God's Word Spoken in Truth (11/11/22-11/12/22)

I find I have rather an overwhelming array of points collected upon which to make comment in regard to this passage, but I shall make a start, and hopefully not add to the pile more than necessary as I go.  What we have here is a continuation, clearly, of those thoughts Paul has been expressing already in this chapter, and indeed, there are echoes of those prior statements, reiterations which we might suppose lend a certain emphasis to the point.  We have it at the outset, as he notes his ceaseless thanksgiving on their account.  We have it also in the notice given their exemplary lives since having believed.  And in this regard, we find Paul turning particularly to their response to persecution.  I will get to that in due course, but I want first to focus on this reiterated note of faith receiving, or if you prefer, receiving faith.  It has much to tell us, and that, in several regards.

I had at first thought to collect my comments on this portion of the text under the single heading of “God’s Word in Truth”.  That is certainly Paul’s point, isn’t it?  We spoke what was truly from God.  You received it as being truly from God.  But I find too many aspects of this to comment upon for them to be contained in a single section, and have therefore broken it out into three.  Let us consider, then, the first aspect:  The delivery of God’s Word in Truth.

Here I want to note that the delivery of God’s Word in Truth did not consist solely in the preaching, nor even in preaching and teaching.  Ironside notices it, and that, because Paul gives notice of it, although primarily in the preceding sections.  These believers, before they came to belief, already knew the reality of the gospel in Paul’s life, and in the lives of his companions.  They could see already that whatever it was had hold of these men clearly had a strength far greater than that of the average student of philosophy, or follower of this or that teacher.  There was something more here, and it could be seen in these men.  They lived it.  Now, I have little doubt that one could find a stoic here or an epicurean there who did his best to live as those philosophies propounded.  I suppose one could find a devote Aristotelian or Socratic sort.  One can find, after all, plenty who are striving to pursue the tenets of their beliefs today, be it in such ancient philosophies, or in pursuit of other religions.  So, it’s not merely the matter of living as one believes.  What one has believed matters.

But I would say this, concurring with Ironside:  The fact that they clearly lived as this Gospel of theirs commanded did much to gain a hearing for their preaching.  I have observed it often enough.  If our actions do not demonstrably concur with our message, our message will be delivered in vain.  The world is highly attuned to perceiving hypocrisy, and nowhere more keenly than when being confronted with the word of God.  When Truth bears down on a man, if he is yet devoted to the pursuit of his sinful ways, nothing will more provoke him to look for reasons to reject that Truth.  Those seeking such an evasion would find nothing in Paul and company to offer them that out.  They could see in these men that they not only spoke what they believed, but they really believed it.  They really lived it.

It’s a theme that’s been much with me as I’ve gone through this epistle, that theme of aletheia, the outward man in harmony with inward character.  And here, we can expand it to say that inward character is in harmony with that word which God has imparted.  That word had apparently gained a hearing with these messengers, and more than a hearing.  It had made its home in them.  And that showed.  And showing, it gained a hearing with those who observed.  No hypocrisy here, only unvarnished devotion to what is true.

Let me touch on the negative side of this matter.  If indeed this is truly God’s word we have believed, surely it moves us to seek that others would both believe and obey, for surely it moves us to obey in our own case.  But we dare not let our urgent desire that others come to believe in God to lead us to toy with this Gospel we bear.  Matthew Henry writes, “Those are greatly to blame who give out their own fancies or injunctions for the word of God.”  It’s a huge temptation, isn’t it?  We are, after all, rather inclined to be pleased with ourselves.  If we have certain insights, whether they be well-founded or not, we will tend to suppose them grand.

Perhaps it’s just me.  Perhaps it’s ego and arrogance such as no other suffers.  But I doubt it.  The point remains, though.  We must needs take care in how we present the Gospel.  God took pains to enlighten those through whom He determined to announce His mind to man.  He has taken great pains throughout human history to see this message preserved accurate and intact.  He has undertaken on multiple occasions to purge His house of those who claim to speak for Him but in fact spout their own fantasies.  And God, dear ones, does not change.  There is great need of such a purging of His church at present, and I have no doubt that when the measure of their sins, who have taken to claiming false title as spokesmen for God, that He will indeed do so.  And I doubt it will be pretty.

So, let us take heed, lest we discover ourselves in that number.  There is cause to devote ourselves to both familiarity with, and clear understanding of His word as He has given it to us in these pages of Scripture.  It’s not sufficient to be able to quote from memory, nor even to have some capacity to speedily look up some proof text and make one’s point.  If one’s point is false, so, too, is any perceived support of that point in Scripture.  The devil, after all, is adept at quoting Scripture.  We see it in the temptation of Christ.  Look!  It’s written right there!  It is true.  Well, yes.  The word is true, for it is of God.  But the application has been twisted.  This is not a game reserved to Satan.  We are terrifyingly adept at doing the same, and it takes great care and vigilance to avoid doing so.

Consider how you might respond to a brother in crisis.  Perhaps he is grieving the loss of a relative, and perhaps that relative’s relationship to faith is, shall we say, suspect at best.  How do we give counsel?  How do we give comfort?  Will we indeed lay claim to certain knowledge of God’s determination in regard to that one?  Will we, in spite of strong suspicions that his afterlife is not going to be pleasant, tell this one that surely they are in a better place?

Or how do we counsel one who is quite certain they are following hard after the Lord when it seems pretty obvious that they are in fact being led far astray?  Do we continue to leave room for conscience?  How much room?  Do we just nod along and leave it to God to sort out?  Or do we do the hard work of presenting the Truth in love?  And I tell you, it is hard work!  But it is necessary work, isn’t it?  We cannot promise a welcome for this Truth.  We can be reasonably assured that there will be more reaction and rejection than welcome.   That welcome may come later.  It may not.  But however loving we may try to be, rejection and anger are likely to be the first response.  And now our own love is tested, and our own grip on the Gospel may well be found wanting.

Yet, we dare not let this prevent us from seeking that we might just turn this one back towards the Way.  We do so in humility, knowing first, that it is only by God’s grace that we have not wandered far afield in our own turn.  We do so in humility, knowing second, that it could very well be that we have in fact strayed and are in need of loving correction ourselves.  We do so in humility, fundamentally, knowing that if there is to be a returning to the Way, it shall come of God’s doing, and we shall be at most instruments in His capable hands.  And so, we must set ourselves to be well-functioning instruments, not such as are of so faulty a workmanship as to render His work that much harder.

Now, before I leave off this matter of God’s word spoken in truth, I need to consider something that came up not directly from this passage, but from a text that the Wycliffe Translators Commentary turns to in discussing the passage.  They are not alone.  The JFB brings it up as well as they consider the latter portion of our text.  They point to Mark 12:1-9 and its parallels, where Jesus, the Word of God, is talking to the leading religious authorities of the time, the chief priests, the scribes, the elders.  They did not receive Him but sought cause both to reject Him and to destroy Him.  He, in turn, spoke to them in parables among which was this rather lengthy parable discussing the owner of a vineyard and those renters who refused him his due share.  The focus is not on the theft, so much as on their treatment of the owner’s representatives, whom they abused, beat, or killed by turns.  And in the course of this parable, we come to this statement.  “He had one more to send, a beloved son.  He sent him last of all to them” (Mk 12:6).

What has jumped out at me here is this:  “He sent him last of all.”  Matthew, in his accounting, does not use this wording, but only says that he sent his son afterwards.  Yet here it is, in the text of Scripture, which is God-breathed and inerrant.  “He sent Him last.”  The term before us is eschaton, a superlative term indicative of the final item, the uttermost completion.  It is the utmost sending, then.  It is a term we find Paul using when he speaks of death as the last and final enemy to be abolished (1Co 15:26), and of Jesus as the last Adam (1Co 15:45).  He is the last.  There is not another coming.  You could look, too, at the last trumpet of 1Corinthians 15:52.  Now, Kittel’s does observe that in the passage I am considering, this is more of a colloquial usage, simply pointing to the last in a series.  But what a series!  After all, the point of that parable is clearly pointing to the same matter that Paul brings up, as to how this chosen people of God had responded to God, and to those He sent to address their rebellious ways.  Those servants of the parable are clearly representative of the many prophets sent to them, prophets who were largely rejected and abused, and oft-times put to death.  The son is quite obviously a reference to Jesus Himself, the very Son of God.  And it’s equally clear from their reaction that they knew it.  They were rejecting the Son.  They were the renters of this parable, and the Son’s message to them was plain:  The vineyard was being given to others.  They were out.

Okay, we’ll get to that matter, but not here.  Here, it is this matter of last of all.  Last of all He sent His beloved son.  This touches on a point of understanding God’s truth that I have struggled with quite a bit, because it really sets up the dividing line between the Reformed view and the Pentecostal view when it comes to the gifts of the Spirit.  Having experienced some of the latter, it is naturally rather difficult to come to a position that accepts that these gifts have ceased.  How am I to square that?  And yet, there is the chief argument made that God already delivered all He intends to deliver in terms of revealed Truth, and we have that in these Scriptures.  That being the case, how can prophecy continue?  How can there continue to be newly revealed truths if He has already completed His revelation in Christ Jesus?

Now, I find that most often, when this point is made, it is made fairly simply, without really seeking to nail down reasons to accept that this is the way of it.  And I find it difficult to accept, as I say, for having experienced what I would concede to be legitimate expressions of these gifts.  I have experienced plenty of such expressions that struck me as entirely questionable as well, but there have been those few occasions of there clearly being something happening, and I did not on those occasions find cause to suppose these were mere counterfeits.  But the one passage that generally comes up to defend their point is Hebrews 1:2, when it says He has spoken to us in these last days by His Son.  It’s the same term, here, although applied, I believe, to days, not Son or speaking.  So, how does notice of last days make it necessary to say God has ceased revealing things to His children except through Scripture?

Well, we have as well John’s admonition toward the end of Revelation, pronouncing certain condemnation upon any who would add to or take away from ‘the book of this prophecy’ (Rev 22:18-19).  But then, we should have to ask if that only cover Revelation or the whole of the Bible?  I could pretty readily accept either answer.  Then, too, we have Paul’s discussion with the Corinthians, the one chief exposition we have in Scripture regarding these gifts.  These gifts, he observes, will cease in due course (1Co 13:8-10), the time pointed to being that time ‘when the perfect comes’.  The Reformed position looks at this and says, see?  They ceased.  But I must ask, has the perfect come, then?  And if you say yes, Jesus already came, and the kingdom is set in motion amongst us, then I must observe that this was equally true when Paul was writing these things, and giving instruction as to the proper use of these gifts, including, it must be observed, a strong defense of prophecy.  Indeed, we have inklings of that in this letter, as well.  “Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise prophetic utterances” (1Th 5:18-19).  It would seem clear enough that he did not perceive the perfect as having already come.  Indeed, given the thrust of 1Corinthians 15, I would say it is quite clear that his view of the perfect consists in that day when Christ returns, and we are called to meet Him in the air, to experience the transformation of our bodies and the finalization of our sanctification process – finally able to know Him and see Him as He truly is.

But then there is this:  He sent His beloved Son last of all.  Well, perhaps we had best seek to understand God’s word in Truth.  Somehow both Paul’s continuance, and Christ’s last of all must harmonize.  I hesitate somewhat to suggest I have the answer, but in point of fact, I do think I have at least an idea as to the answer.  It lies in this:  The prophets, by and large, did not come speaking new revelations.  Oh, there are those passages, to be sure, which point forward to Messiah or beyond to His return.  And these do, at the least, add clarity to things previously said.  They are revelatory in that sense.  But at the same time, I observe that these prophets did not come as presenting new Truth.  They came as clarifying established Truth.  And more than that, they came as reminding God’s people of Truth, reminding them with forceful application to present circumstances.  They came with unsparing observation of the sinfulness and rebelliousness of these, God’s people.  And as Jesus observed, as Paul here observes, the response was not always what one might hope.  The reviled.  They beat.  They killed.  Anything to shut up the truth and leave them to their sin.

So perhaps here is our balance point.  As concerns truly new revelation, an expositing of new doctrines, new regulations for the life of the believer or new information as to who God is, yes, we’re done.  Last of all He sent His Son, in Whom we have seen God’s word made flesh, in Whom we have the perfect image of the Father set before us.  And it is He, at root, Who has authored these texts we account as Holy Scripture.  It is He who spoke through the prophets of old and through the Apostles of this earliest age of the church.  It is He who establishes the Church, and He who has seen to it that His Church has ever and always access to these authoritative expositions of God’s word to man.  There is nothing more to be revealed as to God’s purposes or God’s character.  Yet, there does remain room, I think, for expanding and expounding upon what has already been revealed.  There does remain room for God sending those who would prick the conscience of His children and remind them of Truth – and of consequences – when they have become neglectful of the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within.

We are terribly adept, after all, at shutting off the internal voice that seeks to keep us from straying.  It’s much more difficult to shut out the one speaking to us live and in person.  You would think the Spirit would be the much harder voice to quiet, except that in the deceitfulness of sin, we readily convince ourselves He is not the one speaking, it’s just our pesky conscience, our thoughts.  And we are masters of our own thoughts, surely.  Yes, yes we are, and generally to our detriment.  And yes, the Spirit can win through even the most obstinate internal barriers.  And sometimes, dear ones, He uses instruments.  Here comes the prophet, the true prophet, speaking words of exhortation, of consolation, of imploring us to walk worthy.  Sound familiar?  It should.  This is exactly what we find Paul and company doing (1Th 2:11).  It is exactly what we should expect to find every minister of Christ doing.  It is exactly what we ourselves should be doing, both to ourselves and to those among whom we live and worship.  And that, I suppose, gives me my needed transition to the matter of God’s Word received in truth.

God's Word Received in Truth (11/13/22)

The point is made in a few of our commentaries that Paul speaks of a two-step process in regarding how they responded to that word of God which was delivered to them.  He spoke God’s truth, and as such, they received God’s truth from him.  This much, however, those of the synagogue could say, though having received it, they made of it cause for rejection.  But they received it.  They sat still long enough to have heard Paul’s message before declaring hostilities against Paul and against God.  So, too, had these who became the church in Thessalonica received it.  Here was what we might call outward, formal acceptance.  So, perhaps it does actually move beyond what those others could claim, for they had heard, but they surely hadn’t accepted it as having any validity.

Being as we’ve just been through that crazy season which is our election process, we have likely heard all manner of speeches promoting all manner of ideas, and some of them may have even sounded agreeable, perhaps even sensible.  We could accept these things, were they to come about.  We might even prefer that it should be so, whether or not we expect much to come of these fine speeches or our votes.  Or we may be in our college classes, let us say, listening to the professor, and convinced well enough that what he is teaching us is valid and truthful so far as the subject matter of that class is concerned.  We might even be right.  But there remains the question of what we do with it.  Now, my experience has primarily been with engineering courses, so it’s not like we’re dealing with matters of ethics and philosophy.  We’re dealing with the relative certainties of mathematics and how things actually function in the world.  It’s not exactly life-changing stuff.  But perhaps you have taken some philosophy or psychology type courses and become convinced that there is some great truth being exposited upon by these teachers, things that, if they are really true, really ought to be life-changing, really ought to take such hold of us as would lead us to reconsider our ways.

That perhaps begins to move is toward Paul’s second observation of these believers.  You accepted it.  I’m following the NASB, as is my wont.  And that may be a bother, as we have already looked at this first term of having received as bearing the idea of acceptance, at least of this formal, outward sort.  Here, though, he moves us to inward response, to a willing welcome of these things as not only being accurate or interesting, but being personally applicable, as being worthy of adoption as our personal credo, if you will.  In fact, I would insist that where there has been this real welcoming acceptance of God’s word for what it truly is, there will have to be more than adoption as credo. 

You see what Paul is saying here.  You didn’t just acknowledge that our message had validity.  That would leave you considering just one more man’s opinion, to be weighed against other opinions.  We see something of that in the response in Athens, right?  Oh, look, another philosopher.  Let’s hear him out.  Might be amusing.  But there was no recognition of this as coming from God, let alone the One True God.  It was just one more opinion among many, and as such, as readily rejected as any other opinion.  Those in Thessalonica did not perceive it as such.  They saw it for what it is:  The word of God in truth.  And that being the case, it becomes necessary to respond to these words you have so willingly accepted as what they are:  God speaking.  I get, perhaps, just a little ahead of myself, as this pertains more to the next portion of this study.  But that is the point Paul is getting to.  If you have received this as truly being what God says, then it becomes binding, doesn’t it?  If God is speaking, the only God – God who created you, and has full right of disposition over you, as He does over all that exists – then you really had best take it to heart and put it into practice, hadn’t you?  And this they had done.  That has been the testimony of Paul as concerns them, and not just Paul.  As he has noted, when he got to Corinth, word of their obedience to this God of the gospel had already been to town.  Their faith was making waves.

Now, let me back up just a bit to the first clause of this passage, and why Paul is bringing this up.  “For this reason we also constantly thank God.”  That, as has been observed by many ties us right back to the start of this letter, not that it’s so very far back up the page.  But here it is:  Here is why we are so constantly thankful.  It’s because you truly received this for what it truly is, and that being the case, it has had its true and powerful impact on you.  Now, let us understand something.  If this was just about their response, then really, there’s nothing to thank God for yet, is there?  It’s just man doing something, and we ought, I suppose, to thank them for responding well.  They are to be congratulated.  And while there may be some small degree of that to Paul’s celebration of their faith, he very clearly turns that celebration back upon its rightful cause, returning thanks to Him Who has done this marvelous thing.  Beloved, as the JFB author observes, if faith is deserving of such thanksgiving, we must needs recognize that faith comes of divine grace.  If faith leads us to give thanks to God it must be because He is the author of it. 

I wonder how many of us really have this in view when we react with thanksgiving at the news of someone’s salvation.  I fear that for many, if they have been involved directly in the process of bringing the gospel to that one who was saved, the thanksgiving comes more from a sense of personal achievement.  Oh, look what I have done!  They may well think to couch it just a bit, and say, look what God has done through me, but still, the mind is on me, not God who moved.  And that is a huge problem.  It’s something we ought rightly to be taking to prayer as a matter for repentance, even as we celebrate the new birth of this one who has responded.

Let us recognize well that if in fact they have responded, it was not because of our artfulness, nor because of our persistence.  The deciding factor, the only deciding factor, is God’s will.  If He has not decided that this one will be saved, then all your best efforts cannot change it.  And, as a note of comfort, if He has so decided, then your worst fumbling cannot stop it.  Here again is that distinction between receiving and accepting, and the difference is in God.

In my earlier notes, I spoke of this as having something in common with radios, although those become something less common as time moves on, don’t they?  But the radio stations, all of them, are constantly broadcasting their message.  It is there to be heard, should one choose.  But one must choose.  One must tune the radio to that particular station which he desires to hear, else the signal passes without notice.  As concerns our spiritual radio, it is not, in the end, us who do the tuning, but God.  Where He tunes it in, we receive His Word, and we receive the word of His Gospel.  He gives us understanding, perhaps not in full and in depth as He has done with this preacher or that, but sufficient for us to grasp that this indeed is God’s truth, and is indeed not only worthy of being followed, but demands to be followed.  If He does not tune us in, that same message, delivered by the same minister, will just pass over us as so many words.  We may well sleep through it, or, as I used to do as a child, drift off in daydreams and self-amusements, just waiting for the ordeal to be finished.

But it doesn’t matter whether you have heard it from a Billy Graham, or an R.C. Sproul, or someone fresh out of seminary, or from a neighbor.  It’s not about the delivery vehicle, any more than the value of that package you had delivered is dependent on whether it was FedX, UPS, or the post office that delivered it.  They are but the instrument of delivery.  The value remains in that which is delivered.  The value of this message of the Gospel lies in its source, not its choice of messenger.  The Wycliffe Translators Commentary takes it perhaps a step further, removing the minister rather entirely from the equation.  They arrive at this:  “God is the source of the power; and the word is His instrument.”  True, that!  At least in our day.  God saw fit to ensure that the teaching of the Apostles, teaching He had Himself inspired and directed, was preserved for our benefit, that we might have before us a record of Truth that is as solid as Truth.

You aren’t dependent on the capacities of your minister.  Your salvation and your sanctification do not rest on him.  You aren’t dependent on the quality of such commentaries as you may turn to, or the lexicons, or whatever other tools you might bring to bear as you study this glorious word of God.  Mind you, I would certainly advise care in your selection, but I would also advise range, lest you come to mistake the opinion of one author or another as bearing the full weight of Truth.  No man can, and if we are putting one teacher or another up on a pedestal, then we are doing great disservice both to ourselves and to that man.  Worse, we are doing great disservice to God Himself.

Hear it again.  “God is the source of the power; the word is His instrument.”  Who serves as intermediary, bringing that word to us is all but irrelevant.  If God has chosen, His word will be effectually heard.  If He has not, it will be nothing.  It might get so far as to generate a, ‘this is nice’ from us, but it will not be effectual.  It might, perhaps, lead us to adopt certain of its ethical instructions.  You know, most of us aren’t going to have much problem with, “Thou shalt not murder.”  And the vast majority of us are going to concur with, “Thou shalt not steal,” particularly if we are envisioned as the victim rather than the perpetrator.  And I suspect that in many matters, even the more darkened individuals in our society would still seek to live according to some sort of moral code, and some aspects of that code will in fact manage to reflect that which God commands.

Scripture observes this, doesn’t it?  Even amongst the most heathen populations, have some sense of right and wrong, for it is rather built into us, however much we may suppress it.  And we know it from experience.  We can all of us, I suspect, think of unbelieving friends and acquaintances who, for all that they refuse to believe God, yet manage to live what may very well be more ethical lives than many of our believing friends.  And if we’re being really honest, we may even admit that they out-ethical us.  But that’s insufficient in itself.  It does no eternal good to comply with outward form where the inward state is off.  The most ethical of individuals will yet have no standing before God’s court if in fact he has rejected the God Who Is.  And as I said, the deciding factor is, always, the determined will of God. 

Where He chooses, that Gospel message, whoever has delivered it and however well or however poorly, will be effectual.  I have no doubt but that those in Thessalonica, by their own preaching – whether in the pulpit, so to speak, or simply by living lives of obedience to this Gospel – was just as effectual as was Paul’s.  The meanest member of that body, if God is in the work, would prove just as effective a delivery truck for the Gospel as would Paul or Timothy or those others we know from these New Testament records.  It is, after all, the Gospel that is God’s instrument, and it is God Who is effectuating the work.

We hear this over and over from Scripture, and not just from Paul.  The Wycliffe commentary has kindly collected a few examples of this, and seeing them in conjunction with one another drives the point home.  (Ro 1:16 – I am not ashamed of the Gospel.  It is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, the Jew first, but also the Greek.  Heb 4:12 – The word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joint and marrow.  It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions.  Jas 1:21 – So putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.  1Pe 1:23 – You have been reborn not of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.)

Now, I know that for many there will be the urge to super-spiritualize this and directly conflate the word of God with Christ the Living Word.  But the text does not do so.  There is Christ and there is Scripture.  The Scriptures, to be sure, speak of Christ, and He is Himself the expressed Intelligence of God, the Word made flesh.  But the Word made flesh does not, at this juncture walk among us in the flesh.  We do not have Him before us as irrefutable testimony to Truth.  Don’t get your hackles up!  I’m not suggesting that we don’t hear from Christ, or that He is not in fact actively involved in the conducting of His kingdom.  Far be it from me!  But, if our only reference to His instruction is some inner voice, even the inner voice of conscience, we remain ever at peril of being horribly misguided.  We run the inherent risk of mistaking our own opinions or grandiose imaginations for the voice of God.  He has not left us at such risk.  He has seen fit to ensure that we have before us a reliable, testable reference.  Here is the word of God, the written testimony of Who He Is, what He has done, what He has said, and what He expects.  You may receive all manner of teaching along the course of your life, but here is the test.  Here is the glove, to steal an image from the infamous trial of O.J. Simpson.  And beloved, if the glove of Scripture does not fit the teaching, that teaching must be rejected.  Yes, I know.  I am mangling the reference I have chosen, but you take my point.

Every sermon, every claimant to speaking to us on God’s behalf, is to be tested against the clear and certain testimony of Scripture.  Now, let me stress that it is insufficient to say, hey!  I looked up the passages they quoted, and they quoted them accurately.  It’s not even sufficient to say that having looked them up, they do in fact serve to state the point they make.  Context matters.  The full testimony of Scripture matters.  The devil, as we saw in the temptation of Christ, is quite adept at pulling proof-texts to suit his purpose.  He quotes Scripture most accurately, more accurately, in fairness, than most of the Apostles.  But accurate quotes are only of use when accurately applied.  If I may, it’s the meaning that matters, not the words by which they are expressed.  Get the meaning wrong, and it matters not how carefully you parsed the language, how precisely you quoted the writing.

There is a reason we are called to allow the more plain and clear parts of Scripture to serve as commentary on those which are more obscure and difficult of comprehension.  It is the woeful art of the deceiver to rest his point on one of these more debatable passages, wresting its apparent meaning from any relationship to the simple truths of God.  But we have it written, and we have God empowering.  Fear not!  It is because of God that this word is able to judge, able to save, able to bring about rebirth in us.  That is to say, it is God Who does these things, even as it is God Who has seen to the writing of this Gospel by which He conveys His truth to us.  We have, if you will, an insurance policy.  But don’t make that insurance policy an excuse for sloth and carelessness.  It remains God’s word.  You have received it as God’s word.  That being the case, it is deserving of utmost regard, utmost care, and, to move into the next part of my little study, utmost obedience.

If faith is deserving of thanksgiving, it must be recognized as coming of divine grace.  As I said, this idea is conveyed to us in the JFB.  Let me take it the next step.  If faith comes of divine grace, it must be recognized as commanding response.  If faith is of divine grace, then surely we must obey its tenets, heed its commands, and seek to truly live as God has given us to live.  Walk worthy!

God's Word Lived in Truth (11/14/22)

I come this morning to the third leg, if you will of God’s Word in Truth, and that is God’s word lived.  If indeed God’s word has been proclaimed to you in truth and you have received it in truth then there is this necessary outcome; that you will seek to live it in truth.  Our response to the gospel is in fact our testimony to the gospel.  And we might do well to ask just what our testimony says as to this gospel we say we believe.  Does our response in fact lend the weight of truth to our words, or does our response tend more to indicate that our words are vain, empty things of no real bearing as concerns our true beliefs?

In the case of the Thessalonians, there was no question.  Their response gave firm and certain evidence of faith received and welcomed, of the gospel truly understood as being the very word of God.  What was this evidence?  It was in their thankfulness, in their joyfulness.  Now, as we have considered in earlier parts of this letter, that joyfulness wasn’t some glib, happy-go-lucky perspective on life.  They weren’t laughing their way through trial and persecution.  On the other hand, trial and persecution did nothing to dampen their enthusiastic trust in Christ.  You see, they had received faith, and faith had given them eyes to see well beyond the present circumstance.  Faith had established in them a more heavenly, a more eternal perspective.  And that perspective informed and directed their response to the world around them.  There was thankfulness in their character and in their expression of faith, and that thankfulness persisted regardless what those from the synagogue and those from among their countrymen stirred up against them.  God is for us.  Who can be effectively against us?  God justifies.  Who can condemn?  (Ro 8:31-34).  One wonders to what degree their example laid the groundwork for Paul’s later message to Rome here.

Be that as it may, in spite of all that the world threw at them, there was this joyfulness in them, joyfulness in the light of Christ.  It wasn’t that they were having such a grand time of it up there in Thessalonica.  It wasn’t that they were seeing events akin to those surrounding Elijah or Elisha, as their enemies were cast in confusion and they themselves left untouched.  No.  If we read between the lines just the least bit, we sense that things had been hard indeed, deadly even.  They had, it would seem, lost some from among their number, and not just to old age.  And yet, they persisted.  And yet, they knew this joy inexpressible, this peace that so surpasses understanding.  They walked joyfully in spite of being exposed to threat from every side, and being all but defenseless against those threats, at least so far as their own capacities were concerned.

Well, where had they learned such perspective?  They had seen it modeled in Paul, who had come to them out of his own sufferings in Philippi, and yet proved ready, willing, and eager to preach the good news to them, even when the threat of a repeat performance of like persecutions loomed.  He had not, after all, sought to make hasty exit from the city.  They had sent him on.  He had not sought to abandon Berea, but it became necessary for their well-being that he depart.  He was too much of a lightning rod for this opposition, and the church was better served by him remaining at a distance.  And those who witnessed his example took it to heart.  We have heard that in the message here.

In point of fact, we see it constantly in the life of the church.  The JFB writes, “Divine working is most of all seen in affliction.”  Now, that’s not a popular message, is it?  That’s not something any PR agency would recommend as advertisement for your church.  Come join us, and learn what real affliction is.  Oh, yes, that’ll pack ‘em in.  But it is assuredly part of the package.  Jesus was clear enough about it, as has often been observed.  “In the world you have tribulation” (Jn 16:33).  Of course, that’s not the sum of His message.  No!  We have cause to take courage, for He has overcome the world.  And this gets us to our missional situation.  We are not left here on a whim.  We are no more abandoned while we remain in the world than Thessalonica’s church was abandoned by Paul upon his departure.  Look where his heart is!  “We are always thanking God for you, constantly making mention of you in our prayers, ever mindful of your progress and your hope in the Lord, knowing He has chosen you” (1Th 1:2-4).  “For this reason we constantly thank God for you” (v13).  That’s what we’ve been observing.

Well, God’s view of you is much the same as Paul’s view of the church.  “Lo!  I am with you even to the end of the age.”  You are not abandoned here, not forgotten.  You are needed here.  The world needs your light, for darkness is all around.  You don’t need me to tell you that.  You have eyes.  You can see.  You have a brain.  You can perceive what’s happening.  It’s dark out there!  The lost become more lost by the day, and more foolish in their blighted thinking.  I shan’t wander into matters of politics, even though they are as clear an evidence of this blindness of the world as nay.  But look at the push for sexual deviancy, for the physical assault on children, lest they somehow survive to adulthood with any degree of normalcy left them.  Look at rampant drug abuse, at abandoning of any sort of social cohesion.  It’s dark, and in that darkness, your light is all the more needful.  But your light is of no use to anybody if it is hid away.  Your testimony is of no value if none hear it, if none see your example and find cause to wonder at your joyfulness.

Let me take another tack on this.  If your response to the darkness around you is nothing but scolding, revulsion, or fearful withdrawal, what testimony is this to the power of God?  Indeed, all about you, if this is your demeanor, shouts out that you don’t really trust Him at all.  You’re pretty sure He’s lost.  That’s what these responses scream in the face of the enemy, and with that being the case, I can well imagine him laughing in response.  The Thessalonians gave no such evidence of distrust in God.  No.  Their response made plain to one and all that they really, truly believed this gospel that had been entrusted to them.  They really, truly accepted that the God Who Is truly is, and that He is in fact fully and firmly in control of events, even when those events involve suffering.  Perhaps we shall have to concur with the JFB that suffering indeed leads to the clearest view of God working.  And the world, dear ones, needs to see Him.  They need evidence of something greater than this life.  They need signs of life period, for all that they pursue is a steady course to death, and to that which is worse than death, the eternal perishing that awaits those who will not repent and receive this freely offered Gospel of Christ.

So, don’t let this darkness overwhelm you.  Stand and stand some more.  Let your light shine in the darkness.  Live like you believe the God you serve, the God Who so loves you.  Know that He is with you.  Know that He has never left your side, nor ever will.  No!  He fights for you, and beloved, victory and vengeance are His.  You, dear one, are the apple of His eye.  He is swift to defend you.  And even the death of this body can do nothing to defeat His defense of you.  For even should you die, yet you shall live (Jn 11:25).  That’s His assurance to you!  What can man do against such assurance?  What can Satan do?  Oh, he can kill the body, and to be sure, he could make that so very painful to experience.  But he can’t kill the soul.  You soul is in Christ.  You are in the hands of your Father in heaven, and no one, not even you, can take you from His hands (Jn 10:28-29).  No one!  So stand fast.  Walk in the light.  Live your faith.  Let it be known to those who encounter you.  Let them see it in your response to events around you.  Let them see it in your just and upright dealing with any and all.  Let them see it in your joy persisting come what may.  And, when they ask for the reason behind this hope that is in you, let them hear from you the answer.

We have been, of late, going through the Apostles’ Creed at church.  It is a good thing to do.  It is well that we recognize and firmly establish in our thinking these foundational truths which bind together and unite the Church of Christ in God.  But I confess, I have had one concern as we have proceeded, and it concerns the way we word the thing.  “I believe…”  I believe in God the Father, I believe in Christ the Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit…  The challenge we face is that there are myriad beliefs out there, and pretty much the only thing that is not believed is that there is some sort of objective, testable truth that should rightly define belief.  If you present the world with “I believe,” you are quite likely to get a response along the lines of, “well that’s good for you, but I believe something different.”  And at this point, they are pretty sure they have successfully countered your argument, for if there is no objective truth, then your belief is no more or less valid than their own.

How do you think it is that we have arrived at such a state that folks, even folks in the hard sciences and medicinal fields who really ought to know better, accept that what you happen to think you are should trump what you rather clearly, objectively are.  You wish to be thought a woman?  That trumps the physical reality of being a man.  You wish to believe that in this state you will menstruate?  Okay fine.  Let’s feed that delusion, for the clear objective reality that you lack the requisite equipment and could not possibly achieve any of the biological functions involved in producing egg, conceiving, or bringing a fetus through pregnancy into live birth are in your makeup.  And I hate to say it, but no amount of chemical alteration, or surgical intervention is going to change that physical reality.  Hard objective truth will win in the end.  But we must recognize that no matter how certain the eventual crash into the solid wall of reality, yet the mindset is that belief wins; that personal opinion is the final arbiter of truth, and not the other way round.

So, when we come expressing our faith, we must needs find a way to express this which Calvin observes, that faith is something that rises far and away beyond opinion.  Perhaps I had best make clear that I speak of true faith in that which is in all actuality true.  Plenty of folks have faith.  I suppose we could reasonably assume that everybody does.  It’s just that in so many cases, their faith is in something that is patently false, objectively untrue.  This does nothing to shake their certainty, and for the most part, no presenting them with pesky facts will dislodge them from that certainty.  The blinders are on and the earplugs in, and they take to simply drowning you out, saying, “la, la, la.  I can’t hear you.”

Now, Calvin moves on from his observation that faith is more than just opinion, and so must we.  Faith, being set upon divine truths, must necessarily produce in us an obedient reverence for the object of our faith.  If we are truly convinced and convicted that this which we believe is in fact the expression of ‘Divine majesty’, God Himself revealing Himself to us and conveying to us the understanding needful to be such beings as He designed us to be, as He has purposed that we shall be, then surely, faith must move us to comply with His wishes.  Indeed, faith must surely move us to desire nothing more than that we might live in such manner as satisfies His goodness, and as makes His majesty evident to all who meet us, all who come to know us.

Beloved, you are a testimony to your beliefs.  You are living out your faith.  The question is what is your testimony identifying as the object of your faith?  Do you walk so as to give evidence of the God Who Is?  Or do you walk as the pagans round about, do you walk as wholly centered on your own satisfaction and comfort?  We have the call before us.  Walk worthy.  We have also, in the subsequent verses of this brief passage, a clear demonstration of the deadly peril should we instead demonstrate by our choices that our claims of faith are just so much stuff and nonsense.

The Problem and its Answer (11/15/22-11/16/22)

As we move into the second half of the passage, we are faced with several things that are hard to accept, hard to understand.  Perhaps chief among these difficulties is the challenge of the church persecuted.  This is hard to accept, isn’t it?  If we are the faithful, if we are the objects of God’s loving grace, why are these things happening?  If He is in control and He loves us, why does He not only permit such suffering, but even ordains it?  This is hard to accept, isn’t it?  We don’t appreciate suffering for doing what is right.  We didn’t like it as children, and we don’t like it as adults.  It’s hard to accept that this is somehow done for our good.  How can that be?

Well, I have no doubt but that these first believers up in Thessalonica had a similar response.  They had the benefit, I suppose, of having seen the opposition from the outset and even from before the outset.  And they had the great benefit of observing how Paul and his companions dealt with that opposition.  But it had not yet reached the point of suffering for them.  Oh, there was some.  Certainly, the mob coming and dragging Jason out to the magistrates was unpleasant, and quite a dangerous situation as well.  Costly, too.  The pledge demanded from him and from his companions was no mere promise to be good.  It was a financially burdensome fine of sorts, a bond or a bribe, depending how one chooses to see it.

Now add to this that the fiercest opposition to this faith they had come to own came from those who should most reasonably have been expected to support it, if in fact it were true.  This, after all, was about their God, and about their Savior.  Shouldn’t they be pleased to see their God glorified by the nations?  Don’t their own texts insist that such a thing was intended?  Yet here they are decrying the Apostles as heretics, and doing their uttermost to see this new sect eradicated.  Surely, they must know something we don’t.  Surely, being so steeped in their religion and dedicated to such a way of life, they should have an accurate read on this Christian business.  If they’re fighting it, there must be something to it, some reason for their rejection.

You can see how, with their first teachers gone away, and the insistent claims being made against Christianity, there might be some doubts.  You can certainly see how the violent deaths of a few of their number might make those doubts grow.  This is getting serious.  It’s not just the financial loss.  It’s not just the social stigma.  It’s life itself.  And how can this be, when Paul kept telling us about eternal life?  How is it eternal if our friends, our fellow believers, are dying?  Doubts were natural, and chief among them would be that stirred up by those who should by rights have been the firmest supporters.

This is the underlying concern behind the letter.  It is, by the measure of Paul’s epistles, a truly celebratory letter, but that is not to say that there were no concerns to address.  It is only that these concerns remained, at present, relatively quiet, and so does Paul’s response.  It hasn’t come to a point where he needs to point out the glaring inconsistencies and rebuke his children to get them back on track.  But Timothy, for all his good report, must also have observed the rumblings of these doubts, registered the questioning thoughts of these young believers.  And Paul, wise father and teacher, was not about to leave them to fester and worsen.

Without any sort of accusatory introduction, then, he turns to the problem and puts paid to it.  But he does so as confirming and assuring, not as correcting.  After all, the persecution is not, in and of itself the problem.  They knew this would be coming.  I have no doubt but that as Paul preached Christ, and Him crucified, he also took pains to convey the message that following Him would have this impact of taking up one’s cross and following.  As Table Talk observed this morning in a wholly unrelated context, this taking up of the cross was a thing reserved for those being led off to their own crucifixion.  It was, then, an assurance, for all intents and purposes, of life lost.  There would be no last-second reprieve from the procurator.  Judgment was rendered, and sentence would be carried out. 

Jesus told us of this, and as I say, I have no doubt but that His servants made sure to convey the message.  “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” (Mt 16:24-25).  Quite the sales pitch, isn’t it?  But it comes with this.  “I AM the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies.  And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die” (Jn 11:25).  Then comes that hard question for Martha, and for us.  “Do you believe this?”  It’s a thing hard to accept, and all the harder, I imagine, when physical death creeps closer.

But there it is.  “The true church would be persecuted,” as Barnes insists.  And this is something we need to take to heart:  Persecution is hardly evidence that the doctrines are false, and in that regard, it makes no difference how pious the persecutors claim to be.  The Jews looked mighty pious in their pursuit of purging this evil of Christianity from their midst.  The Pharisees, certainly, were quite adept at pious appearance.  Of course, Jesus repeatedly exposed the lie of appearance, painting them for the hypocrites they were.  But still:  Them we know and see.  Jesus is not here in physical presence to counter those observations.  So, it is fitting that those sent to proclaim His majesty and His shocking mercy towards man should make it plain.  “The true church will be persecuted.”  It hasn’t changed, nor will it so long as this present order remains.

In fairness, if we take time to observe the history of the church, it is in those periods when persecution is least that she has suffered most.  When all is ease and plenty, corruption sets in, doesn’t it?  There is that saying bounced about of late, that soft times make for soft men.  Defenses are lowered because everything is good, right?  God, of course, warned His children of this exact thing as He brought them to the Promised Land.  You will have plentiful food, plentiful wine.  Your houses will be fine things, and yours without all that much by way of labor.  Life, as they say, will be good.  And what shall come of it?  Thankfulness to God for the riches of His provision?  Well, that would be the proper thing, but no.  What will come of it is forgetfulness.  Where the need for God is less painfully obvious, the desire for Him fades.  It’s not that the need is in fact any less.  It’s that our vision is cloudy, and our senses too readily overwhelm our wisdom.  Solomon was not a freak accident.  He is a typical example, and we would fare no better were we set in his place.

So, here’s something to consider.  The JFB sets it before us.  “Such sameness of fruits, afflictions, and experimental characteristics of believers, in all places and at all times, are a subsidiary evidence of the truth of the Gospel.”  As I say, hardly the sort of advertising campaign one would devise in hopes of swelling one’s numbers.  This is not going to sit well with the ‘best life now’ crowd.  But then, your best life now, if this is it, is a truly dismal commentary on your future.  If this is as good as it gets, yikes!  Why prolong it, and why would you ever wish to see it preserved unto eternity?  Eternity spent with these freaks and goblins about us?  Eternity spent with a body that is in constant need of attention and repair?  Eternity spent with our faculties slowly fading?  I suppose I can understand well enough the desire for a long and happy life, but that happy part is not really in the cards.  Not here.  Not in this reality.  But afflictions come as confirmation.  You are not of this world.  It ought to be no shocking thing that the world therefore rejects you.  The truth of the matter may be that they are the disease entered into the health of the world as God created it (and we are kin in being that disease).  But in their experience, it seems quite the opposite, that we are the disease entering their body, and like any good antibody, they rise up to repel this invasion.  It’s hard to accept, but it is clearly the reality of the matter.

The true church will be persecuted.  Period, end of statement.  This is, if not an eternal truth, one so persistent as to seem so, and assured of remaining so until that day comes when Christ returns and His own are revealed as they truly are:  The sons and daughters of the living God.  It may be hard to accept, but there is the other side of that current phrase to consider.  Hard times make hard men.  Perhaps it would feel better to state it as hard times make strong men.  This present order is, after its fashion, the gymnasium in which we train for the challenges of living a life of faithfulness unto God.  It is the preparation for our eternity.  The time for true ease and joyful rest will come in due course.  That course has not as yet come due.

So, return your attention to this early church, and the specifics of their situation.  It was a situation, actually, pretty common to all the early churches.  As Paul observes, it was even the case in Jerusalem.  Here was the worst temptation to abandon God, as Calvin points out, and it came from that very nation which so gloried in His name.  These were the Chosen People, don’t you know.  And they were not shy of telling you so.  And if they were so special to God, surely, they should be rejoicing in this expanded reach of Christianity, right?  If this is in fact true religion, they should be first in line in coming to it, right?  So, what’s going on?  Well, what’s going on is that they had in fact become a great stumbling block for those who were receiving the Gospel proclaimed among the Gentiles.  And those Gentiles, used as they were to the Jewish attitude towards them, would tend to take it personally.  Paul says Gentiles are welcome, but his countrymen are making it painfully clear that we are not.  Who are we to believe?  One man, and him not even here with us, or these from the synagogue, which is, after all, the local seat of Jewish religion.  And isn’t it this same God that both claim to represent?  Well, here’s the official order.  Surely, their word should carry some weight with us, shouldn’t it?

Yes, the temptation here was great, and they had only themselves to give answer.  Of course, they had the counsel of the Holy Spirit as well.  They were hardly abandoned.  But our fleshly ways can tend to swamp out the gentle voice of the Spirit when doubts arise.  So, God sends Paul.  Here he is once again, an instrument in the hands of the Master he serves.  It’s not you.  It’s them.  They claim to be seeking to cleanse this heresy from amongst them, but in fact they are profaning the purposes of God Himself.  They can call themselves the chosen people of God all they want, but observe them.  As Barnes points out, their conduct demonstrates plainly that any such claim on their part is not made in truth.  They may oppose Christianity.  God does not.  Their opposition, then, is no reason to be troubled.

And indeed, as Paul proceeds to observe, their opposition was nothing new.  It wasn’t just the revelation of Christ as Messiah, or news of Christ come in real, physical truth, lived and died among them – and at their hands, even if indirectly so – and now reigning in heaven that upset them so.  Or perhaps it was.  But it had been building for long centuries.  It certainly wasn’t merely news of the Gentiles being grafted in that set them off.  Historically, as even their own religious texts, these Scriptures that we read, written by their own hands, testify to the fact that they have always opposed God.  God sent prophets, and they either ignored them, abused them, or killed them.  God sent them His Son, and they did the same.  Oh, they listened for awhile, and some even seemed to be taking His words to heart.  But when His plan and purpose turned out to be something other than immediate military conquest as they had hoped, well.  He would have to go, wouldn’t He?  No, no.  Give us the murderer, thanks.  Maybe he’ll at least do a little something against these Roman dogs.

But the point is plain:  Their hostility goes back to the root.  It has always been so.  Their persecution of the Church is not some new aberration, but a continuation of past behavior.  Their opposition to the prophets festered into opposition of Christ.  But it was hardly going to be satisfied by His death, not when His believers persisted, and even prospered in His absence.  As I said, taking Barnes’ point:  Their opposition to Christianity was not God’s opposition to Christianity.  It was their opposition to God.

Beloved, nothing has changed except the players.  We have many today who would tear down the Church in favor of their own, rarified conceptions of purity.  They will push on the idea that the Church is a failure, and utterly corrupt.  They will insist they have some new vision from God that is to supersede the order set down by the Apostles.  Why, they will claim greater insight than the Apostles!  After all, they have all the advantages of modern man, right?  But this is no more a new thing than was Jewish opposition.  From the outset, there were those who saw the success of the Apostles and thought, yo!  I could do that.  And they came with their dreams born of hallucinations and bad food, claiming wisdom beyond that of the Apostles who were, after all, mostly uneducated, and unfamiliar with local ways and wisdom.  Paul may have been the exception here, but even he must be seen a foreigner, particularly as he moved further from Asia Minor.

So, today, as with society in general, we have those who are sure they have a better, wiser plan for the Church.  Things would be so much better if only we would do it their way.  Throw off those stodgy old rules.  God didn’t really say that, did He?  He hasn’t put a period on His revelation, has He?  Perhaps He’s changed His mind about some of these practices and decided to welcome one and all in the end.  Perhaps everybody gets saved, and honestly, all these trappings of religion don’t matter.  Perhaps all ways lead to God.  And we should be hip, and with it, and enticing in our presentation of faith, even if that requires us to utterly abandon any concept of truth to do so.  Perhaps God’s not so bright, and needs our help to make an in with these younger folks.  And so they boast of being God’s people, while actively displeasing and opposing Him.  Watch out!  We are not immune to such thinking.

But it bothers us, doesn’t it, to hear this harsh and unequivocal rejection of God’s chosen people by God Who chose?  Wrath has come upon them to the uttermost?  But, Lord!  This is Jacob and Ephraim.  This is Judah and Benjamin.  Did You not say?  Had You not called them by name, even as we?  And here they are, condemned by the very word of God.  How can this be?  And if it can be so for them, what of us?  Oh, there is much to concern us in this.  Where is our blessed assurance now?

Well, allow me to declare straight up.  Our blessed assurance is no less assured than it ever was.  God did not fail these Israelites, and He shall not fail us.  We learn, of course, from this same Paul that the sons of Abraham, the inheritors of God’s certain promises, are not those who can lay claim to lineage through the flesh.  The true heirs of Abraham are those who are heirs by the Spirit.  The word of God has not failed!  They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, nor because they are Abraham’s descendants.  God has forever made distinction.  “Through Isaac your descendants will be named.”  We’re not talking children of the flesh, but children of the promise.  These are the children of God, the descendants of Abraham (Ro 9:6-8).  And remember well:   “It does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Ro 9:16).

It was not kinship or ethnicity that defined the children of God then, nor is it now.  Neither is it that this one was born into a family who faithfully attended church, and that one didn’t.  This has never been the deciding factor.  For all that circumcision was a sign of the covenant, the sign itself was no guarantee of true inclusion in this covenant.  Many took the sign but not the terms.  Indeed, I should have to say that all of those pointed to by Paul here in discussing those Jews who repeatedly proved themselves hostile to God, bore the sign of circumcision on their flesh.  But their hearts?  No.

I shall have to recognize that at least one or two of our commentaries wish to suggest that Paul’s speaking of them suffering by their own countrymen is not in fact pointing to those sharing an ethnic heritage with them, but merely those of the same locality.  The JFB, for example, would observe that while the Gentiles of the city were involved, it was the instigation of the Jews from the synagogue that propelled the persecution.  It was the Jews from the synagogue who took to chasing Paul from city to city, stirring up trouble for him wherever they could.  At some point, the exculpatory note that Peter offered them in Jerusalem must fall flat.  “I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did” (Ac 3:17).  That’s as may be.  We must observe, of course, that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of civil law, nor is it any defense in the court of heaven.  It leaves, perhaps, more room for forgiveness when once realization comes, but it does not in fact remove the charge.  And here’s the thing:  Excuses of ignorance have been removed.  Now you know.  When Peter spoke, it had become so.  Now you are aware of the enormity of your crimes, and being aware, it becomes absolutely incumbent upon you to repent if you would have forgiveness.

The same could assuredly be said for these persecutors in Thessalonica.  Whatever slim value a plea of ignorance might have had, that plea was no longer viable.  There was no longer any ignorance.  They had been told, and clearly, of the coming of their Messiah.  They had been shown the gate to His kingdom, and had done their utmost to slam it shut, and to set up a defensive perimeter around it, lest any others break through and enter in.  This is Paul’s message here.  They actively sought to prevent salvation.  They sought to put an end to any learning of it, to deter any from even hearing of the possibility of salvation through faith in Christ.  And as Ironside points out, this was evidence that indeed, God’s wrath was already upon them.

This is yet another difficulty we find in reading this passage.  What is Paul talking about when he speaks of God’s wrath having already come upon them to the uttermost?  The natural connection that comes to mind is with the destruction of Jerusalem, but to make that the case leaves us with a huge problem, because it hadn’t happened yet at the point when Paul is writing, unless we, and pretty much all who preceded us have been entirely wrong about the timeline in regard to Paul’s ministry.  But we can’t be that far wrong.  He would have to have died at the command of some other Caesar than he did for him to have been alive and well and writing to this young church after Jerusalem’s fall.  Indeed, we should have to rethink the entirety of the New Testament, at least apart from the gospels themselves, if this were his point of reference.  And if he speaks prophetically, we have an almost equal problem in that he sets this in the aorist tense.  This is the language of past action, not of future events.

Now, one or the other of the commentaries pointed back to an earlier event that I was not particularly aware of, a slaughter that transpired on the Passover in 48 AD.  I may touch on that issue in the last part of this study, but I just note it here to say that there could, in fact, have been a specific event to which he is pointing at least in thought.  But in all, I incline to think he is simply asserting the certainty of the matter.  They are always filling up the measure of their sins, and God’s wrath is already upon them ‘to the utmost’.  There is a footnote observing the uncertainty as to Paul’s meaning with this word.  It could be altogether, as the phrase would suggest.  It could indicate a permanency to the determination.  His wrath has come forever.  Or, it could indicate that His wrath is upon them to the end.  There is no longer opportunity for repentance given them.  It is too late.

That has to put one in mind of that one unforgivable sin.  “Any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, except blasphemy against the Spirit.  That shall not be forgiven.  You speak against the Son of Man?  That can be forgiven.  You speak against the Holy Spirit?  That shall not be; not now, not in the age to come” (Mt 12:31-32).  What are we to make of this?  Where is the line drawn?  Many would take this as cause to accept every claim made of acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit as cause to give respect.  But how can that be?  The case in Corinth would seem to put paid to that idea.  For all that, I can’t but imagine that all those false teachers plaguing the early church came with claims to bearing truths revealed by the Holy Spirit.  Were they to be condemned, then, who rejected them and their claims?  Hardly.  Were they themselves to be condemned for blaspheming by their claims?  That seems far more likely, to be honest.

But there are many others who would insist that this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has as its primary object the rejection of Christ and His free offer of salvation.  To refuse Him faith is assuredly a blasphemy against the Spirit, for where faith has come knocking, it is the Spirit Who bears the message.  One cannot refuse Jesus except he has refused the Spirit Who ever points our course toward Jesus.  And in that refusal, it must be seen that this one has declared that neither Son nor Spirit are truly God of very God.  And that, dear ones, is blasphemy indeed!  But, up to some certain moment in life, it can still be said, “I know that you acted in ignorance.”  The question is, now that ignorance has been dismissed, what have you to say?

These Jews who so troubled and harassed the young church and sought to see it eradicated, had said quite plainly that they would prefer to be in charge, thanks all the same.  And they weren’t even satisfied with retaining control of their own course of life, but would seek as they may to ensure that everybody else was headed for eternal perishing even as themselves.  Is it any wonder, then, that wrath has come in full, irrevocable certainty?

Look, when Adam found himself able to walk away from the gate of Eden, he might well have been thinking that this certain death God had spoken of was apparently not coming about after all.  It’s the standard mindset of sin, isn’t it?  Well, I seem to have gotten away with it.  I guess I needn’t bother myself about it, then.  But not so!  No, sin’s punishment is certain, and our certainty that it is not only leads us to add to the enormity of our crimes.  And here, Paul points out that in regard to these opposers of faith, ‘they always fill up the measure of their sins’.

Let me observe, then, that this is nothing unique to the Jews.  It is the story of every sinner that ever was or ever shall be. By our sins, we continue to add to the pile, for it never lessens, does it?  It’s not as if somebody is over there removing old sins from our account so as to make room for the new ones.  That’s not how it works.  When civil justice is functional, that’s not how it works.  We don’t release you from prison so that you can go commit some new crimes to earn your way back in.  No!  The whole intent is to discourage you from that course of life, to make it sufficiently painful as to serve as a deterrent when you are returned to your liberty.  Of course, there are those for whom no deterrent will suffice.  There are those who will take the security of a bunk and free meals over their freedom, and deliberately seek not only to commit further crimes, but to make sure they are caught, so that they can get back to this comparatively easy life.  That, I dare say, is more a comment on our failure to make prisons the deterrent they should be, than upon the perverseness of mind in the criminal.  But then, it does speak volumes as to their mindset as well.  And ours.

We are not so very different, if we choose to examine the case.  Here we are, possessed of forgiveness for our sins in Christ Jesus, and what do we do with it?  Do we indeed ‘go and sin no more’?  We might try for a season.  But we rapidly discover that however willing the spirit, the flesh remains weak, and instead we go and sin some more.  God is good, though, and His Spirit does in fact indwell His children.  And He speaks.  He does not leave us to blithely suppose this is okay, actually, and God doesn’t really mind.  I mean, after all, He’s called us His own, declared us saved.  What can our sins matter now?  But they matter greatly!  What can it mean, if we have such total disregard for God’s righteous order, though we would claim Him as our Father, and call Him Lord?  At some point, we shall have to accept that what it must mean is that our claims are utterly false.

Understand well that even this does not alter the true assurance of true salvation.  It only demonstrates the reality that the truth is not in you.  I take Ironside’s point.  This continuance on the path to perdition is clear evidence that God’s wrath is already determined against you, already in action, and there can be no escape.  It is indeed cause for us to heed the call to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, even knowing that it is God Who is at work in us.  It is indeed cause to take very seriously the call to truly repent and set a different course in life, to truly set aside those old, sinful ways and embark on a life of holiness.  It is indeed cause to seek not only forgiveness, but true, heart change.  And it is most assuredly evidence of our continued desperate need for Christ, for the Spirit abiding, for the Father working in us, that we might in fact will and work for His good pleasure.

Oh!  May we never find that we have become such as are pursuing their own death, and not satisfied with that, seek also to prevent anybody else from obtaining life.  You know how we respond to the news of yet another mass killing.  It’s not just sadness at the loss of those ‘innocent lives’.  For one, a moment’s proper introspection would remind us that those lives were never innocent, no more so than our own.  But it’s this, I think, that drives home the horror of it all.  This one was not satisfied with his own death, but felt it needful to prevent others from living.  Perhaps there are thoughts of vengeance there, for some perceived wrong of the past.  It might even have some validity, although it seems to me that this is never a case that is made with any success.  It’s beside the point.  The point is death.  That’s all.  Maybe it’s the sense of power in the perpetrator, of getting to play judge and jury.  And yet, it seems it always comes with this same end in view, of the perpetrator joining his victims in a shared outcome.  Pointless, really.  But also, evidence:  The wrath of God is upon this one. 

As I say.  Let this not be our story.  Let us recognize the danger, even in our security.  Yes, I truly hold that we can be absolutely assured of our salvation.  But we cannot rightly be so assured when our lives continue to give evidence against us.  Let us, therefore, repent of our wicked ways, turn away from our insistent continuance in sin, and seek the more fully that God might so work upon our inner man as to bring about a true state change in character.  Let us set ourselves to do better today than yesterday, to seek God more wholeheartedly today than yesterday, to allow His thoughts to guide our thoughts more today than yesterday.  Let us set ourselves to the task of maturity, of growing in Christ and in likeness to Christ, that we may, at the very least, present no unwarranted hindrance to His work in us.

Application for the Present (11/17/22-11/18/22)

There are two particular aspects of this which I would now consider in terms of present day application, and the first of these is found in the example of these Jews who so opposed God.  Let me put it simply.  Take care!  There are many possible motives we might think to assign to their case by which to explain their opposition to God’s purpose among the Gentiles.  That purpose, in all fairness, is no different among the Jews, but leave that aside for the moment.  We might look at the things we are told in Acts regarding this church plant, and suppose their issue was primarily a financial concern.  They were not so very unlike the followers of Artemis in Ephesus, or those who profited by sales to those followers.  When God saw fit to make Himself known in truth, it had an impact on their trade.  The statue makers weren’t selling as many statues, and this would not do.  The purveyors of magic texts were likewise suffering loss.  Well, the case for the Jews in Thessalonica had certain similarities, didn’t it?  Some of their wealthier proselytes were abandoning the synagogue in favor of this new Christian teaching.  This was not just about funding the synagogue.  This was business!  These were trading partners, folks one used to be able to count on for favorable terms, they being your coreligionists and all.  But now, who knows?

That is one possibility, and our own experience in similar sorts of economic concerns would suggest it as a fairly strong possibility.  But there’s also the issue of prestige and position, if you will.  Again, that association in the synagogue, particularly between Jew and proselyte, put the Jew in a place of relative honor and prestige.  They, after all, were the Chosen people.  It was their God.  Yes, yes, you were welcome to join yourself to them, but let’s face it; you’d always be something of a second-class member, and would need to show some deference to their clearly superior position with God, and with regard to their understanding of Torah.  And again, our own experience would readily lend credence to such a motive, for we can find it in ourselves.  Put a man in a position of any sort of authority or apparent expertise, and he rather quickly takes to thinking himself rather something.

But I would offer a third, more insidious issue.  For them to heed the call of Christ would require them admitting to error on their part.  It would require setting aside all that prideful supposed knowledge of God’s ways and God’s requirements.  It would require acknowledging that this whole framework that had been built up around the Law of Moses needed to be torn down.  It would require a significant mea culpa on their part, and I dare say you can just as readily recognize in yourself how incredibly difficult it is to make such a confession.  I have heard it put this way.  “I can’t be wrong about everything!”  Well, in truth, we can be, and in truth, those Gentiles who were coming to Christ had found it needful to recognize that indeed they had been.  They, too, had their religious propensities, their frameworks of moral understanding and worldly order. 

Nobody comes to Christ without having already developed some sort of worldview, some sort of guiding principles that govern their behavior.  The Gentiles certainly didn’t.  The Jews couldn’t.  The most committed atheistic, irreligious person who might venture into the church today can’t.  You and I certainly did not.  And I frankly don’t care how young you were when first you heard His call.  You had strong opinions, strong convictions about how things work and how things should be.  And for the most part, I could all but guarantee that for all that they were so strongly held, they were strongly wrong.

So, what happens now, for those of us who have been some time in the Church?  Perhaps you were raised in the church, perhaps still adhere to the teachings of whatever particular denomination your parents raised you in.  Perhaps you have been pretty much a lifelong member of the same local body, which in many regards should be regarded as reason for praise or congratulations, I should think.  It’s rather the exception anymore, if only because our lives no longer tend to remain localized in such a fashion as would permit of such a thing.  But it could as readily present us with a more serious challenge should correction become necessary.

Let me suggest this, as well.  The more we have been in pursuit of truly delving into the texts of Scripture, and, as likely as not, into the commentaries of this or that theologian, the more firmly we tend to establish our particular beliefs as to the nature of God, the nature of our walk with Him, and the particulars of this or that matter of doctrine.  I remember a good brother of mine who was long of this church I presently attend, but has since moved away.  He would often comment on the fact that he had held to various beliefs in the course of his life, all of which he held as being clear and obvious, absolutely correct beliefs, in spite of them being entirely contrary to beliefs held with equal vehemence at other stages.  I forget the exact wit of his presenting the idea, but it was along the lines of, “I have had many opinions on this or that doctrine over the years, and always been sure I was right.”

I can think of that example I have often observed in my own development.  In earliest stages of faith, I was firmly convinced of what I would now recognize as a more or less Arminian position.  Of course, you could lose your faith if you aren’t ever so diligent!  Why, look!  It’s right here in this verse.  You remain a child of God in great peril, and must be committed, and on your toes, if you expect to make it to heaven.  But then came that period, now a rather shockingly long time ago, of going through Romans with various commentaries from various perspectives, and I found I had need of abandoning that perspective, and properly accounting for the sovereign will of God, and His unfailing love.  This was a huge reversal, and at the time, it came easily enough, I suppose.  Here were what I would construe as some of the best arguments presented for both cases, and my old position was found wanting.

Here's the thing, though:  Having now re-established such a perspective, it becomes that much harder to even contemplate changing course.  Look!  I have studied.  I did my homework.  I revised my understanding, so of course I am surely correct now.  And it would, I know, take rather a lot to dislodge me from my beliefs at this point.  And that should concern me, for it is clear that, at least so far as these things go, I would rather be found right than actually be right.  Or, at the very least, I am in grave danger of adopting such a position.  And this is very much where many both among us and around us find themselves.

This is the training of the world:  It doesn’t matter so much that you have a handle on reality, but only that we acknowledge and uphold whatever fantasies you have woven for yourself.  Objective reality is no longer the defining point.  Belief is.  If you believe you are thus and so, then let’s not allow physical reality to hamper your beliefs.  No, no.  Let’s celebrate your triumph over reality.  Look.  This is what the world is telling us with regard to relatively simple matters which are readily shown to be false by simple appeal to the clear evidence of the senses.  It only gets worse when we move into the realm of theology, and belief in this god or that.  I mean (and how swiftly you will hear the very question!) who are you to say your God is any more or less real and valid than mine?  Can you show me this god of yours?  Can I show you mine?  It’s all just opinion, surely, and yours and mine are of equal weight, for how could either opinion weigh more?  Honestly, once you’ve removed the bulwark of objective truth, they’ve got a point.  If truth doesn’t exist, and exist quite independently from opinion, then all opinions really are equal.  Of course, we see the fallout, which is that meaningful discussion of most any matter becomes effectively impossible.  The confusion of languages at Babel has nothing on us at the present day.  We may speak the same language, but we can no longer agree as to what the words mean.  How could we?  They were designed to describe and discuss objective reality, and we don’t quite believe in that any more.  So words come to mean whatever we wish them to mean, and soon, all meaning is lost, along with all truth.

But let’s bring this back to ourselves.  Where are we in our faith?  Where are we as a denomination, or a local body?  Would we in fact rather be found right than actually be right?  If we were to discover that a significant course change was needful, or that we had in fact got certain, fairly significant doctrines wrong, could we find the strength of will to change?  Or would we, rather like these Jews of the synagogue, these Pharisees, insist on continuing our course unchanged?  And again, I would warn that pointing to past examples of just such a course change is no assurance that we would do so again if it proved necessary.  Indeed, it might even serve as a deterrent.  No!  We already addressed this.  We already reconsidered and established this new belief.  There’s no reason to revisit it.  It’s settled.  Watch out!

The church, it has been said, is ever in need of reformation.  If it is healthy, I should have to suppose the implication is that she is ever in process of reformation.  That doesn’t mean we blithely switch out beliefs and practices with every new idea that comes along.  Far be it from us!  We are not to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine that happens to blow by (Eph 4:14).  That’s childishness, not child-like faith.  That is setting oneself as a ready victim for every crafty false teacher that happens along.  But neither have we safety in becoming so stiff-necked and proud that even God can’t change our minds.

Take the Pharisees not as a historical curiosity, but as an object lesson.  After all, what has been written has been written for our benefit, that we might learn from it, not merely gain a bit of head-knowledge, but truly benefit from the record.  How often do we parents complain of our children’s inability to learn from our mistakes, to accept our wisdom and avoid some of our pitfalls?  But we are our children in this regard, and just as prone to discount the wisdom of those who have gone before us.  But take this example.  Here was a sect that, for all their good intentions at the outset, had developed into a movement wholly focused on feeling holy.  All of these traditions were about feeling one had complied with the high demands of holiness.  Oh!  Moses set out the basics, and these, taken at face value weren’t really all that hard, were they?  I mean, really:  Give God exclusive place in worship.  Yep.  We can do that.  Don’t murder anyone, and don’t sleep with those who are not your spouse.  Okay, that’s not too difficult.  Don’t steal.  Sure, we can handle that.  Honor your parents.  Again, hardly a big ask for most of us.  Take a day off a week.  Hey!  Who’s not up for that? 

But they would do better.  They would set fences around those fences to make the more certain that they didn’t accidentally violate the real laws.  Oh my, how holy they would be!  How clearly one and all would perceive that these were the set apart ones, which is, after all, what their chosen form of identification meant.  But time would demonstrate that what they had actually done was to downgrade the reality of Mosaic Law to something achievable.  Their religion had been reduced to appearances.  And, oh, how they could devise all manner of regulations for life by which to demonstrate their greater compliance and, as an added benefit, demonstrate the lesser nature of those who did not.

Jesus complained often of this.  You are so busy enforcing your own petty regulations that you completely miss the point of God’s regulation of life.  You would rather see your fellow man suffer and die than abridge one of these rules you have made for yourself!  You would rather violate Moses’ Law than your own.  In short, you don’t want to be holy.  You just want to feel holy.  In point of fact, that probably doesn’t even matter all that much, so long as folks around you perceive you as being holy.  The reality, after all, is way too hard.  And if they’d lost sight of that fact, Jesus set it front and center before them.  You think you’ve complied with the commandment against murder?  Well understand it fully.  Understand it in all its implications, and then tell me how you measure up.  You think you’ve avoided adultery by refusing to act on your impulses?  Try again.  The thought was already the sin.  Guilty!  You think you have avoided coveting?  Give everything away and come follow Me!  No?  Well, so much for that piety.

And over and over again, they showed that they would prefer their traditions, their achievable goals, to the high call of holiness.  They would prefer their way to His.  And beloved, we are not so different as we would like to believe.  When it comes down to it, we are at very great risk of having the self-same mindset.  Better my way than His.  Keep that up, and see what happens.  Eventually, if not already, God says, “So be it.  You do you.”  And no more dread response could be coming.  Here is evidence of wrath come upon us, that God leaves us to pursue our course, and will trouble us no more with discipline and correction.

There is a second point I wish to pursue here, but I’ll save that for tomorrow.  For today, I think it best I pray.

Father, as I consider the challenges that are ever with me these days, I hear the caution in what You have had before my eyes today.  Have I indeed become resistant to Your discipline?  Am I so committed to being found right that I have lost concern for actually being right when it comes to Your truth?  I know that tendency is in me.  I have often spoken of it as the defining Wilcox trait.  We are always right.  We have thought it through.  Oh!  Such towering pride!  And that tower needs to totter and fall down, that I might indeed walk humbly before You.  You are assuredly right.  Me, not so much.  I can but set myself at Your feet, and beg that You would hammer through any such resistance in me, and bring me into true compliance with Your ways.  I know too well my besetting sins, at least some of them.  And those I know are more than sufficient to keep me busy with repentance and reformation.  And yet, how often I see that I simply accept them as the way I am.  But I am not given to remain as I am, am I?  No.  I remain Yours, for You have called me.  But I remain in great need of change, and I shall need Your power working in me to attain to that change.  Yet, let me not be so foolish as to suppose that sitting passively by will satisfy Your requirements of me.  Let me be active in resisting sin by the power You have already given me to do so.  Let me be active in reforming my ways to better reflect the reality of Your presence in me.  Let me indeed walk worthy of the love You have shown me, and continue to show me.  Let me be your true son.

This morning, I would expand our scope just a bit, while retaining a focus on how this matter of receiving God’s word amidst great opposition applies to our own day.  One thing that caught my eye as I reviewed the commentaries was this text drawn from the book of Daniel.  He writes that in the latter part of their rule, when sinners have run their course, an insolent king will arise, one skilled in intrigue (Dan 8:23-25).  At risk of turning political here, does it not seem to be the case that this time is with us?  Now, I can say with reasonable assurance that there have been other times when other people were just as certain that some current event clearly satisfied the prophecy, that this one had come who would ‘destroy mighty men and holy people’.  Surely, some must have viewed the rise of soviet Russia in such a way.  But it’s hard not to look at the present and observe that what we have set in office over us are such as ‘cause deceit to succeed by [their] influence’, magnifying themselves while destroying many, and ‘even [opposing] the Prince of peace’.

Well, beloved, if we allow ourselves to suppose that this speaks to our own day, and I cannot discount the possibility that it is so, then take heart.  For Daniel also informs us that this one ‘will be broken without human agency’.  We have no need to take up arms against our oppressor, nor are we to look for some other human agent, some other politician, to dislodge this evil.  It shall be done, says our God, without human agency.  It must be.  For how else shall we avoid man taking credit for his own salvation, and that will never do.  Let such a human agent arise, and I dare say he will soon prove to be as bad or worse.  He, too, will come to care more for his power than for his people, and will set himself in opposition to the Prince of peace.  For nothing so threatens the man in power than to know that there is Another to whom he must rightly answer, and learning of it, like Herod before him, he will do his utmost to prevent that One from coming to be. 

So long as God remains some vague concept, some crutch for the proles, He is no threat to such men.  But let this God prove demonstrably true, and now there is threat indeed.  Now the powerful must confront their powerlessness.  Now the corrupt must face the certainty of their corruption being not only found out, but fully exposed and fully punished.  And, as with any sinner facing judgment, they will seek any means at their disposal to escape judgment, preferably while continuing in their sins.  It is hardly, as I have said, any strange thing that these to whom Paul turns our eyes, are so assiduously seeking to fill the measure of their sins.  This is ever the way with unrepentant sinners.  It is ever the way with us, or would be were it not for the disruptive influence of the Spirit indwelling, were it not for the sovereign choice of our God to see us aware, repentant, and reformed.

Yet, here we are, still in a world lost in darkness, still left to keep our lamps burning in the dark in hope.  What is our hope?  Is it that we might survive?  But that doesn’t need hope.  That is now a certainty for us to whom Christ has made known His call, to all who have received and accepted this great message for what it truly is:  God’s own word.  No, our hope is that those who see the light in us might be drawn to Him Who is the Light.  Our hope is that by our example and by our message we might make known this glorious message which has come to us, in order that they might also not only receive the message as delivered, but accept it as it truly is; the true revelation of God, given by Himself that they, too, might live.

We know, however, that not all will so receive it.  Not all will hear it to their benefit.  Not even all who sit with us under the preaching of God’s word week upon week have in fact received it as truly being the word of God.  Some, even in the pews, are yet pursuing the filling of the measure of their sins, and while they would have the social value or communal feeling of being in the church, will have nothing to do with the God Who Is.  They can sing the songs.  They can nod along to the message.  They might even find cause to concur with some of the moral and ethical implications.  But they will not have God.  They will not have their sins removed from them, not even for this.

There are others, however, who, like the Jews to whom Paul’s attention is turned, like those fellow citizens who turned upon the churchmen of Thessalonica, are determined to oppose the gospel with everything that is in them.  They will have no part in your services.  They will not tolerate you so much as mentioning this God of yours.  In point of fact, if they discover that you are doing some sort of outreach, they will seek to call the powers of civil authority to put an end to it.  How else shall we explain the vehemence with which they have sought to prevent any from speaking of God in their schools or in the halls of government?  How else shall we explain their insistence that no visible sign of Christianity be permitted in public view?  And yes, to some degree this extends to Judaism as well, at least in the current way of the West.  But it seems that others are given a pass.  The Muslim is permitted to flaunt the laws in preference for his insistence on this or that observance.  Others may demand to wear their religious identity, and this we are called to accept.  But let the believer set a cross upon his neck, whatever one might think of such a fashion statement, and know this:  There will be howls of opposition.  It’s one thing if it is in fact no more than a fashion statement.  But if it is truly an expression of faith?  Oh, no.  We can’t have that.  Away with such a man!

And here is our message.  Matthew Henry delivers it for us.  “Nothing tends more to any person or people’s filling up the measure of their sins than opposing the gospel.”  I think we need to hear this with a degree of care.  I would concur that such vehemence in opposing Christ would appear to be indication that, as Paul says here, ‘wrath has come upon them to the utmost’.  And yet…  And yet, was not Paul himself just such a one?  And here he is, the chief exponent of Christian faith, though he had been among the fiercest in opposing it.  Was not he such a one as he would now describe as having God’s wrath upon him to the utmost?  We need to bear this in mind as we consider.

There is always the possibility, even for those who most vehemently oppose the valid rule of our great Lord, Jesus Christ, might in due course truly hear this message for what it is, for being the true and legitimate and only word of the only true and legitimate God Who Is.  We don’t write them off as a loss and move on.  That is not our call.  If it were, then we should have been a suicide cult, determined to leave this life so soon as we discovered the reality of heaven and our citizenship therein.  But our Lord does not leave that option open; instead insists that He has left us here to serve in His physical absence, to seek that His kingdom might be expanded by the word of our testimony of Him.

That said, there is this counterbalance present, something Calvin suggests as being really the whole point of Paul’s message here.  That, he says, is primarily aimed at keeping us from having society with those whom God has determined to pursue with His vengeance.  Now, we must be careful to observe the caveat which Calvin applies to this warning:  That it is a matter of keeping society with them in their rebellion.  We cannot help but have society with those who oppose Christ, for to avoid it we should have to withdraw utterly from society, and this option is not granted us.  He speaks to this in addressing the church in Corinth later, the very church from which he writes our present epistle.  “I wrote to you not to associate with immoral people, but I did not mean with the immoral people of the world, or with the covetous, the swindlers, or the idolaters.  For then you would have to go out of the world” (1Co 5:9-10).  It’s not about refusing all connection with the world around you, for how then could you expect to present them with the word of God and so hope to save some?  No.  It’s a question of who we consider to be our brother in Christ.  Such a one as this, whatever his claims to the contrary, cannot truly be a brother.

We cannot, then, keep society with such a one, for we must, particularly if they would claim faith, recognize that in point of fact, God’s vengeance is upon them for their obstinate rebellion.  We can yet pray for them.  We can yet seek to act as missionaries toward them, bearing witness to the truth of God, which much surely, in this case include bearing witness to their sins and the falsity of their profession of faith.  But we must continue to pursue them in hope that this false profession might in fact become a true confession for them, that they who have falsely laid claim to brotherhood might yet be found true brothers in Christ.

How needful it is to find the proper balance in our present age.  There are so many that would claim to be of the faith, and yet preach a way that is entirely of compromise.  There are many who would insist that we who believe should bend over backward to make the false professors comfortable until such time as they maybe, and apparently through no effort of our own, come to true faith in the true Christ who is truly Lord of all.  No!  These are exactly the ones of whom Paul counsels, “Do not associate!”  There is a place for expulsion.  There is a place for church discipline.  It matters.  We don’t just accept you as you are and cling to some gauzy hope that maybe if you fake it long enough it might become real.  If this one won’t repent, expel him.  Go back just the least bit in that letter and you find Paul’s clear and explicit instruction.  “I have already decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1Co 5:5).  But if there is to be hope of salvation, then the sin needs exposing, and the sinfulness of sin needs to be made clear to him.

Who, I have to ask, is going to be bothered to set aside their sins if those who come to them as representing the thrice holy God make the case to be that they can continue so long as they please?  Why give up the one when the offer is apparently there to hold onto both?  Why choose you this day if no such choice appears necessary?  The sinfulness of sin must be made plain, and the holiness of God must be made plain.  It is one thing to hate the sin and not the sinner.  It is quite another to love the sin in loving the sinner.  How loving is it, really, to allow this one to think himself safe when he is at utmost peril?  What true revival of God has ever come about by allowing such a mindset?  If one goes back to the writings of those who were God’s instruments in provoking the Great Awakening, we find that they did not do so by making Christ comfortable to the masses, nor by making little of their sins.  Rather, to take the obvious example of Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, they made it painfully clear just how dire the situation was for these sinners.  And, having just reread that sermon recently, it is noteworthy the degree to which Edwards is focused on ‘some of you sitting in the pews today’.  This wasn’t some fiery speech in the public square, or some tent meeting or evangelistic outreach.  This was a sermon to those who came to the house of God of a Sunday, and it was recognition – clear and clearly propounded recognition – that not all who came were truly of Christ; at least, not yet.

How shall we respond to such a thing?  I dare say the first response must be one of introspection.  What of me?  Is my confession of faith a true confession?  Are there things in my life which would tend to suggest it is not?  And if so, what is to be done?  I can be pretty certain that you, like myself, find the answers far less comfortable than we should like.  Yes, I know my habits, and I know many of them constitute longstanding sins, sins which I rue and yet I pursue.  I am not alone in this.  I have the further testimony of this Apostle to make clear that this is no unusual thing.  But the desire for holiness is in me, the desire to walk worthy of this God Who has redeemed me is in me.  The spirit is indeed willing, however weak the flesh.

I like the view of a trendline.  If you are inclined to keep watch on the stock market, for example, you see that there are ups and downs on any given day, and they can sometimes be alarming or exhilarating, depending the direction.  But it is not the short-term view that matters.  It is the long-term.  What is the trend?  Are things tending upwards or down?  Are we approaching a peak or a valley?  Something similar may be said in regard to the life of faith.  We are either trending Godward or we are trending hell-ward.  With each action we undertake, with each habit we establish, we are contributing to a movement in one direction or the other.  There is no plateau of safety, no point at which we can simply rest on our laurels and ride out the rest.  We cannot count ourselves safely ahead in the game, and seek to run out the clock.  The trend either continues upward or it trends toward our perishing.

Here's the thing.  If we are keeping society with those on the downward trend, we can expect to be drawn downward together with them.  If, on the other hand, we are keeping society with those of like faith, those who seek to love God and to walk worthy of this love He has shown towards us, we should likewise expect to be drawn upward together with them.  That, after all, is the proper function of the Church, isn’t it?  It is established – established by our Lord and Savior – in order that we might come together and edify one another, build one another up in holy faith, “until we all attain to the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

Feed the you you would have.  Work toward the future you would occupy.  Seek to walk worthy of this Jesus Christ Who has not only called you, but redeemed you, called you by name and made you His own.  And in so doing, seek that these around you might likewise know His call and be made brothers, sons of this same Father in heaven.

God's Wrath (11/19/22)

It may well be the most troubling aspect of this entire passage that we have Paul speaking of these upon whom “wrath has come to the uttermost.”  For one, we really aren’t all that comfortable with God being wrathful.  We’ve had a lifetime of hearing that God is Love, and we hold to that with desperate strength.  But God is Wrath?  That’s harder to cling to, certainly.  That’s hard for us to correlate with this Love business.  And yet, as I have often enough observed, we must, for He is both, and He is not shy about it.

And here He is, declaring through His servant Paul that this is indeed so, and that indeed, there are those of whom it must be recognized that His wrath has come and it will not be revoked.  Whatever opportunity there had been for repentance, that time had passed.  Okay.  We know that this is true.  Come the grave, your opportunities for repentance are clearly at an end, but we tend to hold the line there.  Just so long as breath remains, surely so does His gracious offer wait for us to sign on, right?  Not necessarily.  I could point to a few fairly obvious examples from relatively modern history, and I expect we would all agree that no, this one was clearly condemned of God long before death took him or her.  But I could turn to the Bible as readily. 

There’s Pharaoh, of course.  God makes it exceedingly, inescapably evident that for him, there was no possibility of repentance, no possibility of salvation.  That was not going to happen.  I have had it argued to me that this was a singular, exceptional case, and that for any other human being, past, present, or future, of course there remains a possibility, and that remains a matter of their free will choosing.  Well, I would accept that in some ways Pharaoh was in fact an exceptional case, but not in that he was refused any chance of repentance.  He was exceptional in that here was one who had set himself as a god, and as a god on par with the other gods of Egypt.  As such, when the True God came, and determined to see these poseurs exposed for what they were, and destroyed from the land, Pharaoh pretty much had to go, didn’t he?

But can we make of him the sole exception to man freely choosing whether he shall be redeemed or not?  The language of the passage before us points us back to others, doesn’t it?  Even as God laid out the future for Abraham, way back near the start of this covenant relationship, He spoke of that time we just considered.  But He spoke of what came after, of the reason, if you will, for Pharaoh’s crushing, and it wasn’t just him, and it wasn’t just Egypt.  “Then in the fourth generation, they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Ge 15:16).  But it would be.  And the certainty of this outcome is there in God’s announcing a schedule of events.  When their iniquity had been completed, would come the time for God’s wrath to come ‘to the uttermost’.  Jesus spoke much the same in regard to the Pharisees, whom we might suppose Paul also has in view here.  “Fill up the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you brood of vipers.  How shall you escape the sentence of hell?” (Mt 23:32-33).

Indeed, looking at that passage, I have to wonder if it isn’t this rather than the example of the Amorites that Paul has most immediately in mind.  For it is effectively to this point that he speaks.  Jesus observed how they would kill and crucify those prophets sent to them, and declares quite directly, “Behold!  Your house is being left to you desolate!” (Mt 23:38).  Have I your way.  Was this free will choice?  If so, the time for choosing had apparently passed, and free will removed.  Alternately, God being sovereign, and having determined the specifics of His elect from before the first moments of Creation, this was inevitable, and while they may have chosen freely, there really wasn’t any choice in their case.

It is this that makes us edgy in considering God’s sovereignty in the matter of salvation; that it necessarily leaves Him sovereign in the matter of its absence, as well, and we just really don’t wish to think that there are some among us who, no matter how hard we try, no matter how often we speak to them of this loving Christ, will never in fact know His love.  It becomes that much more painful to accept when the one we have in view is a loved one, perhaps a parent, a sibling, or a child.  But has He not said?  “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.  HE who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy  of Me” (Mt 10:37).  Aaron was warned, back when his sons were destroyed from before the temple for playing with strange fire.  “Don’t uncover your heads, don’t tear your clothes, lest you die and God become wrathful against the whole congregation.  Your kinsmen shall mourn well enough, but you:  Don’t even depart the tent of meeting, lest you die. For the LORD’s anointing oil is upon you” (Lev 10:6-7).  You represent!  You stand for Me, and you shall not mourn when I am glorified, even when I am glorified in My wrath.  You shall certainly not rebuke Me for My holy vengeance.  Leave it to the dead to bury their dead.

Okay.  That’s been a rather lengthy diversion, hasn’t it?  But I think I’ve made my point.  So, let’s come back to Paul’s presentation of wrath come to the utmost.  We have something of a second problem here, once we have moved beyond our concerns with God being wrathful, and particularly when His wrath appears to be against those He had so long demarked as His own peculiar people.  And some of that concern comes about because it seems strikingly clear that if He could abandon them, He could abandon us just as readily.  Oh dear.

But I threaten to wander off again.  Stick with me, and let me try to stick to my point.  If this has already come with such certainty, to what is he referring?  It can’t be the destruction of Jerusalem, for that lays yet in the future.  Even the siege that led to its fall would likely remain in the future yet as he writes.  So, where’s this already?  The JFB suggests the Passover slaughter of 48 AD, which had certainly brought some 30,000 souls to their end, so far as physical life was concerned.  And this, he suggests as being a foretaste of what was coming in 70 AD.  Well, news travels, and I’m sure Paul would have had news of this event.  Even if it was relatively insignificant by world standards, to the Jews it would be huge, and it would certainly have registered with those of the church in Jerusalem, even if they were not directly affected by it.  Is that what he has in view?

I’m not so sure.  I rather like the other perspective that commentary offers, that what he is doing with his choice of syntax here is emphasizing ‘the speedy certainty of the divinely-destined stroke’.  It takes on not quite a prophetic flavor in its own right, although one could choose to hear it in a somewhat prophetic voice.  It speaks far more directly to the certainty, the determined will of God in the matter.  The decision is made.  The case is closed.  The decisions of this court are final, and there is no court of appeal.  The end is certain, even if the specifics of time and means are not.  As I observed in my earlier notes on this passage, when God determines a thing shall be done, He sees it done.

It is of a piece with many things we find declared as indicatives in Scripture, as present realities, even though for us it remains future hope.  That speaks to the certainty which is our hope, the confident, even joyful expectation of God fulfilling His determined will in regards to us.  This is, at root, no different.  The event is so certain that not only can Paul speak of it as established fact rather than probable future, but he can speak of it as already accomplished, and for the same reason that we can speak of our entry into our inheritance in the kingdom of God as accomplished fact though its true and full fruition remains to be seen for us.  That reason is God’s sovereign will.  There is, in the end, no other valid cause for certainty.

So, what shall we say of this?  Are the Jewish people lost utterly, beyond hope of redemption?  Well, for many that is clearly the case, but it is just as clearly not the case that it held true for all.  There was, after all, a church (or churches) in Jerusalem, and one might presume there still was when Jerusalem fell, although I don’t know that we could say that with certainty.  And there was Paul, not to mention those other Apostles who, to a man, were Jewish.  There were those in the Thessalonian church who were Jewish.  So, no.  It’s not a blanket, all-inclusive pronouncement of judgment on Israel or on the Jewish people.  I dare say we could say the same in regard to the Amorites, or others of those nations driven out when Israel came back to take possession of the Promised Land.  It was clearly so with Egypt, where to this day we know there remains a body of believers.

It holds true for those nations currently accounted as Muslim nations, or Hindu, or Buddhist.  It holds for us.  It would be hard, I think, to gainsay those who decry our current condition and see it as necessary that God come in wrath, if only out of a sense of fairness to those nations He has destroyed for their sins in earlier ages.  How shall He justify the eradication of Sodom and Gomorrah and let this present situation go unpunished?  How then is He Just?  Fair enough.  And yet, even for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were exceptions, however very few they may have been.  Were Lot and his daughters the only ones to escape?  And even then, it could be argued that only Lot was truly redeemed and the destruction of his daughters but delayed.  I don’t find it impossible or even improbable, really, that there were others, even in those most debauched of cities, who yet found hope in God and were preserved unto life.  It may be that they were preserved on their dying breath, but even so, it would count.

As for the Jews of whom Paul writes, Clarke (admittedly, one whose sentiments towards Jews in general is hard to take) observes with some accuracy that, “It is to be reckoned among the highest mercies of God that the whole nation was not pursued by the divine justice to utter and final extinction.”  That’s a fair statement so far as it goes.  Mind you, if you replaced ‘nation’ with ‘world’, it would hold just as true.  If it was among the highest mercies of God that some Jews were spared, it must be higher still that ANY have been spared.  Why was Noah spared?  His subsequent adventures did not particularly recommend him.  Why has salvation come to the Gentiles at all?  What had we ever done to give God reason to consider us?  Why do any yet persevere in faith, when He has so long delayed His return?  The reason remains one:  It is His will.

God’s wrath, Barnes observes, comes upon a man when God abandons him.  That is the already of the situation.  And it remains established fact though there may be no clear evidence of His punishment upon such a one as yet.  It’s that same already and not yet tension that we know with respect to our salvation, only in the dark negative.  He offers this clarifying point.  “It is not punishment that constitutes the wrath of God.  That is the mere outward expression of divine indignation.”  That rather makes sense, doesn’t it?  After all, punishment ever comes subsequent to judgment.  The sentence is rendered first, the determination made.  And, with that determination made, the court having delivered its verdict, the punishment has become certain, even if its execution may be delayed for a time.  Now, I do not consider the vagaries of civil justice, with its long appeals processes, and potential for skating on technicalities.  No such potentials exist when we stand before the court of heaven.  And this, too, I think we might need to recognize bears that tension of the already and the not yet.  God has determined.  He will see it done.  And we who are His children shall have to come to grips with the fact that this holds as strongly for His wrath as for His mercy and His love.

The message, then, is that for those whom Paul has in view, wrath is come with inescapable certainty, and it shall come in completeness.  Our attention is turned to Paul’s later, more polished message to Rome, and it’s worth revisiting.  To paraphrase gently, “God gave them over to their lusts, their bodies being dishonored among them.  For they traded God’s truth for a lie.  They worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, Who is forever blessed.  Amen.  So He gave them over to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged their natural function for unnatural, and likewise men abandoned the function of the woman, and desired one another, committing indecent acts, and receiving in their own person the due penalty of their error.  Just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, so God gave them over to their own depraved minds, to do things which are improper” (Ro 1:24-28).

How can one look at this and not see the present-day situation in our own land?  Never mind the old sexual revolution of the sixties.  That was bad enough, and we might readily trace our current corruptions to those early beginnings.  Or we could chase them earlier.  Without too much trouble we could probably chase them right on back to Adam.  But we’ll stay more current, shall we?  Here is clear reference to the rise of sexual deviancy, and let’s call it what it is.  It is abnormal and immoral.  It is an abandoning of the order of God’s creation, and I don’t particularly care if one can point to this or that example from the world of nature to try and fabricate some sort of support for humanity following suit.  For one, all creation has fallen, not just man, so the fact that this animal or that may occasionally demonstrate similar depravities is hardly sufficient cause to count them honorable.  If, in fact, God has created certain species to harbor hermaphrodite properties, as was observed with certain fishes in the documentary we watched last night, that does nothing to promote self-willed pursuit of similar behaviors by other species.

I cannot fathom just how benighted our culture has become, that we are not only counselled to accept those who have made such aberrant choices for themselves, but must actively celebrate them.  Indeed, not only are we called upon to celebrate these things, but even to promote them.  We are in an age when the idea of not convincing your child to change sex on a whim, of not lending every support of government and medical science to the task of helping them along in their confused (and heavily influenced) pursuits, is considered hateful, and may soon enough become something that civil law accounts as punishable offense.  It’s not so far-fetched, is it?  In some nations, it’s already happened.  You failed to use somebody’s chosen pronouns?  Off with you!  You insisted on referring to somebody by their physical reality as man or woman when they wish to be found otherwise?  Guilty!  You dare to speak truly?  You, sir, are a threat to society!  Well, yes.  I suppose truth has always been rather a threat to society, hasn’t it?  And thus, “So they treated the prophets before you.”

What to do?  Well, I can tell you what not to do.  Do not be talked into acceptance.  Do not become so concerned  about being kind and loving that you leave these poor sinners to suppose their sins are holiness.  We do no loving service to these sinners by leaving them to their sins.  We do them great disservice if we present, either by direct word or by example, the idea that God doesn’t really mind after all.  It is one thing to hold out, truly, that God’s offer of forgiveness remains - for those who would repent.  It is quite another to suggest they all come on in and be part of the family, and if they maybe decide to repent later, that’d be nice.  It’s not a question of cutting them off without hope.  It’s a matter of proffering them real hope.  And it’s a matter of treating that which is holy as holy.  It’s a matter of accepting this message of Scripture for what it really is, the word of God.  If this is what God speaks, then it must be what God’s children heed and proclaim, without alteration, without dilution, and without compromise.

Lord, it is a difficult age into which we have come, and it would be easy to lose hope.  But our hope is not a thing of circumstance, but rather a thing of certainty founded solely in Your own certainty.  You have promised, and so it is.  You have just as certainly promised that the darkness shall grow darker, and so it does.  Teach us and guide us, I pray, to handle this present time in a fashion consistent with Your truth within us.  You tell us to speak the truth in love, and in truth, that is often a most difficult assignment.  Yet, with You all things are possible.  So, Lord, give us the words to speak, and the strength of character to do so in the true nature of that love You have poured out within us.  Let us shake free of our gauzy concepts of love as soft and romantic only, and come to grips with this Love which You are, Love willing even to suffer and die for the good of those who want nothing good.  Teach us, Lord, to live like You, to think like You, to walk worthy of the enormity of Your love shown toward us.  Bring us to a mature faith that can both withstand and address these times we live in, so long as life endures.