Thank you so much for your good singing this morning. Amen. Thank you Derek and Pam. Thank you for stepping in. We'll be praying for Emily that she'll be feeling better and appreciate Derek and Pam substituting for Jake and Emily this morning. 2 Thessalonians chapter number one. We are going to go ahead and move right into this next epistle. Two epistles, two letters written by the inspiration of God. These are the inspired words of God. that God obviously led through his inspiration, the Apostle Paul, to write these two letters to a local church, a local assembly, much like what we are gathered in today. We have a great heritage and tradition and history. that we today in the 21st century in what would be a vastly different culture being in the United States of America as compared to first century Roman colony or Roman province in northern Greece. Macedonia, the church at Thessalonica, would have gathered in similar fashion to worship the same God that we gather and worship today. And they would have received the first letter that Paul had, as we looked at last week in 1 Thessalonians 5, in verse 27, I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. probably written on animal skins. The first letter had been brought by likely the pastor of that church and read to the congregations to many as could gather. Remember, there was no email. There was no Facebook, no Instagram, no YouTube. They had to gather and there would have been one copy. And it would have taken, I don't know how much time for them to then make other copies handwritten hand copies from that one animal skin upon which we would refer to as an autograph, an original copy that Paul penned that he charged the church to read and to read aloud and to gather the brethren like we are gathered today to hear the Word of God. Now there was a second letter. Paul had such a burden for this church. He knew that they were suffering under persecution. He loved them dearly and he writes this second letter and we will once again see Paul's pastor's hearts, his missionary hearts, his evangelist hearts. And as their pastor for a period of time now writing back to them, he is once again sharing his hearts and his burden and his love for these people. And we see in this second letter once again that the church continues to suffer under persecution. This church has been birthed out of persecution, Acts 17, again going back all the way to the book of Acts to Paul's second missionary journey, traveling with Silas and also as Timothy joined him. They planted this church, having left Philippi and then coming to Thessalonica there in northern Greece in the region of Macedonia. They went to the synagogue, and they went in the marketplace, and they preached Christ. And there were Gentiles, there were Jews that were saved, there were women of that society that were saved, and they gathered together and began a local church, an ekklesia, the church at Thessalonica. And they were unfortunately forced to leave town. Paul, Silas, Timothy were forced to leave town because a group of unbelieving Jews had stirred up trouble, basically started a riot, lied to the governing authorities about this missionary team and about Christianity. And Paul and Silas and Timothy were forced to leave town and they ended up in the town of Berea. And hence our church name, Berean Baptist Church, is based on the church that was planted in Berea, there in Macedonia, along with Philippi, along with Thessalonica, and then the church at Berea. Three local churches there in the northern Greece. and that church was planted and those same unbelieving Jews that had started the riot that had stirred up all that trouble and had lied to the governing authorities down in Thessalonica they went to Berea and stirred up another riot and caused more trouble to the point that Paul was Paul was basically forced to leave Berea, but Silas and Timothy were able to stay, and Paul then would go on down to Athens, and eventually Silas and Timothy would join him in Athens. And we know that Paul preached there in Athens, and he even went up to the hill there, and he preached about the unknown God. He went all the way back to creation, and he preached Christ creation to the cross and we know then that God used Paul there at Athens to proclaim the gospel to a very heathen, a very pagan society, immersed in secularism and all the knowledge that the philosophers of the Greeks could gather and He preached to them the truth regarding the unknown God that they had made an altar for, that we know is the one true and living God, the Lord God, Jehovah, who sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins, who rose again the third day, and Paul preached to them Jesus Christ. And then eventually Paul would go to the church at Corinth. And so there is some debate as to whether Paul wrote from Corinth or wrote from Athens these two letters to the Thessalonians. More than likely, they were written from Corinth, but it's possible that he wrote one letter from Athens and then the second one from Corinth, or both of them from Corinth. But we know that it was about 50 to 55 AD that Paul penned these letters by the inspiration of God. So they are two of the earliest epistles, two of the earliest books of the New Testament. And we know again that this church continues to suffer under some measure of persecution. And we look, first of all, in chapter one, in verses one and two, we look, first of all, at the greeting, the greeting, a customary greeting, as Paul would often start his letters, Paul and Silvanus, Silas and Timotheus, Timothy, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that Paul had desired to visit Thessalonica and up to this point had not been able to return. He had left again, gone to Bria, gone to Athens, apparently is now very possibly in Corinth by the time he's writing this letter in the early 50s, as in the first century, not the 1950s, but literally in the 50s of the first century, in the early 50s. And Paul has not yet been able to go back to Thessalonica. We know from 1 Thessalonians, the first epistle, he desired to go. He wanted badly. He had heard about some of the struggles. He had heard about the persecution. He longed to go back. He had heard bits and pieces. Again, there was no modern technology of communication back then. It would have been people who traveled through that Paul would meet along the way, there would be the oral transmission, maybe a letter or something that was written, so Paul had some knowledge of what was going on at the church at Thessalonica. But he hadn't been able to go back, and remember in 1 Thessalonians he talked about there being a hindrance. The Jews that opposed them, and also he mentioned a satanic hindrance. that there were literally people who had given themselves over to the devil in their opposition to the gospel, that were even preventing Paul from going back and visiting. And Paul accepted that in the will of God, as we looked at in 1 Thessalonians, but eventually, thankfully, Timothy was able to go back. to Thessalonica. He was able to visit with them and minister to them. And we spent some time looking at that already. And Timothy then rejoined Paul and Silas in Athens. And Timothy apparently was able to give a report to Paul and to Silas about what was going on in the church of Thessalonica. So Paul wrote this letter, the first letter. Now he is writing a second letter. The distance or the The time difference between the first letter and the second letter, we're not 100% sure. Some have speculated it was just a matter of a few months. It's possible that it was more than a year. We're not 100% sure how long it was between the first letter and the second letter. We know that Paul had sent Timothy, more than likely Timothy was the one who took that letter in his visit The first letter to the Thessalonians, Timothy had taken that letter, had returned now, had given the report, and they had apparently moved on to Corinth, or very possibly had moved on to Corinth from Athens, and now Paul, just maybe a few months, maybe a year later, is writing a second letter. And in his greeting, he mentions that this church is in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and he repeats that God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, he repeats that phrase in verse number two, emphasizing once again that the church, this ecclesia, this local assembly was in God the Father. These people were not gathered for some social club, for some sporting events. They were not gathered for some political rally. As a matter of fact, the word ekklesia originally, at this time, the word ekklesia was primarily used to describe a political gathering, a gathering of people for a political purpose. But God, by the inspiration of his word, He gave his word, as he revealed his word in the Koine Greek, in the original language of the New Testament, the word ekklesia was infused with new meaning, with a far greater meaning, that this gathering of God's people in God the Father, in the Lord Jesus Christ, was for the purpose of God, for evangelism, for the edification of the saints, for the sending out of missionaries, for the furtherance of God's kingdom, not a man-centered political kingdom. This ecclesia was unique in its gathering. It was gathered for a far higher purpose, a far different purpose, and it was gathered uniquely as saints of God, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. What we do here on a Sunday is unique. It's different than any other gathering that we do any other time of the week or time of the year. And we're thankful for family gatherings. We're thankful for various events. We enjoy going to ball games and concerts and various other activities. But there is a uniqueness to the gathering of God's people. And we do this on purpose every Sunday in multiple times. I know that we take some criticism for having too many church services, but I don't care because we are a local church and we come to gather to gather around the Word of God and we meet together as a blood-bought people in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are reminded in Hebrews 10 to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. When the church turns into an entertainment center, a social club, when it just turns into another humanitarian service provider, it has lost its purpose. It has lost its reason for existing. Is it no wonder that as we came through the COVID crisis that some churches just simply ceased to exist because they had no higher purpose for gathering except to maybe involve some sort of political speech? Their doctrine was so liberal and unorthodox that they were no different than NPR or some political gathering going on somewhere around the city. So I've read that it's many times, and for the most part, the liberal churches, the unorthodox churches, in many cases, it is them that have lost the most people. In many cases, their doors have shut down. Now it's happened to also some smaller orthodox congregations as well, but by and large, the lack of return to church has been among the liberals, among the unorthodox, because why come and gather when you're not gonna hear anything different than you would on CNN or MSNBC? But you know what? As conservative as we are, and as much as we want to be faithful to the word of God, we're still different than Fox News. We're still different than gathering for a conservative influencer on the internet. We gather as a people of God, as saints in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And we need each other. We need our, to use the modern vernacular, Christian community. We need, think about what the Littles are going through this morning. Think about the needs that have come up in our lives in the last few weeks, few months, few years. I don't look back at having grown up in church, I don't look back at it with any regret at all, in any way. I'm thankful that Kelly and I grew up going to church from the time that we were in diapers, practically, to this day. I am thankful for a family that emphasized the word of God, not just in the home, but also we went to church and we had family worship. Yes, in our home, in our living room, with family devotions, but we had family worship together. And I know there's all this talk about the patriarchal society. Well, I'm glad my dad was a family patriarch who brought us to church and showed us that we needed to have our eyes on the Lord. And I'm thankful for the many, many, many, many thousands of sermons that I sat through in youth group and Sunday school lessons. And I look back and I think of all those mornings of waking up early and going to Sunday school and those people that invested in my life, who made a difference in my life for eternity. That is accomplished through the church of God. through God's church, and we covenant together as church members, on purpose, for a reason. Not to be some sort of corporate gathering, to not be into some business contract, but we covenant together as blood-bought saints. for the purpose of edifying one another, of exercising our gifts, and evangelizing the lost, supporting missionaries, and seeing the advancement of God's kingdom. And Paul wrote to this church, and he said, Grace unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We know grace In this greeting, he mentions the grace of God. Of course, grace being the unmerited favor of God, the free gift of God. We talked about peace last week. We spent a good deal of time as we looked at verse 23 of 1 Thessalonians 5, and the very God of peace. We know how important peace is in the Bible. And we talked last week about peace being the quietness of the soul, the inner tranquility that comes from the Lord, an inner contentment and inner satisfaction that comes from, first of all, peace with God and the peace of God that results in peace with men. So we see in his greeting, we see the people, the missionary team, we see the church, but we see Most importantly, the Church gathers as blood-bought people, as saints, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And the greeting mentions grace and peace, central themes throughout the New Testament that speak to our salvation that we have through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So we see greeting, but secondly, we also see gratitude. We see gratitude. Verse number three. We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth. Gratitude, not just greeting, but gratitude. Notice he uses the word bound. This has the idea of we have to do this. We have to give thanks, and notice what he says. We are bound to thank whom? God, always for you. In Philippians one, in verse number three, Paul would write to the Philippians, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. The thanksgiving is because of what God has done in his life and in the lives of the people of this church at Thessalonica. The thanksgiving is to God, while it is a thanksgiving to God for the people, it is ultimately a thanksgiving to God for what he has done, because only God could have saved him and his missionary team and these people and called them out and called them to this local assembly. And he is thanking them for their faithfulness, for their love for the Lord, their love for the brethren. He's thanking them for their faithfulness and their faith, but he's ultimately giving the glory and the praise to God because he it is that has worked in their hearts and brought them together by his grace and with his peace. And he says he is bound He is bound. It would be wrong for him to not thank God for them. And notice the phrase, as it is meat, as it is meat, that means it is appropriate. It is right to do so. He is bound. He has to give thanks to God. He is so grateful for them and what God has done in their lives that it is such a heavy burden. He has to give thanks. And he says it is appropriate. It is the right thing to do. And I think that's something that we can continue to do with one another. And I know that we all tend to be critics. And we are in our culture. We are taught by our culture to criticize anything and everything. And there is a place for confrontation. There is a place, obviously, for constructive criticism. We have to be good discerners and avoid every appearance of evil. And we do need to caution people, and we do need to help people in their walk with God. But while we are, yes, being faithful to the word of God in our discernment, in our good judgment, and avoiding false doctrine, and avoiding sin, and sometimes confronting, and sometimes practicing church discipline, we cannot forget in the midst of all that to praise God for one another, and to give thanks and to give honor where honor is due. And it doesn't mean that we should live for that. It doesn't mean that we should go around and get upset and get bitter and get sideways with each other. Well, I did this and I did that, and nobody's noticed me for 15 years. Well, if we're serving because we have to be seen of men, then maybe our motive is wrong. But it's good for us to receive praise, and it's good for us to encourage one another with praise. As parents, if all we ever do is say no and criticize, our kids are eventually going to grow up and think that mom and dad don't care for them, don't love them, and they're going to run away. And they're going to be bitter and angry. We as parents, we have to praise. As much as we have to say no, as much as we have to confront, as much as we sometimes have to offer constructive criticism and say, that's not the right thing, or have you thought about this, In some cases, we have to exercise corporal punishment. As much as we have to say no, we have to remember that they need praise, they need encouragement, they need a pat on the back. And I know this church at Thessalonica did not have the degree of sins that the church at Corinth did, but Paul did have to bring some things up, didn't he, in the first letter? about some lust and some fornication, about some laziness, some busybodies in the church, possibly some gossip, it's gonna come up again. But he brings gratitude, he brings praise. Eventually he will have to deal with some issues in the church. But we see his greeting and we see his gratitude. And then I want us to see, thirdly this morning, I want us to see, and to keep the alliteration, I want us to see grit. grit, perseverance, endurance. In school, we used to talk about rigor. And I've mentioned that word from this pulpit before, but rigor became a bad word because it meant that I had to actually read the textbook. You mean I couldn't just go to the glossary in the back and look up all the terms and just write them out? Oh, and then when we begin to change our curriculum a little bit and we introduced a curriculum that didn't just have everything in bold print and italicized print. The kids began to gripe and complain, and sometimes I'd hear it from the parents. You expect us to read the paragraph, to understand the meaning of the text, to learn the syntax, and to actually use some sort of logical and critical thinking to discern what they're writing about, and actually answer the question? You mean I have to do more than just the what? I have to do the why? I have to explain? And then we began to do some standardized testing and we had to use a certain form that we were trying to help the kids with and all of a sudden we began to talk more and more about rigor. And it's not just about getting the answer from the back of the book or from Google or from Siri, however you pronounce her name, It's not just about going to, now it's artificial intelligence. No, there is a process that is important for our learning. Part of how we get the desired goals and results is to go through the process. I've learned a lot in the last six months with Eric in the military, things that I already knew but have been reinforced. The army, as much as we get frustrated sometimes with some of their process, they have a process on purpose because they have a certain goal in mind. And that includes some hardness. But for some reason in the spiritual life, we think that we ought to be exempt from any hardness. That we ought to just be able to get the spiritual pill out of the cabinet, get the spiritual shot in just one dose and we're good to go. Give me the easy. Well this church at Thessalonica hadn't found easy street yet. They had been saved out of a culture, a society that was oppositional and they hadn't found any beds of ease, any flowery beds of ease yet, as the hymn writes. Are we to be exempt from suffering? If the church at Thessalonica, a local church like this, suffered all throughout its beginning stages and years, then how can we think that we would be exempt from suffering? Maybe we need some grit, some spiritual rigor. Maybe we need our faith strengthened for some spiritual perseverance, some stronger faith for a faithfulness. We'll only have a minute or two to develop this this morning before we have to close the service and get into our drill. But we notice the terms, patience and faith. We see the phrase in verse 5, persecutions and tribulations that ye endure. Actually, that's the end of verse 4, but then verse 5, manifest token of the righteous judgment of God that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which ye also suffer. So we see patience and faith, persecutions and tribulations, but he says that there is a reward. The persecutions, the tribulations, the perseverance, and the faithfulness are not for no reason. They're not for a waste of time. It's not because God is up there in heaven saying, aha, if I can just make their lives miserable for a little bit longer, hee, hee, hee, ha, ha, ha. No, not at all. God was working in their lives. He was producing Christ's lightness. He was producing perseverance, endurance, faithfulness. And notice how Paul describes their reward in their persecutions, in their tribulations. He says in verse five, it is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God. He says this is a righteous judgment of God. This is a purging, this is a pruning, this is a perfecting of the church, and even within the church, the individuals that make up the church. We are in that time of year where we're beginning to go out and work in the yard, and things are beginning to grow, and we're gonna be working on the garden back here a little bit, and Jerry Vegter, when he was here before the Lord took him home, Jerry Vegter would come to me and say, I learned how to, make the rosebushes grow better in the church garden. And I said, how's that? He said, I watched YouTube. And he said that he watched a video and they basically said to maim the rosebushes. Take out all the dead stuff or you won't get good roses. You won't get a good growing rosebush. And the last time I checked, roses still had thorns. But sometimes there's a purging and there's a pruning because God is perfecting. He is conforming us into the image of His Son. There was a testimony of this church as they grew in Christ's likeness, as they persevered. Yes, there was some purging, there was some pruning, but God was perfecting them. and they had a testimony and there were people around that entire region down into southern Greece and Achaia and even people that apparently Paul had come across in his travels to Athens and to Corinth that spoke of the testimony of this church at Thessalonica. And they weren't a church of backbiting and fighting and division and strife. There were some warnings that Paul had given about some busybodies and some laziness that wasn't like they were perfect. But overall, this church had a testimony of faithfulness to God. They were handling their persecution with grace and with strength, with faithfulness, with endurance. And he says in verse number five that there was going to be a reward, a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God. He says, you are being perfected. You are being troubled. That word troubled has to do with being pressed down into a narrow place. And again, I use the example of Mammoth Cave when we were there on vacation one time visiting and we went to, I forget what it was called now, Fat Man's Misery and Tall Man's Trouble. And they put you in a really, really narrow place as you went down into that cave. And you were just squeezed in, and that trouble was squeezing them. But they were handling it with faithfulness, with faith. they weren't griping and complaining but instead they were trusting God and they were praising the Lord and they were accepting the process that was purging and pruning and was perfecting them and instead of turning in griping and complaining and impatience instead of turning in disobedience and defeats into stagnation and immaturity. Instead, they embraced the process through faith and faithfulness, through patience, through labor of love, through patience of hope, and the work of faith. And God was working in their lives that they were a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God. And they were being perfected to the point that they were counted worthy of the kingdom. They were looking more and more like what they already were positionally in Christ. That Paul at the end of 1 Thessalonians 5, as we looked at last week, I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Thessalonians learned to keep their eyes on Jesus. to keep their eye on the goal through faith and faithfulness, that though they were being pressed down, they weren't being conformed to this world, but rather they were being transformed by the renewing of their mind, that they may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God, that they were looking more and more like that worthy citizen, worthy to enter into the kingdom, not by their works, but because they positionally were already in Christ, having turned to God from idols to serve the one true and living God, now they were progressively, through the process of tribulations, through the process of these persecutions, they were being perfected. They were being made more and more like Christ, conformed into His image, so that they were looking progressively like they already were positionally as a citizen in God's kingdom. Oh, may that be true of each and every one of us. May that be true of Berean Baptist Church, that we will have the grit to let God work, that though it may mean tribulation, we don't know what degree of persecution, but we'll allow God to purge and to prune and to perfect us, that there would be the gratitude that there would be the grace and the peace of God evident as we go through the grit, as we go through the process of being conformed into the image of God's Son. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. We ask, Lord, that you will do your work in our hearts. That, Lord, as we look at the example of the church at Thessalonica, that, Lord, it may be a help and an encouragement and maybe even a rebuke and a lesson to us. of how, Lord, we should handle tribulations and persecutions and the struggles and the trials of life, that we might handle them with faithfulness and faith, with endurance, with perseverance, with our eyes fixed on you, trusting you to do the purging and the pruning and the perfecting as you see fit. Lord, I thank you for your word. thank you Lord for our church family, for bringing us together today. We pray that you do your work in our hearts as we close this song.