So we are starting 2 Thessalonians today. And if you think about these two letters, 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians, there are a number of things that they have in common. We could start that Paul wrote both of them, and they were both written to the same church, the Thessalonian church, the church in Thessalonica. But when you look at the content of the letter, you can also realize, you can also see how God and how Paul, how God was using Paul to speak to specific areas of the church in Thessalonica. And I think that is helpful for us as we consider these verses and this new letter to remember what is the journey for Paul to get to write 2 Thessalonians. First of all, Paul came with his co-workers Silas and Timothy to preach the gospel at Thessalonica. And in only a few weeks, there was a great persecution against the people of God because the Jews were jealous of seeing many coming to Christ, including many Gentiles. And because of that reason, in only a few weeks, Paul had to move from Thessalonica to go to Berea, to Athens, and Corinth. And then Paul is deeply concerned about these brothers and sisters who just heard the gospel a short time. And they were threatened by those who were persecuting them. So these new believers were facing a very strong challenge. And Paul was concerned about their faith. This is what moved Paul to send Timothy back to Thessalonica to encourage their brothers and sisters and strengthen them in their faith. And also to collect news, to bring news back to him, to hear how they were doing. Then Paul received a good report from Timothy that they were doing well in their faith and in their love for one another. But also, Timothy brought some concerning aspects of how they were faithful. their understanding of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, things that he addressed in 1 Thessalonians. But if you want to think about or if you want to have a window into Paul's thoughts when he was writing 1 Thessalonians, you can see it through some verses that I will be reading to you that will help you to think what Paul was concerned about the Thessalonian church. Now, these same concerns he has in 2 Thessalonians. In fact, it is believed that this letter, 2 Thessalonians, was written just a few weeks after Timothy returned from Thessalonica bringing news back to Paul after delivering the first letter. And then you could see there in both letters that there is basically the same thing or the same concern. So let me read to you a few verses and you, yourself, can discover what is Paul's concern. chapter 1 verses 2 to 3, and this is in 1 Thessalonians, Paul is giving thanks to God. And I will paraphrase some of these verses. Paul is giving thanks to God for, he says, for your work of faith, for your labor of love and for your steadfastness of hope." For these things, he was giving thanks to God. Remember, he heard from Timothy that they were doing well in their faith and in their love for one another. Now he's thanking God for their work of faith, their labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope. Chapter one, verse six, he says, you receive the word with much afflictions. you became an example to all the believers. That was another concern that Paul had about the Thessalonian church, that they were facing afflictions, but they have become an example because they were standing firm in their faith. Chapter three, verse two, he says, we send Timothy to establish you in your faith that none might be moved by this affliction. So, again, Paul's concern is about their faith. And this is why, even though he was in a place where he was in despair, he sent Timothy to strengthen their faith. Chapter 3, verse 5, he says, I sent to learn about you, your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter have tempted you and our labor will be in vain. Chapter 3 verse 6 he says, Timothy has come to us from you with good news of your faith and love. Chapter 3 verse 10 he says, we pray to see you face to face to supply what is lacking in your faith. Chapter 3 verse 12 he says, may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all. Chapter 4 verse 3 he says, the will of God is your sanctification. And in chapter 4 verse 10 he says, about love you are doing well. and what you are doing, do it more and more. So if you, by this moment, if you were able to catch all my fast reading, you will see that Paul is concerned about two things for the Thessalonian church. Faith and love. Faith and love. And if you think about these two important points, fruits and elements of our Christian faith and our Christianity, faith and love. The world doesn't consider faith and love as something that is strength. In fact, you think about somebody in the world, we'll see somebody who have faith is somebody who is weak. Because it might be no following facts, but hopeful thinking. And we know that does know what faith is about. But also we think about love. Love is also considered in the world as something weak. People say nobody will do good businesses if you are doing it with your heart. You have to do it just with your mind. But Paul's concern for the Thessalonian church was that they will continue to grow in faith and love because these are very important fruits for the believer, the Christian believer. And then, therefore, we should think about this for ourselves. Now as we come to this chapter today, chapter one, we'll see how Paul right away is talking about the same theme, faith and love. But something that I'd like us to do to frame these verses, verses one through five, or to help us to see what God is doing through Paul in these verses is to consider this metaphor that our Lord Jesus Christ uses in John chapter 15, verse 5, which is the metaphor of the vine, the vine and the branches. And I only want to read verse 5 because I only want you to keep in mind this metaphor, this illustration as we read these verses. I am the vine, Jesus says, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. You can do nothing. So Paul starts this letter giving the Thessalonians a greeting, saying hello. And then he called his two brothers, his two co-workers, Silvanus or Silas and Timothy with him in this greeting. And sometimes you can read this greeting and think, well, it's just saying, hello, let's move on to the following verses. Verses, probably verses one and two are not saying much because he's just greeting them. He's just saying hello. In fact, when you read the greeting in 2 Thessalonians and compare it with the greeting in 1 Thessalonians, basically the same, few differences. One is that in verse one, when he says, in God, he said, their father, rather than what we have in chapter two, is in 2 Thessalonians, which is our father. And when you read verse two, he only says grace to you and peace. But here in 2 Thessalonians, he talks about the source of this grace and this peace. But why is this greeting so important? It is because basically this is the foundation for what he will say afterwards. He says, like this, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. A question that you can ask right away is, Paul, what do you mean to be a church that is in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ? the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about right away on the metaphor that our Lord Jesus Christ uses about the vine and the branches. I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever is a vice in me and I am in him, he He it is that bears much fruit. So to be in God is to be, or to be in Christ is to be in union with Christ, in union with Christ. But there is something important here on what Paul is saying when he uses these two words, Father and Lord. Father and Lord. To be in God our Father is to be in communion with God our Father, but also to be sons and daughters of God. And this has great implications for our faith as Christians. Remember John, this famous verse from the Bible. He received him who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. So it is those who have believed in Jesus who have become sons and daughters of God. We have been adopted by God. And the implication is that God treats us as his children. We are under the care of our God, our Father. And this should strengthen our faith. I know that for some of our brothers and sisters, understanding the relationship with the father is difficult because some fathers are not very good fathers. But something that we know about God, our father, is that he is a holy father. He is a perfect father who loves and cares for his children. The second thing that he says is, in God our Father, and he says, in the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, it refers to our union with Christ, but also refers to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Lord. He is the Lord of our life, that we are in submission under our Lord Jesus Christ. But he is also the Lord of the universe. When he came, he came to establish his kingdom, and his kingdom is right here, right now. Why is that so important? I would say that, think about this. These days, there is so much sometimes confusion and fear from people about the future of this country or of many countries. But something that we know for sure is that there is no elections in heaven. There is only one Lord and that Lord is Lord forever. Then we have the assurance that Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is our Lord. So we are in God our Father under the care of God our Father and under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Now, what does that mean for us? What do we receive from being in God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ? You see, verses one and two are very similar. The similar phrase is that it says, God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ is said in both verses. But in verse one it says that we are in God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, while in verse two says, from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, we receive what? Grace. and peace, grace and peace. What an important thing, because when we think about grace, we know that it's this undeserved gift from God that we are saved, not on the basis of our merits, but we are saved based on his love, based on his plan for our lives. And because of that, you can have this assurance that his plan is an eternal plan and that it is unchangeable. Because it doesn't depend on who you are, it depends on who he is. But also he says that we have grace and peace. And peace refers to the reconciliation that it is given to us. the work of Jesus on the cross. I remember many years ago attending a small group that my dad was teaching, and he asked everybody, who do you think he's referring when fear this one who can send your soul and your body to hell? And I responded quickly like a good Peter, and I said, yeah, that's Satan. What a confusion I had in my mind. It was referring, it's referring to God who is the only one who have the power to send people to hell. But then we know that through the work of Jesus Christ, God has reconciled us to himself. That now we have peace with God. That once we were his enemies, but today, We are not just simply his friends. We are his sons and daughters. Then this is the foundation of what we are reading in the following verses. Think about again the metaphor that our Lord Jesus Christ is using. He is the vine, and we are the branches, and we are in him. But as vines and branches, he says, he it is that bears much fruit. Who? Who is in God, who is in Christ. And this is what he goes to say in verse three. He says, we ought always to give thanks to God for you brothers as it is right because of your faith is growing abundantly and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. is thanking God for these fruits that are being seen in the Thessalonian church, which is faith and love. Now sometimes we tend to think about faith and love as static things. I either have faith or I don't have faith. Or I either have love or I don't have love. But in reality, when you look at the Bible, the Bible teaches us that faith and love are things that grow. Let me quote something that John Stott says regarding that. He says, faith is a relationship of trust in God, and like all relationships, is a living, dynamic, growing thing. There are degrees of faith, as Jesus implied when he said, you of little faith, and I have not found anyone in Israel with such a great faith. It is similar with love. We assume rather helplessly that we either love somebody or we do not, and that we can do nothing about it. But love also, like faith, is a living relationship. whose growth we can take steps to nurture. So Paul is referring here not just that the Thessalonians had faith and have love, but he see that their faith and their love was growing. In fact, these two words that Paul used here, these two Greek words to define or to describe how faith was growing, are interesting because, in a sense, it's a picture of what was happening. The word growing that comes, your faith is growing, is the word hypersemi, which means an internal, an organic growing, as the growth that happened inside a tree. Also, the word increasing that we have after the word love is the word pleonesi, which is a diffuse expansive like a flood irrigating a land. So you see internally, faith is something that grows, but love is something that expands as we love one another. So Paul is thanking God because as he was concerned about their love and faith, he is seeing that their faith and love is growing. It is because, not because they are good, not because they were working hard for that, it is because God is the one who was doing this in their lives. Now he says, he says this in verse four, which I think that are the conditions for these fruits to grow. He says, therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring. I remember that when Sandra's grandmother came to visit us, she was in shock. because she came during winter time and she came from Colombia and she have never experienced such a cold weather. But she wasn't in shock about the weather, but about the trees. She said, what happened here? Did you guys had a natural disaster or something? Where are the leaves? All the trees were dead. In her mind, she thought they would never come back. They would never come back. Now, but she saw something that was standing in her eyes. It is that she saw the pine trees and she said, how did this survive to what happened here during these months? I think that pine trees became very popular. I don't know even actually the story of why people are using it as Christmas trees, but I think it's just the fact that they are alive even during winter time. But think about this. What Paul is saying here is that he's boasting about their faith is boasting about their steadfastness, but it's not just because they have faith and steadfastness, but because they were having faith and steadfastness in the middle of persecution and affliction. They were enduring persecution and affliction, and that make Paul boast about their faith to the other believers. It was a proof that they were pine trees, that they were able to endure difficult times. So it is the same way for us as Christians. It's a test of our faith is actually when we endure persecution. suffering. But now he moved to verse 5 to say something that is sometimes a little bit, I would say more than confusing, strange. Why would Paul say this? He says, this is evidence of the righteous judgments of God. What is that this? This is all persecutions and afflictions that they are enduring are evidence of the righteous judgment of God. You may wonder how is it possible that they are Christians suffering the judgment of God and persecution and suffering because they believe in Christ. It's almost as if God was punishing them, you might say, for believing in Jesus Christ. But the reality is that you have to read this in the context of the following verses that we're not gonna be reading today because it's for next week, where we see that the righteous judgment of God fall on those who are persecuting the believers. But as it falls on those who are persecuting the believers, or it's gonna be an evident of the righteous judgment of God, There is something that happened with the believers as a result of persecution. You see it here. He said, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God. The reality is that when you think about fruits and trees, you think about there have to be a friendly environment for them to grow, for them to flourish. But when we talk about our faith, our faith actually grow when we experience and we face hostile environment. You see places where the church is persecuted is where the church is growing even more. But if you think about just your own life, the instance and moments when you have grown in your faith is when your faith has been challenged by persecution and difficulties. And I know that Paul is referring here to persecution that came from those who were going against the gospel, but this plays in each one of our lives in different ways as we face trials and tribulations and sufferings of any kinds. Because there is where God grows our faith. Now let's go back to the metaphor that our Lord Jesus Christ gave us. I am divine and you are the branches. And we are in Christ who is divine and we are the branches. Now we bear fruit, we bear fruit like our faith and our love for the members of the body of Christ. But as we bear fruit, this fruit continues to grow. You don't see, if you go to an apple tree, a apple that appears from one day to the other to the maximum size. What you see at the end is that there is a sustained growth that that apple has through the time. And that's about our faith and about our love for the members of the body of Christ. But how that happened, it happened in the middle of persecution and tribulation that makes our faith in God the Father and in our Lord Jesus Christ to grow. That make our love for the members of the body to grow. We face those challenges and they help us to grow because what they do is that they remove all distraction in front of us and make us to see that what is more important at the end is that we are in God. This is why Paul says, or sorry, Jesus says, whoever abides in me and I in him, he is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. And if you are in him, you can do everything. Let's pray. Dear God, we thank you for your love for us, that you send your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross so that we have received grace, an undeserved gift, and today we are reconciled to you through the peace that has been obtained by our Lord Jesus Christ. We confess, Lord, that our faith is little And we pray, Lord, that you help us to grow our faith. We confess also, Lord, that our love for the body of Christ might be small, but we pray, Lord, that we will increase as well in our love for the members of the body of Christ. We thank you, Lord, that you are committed to our sanctification because your will is our sanctification. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.