1 Thessalonian Series Part3

Last time we looked at the things Paul had shunned, the things he had shown, and the things he had shared with the Thessalonians. We finished with Chapter 2:10 where Paul tells of his fear of the Lord; how he lived with the awareness that God Himself was watching His life and ministry.

Now this time in the 2nd half of Chapter 2 we will see what is PAUL’S CROWN OF REJOICING AT CHRIST’S RETURN. Paul had a twofold concern for his converts.

First, he had a fatherly concern: 2:11 “…as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children…” Paul was not content simply to win people to Christ. He recognized his responsibility as a spiritual father, the one who had led them to Christ.

He says that he exhorted them, meaning “to call aside,” “to appeal to.” Paul would call various ones to his side. After asking a few penetrating questions, he would know at what stage that person was in the spiritual life. He would then build on that. His great aims were to impart doctrine, to develop Christian character, to teach the principles of the new life in Christ, and to encourage submission to the will of God.

He also comforted them. Very early on in their faith, the Thessalonians had encountered fierce hostility and persecution. Some suffered physically. Others were ostracized by family and friends. Others had lost all of their material wealth and possessions. Paul knew how to comfort them. The great Apostle would put an arm around their shoulder, listen sympathetically to their tales of woe, and weep with them.

And he also charged them, meaning “to testify,” or “to bear witness.” Paul could talk to them like few others. He knew the perils and pitfalls of the spiritual life. He knew their character, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, talents, and handicaps. Thus, he could talk to them “as a father does his children.”

His second concern for them was a fundamental one.

2:12 “…that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.”

Paul the Apostle held a very high view of the Christian life. God’s people are sons of God, heirs of heaven, citizens of glory, and joint heirs with Christ. Paul would have agreed with the statement, “Remember whose child you are,” when out and about in the world. Walk worthy of the name of Christ. We have been lifted from the gutter to the glory—“from the guttermost to the uttermost,” as the old preachers used to say. So act like it.

Next, Paul talks of how the Thessalonians had received the truth:

2:13 “For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.”

First, they had received the truth at its face value as God’s inspired and inerrant Word. They never doubted what Paul preached. It bore the ring of truth and authority.

The Word of God contains a perfect blend of the human and the divine. The Lord Jesus is described as “the Word.” He was there “in the beginning.” He was with God. He was God. He became “flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1-3, 14). God’s revealed Word (the Bible) is the same. We detect the differing personalities, styles, and vocabularies of the various human instruments. Yet everything they said was “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16) so that every word bears the authority and authorship of God.

The Word of God has a fivefold quality that the words of men do not have. First, it is inspired—“God breathed” is the Holy Spirit’s own description of it. As a trumpeter breathes into his instrument and his fingers control the flow of his breath through the tubes, so God breathed His words through His human instruments and controlled the very parts of speech they used—without in any way violating the freedom of the human writer.

Second, the Word of God is inerrant. The original manuscripts are miraculously free from all error. God’s Word in its original documents contains no absurdities, no mistakes, no inaccuracies, and no contradictions. When God speaks about Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, or the origin of languages, that settles it.

Seeming errors and contradictions in the Bible arise from poor translations, wrong interpretations, a partial grasp of the whole, human ignorance, bias, and fallibility.

Third, the Word of God is infinite; that is, it is without measure or end. It communicates some truths that transcend our own powers of thought or comprehension. David says, “Your thoughts are very deep” (Ps.92:5). The Holy Spirit says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa.55:9). Paul declared, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Rom.11:33-34)

Fourth, the Word of God is incisive. It has the power to penetrate our thoughts, move our hearts, quicken our consciences, and conquer our wills. “For the Word of God is quick [living], and powerful [energetic, possessed of strength], and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb.4:12).

And fifth, the Word of God is inescapable. Jesus said, “He that rejects Me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48).

Having looked at how they received the truth, Paul now looks at how the Thessalonians retained the truth:

2:14 “For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans,”

Not only had the Word of God changed the Thessalonians, it also empowered them to endure great persecution. Their worst persecutors had at first been the Jews “your own countrymen.” But that would change to also include persecution from the Gentiles. Yet the Thessalonians retained the truth they had received. They held it tight, and it held them. Jesus had warned that persecution would be the natural lot of those who embrace Christianity.

“Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,” Jesus said (Matt. 5:11). A recent report stated that a Christian is martyred every five minutes somewhere in the world!

Now, Paul focuses on the tragedy of his own countrymen:

2:15-16 “…who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, 16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.”

The mention of persecution turns Paul’s thoughts to the tragedy of the Jewish people. Their bitter hostility to Christ and Christianity never ceased to amaze him.

First, they “killed the Lord Jesus…” No worse charge could be leveled on earth—they killed God’s Son. This is the only place where this charge is leveled against them by Paul. Jesus had loved them, taught them, reasoned with them, pleaded with them, wept over them, and warned them. And they killed Him; the Son of the living God, God manifest in flesh.

Second, they killed their “own prophets.” The first Christian martyr, Stephen, had said just before they killed him, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” He continued, saying “They have slain them which showed the coming of the Just One; of whom you have now been the betrayers and murderers” (Acts 7:52). For example, Isaiah was sawn in half. Jeremiah was stoned to death.

Third, they persecuted the early church, “…and have persecuted us.” One would think that the conversion of their chief agent of persecution, Saul of Tarsus, would have changed them! But no. They turned on Paul, and also persecuted James and Peter, along with the rest of the church.

The sad fact is that God had originally set the Hebrew people apart from the rest of the world for Himself (Num.23:9, 21). His plan was to reveal Himself to them, redeem them, reign over them, and make them a model of His goodness, greatness, glory, and grace. Yet they abysmally failed.

In resisting God they “filled up the measure of their sins.” In other words, their sins had been “piling up on them” over time. This reveals that God is patient. He gives time for repentance. He will sometimes wait many centuries before sending judgment. He did this with Noah, who spent over a century warning his generation while building the ark. He withheld His hand for four-hundred years in the case of the Amorites (Gen.15:16). He waited and waited for Sodom and Gomorrah to turn. But one day, His judgment finally fell.

And in the case of the Jews, Paul says “The wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” The anger of God had caught up with them at last. What did that mean? Time and space does not allow a full discourse on all of the woes experienced by the Jews; stretching all the way back to the ten tribes being carried away into captivity by the Assyrians and disappearing.

Theirs has been one tale of woe after another. The Babylonian captivity of 70 years. The Diaspora where the majority of them were dispersed throughout the Gentile nations for centuries on end. The arrival of the Romans who captured the Promised Land and held it in subjection. Then the horrific destruction of the Temple predicted by Jesus in A.D. 70. where the Jews were slaughtered unmercifully and driven from their homeland.

For 200 years, Jerusalem passed into oblivion. The long centuries of their dispersion have been full of peril for the Jews. In the various places they have sought to live they have suffered discrimination, segregation, persecution, and expulsion.

The very expression “wandering Jew” became a proverb. They have been blamed for the ills of the world, accused of horrible atrocities, held responsible for the Black Death, and made the scapegoats for every failed enterprise.

As Jesus was being judged by Pilate, they cried out “His blood be on us, and on our children!” (Matt.27:25). It most certainly has been. Their history shows how tragically and terrible their self-imposed curse has haunted them.

Now Paul turns to his future crown of rejoicing, the Thessalonian Christians:

2:17 “But we, brethren, having been taken away from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavored more eagerly to see your face with great desire.”

Paul’s great desire was to see the Thessalonian Christians again face to face. Being absent had not affected his love for them one iota.

2:18 “Therefore we wanted to come to you—even I, Paul, time and again—but Satan hindered us.”

Paul discerned that it was Satan himself that was actively seeking to keep him from the Thessalonians. We remember Paul’s words to the Ephesians, “We battle not against flesh and blood,” (Eph.6: 12).

2:19-20 “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? 20 For you are our glory and joy.”

The “crown of rejoicing” refers to a victor’s crown. Paul anticipated seeing his converts step forward at the judgment seat of Christ to receive their reward.