Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 25, 2016 | Route 66 - 2 Thessalonians

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September 25, 2016 | Route 66 - 2 Thessalonians · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, join me in a little book called 2 Thessalonians.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's close to the right hand side of your Bible, about the dozen book before the end.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Book of 2 Thessalonians.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, there may be one in the pew bottom in front of you or around you.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the book begins actually, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Grace and peace to you.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Grace, the Old Testament greeting, the Hebrew greeting, peace, Irene, the New Testament times greeting to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: What a neat beginning.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we are, I personally am so blessed to be able to hold a grandchild and dedicate him to you.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it is an even greater blessing to open your word, to do Bible study, to take the words that you breathed out so many years ago to men whom you gifted and then compiled, oversaw the compiling of these words into what we call the Bible, so that we could live lives that are full and mature to every good work.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We so appreciate your word and ask it this morning that as we study 2 Thessalonians, we would gain what it is that you have for us.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that I think that the theme of 2 Thessalonians is keep calm and carry on.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard that line before.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was the summer of 1939, and here in Topeka, Kansas, uh two couples got together.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Barkley was the name of one, uh, and Buck was the name of the other, and they started talking about, in fact, they resolved to start a church here in Topeka, a new church.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Shawnee Heights area, they started meeting in a home in September of 1939, which happens to be the same month that the Germans invaded Poland and World War II began.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hitler had announced that he uh that the Arians, his Aryan race were supreme and they should uh govern the world.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so he started his massive land grabs that fall.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the summer of 1939, the English, the British, Winston Churchill, the prime minister, they knew this was going to break forth, and so they had begun preparing, they'd begun mobilizing.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that uh Winston Churchill had done is he'd instructed the Ministry of Information, sometimes called the Propaganda Ministry, if it's your enemy, he'd instructed them to come up with some ways of encouraging and inspiring the courage of ordinary British people during this terrible war that he could see was about to start.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And a civil servant whose name we do not know, in 1939 in the late summer, came up with an idea for a poster, a poster that would read, Keep Calm and Carry On.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they liked it in the government.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They liked it so much they printed up about two and a half million of these posters, intending to blanket the British Isles with these posters.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: If Germany did as they were threatening, Hitler had threatened, he said, We have air superiority.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you up there in England think you can stand against us and you oppose us, we are going to bomb your cities, we're gonna bomb your towns, we're gonna bomb your villages.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the British people were terrified.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so this was the response, a poster that was gonna go up everywhere, reading, Keep Calm and Carry On.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have perhaps seen this poster, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen this?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps seen some of the takeoffs or the parodies of this poster, keep calm and avoid zombies, keep calm and carry on.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now panic and freak out, things like that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So this poster is very common, especially used in advertising things over in England.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not so common in the States, but still it's it's pretty well known.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what happened is that after the war was over, the posters were all destroyed, and uh they just it just didn't last.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And though the poster was known about it was pretty much forgotten until the year 2000 when a bookseller in London discovered one in his back room and it started spreading copies again.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was you know very nostalgic.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then just a couple years ago, I think 2012, a couple dozen more of the original posters were found.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why you you see this poster around, keep calm and carry on.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The keep calm part was, of course, uh Churchill's worry that the British would panic.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the carry-on was his fear that they would run away from their jobs, that they would quit and try to flee if Germany was successful.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my point, and I think I even put this on the front of your bulletin this morning, is that this was actually uh no idea, I guess, is new.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: This idea, keep calm and carry on, is as far as I can tell, as I've read and reread now, once again, the book of 2 Thessalonians, I think it's a wonderful way to capture the message of this little book.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's turn to this book.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 1, you'll uh uh uh chapter one of 2 Thessalonians starts kind of the way that 1 Thessalonians began.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you were around last week, last Sunday, for example, you may remember that we said that the theme of 1 Thessalonians had to do with the three great virtues, faith, hope, and love.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: That Paul, we said, began 1 Thessalonians by praising them for their faith, which could withstand persecution, for their love for each other, and for their hope in the return of Christ.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: He praised them for that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then he went on in the other, in the rest of the book of 1 Thessalonians to say that his message was that they needed to ratchet up their faith and their hope and their love, those three things, because the persecutions were gonna get worse, and so they needed to toughen up their faith.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said in in light of the bleak days ahead, they needed to fill up their love and let it overflow even more and more.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, in the last two chapters of 1 Thessalonians, chapters 4 and 5, he said, You have a tendency to doze off.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want you to wake up your hope.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe we shouldn't be surprised when he, in his second letter to the Thessalonians, he begins in verses 3 and 4 by saying, Dear brothers and sisters, we can't help but thank God for you because your, here it comes, faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was his command in book number one.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We proudly tell God's other churches about your endurance and faithfulness in all the persecutions and hardships you are suffering.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You say, what persecutions and hardships were there suffering?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, Thessalonica is up in what we call Macedonia.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the northern part of Greece, and that's far from Rome.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't know the specific persecutions and hardships they were suffering.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We know that Paul was beaten and nearly died when he visited Thessalonica for the first time on his second missionary journey.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: What persecutions and hardships they were going through, we don't know, but we know what persecutions and hardships were going on in the rest of the Roman Empire in the year that this was written, which is about 55 AD.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: We know that Christianity had been what we call a really fast-growing religion for 20 years, since Christ had died, risen again, and ascended into heaven in the mid-30s, about maybe 33 A.D.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as Christianity was small, nobody cared all that much, and the Romans were all friendly.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now Christianity had begun exploding across the empire.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: There were at least 50,000 Christians in the city of Rome alone.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the Roman leaders saw this as competition.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: They saw it as competition because the Roman religion told you to worship the emperor.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they were supposed to worship the emperor, they were supposed to trust in the nanny state, in the government, and here was this rising, growing group of people, these Christians who didn't believe in the government.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they thought government was part of the problem and was opposed to God, was the enemy.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And more than that, they thought that the emperor was not only not deity, but unless the emperor became subservient to the true deity and to Jesus Christ, he was on the wrong side.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so Christianity began to be persecuted.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the persecution was not only in Rome where they kicked out all of the Christians, but it was in places like Thessalonica.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they lost their jobs, but we can't imagine that the Christians were occasionally being beaten up for no reason.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what Paul does is after saying, listen, you're doing great, persecutions are bad, we're telling everybody, your faith is strong, you're hanging on, he then says something which many of us are surprised at.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us are a little more spiritual than God because we're shocked when Paul says, in God's justice, he will pay back those who persecute you.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know there are many who are listening to me who are saying, Wow, that's not very spiritual, because you're supposed to turn the other cheek, and you're not supposed to pay anybody back.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be really nice and sweet.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Christians are all about.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me notice the future tense here.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: He will pay back.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: The point of the New Testament about vengeance is this.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: In this present day, don't go for revenge.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to take vengeance because one day in the future, God will avenge you.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Leave your avenging to God.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the New Testament says further, we live in an age of tolerance.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You should tolerate your enemies and the enemies of God.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to establish a theocracy on the earth or anything.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be tolerant.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: One day, however, tolerance will cease.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: The God who bothers us a little because he's too tolerant, we wish he would send lightning down and zap ISIS before they shoot Christians in the head, right?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We wish God wasn't so tolerant.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: God is tolerant today, but one day the tolerance will cease.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on that day, God will pay back those who persecute you.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: You say, what difference will it make then?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it makes a difference to God.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It makes a difference to a parent who's ever been ever.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Were you ever in a park with your two-year-old little girl or a three-year-old little boy boy and a bully came along and shoved them off the slide or grabbed the last swing before they could get to it?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Remember how you felt at that point?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You felt like Mother Teresa.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you did.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you were so sweet it didn't matter to you at all.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You felt like going and pulling off arms and legs.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were you were really upset.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think God cares about you and me and his children, his little children, any less than a daddy or a mommy or a grandparent cares about their little child who's being bullied?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: God cares deeply about it.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the martyrs under the throne in Revelation chapter 5 cry out, How long, O Lord, how long will you not avenge us?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: We were slaughtered, our family's being killed, they're getting persecuted down there.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why won't you do something about it?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And God's response is, I promise you, I will, because I am really upset.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So God says, I will pay back those who persecute you.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And don't be more spiritual than God at this point.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And God continues, I will provide rest for you and relief.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the older translations, older than the Holman, which is the one I'm using, God will provide rest for you who are being persecuted, and also for us when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, taking vengeance.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: There it is again, with flaming fire on those who, one, don't know God, and on those who, too, don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hear what he's saying.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very sober, serious passage.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's coming a day which we call the return of Christ, the second coming when God will come back, and one of the things he will have on his mind is vengeance upon the persecutors of his children.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: The other will be to bring rest and relief and rescue for his children.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the people upon whom he will take vengeance in what we call the great tribulation will be those who don't know God.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, meaning know God personally in the Bible, that's always a personal knowledge.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who've never entered into a relationship with God.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that maybe it may make you feel uncomfortable.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: You may think he's saying, well, obey the gospel, keep the Ten Commandments.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not the only time.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a half a dozen times, well, a little less than that, in the New Testament where this phrase is used, obeying the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you know the gospel, the good news, you know that the gospel is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the good news.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now we don't work, but believing is not considered a work in the New Testament, but it is an obedience.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: We obey the gospel by believing in his son.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: By doing a 180, turning around and saying, that there, yes, he did come.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: He died for me.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for loving the world so much that you sent your son that he died for me.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that is completely opposite, notice, to the sort of a, you know, earth rises up to heaven and does enough so that God, I obey enough, I do enough things so that God sees me as worthy of heaven.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the other direction where God reaches down.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And all I do is I obey him by believing.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking this is a big golf weekend, the culmination of the whole golf year, and I thought of an illustration about that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It concerns an old golf pro, a uh a club pro down in Austin at the Austin Country Club, who's now passed on some years back, named Harvey Pennock.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was very beloved, and he used to give lessons every single day to people like you and people like me.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: He started giving lessons way back in the 1920s, and he started at that time keeping a spiral notebook, a spiral red notebook, and he would always write his ideas in there and thoughts that he had.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: He never showed anybody the notebook for 70 years, and in 1991, at the age of 90, Harvey Pennock shared the notebook with a friend of his who happened to be a writer, who told him, Really, I think this is good enough to be published.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Harvey said, You think?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Guy said, Yeah, would you loan it to me?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to go talk with a friend of mine at Simon and Schuster.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he loaned him the notebook, and the guy took it to Simon and Schuster that day.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day, the guy stopped by Harvey's house.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Harvey wasn't there, his wife was.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: The guy said, Simon and Schuster loves it.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Simon and Schuster would like to uh, you know, settle with you, making a contract with you uh uh uh uh at an advanced royalties amount of$90,000.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and he left, and the next day he saw Harvey, expecting Harvey to be all excited.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was really stunned when Harvey was sort of flat-faced.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Harvey, what is the deal?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you were excited about having your book published.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Harvey said, Yeah, I thought so too.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, what did you think about the you know the advance royalty of$90,000?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Harvey said, That's the problem.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: He says, With all my medical bills, really, there's just no way I can do that much.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Harvey, no, you don't understand.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: They give you this, you simply receive it.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the agreement.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you'll talk with people who are really excited.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: They have they've understood the gospel really for the first time, and they see other Christians.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I hang around Jewish people, as you know, and a number of the Jewish believers that I know trusted Christ as a result of watching people like you celebrate Christmas.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this jealousy that Paul speaks about in Romans came up inside them.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: They saw the joy, they saw the light, they heard the story of baby Jesus and the death and so forth, and they thought, wow, we don't have anything like that in Judaism.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that provoked them to ask about Jesus Christ.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then what happens is they go, well, how then how then am I saved?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what is the story there?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And their default position is I must do a certain amount, I must come up with 90,000 good works or whatever, I must obey.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then you say back to them, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: The obedience that God wants from you is simply an obedience of acceptance, an obedience of belief.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's a wonderful, and all of you, can you say amen if you were on the right side of that?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the the point, of course, though, of this first chapter is listen, friends, judgment is coming.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: The real Holocaust is coming.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, you sort of want to say to the Muslim radicals who are holding signs like this in London, be prepared for the real Holocaust.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what the real Holocaust is.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is a real Holocaust coming, and God will bring it, and God will take vengeance on all of those who have persecuted his little children.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point, or real point, of chapter one.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So then when he gets to chapters two and three, the other two chapters, Paul has a little message for them.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna stop right here and say it's not the most important message in the Bible, not the most glorious theological point that he ever makes.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't match up there with Isaiah or the book of Romans.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's very simple, however, very practical, and very applicable in the day in which we live.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 2, the first part of the message is keep calm.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Keep calm.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't freak out, don't panic about the whole day of judgment.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: He starts this way.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, now concerning, chapter 2, verse 1, now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message, by a letter, as if from us, alleging the day of the Lord has come.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can understand, you can sort of see what happened.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here are all these good people, you know, and they live in what's today called Salonica, this, this, this, this beautiful seaside village, and all of a sudden, I mean, they're worshiping the pagan gods, and life is a little bit boring, and so forth.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, this firebrand named Paul comes into town with his sidekick Silas, and they start sharing about this man, this amazing man named Jesus, who is a miracle worker, who came to Jerusalem and Israel, and he died for everyone's sins.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the Thessalonians are like so excited about this, and they trust Christ as their Savior.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the weeks that Paul is there planting the church, they're in Thessalonica, they're asking them loads of questions.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the questions, of course, that they ask him is okay, so that's what happened in the past, and that's what's happening in the present.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: You say Jesus rose again and then he went to heaven and so forth.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what's happening in the future?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, wow, it could happen anytime.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is coming back.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is coming back.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there will be a day of the Lord, a time of great tribulation, in which he brings judgment, you know, upon the earth for all of her sins.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: But he is coming back for his children.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then apparently, what's happened?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: See, Paul got beaten up badly and he leaves and he's gone for a while, apparently a year, you know, a couple of years now, or whatever.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And some other people, popular teachers came through from the prophecy club or wherever else, and they go, it's happening already.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the middle of it.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Christ, you know, he came, you missed him, and so forth.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: The tribulation is on us.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we are we're in the middle of it.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they start freaking out.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the point of chapter two is would everybody please stop freaking out.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it ends that way as well.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, brothers and sisters, I want you to stand firm.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Keep calm.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Don't panic.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Don't crumble, stay on your feet.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, some of you may recognize the whole stand firm, stand on your feet thing from verse 15 and so forth.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the most common phrases in 1 Thessalonians as well.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the arguments that these two letters really are by Paul and that they really go together.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one thing that Paul would say.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because the fact of the matter is, maybe for different reasons, Christians panic today.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Christians get free.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: We get freaked out by what's happening overseas, don't we?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we live in a really I mean we never, who expected, you know, 10 years ago that the United States would have an enemy which it couldn't see.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically there's no nation, single nation on earth, or even a group of nations.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not even 22 Arab Nations or anything.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we had an enemy that you could hold in your hand, but the enemy today of Christians and of good people and so forth across the world is a group of radicals, religious radicals who don't have a country, who move around, who are amorphous, who pop up in France three, four times in the last year or two just with bombs, and in America as well.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's enough to make you get a little freaky, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the culture war here at home.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's enough to scare Christians and cause them to panic and to freak out a little bit.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because it seems that that in the culture war, that everything, you know, all the virtues that we know and and believe here in the Word of God are being ridiculed.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're being told that not just in the church, we can't even that that if we want to believe something about any of these cultural issues, we need to whisper it to each other behind closed doors and not live it, not speak it outside of church walls.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it tends to make you go, wow, this is not at all the America I grew up in.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so you find Christians, you know some of them, and and they begin to be really freaky about this, and that's all they can think about, and it causes them to lose sleep.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And chapter two says, listen, keep calm, don't crumble, stand firm, don't panic.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then in chapter three, he says, and carry on.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And carry on.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because what was happening is in Thessalonica, you had a group of people going, wow, the persecution's bad, but praise God, Jesus is coming back, and they'd get together.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's meet at lunch after we work in the morning.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they'd meet at the local cafe and then start talking about the Lord's coming.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're so excited about it, they'd skip the afternoon.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: They'd just stay there and skip work that afternoon.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: A couple days later, let's just let's just all take work off today and let's just talk about the return of Christ.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And let's let's get all the views together, you know, about when exactly it's happening and what comes before or during and after.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about the tribulation, let's talk about this and that and take off work more.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then they'd start taking three days off work a week, and then finally they stopped working at all.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they started looking down on the people there in the church who were working.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: They'd go, what, don't they even care about the return of Christ?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: They started meddling with the people who were.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: They'd stop by and say, listen, can we sit down and talk a little bit, pray a little bit about the return of Christ?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then after a while, just by coincidence, of course, they started stopping by those people's houses at lunchtime and at suppertime.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, we're here, you're serving food.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can we join you?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because they weren't earning any money.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they were kind of hungry.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul speaks to this issue in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother who walks irresponsibly, and not according to the tradition received from us, for you yourselves know how you must imitate us.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were not irresponsible among you, meaning lazy.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he's serious, isn't he?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he uses the word command, which he rarely does.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a sergeant.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then he uses drops in the clause or phrase in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says that you need to actually do a little bit of social ostracism.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he means full church excommunication here, discipline.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a social ostracism that he suggests against brothers.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of brothers?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, brothers who stop, people who stopped working.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gives a personal illustration.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, this is, I'm not talking the talk here.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I walk the walk because we didn't eat anyone's food free of charge.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we labored and struggled, working night and day so that we wouldn't be a burden to any of you.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what Paul's job was?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was a tent maker.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And why did he have to work night and day doing this?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: He came from an area of Turkey still well known even today for its beautiful and rare goats that have really long black hair and so forth.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you grew up in that area, you learned how to weave that goat hair into beautiful carpets and the tents that were warm, gorgeous, shed water, and so forth.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul had learned that trait, and so of course, wherever he went, people would put their orders in.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so he would work night and day.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he wasn't taking anybody's food free.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was taking them out to lunch, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to dinner.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he says it's not that we don't have the right to support, but we did it to make ourselves an example to you so that you would imitate us.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he says, when we were with you, this is what we commanded you.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone isn't willing to work, he shouldn't eat.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody heard that line before?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: From Dad?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when you're young?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Have you taken out the trash yet?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we'll see you at the table when that's done.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the word willing.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone isn't willing to work, this is we're talking not about people who can't.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about Garfield who says, I can't, but I won't.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about people who choose not to.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they choose not to because they they refuse to work at Burger King or they refuse to work at a menial job that requires the use of your hands, or they refuse to work at anything that seems beneath them.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: But forever, for whatever reason, we know the reason in 2 Thessalonians, it was a super spiritual reason.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is coming back.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're too spiritual to continue doing that.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is so serious about this, he keeps talking about it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says, We hear that there are some among you who walk irresponsibly, not working at all.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now we command and exhort such people by the Lord Jesus Christ that quietly working they may eat their own food.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone doesn't obey our instruction in this letter, take note of that person.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't associate with them that he may be ashamed, yet don't treat him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's really serious about.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this isn't Paul's only time around the block on this one.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's he says back in 1 Thessalonians, make it your ambition to lead a focused life, attend to your own business, and work with your hands.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: In Acts 20, he testifies these hands of mine supplied my own needs.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians, we work hard with our own hands.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is really an important issue for Paul.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And work should be an important issue to Christians.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's practical.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're not used to practical stuff.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe on Sunday morning, but but many of you grew up in places, fortunately, we grew up in a generation where we were expected to work, right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in the Pacific Northwest on a little farm.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there you have, you know, no choice as the oldest son.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had to get up between, not had to, I felt like I had to, you know, it was no fun then.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were little and you had to do chores?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you just jumped at it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: You loved them so much.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, when I would hear the milk bucket creaking coming out from the house, I slept behind the garage, and dad would yell or knock on the window and say, It's time, I'd know that I had to throw on my dungarees or whatever and get out in time to milk the cows and feed the chickens.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really glad when more children, lots more children, came along, so that my little sister Ruth, who who's married to Ken Maynor, she then took over the job of feeding the rabbits, pulling the grass and feeding their other other little kids would then move the tether on the goats or feed the chickens or whatever.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I was fortunate to grow up in a day like that.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the difficulties that many of you have, that that I, Melody and I had as well, is that not living on a farm where chores are easy, you sort of are having to make up chores for your kids, you know, and and and they're not that serious, and yet, and and and yet, you know, it's really important, isn't it, that children grow up working hard.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's such a firm belief of a group of people in our country called the Amish and the Mennonites.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: The last several days I'm in a mission, I was in a missions meeting with one of my best friends in the country.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's an Amish guy named John King.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: He owns a number of businesses, and he has a number of kids.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been out to his home in Pennsylvania a number of times, and those kids would get up, and no matter how little they were, they started working, and they worked all day long, and somehow they were used to it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: No TV until nightfall, maybe one hour with the family.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: But but there's something about the discipline of working, something about the blessing of working that really helps young people, isn't it?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: So his point here is don't quit, stay on the job, carry on, don't quit.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you maybe this you've never known anybody like this.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sad to say that I have known a few people whom I love in my own family, among my best friends, who have for whatever reason just chosen in the middle of life to stop working.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it really comes down to preferring life without work to working.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we live in an amazing country where you know where there is a free lunch, right?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: At times.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: There may not be in third world countries, but in America and many places, there is a free lunch.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and so you you can get help.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, you know, you do sort of lean on your family and lean on other people.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and and Paul's not happy with that, especially when you use spiritual sounding language like I'm waiting for the return of Christ to defend it.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think of a story of um of a Christian who used spiritual language to defend it, named DeWitt Finley.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: He worked for a large Christian charity, largest Christian charity, I suppose, in the world called World Vision.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he worked for many years for World Vision as a fundraiser.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then in his mid-50s, he decided to move from Southern California up to the Pacific Northwest.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wise move, of course, because he loved to fish and all that stuff.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he moved up there and decided to sell, you know, campers, the stuff that you'd put on the back of your pickup or whatever.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he would just do that part-time whenever he wanted.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And DeWitt Finley at the age of 55 or 56 put a brand new demo camper on the back of his four-wheel drive pickup and decided he would drive down to Grants Pass, Oregon, to see if he could sell some campers.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And on the way there, he decided to sort of take a shortcut and go through the Siskiya National Forest, sort of the back roads, Siskiya National Forest.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he was going through in mid-November with the new camper and the truck and everything, and there was a foot or two of snow, and he he somehow took a little wrong turn or something, and he got stuck.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And DeWitt sat in his cab and he prayed.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: November 14th, by November 15th, uh when he woke up in the cab, he got his salesman book and he checked that off on his calendar.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing happened on November 16th and 17th.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: He kept checking days off on his calendar.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: He started writing letters.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: If he'd gotten out of the cab, if he decided to do a little work and walk through a foot, sometimes then two feet of snow, but by December, the snow was a little higher, and then it melted a little bit in late December.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he never got out of his cab, not even once.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: He just kept and he kept writing letters.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Letter to his fiance, a letter to his letters to his children, letters to his boss.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: With words like these I have no control over my life.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's all in God's hands.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: His will be done, he wrote.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And again, in another letter, the most wonderful thing out of this entire ordeal has been my never-ending fellowship with my Lord.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't eaten since noon of November 14th, yet I feel great and I'm in good spirits.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: January 4th and 5th.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And when they found his body, starved to death, still in the cab in late January, the hikers.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: He saw that was the last day he'd crossed off on the calendar.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds so spiritual.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the Apostle Paul wouldn't have thought that was spiritual at all.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had said, get your ketokas out of the cab.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's only 200 yards if you take the right route through the trees to get to a paved road.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you take the worst possible, worst possible direction, it's only two miles to a highway that'll take you right down into a sizable city 15 miles away.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing spiritual about sitting there and just quitting.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, I love the story about Bernie.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Bernie was a Domino's uh uh pizza deliverer in in uh in Massachusetts, uh mid-30s, Bernie King.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one day as he was uh delivering his pizza, you gotta get it there in 30 minutes, or pizza's free or something like that, he saw some smoke rising above an apartment house.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: He swerved over and then he saw a lady named Devil, and she was standing on the porch, you know, as the the apartment house is going up in smoke, and she's screaming.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: He pulls his truck over, runs out, and she screams that her 72-year-old mother is up on the third floor.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so he dashes up to the third floor, which is so full of smoke he can't see anything, and he yells, but nothing happens, so he goes back down.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Helen grabs him, she's crying, you've got to try again, and so he does.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: He tries again, he climbs to the third floor again, and suddenly there she comes out of the smoke.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: An elderly lady, she can't breathe, she's coughing, he puts her over his shoulder, he carries her down, he gives her to her daughter.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then he runs back to his Domino's pizza truck and he gets the pizza delivered on time.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had ordered that pizza, that would have been important to me.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a great example, though.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he right, he kept calm, but he carried on, he kept at his job.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it does seem as though the world's going up in smoke, as though everything that's not nailed down is coming loose, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there's smoke rising everywhere, and people are lost.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what does it matter what I do day to day anyway?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to save people from this burning world, and I need to look toward heaven because that's the only thing that matters.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says, Yeah, I know the world is bleak and it's dark and it's on fire, and yet what I'm calling you to do is I'm calling you.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a simple message, it's nothing really theologically deep.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just calling you to remain calm and carry on with what I've given you to do.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: A final story, since it's a great golf weekend, as I returned to that story of Harvey Pennick, one of his main disciples who considered him a father figure, was the young Ben Crenshaw.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as they went through life, they stayed really close friends.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Ben, as much as anyone in the world, was absolutely heartbroken in April of 1995 when Harvey Pennick died.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben Saab Ben went to the funeral, Ben was a pallbearer, and so forth.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the thing was, everybody wondered would Ben Crenshaw, who's still a good golfer at that time, would Ben play in the Masters, which started the very next week.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben struggled, he almost didn't, but he decided to play in the Masters.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what was interesting, now, to his surprise, he played like better than he'd ever played before, maybe better than he's ever played since.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And on the final day on Sunday, he had the lead in the Masters tournament.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: As he was coming down the final nine, everybody wondered.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: They could tell he was so emotionally moved, he was barely holding it together.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: His caddy'd confessed, that's all Ben was thinking about.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: As he walked down the 18th fairway, he still had the lead.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as he came on the 18th green, he still had the lead.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when he made the final foot and a half putt to win the tournament, Ben Crenshaw collapsed and began to sob.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was interviewed later, I said, Ben, uh, how did how did you handle it when you got on that uh on that last hole, when you got on that last green?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben's response to the press was, I told myself, I just said to myself, if you can just get through this last foot and a half putt, then you can break down and cry.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Our story is a little bit like that.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we we live in a difficult world, and we're told that it's going to even get more difficult.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: The persecution will get more difficult, the trials will get harder.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're hard now, they're even going to get harder.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: But one day we are assured God will set things straight.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: He will pay the bad people back, and he will give us rest.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: He will give us relief, and then you can break down.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: When he returns, when you see him in the air, you can break down, you can let loose, and finally you can cry, and he will wipe away all tears from our eyes.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: But God says to us, until then, until then, please stay on your feet and stay on the job.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, keep calm and carry on.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: We so look forward to his return.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that it is soon.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you that we have each other to hang on to, that we can love each other and we can nurture and inspire each other to have the faith to survive the difficult days that we go through.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Give us the strength to cling to the hope of your return.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: But until that happens, to remain calm and to carry on with what you've wanted us to do in Jesus' name.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, you're dismissed.