Professional Documents
Culture Documents
People”
1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5
But along the way, Paul manages to tell us four things that are very
important for the living of the Christian life. If we're going to live our
lives in light of the return of Jesus Christ, and we said that's one of
the great themes of this letter of 1 Thessalonians, then we need to
understand these four things. I want you to be on the lookout for
them as we read this passage. The first one you’ll see in verse 18.
There's this little phrase, “Satan hindered us.” You’ll see it crop up
again in the fifth verse of chapter 3 where Paul speaks about
worrying that the tempter may have tempted the Thessalonians.
Paul is conscious of Satan attempting to undermine and oppose
God's people. That's the first thing I want you to keep your eye on in
this passage.
The second thing you’ll see in verse 20. Paul, when describing what
his real motivation is for ministry, says this, “You are our glory and
joy.” Now we need to figure out what in the world Paul means by
that. What is Paul saying when he says, “You are our glory and joy”?
That's where he expresses what his ultimate reward is for Gospel
ministry.
Heavenly Father, this is Your Word. Open our eyes that we might
behold wonderful things in it. Give us ears to hear and to respond in
belief to the truth that You teach us. We ask this in Jesus' name,
amen.
This is the Word of God. Hear it:
“But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in
person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great
desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you
— I, Paul, again and again — but Satan hindered us. For what is our
hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at His
coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.
A PASTOR’S WARNING
And the first thing you see is the warning. It comes incidentally. It's
Paul in the context of explaining why he hasn't come back to
Thessalonica. “I've wanted to come back,” he says. “In fact, I've
tried. Over and over again I've wanted to come back but - end of
verse 2 or end of verse 18, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 18, “but
Satan hindered us.” Paul is saying he wanted to come back to see
the Thessalonians but Satan hindered him. Now you need to be
asking the question, “How exactly did Satan do that?” The
commentators have a number of interesting suggestions. Some think
that Paul is indicating that the Jewish opposition to his ministry in
Thessalonica or maybe where he is now is keeping him from being
able to come back to the Thessalonians. That's a possibility. It's also
a possibility that Paul's thorn in the flesh is keeping him from being
able to come back to them. Do you remember in his letter to the
Corinthians Paul calls his thorn in the flesh a what? “A messenger
from Satan.”Heavenly HHHIHHeaven And commentators for two
thousand years have speculated on what that thorn in the flesh was.
Was it a physical malady that he had that had flared up and was
keeping him from coming back to the Thessalonians? I don't know.
Some have said maybe the leaders in Thessalonica had actually put
in place legal restrictions against Paul and his team from coming
back. You know Paul and his team had kicked up a little fuss in
Thessalonica and so maybe the civil leaders had actually passed
legal restrictions on Paul coming back into the city. Or maybe,
maybe the reason that Paul has not been able to come back is
because of sin and scandal in Corinth and he's having to deal with
that even from Athens and it's keeping him from coming back to
Thessalonica. In the end, my answer is, “I don't know how it was that
Satan hindered Paul from coming to the Thessalonians, but Paul is
actually aware of the fact that Satan is behind his inability to get
back to the Thessalonians.” That is huge. You need to think about
that. Now he doesn't drop that idea because if you look down to
chapter 3 verse 5 he tells us that one of his worries while he's away
from the Thessalonians is that the tempter had come and tempted
them. In other words, Paul is concerned that a real, personal evil is
not only opposing his ability to come back and minister to the
Thessalonians but may be attempting to undermine the
Thessalonians themselves. This is huge; we need to understand
this.
In this world, we not only have to deal with the allurement of the
world and the culture with the enticement to sin that comes from the
flesh, our own inclination to sin, we have to deal with the devil. There
is a being in this world that is older than humanity that has a design
to destroy you forever. And the apostle Paul believes that with all his
heart and so he writes about it here. Do you believe it? I do. I've
seen it at work. When people who know better look you in the eye
and act against their own best interest here and hereafter, I smell
that angel from the pit that Billy read about - Abaddon, Apollyon,
Satan. Paul will call him “the evil one.” He’ll call him, “the tempter” in
this passage. There is a real, personal evil in this world who wants to
sift you like wheat. We've got to factor that into our thinking. No,
that's not an excuse for us to say, “The devil made us do it. I don't
have any personal responsibility.” The Bible never undermines our
personal responsibility by appeal to Satan. We always have to look
at our own hearts. We always have to consider all of the total context
of sin and situation in our lives, but we must also remember that
there is a person that wants to destroy us, Satan, the devil. And that
means that we cannot fight him with flesh and blood.
The second thing is this. Paul explains what's in it for him. You
know, if you walked up to Paul and you said, “Okay, so Paul, you've
been beaten, you've been left for dead, you've been shipwrecked,
you've been stranded, you've been slandered, you've been falsely
accused, you’re in chains on your way to Rome, what's in it for you?
Why do you do this?” He tells you his answer right here. It's in verse
19 and 20. “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before
our Lord Jesus at His coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory
and joy.” Now Paul had people in Thessalonica who were saying,
“Paul's in it for money. Paul's in it for ambition. Paul's in it for praise
and fame.” Paul says, “You want to know what I'm in it for? I'm in it
for you.” And he pictures a scene. What's the scene? The Lord
Jesus Christ has come and what is Paul doing? His boast, his
reward, his crown — what's he going to get from the Lord? You,
before the Lord Jesus. You, with the Lord Jesus. You, safe home
with the Lord Jesus on the day of His return. Paul says, “That's what
makes me do this. That's what makes me work night and day. That's
what enables me to bear the anxiety and the pressure and the
persecution is to get to that day when you’re safe home with Jesus
and His return. That's what I'm in it for. You are my reward, safe
home with Jesus.”
I was a youth director in my previous life and one of the great fears
and terrors that I had was that I would go off on a retreat with fifty
kids and come back with forty-nine. I kid you not, the whole time I
was away — massive amusement parks, big cities, beach retreats,
and foreign mission trips - the whole time I was thinking, “Lord, just
get me back with all fifty of those kids.” And when we pulled into the
parking lot of the church and all of them were distributed to their
parents and they were happily on the way home, I was the most
relieved human being on the planet.
And here's the apostle Paul saying, “You want to know what I'm in it
for? I'm in it for the day when I hand you over to Jesus and you’re
safe home for eternity and I'm going to take a billion year nap
because I've spent my life making sure that you weren't temporarily
happy but that you were everlastingly happy. And that meant I had to
fight when you were tempted to swap cheap, temporary happiness
for eternal happiness. I had to fight your sin. I had to fight the world. I
had to fight the flesh. I had to fight the evil. But I do it all because I
want to be there on the day when you’re safe home with the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I can say, ‘There they are, Jesus. They’re safe
with you now. That's all the reward I want. I just want them safe
home.’ That's what I'm in it for.” That's huge for us to understand.
There are people ready to pour their lives out for us just to get us
there. They’re ready to put blinders on us so we won't be pulled off
the pathway - keep going, keep going, cross the finish line —
because they want us to be there. That's what Paul's saying to the
Thessalonians. “That's my hope. That's my crown. That's my glory.
That's my joy — to get you safe home with Jesus.”
A PASTOR’S PURPOSE
A PASTOR’S PREPARATION
That takes us to the fourth thing that Paul says in passing here. Look
at verse 3. “For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.”
For what? For these afflictions. “We are destined for afflictions,” Paul
says. He elaborates on that in verse 4. “For when we were with you,
we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just
as it has come to pass and just as you know.” Paul is saying
suffering, affliction, trials in the Christian life are not a surprise. We
are destined for them. They are certain to come. They won't maybe
come, they won't might come, they won't might could come; they will
come, they are destined to come, and it's our job to prepare you for
them. How do we prepare you for them? By rooting and grounding
you, by exhorting and encouraging you, by establishing and
strengthening you in the truth, in the faith, in the Gospel. That's how
we prepare you to endure those trials, those afflictions, those
sufferings. They are coming.
A few years ago Matt Chandler, the pastor of The Village Church in
Fort Worth, Texas, was burdened pastorally that part of his job was
to prepare his congregation to suffer. Now you understand his
congregation is very young. If you’re over thirty-five at The Village
Church you’re an old timer. And he had not done many funerals at
The Village Church to that point, but he felt convicted that he needed
to prepare his people for suffering. One of the first things that
happened was that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was in
his home playing with his children, he fell over with a seizure, and he
found out that he had a brain cancer. Since then there have been
numerous trials that proved out the importance of him as a pastor
preparing his people to suffer. He, in preparing them to suffer, was
preparing himself to suffer and then preparing them to experience
the afflictions of life.
Now let's take our hymnals and turn to number 332 and sing it as a
prayer.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.