The God of Peace and Grace

Disruptors

How many times have you had some project you’re working on - maybe you’re fixing something around the house, or your writing an email that needs to get written… you’ve got a good flow happening, but then the phone rings.… or perhaps for those with kids, one of yourr children come flying in with a problem. Your attention shifts. That flow you had going that was helping the job to get done is gone. The disruption can be frustrating. At times, it can be debilitating.

But the reality is, the disruptions we face are more than just about a particular project we’re working on. Life itself faces many disruptions. You think you’ve got yourself on a certain track, only to receive news that will knock you on to a completely different track.

Now, the disruptions we face can come in many different forms. Sometimes it might be something like a cancer diagnosis, or the loss of a job.

But sometimes the disruption can come from other people. The person who makes the comment that brings you down. Perhaps they said it out of spite. Perhaps they said it being too self-absorbed to realise its effect on you.

We live in a time when the evil desires of humanity abound and it causes havoc in our lives. Some people allow these evil desires to really flourish, for others, we might be trying to work on it. But too often, we’re confronted with disruption of evil and wicked people.

So how do we work through it?

Do we just grin and bear it and try and manage as best we can?

Or do we fight against it? Fight fire with fire, as they say.

Well, today, we come to our last message in our series on 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

I’m going to explore some of the disruptions that we saw the newly established church went through, and we’re going to think about a better way of approaching it.

Disruptions to the Thessalonian church

Well, the most obvious disruption that the church of Thessalonica faced is one we’ve considered quite a bit throughout this series.

Let me just remind you of how the church started.

Paul was on his second missionary trip. He went to Macedonia, and after first establishing a work in Philippi, he then found himself in the city of Thessalonica.

So he goes to thhe Jewish synagogue first. This was his custom at new cities.

Some people there have their eyes opened and they form a new church.

But we see the first of the main disruptors. A group of angry Jews run Paul and his travelling companions out of town.

This is the type of disruptor that opposes your work.

Today, we might see a similar disruptor in say the way certain groups are lobbying to get Scripture classes out of public schools. Thankfully they haven’t succeeded in NSW schools, however, they’ve been a lot more successful in others states such as Victoria.

But there was another kind of disruptor that we see in these two letter to the Thessalonians. This is the disruptor that we saw last week when we looked at the people Paul described as idle.

This is not the disruptor that ran them out of town, this was the disruptor from within. They were believers who actually meant well, but had formed conclusions that unfortunately led them to disregard other teaching.

In the case we saw last week, their preoccupation with endtimes meant they were so focussed on this aspect of Paul’s teaching, that they forgot to care for others… they forgot to do the very work that they were called to.

Now on that specific issue, we covered that last week when we looked at verses 6 to 15, so I won’t cover that again, rather I want to just consider more generally our response when we face disruptors.

Now, before I continue, it’s worth pointing out that disruptors don’t have to always be negative. Sometimes we need a disruptor - someone who can allow us to see a better way. Sometimes we get so caught in our ways and we do things a certain way, even when that way has significant flaws in its effectiveness. So a disruptor can at times have a positive effect.

This should be kept in mind as we explore our idea today.

Peace

Well, I have three main words which I’ll give to you today, and they’re all taken from the last three verses of 2 Thess 3. The three words are: peace, presence, and grace. We’re going to see that the three words are related quite closely, but as we go through them, I want to show that these three ideas are going to help us think differently when those big disruptors threaten to derail what we’re doing.

So let’s start with peace.

Verse 16 says: “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way”.

Paul has just been talking about these people who disrupt, and as he brings the letter to a close, he reminds them that Jesus is someone who brings peace.

Now, it’s important that we understand what this peace is.

The biblical understanding of peace is tied to the Hebrew word “shalom”.

Shalom is a much bigger concept than our understanding of peace.

Shalom is all things working as they should. It’s the state in which God has designed this planet to be in.

You see, you can negotiate a cease fire between two warring nations, and while this might be a very welcome step in the right direction, we’re not even close to shalom.

On a more personal level, shalom is constantly being broken, and it should be no surprise to the Christian, that the breaking of shalom happens because of sin. And before we point to all the wicked people out there, we should also be aware that our own sinfulness is conrtibuting towards this breaking of shalom.

So, let’s think of a scenario… you’re doing a certain task and someone comes up to you and speaks in a way that completely throws you off. We’ve got ourselves a disruption. Potentially, we’ve got ourselves a conflict and shalom has been broken.

Now, because of our concept of shalom, we know this is the aim - but we also know that a cease fire is not shalom. We want the type of peace that Jesus brings - real peace.

So when that disruptor comes, we want to work towards shalom.

Now, our great temptation is to assume that the problem is completely with the disruptor and we’re the completely innocent party that is being inconvenienced.

Interestingly, if we go back to chapter 2, we saw the theme of deception being introduced. It is so easy to deceive ourselves into thinking we’re right and anyone who opposes us is wrong. We need to be so careful with this.

You might recall the lesson Jesus gave us when he told us not to worry about the speck of saw dust in the eye of the other when there is a log in our own eye.

If we don’t take the time to reflect on our own issues when the disruption comes, then I’m going to suggest, we’re not really interested in shalom, we’re only interested in moving towards a cease fire.

But let’s say, we spent time reflecting on ourselves, and we work on ourselves - which of course will be an ongoing process… but shalom is still broken - and we can ask, why hasn’t the Lord of peace given us peace at all times and in every way?

Well, let me go back to the prayer at the start of chapter 3. In verse 2, Paul prays that they will be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith.

When we have conflict, I believe we should always try to resolve the conflict, but there is a time when we need to pray that we are delivered from the evil ways of these disruptors.

How is this deliverance going to happen? Well, in some ways, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to move in the way he wants to. It’s quite likely that when Paul wrote that verse, he actually had in mind the angry Jewish mob that was bent on getting him. The Spirit allowed him to escape which took the sting out of their attack, and allowed more peace for the remaining Thessalonians believers.

So people can move. Or perhaps, some sort of other barrier could be placed stopping the attacks. We need to remember that this is also part of a supernatural battle that is going on… the deliverance can also be by supernatural means.

But then look at verse 3: “the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one”.

It is interesting to note the shift from verse 2 to verse 3, where we go from wicked and evil people in verse 2, to the evil one in verse 3.

The peoplee in verse 2 quite likely don’t even realise the influence they have with the evil one causing havoc.

Back to verse 16, while I’ll continue to maintain that we need to make effort to work towards shalom, we need to recognise that it is the Lord of peace who is going to give us this peace. Only he is able to counter the shalom breaking activities of the evil one.

Presence

And this brings me to the second of the three words I want to share with you today - presence.

This word comes from the last bit of verse 16: “The Lord be with all of you”.

In some ways, this can become a bit of a cliche. Almost a bit like when we say goodbye to someone and then add - ‘have a nice day’.

But the reality is, this idea of the Lord being with you is actually crucial for us to have any hope of seeing even a glimpse of shalom.

For starters, as I was just arguing a moment ago, there’s a spiritual battle raging and we have actually zero hope of doing anything in our own strength. You might think your pretty clever, but just remember what we looked at when we explored chapter 2 and the man of lawlessness - he’s the master of deception. One of the big tricks of the evil one is convincing you that your judgement in immpecable - because then once he convinces you of one of his lies, you won’t even question it.

How do you counter this? You need Jesus and you need him real close.

The answer is in surrendering to Jesus. The disruptor comes, whether its the disruptor bent on evil or the disruptor acting out of ignorance… and you think, I can deal with this in my own strength. Wrong!

We say: Jesus, I can’t do this in my strength, give me wisdom… give me protection… give me the strength I need.

This is why it is so important that we cultivate a strong relationship with Jesus. Figure out how to put measures into your routine where you have the time to listen and converse with Jesus.

For many, it is the quiet time in the morning. It might be reading through a published devotional. Or could be meditating on a short piece of scripture. It might include going through a bible reading plan.

How and when you do this, well, that’s something you need to work out for yourself, although if you’re having struggle in thinking how to make it work in your life, I’d love to have a chat to help you figure something out. This is a way in which we can become more aware of the Lord’s presence in our life.

The more we neglect this, the more we become ignorant of what God is doing in our lives, and the more we become ill equipped to deal with the disruptors in our life, and the more shalom is shattered.

Grace

The final of the three words for this message is “grace”, and this comes in the very last verse of the letter: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all”.

Again, like the phrase “the Lord be with all of you” that we saw at the end of verse 16, this can sound like one of those pleasantries that we give - we kind of skip over them as Paul signs off.

But grace is actually an extremely important concept in this whole discussion that we’re having.

First of all, it’s worth discussing what grace is… it is the unmerited favour of God which secures and bestows salvation freely.

We need grace. We need to recognise that each and every one of us, based on our own conduct, are sinful and deserving of punishment. We’ve all broken shalom and continue to break shalom because our natural inclination is toward ourselves. We are the disruptors.

If it wasn’t for grace, we would continue to break shalom. But because God has shown his favour on us, he’s enabled us to operate differently. Because God has shown us grace, we’ve begun to be transformed - the process continues, and that is evident because we continue to break the peace, but yet because the spirit moves in us, these moments of shalom start to happen and it is so beautiful to see.

Now, because we’ve been shown grace, we too need to be people who show grace to others.

When the disruptors come, we want to either run and hide or throw them out of the way… and as we’ve discussed, there are times when we just need to pray for deliverance from wicked and evil people.

But yet, when we start to show grace to others, we can actually start to see a transformation in them.

Our fear in showing grace to others, is that they will just continue to walk all over us, but grace doesn’t have to be a case of ignoring wrong doing and thereby enabling bad behaviour in others.

Rather, grace becomes the means in which we stop a cycle of escalating tension between two people.

Grace does not elimate God’s justice. God is a god of justice and wrong doing is punished. But by the work of the cross where justice and mercy meet, God has enabled a situation where he can cut the cycle and introduce shalom.

We need the presence of God to show mercy. He showed it to us first, and so he enables us to show it to others.

Our great hope is showing mercy is that we can bring them to faith and they can experience true mercy from God - that they can know salvation. In doing so, they can become part of the process in which shalom is created.

Conclusion

Disruptive people are going to come.

Some can be described as wicked and evil people who are detemined to frustrate God’s activity.

Others, are people from within the body of believers, but who through ignorance or lack of insight, disrupt the process. As I’ve discussed, at times, this includes all of us.

But through all this, the Lord of peace continues to bring about shalom.

And it is the most incredible thing.

It is true, that we will only fully know shalom when Jesus finally returns. At this point, the evil one with his man of lawlessness will be brought to an end. We will live in a new heavens and a new earth where there will be no more pain or tears for the old order will have passed. That will truly be shalom.

But even now, God allows us to have shalom in part.

While we live in the midst of a spiritual battle, God protects us, and will deliver us from evil people.

But we also know shalom as we draw close to Jesus. In doing so, we become more aware of his protection.

And all this comes about by the grace of God. Grace that has been shown to us, and that we now show to others.

So we have these three words: peace, presence and grace. Three words that help us through a difficult and at times hostile world, and into something much better.

May you know the peace, presence and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me pray...