Proof of Righteousness (2 Thessalonians 1:1-12)

2 Thessalonians chapter 1, starting in verse 1, and we'll be reading the whole chapter.

2 Thessalonians 1 · chapter mention

Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians and God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing, and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing.

Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God's churches, about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.

It is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom, for which you also are suffering, since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us.

This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don't know God, and on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by all those who have believed, because our testimony among you was believed.

In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling, and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this new book we're jumping in to here today.

We thank you for 2 Thessalonians.

And Lord, as we open this book, we pray that you would minister to us as individuals, that you would minister to us as a church, and that you would do the exact work that you would like to do through this book.

Lord, I pray that that as we study this going forward, that you would form us and mold us and shape us to be more and more like Jesus on a daily basis.

Would you do your work through the power of your spirit, Lord, to use this sword, your word, to carve us up, Lord, to make us into the more and more into the image of Jesus Christ, to cut away the parts of the flesh that are not honoring you, Lord, and to build up the parts of us that are led by your spirit, that are glorifying you through the power of your spirit.

So, Lord, make us uh more and more like Jesus.

Through this we pray, through the power of your word, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

So, as you probably just noticed, we're gonna approach 2 Thessalonians a bit different than 1 Thessalonians, because 2 Thessalonians is largely a review of 1 Thessalonians.

There are differences though, so what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be taking on some larger chunks of scripture throughout this book, and then we're gonna slow down when we come across the diff the differences.

We'll kind of just go over the review stuff, but we're gonna slow down and really put our focus on the new things that we're finding in this book that weren't mentioned in 1 Thessalonians.

So let's talk a little bit about this letter, the second one that Paul has written.

This letter was obviously written later than 1 Thessalonians.

It's thought to have been written between about 51 and 52 AD.

Paul is most likely writing this from Corinth, as we know.

You know, he was there for about 18 months, and he and he wrote the letter probably during this period, that 18-month period.

And he's still on his second missionary journey, which is when he first visited Thessalonica and when he wrote first Thessalonians.

So I want to bring our map up here, just as a review.

This is the route that Paul took through his second missionary journey.

And you can see Thessalonica's right here.

And if you remember, Paul was chased out of Philippi, so he went to Thessalonica.

Then he was chased out of Thessalonica, so he went to Berea.

People from Thessalonica followed him to Berea just to chase him out of there.

And so he gets chased out of Berea, and then he comes down, he goes to Athens, and then he spends about 18 months here in Corinth, right there.

And this is probably when he wrote 2 Thessalonians.

And 1 and 2 Thessalonians could have only been written a few months apart, but they also could have been written, you know, a year to two years apart as well.

Either way, not too far apart that he wrote these two letters to them.

And it seems to be written to confirm some things, to encourage them in some things, but it also seems to be a response to Paul finding out that people were sending letters to this church and pretending to be Paul.

They were forging these letters saying, This is from Paul, now go and do whatever my letter says to do.

And these letters we find out were filling their heads with nonsense.

Nonsense about end times as well.

Things like the day of the Lord has already come or is already happening, and you're in it right now.

So Paul will address this directly and address other false teachers in this letter as well.

And then we'll see that Paul ends this letter in his own handwriting, the last chunk, and this is really proof.

It's almost like a modern-day signature at the bottom of a type letter.

Like this is my stamp, this is who it's coming from, this is my writing.

Now you know this letter's from me and not somebody else pretending to be me.

Also in this letter, we'll see one of his main purposes of writing is to set them straight, to set this church straight.

Once again, regarding end times.

We already saw that in 1 Thessalonians.

And more than anything, we're gonna see this again, just like we did, but it's to ease their minds.

Hey guys, calm down, take a breath, don't listen to these false teachers, don't listen to these forged letters, you just need to listen to what I'm telling you.

Paul will tell them, actually, if anyone says anything contradictory to what I've told you or contradictory to what I've written to you, just don't listen to them.

So you need to listen to the things I'm saying and nothing that will contradict what you've learned from me.

We're actually going to see him say in chapter 2, verse 15.

So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, whether by what we said or what we wrote.

And as a church, modern day for us today, we need to do this with Scripture as well.

You know, if somebody starts to speak against what Scripture plainly says, we need to stop listening to them as well.

Because they can get us all riled up about all kinds of different things.

But we need to always come back to God's word because God never contradicts Himself.

Somebody might say, I have a word from the Lord, and if it contradicts Scripture, no, they don't.

They're making it up.

But what this means is that we have to have the ability to recognize when somebody is contradicting God's word, when somebody's speaking against Scripture, or when somebody's adding to Scripture something that was never there, never intended to be there.

And this is just an encouragement.

Know Scripture for yourself.

We cannot encourage you enough in that area.

Please read your Bibles daily or as close to daily as you possibly can.

Know it for yourself.

Don't depend on me.

Don't depend on any other Bible teacher, person, podcaster, whatever it might be, commentary.

Know it for yourself.

This is, again, one of the reasons we're memorizing scripture together.

Just an encouragement.

Know a little bit more than you did before.

Have that available for the Holy Spirit to pull up inside of you and remind us of that truth when we need it the most.

So basically, we're gonna see Paul telling this church to know the word.

Whether Paul knew he was writing the word or not at that time.

He said, if I wrote it, you need to listen to it as if it was from God Himself, because as we know, it was.

And like I said, he's also telling this church, hey, don't freak out.

Don't worry about what others are saying, just calm down and listen to me right now.

So that's really I think what the tone is of this letter in 2 Thessalonians.

Now, with that, look at what he says in verse 1 as we start out here this morning.

Paul, Sylvanus, or Silas, and Timothy.

So right off the bat we see it's the same three people that start off 1 Thessalonians.

Paul, along with Silas and Timothy.

And Timothy is eventually going to be set to be the pastor at Ephesus.

And then Paul's gonna write Timothy a letter while he's in Ephesus, and that's what we're gonna be studying next.

That's the next book that we have coming up, so we get to look forward to that in 1 Timothy.

We'll probably be there in a month or so.

But these three mentioned here have all been to Thessalonica.

They've all played a part in building their space, their uh, their faith spiritually.

They've been involved in their development from a very young age as Christians.

So, in a lot of ways, these are their spiritual fathers that are writing this letter to them.

So we won't see Paul in this letter declare his apostleship like we do in so many other letters.

He's not gonna say, appointed by Jesus.

So listen up.

It's not like that at all.

He doesn't feel like he has to give his credentials.

It's simply, hey, it's the three of us.

The ones that you know so well, the ones that love you so much and you love so much.

This is coming from us.

Look at the signature at the end of the letter.

Now you know this is what you need to be doing, this is what you need to be listening to.

And that's gonna lead also in this letter to a bunch of familial language, as we saw in 1 Thessalonians.

So a lot of similarities, but we're gonna see some differences as well.

He goes on in verse 1.

He says, To the church of the Thessalonians and God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I imagine Paul writing this and thinking about all that this church has gone through.

The persecution, the resistance that they're getting on the local level, and then thinking about their faithfulness through all of this.

And not writing grace and peace here like we would write, hope you're doing well, you know.

But praying this.

Oh Lord, give your kids the grace to endure.

May your unmerited favor be upon them.

And may they experience your peace.

The peace that they can't even understand, Lord, other than they know it's coming from you because they shouldn't have it otherwise.

Oh Father, give them grace and peace that only come from you and your son.

Because you are their father and they are your children.

I just see so much compassion in what Paul is saying here to this church.

He goes on, verse 3.

We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing, and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing, superabounding.

Remember, he did this in 1 Thessalonians, and he continues here: your faith is flourishing, it's growing abundantly.

Spurgeon has this interesting quote.

He says, always have something in your hand that is greater than your present capacity.

Grow up to it, and when you have grown up to it, grow more.

Read that again.

Think on that for a second.

This church is coming up against intense persecution.

It's coming up against intense false teaching, false doctrine.

More than they should be able to handle at this young stage in their faith.

But that's when God shines.

When our faith flourishes, when we allow God to move through us and above and beyond our capacity.

God shines, God flourishes when we allow Him to move through us above and beyond our own capacity.

So this church is doing that.

They're doing an excellent job.

They get encouraged, and they're also doing it with love.

Look at the end of verse 3.

This is agape love.

That's God kind of love, sacrificial type of love that God has for us.

And it's increasing.

As I said when we read it, if you look in the Greek, it says superabounding.

It's like not enough adjectives for what's going on here.

They are doing things in faith and love that are beyond their ability.

Which means they're allowing God to do it through them, aren't they?

When's the last time that you allowed God to use you in faith beyond your capacity?

When's the last time you allowed God to love somebody through you beyond your own capacity?

We don't like either one of these, do we?

We like our comfort zone over here.

We don't we like when we feel like we're in control and we're not, you know, having to rely on the Lord for everything.

But think on that.

Let that challenge you for a bit.

When's the last time you allowed God to use you beyond your own capacity?

Or maybe he's challenged you and you're like, uh no, uh-uh.

Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna stay over here, Lord, and you don't need me to do that.

But let that challenge you today.

Because this church is doing that, and they're doing it through persecution.

And because of their flourishing faith and love, look at verse 4.

Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God's churches, about your perseverance and faith and all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.

That's gotta be so encouraging to this church to hear this from one of your spiritual fathers, so to speak.

Hey, I've been bragging about you guys to all of these other churches that I'm I'm visiting, and I take zero credit.

You know, he says, I ought to, in uh, in the previous verse, meaning I can't take credit for this.

I have to give God credit for what you guys are doing, what's going on in your church, because it's only through God that these things can be taking place.

So he's bragging about them.

You know, talk about a shot in the arm for this young church.

Don't you think?

When I was first in ministry, I think I told you guys this before.

It was the first couple years that I was in full-time vocational ministry, and the pastor that I was working under, he wrote me a letter telling me about the things that I had been doing that were encouraging his faith and encouraging his ministry.

And I was like, what?

This is like he's mentoring me.

This isn't possible.

I still have that letter in my Bible at home today.

It goes a long way to have somebody that's in a spiritual authority position over you or mentoring you in some capacity to say things like this.

I've been bragging about you.

So I really think for this church, they're like, oh yeah, it's just encouragement to keep doing this even more.

Now, regarding them enduring persecution and affliction, look at verse 5.

It is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom for which you also are suffering.

Now, I want to spend some time here because I feel like this is not review.

This is something a little bit new that we're talking about.

At first glance, it can be a little hard to understand.

But for the Christians in the room, I want to ask you this question.

Is anybody looking forward to the judgment of God?

My goal, by the end of explaining all of this, is that every follower of Jesus Christ in this room will raise their hand to that question at the end.

And here's why.

In Acts 5, the apostles were on trial before the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin.

They were wrongfully flogged for preaching the gospel.

And then when they went out from the Sanhedrin, after being flogged, it says this they went out from the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they were counted worthy, same word that we have in our text here, to be treated shamefully on behalf of the name.

The point of view that the apostles had towards persecution, I think, is so different than what we have in our American minds.

It's so different than ours.

They saw persecution because of the gospel message, not because of being a jerk.

But they saw persecution because of the gospel message as validation.

Validation that they were acting righteously for God's kingdom on behalf of the name of Jesus Christ.

They saw persecution on behalf of God's name as being counted worthy, as proof of righteousness.

You could say, I guess, in that way.

Proof of being in Christ and therefore having the righteousness of Christ for themselves.

You see, in verse 5, here in our text today, God's righteous judgment, it's not a bad thing.

For believers at least.

This isn't God's wrath.

This isn't judgment on the church's sin.

Because God judges the righteous for their righteous acts only.

And this is why we get to look forward to it.

So hang with me as I continue to explain this.

I know it's getting a bit technical, but hang with me a little bit longer.

You know, we see the word judgment.

We tend to think it's automatically bad.

Just in our mind, judgment, God, you know, our minds for whatever reason go to bad.

It's something that we typically, I think, associate with God's wrath.

But even in our modern-day court systems here in the U.S., we can have a judgment in our favor, can't we?

The judgment seat of Christ is reserved for believers in Christ, and it'll be judgment in our favor.

Because when we're in Christ, we can't be punished by God for our sins because Jesus already paid.

Paid in full.

There's no more debt left for us to pay.

So all that's left is to be judged and rewarded for the righteous acts.

Only judged for good works.

This is why we should be looking forward to that day.

It's gonna be an award ceremony really for us, if you want to think about it that way.

But think about it like this: God's righteous judgment on us is something that we get to look forward to because it proves that we are in Christ and have taken on the righteousness of Christ as our own.

2 Corinthians 5.21 talks about this.

It says, He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You see, I believe here in verse 5, Paul is seeing their persecution for the sake of the gospel as clear evidence that they are counted worthy of God's judgment in their favor.

The same as the disciples did after they got flogged in Acts 5.

They saw themselves as counted worthy.

And I think we're talking about the same thing here as we're seeing in Acts 5.

Now I want you to read verse 5 in our text here again, now with that perspective.

It is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment.

That you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom, for which you also are suffering.

Now, we'll see Paul go from speaking about the righteous to those that are persecuting the righteous.

That picks up in verse 6.

Since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted along with us.

The first question I ask after reading this verse is when?

I don't know about you, but that's the first question that comes to my mind when I read this.

Because I read this and I want it now.

Alright?

Yes, Lord, amen.

Do it now.

Take these unrighteous out, the people that are afflicting me.

I think we do see that a bit, the immediate judgment or judgment on earth.

There's evidence of this in the Bible, to a certain extent, as far as repaying affliction with affliction.

And though we want it now, I do at least, justice doesn't always happen on earth.

We can take comfort, though, that justice will not go without consequence in eternity.

Justice will prevail because, and please listen, sin without some sort of consequence is injustice.

Sin without some sort of consequence is injustice, and God is a just God.

So I think the next question would be well, why doesn't God judge injustice immediately right now on earth?

Why doesn't he just quench it out, you know, right now?

Well, we brought the system and conditions that we live in right now upon ourselves.

When we chose sin over his plan, when Adam and Eve, that original sin, chose this over God's plan.

We're now paying the consequences of original sin here on earth, living in this fallen world.

But for those that don't surrender to Christ, they're gonna suffer much graver consequences throughout our eternity.

You know, you've probably heard that being on earth is the closest thing to hell a Christian will ever experience, and being on earth is the closest thing to heaven that the unrighteous will ever experience.

But if you look at the beginning of verse 7 here, you see Paul is encouraging this church that this persecution is only for a short while.

It's only temporary.

Look at that word relief right there.

Relief is coming for the afflicted Christians.

And judgment will be handed out on those that are afflicting Christians.

Maybe not as soon as we would like, because we want justice now, but it will.

And praise God there isn't justice now, because we would be in a lot of trouble, each one of us, if there was before coming to Christ.

You know, Warren Wearsby has this story in his commentary about these two different farmers that are neighbors.

One's a believer, one's an atheist.

And then when harvest season came around in September, the atheist started to taunt his believing neighbor.

Because apparently God had not blessed him very much that growing season.

The atheist, on the other hand, his family hadn't been sick, things were going well, he had these bountiful crops in his field that he was about to cash in on.

So the atheist said, I thought you said it paid to believe in God.

I thought you said it paid to be a Christian.

To which the believing farmer replied, It does pay, but God doesn't always pay his people in September.

You see, just because we may see the wicked succeed on earth, and it may feel like it's a slog for us, we may feel like there's injustice all around us, and nothing's being done about it.

There is a future where the tables are gonna turn that we get to look forward to as Christians, and the unrighteous should be dreading.

So, when will this table turning take place exactly?

Look at the next part of verse 7.

This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don't know God and on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

So we have two groups that we're looking at here.

That should, they both should be dreading the day of the Lord that's being talked about here.

And first is those that don't know God.

That may sound unfair that these people are being judged just because they don't know God.

But our same author here, Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote to the Romans in Romans chapter 1 that people are without excuse.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Everyone will have a chance to know God one way or the other.

And then we have the second group here.

We have those that don't obey the gospel.

Those that have heard the gospel, they know the gospel, they may even know about God and who God is and all of those things.

They may even believe that there is a God, but they refuse to obey the gospel.

These are the two groups in our text today that should be dreading God's righteous judgment.

And if that still sounds unfair, that these people are going to be judged in eternal fire, we need to remember: these are people that want nothing to do with God here on earth.

So God grants them their wish.

Eternal separation from Him.

Which means separation from everything that is good.

Because if it's good, then it's God or it's something that's been created by God.

It's something that's been made by God.

And if that still, this damnation still sounds unfair, God said that he desires that none should perish.

That's why he sent Jesus.

He desires all to choose Jesus and to not have to live out that eternal damnation.

He wants every single person to walk in eternal bliss with him for all of eternity.

That none should perish.

But for those that refuse, they have to pay the consequence of sin.

Jesus is offering to pay that for them, but they're saying, no, I don't want anything to do with that.

I'm not gonna obey the gospel message.

And so God grants them their wish, and that's eternal separation, to pay their own consequences for the sins that they have committed.

Otherwise, it would be injustice on God's part to not send them to that destination.

You know, if you struggle with the thought of eternal damnation, we have to remember that it's the person's choosing.

We need to think less about God sending and them choosing, I think, is more accurate.

Now, look at the fate of those that choose this separation from God.

Look at verse 9.

They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength.

We really need to get the cartoon image out of our head of heaven and hell that we've seen throughout comic strips for a long time.

Christians will not be floating on clouds wearing togas next to babies with wings playing harps.

Hell won't be a place where people walk around with pitchforks and they have campfires and they party with their friends and roast marshmallows.

Hell will be eternal separation from God and all that is good.

Like separation from light.

Where we're talking eternal darkness.

Jesus calls it outer darkness in Matthew 8, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And I don't think there's going to be communication in hell either with any other created beings, let alone partying with friends, as you hear people say.

This should make us want to go out as a church and fish for people, shouldn't it?

Just understanding what awaits an eternity for these unrighteous that want nothing to do with God.

It should make us go out and want to be a light in our community and to our coworkers, to our neighbors, to our classmates, not to make them fear hell, but to show them the love of Jesus Christ, to show it in our life, to allow that light of Jesus Christ to flow out from us.

If that still, you know, sounds scary, well, maybe this is the capacity in which God wants to stretch you.

Where he may want you to build your faith or love somebody in a capacity that you don't have for them, but God does.

And if that still freaks you out, you can't get the words out, invite them to church.

They'll get the gospel here.

Whatever it means.

But when I read this and I and I think about heaven and I think about hell and the difference between the two, it makes me want to just continue to preach the gospel and to try and reach as many people as we possibly can with the love of Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 10 with me.

On that day, when he comes to be glorified by his saints, to be marveled at by all those who have believed, because our testimony among you was believed.

We get to look forward to this day as Christians.

When we see Jesus, because we're just going to be floored.

We will glorify him, it says, and marvel.

We're talking just complete awe and wonder.

If we think we know what to expect on this day, we're wrong.

Because it's going to be way better than anything that we could ever imagine.

So I want to ask you, what puts you in awe of God?

What makes you marvel at him here on earth?

For me, it's a sunset over the mountains or sunset over the ocean.

When the sky, you know, it gets pink and orange and purple and yellow, and there's clouds and just all these things that are just creating this beautiful painting in the sky.

The other one is like lightning storms.

I guess I like weather.

I don't know.

But lightning storms, you know, you get the flashes of light, and you get the thundering.

That just puts me in awe.

It makes me feel tiny in comparison to God.

And I just have this awe and wonder that comes upon me.

But I want you to think about whatever puts you in awe of God.

And then multiply that by like a million.

That's what we're talking about on this day.

That's what I imagine that feeling being like when we get to see Jesus.

Just awe and wonder and being floored, and then all of this praise just breaking out, and it's like a flashbob before Jesus.

All because of the gospel and because we believed the truth of Jesus Christ, just like the Thessalonians did when Paul told them about Jesus.

He shared it with them, and this church got started.

Let's share it with people and see what God wants to do with that.

Now, verse 11.

In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good in your work produced by faith.

This is about progressive sanctification right here.

This is not about earning salvation.

We can't make ourselves worthy of being more saved, worthy of being saved in the first place.

This is talking about becoming more like Jesus.

And when we look at this, you may be asking, well, what is his calling?

What is that calling?

How do I know his calling?

It's to follow after him.

When Jesus called his disciples, what did he say?

Follow after me.

And I will make you fishers of men.

But first, you need to follow after me.

Meaning, stay literally in that day, stay close.

Learn from me.

Follow me around.

Learn how I do things so that you can mimic what I'm doing.

You can learn from me, and then you can start doing these things on your own.

But it's key that it's all through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that's key because Jesus made his disciples wait for the Holy Spirit, if you remember, before he allowed them to go out and start their work as apostles.

Because he had seen what these guys were capable of on their own when the Holy Spirit was not filling them, didn't he?

And it was not good.

So he said, you guys need to wait until this helper comes.

And then you can go out and be apostles because I've seen what you can accomplish on your own.

We see that these disciples slash apostles, they were very different men before and after Pentecost.

And that's why Paul says here, and by his power, fulfill your every desire to do good.

It has to be his power.

We have the same calling here today.

On us as well.

To stay close, abide in Christ, learn from Jesus, do as he does through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

And we can learn how to do this from studying Jesus in the gospels, see how he does things and how he did things and things like that.

We can do this by studying his word, you know, scripture.

And we can do this from the Holy Spirit living inside of us, that is our helper, the one that's going to lead us into all truth.

The one that's going to show us how Jesus does things and then encourage us and empower us to do those same things.

And then He, He empowers us to do it.

You know, those faith things that we're talking about beyond our capacity, those love things that we're talking about beyond our own capacity, they can only be done in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

They can't be done under our own power.

God will use our experience, but sometimes He's going to counsel us, you know, to do things that are just beyond anything we've ever experienced before.

Beyond anything that we could imagine.

He's going to say, take that step of faith.

Take that step of love beyond your own capacity and allow me to do it in my power.

But we have to have the faith to let him do greater things in us first.

We have to allow him.

We have to be able to take that step and maybe not be exactly sure where our foot's gonna land next.

But we have to have the faith to let him do greater things in and through us than we can imagine.

Even if, as we see with the Thessalonian church, that means suffering.

Because as we talked a lot about two weeks ago, suffering, if we allow God to do the work, suffering will make us more like Jesus.

If Jesus suffered, we can expect it.

He even told us that.

We will have tribulation in this world.

But the Holy Spirit is the one that'll empower us to endure that and to superabound, as it says here in those things as well.

Now look at verse 12.

So that, so all the stuff that we've been talking about, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

As believers, we have this amazing moment that we talked about of awe and wonder and marveling at Jesus.

We have this amazing moment that's waiting for us.

But I really believe that verse 12 tells us that we can start that now.

We can do that now by living worthy of his calling, by faith, by love, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And this is all by God's grace.

And because of God's grace.

Is my mic going out?

No?

Okay.

It just sounded a little bit different.

Okay, but it's like I said, it's all by God's grace, as it says here in our passage.

It's because of God's grace.

You know, we can only do something that glorifies God by the power of God in the first place.

And here's the thing: we will continue to make mistakes.

We're gonna continue to have issues that we're working through.

We're gonna continue to try and do things under our own strength, and we're gonna continue to sin.

But God knew this before he desired us.

Did you know that?

God knew that before he desired us.

And he still wanted us.

Because he knew that his grace would be sufficient to cover all of that.

All of our failures and our shortcomings and all of the things that we that he knew we were gonna try and do in our own strength, even if we're trying to do it for him, but we weren't depending upon him.

Grace can overcome all of that.

God knew we didn't have a chance on our own.

He knew it before he called us.

But he loved us too much to leave us there.

He loved us too much to leave us in that condition that we created for ourselves here on earth.

So, what did he do about it?

He sent Jesus.

We just sang that.

God so loved the world.

He sent Jesus to give us the free gift of salvation that we cannot earn.

He desires, Scripture says, we already talked about that, none should perish into the fires of hell.

And he doesn't want anybody to experience that.

So he calls us to accept his grace, to accept his gift, to accept his call to follow after Jesus Christ, and then to daily, progressively become more and more like him.

And as you can see for yourself today, it's not going to be easy.

There's no promises of give your life to Jesus and then everything's gonna be smooth sailing.

Just talk to anybody that's been following Christ for six months, and I'll confirm that for you.

There will be hard times ahead.

Jesus said there will be tribulation in this world, but be encouraged.

I have overcome the world.

And we have this eternity that we get to look forward to.

The thing is, it's not gonna be easier, but he's gonna walk you through those times.

You will never be alone again.

And we're all gonna have this reward of God's righteous judgment ahead of us.

This reward of eternity without the consequence of sin.

That to me is a judgment we should look forward to.

I asked you in the beginning, you know, who's looking forward to that righteous day of judgment?

Now I hope we can all raise our hand, like, yeah, that sounds pretty good.

I'm looking forward to that as a believer.

But if you're not a believer, you should dread that day.

And scripture says all you have to do is accept that free gift of salvation.

That free gift that Jesus paid for our sins for us.

He died on the cross.

He was buried in a tomb, he was raised on the third day, proving that he was God and that it was paid in full.

And now he says, I'll pay for that.

When we get into that judgment courtroom, it's like I'll pay for that.

So anything that's brought against you say, nope, paid for.

And I'll say, no, he's he's with me, Dad.

He's in Christ.

But look at all these.

Good works.

Look at all those righteous works that this person did.

And then we get judged for those.

We get rewarded for those.

So I really think the encouragement here today for the believers is to follow after Jesus.

To live in that grace.

To look forward to that day of righteous judgment that we're going to get to experience.

Not dread it, but get to experience it.

And I think if you're not a believer in Christ already, the challenge for you is why not?

Jesus has this free gift that God loved you so much that he gave his only son for you.

And you just need to accept that for yourself and accept Christ as your Lord in your life, the Savior from your sins.

So with this, let's just step out in faith.

Let's go out and step out in love.

Let's go out and allow God to use us beyond our own capacity, to not shy away from those things, but to say, okay, Lord, I'm going to take a step.

Not exactly sure where this foot's going to land, but I know you're leading me into this.

Lord, whatever it might be, help us to take that step of faith.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, this is such a scary prayer.

I admit it.

I'm even scared teaching on it a little bit here.

To challenge ourselves to take a step of faith and a capacity that we do not have on our own.

But Lord, following you is not about finding comfort, living in a comfort zone.

It's about allowing your Holy Spirit to direct us and to guide us and to lead us into those places that are beyond our own capacity.

So, Lord, would you lead us and guide us and help us to be faithful, to have a ready yes on our lips for whatever you ask us to do.

Lord, we realize this has to be through the power of your spirit, through the direction of your spirit.

Help us to not go out and take risks and take chances based on who knows what.

But to walk by the Spirit, to hear your voice, to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.

Lord, so help us to stay in your word, to look for that guidance, to hear your voice, whatever that might be, and help us to know when that step of faith, when you're calling us to that.

I pray you just tug on our heart and let us know.

Oh, this is the time to share the gospel.

Oh, this is the time to step out in faith in some capacity.

This is the time to allow you, God, to stretch us to where I can only give you the glory because I know I can't do these things on my own.

So help us to be responsible.

Help us to walk by your Spirit and to be your obedient children in all of these ways, we pray.

God, we love you so much.

We thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ.

We thank you for your grace.

Lord, you knew we were gonna mess up and we were gonna fail.

And we might even try to step out in faith and not be by your voice.

But you knew all of this stuff before we came to you.

You knew all of this stuff before you called us to be your sons and daughters.

You said, No, I want you anyway.

I know you're gonna mess up.

I know you're gonna continue to sin, but my grace is sufficient.

Just follow after me.

Help us to do that well here this morning.

Throughout this week ahead, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.