2 Thessalonians 2:13-15
Amen, you can be seated. Turn
to 2 Thessalonians chapter two. Today we want to look at verses
13 through 15. 2 Thessalonians chapter two,
13 through 15. Remember, this is Paul’s letter
to a church he had to leave behind very quickly after the gospel
took root. Had to leave after about three
weeks. Lots of trouble, Jewish persecution, wrote them these
two letters, sent Timothy, and eventually on another missionary
journey does get to swing back through there. And so when he’s
writing to them, he is writing to them in the context of them
living in the present evil age and under persecution. And this
is a second Thanksgiving, usually just one Thanksgiving in a letter,
but this is a second or a middle Thanksgiving. And so God’s Word
says 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13, and the we is Paul, Silas,
and Timothy. But we ought always to give thanks
to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose
you as the firstfruits to be saved through sanctification
by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you
through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm
and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either
by our spoken word or by our letter. Pray with me. Lord, may
your word comfort and build up your saints in our most holy
faith, and may it convince and convert sinners unto salvation
as they hear and believe the gospel by your spirit’s power.
Do both these things. Do them mightily today. We pray
in Christ’s name. Amen. Well, since Adam and Eve’s
fall in the garden, we like to say that life has been lived
east of Eden. Life has been lived east of Eden
because God exiled Adam and Eve from paradise. He exiled Adam
and Eve from his good, beautiful, wonderful place that God made
for them, where they could be fruitful, multiply, fill the
earth, they could work, they could keep, and they could have
dominion over the earth. And they could do so with the
fellowship of God and without the presence of sin. But we know
all too well the story of that ancient serpent who slithered
in the garden and tempted Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden
fruit. They took, they ate. They saw
it was a delight to their eyes, and they rebelled against God.
And so all mankind after them fell with them in their sin.
And so life has been lived east of Eden. Some of you in your
literature classes, maybe in high school or other educational
endeavors, probably took you through some of John Steinbeck’s
literature. Maybe you had to read The Grapes
of Wrath. Maybe I’m bringing up painful memories. I always
bought the CliffsNotes. Don’t tell anybody, but that’s
what I did. So I got through Shakespeare too. But one of the
titles of his book, his books were very realistic, describing
the depravity of man and the bad choices we make. But one
of the titles of his books was called East of Eden. And if you read his book, the
plot, the characters, the storyline, it reads like afternoon television. You can interpret that as the
soap operas, and you can also interpret that as those, you
know, Judge Judy shows, you know, where America’s finest appear
for justice. And we understand this. Life east of Eden, life after
the fall, life that is bent and broken by sin, As described in
Genesis three is the reality of our surroundings. We live
in a world of thorns and thistles. We live in a age of broken bodies. We live with relational strife
and we live in days that sometimes can seem like the days of Noah
where people only did evil and they only did evil all the time
or continually. Peter and Jesus make mention
of the days of Noah, where people were marrying and being given
a marriage. They were eating and they were
drinking. And that was all the while righteous Noah preached
salvation through entrance in the ark. And at the end of those
hundred years, when the rains came and God shut the door, only
Noah and his sons believed God and entered. Or how about the
days of Sodom and Gomorrah? where the people more and more
became selfish and self-centered, much like our society today,
where instead of worshiping God and serving others, we worship
ourselves and serve only our basest instincts and desires. Or speak of the nation of Israel,
where God planted them as a vineyard in a choice land and gave them
everything they needed to thrive spiritually. But you read throughout
the history of Israel up until the exile of king after king
after king, who only did what was evil in God’s sight, who
did not tear down the high places, but followed after the gods of
the other nations and followed after the gods of their many
wives who became a snare to them. When you fast forward to the
New Testament and several times, especially in the words of Paul,
you get the, the phrase the present evil age. And so from the garden
through Old Testament, through New Testament and up to our age,
God’s people living east of Eden have lived in the present evil
age. In fact, you read Galatians chapter
one. Why did Jesus die and rise? Well,
a lot of reasons, but in Galatians 1, it’s to save us from the present
evil age. You read in our confession of
faith about Christian liberty and how God has freed us from
his wrath. God has freed us from his curse. But God has freed us also from
the dominion of the devil and the dominion of this present
evil age. And so the present evil age is
the context in which we live. but also the context in which
Paul is ministering on this missionary journey. And we’ve seen so far
in 2 Thessalonians, a contrast of the unrighteousness of the
wicked people of the present evil age and their coming judgment. But on the other hand, we’ve
seen a picture of the righteousness of God’s people who come to Jesus
by faith, escaping God’s wrath and curse, and they will one
day be gathered at the second coming into the presence of God.
So when they were exiled into east of Eden, they will then
be gathered into the holy city of the new Jerusalem, the one
that is above. And so you have this great contrast of righteousness,
unrighteousness, judgment, but also being gathered into the
arms of God almighty. Now we know these things to be
true because we’ve read our Bibles. We’ve read about the days of
Noah. We’ve read about Sodom and Gomorrah. We’ve read about
the kings and the wickedness of Israel, even though God gave
them a land flowing with milk and honey, laws, promises, prophets.
He gave them everything, the covenants. We know also who we
once were. One of the blessings we have
from the pen of the apostle Paul is he very well describes what
we know to be true. We once, We’re foolish. We once walked in the ways of
this world. We once walked according to the
courses or the principles of the present evil age. And so
we know in our head, we know in our heart what it is to live
this way. And so we hear the headlines,
we see the news, and we hear of atrocities around the world
in our own neighborhoods. We even know what we think and
what we feel and what sometimes we might like to do because our
sin goes unchecked or temptations rise up in us. And while most
of the world says, how could people be so evil? We say quite
easily, it’s the sin nature. The great Scottish pastor of
the 1800s, Robert Murray Machine said, the seed of every single
sin is in the heart of man. And if you don’t think that,
just quit reading your Bible. If you don’t think that, resist
the Holy Spirit. If you don’t think that, let
sin run rampant in your life. And it won’t be long before you’re
the next headline in the news. We should never say, I would
never ever do that. We know this present evil age. We know the sinfulness of our
own hearts. And now we must understand the
mission field we live in. Paul was living in ancient Rome.
We’re living in modern day America and the mission field because
of life East of Eden, because of remnant sin or reigning sin
in the lives of unbelievers is a hard soil to till. You know, many of us are used
to growing up in the South where everybody’s nice. We’re used
to growing up in the South where everybody’s a Christian. Everybody
goes to church. Everybody is a respectable person. That’s not so for a lot of reasons.
First of all, it was never true. We just felt it. Second of all,
we’ve had a lot of relocated, how should we put it nicely,
northerners who’ve taken over. especially the state of Florida,
but we’ve also seen, and I think this is the big deal. We’ve seen,
uh, uh, we love our Yankee brothers and sisters. Um, just don’t tell
us how to live. Um, but we’ve seen an increasing
secularization of our nation and we’ve seen a secularization
of the church and that the church is so doggone lukewarm. that
it can hardly have an effect. And so I think what we can take
from today’s message from 2 Thessalonians 2, 13 to 15 is this. If you’re gonna be a Christian
east of Eden, you need encouragement and you will be persecuted. Those
are two things to think and to keep in mind today. It’s gonna
be slower going to proclaim Jesus and see the church. grow. I think that’s in God’s sovereignty
and it’s maybe perhaps for our learning and our growing. But
Paul is writing this letter from Corinth and you’ll know from
maybe your Bible studies that to Corinthianize, was sort of
an epithet. It was a bad way to say these
people, when they sin, they do it really well, right? They were
hedonists. They were people full of the
flesh, full of the pride of life and all those things. So he’s
writing to the Thessalonians from Corinth. He’s writing to
a people who are surrounded by ungodliness and being persecuted. And guess what he says? He says
two really big things. We give thanks to God for his
work in your life. And then we have a strong word
of encouragement for you. And so as we believers live in
modern day secularizing at a rapid pace America, we need encouragement
that God is at work in our lives and we need to hear God’s call
or his command to live. And so today we wanna be encouraged,
we wanna be assured of God’s grace that God has been, God
is now and will continue to be at work. in our lives just as
he was in the lives of the Thessalonians. So a couple things. We’ll think
about what it means to give thanks to God for spiritual growth.
We’ll think about God’s activity in the life of the believer for
salvation. And then we want to consider
the command to stand firm by holding fast. And so verse 13
gives us our first thing to consider, which is we give thanks. Paul,
Silas, and Timothy writing to the Thessalonians said, we, they
say, we ought always to give thanks to God for you brothers. Now, of course he means all the
saints, their brothers in the Bible includes the sisters, uh,
members, sons, God brings many sons to glory. That’s the guys
and the girls. It’s just the term of endearment
God has adopted us as firstborn sons, which is the highest and
best privilege. So don’t be too offended, you
know, with the male language there. It includes everybody.
It’s a good thing. But we ought always to give thanks
to God for you brothers. This is the second Thanksgiving
of the passage. or of the letter, the first Thanksgiving,
they gave thanks to God because their faith was abundantly growing. They gave thanks to God because
their love for one another, their agape, their for one another
love, was increasing and abounding. And so what did Paul do? They
gave thanks to God, but they boasted among the other churches,
those Thessalonians, faith increasing, love for one another abounding.
That was the first thanksgiving in the first part of the second
letter. And all of this in the context of their afflictions
and persecutions and test of faith. Now, they say we ought
always to give thanks. We’ll think about why. the reasons
for thanks in a moment. But I want us just to think very
briefly about the need to give thanks. I think we looked at
this last Thanksgiving and we said it is right to give thanks. Maybe you’re a King Jameser.
It is meat. Now, not lunch meat. Right? M-E-E-T. It is fitting to give thanks. In fact, if you look at the Anglican
order of service, the book of common prayer in their communion
liturgy, it begins this way. Let us give thanks to the Lord,
our God. And the congregation responds.
It is right. to give him thanks and praise
right out of Thessalonians. The first and the second Thanksgiving
say it is right, necessary. There’s an oughtness to it. And
then it says it is right and good and a joyful thing always
and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator
of heaven and earth. We should be thankful people.
It’s in our scriptures. It’s in our liturgies of the
church. But is it in our hearts and does
it come out? You know, on a rainy day like
today, you can kind of be Eeyore. Oh, it’s raining. You know, we
can be chicken little, sky is falling. You know, we can stick
our heads in the ground. You know, as long as I don’t
see bad things, nothing bad is happening. We can get kind of
Eeyore-ish. We can get ungrateful, but we
need to look and live. We need to look and be thankful.
As the song goes, we need to count our blessings and name
them. one by one. If you follow that pattern of
prayer, maybe in your daily prayers, adoration, confession, thanksgiving,
and supplication, I think it is good for thanksgiving to say
it is right to give thanks. It is good to give thanks. It
is necessary to give thanks. In fact, to not give thanks,
the Bible says you are an idolater. Thanklessness is equivalent in
the scriptures to idolatry. And so for our physical needs,
our material needs, yes, we give thanks, but also as Paul will
do here, we give thanks for our spiritual progress. And so verse 13 says, we give
thanks. Well, what do we give thanks
for? The second thing we give thanks, so we give thanks. Second
thing is we give thanks for God’s activity. in our lives. That’s the second thing, God’s
activity. So we give thanks. What do we give thanks for? A
lot of things, but here we give thanks for God’s activity. Verses
13 and 14. Notice the salvation words. We
ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved
by the Lord, because God chose you That’s the dirty word, isn’t
it? As the first fruits to be saved
through sanctification, there’s one, by the spirit and belief,
there’s another, to this he called you through our gospel so that
you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think, and
I’ve thought this for a while, probably in practical Christian
living, the most important thing a Christian can do is look through
the Bible, It’s in the Old Testament and it’s in the New Testament.
Look at salvation words and you will begin to see that in those
salvation words, past, present and future. And so these are
in eternity past, they’re in present tense and they’re in
future tense. Past, present and future also indicative. These
things are true. These things have happened, but
also in the imperative sense, therefore do this or believe
that or act this way. These salvation words give us
a very vivid picture of what the Christian life is. Now, y’all
know my little thing, you know, evangelism is way more than,
hey, you don’t want to go to hell, do you? Right. I mean, that’s how that’s evangelism
in America the last 150 years. You know, preach hell, get people
to walk the aisle. Hey, you’re saved, stick the
card in your wallet. Chariot swings low, you open
up your wallet, although you can’t. But that’s the implication,
right? Open up your wallet, say, I prayed
the prayer, walk the aisle, here you go, take me on up, not down,
right? That’s what we think of as evangelism.
And if you read all the salvation words of the Bible, they’re being
past, present, future actions by God. and things that are true,
indicatives, things that we must do, imperatives. Salvation is
a very rich thing, and how often do we live below our spiritual
riches? If you had a bank account with
two million bucks in it, I bet you we’d see some shiny cars.
I bet you we would see, you know, maybe the house fixed up, a few
things, money put back for retirement. Money you didn’t have, but all
of a sudden you do have, you wouldn’t say, ah, whatever. But don’t
we live the spiritual life like that? What does Ephesians tell
us? In Christ Jesus, we have been raised up with him and seated
with him in the heavenly places and all the riches and resources
of heaven are ours. But we’ve somehow dumbed it down
to, you don’t want to go to hell, do you? So we pray the prayer,
we walk the aisle, we stick the card in our wallet. But you look
at Romans 8, you look at a passage like just little bitty 13 and
14, what has God done in the lives of the Thessalonians and
in our lives that we should be thankful for? Well, read those
words. And I put them in a little different
order in this list. We are beloved by God. Well,
isn’t that amazing? We sinned against him. We told
him that he could buzz off, right? We did the two-year-old stamp
the foot and say, I do it by myself. And we threw in that
you’re not the boss of me, right? That’s what happened in the garden.
And yet we’re beloved by God. He never stops loving. He’s the
father in the prodigal son story who stands on the porch looking
off in the distance because he knows deep down that son will
return home. That’s our God. And so not only
are we beloved by God, we are chosen in him. And I know the
whole chosen word is very dirty, but it’s in the Bible. So you
better reconcile. God said it, there it is. God,
this is basically what the chosen word means. It means he set his
affection on you. Now think about that. What is
there about you that is lovable? Not a thing. Why did he set his
affection on you? Because he wanted to. That’s
simply it. Remember in Deuteronomy, he says
to Israel, I didn’t choose you because you’re the greatest nations.
He could have picked Babylon. He could have picked Assyria.
He could have picked Egypt. But he picked that little bitty
sliver of land with a bunch of disobedient, wacky people. Right. And that’s what he’s done to
us. We’re the Star Wars. bar room scene, right? And God
loves us. That’s what’s so amazing. So
we’re beloved in God. We’re chosen by God. And then
it says we’re called by God. The outward call of the gospel
came. We heard it. The spirit opened
up our heart to receive it. And we trembled at the threatenings.
We embraced the promises and we have turned from disobedience
to new obedience life in Jesus Christ. And it says we believed
we Let the knowledge of our sin and God’s salvation come into
our heads. We just asked Reed and Ellen
those questions from the membership covenant. Do you believe you’re
a sinner? Yes or no. Do you believe in the Bible?
Yes or no. Do you believe Jesus is the only savior? Yes or no.
Do you believe in the triune God? Do you believe in the church? Do you believe in its worship?
And do you believe in its authority? Yes or no. And see, there’s stuff
we get to do. learn knowledge, assent to these
true things, and then we get to live. That’s all wrapped up
in belief. We’re saved, he says. We’re sanctified or washed. We’re
made clean or sanctified. Maybe if you really wanted to
be, literally means holified, right? You’re unholy, you’re
unsanctified. And so part of growth and grace is we get holified
or sanctified. And then ultimately we are glorified. We will receive the same glory
as Christ. one day, we like to say around
the church, our job is to get you safely home. Okay. We are
not here to be big, grow in numbers. We’re not here to be the hottest
thing in town, the most flavors of ice cream. We’re simply here
to preach Christ, comfort and build you up in the faith and
get you safely home to heaven. Because that is where a church
will be in its fullest expression. We are not trying to live the
American dream here. You know, I’m not trying to have
the biggest church in town, although if that many people came, we’d
sure take them and that sort of business. But our job is to
convince and convert sinners, comfort and build up saints,
and get you safely home to glory. That is simply it. And that’s
what Paul is thankful for in the Thessalonian lives. So when
we sit around church and think, how’s it going at Covenant Prez?
People at Presbyterian say, how’s it going at your church? And
say, oh, we’re redoing the sanctuary. Oh, we got grass growing. Oh,
offering is this. Okay, those things are fine.
But what’s the most important? We give thanks. for our brothers
and sisters because they’re beloved by God. They’re chosen in Christ.
They’re the first fruits of those being saved. They’re being sanctified
in the truth. They’re growing in their beliefs.
They’ve been called by the gospel. All these things, Paul says,
that’s the stuff you brag about in a sense, isn’t it? That’s
what Paul bragged about the Thessalonians in first Thessalonians. So he’s
giving thanks and it’s for God’s activity in their lives. And
now we want to think of the command, the encouragement. And the encouragement
is for them to stand firm by holding fast. In your translations,
it probably says stand firm and hold fast. Not a bad way to think
of it, but we want to think about standing firm in the present
evil age. And we do that by holding fast
to the scriptures. We hold fast to the things we
have learned. Verse 15 says, so then brothers,
Brothers and sisters, we are thankful for because of the activity
of God in your lives. So then stand firm and hold to
the traditions that you were taught by us, either by spoken
word or by our letter. About a year ago, Patrick and
I went on this Grand Canyon thing, the same trip I went on with
my dad, about 30 years ago. And the night before you go down
the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, they tell you a couple
things, like you could die, You need to eat and drink, you need
to wear your life jacket, don’t fool around. But they tell you
two things. When you go through a rapid,
you need two fists of rope and your feet firmly planted on the
boat. Otherwise, you’ll fall off and we may or may not find
you. That’s what they really tell you. And you’re so far out
in the boonies by then it’s too late. And I’ve always thought
of that with this passage, stand firm and hold fast because the
rapids, the waves, the just the stuff that comes at you, whether
it’s health or relations or finances or spiritual oppression or internal
things, whatever it is, it comes your way. And if not careful,
you will get washed off the boat and into the rocks or into the
rapids and downstream. And you may or may not come up.
You may be fish food or you may happily live forever after. So then, brothers, stand firm. and hold fast to the traditions
that you were taught. Now think about this for a moment.
Paul’s on missionary journey number two. He’s an apostle of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s got, there’s the other apostles,
you know, Peter and Crue. And what did they do? They preached
the Old Testament and under inspiration of the New Testament, or under
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they write the New Testament
books. And so during this era, when Paul says, stand firm and
hold fast to the traditions, We hear that and say, oh, big
no-no, we just fought the Roman Catholics in the Protestant Reformation.
Tradition’s bad, right? Because tradition’s unbiblical
very often. So there’s bad traditions, there’s good traditions. Here
he’s speaking of good traditions. And he’s saying when we read
the Old Testament and preached it, and went under the Holy Spirit,
we wrote you letters that became inspired Bible books. Or when
we were with you and taught you apostolically, or with apostolic
authority, These are the things you ought to listen to. They
didn’t have their English Standard Versions, their Reformation Study
Bibles. They did not have all that. They had to hear it, remember
it, and live it. And he’s saying, when I was with
you, when we sent Timothy back to you, when you’ve gotten these
inspired letters, These are the things that will help you stand
firm when the tide of the present evil age washes over you. And
as Martin Luther would say in A Mighty Fortress, they would
threaten to undo us. These are the things, the teachings
of the scripture that we need to cling to. Now think of other
places in the New Testament where Paul or others say you need to
stand firm. Think of the very beginning of
Ephesians 6, where he’s about to give them the full armor of
God. He says, stand strong in the Lord and in the strength
of his might. So we can stand strong in God
and the might he has passed on to us through Jesus. Or Galatians
says, for freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not give in again to a yoke of slavery. So don’t give up
your gospel belief for non-gospel practices. Don’t go back to the
old way of living. Or at the end of 1 Corinthians,
a verse we know well, be watchful, stand firm in the Lord, act like
men and be strong. And so this standing firm and
holding fast to the scriptures is a very common theme. And so
as the word of God comes to us, as the word and spirit speak
to us, Through preaching and teaching and Bible reading and
all the rest, we need to remember this is, in the present evil
age for believers, this is eating our Wheaties. Now think back
to Jesus’ high priestly prayer, John 17. He says, God, I’m coming
to you, leaving these my disciples behind. The world hated me, it’s
gonna hate them. And what does he say? I don’t
ask you to take them out of the world. but I ask you to sustain
them through the Christian life until you bring them home. For
sure, this is on the apostles Paul’s mind. And so let me encourage
you this way. If you want to stand firm, hold
fast. If you want God’s activity to
be manifest in your life, if you want reasons for spiritual
thanksgiving to God, stick to the Bible. Stick to the doctrine,
stick to the creeds. We love the Bible because it’s
God’s only rule of faith, what to believe. It’s God’s only rule
of how to live, but we love our creeds and confessions. They
stand under the Bible, of course, but they teach us so much that
will help us get us through life. We need to remember God is speaking.
God is sanctifying. God is going to glorify us. He’s mighty at work. And it is
right, it is good for us to give thanks to God for all that he’s
doing. I was thinking about a wonderful
hymn that we sing from time to time, and hopefully just a stanza
or two will help us remember how great God has been in our
lives. It goes this way, when this passing
world is done, and when has sunk yon glaring sun, when we stand
with Christ on high and we look over life’s history, then, Lord,
shall I fully know, not till then, how much I owe. And all the other standers, all
five, are like this. When I hear the wicked call on
the rocks and hills to fall, when I see them start and shrink,
On the fiery deluge brink, then, O Lord, shall I fully know, not
till then, how much I owe. Brothers and sisters, we need
God at work in our lives to withstand this present evil age, the remnants
of sin in our heart, but also so that we can give thanks that
God has been at work in us. Let’s seek his face now, pray
with me. Lord, we want to have a pure
heart, a good conscience, a sincere faith. We do not want to swerve
and wander into vain things. So keep us on the path by your
grace. Lord, you’ve put us in the church
with the word and the spirit and the sacraments and with the
company of saints, fellowship, encouragement, and with the oversight
of the elders. And so may these things keep
us on the path. May we keep growing in grace.
Help us in here as we pray in Jesus’ great name. Amen.