2 Thessalonians 3:16-18
Before we read, let’s look to
God in prayer. Lord, we come into your house
with all kinds of things on our minds, in our hearts, and we
come from a world that has made it next to impossible to pay
attention, to listen. And so we need your help, not
only spiritually. We don’t want to be dull of heart
or hard-hearted, but we also need your help to settle our
minds and our hearts so that we can listen to you. And so
grant us that help, we pray, in the strong and mighty name
of Jesus, our Savior. Amen. Second Thessalonians 3,
beginning at verse 16. This is the Apostle Paul, and
he writes in his own hand after his secretary or his scribe has
written most of the letter, the bulk of the letter. And he says
to the Thessalonians, also to us now, May the Lord of peace
himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord
be with you all. I, Paul, write this greeting
with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness
in every letter of mine. It is the way I write. The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Think of the opposite
of peace and that’s chaos. think of chaos in the world.
In Paul’s day, the Roman empire, well, they didn’t exactly have
chaos. They had the Pax Romana, the
peace of Rome, but it was a topsy turvy time of world dominion,
world domination. And in Paul’s day, living at
Corinth, where he writes this letter, he saw an upside down,
topsy turvy world. We live in a day with wars, At the funeral of the Pope we
saw our president and the president of Ukraine get together There’s
chats with Russia chats with China. There’s talks all around
the world of making peace and ending chaos We’ve we’ve got
the tariff war. Maybe some of you were thinking
of retirement or maybe buying something and all of a sudden
you’re Little account takes a hit. That’s chaos. We need peace.
How about spiritual chaos? Well, in the Thessalonian letters,
Paul has spoken of the antichrist. He’s spoken of the man of lawlessness.
He’s spoken of blasphemy, speaking against God. We live in a world
that denies natural law, the natural order that God made and
instituted at creation. And so we live in a world that,
thinks there’s something other than male and female. We live
in a world that denies natural law in all sorts of ways. We
think men can have babies. We live in a world where the
man of lawlessness is at work in some way, shape or form. Then
you’ve got church chaos. Yesterday, a couple of us at
our denominational meeting, our regional church meeting, sorting
out issues. And we followed the scriptures.
That’s the way God ordered it. And it brought chaos back to
order. We left in peace. In the Thessalonian church, you’ve
got sin. You’ve got lazy people. You’ve got the idlers. You had
Paul say, if a man won’t work, a man won’t eat. You’ve got false
teachers. You’ve got people telling them
the second coming has already come. and you’re left behind,
that sort of business. You’ve got false doctrine. And
in today’s church world, you probably have been through it.
They fight over the color of the church carpet, that sort
of thing. So there’s church chaos. How about persecution? In Paul’s
day, they were facing Jewish opposition. In fact, he was run
out of Thessalonica, what, a couple of weeks after he got there.
There’s Roman opposition. We don’t want this Christian
sect to get too big, too strong, too mighty. Too powerful. That
didn’t change till Constantine came along. Or how about persecution
today? And you read the voice of the
martyrs, you read of various countries and read their ratings,
how they treat Christians. The news doesn’t really report
it, but all over the world today, people will be barred from their
places of worship, their houses of worship. Just spoke with a
man from China yesterday, and he said that China has recently
made a rule, a law, you cannot proselytize at all. And so the foot has been put
down and so persecution brings chaos. How about personal life? Maybe things are out of control,
your health, your finances, your relationships. Or as we spoke
of Wednesday evening, we talked about the Israelites worshiping
the Baal of Peor there in the book of Numbers. And we spoke
of the word harassed, the people of outside of Israel harassed
the Israelites with the bales and with the women of their own
community. And it brought chaos. It brought
death into the covenant community. And so you may East of Eden be
harassed with the curses of this world, this life. And so you
need peace and you don’t have it. So how do you get it? Where
does it come from? Do you want earthly peace? Do
you want spiritual peace? How do you get it? How do you
get it on all fronts? Well, Paul says in our passage
today that peace is possible. And he’s speaking these words
of peace to a young church about a year since he first preached
there. They’ve had a violent persecution. Their preacher of
Jesus has been run off. It’s been a constant trial since.
Timothy is gone and ministered among them. This is now the second
of two letters. Lots of prayer, lots of agony
on the part of the apostle. Facing the same things we do
nationally, internationally, in the church, in our communities,
personally. And Paul says some things they
need to do, quit being idle, quit believing false teachers.
He goes through the list of trusting in the Lord. And not only does
he give them a strong do it, but now he gives them a prayer.
He gives them a blessing that says, God must do it. In fact, several times in his
letter, he said some hard things, hard things about them, hard
things about things outside of them. But then he throws in a
prayer, he throws in a benediction, he throws in a blessing. But
now at the end of the letter, as he writes with his own hand,
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the
sign of the genuineness of every letter of mine. It’s the way
I write. This isn’t a fake letter. This
isn’t a fake Paul. This is, this is the real deal.
And we understand it’s apostolic, which means God, Christ is speaking
through him. He gives them his desire. He
gives them his heart. He gives them his burden. And
he says, you need the Lord’s peace. You need the Lord’s presence
and you need the Lord’s grace. And those are the couple things,
the three things we want to think about today, the Lord’s peace,
the Lord’s presence, and the Lord’s grace. The peace of the
Lord comes up in verse 16. Now may the Lord of peace himself
give you peace at all times and in every way. Now, before we
look at what is spiritual peace, think about fake peace. You know,
you get behind a car and they got the bumper stickers, need
world peace now. Well, how does that happen? Quit
shooting at each other. Give them your stuff and they’ll
leave you alone. How does that work? What is fake
peace? Maybe it’s drowning out your
sorrows through substance. Perhaps it’s consumerism or making money,
getting everything all nice and neat and clean, house, yard,
retirement, whatever. We can try to build peace. Uh, we can stay away from certain
people. We can get around the ones we
like. Uh, we, we can make peace, but it’s, it’s earthly peace.
Uh, what’s the better way? Well, verse 16, now may the Lord
of peace himself give you peace. So we need to go to the source
of peace. We need to go to the one who is the God of peace.
So a couple questions about this verse, who is the Lord? Well,
he’s the everlasting creator. He’s the everlasting God, the
sovereign God. He does not change. He is not a shifting shadow. He’s the God who decrees whatsoever
comes to pass. He’s the God that works through
his created order, through natural law. He’s the God of providence.
What he makes, he cares for. He’s the God who saves. And this
peace that comes from God comes from God himself. He is peace
himself. And he is the source of peace.
You can get the fake peace, the fake shalom. And you can think
you have peace, but you absolutely do not. Now think of who is the
Lord. It’s Christ. What did Isaiah
say of Jesus? Well, a virgin shall conceive
and give birth and he will be the prince of peace. He’ll be
the Messiah, the warrior, the Lord, the anointed one, the coming
one. He’ll be the King who sits on
David’s throne. And he doesn’t just beat the Philistine. He
beats Satan, has victory over him. And then we have the fruit
of the spirit is peace. So who is the Lord? He is God,
triune God, father, son, Holy spirit. And he’s the source of
peace. Well, what is peace? Well, we
don’t want the fake peace. We don’t want worldly peace.
We don’t even want a fake Christian peace. You know, we hear in the
Christian world, sometimes you want, Peace, do these things,
and they aren’t really biblical, but it’s proposed as Christian
peace. Is peace perfect everything?
Absolutely not. But it is a settled soul. It’s
a settled soul in the midst of chaos. It’s a settled soul understanding
east of Eden, things are messy. They’re broken by sin. And peace
is 100% from God. It is 100% spiritual. But it’s also a hundred percent
physical. We think of the word Shalom.
We think of Old Testament peace. It was well-being inward and
well-being outward. What did God promise to Israel?
He promised them he would be their God. They would be his
people. He promised that he would love them with an everlasting
love, that his steadfast love and faithfulness would never
leave them. And he promised them a prosperous life in the land
that he would give them, a land where they had the border stretch
as far as they would go. They would have peace from their
enemies as they worshiped him and followed him and lived for
him. They would be a nation where everyone would look in and say,
what’s going so well with them? That’s what we want. And so God
would give them both spiritual and physical wellbeing. It was
a wholeness. It was a settledness. Be still, God would say, and
know that I am God. It is well with my soul. We think of the Heidelberg Catechism,
what is my only comfort in life and in death. What is my only
peace in life and death? And it’s that we belong to our
faithful savior, Jesus Christ. He’s bought us with his blood.
He knows the hairs on our head. He feeds the sparrows. And we
have the confidence, the good assurance that whatever he ordains
is for our everlasting good. And so we find peace in God himself
and we find it in the way he defines it, spiritual and physical,
wholeness, well being. Well, when does he give peace?
Think of in the early chapters of the Bible, Genesis. The spirit
of God was hovering over the face of the deep, over the chaos.
Everything was formless and void and the spirit of God, the word
of God, the wisdom of Jesus took what was chaotic and made it
orderly, formed it and filled it. And so you can think of peace
cosmically. The disordered world became ordered. He does it again after the flood.
He takes what is chaotic and makes an orderly world. We think of the benediction in
numbers. Israel’s out on the wilderness.
Scary out there. No 7-Elevens, no grocery stores,
no provision. And they’re just out there with
the scorpions and the snakes. And what does God tell Moses
to do? Didn’t say curse the people. He says, bless them. Put my name
on them. The Lord bless you in peace.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause his face or his
countenance to shine upon you and give you peace. He gives
us peace at the cross. We who were far off because of
sin, we have been brought near by the precious blood of Jesus.
And then as we grow in the Christian life, we have assurance of God’s
love. We have peace of conscience. We have joy in the Holy Spirit.
We grow and increase in grace and we persevere till the end.
All of that through the peace that God provides. As you live
a life of faith, as you live in this world east of Eden, you
fight the good fight, you’re harassed by enemies and by sin. And as you deal with these things,
as you repent, as you obey, as you bear fruit, as you put away
the bales of payor and all the things that harass us, you begin
to have peace. Well, what does it mean to have
peace in every way? In all circumstances. It does not matter what is going
on around you, no matter the circumstances, storms, shaking,
whatever, you can have peace. You probably heard the interviews
with the man stuck in space. Went to the space station, what,
for a week or two? Ended up being nine months. an outspoken Christian,
and he tells you very plainly my faith in God. But every Sunday
he got to Zoom with his church. And so the God of peace and the
people of God brought him peace. I’m sure he went nuts. How am
I going to get home? Am I stuck here forever? Are
we going to run out of oxygen? Whatever you might think of when
you’re stuck in space. I’m sure he at least had the
thoughts of the Heidelberg Catechism. What’s my only comfort? in life
and in death or what’s my only comfort being stuck in space
that I belong to Christ and not a hair can fall from my head
without it being the will of the heavenly father. And so we,
we want the peace of the Lord. He’s the source, the provider,
um, He gives it to us freely. And so we want the peace of the
Lord, but we also want the presence of the Lord. Paul simply says
in verse 16, the Lord be with you all. We think of the presence
of God. And I think appropriately, we
say in our minds, God is far off. He’s in heavens. He lives
in the heavens above. He dwells in an inapproachable
light. No eye can see, no ear can accurately
hear. We aren’t made for that kind
of glory. We think of Isaiah who pronounced
woes upon himself when he saw God. We think of Ezekiel. We
think of John on the Isle of Patmos who fell over as though
dead. We can’t look upon God and live. He is far off. He is
other. He is holy. He is distant. But
God also comes near. In the scriptures, we have Theophanes,
the burning bush. We have Joshua run into the commander
of the Lord’s army. Most will say it’s a Christophany,
an appearance of Jesus. We have the benediction. Again,
God says, the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine
upon you, be gracious. And what does God say? Through
Moses to Aaron and his sons, the priest, so you shall put
my name on my people. And so when you get the benediction,
you go out with God, God with you, God placed upon you. I think
most importantly, the presence of the Lord comes in the face
of Jesus. We call Jesus Emmanuel, which
means God with us. John says, in the beginning was
the word. The word was with God. The word was God. But the word
became flesh and made his dwelling or his tabernacle upon us. God camped with the Israelites
in the wilderness. And now Jesus camps among his
church in the world. And we say things like, I’ve
invited Jesus into my heart. We say the truth of the scripture
that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit
dwells in us. Think of Psalm 46, Martin Luther’s
favorite. Be still and know that I am God. God is our refuge, our strength,
our ever present help in a time of trouble. God is with us. John
17. Jesus prays the Spirit will come and be with us, our comforter. Matthew 28, after Jesus gives
the great commission, what does he say to the church? I am with
you always, even to the end of the age. Or Ephesians 6, where
Paul gives the whole armor of God, he says, stand firm in the
Lord. and in the strength of his might
and put on the whole armor of God. And we take up the blessings
Christ has procured for us in salvation. And we go in the Christian
life with them. But here’s the grand presence
of the Lord. We get to be in heaven with him
forever one day, and there will be peace. The lion will lie down
with the lamb, the child will play by the serpent’s nest. And so in heaven, with the presence
of the Lord, we get God’s blessing. We get his benediction. But what
about today? Chaotic world, chaotic life,
chaotic church, life east of Eden. How do we get the presence
of the Lord? Well, you’re in church now. You’re
in the presence of the Lord and in the company of the saints.
We like to say Christ is among us. We gather today with all
who around the world call on the name of Jesus, but we are
also gathered with the festal gathering in heaven. The book
of Hebrews tells us that. When we have the Lord’s Supper,
you know, you got the Roman Catholic view, you got the Lutheran view,
but the Reformation view teaches us that in the Lord’s Supper,
our hearts, our spirits are raised up. into heaven where Christ
is seated. And in some mysterious way, we
experience the presence of Almighty God. And so we are raised up
to heaven where Christ is seated. And so we need the peace of the
Lord. We need the we need the presence of the Lord, but we
also need the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ be with you all a simple benediction there
in verse 18. What is the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Well, you could say the little
anacronym, you know, G-R-A-C-E, God’s riches at Christ’s expense.
You could speak of unmerited favor, favor you did not deserve
or earn. We can think back in the scriptures
to the language of the covenant. God did not set his affection
on us because we were the greatest of nations. But in fact, we were
the least. God doesn’t love the best and
brightest because they’re the best and brightest. He loves
those who are unlovable and he makes them lovable in Jesus Christ. And so the grace of our Lord
Jesus comes to us most clearly when we see his mission to leave
heaven, to become one of us, to live the life we should have
lived, to die the death we should have died. and to offer to God
the sacrifices that are suitable and pleasing to him. And so Jesus’
mission brought about our salvation. We who are far off had been brought
near. We who were separated and alienated. have had the peace
offering, Jesus Christ offered to God and the aroma of the offering
of the son has risen to the nostrils of God and he is pleased with
his son and so by faith he is pleased with us. We have been
reconciled to God. And so what about the chaos?
What about the sin? What about the doubts? What about
the striving and the stumbling and the can’t get traction? Think
about this, God hovered over the space, the face of the deep
in creation. God hovers over the earth after
the flood, new creation. The spirit of God hovered over
those dead, dry bones in Ezekiel 37. Last week, we thought about
how Jesus spoke into Lazarus’ tomb and his command, his voice
raised him from the dead, Jesus out on the sea with his disciples.
He calmed. the raging storm, peace, be still. And so the peace of the Lord,
the presence of the Lord and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
comes to us by the gift of God. It comes to us by the word of
God. It comes to us in church and in fellowship and in suffering
and in prayer. And so I’m sure every one of
us needs a dose of it. We know the world does. We know
the church does. But Paul desperately wants that
to be the case for the Thessalonians. And don’t we want that to be
our provision today? And so let’s ask for God’s help
and his blessing of grace and peace. Pray with me. Lord, the world is upside down. Our lives are upside down and
only you can turn them right side up. And so we pray for your
grace, your presence. and your peace to do that, we
ask in the mighty name of Jesus, who himself is peace, and it’s
in his name we pray, amen. Let’s respond to God’s word,
we have number 555 to sing, let’s stand.