Lord comes: "May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones" (v. 13). The coming of Jesus is no further away for you and me than it was for the believers in Thessalonica, since it is no further away than the end of your life or mine. He comes for us, if we know Him when we die. Paul therefore prayed that the rest of their lives might be marked by "unblamable" living.
Unblamable does not mean sinless, as we have already seen; unblamable means dealing with what is wrong, not covering it up or pretending it is not there. The Thessalonian Christians dealt with sin in their hearts with the spiritual resources provided by God, and thus were enabled to turn from evil and walk closer and closer with the Father.
Paul knew that Jesus Christ would someday enter into this world of time again. The Scripture anticipates it. We are perhaps nearing the time of His return right now. It could occur before the end of this century. Though His second coming is no further away than our own personal death, it may be even sooner than that. Paul prayed that all believers would live in the expectation that the Lord's coming would find them living the way they ought to live.
I have observed that most Christians pray that God will prevent certain things from happening, whether it be injury, death, suffering, or heartache. Unfortunately, there are people who teach that we have a right to be spared all trouble. But the New Testament shows us that afflictions are needed in our lives. God does sometimes grant our requests and remove problems--and it is not wrong to pray in this way if we also understand that He has perfect freedom to say no; but He prefers that we pray, not for negative things to be prevented, but that they be used to grow us up into Christ.
In the week before Jesus was crucified, He said to Peter, His most troublesome and outspoken apostle (the one who suffered most from hoof-in-mouth disease), "Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you" (Luke 22:31-32). He did not pray, "Do not let it happen. Stop Satan from getting hold of Peter." Rather, what He said was, "I pray that Peter's faith will not fail." Those words were uttered before the tragic night when Peter denied his Lord. That denial was Satan sifting him. But Jesus had prayed, "Father, though Peter must go through anguish and heartache, I pray that when it happens, his faith will hold firm, that You will take him through, and use it for good in his life."
All of our prayers ought to reflect this desire. Anything can happen in our lives--heartache, tragedy, joy, glory. But whatever happens, let us pray that it will deepen our faith, increase our love, open our blinded eyes to truth and reality, and result in spiritual maturity.
IF WE COULD CREATE a drug that would remove pleasure from the act of sex, we could change the whole moral climate of our country. We could reduce crime, bring an end to the scandal of divorce, eliminate teenage pregnancies, reduce the prison population, stop the sale of pornography, and decrease poverty.
But in doing so, we would also lose a special part of God's creation. We would forfeit some of the zest and spontaneity between the sexes, and life would become drab and dreary indeed. Since we obviously cannot make that drastic change, the only thing left for us to do is to learn how to handle our sexuality properly.
When I was a young man, nobody was teaching about sexuality. Back then, you grew up thinking that your body ended at the waist. If the word sex was ever used, especially in church, it was usually whispered. How people can read their Bibles every day and miss some of the great passages that teach openly about this subject, I don't know. But Paul had no such inhibitions in his first letter to the Thessalonian Christians. Along with instruction on the practical matters of learning how to get along with one another, how to handle the death of loved ones, and how to view God's apparent delay in the coming again of Jesus, he provided a treatise on how to handle one's sex drive.
PLEASING GOD
We may think of the ancients as very different from us, but they really were not. Those people who lived in the bustling seaport city of Thessalonica felt the same kind of pressures and drives we do. New Testament Thessalonica was rather like San Francisco--filled with business and commerce and the usual hustle and bustle of a large city, along with culture and beauty and art. But there was also degradation and sin, shame and sordidness. The Thessalonians were driven by the same forces that drive us. In the realism and wisdom of the Scriptures, therefore, the apostle taught them how to handle life in many practical areas.
First, he taught them that they "ought to live and to please God" (4:1 RSV). That is the number one subject in the curriculum of the Holy Spirit. The Christian's business is to live to please God. The word ought, which is made up of an elision of the two English words owe it, reflects that priority. We owe it to God to please Him! Paul tells us why, here and in other passages. "He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again" (2 Cor. 5:15).
The great truth that every Christian must learn, says the apostle, is that "you are not your own. " We no longer belong to ourselves. We cannot let our own desires take priority in life. Rather, we "are bought at a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Jesus died on our behalf, in our place. You deserved that death; I deserved it. But He paid the penalty Himself. Now we belong to Him. He has invaded our being by the Holy Spirit, and the purpose of our lives has been dramatically transformed. We are to live no longer for ourselves but for Him who died for us and was raised again from the dead.
Every appeal to the Christian in the New Testament is made on that basis, and that is why Paul put it first here. The Christian "ought to live and to please God." As someone has well said, "The main thing is to see that the main thing remains the main thing." We ought to remind ourselves every day that our business is not to do what we want done but to please the Lord, who has redeemed us at such fearful cost.
Next, Paul taught the Thessalonians "how to live in order to please God." Notice the word how. It is significant that Paul did not merely teach these early Christians what they ought to do, but how to do it, especially in the area of handling sexuality.
Furthermore, Paul exhorted them to do these things (follow his instructions) "more and more." The Christian life is one of growth. There is progress to be made. A wider realm of application ought to be visible in our lives. All of us were disturbed about some aspect of our lives when we came to Christ. Perhaps it was our sex life. It may have been a deep sense of inferiority, or of shame and anger because we were unable to be what we ought to be. We came to Christ because we needed help. But we do not surrender just that one area of our life to Him; every aspect of our life is to be His to control.
The apostle reminds the Thessalonians of the clear instructions he gave on how to live to please God. Notice these are given "by the authority of the Lord Jesus." In other words, this is not just Paul's advice as a religious leader. These are the words and desires of our Lord--Jesus Himself. "It is God's will," says Paul, "that you should be sanctified."
Unfortunately, the word sanctification leads to confusion for many people.
Some think of it as a kind of religious sheep-dip they are put through: a once-for-all experience of cleansing and commitment. Once they have been dipped, they think everything is fine.
Others see sanctification as an extraction process. God uses a kind of supernatural magnet to extract all sin, and from that moment on they will have no trouble pleasing Him. Some people actually believe they have not sinned for years. Obviously, nobody has told them the truth yet. A little deeper investigation would reveal how wrong they are.
Actually, the word sanctification is almost the same as the word that is translated holiness in this passage; it comes from the same root. But many are confused about holiness, too. Many people think of holiness as "grimness." These kind of "holy" people look like they've been soaked in embalming fluid. They are dour and dull; they frown on anything that is fun or pleasurable. But that is not holiness.
The Old Testament speaks about "the beauty of holiness," the inner attractiveness that is apparent when someone begins to function inwardly as he or she was intended to function. What this says is that God is designing beautiful people! Not merely outwardly beautiful people like those we see on television, but inwardly beautiful people. People who are admirable, trustworthy, strong, loving, and compassionate--people who are whole. In fact, the word wholeness derives from the same root as holiness. And that is His will for us.
Wholeness includes moral purity. "Avoid sexual immorality" (v. 3), says the apostle in the very next sentence. You cannot be a whole person if you indulge in sexual immorality. But words like immorality do not seem to register with many people.
Let us put it plainly: Immorality means no sexual wrongdoing. It means no making out in the backseat of the car; no premarital sex (no fornication); no messing around with someone else's husband or wife (no extramarital sex); no homosexual sex (the Scripture is very clear on this issue in many places); no pornography (no standing in the newsstand at the airport and flipping through Penthouse or Playboy magazines and getting yourself turned on by looking at the pictures; that is sexual fantasy, and it is wrong). To "avoid sexual immorality" means to have none of these things going on in your life.
Why? Because such actions destroy the wholeness that both you and God want. There is nothing more beautiful than a young person who has his or her life in order. I am saddened when I see wonderful young men and women who have been reared in godly homes to reflect moral beauty in their lives gradually begin to let their standards go when they get out into the world. Watch them for a year or two, and you see the hardness in their faces as they begin to lose the beauty of holiness/wholeness God has planned for them.
You may be thinking that moral purity in our day is impossible, or that it is too late for you; you have already messed up your life. The Word does not say we must never do these things; rather, the Word says, "Do them no longer." All of us have messed up in one way or another; we have destroyed the wholeness already. But the glory of the gospel is that in coming to Jesus, through His work on the cross in our behalf and His rising again from the dead, we have been given a new start. The past is wiped out and forgiven. We are restored. "I have espoused you [I have betrothed you] as a chaste virgin unto Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2 KJV), wrote Paul. Even though the Corinthians had already messed up their lives with many sexual sins, Paul assured them that in Christ they were as chaste as virgins.
And even if as a Christian you have fouled up, the Word of God says very clearly that you can be restored. If you acknowledge that you have done wrong and accept God's forgiveness through Christ, you are "a chaste virgin" again in Christ. What glorious good news!
ACHIEVING MORAL PURITY
In his instructions to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul gave two steps toward achieving moral purity.
1. Learn to control your own body. In the Greek text, the word translated body is actually vessel, though it is clear from the context that Paul was talking about our bodies. They are the vessels, the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 6:19). But learning how to handle our bodies properly is not always easy. God gave our bodies to us; we did not design them ourselves. We would probably change a lot of things if it were up to us to recreate or even rearrange our bodies. Included in the gift of our bodies is a remarkable capacity to churn out certain hormones that pour into the bloodstream. These hormones have a profound effect upon the way our bodies function. At puberty, new hormones pour into the bloodstream and we experience sexual changes, along with powerful drives that almost seem to compel us to certain sexual activities. Society tells us that those urges are natural and therefore ought to be satisfied whenever opportunity affords. Worldlings argue that the sexual appetite should be satisfied just like hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or any other natural need. This argument says there is nothing wrong with the fulfilling of sexual desires.
Now they are right in saying that sex is a natural function, but what they are not saying, and what the Scriptures reveal, is that all natural functions need certain degrees of control. Take hunger, for instance. You do not eat anytime you feel like eating. You learn to control your appetite. The same applies to sleep. You do not go to sleep whenever you feel like it.
Control increases the enjoyment of a natural function. For example, you enjoy your food more if you do not eat between meals. When a flooding river is controlled by banks, its intensity is increased.
Many young people are discovering that in these days when moral restraints are removed from sexual practices, the result is a kind of listless flood in which one wades continually with no enjoyment whatsoever. But God has designed sex to be stimulating and arousing. That is why marriage constitutes a kind of channeled control for sex. There is ample provision made for the stream, but the limits increase the intensity and enjoyment. That is what God has in mind as part of the process of producing a whole person. Anything that tears down those boundaries destroys the strength and beauty of wholeness.
So Paul says that we are to learn how to control our bodies in holiness--wholeness--and honor. Control contributes to that sense of wholeness. You are to be in charge of your own body. You are not to be bound to it. You are not to be a slave to it.
THOSE THOU SHALT NOTS!
After Paul states the positive, he also gives the negative: Don't give way to "passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God" (v. 5).
In order to learn control, we must avoid the slavery of lust.
A young man told me once: "I got into messing around sexually right out of high school, and I have been doing it ever since. In fact, I would have to say that I am nothing but a male whore!" He meant that he was a slave to lust. He had allowed his sexuality to rage out of control until it possessed his life and he was no longer a free person. That is what Christians must avoid. Paul taught the Thessalonian believers not to give in to the sexual pressures of their lustful city. They were to restrain themselves and learn how to handle their bodies rightly and thus reflect the beauty, orderliness, and glory of a life that was whole.
Secondly, he said: "no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him" (v. 6). Let me put it plainly: this means no adultery; no haunting the houses of prostitution; no sexual involvement with anyone but your marriage partner; no carrying on affairs with your neighbor's wife or husband. Such behavior wrongs others. It steals their property and destroys their rights. The tenth commandment says, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Ex. 20: 17). That perhaps is what some of the Thessalonians were doing, and their conduct had not only destroyed the wholeness of their own lives, but had also hurt others. In counseling, pastors hear seemingly endless stories of damaged families, of children's lives being ruined by the adulterous affairs of their parents. Enormous misery and heartache follow the passions of adultery and sexual affairs.
Paul says there is a dreadful price to pay for all this. "The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you" (v. 6). God so loves His creation and so longs to see beautiful, whole people emerging from it that He will take drastic action when people violate His will. Silently, His judgment falls. Believer and unbeliever alike cannot escape the painful results of sinful choices. That is the law of inevitable consequences. If we choose to sin, there will be evil results. We cannot avoid them. We can be forgiven, but that does not change the results. Forgiveness restores the broken relationship and gives us strength to walk on in freedom in the future, but it does not change or eliminate the hurt of the past.
Every believer must face that unalterable fact. Throughout the Old Testament God sought to impart to Israel the fact that if they violated His laws, if they refused to hear His Word, ugly and terrible things would happen to them. Listen to these words from Deuteronomy 31 where God is speaking to Israel about their disobedience: "On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and difficulties will come upon them, and on that day they will ask, 'Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is not with us?'" (v. 17). That discipline took the form of famine, war, and disease. And the final judgment would be a breakup of families: "Your sons and your daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand" (Ex. 28:32).
Isn't that what has happened here in the United States, where one-half of all children today live with single parents? Families have been broken and children parceled out to strangers.
The final step, God said, would be "a despairing soul"
(28:65), that awful depression of spirit that makes one want to
commit suicide rather than to go on living. As a faithful father,
Paul solemnly forewarned the Thessalonians that this would happen.
God's standards cannot be violated. He has ways of bringing His
judgments to pass, and nobody can evade them.
LOVE WARNS
The apostle recaps this teaching in two wonderful verses: "For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness [wholeness]. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you" (1 Thess. 4:7-8).
These solemn words of warning are set against the background of God's yearning for a whole person. God has called us to wholeness. That is what He can create if we obey what He says. If we disregard His instructions, says Paul, we are not only turning our backs on what He has said, but on God Himself and His supply of power to enable us to carry out His instructions.
In the campaign against drug abuse we are being told that what we need to teach children is to "just say no." But those who are already addicted to drugs tell us that is difficult to do. When the terrible passion for a drug is throbbing through every vessel of the body, it is very hard to "just say no." The will is not strong enough, and they give in again and again. Now God knows that. He knows how we function. That is why He has provided a new resource for believers, the Holy Spirit. Remember the wonderful promise of Ephesians 3:20: "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us."
If we give the excuse that we cannot do what God commands, we deny that we have been provided with an extra resource. We may need to exercise our will to "just say no," but then we must immediately cast ourselves upon the Spirit of God within us--the Lord Jesus made available by the Spirit. Resting upon that presence, we must turn and walk away. We can do it. We have the power. Millions can testify that what they could not do by their own will they were able to do by relying on the power of God.
We live in an immoral world. Young people are under pressure I never faced as a young man. But God has told us we can live a holy life. The following words of a great hymn eloquently express the rallying call we need to hear today:
Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
To serve the King of kings.
Lift high the cross of Christ!
Tread where His feet have trod;
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up, O men of God!
God wants a community of beautiful people whose lives are under control and maintained by the Holy Spirit. Such a people will constitute an island of refuge and resource for the drifting multitudes who are still enslaved by their own passions and desires.
WE NEVER KNOW what circumstances we will face tomorrow. But today comes before tomorrow, and that is where we must live. We cannot live tomorrow, but we can live today. This is the issue that was troubling the Thessalonian Christians. They were looking toward tomorrow but wondering what to do today. The apostle Paul's advice to them in his first letter was, as usual, very practical.
LIVING TODAY
When confronted with the question of how to live in the present moment, Paul's excellent advice was: "Stay loving and keep working" (4:9-12).
First, keep on loving! Keep your attitude toward others warm and gracious. Watch how you speak. If you offend someone, correct it. When I spoke at our New Year's Eve service a few years ago, I said an ungracious word to a man who was trying to help me adjust the microphone. Afterward I had to go to him and apologize and ask his forgiveness. We must keep loving and forgiving one another. We must refrain from being bitter, resentful, sarcastic, or critical.
Keep Loving
Paul told the Thessalonians that he did not need to teach them
how to love one another. His amazing claim was that God through
His Holy Spirit would teach them. "God has poured out his
love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us,"
said the apostle in Romans 5:5. If we welcome that love of the
Spirit, we will be able to manifest love toward others. If we
choose to be bitter, of course, then love will not be manifested.
But if we reject the caustic word, the sharp attitude, then we
can show kindness, mercy, and grace. The Holy Spirit gives believers
a new capacity to love that the worldling does not possess.
On the other hand, many people make the mistake of believing that Christians will immediately feel loving. Christians feel the same way non-Christians do. We often feel angry, put upon, resentful, and repulsed. Here is how one Christian writer described it:
Loving people is about the most difficult thing that some of us do. We can be patient with people and even just and charitable, but how are we supposed to conjure up in our hearts that warm effervescent sentiment of good will which the New Testament calls love? Some people are so miserably unlovable. That odorous person with the nasty cough who sat next to you in the train shoving his newspaper into your face. Those crude louts in the neighborhood with the barking dog. That smooth liar who took you in so completely last week. By what magic are you supposed to feel toward these people anything but revulsion, distrust and resentment, and a justified desire to have nothing to do with them?
Though this attitude is understandable at times, the wonderful good news is that we do not have to act on our feelings. We do not have to regard others as rivals or enemies. We can look upon them as victims in need of sympathy and help. Then, by drawing on the grace God has given us, we can begin to act lovingly. Love is a decision we make to draw on Another's strength. That is why the apostle told the Thessalonians to love each other and to "do so more and more."
Stay Busy
Second, the apostle told the Thessalonian Christians to keep their hands busy with profitable labor. People under stress need to remain busy. They should not dwell on their own needs and feel sorry for themselves. It is clear from Paul's description that some believers had stopped working because they thought the end of the age and the coming of the Lord was at hand. As days and weeks went by and the Lord did not come, they ran out of food and would have starved if Christian friends and neighbors had not come to their aid. Thus, they had become a burden to others.
True faith in Christ, even faith in the second coming of Jesus, does not produce fanaticism. It does not encourage people to abandon everything to wait for Jesus' coming. We need to recall that one of the last words of our Lord to His disciples was, "Occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13 KJV). Even He did not know what day that would be. Mark records that the disciples asked Him, "What day and hour will you return" And Jesus replied, "I do not know. Only the Father knows that." As a man, He did not know the time of His return. He could have known if He had chosen to, but He did not know because He had left that in the Father's hands. The Christians in Thessalonica were making fools of themselves by stressing the immediacy of the coming of the Lord to such a degree that they had stopped working. That is why the apostle told them to keep busy.
In 1846, a man named William Miller predicted that Jesus was coming at a certain day and hour. A group of his followers quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and went out on a hilltop to wait for the Lord to appear. There was tremendous expectancy on their part, but, of course, Jesus did not come. To onlookers they appeared ridiculous because of this extreme action. The apostle Paul corrects that kind of thinking in words to this effect: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody" (v. 11-12).
LOOKING FOR TOMORROW
Twice in this passage Paul uses a term for death that likens it to sleep: "God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep" (v. 14). That term, by the way, is never used in the New Testament of anyone but believers. It never says of a non-believer's death that he "fell asleep." Jesus declared of Jairus' daughter who had died, "She is not dead but asleep" (Matt. 9:24). What a wonderful lesson. Death for the believer, according to the Scriptures, is nothing more than sleep. And when your loved ones fall asleep at night, you do not run to the phone and dial 911 for emergency service. You know that they are quietly resting, that they will awaken again, and that you will have contact with them soon. It is an encouraging word for those who are facing the death of someone dear.
The question the Thessalonian believers were asking was, 'Will we see our loved ones again?" They were expecting the Lord to return any day. They felt their loved ones who had died would not be resurrected until the final resurrection at the end of time. They would not see them again until that far-off event. In this, they were like the sister of Lazarus in the gospel of John. Jesus said to Martha, "Your brother will rise again." Martha replied, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day" (John 11:23-24). She imagined that Jesus was referring to the Old Testament teaching of the resurrection of all the dead, believers and unbelievers alike, in the last day. But Jesus intended to do something about Lazarus right then and there. As we know from that narrative, He did raise Lazarus from the dead on that very occasion. Like Martha, the Thessalonians did not understand. They thought it would be a long time before they saw their loved ones again. We can best understand this account if we remember five simple steps:
1. The Thessalonians had clearly been expecting Jesus to return before any of them died. His return was a moment-by-moment expectancy in the early church. First-century Christians believed the Lord was coming at any moment. In the first chapter of this letter Paul commends the Thessalonians for waiting for God's Son from heaven. That is what they were looking for. Jesus' own words suggest that this would be the case. All His statements about His return were addressed to people still alive, and He spoke as though they would still be alive when He returned. To His disciples He said, "Watch, because you do not know the day or the hour" (Matt. 25:13). He used such terms as "be not deceived" (Luke 21:8 KJV), and "the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him" (Matt. 24:44). There is no mention of the impact of His coming upon those who had already died.
2. The Thessalonians, like many of us today, were projecting the sequences of time into eternity. We all struggle with the concept of eternity. We tend to think of it as time going on endlessly; that, as is the case here on earth, we must wait for certain events that are yet future. That is how it will be in heaven, we feel, despite the fact that the Word of God seeks to demonstrate that time and eternity are two different things. Time has sequences: past, present, and future. But eternity has only one dimension: it is present, now. We struggle with that concept, as did the Thessalonians.
Here we are all locked into a segment of time together. If we are in the same location, we are all feeling the same temperature, the same barometric pressure. But that is true only of our bodies; it says nothing about where our minds are at any given moment. Minds are not limited to space or time or sequence. They can go anywhere and experience anything at any time. Eternity is much more like that. That is why we have great difficulty understanding these prophetic passages in terms of time when they are really eternal events.
Although I believe Paul knew the difference between time and eternity, he reassured the Thessalonians without becoming abstruse or pedantic, explaining that the living and the dead would be together when our Lord returns. That is the point at issue. He says, in effect, "Yes, you will see your loved ones immediately when the Lord returns. Whether you join that event when you die, or whether the Lord comes while you are yet alive, your loved ones will be with Him."
3. The Thessalonians gained new insight about Jesus' second coming "according to the Lord's own word." I take those words to mean that this is something Paul had not taught them when he was in Thessalonica. He had taught them about Jesus' death and resurrection and how that would affect them, but now he provided further truth. "We who are alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep" (v. 15). "Don't worry," Paul reassured them. "You will find your loved ones again when the Lord returns. We will all be together." This is new revelation, given now "by the word of the Lord."
4. The Thessalonians learned the details of the Second Coming--the sequence of events as they will occur. Many people, including certain notable Bible scholars, are confused on this because they regard the coming of the Lord as a single event, an immediate and once-for-all appearing. But if we carefully study the Scriptures, we find that the coming of the Lord is a series of events. This series has a dramatic beginning: "The Lord himself will come down from heaven" to take His saints, living and dead, to be with Him (v. 16). And it has an even more dramatic ending when He will manifest Himself to the entire world: "They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). These are two separate events. In between is a period of time during which Jesus is present on the earth, though not always visible.
That is what Scripture calls the "presence," which is the Greek word parousia. I personally believe presence is a better translation than coming. (see Appendix) When Scripture talks about the coming of the Lord, it sometimes looks at the beginning of that series, sometimes at the end of it, and sometimes, as in the book of Revelation, at what is going on in the time between. We must train ourselves to think in those terms. The parousia of Jesus is a series of events. Daniel, the Old Testament prophet, said that it would be a week of years-that is, seven years in duration. One event takes place at the beginning; another event takes place at the end. In between, the Lord will be present on the earth behind the scenes, as it were, very much as He was in the days after His resurrection.
For forty days Jesus was here on earth. He appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem and in Galilee. People heard reports that He was around, but nobody could find Him except when He chose to be seen. That is the same condition that will prevail on earth during this time of the coming of the Lord. If we understand that, it will help us greatly to comprehend what is described in this passage.
SOUNDS OF HIS COMING
The apostle connected three sounds with this initial appearing of Jesus.
First, he said, "The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command." It always warms my heart to remember that it is the Lord Himself who will come; He is not going to send Michael, the archangel, or Gabriel or anyone else. And at that loud command" "all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out" (John 5:28).
Jesus had once stood before the tomb of Lazarus and cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth," and to the amazement of the crowd the dead man appeared in the doorway, still wrapped in his grave clothes. As many commentators have pointed out, if Jesus had not called the name "Lazarus," He would have emptied the graveyard! But the hour is coming when all the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth! That is what Paul is talking about here. The cry of command will be addressed to the dead, to those in the graves.
The second sound is "the voice of the archangel" (v. 16). The only angel in the Bible called an archangel is Michael. Though Gabriel is a great angel, he is never referred to as an archangel. In the first two verses of Daniel 12 we read that an angel said to Daniel, "At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people [Israel] will arise"; Michael is always connected with Israel. Michael shall stand up and then there shall be a resurrection; those who are in the tombs will come forth, Daniel was told. Also, the living nation of Israel will be summoned to a new relationship with God. Details of this event concern the 144,000 Israelites, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, who are described in Revelation 7 and 14. These will be called to follow Jesus wherever He goes during the time of His presence on earth. He will be invisible to the world but visible to them. That all begins when Jesus returns for His church and the archangel calls Israel into a new relationship with the Lord.
The third sound is "the trumpet call of God" such
as was heard at Mount Sinai when the Law was given. At that time
the trumpet sounded so loudly that the people cried out to Moses
and trembled with fear. I do not think the whole world will hear
this call. In 1 Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter,
Paul says, "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all
sleep [i.e., not all believers will go to heaven by death], but
we will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet" (15:51-52). This verse speaks
of those saints who will be alive when Christ returns. We are
not all going to die; but the important thing is that "we
will all be changed." Although inaudible to the world, when
that trumpet call reaches the ears of living believers, they will
be changed and caught up to be with the Lord.
A COMFORTING WORD
The comforting hope is that we shall all be together as the great family of God, "with the Lord forever" (1 Thess. 4:17). Whatever the church does from that point on, it will be done with the Lord.
As I have suggested, I believe He will actually remain on earth, behind the scenes, directing the events described in the dramatic portrayal of the book of Revelation. The church will be with Him, invisibly participating in directing the course of the Great Tribulation, but not going through it because we are no longer living on earth; we are transformed saints affecting the events on earth. The critical point Paul stresses is that we shall see Jesus face to face. That has always been a source of great comfort to believers through the centuries.
One Christmas I received a beautiful painting of a mountain and lake in Glacier Park, Montana. I had stood by that lake and looked at that mountain, and the painting brought back to me the majesty and beauty of the scene. I remember thinking, "I wish I could live here and look at this. every morning."
Last year I stood on the edge of a cliff in Mendocino County, looking out over the great breakers of the Pacific dashing up one hundred feet or more into the air. It was a spectacle of awesome power. I thought how great it would be to live here all the time.
If the beauty of creation makes us shiver with anticipation, what will it be like to behold the Creator face-to-face? If we tingle at the shadow, what will it be to see the Substance Himself? If we revel in nature's masterpieces, what will it mean to be face-to-face with the Artist Himself?
Samuel Rutherford was one of the Scottish Covenanters of the seventeenth century who served the Lord during times of persecution in Scotland. Elizabeth Clephane took some phrases from Rutherford's beautiful letters and put them together in one of the most popular hymns of the nineteenth century. It was D. L. Moody's favorite hymn, and it has always been a great favorite of mine.
The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of heaven breaks;
The summer morn I've sighed for--
The fair, sweet morn awakes:
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.O Christ, He is the fountain,
The deep, sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I've tasted
More deep I'll drink above:
There to an ocean fullness
His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.The Bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom's face;
I will not gaze at glory
But on my King of grace.
Not at the crown He giveth
But on His pierced hand:
The Lamb is all the glory Of Immanuel's land.
What a marvelous hope we have! When we face the thought of our own death, or when we stand at the grave of a loved one, we are comforted indeed by this tremendous vision of the tomorrow that awaits God's own. That is the apostle's purpose in giving this revelation. Let us revel in it.
HAVING BEEN IN THE Middle East where I was able to observe personally many of the turbulent currents that are challenging the peace of the world in that area, I realize why people are concerned about the fate of the earth. The title of this chapter is borrowed from a book by Jonathan Schell. Published in 1982, it describes in chilling detail what would happen if this country went through a nuclear war. It is a grim and pessimistic account that offers little hope if such a holocaust should occur. President Jimmy Carter's remarks in his farewell address capture the essence of it: "The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide."
The fifth chapter of 1 Thessalonians also deals with the fate of the earth, but from God's point of view. Unlike the pessimism of the secular prophets, there is a strong note of hope amid the darkness and judgment predicted. In the closing verses of chapter 4, dealing with the second coming (or parousia) of Christ, we learned that Christians are not waiting for the judgments and wrath of God but for the coming of the Son of God, either at their own death or when He breaks into time in the event described in verses 16-18. Ignoring the chapter division inserted by some unnamed scribe, the thought continues into chapter 5 with the transition of the conjunction but (RSV). Whenever we come upon the word but in the Scriptures, we can be sure we are turning a corner; the same subject will be covered, but from a different perspective and direction.
THE TIMES AND THE SEASONS
The phrase "times and dates" indicates that the apostle is coming to grips with the question of the time of the Lord's return. All of us seem to want to circle a date on the calendar, but Paul taught the Thessalonians that they did not need to know the precise date. "Now, brothers, about times and dates," he said, "we do not need to write to you" (5:1). He knew they had already been reading in the Old Testament about the Day of the Lord; the description and characteristics of that day were familiar to them.
Remember, the "day" of the Lord is not a twenty-four hour day; it is an extended length of time, covering a number of events over a period of probably seven years. The whole period is called the parousia or the "presence" of Christ. As I understand Scripture, when Christ returns He will remain on earth for this period. Thus, the "day of the Lord" covers a series of events, perhaps even extending into the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ that follows. Actually, the phrase "day of the Lord" refers to any period of time when God acts directly and unmistakably in human affairs. It may be in blessing, as in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, or it may be in judgment. Or it may be that the same event will be a judgment to some people and a blessing to others.
Jesus said much the same thing. During that mysterious period of time after He had risen from the dead and appeared to His disciples, then disappeared again, they asked Him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" In other words, they were asking, "Is this the time when You will fulfill the predictions of the prophets that Israel will be the chief of the nations and the Messiah will reign personally upon the earth?"
His remarkable answer to their question was: "It is not for you to know the times or dates [the same phrase as here] the Father has set by his own authority" (Acts 1:7). In other words, only the Father knew the answer to their question. Then Jesus went on to outline the program that would affect them: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (v. 8).
We must understand that though we cannot name the precise date when the Lord will appear and begin the Day of the Lord, there are three characteristics of that day that we will be able to recognize.
THE DAY OF THE LORD
The first characteristic of the Day of the Lord, said Paul to the Thessalonians, is that it will come stealthily. It will come "like a thief in the night" (v. 2). I recall hearing of an incident where an entire family was sleeping upstairs one night when someone entered their home and stole several items of value; the thief came and left without their knowing it. That is the way a professional thief operates. He enters silently and unobtrusively and does his work. That, said Paul, is the way the Lord will come.
We hear these days about the new Stealth bomber, which the Air Force has developed. The plane is designed in such a way that it cannot be detected by radar. It can come upon an enemy unexpectedly, without warning. The Lord will come stealthily, said Paul, at a time when "peace and safety" seem to prevail, when nothing out of the ordinary is expected. That is how the Day of the Lord begins.
This is not just the apostle Paul's idea. Jesus had confirmed this truth earlier when he said that the Day of the Lord would come when life seemed to be proceeding normally. People will be eating, drinking, and marrying when suddenly the destructive judgment of God will fall (Luke 17:26-27). And that judgment is introduced, as Jesus pointed out very clearly, by the removal of the family of God from the earth: "the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all" (v. 27).
Jesus did not stop there, however. He went on to say, "It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building [normal, everyday activities]. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of man is revealed" (vv. 28-29).
Notice how clearly our Lord indicates in both of the examples He uses that there will first be a quiet disappearance of the family of God. Like a thief at work, silently and stealthily, the treasure will be taken away. Then the judgment will come.
In Matthew 24, the famous Olivet discourse, Jesus mentions that of two men working in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Of two women grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left.
A parallel passage in Luke says that two men will be asleep in one bed, and one will be taken and the other left. The examples occur during both day (working in the fields) and night (sleeping in bed). This indicates that this selective removal will happen simultaneously all over the earth. When it is day in one country and night in another, some will be taken and others left.
Jesus then adds a clear and unmistakable warning to be watchful and ready, "because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him" (Matt. 24:44). So Scripture teaches that the Day of the Lord will begin with the removal of God's people.
WHEN JUDGMENT COMES
The Day of the Lord will also come suddenly, with terrible and destructive judgment. The Thessalonian Christians were thoroughly familiar with the stark and dramatic prophecies of Joel, Isaiah, and Zephaniah: The Da y of the Lord would be "a da y of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness" OoeI2:2). "The sky trembles, the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine" (vv. 10-11). "They will fleefrom the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth" (Isa. 2:21). "A day of wratha day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom" (Zeph.1:15).
All this is summed up in the words Jesus uttered on the Mount of Olives: "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again" (Matt. 24:21).
These are hard passages to preach from, hard passages to read,
but they represent reality. The one thing we must do is to face
exactly what God says is going to happen. Here is indeed the fate
of the earth!
AN INESCAPABLE FACT
The Day of the Lord is inevitable. "They will not escape," says the apostle Paul, who likens that day to a woman in labor, whose time has come to give birth.
When our first daughter was born, we were living in a trailer on the campus of Dallas Theological Seminary. At two o'clock one morning, my wife indicated that the baby was coming. I put her in our old clunker of a car, which promptly refused to start. We had to enlist the aid of the garbage collectors, who were doing their rounds, to push the car and get it s