Full Transcript

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. Whether you’re just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you’ll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. So let’s listen in to today’s lesson and go a little deeper. Second Thessalonians chapter 3. Stand firm and hold tight. Some preachers I’ve sat under were obsessed with alliteration.

By that I mean they apparently didn’t feel their sermon would make a proper impression at all unless they could make every major point start with the same letter. I’m not one of them. But for what it’s worth, here’s some alliteration that dawned on me the other night as I was reviewing what we’ve thought about from the Thessalonian epistles: belong, believe, and behave. I mean, there’s a lot in these letters, especially in the early chapters, about the value of belonging to a healthy local church body, like the one that was thriving in Thessalonica, one which Paul heard was influencing its whole area for Christ and the gospel. God doesn’t want any of us who are trying to follow Him to be lone rangers. We all have a role to play in a local church body by contributing to it with some of our time and some of our unique gifts.

And the body, symbiotically, has valuable benefits to put back into our lives too. It’s the key avenue through which we get taught and challenged and encouraged by hearing God’s Word, as well as inspired by experienced corporate worship, strengthened through the building relationships we have with others. And together, we can do with the other members things bigger than we could ever do by ourselves to advance God’s objectives in the world. So, finding the best, healthiest local church in your area, one that’s marked by faith and by confidence in God’s Word, a spirit of hope and expectancy, and a love for people and joining into it, belonging to it, that’s what God wants for every one of us. For the believe part, these letters gave us so much new information, didn’t they?

New information about what to believe about God’s plans for the future in particular, for the end of this era, information that gives us hope and confidence. For one thing, Paul explained where believers who die in faith are now and when we will see them again. That is, he told us that their spirits and souls are already at home with the Lord, but they will also be physically, bodily resurrected in the future. He also revealed the truth about the imminent return of Jesus for the universal church, that is, all true believers, which we call the rapture, that the trumpet call of God could sound at any time to take Christ’s own out of the world. Beyond that, he revealed a lot about what’s going to happen in the tribulation time on earth, a dramatic rise of evil, the unveiling of the Antichrist, and the delusions that will dominate the world during that short period of time.

We learn from these letters that although that time will be terrible as unbridled lawlessness reigns and because of God’s judgments that will be occurring, Christians are not destined to experience any of that. God is not going to pour out His wrath on His bride, those who belong to Jesus. We will have been taken up before that time. And we are also assured that the rebellion against God and the truth that culminates then, climaxing when that satanically controlled fake Messiah, who claims to be God and demands worship, that will all be blown away when Jesus returns from heaven in His powerful second coming. All of these big prophetic ideas are why First and Second Thessalonians are remembered and valued most for their eschatological content, their teaching about the end times. I believe this will all literally transpire just as the biblical writers say, which leaves the behave part.

Christianity is a very practical belief system. It’s not just theoretical, a lot of lofty ideas that don’t inform or affect our everyday lives. In the closing paragraphs of both First and Second Thessalonians, Paul, like every good parent ever, urges, actually commands, his spiritual children in that local church to behave, to live up to their calling as God’s children. Before we jump into a couple of his practical fatherly instructions, I want to discuss a couple things briefly, clear up a couple things that you could be confused by in Second Thessalonians. By a closing section, I’m referring to his words of encouragement and instruction that start at verse 13 in chapter 2, actually, and then run clear through to the end of this book. He writes this in chapter 2, verses 13 and 14.

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through your belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. By firstfruits, Paul meant the Thessalonian believers were among the first believers in their part of the world, Europeans, we would say. He says God chose them through the work of the Holy Spirit because it’s the Holy Spirit’s job in the church age to convict people of sin and persuade them that the gospel is true. But he also says God chose them through their belief in the truth because they needed to respond in faith to the message about Jesus that they heard. They had to believe it for themselves, buy into it, as I like to say.

So he joined those two concepts. God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and, and I have in my notes here, and in bold and all caps—you can’t see that, but that’s how I wrote it here—and your belief in the truth. He told them, God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through your belief in the truth. God called you through our gospel. That is Paul, Silas, and Timothy sharing the gospel with them. You know, those lines bring up one of the questions that we will never fully understand this side of heaven.

It’s regarding God’s role and our role in our salvation. It’s become something of an intellectual controversy among Bible-believing scholars, sadly. Some place all the emphasis on God’s role in initiating and accomplishing salvation, personal or unconditional election, they refer to it as. Others place all the emphasis on our faith, our choice, our decision to believe and to accept and follow Christ. And the two sides get dogmatic and argue about it and argue about it. In my opinion, that’s not useful, not fruitful.

It’s not an argument I feel any need to choose a side in. By unfruitful, I mean too many Bible teachers and pastors burn up too much energy trying to persuade people to adopt their view. And to what fruitful end? In this passage, it’s clear that both God’s initiative in calling the Thessalonians and their choosing to believe the message are both emphasized. In my mind and experience too, it seems that tipping the emphasis onto God’s part alone or our part alone in either direction. Too far from the balance point leads people to lose the big picture and start adopting what might seem like logical corollaries, but which are in fact ignoring important things in Scripture.

God’s sovereignty and our responsibility are both repeatedly taught in the New Testament, and they are in these verses. The fact my mind isn’t quite big enough to understand how they mesh perfectly doesn’t mean they don’t mesh perfectly in God’s mind. The Apostle Paul seems to be okay with that tension between these two concepts, recognizing God’s ways are higher than ours. So, so am I. We will undoubtedly discuss this more when we get to the book of Romans, but you won’t find me solving the question that great theologians of the past have never been able to solve to everybody’s satisfaction. And I’m okay with that.

I’m okay with letting the Scripture speak for itself without feeling the need to push everyone toward one or another theological camp. Paul warns his protégé Timothy against getting involved in wrangling over words and fruitless discussions, and frankly, that’s how I see the distracting Calvinist versus Arminian theological controversy. So I will spend very little time on it, as little as possible. Instead, I prefer to spend it on topics I know are more fruitful. Sorry if you’re hoping we would ride one hobby horse or another, because on Share the Word, we won’t. In verse 15, Paul writes this: So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by mouth or by letter.

Hold fast. That means keep a tight grip on them. The Apostle Paul knew good and well that pressure would keep coming against these early believers from the world around them, where Satan has a great deal of sway. And he also knew that wrong ideas and wrong philosophies would continue to bubble up among them as false teachers continued to infiltrate and spread wacky ideas. These things were already happening in the first century in a local church that was only a year old. Paul’s antidote then?

Stand firm and hold on tightly to the teaching, that is the doctrinal truths, that we have passed on to you both when we were there in person and what we have written in these letters. Same antidote as now. Stand firm and keep a tight grip on the teachings. Some translations use the term here traditions rather than teachings. The Greek word Paul actually used means what’s passed on from a teacher to a pupil, and clearly here refers to here what he had taught them while he was in Thessalonica a year or so before, and what he is writing them in these two inspired letters we call First and Second Thessalonians. An emphasis on traditions, disconnected from the immediate context here, can and has been misused, to say the least.

Some denominations have added layers of extra-biblical traditions to the truths taught in the New Testament, and over time those traditions grow and grow in importance until they are held up to be essentially as important or even sometimes more important than the things the New Testament actually teaches. That’s a clear and present danger. It’s exactly what happened with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. Remember them? They had added all kinds of traditions onto the teaching of the Old Testament and distorted the Jewish religion. Jesus had a constant problem with them, and often it was over their clash with their traditions, which they insisted were necessary.

Jesus rebuked those religious leaders in his day sternly on that topic more than once. For example, in Mark chapter 7, verse 8, he says, You lay aside the commandments of God to hold up your own traditions. A giant red flag should go up if you ever say to a clergyman, The New Testament seems to say this, but our church seems to practice something different. If their answer is a patronizing, But ours is an ancient church, and our traditions go back to the beginnings of Christianity, hey, run for the exits. No traditions of men. No traditions of men.

Anything that men have ever come up with should ever supersede the written Word of God. I wanted to clarify that, especially if you’re reading a translation that uses the word traditions in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and again in chapter 3, because it’s clear in this context that Paul is referring to what he had learned from Christ and was passing on to them, both what he taught when he was in their city and now what he is teaching through these inspired epistles. In no case was Paul impressing on them or anybody else his own ideas or human traditions that he liked. If you enjoy churches that have a lot of traditional practices, and I understand they feel familiar to you and comforting, there are certain traditions I enjoy. Just don’t let anyone persuade you that they are in any way on par with the authority of the Bible.

No human traditions are, no matter how long they’ve been practiced or by whom. When Paul urges the Thessalonian believers here, stand firm and keep a tight grip on the teachings, he is unquestionably referring to the foundational Christian truths taught by Jesus and the apostles, elsewhere called the faith. The truths now preserved for us in the New Testament writings. We must stay anchored to those he is urging. They are foundational. No matter where the culture around us is drifting or what pressures are mounting to change or abandon them, we must stay anchored to them because they are the unchangeable Word of God.

Okay, let’s get hortatory for a few minutes in Thessalonians, because that’s always where Paul ends up on the behave part, on the practical instructions. Believing the right things is only half the equation. Acting on them, living them out, that’s the other half. In the early part of chapter 3, Paul exhorts the believers to prayer for himself and his team. He obviously believed prayer makes a difference. Pray, he says, that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly and be honored wherever it goes, just as when it came to you.

Pray, too, he said, that we will be rescued from wicked and evil people, for not everyone is a believer. Ask God to knock down the barriers, he’s saying, so the gospel can advance quickly. And while you’re at it, pray for us, his servants on the front lines, because everyone, as you know, is not so receptive to our message. Paul ran into opposition from those who made themselves enemies of the gospel in Thessalonica. We saw that in the podcast on Acts chapter 17, if you remember. When he penned these letters, he was now in Corinth in southern Greece, and he again there was arrested.

Advancing the gospel often brings opposition. That’s one obvious way we know the spiritual dimension is real, by the way. Why should people care what we say about Jesus? Why should governments outlaw Christianity, confiscate Bibles, prevent people from meeting for worship? It really makes no sense. It’s unreasonable.

But it happens. And it happens because spiritual warfare is real. The gospel has enemies now as it did then, evil, unreasonable people motivated by Satan to try and disrupt the gospel’s spread. That’s why Paul is soliciting prayer as his team moves on to new places to share the good news and try to plant more Christian churches. Pray for us that the gospel will be received, that God will knock down some barriers for us. I’d like to make the same request for you, if I can.

Pray for Share the Word. Pray for our team, for us personally, as well as for the success of this Great Commission project. We’re at the very same task that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were. We’re using different methods, but we’re at the same task. Pray that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly, and help make that happen by sharing the podcast with your friends and family. Just this week, I learned that one of my longtime friends recently discovered our podcast, started listening to it, and realized the spiritual value.

Then he started sharing the link to our current podcast on his Facebook page, and he has a lot of Facebook friends. I mean, thousands. If you know folks who need to hear and understand the gospel and who could benefit from understanding God’s Word better, and who doesn’t, pray for them, and then share the podcast with them. When you see them personally, ask if they’ve listened to it and see if that opens an important conversation, opens a door to discuss your faith. This is God’s work, life-changing, eternity-changing work. So pray for us and join us in it.

Thankfully, we’re not in a place where such work is dangerous as Paul and his team were. But also pray especially for those today who are, because sharing the gospel often stirs up spiritual opposition, and there are still plenty of evil and unreasonable people around the globe who want to prevent its spread and its impact. That was exhortation number one, pray. The other exhortation, remember 1 Thessalonians, when Paul urged the church members to admonish idle and unruly members? Admonish means to counsel or warn someone. So he had been saying to them, You should have a word with those I’ve heard about who are being lazy and kind of leeching off of other people.

Let them know that that lifestyle is not okay. Most speculate, since these early believers were expecting Jesus’ return at any moment, that some of them were reasoning, What’s the point of having a dumb job anyway? Paul doesn’t make that direct link here, but that could well be a part of it. In any event, if they had tried talking to these people, mere admonitions hadn’t worked because here in 2 Thessalonians, he comes back to this very issue, and even more forcefully. Listen. And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: stay away from all believers who live idle lives and don’t follow the traditions they received from us.

For you know that they ought to imitate us. We weren’t idle when we were with you. We never accepted food from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard, day and night, so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow. Even while we were there with you, we gave this commandment: those who are unwilling to work should not eat.

Yet we hear that some of you are still living idle lives, refusing to work and meddling in other people’s business. We command such people and urge them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down, work to earn a living. Take note of those people who refuse to obey what I am saying here. Stay away from them so they will be ashamed. Don’t think of them as enemies, though. Warn them as you would warn a brother or sister.

You’re going to have to take firmer steps with these people, Paul is telling them. These people who are all agitated about the coming of Christ have quit working their jobs and are now taking advantage of others. Paul tells them twice in this place, actually, I’m telling you this on the authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is commandment. He’s underscoring the importance of this. Remember, maybe you don’t remember.

It’s not been that long ago, but remember, we all learned a new term during the COVID epidemic. Actually, I wish I didn’t remember this stuff, but the term was social distancing. Paul says here, those who refuse to work should not eat, and other members of the church should not take care of them either, or even associate with them. If they continue to be obstinate about that, he said, ostracize them a little bit. The early churches often shared meals together at their meetings. Their friendships were very close because they themselves had been ostracized often by their own families and communities for following Christ.

So to put someone on the outside and say, You’re not welcome here until you start living a more orderly life, that would produce some social pressure, some shame, and hopefully some needed change. Today, where I live anyway, our church communities are not usually quite as tight-knit and socially interdependent, but many churches still have funds they use to help truly needy members. How this might apply to us is to be careful not to subsidize lazy people who just don’t want to work. Helping those who are truly needy and cannot work, that’s good. That’s a godly thing to do. That’s a compassionate thing.

Helping those who won’t, that’s wrong and in no way in their own best interest. Work produces not only income, but dignity. And people need to work. God made us that way. So Paul is calling out those he has heard were not working, were showing up to church and believers’ homes and businesses looking for handouts. That’s not how Christians behave, he is reminding them.

We work and we pay our bills. If someone will not work, they should not eat. Hmm. With that unpleasantness out of the way, Paul signed off this letter with these words: Now may the Lord of peace himself give you his peace at all times and in every situation. The Lord be with you all. And then in larger letters they read, Here is my greeting in my own handwriting, Paul.

I do this in all my letters to prove they are from me. As we noted before, Paul often had a scribe write for him, probably because he had poor eyesight. But he says he wrote this postscript in his own hand to authenticate this letter. The preceding information I’ve written to you about future events and these instructions about your daily lives, this is all really from me. I’m signing off in my own hand so that you know this is no forgery, a reference to the fake letters some of them had been alarmed by. The Thessalonian epistles have such interesting, valuable, and challenging information in them, don’t they?

It’s no wonder God has preserved these writings for us in the New Testament. Jesus is coming back. In the meantime, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings. This has been Paul for Share the Word. Thank you, Paul, for all of your passion and your love for sharing God’s Word. If this is your first podcast, let me make a suggestion.

Check out the entire archives at ShareTheWord.org. So much insight, so much truth. And here at ShareTheWord.org, we believe that there’s no better way to learn the big ideas of the New Testament than chapter by chapter. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.