WWUTT 531 Inflicting Vengeance?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ does more than proclaim salvation for those who repent and believe. It also proclaims judgment upon those who do not repent and believe when we understand the text.

The Purpose of the Gospel: Salvation and Judgment

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. And last week, we got through about verse 8. I'm going to start again at verse 5, and then we'll go through to the end of the chapter because this is like two sentences, so it's kind of difficult to jump in in the middle here.

Paul says, This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

To this end, we also pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

OK, I think I identified three periods in there, so it's three sentences. I'm going to go back to verse six. Paul says, Indeed, God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you. So over the course of this section, which in which Paul glorifies Christ, not only glorious because of His mercy delivering us from His judgment, but also glorious because he will pour out wrath on those who did not believe, who did not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So some glorious and lofty language that Paul uses here to describe the majesty of our Lord Christ. But also here, he's presenting a contrast between you who are going to be delivered and those who are going to be judged.

And in the process of this, encouraging the Thessalonians in their affliction to know, hey, because you are being afflicted, it's because God considers you worthy to be persecuted for the name. Remember that we read this with the apostles in Acts chapter five last week, that they praise God, that they were considered worthy of the name of Christ, that they would be persecuted the way that they were.

So this is the case with the Thessalonians as well. And Paul includes them with the work of faith that he is doing. So where he says that the Lord is going to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us in verse seven.

So they know about the affliction that Paul has undergone because of the gospel of Christ. He was afflicted there in Thessalonica. The Jews wanted to kill him. They had to smuggle him out in the cover of night.

Just to save his life. And Paul is saying, you are being afflicted, too. And in this affliction, we are sharing in this together. We're going to be delivered from this. Guess what? You are as well. So this is an encouragement that he gives to the Thessalonians.

Now, maybe you who are listening are not going through some sort of a persecution in which your life is on the line, like the like the apostles when they were delivering the gospel throughout the Roman Empire.

And their life would be threatened by the very government itself. Maybe you are not in that position. I don't know who I have listening to me. I don't know where the podcast has gone out to worldwide.

I mean, I can kind of see I can go to the little map and it shows me what countries have been listening. But I don't know specifically what's going on in your area. You may not have experienced a kind of persecution like this.

And in fact, I would venture to say most of my listeners have not experienced a persecution like what Paul is describing happening to him and his missionary brothers and what he's addressing the Thessalonians in as well.

But you will be at least ridiculed for your faith. Jesus promised his disciples that would be the case. And in fact, Paul says to Timothy that those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Ridicule is a form of persecution. It's not it doesn't come with the same kind of fear as having a part of your body cut off or watching somebody die in front of you. And there are parts of the world where that's happening to those who are declaring the gospel.

They are being put to death and their family members are being put to death. And I don't think that we as Christians should turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to that. I think that we should be out there on the Web, especially when we have access to world news on the Internet the way that we have it.

We should be looking up and seeing what kinds of things are happening with our missionary brothers and sisters around the world. There are all different kinds of publications that you can access, whether it's Voice of the Martyrs or Mission Network News, the SEND publication that we receive through the Southern Baptist Convention.

And then I've also got some missionary friends that I follow and hear their reports of things that are going on in the neck of the woods where they are sharing the gospel. We also have a woman from our church who is sharing the gospel in the Philippines, and it's a part of the Philippines that is under significant Muslim control, like she knows she could lose her life for declaring the gospel there and gave up all of the comforts that she is she enjoyed in the United States to go back to her native land, the Philippines, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ there where she is is also not a very technological area.

So we don't hear from her often, but we know to pray for her and we pray for her regularly just about every Sunday. I know that the elder who led prayer in our church yesterday had lifted her up, that we would remember her, that we would not forget about the circumstances that she has placed herself in to be able to spread the gospel.

And so we do need to be attentive to what our brothers and sisters in Christ are doing for the gospel worldwide, the kinds of comforts that they have given up so that the gospel would be proclaimed and lost souls would be found through the power of the gospel, that we may know how to pray for our brothers and sisters, and also that we may weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

When Paul makes that statement in Romans chapter 12, we use that in a very friendly fellowship sort of a way, and it definitely applies. Like if you have a brother or sister in the church that is going through a very difficult circumstance, weep with them, struggle with them.

They they probably don't want you to to spill out your platitudes and your and your catch all verses or your happy verse day calendar verse of the day, you know, to to try to perk them up. That's probably not what they want to hear today.

They just want somebody who will put an arm around them, pray with them, weep with them, feel hurt like they feel hurt. And I think that is something we absolutely should do with one another in the body of Christ regularly in in any and all circumstances.

But I think more specifically, the context of that there in Romans 12 had to do with advancing the gospel, because as the gospel is preached, particularly when you are considering the audience that Paul was writing to.

I mean, this was a church who had seen some of their own brothers and sisters in their congregation killed by the Roman Empire because they proclaim the gospel. They might have 50 or 60 people in church one Sunday and then the next Sunday rolls around.

And there's like two or three less people this week because they were killed by the Roman imperial government since they did not want to hail Caesar as lord. Instead, they proclaimed Christ as lord and they were put to death because of it.

So when Paul is addressing the Romans with this in Romans chapter 12, he's more specifically talking about the effort to advance the gospel. And even as you do this in an in an American church setting or in a Western Europe church setting, as you go into your respective communities and share the gospel, there are going to be people who are going to beat up on you for it, maybe not physically, but they'll put you down.

They'll tear you apart. You will be hated by people. It's just not a very uplifting experience. I've heard Ray Comfort talk about this when he answered questions or was responding to hypothetical questions, but definitely questions he had been asked before about how cool it is to go out and do what it is that he does.

Going out on the street, sharing the gospel, doing, you know, little mini debates with people who will come up and argue with him as he's out there on the strip there in California. You've probably seen some of the videos.

There are videos that I watch just to learn from Ray how to respond to somebody who might come up with this kind of an answer or something like that, a wonderful man of God and his and the heart that he has for sharing the gospel.

So when we go out and we do those kinds of things, even in America, where you may not you may not suffer physical persecution, but you'll definitely get beat up for it a little bit. You'll definitely be put down and hated.

And that's just not a fun experience. So anyway, like I said, Ray Comfort responding to some of these questions, when people will say it's cool that you go out and do what it does. And Ray basically said it's heartbreaking.

It's not it's not fun. You know, it's not something that you that you go out there to do to get my kicks for the day. It is it is work that he does because he is compelled by the gospel of Christ to go out and do that.

And so the he gets beat up for it. And I hope that Ray has a church that he's able to run back to and get encouragement from the saints. So that's what it means to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, those who get beat up for sharing the gospel and are mourning and sorrowful because of that.

Mourn with them. We all mourn together as the body of Christ. And then likewise, those who come back with experiences of having brought this brother from death to life, hey, I shared with this man, he repented of his sin.

And now, look, he's joining us and our church because he realizes that it's only the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves. Well, then we all rejoice together. So we weep with those who weep. We rejoice with those who rejoice.

And again, I don't I don't mean to undercut the necessity as a fellowship of the body of Christ, of weeping with those who weep when they go through a stressful circumstance, whether they lost a family member or they received a terrible diagnosis at the doctor's office or something unexpected happened.

Maybe they're being accused of something that they didn't actually do. Their job might be on the line. Somebody is gossiping about them. You know, all different kinds of things that could call cause us angst that that really would vex us and weigh our shoulders down, weigh our our mind down and occupy our thoughts and just make life that much more difficult, whatever it might be.

Weep with those who weep. That is important. But let us not also overlook the context of that command and how how we should mourn with our brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer for the gospel and also rejoice with them when we read about how the gospel is being advanced and the progress it is making in the respective areas that our missionary brothers and sisters have gone out to.

So that's important for us not to remain closed off from what would what we would otherwise perceive as bad news is enough bad news in the world. Why would I want to open myself up to more bad news? I experience a comfortable Christian life.

Why would I want to read about somebody whose Christian life is not comfortable? Because they're part of the body. They're part of the church. They are as much the bride of Christ as you are. And Paul said to the Corinthians, when one part suffers, we all suffer.

And so it's it's not OK for you to ignore a part of your body that has been afflicted by an injury. You cut your hand and just go, well, you know, I'm just going to pretend that didn't actually happen.

And then and then my my other hand feels a whole lot better if it doesn't have to attend to the hand that got cut. You can't do that. Then your hand gets infected. It affects the entire body. It's simply impossible for you to ignore the fact that you've been wounded.

And so we as a church, likewise, we can't just turn ourselves away from the afflictions that are coming upon our brothers and sisters in the Lord around the world. It is important to know what they are going through so that we can know how to pray for them so that we can know how to mourn with them.

But praise God that we may also know how to rejoice with them, celebrating, praising the Lord for the way that his gospel is, in fact, advancing around the world. And that is what Paul is talking about here with the Thessalonians as well.

This affliction that has come upon you has come upon you because you believed the gospel. And likewise, for us who are advancing the gospel, we're going through this affliction also. But we know that God is going to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire.

And whenever we see fire come up here in the scriptures, it is most often to do with judgment, which is why songs about fire falling are really silly. I know that that the lyricist is probably thinking of Pentecost, like the the fire of the Holy Spirit would come upon us.

And and that's what it is that we're singing about whenever we're saying, God, let your fire fall. But but even Pentecost was a judgment. Paul kind of alludes to that in First Corinthians 14. So even when the apostles went into Jerusalem speaking in tongues in everyone's language, they were proclaiming the gospel even as they were doing that, though there were people who got saved, they turned from their sin.

They said, brothers, what can we do to be saved? And Peter said, turn from your sin and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so there were three thousand souls that were added to the church that day.

But that wasn't everybody that was in Jerusalem. There were thousands and thousands more who rejected the gospel. And so judgment had come upon them. The declaration of the gospel is not just for the deliverance of the saints.

It is also for the judgment of the ungodly. And that's the connection that Paul is even making here in Second Thessalonians. Now, I would beg and I would plead that a person who rejects the gospel would not turn away from it, that they would still have ears to hear it, that the Holy Spirit would change their heart to understand it, that they would turn from their sin and follow Jesus and so be saved.

That is what I want with all of my heart. But I know because of what is said in the scriptures that those who rejected the gospel will be judged. And part of the proclamation of the gospel of Christ is the judgment of unbelievers.

It's not just the deliverance of the saints. It is also the deliverance or I'm sorry, the judgment of the unjust. When the Lord is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, a sign of judgment, fire is consuming.

It destroys. It doesn't save. We are saved from the fire. We won't go through the fire. We will not experience the wrath of God on his great day because we were in Christ, because his glory was shown through us in mercy.

But his glory is shown to those who did not believe through his wrath and righteous judgment, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you a question. What will we be praising God for for all eternity in heaven? For our deliverance, right? I mean, sure, that's a good answer, but deliverance from what? From the wrath and the judgment of God, which means that part of our praise for all eternity in heaven is going to be praising God for the destruction of the wicked.

You will actually praise God for all eternity because he destroyed those who were evil. Just look at it in the book of Revelation. I'll read to you from Revelation, chapter 11, beginning in verse 15. Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

And the twenty four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces to worship God, saying, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.

The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and those who fear your name, both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.

That's a song. We see that as a song that is being lifted up to God in Revelation 11, 17 and 18. You delivered your own and you destroyed those who are evil. Praise the name of the Lord. We see this also in Revelation, chapter 15.

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing seven angels with seven plagues. There's that number seven again, which are the last four with them. The wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God, the almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the nations, who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name for you alone are holy.

All nations will come and worship you for your righteous acts have been revealed. The song of Moses, which was a praise lifted up to God because the Egyptians were destroyed and the Israelites were delivered.

Revelation 16, verses five and six, just are you, O holy one who is and who was for you brought these judgments for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets and you have given them blood to drink.

It is what they deserve. Yes, Lord God, almighty, true and just are your judgments. Again, that's a song. That's a song that we will be singing for all eternity. We will praise God because he destroyed wicked people.

But that's when we get into his eternal, glorious kingdom at the end, when we are able to see the end from the beginning, which we do not know now. For now, we need to patiently endure with affliction.

The things that we will go through while we are in this life, while we are waiting for the Lord Jesus to return and conquer his enemies, pleading with those who are lost that they would hear the gospel and turn from their sin and so be spared the coming judgment of God that that will come upon those who are ungodly.

There are those who have been reserved for this destruction. But we who are saved have been elected from before the foundation of the world so that no one would boast in anything that he has done. But the glory belongs to God forever and ever.

As Paul said to the Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. And I'll close with this. So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.