All people do not have the faith. If we understand that the word faith means persuasion, not all people are under the persuasion of the Lord. Not all people are under the persuasion of His Spirit. Not all people are persuaded under the Lord through His word. So Paul says we need to be delivered from these people who oppose us, who come against us as we try to minister the word. They are perverse and evil men, for the faith is not of all people.
Transcript
We are continuing in II Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 1 through 5. Last week we focused on verses 1 and 2. This week our focus will be on verses 3 and 4. And then, Lord willing, we will finish up next week. You remember that chapter 1 was the instruction concerning afflictions. Chapter 2 was the instructions concerning The Day of the Lord. Here in chapter 3 it is the instructions concerning their testimony, that is, as they wait for the coming of the Lord how they are to live, how they are to conduct themselves on a daily basis.
In verses 1 through 5 we have the provision of the Lord expressed and shown in the confidence of Paul. He started out verse 1 by saying, The rest (or remaining) brothers. The first commandment, which takes up the first five verses: be praying concerning us. Present tense verb that means continually be praying concerning us. For two purposes, first of all, In order that the Word of the Lord might run. That is how it literally reads. The word run is the Greek word trevcw (trechō) where we get our word track from. The race, the track. So, That the Word of the Lord might run, that is, not be hindered. Not be hindered, not be stopped as it continues on.
And we spent quite some time last week sharing with you how important it is that Paul makes the outgoing of the word of God from those who minister, and the entrance or in-going of the word of God to those who are hearing. Once a person is saved, it is Satan’s only weapon against the believer. He cannot take the believer’s soul, because the soul belongs to Christ, but Satan can hinder spiritual growth. And it is God’s designed plan that through the ministry of His Word people grow, His people grow.
We saw that from Hebrews chapter 5 last week, that spiritual growth is like physically working out and getting into condition and getting into shape. The writer of Hebrews says it is been exercised by the Word of God on a continual constant basis, is what causes the senses to be exercised to be able to discern right and wrong in the eyes of the Lord. So he says to the Christians – the Hebrew Christians that he was writing to – that you have become dull of hearing. I have been wanting to say more to you, more in depth about this priest and the priesthood Melchizedek, but I cannot because you are dull of hearing. You have left off from hearing the word. You are no longer being exercised by the Spirit of God through His word. So you have become dull of hearing.
I emphasized to you last week, I will again this week that spiritual growth is not by how many years you have known the Lord or how many years you have walked with the Lord. But spiritual growth is governed by God’s Spirit through His Word that causes the maturity. To experience the Word, and to experience Christ on a personal daily basis.
So he says the first purpose is in order that the Word of the Lord might run and might be glorified. The word glory, we have heard it a lot. Give glory to God. It is from the Greek word (doxa) and the Hebrew word (kāvôdh). And it is really a word that represents substance. It means literally weightiness but a substance’s value was dependent upon its weight. And so, the word of God might be glorified, that is, the substance of the Lord might be experienced and seen in the lives of those who are hearing the word. Then he says, According as also with you, that is, just like it happened with you when we came in your town in Thessalonica and shared the word there.
And secondly, verse 2, In order that we might be delivered from the perverse and evil men; for the faith is not of all people. All people do not have the faith. Again, if we understand that the word faith means persuasion, not all people are under the persuasion of the Lord. Not all people are under the persuasion of His Spirit. Not all people are persuaded under the Lord through His word. So he says we need to be delivered from these people who oppose us, who come against us as we try to minister the word. They are perverse and evil men, again, for the faith is not of all people.
But then, verse 3, he actually gets to the actual provision of the Lord and I would encourage you to pay close attention. This is a very powerful important text. Verse 3, if you are following another English translation you will have it different than we have it here, we gave it to you literally. But faithful is the Lord. That is our provision. Faithful is the Lord. Most English translations have it the Lord is faithful. Both mean the same thing. In the Greek text the Lord is still the subject of the sentence, it is just that it is put at the end, and the predicate to the subject is at the beginning.
In Greek whenever the writer wanted to emphasize something he would always put at the front. And you can tell by the endings of the words, the words that are the subject of the sentence and the different components of the Greek grammar. But the Greek text literally says, But faithful is the Lord. That is His provision. Faithful is the Lord, who will establish you and who will guard you from the evil one. Very important factual points there. All of the promises of the Lord are based upon the Lord’s faithfulness.
I read this quote the other day, I want to share it with you. It says, “The reason I am alive today is not because in my darkest days I held on to God. It is because in my darkest days God held onto me. I am still here because He is faithful, not because I am faithful.” That is beautiful. It puts it all in summary form. I will read it again. “The reason I am alive today is not because in my darkest days I held on to God. It is because in my darkest days God held onto me. I am still here because He is faithful, not because I am faithful.” So it is His faithfulness to me and His promise and provision for me to keep me under His care. This is God’s provision.
It says, But faithful is the Lord who will, it does not say He might. It does not say He should, or He could, it says He will. It is a factual statement. Now, Faithful is the Lord who will establish you and will guard you from the evil one. Two things that make up the promise. He is going to do two things. First of all, He will establish you. Not He might. The Lord will establish you, and secondly, He will guard you from the evil one, that is a promise. There is no maybe. There is no might, it is a promise.
Now this is an interesting word, the word establish: He will establish you. It means to fix or to make firm. We have seen this word before in our studies. In fact, let us turn back to I Peter chapter 5, beginning at verse 6, verses 6 through 10. Therefore humble yourselves, literally it is, allow yourselves to be humbled under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Verse 7, Casting all your care upon Him; because He is concerned for you. Verse 8, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil is walking around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Verse 9, Whom resist. Again, as we studied before this is what we are to do. Not fight with him, resist him. He has already been defeated at the cross. Just resist, resist him.
By being solid (or firm) in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. Verse 10, Now may the God of all grace, who has called as to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered awhile, that is an aorist participle, it is translated after. After you have suffered a while may He perfect you. Four things that are going to happen after we go through the trials, this is what God does according to Peter.
1) May He perfect you.
The word perfect again means to mend. We have seen this word before (katartizō), it signifies the mending of broken bones in the medical field. Mark chapter 3 it tells us that the disciples were mending, (katartizō), their nets when Jesus came and called them. So he says, After you have suffered a while may He mend you.
2) Secondly, May He establish you. That is our word from II Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 3. Through trials He breaks us down and puts us back together again. He pulls apart that which we were, so that He might mend us and put us back together again the way He wants us to be. He mends us. Secondly, He establishes us, he fixes us, he sets us solid.
3) Thirdly, that He might strengthen us. You see, the trials zap us of our strength. All of our human resources we have to rely on His strength, so He provides the strength.
4) And then fourthly, the term settle you in the English translations, literally means to put a foundation under you.
That is what trials are for, to completely develop us in the things of Christ. So the word establish in this collection of words as Peter is explaining what God does for His people, these are solid facts. These are what God does. But He tears us apart first. He breaks us apart first, in order to put us back together again the way He would have us to in Christ.
Back to II Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 3. Faithful is the Lord who will establish you and will guard you from the evil one. The word guard is a military term for watching and guarding for the sake of defending someone. In other words, the Lord is going to watch over us to make sure that the evil one does not get us. He can harass us, but he cannot have us. He cannot get us. He will guard you from the evil one. Interesting the phrase the evil one is the same word used for evil people in verse 2. Satan is said to be the evil one. The Lord is not going to allow the devil or the evil one to take you.
This promise is based on the teaching of the Lord in Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 through 13. We know it is The Lord’s Prayer, or also known as The Disciples’ Prayer, as He was teaching the disciples how to pray. First of all, He said, Our father in heaven. Know who you are talking to, first principle. Secondly, Hallowed be Your name. Hallowed means sanctified. May Your name be set apart and sanctified. Thirdly, Your kingdom come. Fourthly, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Asking for the Lord’s will to be done as it has been decreed in heaven.
Verse 11 of Matthew chapter 6, he gets into personal requests. First of all, Give us this day our daily bread. Secondly, verse 12, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And thirdly, verse 13, And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Do not allow us to be led away by temptation, I am depending on You, but deliver us from the evil one.
And then the reason for all of these requests, For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen. This is for the Lord’s sake. His reputation is at stake. If He makes promises – and we are studying them this morning. If He is making these promises, He is the one whose reputation is at stake. They are His promises to His people.
Back to II Thessalonians chapter 3. Now it is interesting he is making this promise to people who have received the Lord after hearing the word. Did you catch that? They suffered for it and they had been suffering every day ever since that time. And Paul is making this promise of God’s provision to them because they are still with the Lord. Because they are still with the Lord then these promises apply to them. Let me explain.
If you want you can turn with me to Philippians chapter 1, Philippians chapter 1 verses 3 through 5. Paul says in Philippians 1 verse 3, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy. Now here is what he is thanking the Lord for and what he is making request for. He is thanking the Lord, For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. Please note, it is on this basis is going to make the next promise from the Lord. From the very first day that they heard the gospel until now they remained in the gospel. They did not leave. They did not stop hearing the word since they had received the Lord.
Now notice this verse, verse 6, Having been confident – it is actually based on verse 5, having been confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. The promise of what the Lord has begun He will bring to completion is making a statement to people who have been in the gospel from the first day until now. The Lord will bring it to completion because you have endured all the way through.
I can remember many people over the years saying to me, “It does not matter what I do, it does not matter if I hear the Word, it does not matter if I fellowship. It does not make any difference what I do because I have this promise, the Lord who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ. So I have that promise that whatever God is going to complete He is going to do it. That is my promise.” But again, notice who he is making the promise to. It is the promise to the ones who have begun in the gospel from the first day and have continued throughout. They have not left off. They have not stopped. They cannot say, “It does not matter what I do.”
So that particular statement was made to people who continued in he gospel. They are the ones who belong to the Lord. Did you hear that last statement? The ones who continue in the gospel are the ones who belong to the Lord.
It says in I Peter chapter 1 verses 4 and 5, that for those people, for those believers, who have an inheritance waiting for them in heaven, they are those who are being kept in the power of God through faith for salvation. God is keeping those who are His own. He is faithful to protect us from the evil one taking us away from Christ.
Even the Lord said in Matthew chapter 24 verse 13 that the one who has endured to the end, this one will be saved. I read it to you literally. Not the one who will endure to the end but the one who has endured to the end. Basically the language is, at the end looking back saying everybody that is making it to the end they have endured. They are the ones who have experienced the promise of the Lord that they will be kept in the power of God for salvation. It is not the people who start out strong. It is the people who endure all the way to the end. And that is God’s way of manifesting who are of Him and who are not.
You cannot walk away from the Lord. Yeah, I said it. You cannot walk away from the Lord if you belong to Him. It is impossible. You cannot go back to the life that you used to live before you supposedly received Christ and just totally abandon the things of the Lord and still be of the Lord. If you are true believer the Holy Spirit has you, the Holy Spirit has filled you, and the Holy Spirit has sealed you. Nothing can break the seal. The Holy Spirit cannot get out and nothing else can get in. The Lord has us.
That is what John is saying in I John chapter 3 verses 4 through 9, he says, “You cannot go back to the habit of practicing sin that you did before you supposedly came to know Christ.” You cannot do that and know the Lord. John in I John chapter 2 verse 19 says, They went out from us, but were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. God’s way of manifesting who is of Him and who is not is endurance, those who continue with the gospel from the first day until now.
It is kind of interesting that we try to get as many people interested as possible in the church today with all kinds of methods and programs, and in reality we are doing them a disservice by trying to attract people to church. In John chapter 6 verse 44 it is recorded that Jesus said, Unless the Father draws you, you cannot come to Me. That was His expression to people who came up against Him. He said, “Look, you are asking me all these questions and trying to put me on the spot, but in reality, you cannot come unless the Father draws you. You are just not being drawn by the Father.” He did not bother to argue with them. He did not bother to try to talk them into it. It is all by the Spirit of God.
I noticed some articles on the Internet the other day that caught my eye. And the titles of these articles intrigued me. One said, Fifteen Reasons Why Christians are Losing Faith in their Church. You are not supposed to put faith in the church, you put your faith in Christ. The reason why people are disappointed with the people in church is because they are putting their faith in the people to provide for them and minister to them according to their needs, and they do not get them met, so they leave.
Another article was entitled, Eighteen Reasons Why People Quit Being Christians. You cannot quit being a Christian, a biblical Christian, a spiritual Christian. The Bible represents two kinds of Christians. There is the religious Christian, and that is what the majority of people are today. And there is the spiritual Christian, the one who is born of the Spirit of God; again, who has been filled, who has been sealed by the Spirit of God, who belongs to Christ, who has the promise that He will be kept all the way to the end, and the Lord’s will will be worked out. You cannot quit it. You cannot get away from it. God is not going to quit us. It is spiritual, it is not religious. And many people go to church, and go through the religious ceremony, and check the box off. You cannot quit being a Christian, a Christian in the Biblical sense.
Another article said, Fifteen Reasons Why So Many Christians Stopped Believing. You cannot stop believing because it is the Lord by His Spirit that gives us the faith. It is His faithfulness. It is His Spirit that ministers to us that causes us to believe to begin with. Why do people stop believing? It is because they decided in their own mind, and for their own selves for a brief moment of time, whatever it is, to believe what the Bible says. They decided that. But then later decided, “I do not believe that anymore,” and they walk away. That is purely human, purely religious, and it is not spiritual at all.
Now a person can experience a Jonah situation. A situation where God tells Jonah what to do and Jonah says, “I do not want to go to Nineveh,” so Jonah goes in the opposite direction, to get away from God’s calling and leading in his life. So he boards ship to sail as far away as he can. The Lord causes a storm. He, Jonah, gets thrown overboard by the people on the ship because they determined that the storm was there because of him. He is fighting against God, so God made the storm. So they threw him overboard and a giant fish swallowed him. And when the fish was through, he spit them up on the shore. And what shore was he at? Nineveh. That is God’s faithfulness.
Even Jonah going through the city preaching repentance, “Repent for judgment is coming.” So what happens? The whole city repents, and Jonah is complaining, “I knew You were going to do that. I knew You were going to send me here and these people were going to repent.” You see, the Ninevites were enemies to Israel. So here God saved all these people and Jonah is bummed out. It goes to show you what kind of vessel He can use. It is not a positive thinking one, in fact, one who is rebellious. But he goes in and he preaches and they all repent. And God proves to Jonah that God is faithful. That He will not let His people go, that He will complete what He has begun. And what He has for you, He will lead.
Now the person that does not know Christ, one day is going to be able to leave what we call the things of the Lord, the Bible, believing. They will be able to leave and not come back. It will not make any difference to them. There will be no conscience, no conviction. No storms to trap them out in the sea and make them do what God wants them to do.
So we have in Philippians chapter 1 verse 6 the promise that is given. We have the people who are continuing in the gospel, Having been confident of this very thing that the One who has begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ. And again the emphasis of the promise is to those who have continued in the gospel from the first day until now. Not everybody confessing that they are a Christian, or that they believe the Bible, or they believe in Jesus, but have never been born of the Spirit.
Back to II Thessalonians chapter 3. These are the same basic principles that he is presenting to the Christians in Thessalonica. That they are to pray for the free run of God’s word that the Lord may be glorified in His word. That Paul may be delivered from the perverse and evil men, but faithful is the Lord. There is the provision. Back in II Thessalonians chapter 3. But the Lord is faithful. In light of all of our prayer and concerns about the enemy attacking us, there is a promise for those who are His, He is faithful. He will establish you and He will guard you from the evil one. He will do it. Not might, He will if you belong to Him.
But in verse 4, just in finishing up, is Paul’s confidence. And we have had confidence in the Lord over you, that what things we command to you, you both are doing and you will do. Now, it is kind of interesting that Paul if you remember Philippians chapter 1 that we just read, he says, “I have confidence in making this promise to you about God’s provision for you because you are doing and will do what things we have commanded you.” You are continuous. You are not going to leave the things of the Lord. You have been attacked and had it so difficult that if you were going to leave, you would have left by now. They suffered from day one. But if they were going to leave the Lord, and the sufferings were going to reveal that they were not of the Lord, it would have been revealed by now. So Paul says, “We have this confidence and that is why we can make this claim to you that the Lord will establish you and He will guard you from the evil one. It is because you are doing what things we have commanded you and you will do it.” Knowing this, based on this, we make the provision of God’s promise.
Interesting, when you study about the Lord and His relationship with His people, it comes back to be a tremendous blessing to us. It takes all the pressure off of us, but we still have a responsibility to seek and to walk by God’s Spirit so that we do not become dull of hearing, and we do not put ourselves in a position where God has to deal with us.
Let’s close with prayer.
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