Second Thessalonians 3:16-18

This outline kind of just covers the last chapter three, but basically, you know, Paul went through and he prayed for himself. I'm using Constable this time for an outline. He prayed for himself and Silvanus and Timothy, and he also prayed for the Thessalonians up through verse five.

We spent quite a bit of time in this chapter. And then this section, this is why I kind of like Constable's kind of take on, this is really about church discipline. Because Paul's pretty hard on the disorderly conduct that's going on in Thessalonica, and he has instructions about these idlers, these people that are busybodies and are not working. And then further, he talks about if you don't work, you don't eat. So he goes through quite a long, and we've spent a lot of time on that. And I think Bob and Andrew and Roy also have contributed to all that.

It's been great. So now we're coming down to the final part. just three verses. The first verse is just a tremendous verse about the Lord of Peace, our Savior, and He's the giver of peace. He's the Lord of Peace, and because He's the Lord of Peace and has all power and authority, He is then the giver of peace. And that's what this verse tells us, and we're going to spend quite a bit of time on that. And then Paul's greeting, and this is very typical for Paul.

We saw it in Galatians, which I'm gonna review a little bit. You know, he would typically spend the last several verses, and he had a secretariat, and I think you pronounce it in Greek, amanuensis, I don't know, that's how Macaulay pronounces it, anyway. Anyway, apparently the idea was he would kind of take the pen in his own hand and he would write, and his writing wasn't, as a scribe and it wasn't as tight or as compact. And so his writing would be bigger. And so I have an example of that that I got, I used from past classes in Galatians.

And then finally he ends with very typical greeting, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. All right, so let's just kind of get into the text here. All right, so the verses are, now may the Lord of peace himself continually grant you peace in every circumstance. The Lord be with you all. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter. This is the way I write. Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

So I thought I'd just start off with a definition of peace, especially how it's used in this context. That seems to be the thing of all mankind for all history, having peace in our generation and peace from war and all that kind of stuff. But this is really focused on the peace with the Creator God.

And so basically, eirene, which is a Greek word, is a harmonized relationship between God and man accomplish the cross of Christ. You know, without the cross of Christ, there really can be no peace between God and man. And that's kind of the emphasis of this word, eirene. And then a couple more thoughts on that from Vine and Zodiates.

Peace is a blessing which God alone is the author. He is, he being the author of peace, is the only one who can bestow it upon the righteous. And notice that with his, that little definition, I think it's Zodiates, the last part there, is, you know, the righteous, the one that have come to faith in the Lord Jesus are the only one that can really experience true peace. You know, man can, can, man outside of Christ can, can try for peace or hope he has peace or, beg for peace, but until he accepts God's solution, his son, he cannot really have true peace.

You know, Roger, just to build on that, if you think about it. Can you hear me? Was there a question there? Yeah, Roger, can you hear me? I can't hear you guys, but can you hear me? Yes, we hear you well. You can't hear us? Well, and I still can't hear you, and Bill left the room. So it looks like this may be a monologue here. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, Bob, I can. I can hear you and Roger. Yeah, we're trying to round up Bill here. So I guess I'll carry on here for a second. And then hopefully I won't.

Okay. Actually, okay. Bill's going to try to rectify that. So all right. I think we Roger. Roger, can you hear me? And now I can. Okay, Bill, just okay. Now I can hear you. Yes. Roger, can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead. You had a question or just a comment in that, you know, particularly Christmas time when you get Christmas cards and this can be from the world or it can be from believers who I think don't really understand this verse.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. The prayer is always peace in the world. Right. Exactly. I mean, isn't that a common note on a Christmas card? Peace in the world? I know. I know. I think I'm thinking how naive and ignorant that is. to the believer who's well-founded scripturally, like in this verse. Absolutely, absolutely. This verse actually is just a really tremendous statement and tells us the whole context of peace. It can't be in anything else besides our Savior. There's just no other you know, that's God's design from the very beginning, that his son would be the Lord.

You know, and the word Lord, you just led right into my next thought here. The word Lord, I kind of, is kurios, and it's the idea of having all power and authority, and that's, that is our Savior. He has all power and authority. And just the various verses that we see, well, maybe when Thomas said, my Lord and my God. So being Lord is significant. Jesus Christ, our Lord, we say, the title we use many times, Jesus is both Lord and Christ, the Lord of all. So it's just a lot of verses that we see. use the title of Lord, and it's totally appropriate, totally fits with what he's trying to communicate here. So it starts off with a transition here, the contrast day, but now, or and, it could be translated.

So it says, so the subject of this little sentence here is the Lord of Peace. So let's just think about that for a second. So Keithley has, Here the Lord Jesus is called the Lord of Peace because he is the author and source of peace. And I have a bunch of verses here that kind of speak to that, just the fact that he is peace. Ephesians 2.14a, for he himself is our peace. Then Romans, and this is just a tremendous one.

This is how we come into this relationship. Therefore, having been justified by faith, We have peace with God. How is it? Through our Lord Jesus Christ. So, but you need to come to him by faith. And you have to be, you know, before you can come into that relationship.

And then Philippians, another phrase, the God of peace be with you. And then Macaulay kind of points out the, you know, the pronoun that's kind of tacked on at the end of this, the Lord of peace himself. Boy, it just really gives an emphatic force to it. It emphasizes the intensity that he is a Lord, the Lord of peace himself. Boy, that's just really neat. Hey, Roger.

Yes, go ahead. One thing I was thinking with peace, I think we can have peace because we have faith in God and who he is and what he's done and who we are in him. But, you know, non-Christians don't have that, so they can't really, you know, they can't have peace, or they have a version of peace that they think is right, but it's not. Right, okay, well that's good, you lead right into my next thought here. Okay, good, good. Okay.

So now we get to the verb, right? Subject, verb, and the verb is grant, or I think better, may he give, and that's what the, you know, any linear translates that word. And so word, familiar word, to some, may he give is didomai, to give one's own accord or with goodwill. It has an, it has an interesting, You know, every verb has tense, mood, and voice. So this verb is the aorist tense, the optative mood, and the active voice.

Well, aorist we're somewhat familiar with, right? We see it all the time. So it's a past point fact. But the optative is kind of one that we don't often see, and it's kind of cool here. The optive mood is used to express a wish or a desire. So this is really cool.

This verse Paul is giving us, this is his desire. It's not like Paul is, you know, you see people in religious ceremonies, they'll say, you know, blessings upon you, they're like they're dispensing God's grace or God's peace. Well, Paul doesn't say he's dispensing it, he's saying his desire is that you have it, and he will explain himself through this. What really kind of makes it cool, even more neat, the tense mood and voice, it's the active voice. So the subject is the Lord of Peace. He's the one that's going to give us peace, not a man saying something or proclaiming something. It's going to be the Lord himself is going to give us. So the action is the subject is the Lord of Peace.

And then here's a very similar verse, but in this case it says the Lord grant, and it's also optive mood, grant mercy to the house of, I'm going to say Mr. O here. I wasn't quite sure how to pronounce that. Lord grant mercy to the house of Mr. O here. So, very similar idea, optive mood, it's a desire on the part of Paul that these Thessalonians, and us, experience God's peace.

But what's cool here is, question? No, just go ahead. I'll finish up. Just have a comment. Okay, sure. So now, there are three modifiers to this, in this sentence, three modifiers to this verb. The first one is, so who is this, who is God desiring to give peace to? And it's to you. And the context is the Thessalonians, and it applies to us as well as a believer. The second modifier is, which is really cool, continually, And this word, it's a compound word.

It's the idea of through all time. So he desires to give his peace to you as a believer continually through all time. It's just, you get goosebumps here after a while. In every circumstance, in every way. And I know what you guys are thinking. We'll get down to the bottom here now.

Under all circumstances and conditions, whatever comes, and the direct object here is peace. So it's just a tremendous thought that he may give to you continually in every circumstances peace. So Bob, you had a comment? Yes, simply Roger that this optative mood really reflects, I think God's unending desire that we have that peace, but we've got to respond by faith, don't we?

Absolutely, absolutely. And once again, you're setting me up here, Bob. You're good. You guys are just too good here at Holly Hills. I mean, you know. You didn't tell everybody, but you planted questions for yourself. Well, you've heard of the churches that hire people to sit out in the pews. Well, we hire people to ask questions, right? I haven't seen the check yet, Roger. I know, I know. That's good. That's good. Okay, that's neat. I agree with you. Amen. So that's kind of the cool part here.

So basically, Paul's desire, as you pointed out, and the Lord Jesus' desire, Paul's expressing the desire of our Savior. is that Jesus Christ, the Lord of Peace, peace would be realized by every believer. Paul can't grant you peace. He's not dispensing peace. He wants you to realize that you have peace. And so the $64 question is, how does a believer come to realize Christ's peace?

Okay, I have answers for that one. I think you actually already said it, Bob, I think maybe, and others. Go ahead, any thoughts? Good, excellent, excellent, okay. And I wish I had Verne's picture, faith in the facts, the faith in the facts of God's word, right? Remember his picture, he had a train on the track, faith in the facts is like a train on the tracks and feelings are followed, coming by the caboose or whatever it is. Anyway, so the rub here, the difficulty or the part that requires faith is that our feelings, we may not feel God's peace or we may not, a trial that we desire to have peace in, we may not have a resolution in our heart about that. But what God asks us to do is to realize that he has provided that peace and he has described that peace in his word.

And he's described it in just many, many verses. And there's just, so we can look at peace in at least three different ways here. So first of all. Well, Roger. Yes, go ahead. Well, it's trusting in the Lord that he has a reason for everything that happens in our lives. And even though it doesn't make sense to us, it certainly makes sense to him. So trusting in him, then we'll give you that peace because you know that in the end it'll be fine. Right.

I agree with you. I agree with you. But, you know, sometimes and, you know, I think we all have situations. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to maybe amplify it a little bit. Sometimes we have trials and difficulties that are are so. In fact, Mike's going to talk about that today.

One of my favorite verses about how Paul was burdened excessively, that he even despaired of his life. It was so bad. It was so difficult. So trials can be so difficult that you have a hard time trusting the Lord, you have a hard time believing that you're going to come through this. And so that's the part of this that I won't say difficult, that's the part that requires you to continue to trust, to continue to realize, continue to, by faith, trust in what he's doing.

But there are, as Paul expresses, and Mike's gonna cover it today in 2 Corinthians, there are times when it's just overwhelming, when your trial's overwhelming. But the bottom line is that God desires you to be at peace with him about whatever trial you're undergoing. Okay, so first category is the peace of God. And just a beautiful verse here, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So God's word declares, I mean, it's just, he declares what, his piece is about and what it can accomplish. But, you know, man may not always, a believing man, a believing woman, may not always be able to, at that moment of time, be able to say amen to that, so to speak. But it is there, it is available. So let's look at the next category. You know, Roger, just a thought about that.

Margaret and I had a tight connection coming out of Italy yesterday in Frankfurt, and there was really no peace as to whether we're gonna make that or not. I guess the question is, in terms of this peace, it relates to the spiritual man, doesn't it? Do you think it relates to circumstances like that too? Is it right, wrong to have some anxiety about making our flight to the US?

I mean, so just a practical example. I understand. I understand. And, uh, you know, it doesn't, it's interesting. He tells us, and I was thinking about that kind of along that line, Bob, that, um, he doesn't necessarily say he's going to, he's going to relieve the trial. He doesn't say, you know, don't be anxious. And as soon as you're not anxious, the trial poof, the trial is gone. No, he doesn't say that.

He basically says that your relationship with me, is what I'm talking about and you can and by that relationship that that's what gives you the peace and that that's what that's what gives you the the freedom from anxiety is that my relationship with him okay lord if I miss the flight I'm trying to think maybe what you might have thought okay lord if I miss the flight you know, thank you that I'm, you know, I'm still okay.

I'm things are going to be messed up, but I, I trust you that the workout I mean, that's and we go through that. Now think how many times in our life we go through that how many day weeks we go through situations where things don't always go as we would like. But it's our relationship with him and that he is the God of peace. And his peace, he says, it surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

But he doesn't say he's going to fix those trials. They're going to be fixed to your, maybe to even your, you say, well, Lord, it's got to be done this way. Well, no, not necessarily. It'll be done in his way, in his time. And so anyway, hopefully that's helpful there. Notice he's guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Exactly. Exactly. It's identification. I'm thinking of the trials and tribulations our Lord and Savior went through. Right. I mean, right. This is a small issue, isn't it? Right. Well, how about one that occurred to me?

How about in the garden where he said, you know, he was sweating great drops of blood and and he said, if it's possible, this is our Savior. If it's possible, remove this cup from me. He did, I mean, if you read that and you think about it, it's like, well, I don't really want to go forward with this.

But he comes right back almost in the next verse or several verses later, he says, but your will be done. And so our savior, as the God man, displaying his humanity, struggled with what his father had planned for him. But in the end, he said, your will be done. And that's where we're at, too. In the end, we want to be able to say, your will be done. And maybe that doesn't happen right away. Maybe it takes a long time. Go ahead.

Yeah, just something that my years walking with the Lord in some pretty tough situations, I found great comfort in Proverbs 16 verse 3, commit thy works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established. I have found repeatedly I'm in the midst of an issue that I can't come to a conclusion about. There's so many different answers that I don't know which is right. I commit it to the Lord and He puts in my mind, not just this Peace, but a focus in the right direction. I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me. because it's without a number.

It's so many. That's great. That's wonderful, Roy. That's great. I think you're on the right track. That's really wonderful. Okay. All right. Let's go on to the next category. And this is how it all began. In fact, I'm repeating this first. This is how it all begins, right?

Until you have peace with God, you really can't go forward with having any true peace at all. And it's the verse we quoted before. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then the third category, which I hadn't thought much about until I started this piece of the fruit of the spirit.

And that's pretty, that's pretty cool. So, so the fruit, the singular fruit of the spirit, we get the whole package deal, right? We get all, all nine of them. I just put seven up there. We get the whole package. You want to say fruits, right? It's a fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. This this piece from the Lord of peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and the rest of them. So that's a wonderful thing.

So keep the kind of shares. If we, if they or we, speaking of Thessalonians, are to know real peace, we must walk in intimate fellowship with our Savior. And that's true. If you're out of fellowship with your Savior, then that's not gonna help your, you know, that's gonna hinder your realizing that He's, what peace He has for you.

And then this is just a beautiful verse. In fact, actually, there's 90, I looked at my computer, there's 93 occurrences of peace. A lot of them are just kind of a normal peace that man talks about, but many of them are like this one. John 14, 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. And that seems to be a common thread about, when we realize God's peace, it affects our heart, it affects our inner being, and allows us to be at rest about those things.

Pretty incredible verses. Okay, so now we're getting to the, okay, now off to the last part of this. Then kind of a similar thing, he says, after talking about the Lord of peace and granting you peace, he says, another desire for the Thessalonians and for us, the Lord be with you. And this is a wonderful thing. Keithley shares, Paul was praying that they might experience the power and blessing of the Lord on their lives for spiritual growth and well-being.

And then here's one of my... I feel like Jay Vernon McGee, one of my favorite verses. I have many favorite verses, but this one, I like this one. I've used this one so many times personally and for other people, but I really love the Weiss translation. It's just, it knocks your socks off, at least my socks.

Okay, so Hebrews 13, five, five B and six, for he himself, speaking about our savior, Our God, He Himself has said, and the statement is on record. So the faith are in the facts, right? In His word. For He Himself has said, and the statement is on record. There are five negatives here.

I will not, I will not cease to sustain you and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down. So that being of good courage, we are saying, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what shall man do to me. Notice again, the thing about fear is in there. I know he really, I think he realizes that man is, believers are fearful. We can be fearful, but his, we are to realize his unending, unending, pledged to us about his care for us. And he says it five times, I will not, I will not cease to sustain you and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down. Just amazing, just amazing.

And then lastly, Keithley shares, but we may ignore, he's talking about some that ignore his presence and fail to experience it. So the apostle prays that this might be the case. All right, so that's that verse, just incredible. So all right, any last thoughts on that verse before we go on to 17? 17 is going to be just talking about his script there. If not, go ahead. One of the things that he's taught in the Child Evangelism Fellowship, that this I will not, I will not, I will not is a triple negative.

Right. It's one of the rarest forms of it. We won't let you down. Amen. Amen. No, I think it's just incredible. Yeah, I just amazing. Just amazing. OK. All right, so. Getting a little bit of extra dance music here. Okay. So Paul is going to talk about his final greeting here. So Paul says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. So actually just to kind of economize time here a little bit. So Paul, you know, there was a, and I'll just read it.

In 2 Thessalonians 2.2, it says that you not quickly be shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. And we covered this, it seems like eternity ago, but a long time ago. And Paul was concerned that apparently a letter had gone around claiming to be from Paul that the day of the Lord had already come. And he felt necessary to prove that this letter was from him.

So he puts down at the end of the letter, he puts down his own handwriting in his own hand with his unpracticed hand. It wasn't the scribe's hand or secretary's hand, it was his own hand. So that's what this seems to be all about. So he says, and this greeting is a distinguishing mark in every letter. Distinguishing mark is the idea of a sign, a mark, autograph, attesting to the authenticity of the letter. Apparently, Paul would write the closing greeting in his own hand. This is the way I write. So, I mean, it's like you're reading the letter, and you get down to it, and you say, oh, it looks different.

And he said, oh, that's Paul's writing. It's kind of neat. You know, you recognize, I know most families, I recognize Bonnie's handwriting, and she recognizes my printing. Because I'm an engineer, right? As engineers don't write, they print, right? That's why I went to medicine. I got a D in handwriting. Amen. Amen. So so the body has a nice script and I have I print so I so anyway, so you say that's Roger writing that. Okay. Okay. So the Amplified has to hear, in this way, I write my handwriting and my signature. So Paul's just expressing that. So actually, I went back and borrowed some charts from a year or so ago from Galatians. So a very similar verse, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.

So this idea of writing, it was oida, the act of seeing. but it's a perception of an object. He says, see, this is it. It's authenticating what he's doing. I'm writing to you. I wrote it to you, and the passpoint fact. So Paul's saying he actually did the writing. Normally he had a secretary, as I mentioned before. And then here's a verse that we, you know, if you look in Romans here, the guy is named. Churches who write this letter greet you in the Lord. So in this case, he kind of says, he's writing it for Paul. He's his secretary. And he says, oh, hi, here I am. So that's pretty cool. And then here's the thing about the letter size. Paul had two qualifying statements about what he wrote.

First of all, with large letters, there's some debate about this. Some think it could be a large document, but I like the first meaning here. The large characters implied as stiff and unpracticed handwriting are in the Greek letters, not so much a large document. The letters is the idea of the letters of the alphabet referring to the size of the character written in his own hand. He does this writing in a literal unseal, it's called. And it's one inch high letters. So actually, I was able to find a picture of that on the internet. So there you see alpha, beta, gamma, delta. Zeta. Zeta, yeah, right. OK, all righty. Yeah, there's the rest of them.

I'm writing to you with my own hand, with my own hand. So here's, you know, he uses that phrase at least three times. One is the verse we just are covering. And then in Colossians, he says, I write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my imprisonment, grace be with you. The greeting is in my own hand, Paul, and then the one we have today.

So here's, I believe this is, and I found this on, again, doing some research, there's this gentleman that kind of has, I'm pretty sure this isn't an actual scroll, but this is a mock-up, I think, of what it might be, what people thought it might be.

If you wrote in the one-inch high letters, you had the tight text in Greek, of a scribe or secretary, and then you had a one inch high characters. That's what someone thinks it would look like. Okay. Alrighty. Actually, things are a little faster than I thought. You think it's even bigger? I don't know. Anyway, get your ruler out.

Okay, well, and a lot of it we don't know. A lot of it we don't have. We have the scriptures which describe that. That's the main thing we have. And you don't see any periods? No, it's all in the language. And that's where that's added. They were a lot smarter than us back then. Yes, I agree, Roy. They were. They were.

You know, this is a total digression, but that's that's why I think I get kind of upset with people that talk about, you know, people in caves and that kind of stuff. It's actually the reverse of that. People, they built the pyramids and people aren't building pyramids these days with no with no modern machinery. I'm not sure they can build them with modern machinery. I mean, it's Anyway, man, you know, man was a lot more with it. We think historically in biblical times. Okay.

So and then the last verse, very typical, Paul, grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with you all. So part as Mike mentioned this the other day, Paul started the book with grace and he ends with grace, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul now ends the book with grace. And actually, this is the case in all of his 13 epistles. Another example is in Romans. He starts off, to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he ends it in verse 24 of, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Okay, so just, A little summary here from Keith Lee. Just gonna kinda keep on verse 18 here. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

We're reminded of the necessity of grace, necessity of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for the Christian life. You know, we talk a lot here at Holly Hills about we live in this operating system of grace. We're immersed in God's grace. And not all see that or understand that. With the word all, God desires that all Christians experience this life, or to experience this life of grace, that God is for us, who can be against us. And then lastly, he says, he has commended some, this is summarizing the Thessalonian book here, he has commended some and censured others, But his final benediction was upon all. There is here a final appeal for unity, obedience, blessing, including, of course, the idlers.

The ones not working are the busybodies, I believe. So that's kind of the final thought here. Pretty amazing book. We've covered a lot of, and it's covered a lot of areas. Just amazing. They were talking about end time stuff way back before it was popular, right? Yep. Go ahead. Question there? No better description of the rapture than Thessalonians, right? Amen. Amen. So now the cool part is we get to study Jude.

So you can read that, folks. You can read that on the way home in the car, not while you're driving. Put your phone, if your phone's like mine, you can make it, it can read it to you. So put it on that and listen to it on the way home. And Vi and I have been listening, we listened to Jude in about three or four different, we listened from Macaulay, J. Vernon McGee, and Merriman. So we've done all three, so. So suppose I- I think you ought to teach the whole book.

I know, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's cool. There's just some really neat stuff. I mean, it's really cool. And actually what's interesting is it kind of, it mirrors a good part of second Peter, which we covered a year or so ago. Actually it was the last year. I lost track here. Anyway, hasn't been too long ago. So look forward to that.

Thank you guys for teaching and just for all being part of this. And so let's close in prayer. We thank you father. We thank you so much for your blessing, Lord. Thank you for, Just a tremendous statement about you're the Lord of peace himself. You're the author of peace, you provided peace by your death on the cross, and you desire that your children realize and trust you in your peace, even though there are tribulations, but we have your peace. We have this effect and its effect seems to be many, many times to give us, um, um, be at rest about the, uh, the trials in our lives. Lord, we thank you for that in Christ's name. Amen.