Living Life in Light of Jesus Return: A Pastor Who Loves His

People

1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5

The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to 1

Thessalonians chapter 2. Were going to read to the end of that
chapter and then into the first few verses of 1 Thessalonians chapter
3. You remember the last time we were together in this passage we
were saying that Paul has detractors in Thessalonica who are
slandering him. Theyre saying things to the Thessalonians
Christians like, Paul only cares about your money. What he's really
after is money, or, He only cares about building up a group of
followers. He's looking for position. He's looking for respect. He's
looking for importance. You are simply chattel to him. He's using you
for what he can get out of you and as evidence of this, look at him
he's left and you haven't heard from him since. And there's a real
sense in which the passage that we're reading today, and it will
actually go on to verse 13 well look at chapter 2 verse 17 down to
verse 5 today. Paul is saying to the Thessalonians, What those
people are saying about me is not true. I deeply love you, I wish that
I could be with you, there are specific reasons why I can't be with
you right now even though I want to be with you right now, but I want
to express to you the intensity of my love for you, my affection for
you, my concern for you. I want you to understand what my
motivations really are in ministry. Theyre not what these other
people are saying about me. I have very definite motives for ministry
and I'm going to tell you what those are. That's what Paul is doing in
this passage. He's showing his love for these Christians. And in fact,
we kind of get a picture of how a pastor loves his people in this
passage as Paul talks about how he loves the Thessalonians.

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 youll see in verse 18.
There's this little phrase, Satan hindered us. Youll 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 youll 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.

Then, in chapter 3, if you look especially at verse 2, youll see him

use this phrase, to establish and exhort you in the faith. When he
sends Timothy to go be with the Thessalonians and to minister to
him he explicitly says to the Thessalonians, The reason that I sent
Timothy was to establish and to exhort you in the faith. We need to
understand that because Paul is there explaining the purpose of
pastoral ministry. So he's given a warning about Satan, he's
explained something about what the ultimate reward of his ministry
is, and now he's explaining the purpose of pastoral ministry.

And then if you look in verse 3 he says, We are destined for this.
Now what is this? You have to look back up to the previous
sentence which ends with the words, these afflictions. So he says
in verse 3, We are destined for affliction. So he's preparing them for
the trials of life. I want to think about those four things with you today
and I want you to be on the lookout for those as we read God's
Word. Let's pray before we read it.

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.

Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left

behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's
coworker in the Gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your
faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves
know that we are destined for this. 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. For this reason, when I
could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that
somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in
vain.

Amen, and thus ends this reading of God's holy, inspired, and
inerrant Word. May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

Here is Paul, writing to the Thessalonians to tell them that he loves

them, that he wants to be with them, that even while he's been away
he's tried to get back to be with them, and that when he couldn't get
back to be with them, he thought about them, he prayed for them, he
was concerned for their wellbeing, and ultimately he sent his most
faithful colleague in ministry back to be with them even though he
missed having him in Athens. And in the course of telling the
Thessalonians that he loves them, Paul tells us four things that are
very important about living life in light of Jesus return. He gives us a
warning, he expresses to us what the ultimate reward of a minister of
the Gospel is for ministry, he explains the purpose of Gospel ministry
these things are important for us to understand and he talks
about preparing us to suffer trials and afflictions. And I want to look
at those four things with you.

A PASTORS 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. Hell 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.

Martin Luther, in his great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,

where he sort of gives a Christian paraphrase of Psalm 46, has us
sing early on in that great hymn, For still our ancient foe, doth seek
to work us woe. His craft and power are great and armed with cruel
hate; on earth is not his equal. Martin Luther believed in Satan just
like Paul and he knew that you and I do not have the power within us
natively, naturally to withstand him. So what, later on in the hymn, A
Mighty Fortress, does Martin Luther say that we do have? We have
the right Man on our side and we have the Spirit and the gifts. We
have the Lord Jesus Christ who died to liberate us from the bondage
and power of sin and Satan and we have the third person on the
Trinity indwelling us, uniting us to Christ, and gifting us to live the
Christian life. How do we fight Satan? By the right Man who is on our
side and by the Spirit and the gifts. Flesh and blood will not avail
against him. It is so important for us to remember that in our
marriages, in our families. It's not just our interpersonal tensions that
threaten to destroy us. There is a being older than humanity that
wants to destroy us and he cannot be fought with flesh and blood.
Paul is so kind, even in the midst of reminding these Christians that
he loves them, to remind them that Satan sought to hinder him and
Satan sought to tempt them. Satan works to hinder, to oppose, to
accuse, and to tempt us, and we must rely on spiritual weapons to
respond. That's the first thing I want you to see here a warning
from Paul even while he tells us that he loves the Thessalonians.

A PASTORS HOPE AND GLORY

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,
youre 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 youre 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 youre
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 youre safe home with the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I can say, There they are, Jesus. Theyre 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. Theyre
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 PASTORS PURPOSE

Third, Paul explains the purpose of his ministry to the Thessalonians.

And Paul says, You know, after I had tried and tried to come back to
you and I couldn't, first I sent word to hear how you were doing and
then finally I sent Timothy to be with you. And what did he send
Timothy to do? Look at chapter 3 verse 2. We sent Timothy, our
brother and God's coworker in the Gospel of Christ, to establish and
exhort you in your faith. What does that mean? To strengthen and
encourage you in the Gospel. Paul wanted them to be rooted and
grounded in the faith, in the truth, in the Gospel, and he wanted them
to be encouraged in the faith, in the truth, in the Gospel, and so he
sent Timothy for ministry. That's what pastors want their ministry to
result in you being strengthened, grounded, established; you
being encouraged, exhorted, comforted in the faith, in the truth, in
the Gospel, so that what? It's the end of the sentence. So that no
one would be moved by these afflictions.

A PASTORS 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 youre over thirty-five at The Village
Church youre 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.

Paul's saying that to the Thessalonians. I want to prepare you for

those afflictions so that you can do what? Remember I told you to
look at the second to last line in the first hymn that we sang. Turn
back to hymn number 4, second to last line, it's all the way in the
sixth stanza, and what does Johann Schuetz have us sing? He has
us sing, Though great distress my soul befell, the Lord my God did
all things well. Paul wants the Thessalonians and you and me, in
affliction, to be able to say, Though great distress my soul befell, the
Lord my God did all things well. In other words, we want you to
come through affliction, we want you to come through suffering
how? By faith in Christ, being grounded, being established, being
strengthened in faith, in the truth, in the Gospel, so that you can
resist Satan in his opposition, in his accusation, and his temptation,
so that you can withstand trials and tribulations and afflictions.

See, in the midst of just saying to this congregation, I love you. I

care about you, Paul has told us four things that we really need to
understand if we're going to live life in light of Jesus return. May God
bring those truths home to our hearts. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we need experientially to understand these truths

in our lives so come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, with all Your
quickening powers, and wake us up and make us see and believe
and embrace the Gospel and depend upon the right Man who is on
our side and the Holy Spirit and His gifts at work in our lives that we
might not succumb to the world, the flesh, or the devil, or trial. In
Jesus' name, amen.
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.