Bible Guys Classics: 2 Thessalonians 1 & 2

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So today we're going to be talking about in my

Bible that says encouragement during persecution. So that's like, in

other words, about just beating you up. I'd be like, smile.

I'm not exactly sure that that's what that means. As

matter of fact. He goes on, and this is also

talking about Jesus coming back. So it's some pretty big

topics we're talking about today. He's Chris, I'm Jeff. Were

the Bible guys, Okay, Chris. Yes, it's a big day

to day, is it. Yeah? Yeah, Because we're doing a draft, yes,

another draft, yes, yes, And these drafts are fun. So

what is today's draft.

Well, it actually reads the you know, the show sheet

that was given to us, says, if you could have

dinner with any person, whether alive or dead. Oh okay, well,

who are the top five people dinner? So so listen.

I actually normally we don't know what questions are coming,

but I actually read this question before we got here,

so I actually thought it'd be a good idea for

us to do like a draft in five different categories.

Ok let's choose a singer.

So in the draft, we can't just draft five quarterbacks, right,

so we have to have so we have to have

different different positions.

Yeah, okay, so if you could, if you could eat

on the team, you have dinner with five people alive

or dead. Okay, let's choose the first draft singer, then actor,

then author, then preacher, and then historical figure.

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, so you go first. Okay, So,

because you've got it in front.

Of you, I do. So. My singer that I chose

is Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston, Yeah, number one, one of

the greatest voices of all time. Number two. You know,

tragedy strikes right, died you young, but more than that

she was a person who was an incredible faith, grew

up in the church, and I just think that I

would have loved to have had dinner with her.

Wow. Man, I've got several as far as singers go,

So it's the singers, not musicians, just singer singers, Okay, singers,

I think. Uh. Previously, I think I answered a question

similars I said Bono, So, Bono was pretty high. Andrea Bocelli. Wow, yeah,

I think so Andrea Bocelli. He's a blind pop opera

singer from Italy. Bonnie and I just went and saw

him last December, so that was great. But he does

a lot of really good deeds and he has a

very vibrant faith in the world, very very public with

his faith. I think that's okay.

The next category is actor. Actor Okay, so I'm choosing

Kirk Cameron. No, no, okay, that is a hard pass. Okay,

hard Okay, I just was although I liked him in

Family Tied.

Sure, absolutely, So.

I'm choosing Chris Pratt.

Oh man, That's that's why I would have picked really

oh totally.

Yeah. His faith is incredible and his influence. Plus he's

one of the funniest guys that I.

Know, Yes, yeah, yeah, okay, I'd pick his father in

law then, Arnold Schwarzenegg.

Oh really yeah, yeah, Yeah, that'd be a.

Fun one, just because it's hard to sort out what

he's saying, so they just make a really interesting conversation.

Well, it definitely be fun dinner with Arnold.

Why we're just asking a bunch of questions about Chris Pratt.

There you go, that's funny.

No, that's funny.

So author, and I'm gonna pick C. S.

Lewis, okay, why, oh.

Just because he is both imaginative.

He wrote, he wrote Chronicles and o Arnia. He helped

helped invent the the science fiction concept. Yeah, fantasy fantasy

right now?

Yeah, plus incredible theologian, I mean, just a lot.

Of mere Christianity's one of the great great thoughts. Yeah yeah, okay,

that's good. Well I would pick his best friend then,

ja or Tolkien. Well, yeah, they were best friends. Yeah.

Did you know he'd led him to christ I did

not know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty neat.

Wow, Yeah, that's neat. Okay, so preachers.

By the way, Tolkien's the one who wrote Lord of

the Rings in the Hobbit and all those Yes, yes,

so they kind of coinvented the fantasy genre.

So how about if I let you go first? Okay,

I just kind of sort of took two of your No.

No, I would have taken Tolkien over over Lewis anyways.

Oh okay, all right, well then I'll go first. Then, okay,

go ahead, preachers. I'd choose Billy Graham.

Oh, now, I would take that one too. Okay, So

Billy Graham, Why well, he's.

One of the greatest influencers, not only just of our

generation but of all time. You know, probably led more

people to Jesus than maybe anybody ever.

Yeah, okay, so go to dinner. But if I can't

have Billy Graham, Chris Sarbaugh one of my favorite. Hey,

we just went to dinner.

I know it was great. No, come on, I can't be.

Your real okay, famous preachers. I would go dead, could

yeah Spurgeon, Yeah, yeah, Charles Spurgeon. I think it's what

I take because one, yeah, he knew how to eat

good meals. He was a big boy. Yeah.

And then the last one is historical figure. Historical figure,

And I'm gonna choose Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln. Oh, that's a good one.

Well, let let me tell you. You read a book

about Abraham Lincoln's life, you knew that this dude did

not mess around. I mean he would get chased by

people on horseback with axes like. I mean, he was

a tough, tough, tough dude. And no I mentioned you know,

I mean, you gotta be super tough and be a

political genius.

Well, you can get him telling all kinds of stories

and then you can see it with other than that.

What did you think about the play?

Right right now?

That's terrible. It's terrible. Okay, he died laughing historical figures. Yeah, okay, man,

this is a huge one. That's a hard one. Oh man,

Alexander the Great?

Wow?

Why because he achieved so much at such a young

age and then kind of hit a wall and got

frustrated with his life. And so I'd like to talk

about purpose and so I once said, he's brilliant as

a leader. On the other side, really struggled with his purpose.

Wow.

Yeah, I think it'd be neat to talk to him.

Well, there it is, folks. That'd be a heck of

a dinner.

Wow, that'd be amazing.

Yeah, So writ in your comments. Which dinner would you

like to be at? Think about the five people around

my dinner, the five people around Jeff's. Just let us

know or email us at info at the Bible guys

dot com just to see who wins.

Yeah, okay, well I would win. But no, yeah, no, no,

I had great ones.

No, not necessarily.

Okay, So we are now flipping from First Thessalonians to

the Book of Second Thessalonians. He writes two letters in

a very short amount of time.

Yeah. So, just a few months after Paul had written

the first letter, he get word back that people misunderstood

his teachings about the Second Coming. That's right, and so

he decided to write a second letter. And let's be honest,

a lot of times there's overlapping sort of themes, right, yes,

and so there's there's gonna be an overlapping theme of

encouragement with persecution, and then he's going to sort of

reteach and bring more clarity to the Second Coming.

Yeah. So I'm just going to start in Second Salonius

chapter one. We'll start in verse three, the beginning he's seeing.

Before you start. So I read in the notes here

that it says that people misunderstood the teaching in the

Second Coming because they thought Jesus was due at any moment.

So they stopped working.

Right, and they put their jobs.

There's right, there's no purpose. We're going to lay back

and just enjoy our last week that we have live

on the earth.

Right, they quit their jobs, they sold their property. Yes,

they were just like, okay, he's coming back.

Yeah, that's important thing to know.

We should live Jesus is coming back at any minute, Yes,

we really should. But we should also keep working because

night is coming. Jesus says that too. So there's the

two things together, all right. So we're going to start

in verse three of chapter one, the first couple verses,

he says greetings, and then he says, dear brothers and sisters,

we can't help but thank God for you, because your

faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing.

We proudly tell God's other churches about your endurance and

faithfulness and all the persecutions and hardship that you're suffering.

And God will use this persecution to show his justice

and to make you worthy of His kingdom for which

you are suffering. In his justice, he will pay back

those who persecute you, and God will provide rest for

you who are being persecuted, and also for us. When

the Lord Jesus appears from heaven, he will come with

his mighty angels in flaming fire, bringing judgment on those

who don't know God and on those who refuse to

obey the good news of our Lord Jesus. They will

be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord

and from his glorious power. When he comes on that day,

he will will receive glory from his Holy people, praise

from all who believe. And this includes you, for you

believed what we told you about him. So we keep

on praying for you, asking our God to enable you

to live a life worthy of his call. May He

give you the power to accomplish all the good things

your faith prompts you to do. And then the name

of our Lord Jesus will be honored because of the

way that you live, and you will be honored along

with him. This is all made possible because of the

grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ. Now, dear

brothers and sisters, let us clarify some things about the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and how we will

be gathered to meet him. Don't be so easily shaken

our alarm by those who say that the day of

the Lord has already begun. Don't believe them, even if

they claim to have had a spiritual vision, a revelation,

or a letter supposedly from us. Don't be fooled by

what they say, for that day will not come until

there is a great rebellion again us against God, and

the man of lawlessness is revealed, the one who brings destruction.

He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call

God and every object of worship. He will even sit

in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God.

Don't you remember that I told you about all this

when I was with you, And you know what is

holding him back, For he can be revealed only when

his time comes, For this lawlessness is already at work secretly,

and or remain secret until the one who is holding

it back steps out of the way. Then the man

of lawlessness will be revealed. But the Lord Jesus will

kill him with the breath of his mouth and destroy

him by the splendor of his coming. This man will

come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power

and signs and miracles. And he will use every kind

of evil deception to fool those on their way to

destruction because they refuse to love and accept the truth

that would save them. So God will cause them to

be greatly deceived and they will believe these lies. Then

they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing

the truth.

Woo, there it is. Yeah.

So now he's talking about the end of time. I mean,

this is the end coming up on the end of

the world. He's kind of alluding to some of the

things that John writes in the book Revelation.

Yeah. So do you say the term Antichrist or do

you say antichrist Antichrist? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just I've

heard it both ways. Just curious. So as as Paul

is talking about this, he's talking about persecution, and by

the way, I do like, first of all, before we

get into the Antichrist. Before he as he's talking about persecution,

I love how he says that God in his justice,

will pay back those who persecute you. And if you're

getting persecuted, you will find rest. These are promises given

to people that may not be. You know, it's not

like he's saying, Joe or Mary or Billy, I heard

about you. You know, he's actually saying, these are godly

principles that they're going to be for you. And because

we believe this is a letter to the thessalonikeens, but

it's also God's word inspired for us, we believe that

this is true for us as well. That's right, So

for those who persecute us, we believe that God will

pay them back. So just apply that for a second.

For those of us listening who are thinking, man, this

guy makes fun of me, this lady makes fun of

me because of my faith, or just putting me down

because they see me as less of a worker. I'm

soft because I'm a Christian, whatever it is. And as

you're getting persecuted because of your faith, just know that,

you know, vengeance is God's God's got this, and you

don't have to worry about paying back that person. It's

more important to show them that love conquers all those things.

Yeah, you know, in our culture right now today, there's

a lot of people who can point to disadvantages or

difficulties or struggles, and for many of them, their response

is to punish the people who have hurt them, or

to have consequences, or to find some kind of advantage

over the people who have caused them or their people

group struggles and disadvantages. And here Paul is saying, push

through it, be faithful. God is the one that is

going to give you satisfaction. You're never going to be

able to get satisfaction yourself. He ended first Thessalonians by saying,

don't go get revenge, and then he starts off this

one by saying, God's the one who's going to get revenge,

and God's the one that's going to bring justice, So

don't go and seek justice like that. Instead, rely on

him and he'll give you rest. He'll give you comfort,

he'll give you strength, he'll make you worthy of this

struggle that you're going through. And it's a totally different

way of viewing persecution. Now, Jesus said you will be

persecuted if you're a follower of Christ, if you're a

real disciple of Jesus, they will hate you because they

hated Jesus. So if we're not as Christians facing some

level of pushback on our faith or some level of persecution,

I think it's fair for every Christian to ask, why

am I not living a life that's evident enough that

I'm a follo of Christ? Do I not speak up

often enough about the things of Christ that nobody knows,

or it's not getting anybody's attention, because it's natural back

then even today, Jesus said, they will hate you because

they hated him first.

You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about

when I was a pastor and I was in transition,

moving from Atlanta to Michigan. I worked at a car

dealership for five months, and while I was there, there

was a guy that used to poke fun at me

being pastor boy. He said, oh, a pastor boy, preacher boy,

and and he just pushed me to the point where

I ended up just getting in a fight with him,

literally getting a fight with him.

And that's not what Paul is telling us.

No, that is not what Paul is. Just to be clear,

you had to make sure that you throw it in there. Anyway.

It was. It was bad news. But I remember I

went to a camp this past year. So this passed

April or June. It was in June, and it was

so that would have been just what four or five

months ago, and I told that story and it was

my whole big angel story of the whole day. And

then one of the parents during a Q and A

raised their hand and said, did you ever go back

to the CarMax and apologize to the guy for beating

him up? And I made the mistake of saying, well,

I said, yeah, I tried, which I really did. I said,

but I didn't find him. He'd already quit. And I said, Dan,

I didn't care that much.

Oh uh oh, so you still have a little bit

of flesh.

In you, right, yeah, yeah, right.

That Remember a couple a couple weeks ago, we were

talking about living in the spirit and it's whichever dog

you feed is the one that's strong and healthy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess my point of telling that

is Number one, it's hilarious that I made that mistake.

That's probably why they weren't too excited about my ratings

of that Q and A. But the second thing is

is just to say it's difficult, like it's really tough. Man.

It's a struggle.

When somebody, when somebody really gets on you because your faith,

it's difficult to treat them with kindness and let God

take care of all of it.

Well, some of that is it's we're not very strong

in this area. The only way you can get strong

in the face of persecution is the same way that

you are the only ways you can get strong in

any other areas. When God says he wants us to

be more loving, the only way we can become more

loving is to be around unloving people more often, and

we strengthen that spiritual muscle. The only way to build

faith is to be in situations that challenge our faith.

Otherwise it's an unused muscle. And when it comes to

us being strong in the face of persecution or in

the face of struggle, or in those difficult moments, the

only way that can happen in our life is for

us to face those things, and it's otherwise it's an

unused muscle. You know, I've been going back to the gym.

My doctor told me I need to lose some weight,

and I agree, And you know, I'm fifty one, and

so you know, I've got a lot of things I

want to do in my life still, and so I

got to lose some weight get strong. So I've been

in the gym, been working out, got my trainer going

with me, and I found a whole bunch of muscles

I didn't know I had.

That's fine.

A few weeks ago a man alive. My legs are

so so I couldn't hardly walk. And now we go

through those exercises that I'm doing fine. And so what

happens is those are weak and it hurts particularly bad

the first couple times you work out those muscles, and

then after a while, those muscles get strong, and next

thing you know, that workout's enjoyable, it gets exciting, it's fun,

it's beneficial, and I think it's the same thing most

of us. We run away from persecution. We run away

from people mocking us or harassing us because we're terrified

of it, and because it hurt that first time we

lifted that weight. But over time you get strong and

it doesn't hurt it nearly as much. So in the

first book, Paul told the Thessaloni's listen, stand strong in

this persecution. He faced persecution in Thessalonika, and so it's

not surprising that they're also experiencing persecution. And he said,

stand strong in this persecution. Jesus is coming back someday.

And so they were like, oh great, we'll just sell

our house and we'll quit our jobs, hold all this stuff.

We'll just wait for Jesus to come and get us.

And he went, well, let me clarify that. Here's what

I meant when I said that, And he said, it's

not happening in this moment. He will. And so what

he was trying to talk about is the bigger picture.

And sometimes there is benefit when we're going through struggle

to step back and try to get a at the

bigger picture rather than just at the difficulty, that very narrow,

small picture of this difficulty I'm personally facing. And the

bigger picture is God's doing a greater work than even

I can understand my part in it. And so if

I struggle today, that's okay. God's going to take care

of me, and he'll take care of those who's, you know,

causing this problem.

So as he talks about the second coming of the

Lord and he talks about the Antichrist, you know, I

remember all those Left Behind books, Remember that you read

those speaking of Kirk Cameron who started that movie. Yeah

that's right, right, that's funny that you mentioned today.

Yeah, that's funny.

But you know, the anti Christ. So the idea that

a person would come and claim to be God and

a person who you know, would claim to be doing

the things of God but doing the work of Satan

or Satan deceiving people right and causing havoc. You know,

there's a lot of speculation about that because I know

that there's been a ton of people throughout history that

have been individuals who epitomized evil and said they were

sort of everything Jesus stands for, and you know, and

then somehow they've said that they're doing it in God's name.

So there's only one Antichrist. It's going to be one.

And when that, when this person comes.

It's there are many anti Christs, Paul tells us. But

there's what you're talking about, is this man of sin here,

this man.

Of evil, of lawless, he's the one.

There's many people who are against Christ. That's what antichrist means.

But when we talk about the Antichrist, it's the ultimate

bad guy in the history of humanity, Right, He's the

ultimate bad guy, and he's the one that's going to

close this out. It's him and Jesus squaring off, right.

And it says that Jesus will come back. So we

know that that Jesus will come back, and it says

he'll kill him with his breath of his mouth and

destroy him by the splendor of his coming, which means

that that it will happen. Wow, you know when that when.

When remember in first Tessalonias, he said that you're going

to hear the voice of an archangel with a mighty shout.

You're going to hear the trumpet sound Jesus. The Jesus

is going to return in that moment. This is going

to be dynamic. That's the glory of the splendor of

his coming. But I love the breath of his mouth.

What is the breath of his mouth? It's his word.

As a matter of fact, in Revelation it talks about

how when he Jesus comes back, he's wearing a white robe, remember,

and he's on the white horse, and he's going to

be returning, and it's a flaming sword, you know, coming

from his mouth. The word of God is quick and

powerful and sharper than any two had sword. The Book

of Hebrews tells us it was in the beginning God

created heavens in the earth. But in John chapter one,

it says that Jesus was the word, and it was

he was the word of God because God said, let

there be Jesus is the word of God. This is

one of the reasons why we're always encouraging people to

learn the words of God. The power Jesus comes back

and wipes out the bad guys. He wipes out the

anti Christ with his word. How powerful is that word

for us to walk around? You know, we're terrified to persecution.

We're terrified of the evil one because we just don't

have the weapons in our hands. If we had this,

if we understood the word, the power of the words

of God, and that all the demons flee at the

name of Jesus, right, the power of Christ, all those

kinds of things, we would have so much more confidence

in the face of persecution. And this is what he's

trying to tell them.

Yeah, I mean, you know when Jesus was tempted in

the wilderness all three times, when when Satan tried to

tempt him, Jesus responded by the words of God, which

resisted the devil. The Book of James tells us, if

you submit ourselves to God, resist the devil, he will

flee from you. It also says that we believe, we

do well, but even the demons believe and they tremble.

So you know, we know for a fact the word

of God has power over the enemy. So whether it's

Satan himself, whether it's demons you know directly from the

pits of Hell, or whether it is the anti Christ,

which is a person who's doing Satan's work, we know

that God's word is what we need to cling to.

We could talk about these end time things forever, particularly

with who is it right and people have been pointing

at every major international political power player for a thousand years. Yeah.

So and depending on the last president that you vote

for in the in the president before that.

Yeah, and what your politics are, Yeah, one of them

is the anti Christ. Putin's Antichrist, somebody's Antichrist. So so

here's a couple of those things. He's going to exalt himself,

defy everything that people call God, every abject of worship.

He'll sit in the temple of God and he will

declare to the world that he is God.

Yeah.

So crazy. So you know, whenever you hear somebody saying

this president or that president or this political leader is

the Antichrist, well until they sit in the temple of

God and declare themselves God. Well you can't possibly know.

Right, that's exactly right, that's exactly right, and not to

mention deceiving many.

Yes, so people believe the world. The world will believe

in the huge majority of the world.

Of yes, yes, yes, which is crazy ye. So anyway,

those are great thoughts from Paul and it's about time

to end, so we will see you next time.

Okay.

On the Bible, guys,