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Don Filcek; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28 He Plays for Keeps
Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series Hope Rising from the Book of First Thessalonians. Let's listen in.
Well, good morning. Good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and we're going to go ahead and get started. I want to start off by welcoming you all to this gathering of God's people and to this church here in this place.
I want to just start off by emphasizing to all of us something that I think we all probably already know, but maybe in our minds it gets a little bit fuzzy, and that is that we don't need to ask God to arrive here.
We don't have to cry out for his presence. We don't have to sing a lot of songs just asking him to show up because he is here with us already. As a matter of fact, what might be shocking and kind of embarrassing to some of us is he was with us on the car drive here, and I know what that's like for families trying to get their family around and hurry up and get in the car and then walk to the church and act like everything's going great this morning, but he was with you in the car.
He was with you when you slept last night. He is with you at all times, and he is always present in every place at the same time. So why are we here together this morning instead of worshiping him in our bedrooms by getting a little bit more sleep this morning?
I hope it has something to do with the way that God desires to reach our hearts, and that is in community. That is in relationship with one another. He made us and designed us to need each other. As prideful as we can get, as independent as we can think we are or want to be, as individualistic as our culture and society is, we need the gathering together of others to be the church, to be what God is creating us as individuals to be, but also to be what he wants us to be in this community, a gathering of people who are honoring him, loving him, growing together in faith, community, and service.
We need to be in community to support one another during tough times when they're going through tough times, when we're going through tough times, and we gather together to worship together, to learn together so that we can grow together.
And this morning we're going to be closing out the book of 1 Thessalonians. I recognize some of you this is your first time here and we're ending a book, but that's fine. It's been a good journey for me.
I hope it has been for you as well, a journey into the hope that God desires for his church. The theme and the series has been entitled Hope Rising. Regardless of circumstances, we have so much to look forward to because of the salvation provided for us in Jesus Christ.
We have so much hope because of what he has done for us. So in wrapping up this entire letter, Paul reminds us of some very direct theology, some statements about our God that is meant to give us hope.
He prays that God would sanctify the church, that he would keep us blameless to the return of Jesus Christ. You see, we serve a God who plays for keeps. Did you realize that? He plays for keeps. That which he won, those who he won for himself on the cross, he will sanctify.
He will keep them blameless until the day of Christ Jesus. Our God is the God of peace. He is the faithful one, the text says, and he is the one who will present us blameless at the return of his son.
So if you're not already there, you can open your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 23 through 28. You can navigate over there in your app or you can use a paper Bible. If you don't have a means to get to 1 Thessalonians on your lap, Mike's got some Bibles back here.
The only thing you need to do is just slip your hand up. We want everybody to have a copy of God's word on their lap so that they can see it. He's already got them opened there, by the way, so it's very easy.
You'll just be right there when he hands it to you. I appreciate that he does that for us. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 through 28. Wrapping up this book and again recast, God is going to speak to us right now.
You're going to hear my voice, but my voice is going to be saying the things that God wants us to hear this morning. So let's listen in. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have been granted through the text of your word that we know these things to be ours because of your revelation, because of what you have said is true.
And that our sanctification is not on our shoulders, that our keeping ourselves in the faith and making sure that we do all the right things and cross our t's and dot all of our i's, that Father, that would be a terrible and frustrating and completely unjoy-filled way to live.
But you have set us free from that performance and set us free to a hope because you are the faithful one who will do it. You are the one in whom our trust is placed for our salvation. Not that we could please you a lot and do a lot of good things and do enough to make you happy with us this week, or that you're already happy with us.
You're already head over heels for us because of our relationship to your son, because he has covered us, he has given us his righteousness. So Father, I pray that it's from that platform, that solid rock of hope that we could spring forth to sing songs to you this morning, that it's not something that we have to work ourselves up into, but that we recognize just at the bedrock the intensity of the hope that we have, that we who were worthy of condemnation have been given the truth and the hope of glorification in an eternity with you, and that that fact alone would be the motive and the fuel for our worship.
They would see you in your grace and your mercy on your throne, high exalted and worthy of all of our praise this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. And I'd encourage you, just like every week, to get comfortable, as comfortable as possible in those chairs over the next half an hour or so, because we're going to dig into God's word.
Keep your Bibles open or reopen your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 23 through the end of the book there. And it's good to have that open so you can reference that. I'm going to reference it several times during the message here.
And then remember, if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, if that seat you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, you know, take advantage of that. There's more coffee, juice, or donuts, while supplies last.
But again, whatever it takes to keep our focus on God's word is the intention over the next half an hour or so. Our text this morning is not really meant to be outlined. It's not a flowing thought all the way through.
This is the conclusion and postscript of a letter written by the Apostle Paul. And so it covers a few different points over the course of these several verses. And they all, many of them, stand alone as final words to the close of a letter.
Think about if you're writing a letter to somebody and you're like, oh by the way, this, this, and this. And so there's some of that that's going on here. But the conclusion covers a couple of deep theological concepts as well as some practical observations and things that we can do as a church and observations about church life that apply to our situation where we live here and now.
First we're going to find in verses 23 through 24 a theological conclusion to the book. I say theological, think in terms of the study of God. It's going to tell us something about our God here in our text.
And certainly the majority of scripture is with the intention of focusing our attention on God. But sometimes a specific verse is telling us about a historical event or something like that. But this is actually going to title God for us.
It's going to give us some substance to who he is and how he rolls. But remember so far that the theme of this book up to this very last message in it has been hope rising. It's been about hope rising.
It is a book written to a struggling church telling them to hang in there despite persecutions. Paul has been seeking to point them to a present hope in the here and now based on the past work of Christ that will have a future completion.
So that's kind of the nature of the hope that we have is we can have hope now and ought to live now, right now, today, this very day in hope because of what Christ has done in the past and also because of what we know he will do in the future.
And this verse, these couple verses are going to really highlight that what he will is doing for us now and will do in the future for us. So verses 23 and 24 are what some scholars call a wish prayer.
That's a technical term in theological, you know, pastors and scholars will use that. A wish prayer. If I said to you before you leave from this place here this morning, may God grant you safety on your journey home.
Who am I talking to when I say that? You guys, right? I'm talking to you. May God grant you safety. May God grant you peace. May God grant you whatever. I'm talking to you. But in another way, I'm kind of talking to God in kind of a kind of a side note, right?
Like I'm including him in this conversation and I'm basically saying, God, what I'd like you to do for them is this, but I want you to hear what I want God to do for you. Do you get that? And so that's why they call it a wish prayer.
I'm telling you what I wish to be true for you, but I'm also kind of talking to God saying, could you make this happen for these people? Could you give them safety? Could you give them peace? Could you help them out?
But I'm telling you what I want God to do and Paul is doing that here. Why would we ever do something like this? Why would Paul tell the Thessalonians what he wants God to do on their behalf? And I'm convinced that this in our text here, verses 23 and 24, are a teaching device he is employing that engages his emotional connection with the people that are reading this, with the church.
He is yearning for something for his friends and he wants them to know that he desires this strongly for them. His friends then have the benefit of experiencing his love and concern for them. They also find out what the apostle and God, of course since this is the revelation of God's word to us, what God wants for them.
And after reading these two verses they would leave feeling informed by Paul about what he wants for their lives, but they would also leave reading these feeling loved by Paul because of what he wants for their lives and they would feel challenged by Paul to want the same things for their lives.
So it's got all kinds of functions in it, all kinds of things that Paul is writing this to try to accomplish for them and for us today. So let's look at what Paul wants for them. There's two primary wishes that he has in this prayer that I wish for you and that I think we all ought to wish for ourselves.
Two main things that are just very well defined and very clear in this first verse. He wants them to be completely sanctified and he wants them to be kept blameless. Completely sanctified and kept blameless.
But it's important and vital to see that in this wish he appeals to the God of peace himself to accomplish these things. He tells us that God, he gives God a title here, the God of peace. And he asks him to accomplish these two things on their behalf.
He doesn't say to the church here at the end of his letter, I wish you'd get your act together and act more like good church folks, or boy I wish you'd follow all the rules that I've given to you, or I wish you'd just obey and be less frustrating to work with, or less complaining, or less whining, or whatever.
Instead he appeals to God, may the God of peace sanctify you. In a book intended to grant hope to its readers, identifying God as the God of peace is very important here at the end of this text. This is not to say that God is the God of the absence of war.
You can go back to the Old Testament and go, well is he the God of peace there? Is he the God of peace now? Did he change? Did he change his behavior? Did he change his actions? Because how many of you know there's some wars in the Old Testament?
You ever read any of it? There's some stuff that happened back there. So you go, was he the God of peace then? And I would answer yes. But we need to define the word peace in clarity before we understand what it's telling us about God.
The word there that certainly the guy trained in the highest schools of Jewish thought is writing this. I think he has a pretty good handle on what the Jews thought in the Old Testament the word peace meant.
It is the word shalom. Shalom is a very powerful word that ought to motivate you and I. It's a word that ought to inform the way that we live. And although it's not a word that you use very often or probably even think of, how many of you want peace like in the English translation, English definition to define your life?
Like you'd like that, like peace. But the word shalom takes that concept up a notch to the way that things ought to be. When you hear the word shalom, you should think the way that things should be, the correct ordering, the right way of things.
How many of you want that? Like that's, that'd be a great thing. How many of you know that this place was made originally in the garden without pain? Did you know that? Originally without suffering, originally without death.
So when we talk about shalom, we're talking in essence about the restoration of things back to the way that they were meant to be. And that is our hope. That is our goal. And he is the God of bringing all of this back to that.
That's what Paul wants to identify for us here in calling him the God of peace. He is the God of restoration. He is the God who is reconciling. He is the God who is taking everything toward that eternal kingdom of the glory of his son.
Is that a beautiful thing? Is that something you long for, for that day when Christ returns and brings forward his kingdom forever and ever with no more pain, no more suffering, no more sin, no more of that battle that you fight week in and week out, day after day, hour after hour of trying to honor him with your life, even with this curse of sin and death that is over us?
He is the God of peace. And I think you can equally think in terms of, the word peace, of course, is one of the fruits of the Spirit. God is a God of properly ordered relationships. And when you start thinking about the fruit of the Spirit for just a moment, peace being one of them, I think it's fully accurate to say he is the God of love.
He is the God of joy. He is the God of peace. He is the God of patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. All of these things that pertain to the reconciliation of broken relationships and the fixing of things, right?
How many of you know that you don't need to be encouraged to patience unless impatience is a possibility? Do you know that? So all of these things are restoration words. I think before God created anything, before the fall, there was nothing but love.
There was only love. There was only goodwill. Within the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for eternity passed, there was only ever goodwill. And it's only as sin entered that there was a brokenness where these kinds of things, where you need to be encouraged to be kind.
Why? Because on Monday morning, you're probably going to struggle with kindness, right? That's going to happen. So he is the one restoring all things to an ordered goodness. And that's where Paul starts this wish.
He says, may that one, the one who is restoring all things and bringing all things to completion, to the right place, may he be the one who sanctifies you. May he be the one who keeps you blameless. He's the one who Paul is appealing to, to sanctify the Thessalonians completely.
People can get kind of worked up, by the way, about this wish, theologically speaking, complete sanctification. Those two words together, at first glance, looks like Paul has some expectation that the church could become perfect in this life.
That you could be in a place of complete sanctification sometime as you walk through this world. Maybe there'll come a day and you just won't sin anymore or something like that. Have you ever heard that theology?
I don't espouse that theology. I don't believe that that's what Paul is teaching here. Please understand that sanctification is a process by which we are more and more set apart. Sanctification, the root of that word, is the idea of being set apart for God.
And it's a process by which we are more and more and more set apart for God's will and His purposes in our lives. So think about how that works in practical sense as you walk through this next week. Well, I would encourage us to get rid of swearing.
I encourage you to get rid of that. Because we come to realize, not because I said so, not because the book tells you to, or not because you have a bunch of checklists and rules to follow, but because you realize that your tongue belongs to Him.
Like, that's where it starts, is realizing that I am set apart. My tongue is not my own. My tongue belongs to someone else. It belongs to God. So therefore, our mouths are sanctified. We stop looking at porn because our eyes and our minds are His.
So our minds and our eyes should be sanctified, set apart for Him. But the timing of our complete sanctification is not in this life, but it's going to be at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The text gives us the timing of this.
It tells us when that's going to occur. It's going to be at the coming of our Lord. When will we be completely set apart for God's will? When will we be 100 His? When we die or when He returns for us.
But that does not mean that we cease to yield more and more of ourselves to Him each day. It doesn't mean you throw up your hands and go, well, I'm fighting a losing battle, so I'll just wait until He returns.
And until then, I'll just do whatever I want. I don't know if you can really relate to this, but I find that my life is like an unending home improvement project. Have you guys found that? A bit of home improvement?
We got a little cross in the middle of that one. So that's great. Yeah, just an attempt to, and it can often feel like an attempt to try to fix things. There is always something to work on. There's always something that needs fixing.
But notice, I was very careful with my choosing of those terms. I said home improvement, but I did not say it is a do-it-yourself project. It is not DIY. This is a home under new management. Your life should be a home under new management.
And the new owner is the one doing the repairs. The owner is the one that is responsible for fixing up the fixer-upper. He's the owner. I'm at best a tenant of this life, and the landlord is the one who fixes the place.
Sometimes my role, in all honesty, sometimes it's to get out of his way and let him lead me, to convict me, and at times to give me the resources to keep the project going, right? Sometimes it's that he does.
He gives you the fuel, the light, the fire. Have any of you seen a big life change that came about because God gave you the resources, whether it was turning the lights on to a passage of scripture, or you went to a conference and heard a speaker, or maybe you even left on Sunday morning and God had spoke to you in a different way and you went out and you did something different because of that?
I hope that that happens occasionally here. Somebody leaves here changed and transformed by the Word of God, coming in contact with it, and then you go out and you have the resources and the power by his Spirit to act on that.
Complete sanctification, but it's a process that God is working in us day by day. The second wish for the church is that the God of peace would keep their whole spirit and soul and body blameless at the coming of Jesus.
And I need to start off just with a with a side note because people get carried away because this is the only verse in the New Testament that talks about three parts of a human. So then you literally get, I mean, this is the way theologians work.
Some of you maybe even are familiar with these terms. There's some who are trichotomists and some are dichotomists. Okay, what does this mean? This is probably too much for some of you, but trichotomy is that a person is made up of three parts, spirit, soul, and body.
Where do they get that? This very verse. And others would say there's just an immaterial and a material part of me. There's a soul in here and there's a body out here. You guys can see the body, you can't see the soul.
They can be separated. The soul goes to be with, go in heaven. The body is laid in the ground. The two are brought back together at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and thus will be with the Lord forever.
But I kind of tend towards that second one. And the thing is, just to clarify for anybody who's curious, all right, grooving. Got it. This whole thing, this is the only passage in the entire Bible where Paul, speaking of what a person is made of, uses three terms.
Everywhere else he uses two. And then he uses soul and spirit interchangeably on a regular basis. So sometimes in one context he'll talk about spirit and body. Sometimes he talks about soul and body. And he uses those as interchangeable terms to such a degree that you just can't draw any conclusions.
Jesus talks about heart, soul, mind, and strength of a person. So are we four parts? Are we five parts? Are we six parts? Are we are we three parts? I think the most important thing for us to understand is that we are humans created in the image of God first and foremost.
I don't believe that soul and body were ever intended to be separated. I think in the original creation we were created with an internal life and an external life that were supposed to be completely in line.
And then when the fall occurred that's where you get death and separation. And only in the fall do those ever get separated. And even then for only a time. God's intention for us is to be united in material and material.
But all of that argument misses the point of this verse. So do you see how theologians can sometimes, I don't mean to criticize because I like to consider myself a theologian. I like to study and I like to dig into these things.
But at the end of the day I've grown a little bit from the time I was in my 20s and like to challenge everybody on their theology. And sometimes I like to just read the scripture and let it impact my life or what it wants to say.
You know it's like it used to be argue, argue, argue. And now it's like I don't know as much as I did when I was 20. Some of you are getting what I'm saying. But I just don't. Not to pick on the 20 year olds because you're growing and you're getting it.
And you're already got a lot of wisdom and knowledge there. But wow, like I thought I had everything figured out. Anybody that was there when you were in your 20s? And now it's like wow, I realize what I don't know.
And so that's something that's important to take into your theology. But the point of this text is Paul's hope for the church and therefore our hope for ourselves recast. It should be that we will be presented blameless inside and out at the return of Jesus Christ.
Praise God that we would be presented blameless inside and out at the return of Jesus Christ. Anybody in awe at that sentence? At that statement? That that could be said of you? Blameless inside and out?
That sounds like a pretty high standard. Did you agree with me on that? That's pretty significant. And the reality is one true and real day will start just like today began. And on that glorious day, King Jesus will return.
It'll feel like a normal day. We'll wake up with plans, places to go, a to-do list, stuff to accomplish. And on that day, Jesus will come back and he will return for his people and he will usher in those final events before his eternal kingdom is established forever and ever.
And on that day, I want to stand blameless. I want to be completely his. That's what sanctification means. A hundred percent his that I would that I would be belong to him. Do you want to be completely his?
Do you want to be completely his on that day? Do you want to be blameless as you meet your Lord face to face? Let me suggest to you that that's our only hope. Our only hope is that we would be completely his.
Our only hope is that we would be blameless on that day. That we will one day be presented to the Father blameless through his Son who has washed our sins away. He's washed our sins away. But if you're anything like me, you see a problem in this first verse in verse 23 that makes you nervous.
It's made you nervous since I brought it up. And Paul anticipated that some of you in this room would have anxiety, that some in Thessalonica would have anxiety as they read this. He knew that you would see the words completely sanctified and the words completely blameless inside and out or wholly blameless inside and out and you would know that doesn't define you right now.
If you're honest, you know that that doesn't define you right now. It doesn't describe your internal life. It doesn't describe me. It doesn't describe you. It doesn't describe anyone except for Jesus.
And I feel what you should also be feeling and that is the overwhelming sense of our unworthiness. Completely owned by God and completely blameless cannot define any human in the face of the glory of our holy God.
It doesn't define anyone. So Paul gloriously breaks into our fears in verse 24. Intentionally breaks into anyone who has fear over those terms, completely sanctified, completely blameless. Why should we who know our sins so clearly ever consider verse 23 a possibility for us?
We should be intimidated by this standard. And Paul knows fully that the church should be concerned when he finished that last sentence. So he catches us before we fall into despair and discouragement by redirecting our eyes to the place of hope.
Where does your hope rest, Recast Church? I hope it's right here where Paul says, I hope your faith and trust is placed in the God who is faithful. The God who will complete it. The God who is faithful, who sanctifies, who keeps us blameless.
He who is faithful is the one who will do it. Your trust in your salvation should only be as strong as the God who has saved you. If your God is weak or if you think that your salvation came to you as some kind of joint effort between you and him, you know, you did your part, you did 50%, he did 50%, then I think you can feel free to wallow in your doubts and fears and concerns about whether or not you have done enough to keep him happy with you.
I think that's a reasonable outcropping of your understanding of a weak God or even just that you had something to do with your salvation. That would be a logical conclusion to that. You would have doubt, you would have fear, because if any part of it depends on me, I know what I'm made of.
I know what's in here. And I can assure you it is not enough to keep up my half of the bargain if I think I have half of the bargain to keep up. But this passage offers to anybody who would accept the great and awesome faithfulness of our all-powerful God to save pure and unadulterated hope for anybody who has ears to ears to hear, eyes to see.
But it's only on the basis that it is God who carries us. As we sang earlier, carries us on his shoulders. Why do I believe that Don Felsick, that I will remain in the faith tomorrow? Why do I think that tomorrow I will continue with Christ?
Why do I believe that at my dying breath my hope will still be in the Lord? Why do I think that beyond that last breath I will stand before the Holy One blameless and pure and acceptable to him? Why? How could I?
Am I that arrogant? Do I think that I'm that great? Not at all. Only because he is faithful to sanctify me and keep me. It's the only hope that Don Felsick has. What is your hope? You see, we serve a God who plays for keeps.
And those who have come to him by faith in his Son will be sanctified completely, will be kept blameless on the basis of the righteousness, not of their own righteousness, but the righteousness of his Son.
Not that they've cleaned themselves up, but on the cleansing they have received by the blood of Jesus on the cross. God is faithful and he continues to call us. The verb in verse 24 in Greek is a Greek tense for ongoing action.
Look at verse 24. He who calls you, he who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it. The call is an ongoing call. It could easily be translated he who continues to call you, he who continues to call you is faithful.
It's not a one-time thing that he called you and said be my child and that's it and then he never comes to visit, he never talks, he never never wants to have any interaction with you. He's an ongoing caller.
He calls us from grace to grace. How many of you would say that your faith is stronger now than it was when you were younger? Some of us have experienced that calling from a weaker faith to a stronger faith, from the grace to handle smaller struggles to the grace to handle significant struggles.
He calls us like that. He calls us from conviction to conviction. Some of the things that we can do now and can't do now in our lives by conviction, we could do when we were younger without consequence, right?
We didn't even have a conscience against those things but as God, as we walk with God, we actually realize some of the things that we were doing that were grieving him from conviction to conviction. He is faithful to reveal to us areas of weakness over time in relationship with him, an ongoing calling and he's faithful to continue to call me to come back to the cross, to call us to come back to the cross for remembrance of his great love for us.
Not just calling you to rules, not just calling you to do's and don'ts but calling you back to an ongoing reminder, I love you, I love you. How many of you need to hear that? You might be sitting here today, somebody is probably sitting here today and you feel beat up and you don't feel only beat up by yourself, you actually feel beat up by God.
You've asked Christ to save you, you were, maybe you asked him to save you when you were younger and at this point you just fear him. Like the main thing you feel when you hear about God and it's almost kind of like a masochistic thing that you're even here because in hearing about God, every time you hear his mention, you're like, man, he is so angry at me right now.
If he was that angry, he just might, like he could be done with you. Did you realize that? He's letting you keep breathing, he's letting you keep learning, he's letting you keep growing, he is in the process of sanctifying you.
Hold on, brother or sister, hang in there in the battle but don't go it alone. That's part of the problem is that often we just go it alone. When we feel that struggle in our tension with relationship to God, what do we do?
I just, I guess I'm gonna have to fix this, I'm just gonna have to live in isolation, I'm gonna have to live with this feeling of God's distance from me and come and talk with me or go and talk with somebody that you trust and that's a spiritual leader that you can tie into that knows the word and is going to be able to help you through that process of relating to God, the God who loves you.
If you're not feeling his love, now the reality is maybe you're just totally completely getting wrapped up by sin right now and of course you can't see God's love for you because you're so entangled and that's something that needs to be dealt with, it needs to be worked through in your life and you come to a place where you recognize that he does indeed love you and is faithful to love those he calls his children.
The hope that God holds out for us here at the end of verse, at the end of first Thessalonians is simply this, the God of peace will sanctify you completely and he will keep you blameless inside and out at the return of Jesus and how do you know this will be true of you?
Because it doesn't depend on you, because it's not up to you. The one calling you is faithful and he's got it, he's got it. Verses 25 and 26 are just matters of order that still reveal something about church life that should impact us and so what often at the end of that, if you're anything like me, you're reading through the Bible in a year, you're reading through the Bible just for your quiet time, you get to these parts of scripture and then you just kind of breeze over it real quick, oh this is Paul's postscripts, okay we'll just go through, but we need to think through, it's inscripturated for us, it's written down, the spirit revealed it and it's got intention behind it and it's actually these two verses are helpful for us.
Think about verse 25 here, Paul the apostle, the one that God revealed scripture to, the one who suffered to spread the gospel, the superman of the faith is what often we have a tendency to think about some of these characters in the Old and New Testament and he asked little old Thessalonica, this small struggling church, to have a ministry praying for him and if Paul needed prayer from others and openly requested it, we should as well, we should request it as well, I'm going to request it from you, straight up, please pray for me, pray for my ongoing sanctification, pray for my increased blamelessness in my own life.
I would love to be a church of prayer and I hope that we are, I don't really see what you guys do on your own, I hope that you're praying and learning how to pray by praying because you know that's the best way to learn about prayer is by doing it, it's not very easy to, I mean you can take classes all you want about it, but until you actually engage in it, you're not learning.
This fall, by the way, there is going to be a community group that's going to be focusing on studying prayer led by Rob and Carrie Knold, so watch for those sign-ups that are going to be coming soon and the sign-ups will be back here in the next few weeks and we'll be getting those together.
Studying prayer has some benefits and I think that it can just give us some, even accountability together, talking about prayer has some benefit but nothing quite gets down to it like praying, so I again, I ask please pray for me.
There's a book at the welcome table available that has an entire chapter on praying for your church leaders, it's called I Am a Church Member, this one's been out there for a while but I highly recommend it, it's just got some really good content there about engagement in the local church and those are available out there if you'd like to take advantage of that, we've got several copies, right?
And how much are they? Just a five dollar donation, if you can't pay the five dollars, just grab one, there's no, you know, we're not keeping tabs on that, so we wouldn't want anybody to skip the resources because you can't donate, that's just the cost of the book and we can cover that easily, so.
But I would love to know that you're praying for me and really that's even at the risk of sounding as self-serving as Paul is here, I mean he actually, I mean he's just flat out saying pray for me, pray for me and I need that.
I need you to pray for me but please, please, please, oh please don't greet me with a holy kiss, okay? So now we're going to go into that, so I want you to take that one verse literally and the next one figuratively, okay?
And there's a reason for that. Yeah, Dave, okay. Honestly, we can get in our minds some really obnoxious notions about verse 26 here. Is this a receiving line for smooches in the early church? Is Paul sanctioning a holy lip lock for his churches?
Some of you thought our connection time was already uncomfortable, but I'm convinced we could clear this church out pretty quick and have nobody come back if we applied this verse literally, right? If we just literally like, hey, you know what, we ought to, we ought to just kiss each other, go across the room and kiss each other during this, that would just be uncomfortable.
But why are we so quick to make this cultural or figurative? I think we need to understand something about their culture and understanding what that, what did this verse mean when the Thessalonians read it in order for it to make sense to us to why do I feel the freedom to say, I am literally asking you to pray for me, but I'm literally asking you to not kiss me, okay?
Why would I feel comfortable with that? In honesty, what in our text here is kind of socially funny to us is a simple but strong command of the Thessalonians. You see, in their day and age, when they read this, they had probably already greeted one another with a kiss.
That had already happened in their gathering the day that they sat down and said, a letter from Paul, are you serious? And the guy got up that was learned in letters and reading and got up and read this letter to the congregation.
They'd already kissed each other in that gathering. That was the way that they greeted. By the way, kiss on the forehead, kiss on the cheek was the common Greek greeting. Even if you ran into a friend in the marketplace, you would embrace and kiss.
That was the way that they greeted each other. So Paul wasn't inventing a new social custom as it would be for us, right? That would be inventing something new, really new and really strange if we started doing that here.
But for them, that's just what they did. That was common. Just like we might shake hands or give a fist bump or occasionally give a hug. You heard that. But by this command, he is saying, keep up the greetings.
That's what they heard in their ears. Keep up greeting one another with everyone. Don't neglect to greet others in the church. Have a ready handshake and a smile or a fist bump for everyone who walks through the doors of the church.
This young church has been encouraged to deeper relationships throughout this letter. Some, think about who he's addressed so far in the writing of 1 Thessalonians, just by survey. He's addressed those who were acting unruly and unwilling to work.
Others were weak and some were feeling like giving up and some were just brand new in the faith and not sure and were wrestling and struggling with doubts and there were a variety of ethnic backgrounds in this church.
There were people from different socio-economic backgrounds and just like any gathering of humanity, there was plenty of room for division, plenty of room for arrogance and yes, even to be more contemporary, even room for racism.
I believe the emphasis to our eyes in this text, when we read it, where does the emphasis fall in our eyes? The word kiss. Did anybody's attention draw there? Like that's the word that stands out to us.
That's the scandalous word. That's the word that's like ooh. But there's another word in this text that to the Thessalonians was that ooh word. Any guesses to what it is? All. All. You mean everyone? You mean those people?
You mean people like that? You mean that group? Greet them? Are you serious, Paul? All? Greet everyone? All the brothers with brothers and sisters with a holy kiss? All of them? All? No. What should a church be like in atmosphere?
What should a church be like in the feel when you walk in as a visitor? Welcoming to all. No cliques, no divisions, no arrogance, no priority seating, no priority parking. I've had people ask me where the parking spot's going to be for the pastor at the new building and I think it's just fine if I'm out by the dumpster unless somebody else wants that and I can park out further if you need me to.
Let me just use this very pertinent text to say how utterly grieved I was this past couple of weeks with events in Charlottesville, Virginia regarding racism in our country. I confess to being often blind to this because I don't face that on a regular basis.
I praise God that I don't face that on a regular basis and many of us in this room don't face that on a regular basis. Some of us may feel it. Some of us have felt deeply the events of this last couple of weeks.
Racism is a heresy. It is a falsehood propagated by the evil one and by evil hearts. We are not as humans victims of Satan. We are equally victims of our own flesh and our own selfishness and our own pride.
Racism is a damnable poison that comes straight from the fall of humanity. It has no place in a church that is called in our text to greet one another with a holy kiss or a holy handshake or a holy fist bump, to greet all.
The form of the greeting doesn't matter as much as the glad-hearted welcome of all kinds of people. Every person you have ever met is a precious, beautiful, loved creation of God regardless of which side of the aisle they stand on, regardless of the color of their skin, what country they come from, how they talk, where they work, if they work.
Everyone, all. Is anybody besides me glad for the diversity with which he has set his image down on this planet? Anybody glad for that? Are you happy? There's richness in colors. There's richness in cultures.
There's a richness of ethnic diversity that reflects the beautiful creativity of our maker. Greet all, recast. Greet all. Verse 27 moves us on and you can see how just that little part that we could so easily skip over in our quiet time, so quickly move past, has impact for our day, for right now.
Scripture, all of scripture is God-breathed. All of it is beneficial. Verse 27 seems like technical instruction and again we could just skip over it and it kind of is but it has some very quick but dramatic application for us.
Look at how strong Paul is here in verse 27. I put you, he's speaking to the leadership now who's going to physically receive the letter. Everybody, most scholars, almost every single scholar believes that Paul at this point is no longer dictating to a secretary but now has literally picked the pen up in his own hand and is now writing himself to the leaders who are going to receive this letter from Timothy and he says, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to, again our word, all the brothers.
Why again this emphasis? Why so strong here in this text? Paul makes the leadership who received his letter pledge under oath to Christ himself to read this letter to all the brothers and sisters and this at face value doesn't seem like a big deal but I'm convinced that Paul wanted to be sure that this letter wasn't kept from anyone.
There might be some motivation on the leadership's part to avoid reading parts of scripture. Can you imagine a culture where parts of scripture might not want to be read? I think we can kind of picture that, couldn't we?
We could picture how it might be uncomfortable in some cultures, probably not ours, but in some cultures to avoid the reading of scripture, to avoid some of it and well we wouldn't want to offend that group, we wouldn't offend them and so, but his instruction is strong because there were reasons he feared that it would not be read to everyone.
In this letter he's jumped on the backs of the lazy and the unruly. In his letter he has challenged the wealthy to love more. He has called out the sexually immoral. His letter may offend some, do you think?
Do you think there's potential for him to offend some in this letter? And so leaders may not be excited to read it to everyone. He says, read it to everyone knowing it's going to ruffle some feathers, read it anyways.
The application is simply this recast, the word of God is for all, it's for all of us. We should read it all, we should trust it all and we should read it to all. I preach the way I preach out of conviction that we need to hear God's word.
I'm not reading it to please people, I'm not reading it to make us all feel good. I could easily just pick out the passages that prove to be a nice pep talk for your week. We could treat Sunday morning like a pep rally so that you could just get your boost for the week and I could pick out the passages that are just really gonna just encourage your soul, God is for you, God loves you, God's going to give you wealth, God's going to give you all the dreams and just not finish the sentences, right?
And certainly kid glove the cross and the sufferings of Christ and the suffering of the apostles, the sufferings of the prophets, the sufferings of those who followed before us and just say God wants you to just have a stellar week and that would be it.
Or we can take seriously the call to read the scriptures to the whole gathering and let it guide and direct us. That's why the T in recast stands for truth, just like the S stands for snacks. Or simplicity, Dave.
Are you up for a review soon? The T in recast stands for truth. That was a joke, by the way, you guys. I shouldn't joke like that at all, but it was fun. It's a core value, the T, it's the last one, it's the T in recast, but it ties all those other values together.
That we want to follow God's word, we want to obey it, we want to follow the direction that it goes, even if it's very unpopular in our culture, even if it's unpopular to our church. You know that sometimes scripture, it's really kind of, sometimes it's fun when it pushes against our culture a little bit.
Like just to be honest, sometimes we get that, right? And it's like there's a, there's like, oh yeah, we're different, we're unique in a cool way or whatever. But then there's sometimes where scripture speaks against our church traditions, right?
It pushes against some of the things that we were raised with, that we're like, well I would like that better if it was just there. I would, you know, some people come from a tradition where it'd be really great if I wore a suit and it might put them off that I'm wearing what I'm wearing today.
And so there's a tradition there that you look in scripture and you just don't find it there. I'm pretty comfortable today. So you know, it's getting down to letting the word of God guide us and correct us and direct us.
Paul's final words we find in verse 28 for this letter. He closes a lot of his letters with this exact Greek phrase, but it's just so powerful when you really think about it. The word grace, you know, you can come up with God's riches at Christ's expense.
I don't know if you heard that acronym. There's all kinds of things that we've used, getting something you don't deserve, grace, and that word can just get lost on us sometimes, right? It's just a theological term that I'm supposed to get excited about, supposed to be happy with it.
But consider what does a person truly need? What do you really need? The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is a need. A need that's more fundamental and more important than your freedom. It's more important than your right to self expression.
It's more important than anything found in the Bill of Rights. It's more important than oxygen, more important than food, or even more important than life itself. Because it is the one thing that defines your destiny beyond the confines of the grave, beyond your last meal, beyond your last breath.
It is the defining factor. They say you can't take it with you when you go, right? You heard that? Can't take it with you when you go. All your treasures will decay. All your treasures will fade or be spent by people who never quite respect how much work it took for you to accumulate it.
But there is one treasure that will never fade. It is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I want that to be with you, Recast. Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And Paul wished it for the Thessalonians whom he dearly loved.
How are we sanctified? How are we kept blameless? We were set apart, sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ. And we are kept blameless by the substitution of his righteousness for our unrighteousness.
He took our sins and gave us the righteousness of Jesus Christ in exchange. So as we come to communion, I hope that this becomes a weekly reminder of the glorious salvation, the glorious hope, and the empowering reminder that whatever comes at you this week, the grace of God is with us.
His goodwill is now toward us because of the punishment that Jesus Christ endured for us. Jesus doesn't want you to come to this table feeling sorry for him or feeling really terrible that he had to do that for you.
He's not like, man, they just should be a little bit more somber and serious about this. They should just really, I'd like to see some tears here. I'd like to see some people not even do it. I'd like to see you sit back and just really in your own misery and your own guilt, just wallow there for a bit.
He went to the cross so that you could rejoice, so that you could be set free from guilt, from the effects of sin, and that you might have the power to go out because of that love. You might have power to go out and fight and battle sin.
You might have the power to go out and be transformed by love. I truly believe that he wants you to delight during communion in his great love for you. He wants you to do this in remembrance of him who loves you.
We take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed in our place. We take the cracker to remember his body broken in our place. So come to the table and rejoice that he has made a way for you to have a rock solid hope that he will sanctify us.
He will keep us blameless until that day because he is faithful. If you're unconvinced that you are blameless before God, if you're unconvinced that you have ever had that experience where you've asked Christ to save you and you've been washed, then please come and talk with me and we can start a discussion about the way that you can come to Jesus for forgiveness and a new start with life with him.
At the end of the service, feel free to greet one another with a holy fist bump. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace. It is everything. And although we might not all feel that in our hearts and even the theological concept might be fuzzy to us and we've heard a lot of things about your grace, we've heard a lot of things about sanctification, we've heard a lot about being blameless before you and holy and set apart and all of these things.
Father, I just pray that we would walk away with one clear call to trust your faithfulness, to trust you as the one who will do it. And that from that trust in you would flow good things in our lives, obedience to you, love for one another, service for one another.
Because we don't have to fight for our own salvation anymore. We're well above the water line. We're not floating and just barely keeping our mouths out of the water, but you have set our feet on the rock.
We're not even in the water any longer fighting because you have saved us. You have promised to keep us blameless and to hold us. So we are the ones who can rescue others and be set apart in our lives for the purposes that you've called us to.
Because we have hope. Father, if there's anybody in this room that doesn't have that hope, that feels like they're just barely about to take in the water and they just can't hardly keep afloat, Father, I pray that you would give them the boldness to come and speak with me or with Dave or somebody in the band or just somebody that they trust to be able to come and say, I need help.
I need help and I want the help of Jesus Christ today. But Father, for those who are in with you, I pray that we would rejoice as we come to the table because you have loved us so lavishly. You have given us so much and you don't want our guilt any longer.
You want our celebration. You want us to delight ourselves in you. So Father, I pray that that would be reality for us this week and even this morning as we take communion together in Jesus' name. Amen.