Growing in Steadfastness Pt. 2
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GROWING IN STEADFASTNESS PT.2
Good morning Saints of HBC, please turn in your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians and we will see in the Word of God what he's done. We love to sing about it, as evident in the last song, and we love to see it in the baptism. We love to look both into the past of the eternal glory of our salvation...what was accomplished as we saw last week in eternity past. And yet what happened in time and space when Christ died on the cross for sinners. And then when we hear someone give their testimony in baptism, we're also praising God for what he's done in that person's life. So in every aspect, it's exactly as we just sang...all the glory and the honor to the son. And that is the only point towards all history is headed. If you have any sense of fear and trepidation about the future and what's going to happen next, next week, next month, next year, whenever it is. You have tounderstand this foundational thing of what we just sang when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he has already achieved victory on the cross, he rose again. He went back to the father. We just sang and now seated in victory, that we just look forward to the day where this happens. At the name of Jesus Christ, every knee will bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That's what he's done. That's it. And so we can get excited about it now, and we could be lifted up by it now, because that's the victory that we talked about last week that we actually already stand in. That's where we started last week in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14. We're not fighting for victory. There is not a battle that hasn't been already won by Jesus Christ when it comes to the salvation of man. So we fight from victory. We're already standing in it. We have been loved by him, as we saw. We have been chosen by him. And we are called through the gospel to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That's it. That's done, that's accomplished. And as we said, if you're going to stand firm in the fight, you need to know the level ground that you stand on...on Christ, the solid rock you stand, all other ground is what?...sinking sand. It's not that you're just standing on neutral ground if you're not in Jesus Christ today. You are in quicksand and you don't know how far up to your neck you currently are. But in Christ, you're on the rock that will not fail. Your salvation is secure. So the first part of standing firm, being steadfast as a Christian, enduring hardship, embracing difficulty, whatever comes your way is to know that you stand firm because God loves us in Christ as his children. He chose us in Christ, and he calls us to grow in Christ likeness. What wonderful promises that we only got through last week in verses 13 and 14.
Today we'll pick up in 15 to 17, and we'll see two more aspects to the idea of standing firm. That phrase in verse 15 that Paul calls this church to, amidst the challenges and troubles that they were going through in 52 AD that there were adversaries, chapter one told us, afflicting them, trying to either take their lives, lock them up, run them out of town like they did to Paul, Timothy and Silas. But it wasn't going to stop them. In chapter one, he gave them hope. He said, those 'afflicters' will be the ones that when Christ returns, he will repay, and you will be relieved. You will be rescued. So he gives them hope in chapter one...whatever way it currently looks like things are going around you in Thessalonica and today in America 2024. If Christ has not returned yet, we have not missed the day of the Lord. We are not in the end times yet, and our rescue is coming, and his retribution for evildoers is also coming still. That's the first promise he gives them in chapter one.
Chapter two, he then has to remind them, hey, you're being deceived by being told that this Antichrist is now here. Don't believe the hype. He's not. Because the day of the Lord hasn't come yet. And I've already taught you these things. And that kind of is this recurring idea, even into what we're going to see today, that you've got to remember what you already know. Soyou don't live in your fears, but you live in faith. You don't just walk around doubting what you already have been taught, as if it's not true, forgetting what has been told you all along. And he says no. If you're going to doubt something, doubt your doubts. Doubt the things you don't have any idea about, That's fine. If I haven't taught you it. If it's not been made clear, fine. You're okay with that. But don't doubt that which you know...that's the rock that you stand on. And so he takes them back to that rock in 13 and 14. And then today we'll see the two other ways in which we stand firm in verse 15, to know the weapons that you stand with, the weapons that you fight with, and then to know who you stand in.
So let's read the text together. I'll go all the way back to verse 13 to reestablish this closing thought from the first two chapters, and then launch us forward into today's three verses...2 Thessalonians 2:13.
"But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word."
Father, open the eyes of our hearts, that we would know the hope of our calling, the riches of our inheritance, and the glorious and surpassing greatness of your power to those who believe. Amen.
First words to be built up in and sent out by today...stand firm. Right there. The pivot point of these five verses. We are closing out chapter two. Before Paul is going to launch them into ethical living in chapter three, he has to encourage them by what has come before, to exhort them for what's to come in the future. And it all rests on that phrase, as we said last week, to stand firm, to be steadfast, to be firmly fixed in the place that you stand. And you could add all the descriptions to that you want...to be persevering, to be dedicated, to be devoted. Whatever images come to your mind for somebody who is not going to back down as a Christian, that's what he's calling the believers here and us towards today. We started with God's electing love that knew us and chose us and called us in Christ apart from any work of our own, so that we have no reason to boast. If we are so inclined to think highly of ourselves as we shouldn't. But we also have no reason to fear. Because if God has started a good work in you, what's he going to do? He's going to bring it to completion. So the good works he has prepared for you in advance, Christian...He will bring you all the way to the end. And it's all by his grace. So he starts with the firm footing of a soldier. And then today we'll see the weapons that he stands with, the strength that he stands in. And I wanted to remind us of last week so we can have these three dynamics of standing firm in our minds together, picturing ourselves as Christian soldiers...standing firm, knowing the stability on which we are. Knowing what weapon is in our hands given by his grace, and then knowing who it is that we actually standwith, who we stand in.
So start with what weapon we know we stand with in verse 15. Stand firm and hold to the traditions to which you were taught. What is the weapon that we have? The weapon that Paul reminds these believers that they have is not the traditions of man, but that which Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, whether he taught them or whether he wrote a letter to them. He is referring back to when he mentions the letter from us, 1 Thessalonians saying, you got that from me. Silas and Timothy that's the thing you hold fast to. That's the tradition. Or going back to 1 Thessalonians, if you just want to turn back to chapter one, if he's talking about that which was preached right from the beginning, he says in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, our gospel didn't come to you in word only, as in it wasn't just the word of man. Paul wasn't just like any other soothsayer or any other ethical teacher or whatever, whoever it might have been in his time period, that was just talking. He was called by God, given the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it came, he says, in 1 Thessalonians 1:5. It came in power in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. It also came with the example of his life. And what was the response of the Thessalonians?...Verse 6, you became
imitators of us and of the Lord. And here's what they did. They received the word in much tribulation. They took it in. That's how they got started. So he's referring back to that here in verse 15, that tradition, that teaching that I gave you. And that word tradition is just a simple word that means something passed on. What was Paul passing on? He was passing on that which he heard from the other apostles, and that which Jesus Christ taught him. That's what put him in a category of his own. And he said, I preached it. You received it. And then in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, this is key to understand when Paul's talking about the traditions he passed on, why they're in a category of their own. He says for this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. He says that's what separates what I taught you from false teachers of the day. In the time of the Reformation, that's what separated what Luther and Calvin and Zwingli taught them. They took them back to the Bible, away from the traditions of men...the Catholic Church at the time. The tradition of indulgences that you could pay your way to heaven, you could pay someone else's way out of purgatory. Traditions of men...not rooted and grounded in the scriptures...just made up. And into today no tradition of Ashoff, though I have many. But if I can't point you back to the chapter and verse and say, this is why we do what we do here and not something else, it's just a tradition of man. And so that's how we separate it out in our heads. False teachers in his day, Martin Luther's day...anybody else today? Paul, being able to teach traditions as in things passed on doesn't apply to the rest of us. We don't get to make it up. We pass it on. You pass it on. You hear what you hear today from here. You take it to a life group and pass it on. You share the gospel with a neighbor and pass it on. But it's not what?...It's not starting with you just taking it and passing it on to somebody else. So having been taught these traditions, what's going to help them stand firm in the fight? Well, it's the phrase...hold fast to it, grip it and let it grip you. Don't let go of what you know. Keep it in your minds so that it captures your heart. Paul writes this 20 years or so after Jesus goes back up to heaven. He's in these early churches saying, look, there is already a fixed teaching that's ours, not someone else's. And that's what you need to hold fast to. But then if you just flip two letters later, 2 Timothy, maybe written 10 to 15 years later after this. Towards the end of Paul's life, 2 Timothy is written. Maybe he would have some new instruction to give Timothy to give to these churches. And maybe there's something else that he would say. You need to make sure the people are remembering this now that some time has gone on. Listen to what he writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13-14. Paul writes, retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me. Has anything changed with Paul? Has he moved an inch? No, he said, I'm exactly the same guy at the end as I was at the beginning. Retain these sound words you've heard from me. And the sound words in verse 13 that are the foundation of our standing firm in the faith are this...in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. You go back to the Gospel. The same thing he was starting on his first missionary journey...now towards the end of his life, nothing is moving. So the things we hear about today. The deconstruction movement in evangelicalism, moving away from what I thought I was taught growing up is...no, I can't believe it anymore...flies in the face of Paul's own example, doesn't it? You don't move an inch. You don't go past the gospel. These sound words that they were to retain, to hold fast to the faith and love in Christ Jesus...He goes on to say in verse 14...we guard them. Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. Just let that word treasure get into your head and into your heart this morning. Why do we need to have that in our heads and hearts? Because it ascribes value to the Word of God, doesn't it? Treasure is something that you don't buy high to sell low. It's not an investment you make that's going to end up ripping you off by the end. Treasure is something that if you hold on to it over time, it's going to increase in value. It's going to do you better the longer you hold on to it. And that's what Paul is saying in 2 Thessalonians here. Hold fast to this tradition.
Reminds me of a verse I learned in my youth, and it was, um, kind of one of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you want to call it that, because it was Proverbs 23:23. Buy the truth and do not sell it. There's a lot of verses you can try to memorize and forget, but the one that tells you not to forget the verse you memorized, you better remember. Now. It helped as a teenager watching the GOAT play basketball...Michael Jordan. What number was he?...33. Proverbs 23:23. That's the reason I remembered it. As stupid as that is, 30 years ago, I said, that's the GOAT verse of truth by the truth. And don't sell it because of its value. You don't play fast and loose with it. You don't take something that's worth something and then just leave it lying out. You protect it, you guard it, you hold fast to it. You cling to it because when you take care of it, it'll take care of you. I mean, think of the people in your life that you've seen walk away because they didn't buy the truth, but they sold it. They sold it for a lie. They sold it for a pleasure. They sold it for something cheap. And it's worth so much because you have to give your most valuable resource to get it. What do you have to give it?...your time. Every second is a trade off that you're saying, I'm either going to wake up and the first thing in the morning, reach for my phone, reach for the news, or I'm going to reach for the Word of God. And now the clock is ticking, and every second you spend inone thing or the other is going to dictate your day. It's going to determine a lot more down the road, too, because what you're investing in now, what you're filling your mind with to get to your heart with now, is what's going to pay you back dividends decades from now. But you got to believe the value of it today. You got to buy low today. And what I mean by that is everybody around you is looking at it saying that's that's not worth anything. And you're saying, no, I'm buying low. I know it's going to go up. The people around you are saying what the word of God. What are you talking about?...wisdom of the world. Find something new. And you're saying, no, I'm investing my time in this thing. I'm reading, I'm studying. I'm saturating myself in the scripture because it's going to go up. And when I need it, it's going to be the most valuable thing I have.
I was thinking about this with Dwight Stone who passed away about a month ago now. There's a lot we loved about Dwight, his legacy in missions. But what you knew was absolutely trueabout him is he bought the word of God, and he didn't sell it from day one. When God saved him, pulled him out of the darkness, brought him into the light of Jesus Christ, gave up. He was a banker. He was an investor. He had money and he walked away from it. He knew he couldn't stay near it, and he started filling up his mind and heart with the truth. And he didn't sell it. And if you were around him the last five years of his life, he had nothing to give you but gold. He bought the truth and didn't sell it. And any time I would take young guys with me to see him in the last five years. And you can ask Justin and you can ask Nathan. We would go and sit on his porch and he owned nothing, absolute nothing. And we would sit on his porch and he
would talk to us, and he would give us the Word of God from the heart. It was there. He could pull it out, even when he couldn't even see anymore to read it. He could pull it out and we'd leave and we'd drive away and they would say, that was gold.
That's your motivation to hold fast, because one day you're going to need it, not just to give to somebody else. Dwight had a lot more hours by himself in his last few years than he did with people. What do you think was going to be tempting for him to fill his mind with? Satan wanting to make him doubt...was it worth it? Maybe. Look around and see. What am I left with here? Look at my failing body. I can't be on the mission field anymore. What did he have to fight with besides the Word of God? What do you have to fight with besides it? And it's not just a priceless weapon. It's a powerful one. It's called the sword of what?...the sword of the spirit. It's the last weapon you get. It's the only actual weapon you get. You get a bunch of armor in Ephesians 6:10-20. But the only weapon for the attack you get is the Word of God, which is the sword of the spirit. And it says, we take it up to stand firm against the schemes of Satan. And what type of sword is it? It's the strongest and sharpest weapon that you can have because Hebrews 4:12 says, the sword of the spirit, the word of God can what?...pierce you. How deep?...can divide you between soul and spirit? Oprah's words can't get to your soul and spirit. They get to your ears. They tickle them, they give you a few clever ideas and then they're gone. They're useless. But the word of God, it gets you and exposes you. It opens you up to do surgery on your heart. It shows you your sin. It lets the light in and you realize how great a God, how wonderful a Savior that He can see to the innermost part of who I am like no one else can. That's how sharp it is. How strong is it? Jeremiah 23:29, is my word, not like fire and like a hammer which shatters a rock. So you put all that together. What do you have with the Bible in front of you? It scorches and smashes every lie that's out there. You're saying, how do I know what's true today?...fake news. Do you have the Word of God? Just slices through all of it, Burns it up and you go that was a bunch of malarkey. What a weird word to choose. Cuts you deep, breaks you down, lights you up.
Kids, now would be a great time, you know, to draw during a sermon. I thought about this. If you're a young person here, you take some notes, you find yourself trailing off. Here's a great time to draw. You can draw the Bible that is both a sword and it's smashing rocks while it's shooting fire. I'd love to see that picture. So if you want to draw it for me and give it to me afterwards. I got one after first service. It's going to go in my room. Parents, I just got you ten more minutes. All right. Sothere you go.
That's what it is to hold fast to the Word of God. We treasure its priceless value, but we also we also put our hope in its power. Nothing else is as powerful with the Word of God. It's wisdom. Our wisdom is ineffective. The world's wisdom is folly. Our powers are no power compared to God's weapon of choice.
So maybe just the last question I could ask you under this is if you're not grabbing it, how is it grabbing you? I've been a Christian 34 years. As powerful as the Word of God is, it's never picked itself up and flown into my hand like Thor's hammer. It'll sit there and it won't move. And it won't turn a page without my human agency. It's got to come from a desire inside, I need that. It's powerful, but it's not mystical. It won't just open itself up and start talking to you. You got to make that move towards it. And when you do, when you put your mind to this, it will change your mind it says. It transforms your mind. It gets to your heartand it stays there and you live out of it.
So that's the second way we stand firm. We have to know the weapon that we fight with. Clinging to the truth of biblical teaching will grow stronger in steadfastness by going deeper in God's Word. And then last but not least, know the strength you stand in verses 16 and 17. Know the strength you stand in. Back in 13 and 14, he had them look backwards. Look back to God's love for you, choice of you calling on you. Then look presently to the Word of God in your hand. And then he says, as you're going to move forward, as I'm going to exhort you to every good work and word. See verse 17, he's moving you here. He's not wanting you to just learn a bunch of stuff and pontificate on it. The end game of all this is you're going to move forward stronger for every good work and word, but you got to know who you walk with moving forward. Whose presence do you stand in? Well, it tells us in verse 16, you stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God the Father. That's pretty good, isn't it? You know how we talked about last week there's a lot of things we might accept even though we don't understand them yet. Well, this is a pretty powerful one. That when we're told that we're going to be given the Holy Spirit and and he's going to come to dwell in us and not just him, that the son and the father will have a dwelling with us. You have the Trinity dwelling with you, within you. Anybody fully understand that one? But I accept it. And I accept it for a lot of different places it teaches me in the Bible when one's right here, when Paul says, now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself. It's personal, it's powerful. He's present. He's God with us, and he's the one who loved us. He loved us by coming down to earth, taking the form of man, lowest of the low. Humbled himself even to death on a cross. Went all the way to the cross to die for our sins. Rose again. He loved us. But you know. Here's the thing. God the father loved us. God the father demonstrated for his love for us. He sent Jesus to die for us. So what Paul is doing here in verse 16, that might just seem like we skip right past it. He's showing equality between the father and the son 20 years later, after Jesus goes back. So hundreds of years later when false teachers are trying to say, you know, um, later on, people started making up the idea that Jesus thought he was divine, that he was equal with God. No, Paul's saying it right here in verse 16. There's your equality with God because he links them. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father...and then that 'who'. Well, who is it? Was it the son? Or was it the father who loved you and gave you eternal comfort and good hope by grace? It was both of them. The son's efficacious death on the cross. Substitutionary atonement was his demonstration of his love was the sacrifice we needed. And we have eternal comfort and good hope by grace in him, because it was powerful enough to keep us forever. It was effective. It was finished. As it was with God our father, who loved us, chose us from eternity past, gave us eternal comfort in His Son Jesus Christ, and we can hope in God the Father by grace. You see how they're working together here. There's a robust Christology here for the son, linked together with the father to fight any false teaching that would try to say that the son is not also God along with the father. And it's just kind of a again, as Paul often does here. He just says it doesn't have to defend it. It's just true.
But knowing this love in eternal comfort and good hope by grace is what verse 17 says. It's meant to comfort you and strengthen you...that word for comfort. It's meant to encourage you. Your heart right now, even as you hear it, to say, wow, how deep the father's love for me, how vast beyond all measure that he would take his only son and make a wretch his treasure. That encourages you. It also strengthens you. It fortifies you. It builds you up to say, I don't have to leave here living in my doubts and fears of, for many people, losing my salvation could be an issue....lacking assurance. To think as some false teaching might say that you can lose your salvation. That oh, you know, if I'm not, if I'm not perfect with God, if I haven't cleaned myself up. If what if Jesus came back right in the moment of me sinning? Are you in Christ? Yeah. It matters very little your eternal salvation of the state he finds you in when he comes back or when you die. Because if he finished it on the cross and you are truly in Christ. It's not so you could just go out and live however you want, but it gives you the assurance of. I mean, think about that. There's false teaching about losing your salvation, that if you're not in a state of grace when you die, if you're if you happen to be sinning, when when you die or the Lord comes back, you're out of luck because that sin is not forgiven. Oh, so the cross wasn't enough. So it wasn't finished. So essentially, you have tokeep your salvation. You have to keep short accounts versus coming back to the glorious truths that he strengthens the believers with here. It says, no, you've been loved. You've been given eternal comfort. And that eternal comfort is...my salvation is secure.
And so now those weak and discouraged and deceived believers in Thessalonica who weren't comforted and weren't strengthened can now move forward in faith. They can go out and do every good work and word. It's because Jesus Christ
Himself is doing that comforting, strengthening. It's also interesting that that word you see, if you have the NASB, comfort is used twice in 16 and 17. The eternal comfort and then he does comfort us presently. Well, that's the same word for the Holy Spirit's name back in John 16:7. The parakletos is going to come, the one who is called alongside you to help you and strengthen you. So the Holy Spirit is active in this work. You have all three members of the Trinity working in your heart right now as you hear the Word of God to build you up however you came in this morning, whatever you were burdened by as a child of God, all of them, all of them at work in you believer to build you up, get you back on your feet. Get the Word of God in your hand, moving out those doors ready for every good work and word. Christ's power in us and through us all the time. That's how we stand firm. It's in us.
I was thinking about that phrase because I think it might have been just a few days ago. It was during the Olympics and then football season. You know, Gatorade knows their audience. And so they have their advertisements and their slogan is...is it in you? And I think the latest rendition of that is like this question at the end. Do you have 'it'? Do you have 'it'? And advertising works. Talking....we saw the ad in one of my kids asks me, so dad, do they mean Gatorade? Like, do I have 'it'...is Gatorade the it. Is the Gatorade in me? Is that what they mean, or do they mean like the guy in that commercial? He was, you know, working hard and he has passion and he's determined. And is that the it. And I said, I think you're going to have to drink Gatorade to figure it out. It's the only way to test it. You drink the Gatorade, you go bench press £300 as an 11 year old. It worked. You get crushed on the bench. You didn't have it.
But we know absolutely that we have Jesus Christ himself. We have God our father, and we have the Holy Spirit with us, in us, and we stand in him. Because we have responded to Jesus Christ...Who says, if anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink because he has something he has 'it' to give. He says that and that could sound strange. What is he offering when he says, I have something to give you to drink that will fulfill you always. Well, he's talking about the the problem of our sin, the lack of satisfaction we have in our life, no matter what we fill it with. Eternal life is what he had to offer. And he says, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will flow from you. Some of you here are like a woman he met in John chapter four. She was disheartened. She lived on the shadows of society. She was dejected and distant from God. And she meets Jesus at a well. And she's there to get water. But he's there to let her know her sins could be forgiven. And he says to her, if you knew the gift of God. If you knew what it means to be forgiven. The freedom that's found there. The removal of your guilt and the shame. I know all about you. You've already had five husbands. He's gotten her attention. He says if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink. You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
So today you're being offered that which will satisfy you unto eternal life in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't have to be a mystery of why your life feels empty today. Jesus says to you, I who speak to you am he. So is that you this morning? Came in here. Don't even know why you came to church. You wandered in. You're kind of like that lady in the story. But God has you here to hear this offer of eternal life. I who speak to you am he? Whoever drinks of the water that I will give shall never thirst again. But the water that I give will become in you a well of water springing up to eternal life. Some of you reject it not because you're just wandering around and you don't even know what you need. You think you already have it. You think you already have it because you're religious. You're like the people that Jeremiah calls out on behalf of the Lord when he says, my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Some of you aren't like that wandering lost woman in John 4. You're the religious person who you've made a god of your own cistern, and you have fixed that thing up and you think it's solid and you fill it. But what you don't know and what Jeremiah was saying there is there's a crack at the bottom you can't see. And you keep filling it up and it keeps draining out, and you fill it up with more good works, and you fill it up with your own idea of your own righteousness, and you keep going to get a drink, and there's not enough in there, and you're never satisfied. But you keep putting more in and you keep putting more in. And then finally you sit here today and you have somebody tell you none of that religious effort gets you anywhere, and you're empty and frustrated because of it, because you've made a cistern of your own religion, and you think that you can handle eternal life in that thing and you can't. And you've got to throw the thing away because it's busted. Whoever drinks of the water that he gives...the water of eternal life. You believe in him, you'll never thirst again. You got to believe that wherever you stand with God today, you might be the wanderer thinking you're way far off sin too much. He can never forgive you. And he says, come. Come and drink, come be forgiven. Or you could be the person that thought you were as close to God as you can get. But you've had that empty bucket your whole life. Drip, drip drip. Never full. The one who comes to me, believes in me...will never thirst again. And I will not cast out. So you come to Christ this morning. You repent of your sins. You call on his name for forgiveness. You trust in him.
For those who have trusted in Christ this morning you have all of what he just explained in 16 and 17. And through the work of the spirit, through the word, you can leave here comforted and strengthened. For every good work and word, you're to stand firm. His righteousness is yours. His presence is with you. And it's all of this. I mean, even this last verse, verse 17, is to launch you forward into good works, good words and chapter three, ethical living. But you have to stop this morning if you're feeling worn down, thirsty as a Christian and say, am I drawing on the strength that I already have in Jesus? And even thinking about where he is right now, he's reigning in heaven. He has all authority in heaven and earth. He's seated, not standing as the sovereign of creation. And this is the power you draw from that. It's called the session of Christ by theologians. Just like when a sovereign takes up his rule and reign, he sits in the throne. He grabs the scepter. Because the work's done. It's been accomplished. Now it's for him to give the directives. Believers, he is seated in the heavens right now, and he's seated so that you could stand firm. He doesn't need to stand up again. It's done. Now it's for you to stand firm. It's for you to do the work. And his triumph on earth, in his substitutionary death and being raised for your justification...that triumph on earth at the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and now seated at the throne in heaven, is your irrefutable and invincible evidence that you can stand. That's all you need
today to stand. He's seated up there, meaning I could stand here and I'm waiting for his return.
I was reading this week...going deep again. You know, we didelection last week, so I wanted to go even deeper and started reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, a legendary Anti-Hero. And he was steadfast in his loyalty to Sir Richard. There was a king that he did believe in, but when that king had to go away and fight and he was usurped by his own brother and he's bringing the kingdom into chaos. And Robin Hood has seen enough and that's, you know, enough motivation for that guy to go out and join with the merry band of brothers to steal from the rich and give to the poor and try to take things into his own hands. But he was loyal to his king, and he had a problem. And maybe this is a sign of the times it was written in with clerics. Sadly for me...monks religious types were loathed by Robin Hood because he just saw through the veneer. These guys are empty. So Robin and his friends come upon a monk in Sherwood Forest, and before they rob him, they offer...come have a meal with us. And so they sit down and they start talking, and the monk asks them why they despise him so much, and why do they insist on a life of robbing and stealing while the king is away? And Robin answers him, I do this not because I'm against the king, but because of my allegiance to my king. And then that monk removes his attire, and he displays the lion and the cross on his chest. And it's Sir Richard. And he says, I am your king, your sovereign king that appears before you all. When Robin saw that it was he, straight then he down did fall. Stand up again then said the king, I'll thee my pardon give. Stand up, my friend who can contend when I give leave to live. He said, you stand up right now, and you keep doing what you're doing, because you've been faithful to me this whole time. You believed in what I believed in. You stood for what I stood for. Soyou have my pardon. And when I'm back on the throne, you won't be guilty. You go and serve for me.
Are you loyal and steadfast to your king's return? Is that you? That you're awaiting his return? And you say until he comes back that's who I'm standing for. And I'll bow down to no man other than that king. It doesn't matter who's around me. Doesn't matter what it costs me. I have allegiance to my Lord. I have his sword to fight and his strength to endure. He's in you. He's with you, and he loves you. Brothers and sisters, stand firm in him.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace in our lives this morning. We have nothing to stand on apart from Christ. We would be most to be pitied if we thought there was anything else in this life that would give us a firm foundation. We would be laughed at with whatever wisdom we thought we had to go into the world and share if we didn't have your word, and if we didn't know that you are with us always to the end of the earth, your abiding presence in your spirit is with us. The father has come. The son has come to make their dwelling with man, to make a home in our hearts. And you push out and up in our hearts to increase our ability, even this morning, to receive the height and depth and length and breadth of your love. What a gift! And invigorated and inspired by your love, we can stand firm and we can be strengthened, and we can be built up for every good work and word this week. We take you at your word. Help us to do it, Spirit, we pray. Amen.
