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Reading 2 Thessalonians 1:8-12 to see that God will complete this work of faith that was started in us for our good and for His glory. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Bible says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure. So your response to the gospel is also the work of God when we understand the text.
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Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. We come back again to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and attempting to finish this up today so we can jump into chapter 2 next week. I'm going to begin reading in verse 8 here where Paul says that Christ will come 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 always 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.
So Paul says that Christ will inflict vengeance on those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Think of the first words that Jesus preached when He began His ministry, at least the way that we have it recorded in Matthew 4, 17.
Jesus said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So the gospel demands a response. It is not just something proclaimed. It is also something to be obeyed. Those who are the sheep of God will hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and they will obey His command.
When He says repent, the sheep will repent. When He says believe, the sheep will believe. They will follow Jesus and they will obey His commands. So the gospel demands obedience. And that's often not the way that we think of the gospel.
We think of it as something that leads to conversion and then, you know, something else happens after that. The gospel has done its work and we don't come back to it again. We use the gospel to lead a person to faith, but not grow them in their faith.
But that's incorrect. The gospel not only leads us to saving faith in Christ, but is also growing us in that faith and is shaping our minds more and more to long for the things of heaven and less for the stuff of this earth.
That only happens by a continued declaration of the gospel that we would seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the righteousness of Christ even proclaimed in the gospel. Because remember, when we are calling a person to repentance, it is necessary for us to show them their sin according to what is written in the scriptures, because otherwise, if they don't know their own fallenness, then they don't realize what it is that they have to repent from.
As it says in Proverbs, every man is right in his own eyes. So we show them according to the law of God that they have broken this law. They are coveters. They are idolaters. They are adulterers. They are murderers at heart, even hating your brother and calling him a fool makes you guilty of the fires of hell, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter five.
So as we show them these things, according to the word of God, they become knowledgeable of their sin and need a savior. They need a savior in order to stand before a righteous and holy God. They are not righteous.
He is righteous. So when we are proclaiming the gospel, we're also proclaiming the righteousness of Christ. And that is what we need to seek after. So every single day, desiring God and His righteousness, we are shaped more and more into the image of the son.
We are obeying the commands of Christ. We are less and less a part of this world and more and more longing for the kingdom. I mean, all of this is affected by the gospel at work in our lives. It is a call to obedience.
And so we must obey when you heard the gospel and you believed in it and you repented of your sin. You are no longer following after the prince of the power of the air that Paul talks about in Ephesians, chapter two, that, of course, being Satan.
Instead, you became obedient to the king of kings and lord of lords. So no longer, no longer enslaved by the prince of the power of the air. You were obedient to the king. And so therefore you do the things that the king has commanded you to do.
As the apostle John says in first John, chapter five, that we show that we love God when we obey his commandments. If you are not obeying the commandments of Christ, then you have not been changed from the pattern of this world.
You have not been renewed in mind to seek after your creator. You're still enslaved to your sin. You're still following after Satan. Your father is the devil instead of your father being God. And therefore you are not saved.
But those who obey Christ show in their lives that they have been transformed by the gospel. They've been given a new heart that longs for God, the people of God, the kingdom of God. And so they will do the things that the king commands them to do.
John 3, 36, he who has the son has life, but he who does not obey the son shall not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. All of this to further the point that the gospel is something that must be obeyed, not just proclaimed, not just a message, not just heard, but you respond to it.
You turn from sin and you obey Christ. So those that do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction. Second Thessalonians 1, 9, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from his might, the glory of his might.
And one of those one of those criticisms that often comes from unbelievers is how can you say that God is a loving God when he would torture a person for all eternity? And this has caused many Christians and many teachers to soften their understanding of hell and try to say, well, yeah, you're right.
You know, a loving God would not send somebody to be tormented for all eternity. So you know what? Hell is just a hypothetical thing. It's not really fire. A person's not there for all eternity. Whenever somebody rejects God, well, that's like hell.
You know, this this is the way that the doctrine of hell gets distorted because a person has a difficult time trying to understand this concept of eternal destruction. But it's what the Bible says. Jonathan Edwards has said that the doctrine of hell is indeed a terrible, horrible thing, but it is nonetheless of God.
It is in God's word that hell is talked about. And Jesus, in fact, talked more about hell than he spoke about heaven. Why would he speak more about hell than heaven? So that you would be warned of the seriousness of what your sin and rebellion against God will result in.
And you will turn from sin. You will repent of the direction that you are going, turning a complete about face from the direction you're going, which will be over the cliff and into the pit of hell. And instead, you will be chasing in the direction of God through his son, Jesus Christ.
And so this warning that we have that those who do not obey the gospel will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction. God himself is eternal. So whatever God is, he is eternally that trait. So, for example, when we say God is love, we know that he is eternally loving.
He will love forever. And that characteristic of God will never change whatever characteristic he is. He is eternally that. So when we say that God is just, he is eternally just. And remember this sentence that he will give on those who do not obey the gospel.
That is a just sentence. And it is, in fact, the sentence that we all deserve. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, God in his glory and in his holiness and in his righteousness. He is eternally that.
And no matter how hard we try for all eternity to do good and to do holiness, we will never get there. You could have all eternity to achieve holiness and you would never arrive at it, which is why if you do not obey Christ, your your sentence is hell for all eternity, because given all eternity, you would never get to God's righteousness.
You have not obeyed the gospel of Christ. And so that is the sentence that you receive. It is the sentence that we all deserve. But God is just and he is loving and he is merciful to rescue us out of the sentence that we deserve and instead give us eternal life through our savior, Jesus Christ.
So how dare anyone? How dare anyone think that they are more righteous in God than God to be able to say that? Oh, well, he would never judge anyone for all eternity. See, they don't realize when they say that that they're actually blaspheming God, that they are thinking of themselves as more righteous than God, because I know better.
I know that it would be a horrible thing for somebody to be in hell for all eternity. So a loving God would never do that. Well, well, then you have just blasphemed God. You have just said something about God that isn't true.
It's based on your own biases, your own feelings. It is not rooted in truth. And it is also coming from your finite, sinful mind and not according to the infinite holy God. He knows that if given all eternity, a person would never repent and turn to God.
And so they are destroyed for all eternity. And hell is not full of people that are repentant. They're not full of people saying, God, give me another chance. I will turn from this sin. Hell is full of people who hate God forever.
They will be in hate against God for all eternity. I mean, you just go to the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke chapter 16, where Jesus talks about this rich man who went to a place of torment.
And Lazarus, the poor man, when he died, he was carried to Abraham. Abraham's bosom was there at Abraham's side. And when the rich man looked across the chasm that separated them, he begged Abraham for a drop of water that would cool him in this place of anguish that he was in.
But Abraham wouldn't give it to him. And if you note, if you go back to the story and you read it, this is Luke 16 verses 19 through 31. When you read this story that Jesus shares, the rich man never repents.
He never says, oh, just give me another chance. I'll worship God now. All he asks for is relief in the place that he's in and that somebody would go back and warn his brothers of this awful place. But he never repents.
The rich man is never in a place of torment in which he actually desires to worship God. He is in that place of angst and and mourning and woe and hate and madness for all eternity. And that's where a person who hates God will end up and they will hate him forever.
And God's wrath will be poured out on them forever. Hell is not a place where God's presence is absent. It's there. He's pouring out his wrath for all eternity. Now, it does say that they will be separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
So the the glory of his goodness will not be experienced by those who are in hell, but they will absolutely experience the power of God in the sense that his wrath will be poured out upon them. Second Thessalonians chapter one, verse 10.
Now he will come on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed. See, this is something else that you get a picture of in the book of Revelation. But the at the deliverance of the saints, the salvation of those who believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ is actually a judgment on those who did not believe.
So, yes, we get saved. Amen. Praise the Lord. Glory for his mercy. But those who who did not believe, they will mourn when they see the salvation of the saints because they know it means judgment upon themselves.
The book of Jonah, when Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and tell them to repent, Jonah disobeyed God. He got in a boat and headed in the other direction, didn't want to go to Nineveh. Why? And then when Jonah went and told Nineveh to repent, they repented.
He goes up on a hill and he's waiting for fire to come down on Nineveh. But instead, the city repents and God spares the city. And Jonah is angry. And it's often said that Jonah was what was prejudice, that he was bigoted against the Ninevites.
He wanted them to be destroyed because he hated that people so much. And and that was why he was so mad at God. Well, that actually wasn't the issue there. It wasn't that Jonah wanted the Ninevites to be destroyed.
It's because he knew that if the Ninevites repented, the message that this prophet of God to Israel took to the Ninevites and if they repented, it meant that Israel was going to be destroyed. The message of repentance was not being received by Israel, but was being received by the Gentiles.
So that meant the judgment of God was about to come upon Israel. And that's what had Jonah so angry. He didn't want Nineveh to repent. So that way, Joe or Israel wouldn't be destroyed. That was his reasoning.
That was why he got so angry about that. And so that's that's even kind of a precursor or a picture of the final judgment of God when the saints are delivered, when we are raptured, when we meet him in the air, which we see is the event that happens first, as we read about it in First Thessalonians chapters four and five, Christ comes back with the cry of command, with the sound of the trumpet of God.
And we go meet the Lord in the air. We are forever with the Lord. And then we come back down as Christ brings judgment upon the earth. So when the earth sees that happen, they will wail and they will mourn at the deliverance of the saints because they know that it means the salvation of the saints means the destruction of the ungodly.
And we will marvel. All who have believed in this message will marvel at Christ and his glory, and we will praise him for his mercy and his love because the testimony that was delivered by the apostles to the world was believed.
How were we saved? Because we heard the gospel of Christ and we believed it and we obeyed it, too, according to the statement that was made in verse eight. And so this is all our hope and peace, this message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the deliverance from this world into his eternal kingdom and away from the wrath and the judgment of God.
We have been spared that because of the blood of Christ to all who believe. To this end, Paul says, verse 11, to this end, we always 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.
It is God who makes us worthy of his calling. It is he who justified us, and it is he who sanctifies us as well. Consider these words of Peter in second Peter, chapter one, verse five. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So continue to work out your calling and election. But ultimately, we know that this work that we that we are doing in this growth of sanctification is not our work, but it is God's now. Now, in as far as the way that we live here on this world is concerned, you have been told to obey, and so you must respond.
You must obey. But ultimately, we see when we study the doctrine, when we read the Bible, we see that our obedience was even the work of God himself in our lives, all to his glory. Consider Philippians 2, 12 and 13.
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed. So now not only is in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
So Paul is saying, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but it's God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So it is God who has saved us, and it is God who is working in us this sanctification.
So again, to this end, we always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling. So Peter says, confirm your calling and election, but Paul says here that it is God who makes you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.
Will fulfill every resolve for good. There are all kinds of things that happen to us in this world that test our resolve. Do you understand what I mean by that? So you could be struggling through something right now, like your heart has been broken by somebody that you loved and trusted.
You have lost a loved one and you are mourning. Perhaps you have a sickness in your body or you feel your body breaking down. You want relief from the pain that you experience physically in your own body.
Perhaps you have an emotional hurt. You feel lonely and forgotten. You're resisting temptation. Something is tempting you and it is. It is tempting you to the point of boy, it just it really testing the resolve of your mind to resist that temptation.
You are being ridiculed by somebody, and maybe you're even resisting the temptation to back at them. You are being persecuted by someone for your faith. Perhaps you're being ostracized because of the faith in Christ that you have.
Any of these things test our resolve, but God is working this out for his good. And we have it said to us in Romans 8 18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
In other words, we're going to get to that glory in Christ on that great day of his return. And then all the things that we experience in this life are going to seem like nothing. So God is is keeping us steadfast in the faith that we would not be snatched out of his hand by the enemy.
No one will be snatched out of his hand. And he says, Paul says here that we pray 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.
He is working this out to his glory. It's Philippians 1 6 that says, I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ. Charles Spurgeon once said, the more I suffer, the more I cling to the gospel.
Second Thessalonians 1 12. 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. God, I thank you for the salvation that we have been given in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And I pray that you would give us a steadfastness, give us a resolve that we would resist the temptations of this world. We would even resist complaining about our circumstances because we know that what we're going through at the present is being worked out for your glory.
It's for something that is incomprehensible to us now. But then once we get to the other side and we're with you there in glory, our sufferings of the present time are not even going to compare with the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.
So let that be our focus. Let us be let that be our longing. Let that be our hope, because there's nothing in this world to hope in. Our hope is in Christ, who will raise us from the dead. There is nothing, not even death itself, that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So let that continue to sustain us and encourage us and carry us through our day as we lift up praises to our God. For this world is not our home. We will be forever with our Lord in glory in his imperishable, eternal kingdom.
Praise God in Jesus name. Amen.