Good News is Faithful

Joyful & Sustainable Christian Living

12.18.23 [1 Thessalonians 5:16-24] River of Life (3rd Sunday of Advent)

The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

What do you think is the hardest part of living a God-pleasing life? Each of us is likely to answer that question a little differently.

It could be a Love your neighbor thing. It might be really hard for you to love your enemies. Maybe it’s forgiving someone who really wounded you when they sinned against you. Maybe it’s taking the words and actions of someone who has forfeited your trust in the kindest possible way.

It could be a flee temptation thing. Maybe it’s anger, greed, sloth or lust. Maybe you have a weak spot with sins of the tongue: gossip, snark, telling the truth, or keeping a tight rein on your tongue.

There are some areas of life where it is really challenging to live as God has called us to live. Even though we have a new spirit created within us by our powerful, wise, and loving God, we don’t always let our light shine the way that we know we should.

What I’m guessing was not on your list of the hardest parts of living a God-pleasing life are the three exhortations that we find in our reading from 1st Thessalonians 5. Rejoice. Pray. Give thanks.

These things are, by comparison, rather simple. Natural for the new man. Dare I say, easy?

You don’t need to be told to rejoice. When you have something good happen in your life, or in the life of someone you care about, you just do it. You don’t need to be told to pray. When life gets you down and you’re lost or scared or just plain confused, you pray. You don’t really need to be told to give thanks, either. When someone goes out of their way and does something thoughtful for you, or gives you something meaningful, thanks just spills out of us, right?

So God’s commands here are something we want to do, something that isn’t hard to do, and something that feels instinctual. So why does God spend the time telling us to rejoice, pray, and give thanks?

Well, as they say, the devil is in the details. By that I mean, the devil is chipping away at God’s temporal modifiers. God’s will for you in Christ Jesus isn’t just that you rejoice once in a while, or pray when you get in a jam, or give thanks when you get something really good. It’s rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances.

When the rubber meets the twisty, turn-y, bumpy, pot-hole-marked, always-under-construction, who forgot to secure their extension ladder? road of life, this rejoice, pray, give thanks stuff gets difficult.

How can we be expected to be rejoicing when our lives are filled with so many frustrations and disappointments? Does God really expect me to rejoice when everything I’ve worked hard for falls apart?

How can we be expected to keep on praying when it doesn’t seem like prayers amount to much of anything? Does God really expect me to pray for the same thing, day after day, week after week, year after year?

How can we be expected to give thanks when we’ve been given a chronic condition or a terminal diagnosis? Does God really expect me to give thanks when I’m going through unimaginable pain and loss?

There are times in life when rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks is anything but easy. There are times when it doesn’t come naturally, but rejoicing, praying, or giving thanks seems like it would be fake or disingenuous. There are times when rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks are the last things we want to do.

So what then? Well, in these moments, when we know we should be doing something but we don’t want to do it, we don’t feel like it at all, we try to manufacture the strength to do it. We try to dig deep to find a compelling reason to do these things.

And the most popular way of manufacturing new energy is to play the comparison game. When we don’t feel like we have any reason to rejoice, we look for someone who we think has it worse than us. When we don’t feel like our prayers are being heard or make any difference, we look for someone who prayed longer than we did and then, after a long time, got what they were praying for. When we don’t feel like giving thanks, we compare our lives to people in third-world countries or in the more difficult periods of history and we tell ourselves we’ve got it a lot better than they do or did, so we should be thankful.

In the short term, it probably makes us more joyful, more apt to pray, and more thankful than we were. But it’s unsustainable. It won’t take real long before that kind of joy dissipates. Something we were really looking forward to will leave us disappointed. Someone we were counting on will let us down, or double-cross us. We’ll find ourselves in some situation where we don’t even know what to pray for so we just stop praying about it at all. Those blessings that we once gave thanks for will become burdens on our time, our treasures, and our energy and we will struggle with bitterness. Playing the comparison game might feel like it gives us a shot in the arm, but it won’t last. It’s not sustainable. And it’s not what God is looking for when he says Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances.

So how can we rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances? If we keep reading, God will sort it—and us—out.

Paul goes on to say some things that might make us scratch our heads. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test them all. Hold on to what is good. Reject every kind of evil.

We must remember Paul is writing to a specific group of people in a distinct period of time. The church at Thessalonica was formed in less than a month. Paul spent about three weeks there connecting the dots of the Old Testament with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Then some jealous Jewish leaders rounded up some bad characters and they started a riotous mob. They wanted to do away with Paul and all those who believed what he did. But these new Christians wouldn’t let them. They hid Paul at first, then smuggled him out of town.

So Paul didn’t get to spend all the time teaching them that he would have liked. Not only that, but they didn’t have the whole New Testament yet. It was still being inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by those God chose to record it. So Paul wanted them to recognize that God was still working on revealing his will and inspiring his Word. So the Thessalonians had to be very vigilant. God was still speaking through his servants and Satan was still masquerading as a messenger of light.

So God instructs them to test everything they hear, to compare it to what God has already said and done and see if it aligns or not. This test works only because God is faithful and truthful. He does not lie or change his mind. He does not go back on his promises or bury conditions in the fine print. He means what he says and he does it.

We have a slightly different challenge. We do not have to sift through a bunch of prophecies, God’s Word has been revealed in full. But the Spirit is quenched—or doused like a campfire you’re done with—when we neglect or just slight the Word of God. When we treat it as old news, instead of Good News. When we regard it as archaic, instead of timeless. When we set it alongside what is modern, popular, and what we are told is significant and act as if they are in the same league.

Each time we place the opinions of people alongside the truths of God, we are failing the test. We are accepting something less than good as good enough. As a result, we will struggle to rejoice, pray, & give thanks as God will us to do. We must hold on to what is good. God’s Son.

That is the Good News that renews our desire to rejoice, reinvigorates our prayers, and restores our gratitude. When we look again at what God has already done for us, how and why he did it, we see God’s love. It is God’s love that holds on to us. HIs love makes us joyful & prayerful.

The basic outline of what God did for you in sending his Son is enough to fill us with lasting joy, eager prayers, and sincere gratitude. God saw what sinners did to his creation and did something about it. He became like us.

He lived a life that had all the struggles that you and I do and many more. But he came to redeem us fully—our whole spirit, soul, and body—everything that makes us who we are. So he gave of himself fully. Every moment of his life was spent meeting the demands of the Law in our place. As he suffered and died, he experienced excruciating agony. His body was beaten and bruised. Pierced and crucified. His life’s work was mocked. He was jeered and numbered among criminals. It was an amazingly awful ordeal. But it was God’s will for his Son to take our place.

So Jesus did it. But that’s not all we need to see today. Even while doing this work, Jesus did the other things God willed, the things that seem like small potatoes by comparison. He was joyful, prayerful, and grateful.

He rejoiced always. Now maybe you don’t see it because you never saw him face to face. But listen to what Jesus says makes him and heaven happy. It’s not ninety-nine righteous people. It’s a single sinner repenting. it’s God finding lost sinners and bringing them to salvation.

Jesus prayed continually. We see him praying in remote places late into the night. We find him praying with his disciples and even on the cross.

Jesus gave thanks, too. Not just when things were going well. He gave thanks when he only had five loaves and two small fish to feed a crowd of 5000 men plus women and children. We hear Jesus giving thanks as he gives his body and blood to his disciples at the Last Supper. We hear Jesus giving thanks that God reveals his plan of salvation to little children.

Even though he was surrounded by sin and wickedness and under constant attack from the Evil One, Jesus found reasons to rejoice always, to pray continually, and to give thanks in all circumstances.

And he gives us the same today. That is the blessing of the Church and the Divine Service. As we gather together as believers, we make these things our habit. We rejoice with songs of praise. We pray for the needs of our church, our community, and our world. We give thanks for all the great things God has done in saving us from our sins. These things happen every single time we gather together for public worship.

But they happen informally, too. As we spend time together, on Sundays and during the week, too, we are given reasons to rejoice. We hear of God doing wonderful things for other people and it fills us with joy. We meet people who are dealing with a number of difficulties and yet they still are filled with joy. That inspires and encourages us far more than finding someone who has it worse than we do. We get to know people and what they need us to pray for. We pray regularly for their needs. And then, with this wider perspective, our eyes are opened to all the reasons we have to give thanks. Spending time in the Word and with the people of God makes these three practices—rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks—natural, instinctive, and dare I say easy? By God’s grace they are.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.