Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 18, 2016 | Route 66 - 1 Thessalonians

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September 18, 2016 | Route 66 - 1 Thessalonians · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
unknown: All right.
0:00
SPEAKER_00: Um let's start with a word of prayer.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Father, we're so happy to be here in your presence and singing to you, glorifying you, making you happy, and making heaven happy at this moment.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: We uh we come, we bring stuff with us today.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: We've got issues, we have a life to live.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: The world has gone dark, crazy, mad at times.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And um uh we have this election going on and we have personal issues.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: We ask that this morning you would speak to us through this little book, uh, 1 Thessalonians.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: So if you're just visiting, we're in a series called Route 66, 66 books of the Bible, 66 Sundays, and uh we have come to 1 Thessalonians.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: You ought to look it up.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Um start with 16, start on the right-hand end, like Revelation.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: It's not that many pages from the end.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: We're only a dozen, 14 books from the from the end of Route 66.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: And um listen, from uh for the next half dozen weeks, if you get bored or something, here's something, and uh I've done this for years, you know, when I listened to other people's messages, because I'm a bad listener, um, is read read the book through.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: There's 90 verses in 1 Thessalon, five chapters.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have given this advice, Eugene, uh, maybe for the last half dozen books, because they were what's called doctrinal epistles, Romans, 12 Corinthians, Galatians, feasts, Philippians, Colossians.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, those are really meaty, and and there's stuff in there that can be dug out.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: But now we've come to what are often called, again, miscalled, practical epistles.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: 1 and 2 Thessalonians, first 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and and all epistles, all letters, all books of the Bible are both doctrinal and practical, but these are just easy to read and understand.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And so um I will not be unhappy if um if you just grab the Bible from the pew bottom in front of you and you just read through 1 Thessalonians and ignore me and get your devotions behind you this week or this morning.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And now, if you've if you're doing that just to to pretend, because you're really falling asleep, and you want me to think that you're doing that, so I won't be happy there.
2:21
unknown: Okay.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: So we're in 1 Thessalonians, find it.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Awesome book, and I've entitled it while waiting.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Because I think the Thessalonians were sort of waiting.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Their hero, their leader, their founder, the Apostle Paul, been kicked out of town.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: They loved him.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: He had led them to Christ, he had built their church, and now persecution kicked him out of town.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So wow, what are they gonna do now, right?
2:48
SPEAKER_00: And they're also waiting for the axe to fall on persecution.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: We've come to the time, 50, 55, 60 AD, where Christianity used to be ignored across the Roman Empire, but now it's spreading so fast it's not ignored anymore.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's getting persecuted.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And so they're waiting for the axe to fall.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: They're they're they're they're they're civic leaders.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: They're in Thessalon, Thessalonica, what today is in up in Macedonia and Greece is called Salonica.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: They just shorten it.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Thessalonica.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: They're persecuting them, so they're waiting for the axe fall.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: And they're also waiting, of course, for the return of Christ.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: So they're waiting around.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And you know what that's like, don't you?
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Because isn't half of life feel like it's waiting?
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Take a number, stand in line, wait your turn.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: We'll call you when um we'll call you when your table's ready, we'll call you when the tests you know are back, we'll call you, you know, ten days ago or so.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: I was at a nice restaurant, 6:30, group of us.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get our food until shortly after 8.30.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Two hours.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: One of the guys in our party didn't get his till nine o'clock.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know how I'm going, is there a water burger around here or something?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: We're on the West Coast.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So, but by the way, by the way, by the way, this is extra.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: What is the greatest invention in the history of mankind for while you're waiting?
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever been to the airport?
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Been to a waiting room?
4:20
SPEAKER_00: What are people doing now instead of complaining?
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Cell phones.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: If you hate cell phones, if you think they're the demon spawn or something, just have to wait in line for a couple of hours and think.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of us sitting waiting for the food after about an hour, we just started ignoring it.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: We'd run out of conversation, and then we start answering all our email and so forth.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: But this is all extra.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: But but so but I think that we're all we tend to find ourselves waiting.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: And this book uh asks and answers the question: what do you do when you're waiting, just waiting for something to happen?
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have your cell phone.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and life seems that way, doesn't it?
5:03
SPEAKER_00: As I put on the front of your uh, you know, a bulletin or whatever.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're waiting to have your child, or you're waiting for the child to grow up, waiting for the children to go away to school, waiting for the children to finish their education.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: If you're that child, then you're waiting to get married, and you're waiting to have your first first baby, you're waiting for a job, you're waiting for all kinds of things.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when you're waiting?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when, as Paul says, you're waiting for the return of the of your loved one?
5:32
SPEAKER_00: We wait for his son, he says in 1 Thessalonians 1, from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: That is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: What do we do while we're waiting in life?
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a great question?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: That's what this book is about.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: And the main thing we're waiting for at the end of this book is we're waiting for the coming of Christ.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: That's the key word of this book.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: You've got a study sheet here.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: The whole New Testament's full of eschatology, that is the doctrine of the end times, the coming of Christ.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: But this book, that's the key word.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: It's all it's all over the place.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: The other day, some of us were talking about this mission.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're gonna go down and do a pastor's conference in Haiti at the end of October, early November.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And and we were chatting last week, and one of them said, now, I want to caution all of you guys who are speaking, who are teaching, and so forth, half a dozen of you said, you know, jokes do not translate well.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: And I said, That's really true, but can I tell all of you one joke that has worked everywhere in the world?
6:43
SPEAKER_00: I've gone through translator in in a number of countries around the world.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: I said, Let me tell you a joke that will make, that makes everybody laugh, at least even ORCs.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's the joke about the guy who recently got out of seminary and he's preaching his first message, and he's he's all panicked and so forth.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts off and he goes, I've told you this before.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: So he goes, Behold, I am coming.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, and and so my little translator in India, you know, who's about half my height, go, behold, I am coming.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I go, Behold, and and he forgot the rest of his message.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So he backed up and he started again.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I am coming.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: My translator said the same, behold, I'm coming.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: And he forgot.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Mine went blank.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: So he started again.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I am coming.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: This time he went forward and he fell down the stairs and landed right in the middle of a sweet older lady in the front row.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: And he got up and brushed himself off and said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Don't be sorry, you told me you were coming three times and I didn't move.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: So I told a joke in India, I was scared to death because there were about 3,000 people there, and there are women and children and everything, and so forth.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: And they they wouldn't stop laughing for five minutes.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a great joke.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's the one joke.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: But this book, I tell that, I tell that to tell you this that this book tells us two things.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Number one, Jesus says, I'm coming, and he says it more than three times in this book, and he also tells you that you need to get moving.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me share with you what he says in this book.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: He he this the outline of this book is so simple.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: He puts it right in verse three.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: When he praises them for their faith, love, and hope.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: He says, We remember before our God and Father, whenever we pray, I'm remembering, I'm thinking about your work produced by your faith, your labor prompted by love, your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And as I put at the bottom of your study sheet when I put the outline, this book is outlined, falls into this really cool outline based on these three words.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: I said the book was about 90 verses.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: The first 45 approximately in chapters one through three, Paul goes back and forth between faith and love.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Faith.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Ten verses on faith, then eight verses on love, then eight verses on, and goes back and forth three times.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Talks about faith, talks about love, talks about faith, talks about love, talks about faith, talks about love, ends chapter three.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Now in chapters four and five, the last half of the book, he goes to hope.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: That's the main contribution of this book in the Bible.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: This book plus Revelation, all about what we call eschatology, doctrine of the end times, the return of Jesus Christ.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Faith, hope, love.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: The outline of this book.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: You've heard that triad before, haven't you?
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Say, yes, I have, because right now you're gonna repeat the verse you already know, the last verse of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and now say it with me.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: But the greatest of these is love, these three great virtues.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, what Paul does in Thessalonians is he puts the it's not faith, hope, and love, it's faith, love, and hope.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: He reverses the order just slightly.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 through 3, all about faith and love.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 4 and 5, all about hope.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: What, you ask me, what is he saying about faith, hope, and love that helps us know how we should live during these waiting times?
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is he says, and this is very simple, you would see it if you read through this book yourself.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: He just simply tells us, you no matter how much faith you've got, you need more faith.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: You need to toughen your faith, you need to elevate your faith.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: No matter how much hope you have, no matter how much love you have, you need more of it.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me show you how he says that in this book.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Will you let me do that?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: I'll take you through the verses.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: First, first, he starts off with faith.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we think of faith, we think of saving faith, the faith that causes you at the remember that moment?
10:40
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't had that moment yet, this is a moment you need, right?
10:43
SPEAKER_00: The moment when you look up to heaven, you go, oh yeah, that verse, for God so loved the world.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: I believe, God, you love the world so much that you sent your one and only Son that whoever believes in him won't perish but have everlasting life.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And believing that, it's that simple, you become a child of God.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: That's called saving faith.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul isn't talking about that faith very much in this book.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: He does, I think, maybe in one verse in chapter 1, verse 8, when he says, the Lord's message is wrung out from you, Thessalonic, your faith in God has become known everywhere.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And he might be talking saving faith there, but the rest of the book, when he mentions faith, he's talking about what I'd call a living faith, a faith that stands strong amidst persecution, trials, bad health, loss of income, and so forth.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: And you can see that in these first three chapters.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: For instance, you see it in verse 3.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: We remember before our God and Father, your work produced by faith, not saving faith, that's a living faith.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think what he's talking about when he's talking about this kind of faith is what Isaiah spoke of, when he said, if you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Or what Proverbs says, when the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Twila Paris once sung about this.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: She said, I see you standing, I see you standing in the fire, I see you standing tall.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of faith Paul's speaking of.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of faith he referred to to the Corinthians.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about a kind of living faith that is strong despite trials, financial trials, health trials, family trials, marriage trials, a kind of faith that is firm despite any suffering that comes.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: So you can see this all the way through, first three chapters.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: He compliments them for the fact that they've suffered and kept their faith.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: You became imitators of us and of the Lord, he says in 1 6, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with joy given by the Holy Spirit.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2, verse 14, for you suffered the same things for your only own countrymen as we and they did from the Jews, et cetera, et cetera.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Persecution.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in 1 Thessalonians 3, when we could stand it no longer, we were scared for you, we knew your faith was under attack by persecution.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: We sent Timothy to what?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: To strengthen, to toughen up, to encourage you in your faith so that no one would be unsettled by these trials.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Because you've seen it happen to people.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: You've seen it happen when they find out, when a young couple finds out they're they're infertile, you know, faith just starts its shakes, doesn't it?
13:43
SPEAKER_00: It sort of topples, right?
13:45
SPEAKER_00: And and you pray for them and you try to help me, but that's a real attack.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: How in the world could God, who loves babies, not give me a child?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Or when, for instance, you have a couple that splits up and one of them goes, how in the world, God, I was positive that was the right prayer.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: How in the world would would they do such a freak?
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Why would they, what a stupid decision.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: And faith begins, am I right?
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Faith begins to shake.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Or you lose your job and it's not your fault.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: You got blindsided, you got ambushed.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And your faith begins to shake because of these trials.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, that's why I say you need you need a living, tougher faith.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: We kept telling you, he continues in verses four and five, that we would be persecuted.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: And it turned out that way, as you well know, for this reason.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: When I could no longer stand it, I sent to find out about your faith, fearing that the tempter would tempt you and you would lose it.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: He's talking here about the kind of thing that's that happened this year over in Pakistan, when 15 homes of Christians in Lahore, Pakistan, were torched, and so was their church.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: People persecuted simply because they're believers, happening all over the world.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: All trials qualify in some manner for these persecutions, but Paul, of course, is speaking about being persecuted because he's a Christian.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And he says in chapter 3, 7 and 8, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution, we were encouraged about you because of your faith, for now we really live because you are what?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Standing firm in the Lord.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: So Paul comes to us and he says, okay, we're waiting for the Lord to come.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: We live in dark days, we live in tough times, we no longer, you know, we're fighting this chimrah, this, this, this, this, this, this, this enemy that's no longer a nation called ISIS.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of a belief or religion.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: It's, and then it appears and it pops up and it just murders people without any warning.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And then we've got, we have no idea what in the world's going on with the election and the leadership in America, and then the the world is dark for dozens of reasons everywhere you look.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And even in our personal lives.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what's going to happen to you if you're not facing an issue right now, an issue of health, an issue of finances, an issue of family or children or whatever else, you will.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, you know what?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: You need to toughen up your faith while you're waiting for something to happen and waiting for the Lord to return.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is you have it, you develop this stronger and stronger, defiant faith that looks in the face of evil and says, I can stand up in that.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: I was reading recently about the old maps, the early European maps in the 14th century, 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, and so forth, where they hadn't explored, you know, before the great age of exploration.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And so they had all these blanks, these oceans and Africa and everywhere else, and they didn't know what was there.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: And they had heard things, so they would draw on the maps, you know, dragon here, scorpions there, giants there, demons there, and even uh one famous globe, uh Hicksunt dragons, here be dragons, right?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Right there on it.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And they had this view of the world that there were parts of it that were, and sort of like some of us sometimes think, that part of my life seems to be controlled by dragons.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: That part of my life, demons seem to be in control of that part of my life.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: They're scorpions when I look in that direction.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: In the 1500s, uh uh King Henry's, King Henry V's main mariner was a devout Christian, devout Christian man named John Franklin, Sir John Franklin, he came across this map and across the words, here be dragons, he wrote, here be God.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Hickson God.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's what a Christian who has a firm faith will do.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: You'll write across your life, here is God, no matter I know of a surety that I can never be, I can never be moved or reassigned or dumped or whatever else in a place where the Lord will not be there to help me.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, I can have a defiant faith.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: I can have a tough faith.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's number one, God saying to you, God saying to me, in this dark world, as we're waiting, toughen up your faith.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Second, is something we think we know all about, but I'll tell you one thing we don't know about love, and that is we don't realize how mushy in a way Paul was.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: When I think of Paul, I think of this short guy with a voice of command, who bossed everybody around, who knew everything that should happen, who was mainly a visionary.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: And then I read first death, and I realize that what Paul was most proud of was that he was a relationary.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: That is, that he loved people.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And he just says it in such warm ways.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: He says, We loved you so much that we delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you'd become so dear to us here in the church.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, we admire visionaries, we admire power people, but the church needs to admire relationaries, needs to admire not bosses so much as lovers.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Don't you remember, Paul continues, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you?
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Night and day we toiled to earn a living, so we wouldn't be a burden to any of you as we preach God's good news to you.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we cared so much, and then he and then he describes himself in words which don't sound like the Paul I think of very often.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: He describes himself as like a mommy, a gentle mommy.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it neat how I mean, whenever I'm playing with my grandsons and and whatever else, if if uh I was wrestling with him the other night and I rolled over on top of like the one-year-old and nearly crushed him, so he's crying.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, he doesn't run to me at that point, nor to his daddy.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Where does he go?
19:49
SPEAKER_00: They always go to the same place, they always go to mommy because somehow a mommy is gentle, and Paul says, That's what I'm like.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: You're going, Oh, you are not.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm like a nursing mother taking care of her children.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: And then he says a couple verses later, we dealt with you like a father deals with his own children too, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: So, Paul, you're like a gentle mother and like an encouraging, guiding father.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Yeah, and that's what the church needs more of.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: The church needs more of that.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: It needs people who are just filling up with love and overflowing with love.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: So he says in 4, 9, and 10, about brotherly love, we don't need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Yet we urge you, get this, brothers, to do so more and more.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't care how much love you are full of right now, apparently you can be full of more love and you can overflow more.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Because he says in 3.12, may the Lord cause you to increase and overflow with love for one another and for everyone.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: For one another means brothers and sisters in the family.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: That's always first, and for everyone, spill that over onto the world, onto high crest, onto wherever else, and then onto the kids across the street.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: For everyone, just as we do for you, you.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: In other words, fill up your love and let it overflow.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: You can always learn from love and be more loving.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Love the story that came out of Pacific Northwest, my home.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Growing up, we always knew Mount Hood could be climbable.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: Mount Hood's the mountain, which is right outside, really, my door as I was growing up.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful mountain.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, climbable even by uh us kids almost.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And but Mount Rainier, uh near Seattle, on that mountain mountain is a scary mountain, it's over 14,400 feet high.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And people die every year.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: At least one person every year dies on that mountain.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's very slick, it's very scary.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And it was incredible to read about Don Bennett, the first amputee, to ever climb Mount Rainier.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, here he is.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else has got uh two shoes.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: He's got one boot and he's got two crutches, which is really bad because uh Rainier is known for this massive ice field, this slick ice field.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: So you get to the ice field, everybody else, you know, puts uh crampons on their boots and digs in so they don't slide down.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: He can't do that.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: He can't do that.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: What he what Don found he had to do is he had to lean and he had to fall forward onto the ice and pull himself a foot or so, and then gradually get up again and fall forward.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: It took him forever.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: He would have never made it up the mountain unless, as he later said, unless his teenage daughter, Kathy, was with him.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Kathy was with him, and when she saw how he was struggling to make it, she got next to him and she went down with him every time he went down.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: She got up with him in his ear constantly.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: You can do it, Daddy.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I love you, Daddy.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: You're the greatest daddy in the world.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: You can do it, Daddy.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, he said, he said, that is what kept me going.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: And when I heard that, I thought, that's that this is a little bit like that songs.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: We're all sort of climbing the mountain, we're in dark days, we're doing the best we can, but we all need somebody in our ear to encourage us and love us and to build us up even when we're getting depleted, and to say, you can do it.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: So the second point is fill up your love and let it overflow.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And finally, he says, hope.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Hope.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the last whole half of the book, and like I said, it's what sets 1 Thessalonians apart with revelation, two great books on the end times.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And when he says hope, what we're talking about is what Christians call the blessed hope.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: We wait, he says elsewhere, for the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: That is the hope or the confidence of the return of Jesus Christ.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: And you know what he says in chapters four and five over and over again about hope?
24:09
SPEAKER_00: He said, toughen up your faith and fill up, build up, fill up, and overflow your love.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to wake up your hope.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of you, you know, your brain is a little bit like a computer that's gone to sleep, and you sort of, you know, you need to jostle it.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And you needed to wake it up.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Now, the verses uh that he uses are verses you've heard before, you hear them at gravesides, and yet they're so beautiful.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Let me recite them for you at the end of 1 Thessalon, the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with a voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And first, the believers who have died will rise from their graves, which makes sense.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: They have six more feet to go, right?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: So then, that's probably not the reason, then together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord's in the air, Lord in the air, and then we will be with the Lord forever.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Yay! So encourage each other with these words.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: So this hope of the return of Christ, which we need to wake up, is encouraging, it's comforting.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: The question is, when's it gonna happen?
25:20
SPEAKER_00: So immediately, since they're waiting, they're going, you said it was gonna happen, and we're waiting, when's it gonna happen?
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, really, dear brothers and sisters, concerning how and when all this will happen, we don't really need to, right?
25:31
SPEAKER_00: You because you already know quite well that the day of the Lord's return will come unexpectedly, like thief in the night.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what's gonna happen.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: We we don't know what's gonna happen.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: It can happen anytime.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: Love the story of the little girl who had whose preacher just preached on this passage, and she goes, and and she's really quiet in the car, and mom asks her on the way home, so what are you thinking about?
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And she says, Do you believe that Jesus is gonna come back?
25:58
SPEAKER_00: And the mommy says, Yeah.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: She says, Do you do you do you think it could happen this week?
26:03
SPEAKER_00: And her mother says, Yes.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I think it could happen today.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Mother said, Well, yeah, okay, good.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it could happen in the next few minutes?
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Mother said, Yeah, I believe that.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: She said, Mommy, would you comb my hair?
26:22
SPEAKER_00: So it was a pretty good acute application of that.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: But there it is.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: She she wanted to be ready.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: She wanted to look ready.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: She wanted to be ready when Christ would return.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, the response that Paul's looking for is not well-combed hair, but the first response he says suggests is that you need to first make sure you are a Christian.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: He says in verses 4 and 5, brethren, you're not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: You are all children of light and children of the day.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: We're not of the night, nor of darkness.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know it sounds judgmental of Paul.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: We just said he's a really loving guy, but he is saying that whenever you hear people say, oh, God's so loving, you know, everybody gets in, it really doesn't matter.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: You can believe anything you want.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, no.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: All I'm gonna tell you is that they're people of the night, and they're people of the day.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus Christ is so central to heaven that you have to be a believer in Jesus Christ to be a child of the day.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And if you believed in him, you're a child of the day.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: But need to make sure, I'm just suggest this, make sure you're a child of the day that you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And then the main point of chapters four and five, he goes, here's the real response I need from you who are children of the day or believers.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: You need to wake up, wake up your hope, watch, expect for Jesus to return.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he says, let us not sleep, as do the others, let us watch and be sober, be awake and sober.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Now he's not using the word sleep of death, like he did in chapter 4.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: People who are Christians who are asleep, you know that.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Dead, awake, alive.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: No, he's using it now spiritually.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Let's not be spiritually dozing, as do others.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely critical.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: But let us watch and be so.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: I love that word watch, by the way.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: It's the word in Greek from which we get the English name Greg or Gregory.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: In Greek it's Gregoreo, Gregoreo, to watch or to be awake.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And you can take the English word Greg and make each of the letters stand for get ready to encounter God.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying, the first thing I want from you is that you wake up your hope, that you be ready.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Jostle your mind.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: My mother used to end every year with one of these letters that told about the family, one of those old whole handwritten letters.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: The last line was always a little poem that said, We don't know what 1984 will bring, but the Lord may come in 1984 or something.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And she always thought about the return of Christ, and she wanted other people to remember the return of Christ, that it could happen every time.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Second thing he says is not only be awake, but be sober, which in Greek means to be disciplined.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: In other words, not only wake up, but shape up your life.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Or as the New Living Translation says, be clear-headed, be on your guard, not asleep like the others.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Stay alert and be clear-headed.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Night's the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: So, friends, that's that's the third very simple thing he's saying in this book.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: You need to wake up your hope.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: You need to get your hope awake.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: All right?
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you need to wake up the hope of someone you love.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Someone in your family, someone sitting next to you, someone who never, you know, who doesn't realize how critical it is that they be alert, that they be awake for the coming of Christ.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: So mention it to them.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Jostle people.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And then he concludes with a wonderfully encouraging verse.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: For he says, 1 Thessalonians and 10, God has not destined us, believers, for wrath, and by wrath he doesn't mean hell.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Wrath always in the New Testament means like tribulation or the outflashing of God's wrath in time and space.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation or deliverance through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, alive or dead, even spiritually awake or spiritually asleep, we might live with them.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: What a wonderful word of promise and a word of confidence and a word of assurance that it's uh God is coming to take us.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: That's this book.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I just sort of laid it out for you.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: I think it's all about faith, hope, and love.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: And he starts off by saying, Adaboy, guys are doing great.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: But goes to the book and says, you know what?
30:52
SPEAKER_00: You need to sort of ratchet those three up.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: Think about your faith, toughen it up, think about your love, fill it up, overflow it, think about your hope, wake it up.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: And he ends the book by mentioning the three of them again in the context of sort of Ephesians armor of God.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: But let us who live in the light be clear-headed, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence, hope is the word of our salvation.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: All right, you hear me?
31:20
SPEAKER_00: Toughen up your faith.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: That's what God wants from us while we're waiting.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Fill up your love, let it overflow, and wake up your hope.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the best story I can think of that illustrates this is a story I was rereading last week about Ernest Shackleton.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the great, you know, the great explorers in the first several decades of the 1900s.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Ernest Shackleton was British, and he'd had to ask the Prime Minister if he could go explore Antarctica because it was 1914 and the war just broken out.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Prime Minister said, go.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: They thought the war would be over any moment, and it wasn't going to be big.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: They were wrong, but so Ernest Shackleton took 27 men and he got on the ship, the endurance, this Norwegian cruise ship that had been outfitted, and they went a thousand miles, took them, you know, six weeks, and they get down, you know, and they start going through the ice flows, picking and bumping their way to the ice flows because his goal was to was to be the first person ever to march all 1,800 miles across the continent of Antarctica.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: But then tragedy struck.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Tragedy struck.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: The temperature plummeted, and in January of 1915, the temperature plummeted and it froze all of those ice flows around them.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: It was like concrete, and it captured the ship.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: Just one day's journey away from, only 100 miles away from the continent of Antarctica.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And now they're stuck in January and then February and then March.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: And the whales and the, I mean, and the walrus and the seals that they were killing, you know, the season ended and they were gone, and boy, they're getting desperate.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And they knew one of two things would happen.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Either the spring would thaw the ice and they could get free and keep going, or else the ice would keep coming and it would crush the boat.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: March, April, May.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Nine months later, they found that the second option was happening, and the ship began to crumble around them as the ice crushed it.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: They grabbed their three lifeboats, they got off.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: They got into an ice flow, and then they had to leave that ice flow and travel for five days across stormy seas and found a terrible island, uh, inhospitable island called Elephant Island, where they camped out.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: But what were they gonna do?
33:39
SPEAKER_00: It's now October, November, December, 1915, January, February, and April, Shackleton said, guys, we're gonna die here.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: I need to take one of these boats.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: I need to go over 800 miles of sea.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: I'll take just five of you.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna leave 22 of you.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I won't take very many rations, but I've got to try this.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: If I stay alive, if I make this, I will return.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: I promise you, I'll come back.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most stirring adventure stories of all time, you know, true adventure stories.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And so he takes off.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And it must have been parting with their intrepid and inspiring leader, must have been like the Thessalonians when Paul left, or the disciples when Jesus left.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Their hearts sank.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Would he ever really return?
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Would he die?
34:23
SPEAKER_00: He had a, he had a you know, his side of the thing is absolutely horrendous.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, that boat almost becoming unmanageable because of a foot and a half of ice over everything.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: But and then there they are on Elephant Island, week after week, and then month after month, waking up going, people going, he's never gonna return.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Let's just die.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Some of them getting frostbitten and so forth.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: It was two months, three months, four months, almost five months.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And the fog cleared, the ice parted briefly, and there was a steamer.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: They started sobbing for joy.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: It was Ernest Shackleton who made it all that way and come back on August the 30th, 2016.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: And they get on the ship and they're just sobbing and laughing and hugging, and as they steam away, the ice crashes behind them and sinks.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And Shackleton turns to them and says, It's a good thing you were prepared, good thing you were packed and ready.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: And they said, they said, every time the ice parted at all, we would pack everything.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: We would pack, we would roll up our sleeping bags and pack everything.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Because we said the boss, that's what they called him, the boss may return today.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: What a wonderful story.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that's what 1 Thessalonians is saying.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: You need to wake it up and realize the boss, the boss could return today.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Be ready.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: Be ready.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Get other people ready around you.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: We're waiting for something to happen.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: We live in a dark world.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: We need a tougher faith.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: We need a warmer, overflowing love.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: But we also need to wake up our hope, our confidence that Christ is coming back in any moment.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for this book and for its inspiration, for its reminder.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: I pray for these dear people that like me, they they will not rest content on the faith that they have, but will toughen it up because trials are coming.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: And not rest content in their love, the level of their love, but keep on filling it up to the brim and overflowing.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And then constantly jostle, jostle and wake up.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: Our hope, our confidence, looking for your return.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.