Published: May 3, 2026 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: The Law of Liberty 2 - Part 1 | Scripture: 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12
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the study I have begun. Oh, are we on, Jenny? Okay, thank you.
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And I will admit here again um as I be regin I mean it's only been oh what eight months so hopefully you remember some things from where we were last. Um
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my choice of the particular books we're going to march through here is uh is somewhat arbitrary. Um the reason I've chosen these particular books and and to follow this particular order is because I think frankly sometimes these things
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get neglected by their brevity. These are books that don't necessarily get time or attention uh spent on them because they're not long enough to make a whole study of on their own. Or so I
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thought. And then it took me all of last session to do first Thessalonians. So, you know, you know, um I'm going to pick up this morning in second Thessalonians. second Thessalonians. I'm going to read chapter 1 in your
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hearing and uh we'll we'll discuss from there. So, I'm going to start 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 beginning in verse one.
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verse one. I'm reading from the New American Standard. And as of now, I'm not going to make any adjustments to this one. Stay tuned.
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Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting because your faith is greatly enlarged and the love of each one of you towards another grows ever greater. Therefore,
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we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure. This is a plain
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indication of God's righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which indeed you are suffering. are suffering. For after all, it is only just for God
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to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming
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fire dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal
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destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power when he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed. For our
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testimony to you was believed. To this end also we pray for you always that our God will count you worthy of your calling and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with
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power so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I found myself as I was preparing for this one thinking that this is a somewhat strange chapter. And I had the same um thought that I had in studying here in 2 Thessalonians that I did in
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First Thessalonians, which is when I've had some conversations or look some of these things up, you often find people wanting to talk about the prophetic elements of First and Second Thessalonians, which admittedly there
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are things to do with the end times here. And yet I find myself very struck by the strangeness of some of the phrases here. Um the first one that stuck out to me
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these I I found sort of three curious terms of phrase that Paul hit me upside the head with here. First of all, he says uh regarding all of these afflictions that these afflictions and tribulations that you're enduring are
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evidence of God's righteous judgment. Secondly, he speaks here of the idea of obedience to the gospel. which Lord willing we will get to talk
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about in some depth. And finally, he uses this phrase when he comes to be glorified in his saints. And I wonder if that's how we think
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about the end times necessarily, but we'll get there. So again, a strange phrase, but I'm going to or strange um chapter in some ways, but also very
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similar to Thessalonians chapter 1. And I'm going to read Thessalonians chapter 1 also so that we can see some of the similarities here similarities here just the first, you know, 10 verses.
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That's the whole chapter. That was the joke, but that's okay. Paul and Sylvanas and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace
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to you and peace. And we give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and
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steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren, beloved by God, his choice of you. For our gospel
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did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, you also became
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imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Inaya. For
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the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Aaya, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. They
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themselves report to us about what kind of reception we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the
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dead that is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. So a very very similar opening. Um, some of the commentators opine that 2
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Thessalonians is colder in tone than First Thessalonians, which I disagree with, but I suppose as we go forward, you can make up your own mind. I think the reason why some people think this is
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2 Thessalonians does in fact have certain admonishments more perhaps than First Thessalonians does. And yet we are well aware, I hope, as the scripture says in many places, um, that those who
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are loved are those who are admonished. that correction is for those who have some hope of being corrected. And so as we go forward and we see some of those
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things, we will bear that in mind. But here it's very very similar. I think these introductions, in fact, his opening phrases are almost identical.
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Grace and peace to you. Um the only addition that I saw really in the first couple of verses of 2 Thessalonians is uh in the other where he specifically
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says the father. Here he says our father. A minor difference. Um not something I want to necessarily make a big deal out of. But the the part that
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becomes interesting or the difference I think here um and I'm I'm happy if you guys want to tell me what your different um versions say.
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Mine says we ought um I believe the ESV says O perhaps. Okay. Um, the actual Greek word here is
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the idea of owing. The idea of owing like owing money. It's also used in Luke in that way. Um, literally it is a it is a personal obligation almost like indebted. We owe thanks to God
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on your or because of you. Um, literally bound or obligated. We owe this particular thanks to God. And I find it in my own head rattling around. uh
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Romans 1 of course where he talks about that they um knew God but did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. There's an element here of Paul's uh
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recognition of the work that God is doing among them so that he owes a particular thanks to God for these people that he is specific in his acknowledgement and his thanksgiving of
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what he sees among them. And then he uses this phrase that he also used in first Thessalonians. But always um all the time that they're constantly
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in his thoughts and and his prayers um was beused that one of the particular respected uh old commentators went off on a direction of this that this always
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and he went down a road of you know in Paul's particular circumstances and he was having a hard time on his missionary journey and this was his first real success. All of which was true. But I don't know that that accounts for
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always. I think the always here is this. This is a constant source of joy to Paul to see this faith in the world, to see this light going out among the nations.
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Um and then we have this reversal uh curious perhaps in the sense that he he says here um
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well actually let me stop here for a second. He says fitting. He says as is only fitting. Um there is an element there perhaps of uh that in their communications back to him. We don't know exactly what was reported or what
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was said but that they may have communicated like well you shouldn't you shouldn't praise us too much. Don't give too much thanks for us. We're not doing that much. And yet Paul says here as is only fitting. It is only right that I
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give this thanks. I owe it to God to give thanks because of what we observe. as is only fitting or is only right because your faith is greatly enlarged and your love towards one another um
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sorry the love of each one of you towards one another grows ever greater. Um he's very obviously excited for this growth. We've been uh spending the last several
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weeks chipping out our vegetable garden. Um, I am very excited to see the plants grow hopefully and uh the excitement of seeing, you know, we started seeds
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several weeks ago and they're finally in little sprouts that we can plant out in the garden. The excitement of seeing these things grow and increase and frankly looking forward to them bearing fruit. That's why we have a vegetable
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garden. So Paul's joy at seeing the growth of the Thessalonian church. Um, I think this also ties in with what we see in 1 Thessalonians chapter 3.
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We spent some time looking at this, but he says here in 1 Thessalonians 3 at the end of that um, his sort of middle benediction if you like. He says, "Now
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may our God and Father himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you. And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all people just as we also do for you so
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that he may establish your hearts without blame and holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints." And he sees this now fulfilled. I think he's he's
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commenting here in his greeting and in his joy before them that he sees the fulfillment of this that they are uh abounding in love.
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So he's excited to see this growth. He is rewarded uh with this definite source of thanksgiving. And now we come to what I was going to say before this this idea of reversal. For he says in in 1 Thessalonians 1, um, I don't even have
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to say anything. People are coming up to us all the time talking about how much you received the gospel from us. How how changed you were, how you're going about
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the the report of you has reached these places before even we have. And that here he says, I'm going around boasting about you. So we've sort of reversed from where he said, I don't even have to
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say anything to now I'm talking about you guys. I'm boasting in this. I'm boasting that um he says we we ourselves speak
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proudly of you. I think boasting is probably the right word there. Um I don't know if any any of you have other translations of the word in that section besides boasting or speaking proudly. Um
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what is speaking proudly if not boasting? So he's going around saying we we speak proudly of you. Sorry, I've just lost my place for some reason. Um, among the churches of God
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for your perseverance and faith in the midst of your persecutions and afflictions which you endure. And he will in in fact use that word just a little later on, the idea of patience. And so he's picking up three uh those
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three sort of key phrases that we looked in first Thessalonians 1, if you recall some months ago, um in which he talks about their steadfastness, their faith,
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their endurance, their patience. While all of these things are here that he is continuing to praise them for being steadfast, for being faithful, for being uh patient in the things that they are
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enduring. I think all of this is especially true as Paul says in the face of these persecutions that they face. Um my garden is facing groundhogs among other
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things. But he's excited here that in the face of whatever persecution, now we talked about this a little bit in First Thessalonians. We don't know exactly what they were dealing with. We have
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some idea, but we're not given a lot of detail about what it was that they were enduring. There are certain um traditions about what perhaps was going on there, but we certainly understand that it was not nice. They were being
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persecuted. They were being persecuted in the midst of a very um pagan area. It almost certainly included beatings and potentially death. That's the kind of
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persecution we're talking about here. Um it also probably as we understand um at least one of the people who is named among the Thessalonians there was a
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prominent member of one of the guilds of the city probably also included some amount of economic pain of being excluded from certain things. Um, but he says here, and this is this is the part
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that made me wonder as we're we're coming down here, he says, um, in my translation, this is a plain indication, sorry, he says just before that, your your perseverance and faith in the midst
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of your persecutions and inflictions which you endure, and this is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God. Um, one of the
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translations I was looking at used the word evidence. I think that's also fair there. This is evidence of God of the righteous judgment of God. Do we think about affliction that way? When we're
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afflicted, do we say, "Ah, yes, behold the righteous judgment of God." Um, is, oddly enough, Jenny was uh reading through Job recently on her own and we
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were discussing this and I hadn't made the connection until we came here. I don't think Job's friends thought about uh affliction and persecution in that way. They would have considered that the righteous judgment of God that look
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what's happened to you. You clearly did something wrong. something wrong. And I actually think we may have an issue with that at sometimes in the modern church. Well, these sort of things wouldn't happen to you if you
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were doing the right thing. You wouldn't be in trouble.
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right in the American context? even constitute That's a very reasonable question and something I want to point out since we are in this context
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which I think we touched on in first Thessalonians. So thank you for that point. We don't have the same kind of thing. In fact, it's often hard for us to point to anything that would actually count as persecution for our faith
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rather than persecution for just being annoying, frankly. Um, and yet what what I want to draw out of this is
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Paul says here to them, this is an indication of God's righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which indeed you are suffering. Now, we get to be a
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little bit grammar nerdy for a minute because the way this is phrased in the Greek when he says um that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, it's the same kind of phrasing that you
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will find in Romans and other places for the idea when he talks about justification and we we use that term declared righteous. It is literally the same construction of declared worthy.
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Okay? So it's he's kind of undoing any sort of human effort here. Even though he's praising them for their steadfastness, their endurance, their patience, he's saying God's going to declare you worthy of the kingdom. The
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mark of it is that you're being persecuted. Okay. Which perhaps raises a question mark in our head on the other direction of if we're not being persecuted, what
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then? You look like you have a question. Yeah. So I'm reading
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So, um, since you asked, the the this is actually not there the way the Greek is constructed. He just says a plain indication. Um the the following indicates to me that he's speaking
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specifically, how do I say this? He's speaking specifically of the idea of the persecution and the fact that they are steadfast, patient, and enduring in it cannot really be separated. He's specific about
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the persecution, but the fact that they are enduring is is so integrally related that it's not not that you had your hand up. Okay. Okay. So, yes, it is
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absolutely talking about persecution. So, you go on to follow this, but but this I'm sorry, I'm getting excitable because I'm excited.
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What I want us to do is the the whole reason I want to go down this is I want us to follow the way Paul is thinking about this stuff because I want us to follow Paul as he follows Christ. So,
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I'm going to jump over the middle section for a minute and ask us a question because I don't know that we think about affliction in this way. Um, and I'm not trying to to condemn anybody, but occasionally we will have
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conversations about persecutions that come up in the news perhaps in other places in the world where churches are in fact being persecuted for the gospel. Paul is looking at just such a thing.
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He's in a different location. He's looking back at people who are his actual friends and saying, "Look, you're enduring in persecution." And he goes on here to say, and I find this amazing.
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He says um that uh it is only just for God to repay you sorry in verse six for for after all it is only just for God to repay with
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affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted to us as well when when will he grant you this relief? this relief? when the Lord Jesus will be revealed
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from heaven with his angels in flaming fire. Okay, so at the Lord's return is when you are guaranteed relief from this affliction. Finally, jump all the way
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down. He says He says in verse 11, to this end also we pray for you always. We pray for you always. What does he pray for them? Does he pray that their suffering would cease? Does
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he pray that they would be delivered? Does he pray that this cup would pass from them? from them? No. He prays that their calling would be made sure that they would endure. He
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prays, "Fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in him according to the grace of our Lord Jesus
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Christ from heaven." He doesn't ask for the suffering to end. If we take up the metaphor, and I I want to relate this back to a couple of weeks ago, Chuck's sermon, and also what we
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talked about last session in First Thessalonians, because if you think about this in terms of war or combat, he is saying to this unit under heavy fire, may you take the objective
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by life or death, may you succeed in your mission. Not that you escape the battle with your life, that you win and
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you jump back up. You win to be counted worthy to receive your laurels. Okay? So when he says, "I pray for you," he doesn't say, "I hope everything goes well." He says, "I hope everything
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glorifies God in you, through you." Do we think about the things that we go through that way? That seems to be how Paul is thinking about them. Does anyone
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object to that? I still
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I read Thessalonians. I think this must have been horrible. But I've been a believer for 40 years. Never suffered anything like these people or what people go through in the
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world today. It's really hard to figure out. You wrote ease.
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Yeah. want to give that up. We've been economically persecuted. American churches
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deeply of the deep hurt that Paul advances in his letters for brothers who aren't
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If he he speaks of his physical sufferings as I endure this for the sake of this of this there's almost an uncomfortable triumphalism about the things that he
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endured that are more visceral like that. But his his sense of frustration and and grief is palpable when it comes to
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from the body and having grown up in a church.
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That sense of betrayal is no less when you realize that people are supposed to be brothers in arms are traitors are traitors put up with
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and I don't mean I mean although we're part of And that is it doesn't really matter what a professing believer does. I think you're right. you're right. This is ground zero. We won't maintain
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the glory of the name of Jesus in the church. You can't expect but if someone apostatizes
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don't change but even even when we excommunicated that personation members of the congregation continue with that person under the trying to
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lead them back to love that is very uns
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don't allow God says I gave him I g him up to Satan we just gave him up to the church it's it's discouraging I think it is ground zero it's judgment begins at the god but the reality is when we read
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Thessalonians I think we should be struck by struck by We don't We don't we're told that if anyone wants to live godly in Christ, he will suffer persecution. But we don't suffer
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persecution. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name. We are not persecuted for his name. What does that say about?
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No, that's um you you in some senses anticipated where I want to go here. Um, I I do I think I agree with you wholeheartedly here because
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here because Jenny and I were even talking about this. Um, you know, it often gets used, I think, in in perhaps inappropriate ways, but where Jesus says, you know, that you must take up your cross and follow me. He talks about that idea. You
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get this phrase that makes its way into Christianes of counting the cost. Well, to your point, frankly, it costs most of us almost nothing.
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Um, so, so what's up with that? And I think what we need to examine for ourselves, and you'll forgive me for borrowing Paul's metaphor here, but what
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what mission are we on? What are we supposed to be doing? We actually talked about this quite a bit in First Thessalonians.
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I think there is a difference in circumstance that doesn't necessarily make a difference in how we're supposed to
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behave, but it does make a difference in how we conceive of what we're going about. Okay, so let me put it this way. We are not in a place where primarily we will be persecuted for calling ourselves
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Christians. It's extremely unlikely. In fact, to some extent, we have the opposite problem that people think of America as a Christian nation, which is its own kind of damaging. Um,
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I would suggest to you, and I'm happy to have this discussion, that what we are supposed to be doing, we are in a place where the gospel has been established previously. We are not on a front line
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the same way that other people are on a front line facing the darkness head on. What we are is we are a community that the darkness is attempting to infiltrate and weaken and sap and remove any light
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from it. Not in the same way of marching boldly on the the border between day and night, but that we are watching for those who are trying to come in. you
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pointed out a number of times from within Ariel. Should we consider the work that we're doing in light of Peter apostles attempted to reach
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Jews where he was going
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Yeah, we live in a world that says our part of the world that says we already we already Yeah. No, I think I think that's an
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excellent example. Um, you know, Peter or those trying to minister to their countrymen. I would also suggest to you in your own reading as you're studying the scripture, um, it's made a
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difference to me in my reading anyways. As I read the prophets, think about the prophets in that light. Now, the prophets were given direct instruction on how to interact with the people around them, but frankly, the prophets
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were a group of men ministering to a a country that was convinced it was right before God and having to tell them, "You could not be more wrong about that."
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Chuck, I would I think this people represent unbelieving Israel
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church. But I think the church is so wrapped up in trying to change politically or through programs, you know, trying to clean up
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I think if you try to live in Christ as a congregation, I think we will and probably have received the 21st century equivalent of
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Yeah. Indeed, Abigail.
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and consider the fact that we participate in what Christ
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I would agree with you there and and I would certainly welcome um I thank you for that point. I would welcome your thoughts from your own reading as you go through the scripture also because a number of other passages are occurring to me in which the idea of suffering as
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a mark of of Christians. Now there's two things that I want to caution us against here. Um one of which I think Chuck mentioned recently on a Thursday night. Um you know there there are curious
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cases in the early church fathers of where this idea of being a martyr was so important and we really wanted to be martyed for the case of of Christ that
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we would run out into the street to be accosted by the Romans and Justin maybe you can remind me I forget which one it was um whose origin whose mother hid his clothes so that he would not run out
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into the street and be accosted by the Romans. He was happy to go die but not happy to run out naked. So, right. Um, so, you know, we don't we're not we're not going out to like pick a
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fight. That's not the point. Uh, the point of of Peter, the point of Thessalonians, the point, frankly, of the prophets is if you are following, the phrase that I hope to look at very
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soon, if you are obedient to the gospel, the fight is probably going to find you. Here is the point. The other thing I want to caution though while we're here and um beware
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as we follow this idea, beware of the remnant mentality. remnant mentality. Don't assume we're the only ones. We're not. Okay? God has thousands, but what
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we must be is wise. I would hazard a guess that it's millions, but I don't. My point is, I don't have the number. God has the number, and it's probably more than I
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think it is. Okay. So, when the prophet goes, I'm the only one left. And God says, "No, you're not. You're not the only person I'm using. We're not the
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only church in Greenville, okay, by any means. And certainly not the only one that is faithful." My point is we are meant to examine ourselves and one another in light of obedience to the
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gospel. That's where we're headed. I saw your hand first and then Yeah. I was just going to say that what you were saying our goal is not to be right? Our goal is to live in Christ.
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Yes. Yes. As long as you remember that Elijah was wrong in his assessment of whether or
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not there was another He wasn't wrong that he was totally thickly surrounded Yeah. people who were false professors and and
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spiritual nar. spiritual nar. Yeah. I think this I'm speaking autobiographically here, but the implication is often that if you lose a
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friend uh that on on account of something pertaining to the Lord or his kingdom that you are simply unnecessarily aggressive or strong in
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your opinion. That's why it's you. You're the prophet. Elijah's perspective was warped, but he was not wrong. And we're not the only f by by a long
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country mile, but most of them aren't right. Like we're not wrong to look around and go, "Wow, there are really few proportionately."
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That is a very fair point. Um and and again, I I'm not I'm not prepared to John Knox up here and start naming names and condemning, you know, this or that other person. But you know our our our
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perspective on this must be that we examine the things that we see and we hear. Paul says here frankly that first of all the report reached him from afar
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of the good of the faith of the and here he is now confidently boasting about them among the other churches. Look at this example. So we ought both to
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exemplify and to look for the examples. Those would be the the rules that I would draw out of this of we ought to be those who are exemplifying and we ought also to be looking for that example.
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Richard, you had your hand up. I would
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becomes a trendy thing to go to church to be a Christian
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to combat that in our body. How do we combat that combat that church as a whole or is that not That's an excellent question. Um, that is an excellent question. I would
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I would parse it out in a in a couple of different ways. One, I would suggest that for the majority of the congregation, our job is not to go track people down and and start saying, "Well,
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here's what's wrong with your church and here's your I would suggest that the leaders of the church are generally going to have contact with other leaders of the church if we're fortunate. He actually tried specifically to initiate
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more contact and were rebuffed. But there is an element in which the leadership of the church is having or ought to be involved in some respects. But I would also fall back on what I
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said before which is if we're exemplifying more than likely the examples are here in scripture. If we're exemplifying this walk, you're going to find friction with people who are going to church because it's kind of
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fashionable to do right now. You know, it's it's politically expedient to be going to church, especially in Greenville. Everybody's a Christian. So, we're going to church and if you are obedient to the gospel, you are going to
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find yourself in friction. Um, Chuck, you first and then Jen. Yeah, I think Paul says we we've heard about everybody's heard about it. Well, how did they communicate,
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right? The same way we communicate. have email and text but communicated by word of mouth to people they in the market
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relatives I think you know if we have extended family who are church goers and yet their church is lost
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conversation I think I think it's not just it's not just also you How is how is your church I hate the word governity of your church
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what is the practice of your church those conversations will spread that every time because it feels like churching each
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you know I don't think it's it's even necessarily right to to encourage them or invite them or them or guilt them coming to our church. You just talk about how the scripture
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talks to them. Yeah. talking about the scripture with those who profess to be Christians and it will be difficult especially in I I would second both of those things
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that that yes it it will be difficult and part of that is is shouldering the fact that that's going to be uncomfortable. Um I think that's one of the things that we're called to
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to take on. But also to that second point I would prefer that we see more you know there's a sense pick a thing, whether it's your job or a
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hobby or whatever. When you meet someone else who says, "Oh, yeah, that's my thing." It's not hard to have a conversation with them, is it? Well, you meet somebody else who says, "Christ is my thing. Let's go. Let's talk about it.
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Let's talk about it." And if they can't, okay, now we're having some problems, right? So, have that. That's that is part to me of obedience
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to the gospel is if you meet a brother or or professed brother or sister who then has nothing to say, no excitement,
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follow that up. I mean, chase that tale. Um, hey, you have your hand up. Sorry, Jenny. I'll come back to you in a second. I know you had
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Okay. Um, I'll take the point here that certainly my goal here is not to line up and mow down those that I think are doing the wrong thing. This is a form of self-reflection that we're discussing here. We're looking at the example that
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Paul sees in first and second Thessalonians and trying to measure ourselves on that mirror. Are we a reflection of what he sees? Also to come back to this point
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currently I don't know that any of us could raise our hand and saying we're reflecting suffering. So that has brought us around to this question of why not why not which to me brings me back up here of
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what am I supposed to be doing? Um, I've been reading uh older series by a guy named William Jay and he made a point at one point saying, um, God's work is
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going to get done. Are you going to be part of it? Okay, God's not going to not get done what he has purposed to do. Are we walking in
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that line? Are we shouldering that duty? Because God's going to make sure it happens. Will we, as Paul says here, be counted worthy at the end of it? I need to catch Jenny and then I'll come back here. Sorry, you had your hand up quite
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a while ago.
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Yeah. No, I appreciate that. My what I'm trying to get to here is obedience to the gospel, which is a phrase that we're going to have to spend a little time digging into. And it it relates to what Chuck just brought out to us from Romans. Um that that concept is is
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central. But I do think there are differences in circumstance of whether you are an evangelist or whether you are here in a church that is your home. Those things are different and yet
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obedience to the gospel will have similar hallmarks. Um you mentioned somebody mentioned, you mentioned the idea of competition. Um, frankly, Abe, I would love to see this go in completely the other direction, which is when you
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meet a fellow Christian and they are so excited. And in fact, put me to shame with how excited and into the scriptures you are. I would love nothing more. And
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it has on occasion happened. It doesn't happen as much as I would like it to happen. And Paul says, okay, there are those who are trying to put me to shame by preaching the gospel. Great. Go do
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that. Go put me to shame by preaching more than I am. Go out there and compete for God's glory that he might be glorified in you and through you according to the
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grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Do that.
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out there. So I don't think it's not a one or that we shouldn't
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church. Well, and and I appreciate your point there very much because that's really the only two things that Paul admits of, isn't it? You are either of Christ or
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you are of the world. And so, if you tell me you are of Christ and yet you have no none of those marks or if I tell you I'm of Christ and I have none of those marks, don't we have a problem?
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Richard, you had your hand up. I think what we do
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people that's not I I agree there also both love and humility And frankly, as we move forward
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through these letters of Paul, I think that's one of the things I hope to draw out is the wisdom of what it is to do that. Because it takes wisdom to engage with people in in that.
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Erin said it a number of times, and I'm going to concur that rules are for fools. I'm not going to be able to stand up here and give you all right, here's the um outline you put in the front of your Bible about how to witness to somebody if they're of the world, and
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here's the one you put in if they say they're a Christian, but they don't know these five things. like we're not doing that. What we're doing is we're going through to find the gospel and we look for conformity to that in ourselves
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first and then in those who profess to carry it. Right? So self-reflection. Yes. Humility. Absolutely. That's part of why I put this up here. was struck. Um it it happens more than once in the
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um prophets ma uh no yeah I think it is in Malachi has a a fair amount to say about this later on where he he talks about this
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self-righteous disease that comes in when you go like well I'm the one who's got it right that wisdom will require both things from us the humility to recognize in ourselves
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but also to look around you had
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Yeah. Thank you. Yes. I'd forgotten that reference, but yeah. Right. So, that's that's where we're headed here. Again, this is not me trying to say, "Well, you need to feel bad about this or you need to go make other people feel bad about
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themselves." This is not where I'm headed. And frankly, I think I could name probably off the top of my head half a dozen churches nationally that just sort of occurred to me who are doing work, putting stuff out
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there, clearly laboring in the gospel. That's great. There is nothing that would make me happier than this this land to be literally covered with the glory that Paul is describing here in
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first, sorry, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. If that was true of this country, wonderful. But we must admit,
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and come find me if you disagree with me. We must admit it is not. Okay? It is not covered with this glory. It is not bathed in this kind of righteousness.
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That's what we're after. That God would be glorified because that would be true. So, as we go forward again through these letters, what do we do for that to be true? What
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are what is my responsibility? Is that fair? All right. Well, let's close in a word of prayer.
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Our father, we are very grateful that you have left these words for our instruction. We are grateful that you are faithful in every respect and that you will not be moved from your will and your plan and your purpose. Lord, we are
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very desirous that we would be counted worthy tools in your hand, instruments for your glory. We desire greatly that you should be
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glorified among us and by the light that we put forward in this land. So, Father, I ask as we go upstairs now to worship together and
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call upon your name that you would please be glorified among us. I ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.