Until We Meet again

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Well, tonight we’re going to be in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, if you’ll turn there with me, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, and we’re going to complete our study tonight of the book of 1 Thessalonians, but not our series on these two books. We’ve been looking at Paul’s letters to the church at Thessalonica and what he had to say to them about the subject of finishing well. And if you’ll recall back to how I introduced this series and what I’ve reminded us of multiple times, this is not finishing well in the sense of Paul writing 2 Timothy to Timothy because he knows his time of departure is close at hand.

He knows that his time on earth is just about done. And so with that realization that I just have a few days left, I know the end definitely is coming near, and I want to make sure that I tie up all the loose ends, that I finish well, that I make everything count. I don’t want to discount that, but for most of us, for most of us, we don’t get to a point where we have a definite countdown, we know, okay, it’s just a matter of days.

For many of us, we may get to a point where we think, well, we don’t have much longer, but then it comes more suddenly or less suddenly than we’d planned on. And when we get right down to it, none of us know how much longer we have left on earth. None of us know how much longer we have with each of the people and each of the relationships in our lives.

God could take anybody in a moment. We don’t know how much longer we have at a given job, necessarily. We don’t know how much longer we have living next to that neighbor.

In so many of the things in our lives, we don’t know whether we’ve got five minutes left in this situation or we’ve got 50 years left in this situation. And so we find ourselves more in the boat of the church at Thessalonica, where they knew the end was coming. And as far as they were concerned, the end is coming soon.

And as I’ve said so many times, God’s timetable of soon is not the same as ours. Because soon for us is, you know, he’s coming this week. It’s been 2,000 years from our perspective.

And yet we know that we have the promise that Jesus will come again soon, just according to God’s timetable. So we find ourselves in the same boat as these people at Thessalonica, that they knew the end was coming. They knew Jesus was going to return.

They just didn’t know when it was going to be. And so they were faced with the difficulty of how to take what time they had left and make it count. We’ve talked about some of the difficulties, some of the challenges in that.

They faced some persecution. They faced some false teachers. They faced some people in their midst who went overboard and said, We’re just going to get rid of all of our stuff, and we’re going to sit around on a hillside and play guitar and sing Kumbaya and sponge off of everybody else who is working while we wait for Jesus to come back because it’s going to be any moment.

And Paul deals with each of these things in their proper turn. But the message that I’ve wanted us to take from our study of 1 and 2 Thessalonians is that for us to finish well means to take whatever amount of time we have left, and we don’t know. and make sure that we’re using it every day, using that time in the best way possible to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and advance His kingdom.

Whether we’ve got five minutes left or we’ve got 50 years left, we take that time, say, Lord, however much I have left, I’m going to use it and I’m going to make it count for you. Well, Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica in this first letter, this first book, We’re here in chapter 5. We’re coming to the end of it.

He writes and he sort of signs off to the church at Thessalonica. And it’s not, again, like a 2 Timothy. These are my final words to you.

Because we know from the rest of the story, Paul wrote another letter to them to continue on this theme and straightening out some of the things they had, especially those who were so eager for the coming of Christ that they sat around and did nothing. But this is where he signs off his first letter. And so instead of saying, oh, these are his final words, I look at this more as his until we meet again words.

Until I get to talk to you. And keep in mind, Paul still is longing to come back and see the Thessalonians. He’s hoping that the letter will suffice until he gets to be there.

He still wants to come there as we talked about in some of the earlier chapters. So look at this as his, until we meet again, sign off. As we look at this passage, I’m going to be honest with you.

Not that I’m usually dishonest with you. But just to be transparent with you, this was a difficult passage to prepare to preach. Not because it’s particularly hard to understand.

but because it’s structured in an unusual way compared to a lot of the passages we’ve studied. If we’re not careful, we can end up looking at this passage as just a big long list of things to do. And Paul does list some things here, and he lists their imperatives, their commands.

He does list some things that we need to keep in mind and some things that we need to do. But if we are not careful, we can look at it as just simply a list of do this, do this, do this, do this, and totally miss the spiritual point behind all of it. So as we turn to this passage, consider it from the standpoint of this is Paul wanting to squeeze in all the important things he can think of, not because it’s his last words to them, but because it has to hold them over for a little bit until he either gets to come see them or gets to write to them again.

and he gives them this list and says here are the things that are important but we don’t want to miss the spiritual importance of this list at the end. And so we go to 1 Thessalonians 5 we’re going to start in verse 12 tonight. He says now we ask you brothers and sisters to give recognition to those who labor among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you.

and to regard them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we exhort you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone, see to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all.

Rejoice always. Pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Don’t stifle the Spirit. Don’t despise prophecies. But test all things.

Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil. And again, as I said, we could easily stop there.

And what made this such a difficult passage, again, is it comes out like a list. And I like to take a passage of Scripture, and even though we may look at a lot of the details, I like to bring it around to one theme and one major point, but this is a list of stuff to do. It’s hard to put this all into one thing for you to walk out of here with. The other alternative is to break the list up into separate sermons and come in here and teach for 30 minutes on, oh, I don’t know, rejoice always.

two words and spend 30 minutes on it and do that with each item on the list that doesn’t seem like the best the most efficient use of our time to study God’s word together we don’t want this just to be a list of things to do all of these things are important don’t get me wrong there are some important things that he leaves them here to remember and we are going to talk about what they mean. But he doesn’t just leave them with a list. Do this, do this before I get home. Like when my wife has gone to visit family in the city and says, can you do something for me before you get home?

I told her one time, she said, would you do one thing for me? I said, for you, I’ll do two things. That was a mistake.

Because usually it ends up, can you do something for me? Yes, I can do something. And then comes the list, a whole list of things.

I’ll be home in an hour. Can you take care of all these things? Sure.

I don’t know how, but I’ll try. You know, we don’t want to just look at this as the list of Paul says, oh, one more thing, and turns into 15 things, and here’s all the stuff for you to remember. These are all important, but there’s something more important than the list, and it’s their relationship to God, because he says in verse 23.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. We’ve talked about that word sanctify in the past. I’ve explained to you that sanctification means to make something holy. And sanctification is entirely the work of God.

It’s something that we need to embrace. It’s not something where we just sit back and say, I’m going to live my old sinful lifestyle and do exactly what I feel like and I’m just going to trust that God will sanctify me when he’s ready. Oh no, he’s already at work sanctifying you if you’re a believer, but it’s something you need to embrace.

It’s something God calls us to pursue as well. We can’t sanctify ourselves. It’s something only God can do, but he wants us to embrace it.

This idea of sanctification, of being made holy, there’s a sense in which at the moment of conversion, God sets us apart and says we’re His. That’s what holy means, to be set apart. Where God seals us with His Holy Spirit, He sets us apart, it’s like He stamps us on the forehead and says, they’re mine, they belong to me.

Our sins are forgiven, they are covered under the blood of Jesus Christ, and we have exchanged the filthy rags of our own good works and our own sinful nature for the righteousness of Christ. And in that legal sense, we are declared holy and we are sanctified at the moment of conversion. And yet there’s the ongoing work of sanctification where through the rest of our lives, God brings our behavior and our hearts in line with what He’s already declared legally to be the case. Does that make sense?

you can legally adopt a child and from that moment of adoption they are stamped, they are sealed they are legally yours and yet it may take it may take weeks, it may take months it may take years for their hearts to be brought in line with the reality that they are yours so God at the moment of our conversion says they’re mine but then there’s this ongoing process where he changes our hearts to where we live like it, to where we act like more and more that we are his. So he prays that the God of peace would sanctify them. Now why is that important?

Because all these things that he talks about in verses 12 through 22, it sounds to us like a list of do this, do this, do this. If you can just do all of these things, you’ll be a good little religious person. You’ll act like a Christian.

The reality is we cannot do these things apart from the sanctifying work of God. We need to realize that. There are so many things that are commanded in Scripture that God says, do this, and we have to be willing to do it, but at the same time we do not have the power to do it apart from His Holy Spirit who is within us.

Our nature and our natural inclinations go against each of the things that are written here. If these things came naturally to us, he wouldn’t write to us about doing them. They would just kind of be second nature.

But he tells us to recognize those who labor in the Lord and labor among you and lead in the Lord and admonish you and regard them very highly because of their work. And I don’t want to say too much about this because it might sound self-serving, but he’s talking about those who lead for the benefit of the church, and he’s talking about respecting them and he’s talking about following their leadership. Our human nature does not like to be led.

We don’t like to be led. At least we like to feel like we’re making our own decisions and we’re calling the shots. Sort of the thing I talked about this morning with the fleshly inclination to want to be the head of the church.

I want to call the shots and I want stuff done my way. I’m not talking about y’all. I’m talking about me.

I think we all do that. But I know I do that. Y’all don’t see that side of me because it’s in the sin nature that God works on.

And I don’t always verbalize those things. But we all have our. .

. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do. I should get to call the shots.

That’s our human nature. No, no, he says give recognition to those who labor among you and lead in the Lord and admonish you. And especially when they admonish you, when somebody preaches God’s word and says, wait a minute, this is wrong and this is right.

Our natural inclination is to say, you can’t tell me that. It’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we receive that message. And yet he says, including those who admonish you and regard them very highly in love because of their work.

I’m going to move on from that quickly. He says, be at peace among yourselves. Human nature is not peaceful, is it?

Peace is a rare thing in our world. I can’t think of a time, I can’t remember a time where there was no conflict going on in the world. and I think if you stopped and thought about it you’d be hard pressed to think of a time in your lifetimes either I’m younger than most of you I was born in 1985 some of my earliest recollections are the first Gulf War and I know that during the 90s it was largely a time of peace for the United States.

I grew up kind of thinking that was normal until 9-11. And we were also shocked when 9-11 happened because that kind of killing and that kind of violence and that kind of conflict was not something that happens in our streets. Except I also grew up in the Oklahoma City area and there was the 95 bombing.

But we looked at that. That was an isolated incident. until 9-11.

This stuff didn’t happen on our shores. All we got was a wake-up call to what’s been going on all. .

. That time of peace that we had in the 90s, there were a lot of places in the world where it wasn’t peaceful. And as I look back on the history, I can’t think of a day in my entire lifetime where there haven’t been conflicts and people killing each other all over the world.

So is that what he was talking about? Is that what Paul was talking about? Don’t kill each other at Thessalonica?

No. I’m just making the point. Our human nature doesn’t really run toward peace.

Our human nature, our sin nature, gets riled up and demands our rights and demands what we want, and it leads to conflict. He says, we exhort you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle. Warn those who aren’t pulling their weight.

human nature also likes to get something for nothing he says we need to warn about that comfort the discouraged help the weak again sometimes we have moments of compassion either because of our Christian faith or because of our society that’s accepted the premise we ought to do things to help the weak and the vulnerable. But a lot of our human nature is step on whoever you need to to get where you want to be. Even if you don’t go full on, I’m going to step on whoever, sometimes it’s easier just to turn a blind eye to the suffering and the struggle of those around us.

Be patient with everyone. I’m like, oh, that’s not in our nature. That’s not in my nature.

That’s not in my nature. I’m not a patient person. When I see that it’s needed, it needed to be done yesterday.

We’ve gotten to a point, I’m so spoiled about this. Amazon offers two-day free shipping because I’m a Prime member. They offer two-day free shipping, and sometimes that’s not even fast enough for me.

Yeah, but I don’t want to pay extra. I just want it now. All right?

I want it to. I can’t wait. I can’t wait until the drones start buzzing through the sky and delivering stuff here.

You know? I want it today. I ordered some books a couple weeks ago, and they weren’t here in two days.

They weren’t here in three days. It took them eight days to get here, and I about blew a gasket until I realized I’d accidentally ordered them on eBay and not Amazon. I am not patient, and you’ve heard enough stories about me driving to know that I’m not patient.

And I suspect I’m not alone in that. Because nobody ever sat me down as a child and taught me how to be impatient. It just comes from this sin nature in here.

I’m not always patient with people either I’m not always patient with people with their stories, their problems yes I know I’m the pastor and that’s part of my job and that’s why I work on that with God’s help but I’m not just automatically there be patient with everyone See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone. There again, we don’t have to sit down and teach our kids to hit back when somebody hits them. That’s repaying evil for evil.

They just know how to do that. I know we teach that’s wrong. We teach turning the other cheek.

But sometimes when we’re wronged, isn’t our first instinct to jump into doing something back? You sit there and look at me like, no, no, it’s never to jump in and do something back. But do you not have at least that flash of a thought in the flesh, that first second after something happens, that you think, I just want to burn their house down and salt the ground so nothing grows there again.

I just gave you a glimpse into the dark depths of my soul there. Folks, we have that gene in us. We’ve inherited that gene from the fall, from Adam and Eve.

But he says don’t do that. See that no one repays evil for evil to anyone. but always pursue what is good for one another and for all.

Do what’s good for all. Do what’s good for one another, not just ourselves. Rejoice always.

I don’t always feel this one. At least once a week, my wife and I have a conversation about how worrying is a sin. And it is.

It is. I’m not talking about being concerned about things. I’m not talking about taking care of things and being responsible.

I’m talking about sitting there and just worrying and stewing. Because you know what that is? It’s us saying, God, I don’t trust you to handle this.

I don’t rejoice always. I worry way more than I rejoice. When life throws me a curveball, my instinct is not to rejoice.

My instinct is to worry and whine to God about it. He says rejoice always. I was at a preaching conference yesterday.

We were discussing the book of Philippians. We really were discussing Philippians 4. 13 and how that verse is taken out of context so badly.

One of the things we talked about was how, I believe it’s earlier in chapter 4, Paul talks about rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. He says, always rejoice in the Lord. And you know what, in case you missed it, I’ll tell you that again.

Always rejoice in the Lord. Do you know, does anybody know where Paul was when he wrote the book of Philippians? He was in jail.

He was in jail. our human nature is not to rejoice in circumstances but God can give us that ability pray constantly you ever have those times where I just don’t want to pray I’m just too tired I just don’t feel like it and we make excuses I don’t know what to pray I just don’t have time I heard Adrian Rogers talking about this recently. I heard him recently.

He wasn’t talking about it recently unless he was talking to the Lord about it. But in one of his messages, he was talking about this very thing, the reasons why we don’t pray. The reasons why we don’t pray as often as we ought to.

The reasons why we don’t pray as fervently as we ought to. And I’ve been guilty of this from time to time. But he said, he talked about how we have time to do all these other things, and ultimately we make time for what we actually want to do.

And Adrian Rogers said, the reason why we don’t pray when we don’t pray is because we don’t want to pray. I was driving down Milt Phillips and felt like he just, man, do you want the dagger back from my heart, or should I keep it in here? You know, because he got me.

I realize more and more how utterly dependent I am on God and how dependent I am on prayer. And I find myself the older I get spending more and more time in prayer. And yet there are some times that I think I ought to pray right now, but I just flat out don’t want to.

And that’s the flesh. you know what we do we power through it and we pray anyway sometimes I’ve spent so much prayer so much time in prayer about a situation the day before I’m just out of things to say there have been times in the last month that I’ve spent I’ve had such an emotional time of pouring out my heart to god about something that I have nothing left in the well and so the next day I feel the need to pray about it again I just don’t want to I’m too tired and when I say too tired I mean spiritually and emotionally wrung out and I use that as an excuse not to pray when what I ought to do is talk to god about the reason why I feel that way praying to god can be as simple as telling him what’s on your heart god I I feel so exhausted and so worn out by this experience and by pouring my heart out to you that I really don’t know what to say. Because you know what?

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings that words cannot express. When we don’t know what to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. It doesn’t mean we stop communicating with our Father.

Paul said, pray constantly. King James says, pray without ceasing. Don’t stop talking to God.

Don’t get into that place where you think, God, not today. Sometimes you just don’t feel like praying. Do it anyway.

Give thanks in everything. You’ll notice it does not say give thanks for everything. I think that’s unrealistic.

Give thanks for everything. Lord, thank you for the divorce. Lord, thank you for the cancer.

we don’t pray for these things but we can give thanks to God in the midst of those things because even in the midst of those difficult times there’s always something that we can look to and realize God’s care and provision for us so he doesn’t say give thanks for everything he says give thanks in everything but again our human nature is not to just be thankful all the time but he says this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus He says, don’t stifle the Spirit. Sometimes our tendency is when we hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us, when we feel the Holy Spirit moving, and it’s something we don’t want to do, or we’re scared by, or we’re uncomfortable with, we’ll just shove that down in there. Tell the Holy Spirit, just shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, no more.

I don’t want to hear that. sometimes I get to a point with my kids and the tattling on each other that I’ve just had it for the day and they could come and tell me the other one has set their hair on fire and I’m going to tell them I don’t care no not really not really I don’t want to sound like a bad parent here but no he looked at me she tore up my paper I don’t care is anyone dying? I will ask that is anyone dying or in danger of dying?

no, then shh I don’t want to hear it and I just cut them off I’m just going to stop you right there I feel like we do that with the Holy Spirit when it’s something we don’t want to hear we just shh, shh, shh just shh that’s not just my opinion that we do that Paul said, don’t stifle the Spirit. Why? Because in our flesh, we sometimes try to stifle the Spirit.

He says, don’t stifle the Spirit. Now, this is connected to verse 20. Don’t despise prophecies.

Now, in their day, they didn’t have the finished New Testament. And so somebody would bring a prophetic word from God, a new revelation that they would speak to the church, and this would be verified in different ways. They had speaking in tongues and things of that nature.

But When he says don’t despise these things, that’s not a command to us to say, I don’t know, have people stand up in the service and prophesy. Give them a new word from God. Have people stand up and speak in tongues.

What he’s saying is don’t despise what God is trying to tell you. I want to be very clear. I believe that everything that we need to know from God, everything for special revelation has come to us in God’s written word.

All right? I believe that is how God speaks to us today. I don’t want you to misinterpret anything and think I’m moving us in a direction of some of these churches and say, oh, God’s still giving us new revelations today because a lot of these new revelations have nothing to do with the Bible.

In our day, it would be the equivalent of saying, don’t despise what God says in His Word. Because they were getting messages from God through the prophets in the early church, and some of them were stifling the Spirit by saying, we don’t want to hear what God speaks through this prophet. In our day, don’t despise what God’s Word says.

Don’t stifle the Spirit by refusing to listen to the Word, but test all things. If somebody stands up and says they’ve got a prophecy, if somebody stands up and says they’ve got a word of wisdom, give them a hearing. Again, in the early church when these things were still going on, give them a hearing, but test all things.

Also, don’t just accept that anybody who says, hey, I’ve got a message from God, is really bringing you a message from God. So to apply that to our world, don’t despise what the word of God says. Don’t despise someone who teaches God’s word.

Listen, but test what they say against God’s word. And I tell you this all the time. If I haven’t told you recently, that’s my fault.

But when I preach something, you go to this book here, and you look for where it says that. If what I’m telling you contradicts this book, then you don’t listen to what I said. You listen to this book.

Is that clear enough? I am not the authority, God’s word is. Test all things and hold on to what is good.

So when people were bringing them a message, okay, listen to what they’ve got to say, test it against the scriptures like the Bereans did in Acts chapter 17. If it’s good, meaning it’s in line with what we already know that God has revealed, listen to it, hold on to it. If it’s not, toss it aside.

Stay away, he says in verse 22, from every kind of evil, from all appearance of evil. all of these as I have outlined them go against the grain of who we are in the flesh these are all things that are impossible for us to do apart from the work of god in us so he says now may the god of peace himself sanctify you completely may you always get closer to that that place where you’re more and more like jesus christ where you come to a place of of completeness and maturity in the Lord. And may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept, may all of you entirely be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So he tells the church at Thessalonica, when Jesus, you’re so focused on the return of Jesus Christ, when he comes back, my prayer for you is that he will find that your entire self is pure and blameless in him.

can we do that on our own absolutely not that’s his work within us he says your whole spirit soul and body the whole self the whole person and we cannot divide life up into the secular and the sacred we can’t do it we can’t say this part of my life belongs to jesus christ and I’m going to be upstanding and I’m going to be religious but you don’t know how things are out in the secular world and I’ve got to do this, and I can’t fall in line with this. You know, I’ve got to be this in the secular world, and this in my relationship with Jesus Christ. It didn’t work that way. He calls for our whole self, the body, the soul, the spirit to be kept sound and blameless.

Now, here’s why this is possible. Here’s why any of this is possible at all. Verse 24, he who calls you is faithful.

he will do it they were entirely dependent on the one who called them into the Christian life in order to live the Christian life and folks just as their sin nature is no different from ours their power to live the Christian life is no different from ours we are entirely dependent on the one who called us to the christian life in order to live the christian life he who calls you is faithful we cannot be perfectly faithful at any of these things we cannot be faithful in these things on our own power this this whole list of things that he goes through all these reminders that paul gave them are things that we are incapable of doing apart from the change that Jesus Christ has made in us and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit that continues in us on a daily basis. He who calls you is faithful. He will do it.

And he says, brothers and sisters, pray for us also. Greet all the brothers and sisters with a holy kiss. I’m not going to spend too much time on that because that’s not something we do anymore, and I’m okay with that.

I don’t really understand. I’ve always wondered how that works. I charge you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brothers and sisters the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

We need his grace to accomplish any of this. For us to be the Christians that he’s called us to be, for us to be faithful, for us to finish well, again as I said at the beginning and have said all throughout, we could easily look at this as a checklist of stuff we need to do. Do this, this, this, this, this, and this, and God will love you.

You’ll be good little Christians, and it’ll just be wonderful. Instead, it’s a reminder, these are the things we aim for, and the second part of the passage tells us how we get there. Well, preacher, I’m not patient.

I can’t be patient. How’s your walk with Jesus? Is it growing?

How’s your relationship with Jesus? Is it deeper than it used to be? Well, I can’t go along with that.

Don’t repay evil for evil. You don’t know what people are doing to me. No, but I know what people did to Jesus.

I know how Jesus responded when He was on the cross and said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. they didn’t understand the full implications of what they were doing Jesus could have destroyed the world and instead he asked the father to forgive them folks if he can forgive us if he can forgive all of those who put him on the cross he can give us the capacity to forgive others if he and his holiness can be patient with us in our sin, He can give us patience to deal with one another. I don’t feel like rejoicing or giving thanks.

If Jesus could maintain that relationship with the Father, if Jesus could retain that connection with the Father where He prayed to Him, He gave thanks, He rejoiced, He spent time in prayer with all that He had to struggle through here on this earth, then he can empower it in us as well. So rather than tonight looking at this as a list of things that you need to go out and do, shame on you if you’re not doing better at them, we need to look at this as a list of things that Jesus can and should be doing in us. Things w