Waiting for the Last Time

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the end times from 2 Thessalonians 2.

“Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed. Either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that they will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things?

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And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruit to be saved through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth.

To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort in good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.”

This is God’s Word. Let us pray.

We acknowledge, merciful God, that this chapter has things in it that are hard to understand. By your spirit, we pray, help us to understand and to believe and to obey, for Jesus’ sake, amen.

Last week we looked at chapter 1, living in a difficult time. This week, chapter 2, waiting for the end time. Next week, chapter 3, working in the meantime. But this week, we’ll focus on chapter 2. From the beginning, Christians have lived with a quite remarkable tension that has to do with the coming of the kingdom. The tension exists in part because the language of kingdom in the New Testament is used in a wide diversity of ways and we have a tendency to want to simplify it into just one way.

In one sense, Jesus is born a king. Thus in Matthew, chapter 2, the question is raised, “Where is he who is born King of the Jews?” In another sense, he is coming into his kingdom even during his ministry. When the disciples are sent out, for example, in Luke, chapter 10, they rejoice because they see the power of the kingdom working through them in the casting out of demons, proclamation of the gospel, and healing of the sick. In one sense, the kingdom is comprehensive and includes wheat and weeds, wheat and tare. The kingdom is likened unto this sweep of converted and unconverted, wheat and weeds, and only at the end will there be a final separation.

In part, God’s kingdom can refer to his providential reign. The Old Testament tells us God’s kingdom reigns over all. In that sense, you and I are in the kingdom whether we like it or not. In another sense, you’re only in the kingdom if you’re born again. Jesus says in John, chapter 3, that unless you’re born of water and the spirit, you cannot see, you cannot enter the kingdom. In that sense, the kingdom is a subset of God’s total reign. It’s the subset of God’s total reign under which there is life.

Then in one sense, of course, Christ is reigning already. He says at the end of Matthew, chapter 28, this side of the resurrection, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.” First Corinthians 15 says that Christ must reign now, until the last enemy is put under his feet. But of course his reign is contested now. The reign uncontested still awaits the consummation.

On the one hand, Paul can say, “We have already been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear son.” But in another sense, we’re still waiting for the coming of the kingdom. The transformation of all things. The kingdom is still coming; it is that for which we pray. Getting the balance right in this usage depends that we pay a lot of attention to the particular passage in which we find ourselves, but still this also means that we have to learn how to wait for the end while still understanding that in some sense, the end has already begun. How do we wait for the end?

Some voices today under the general rubric, prosperity gospel, say, “Don’t you understand? The King is already reigning. You’re a child of the King. Act like it. Claim all your inheritance now. Health, wealth, and prosperity, because after all, Jesus is reigning. He’s the King.” And then from another quarter, the quarter of apocalyptic negativism, we’re told, “Listen. The whole world is going to hell in a hand basket. Nothing’s going to brighten things anywhere until Christ comes at the very end. Until then, it’s all doom and gloom.”

Then many Christians just don’t even like the debate, don’t want to enter into the subject, and simply ignore it. “Christianity has to do with how you live today, and don’t bother me about the end. It’ll pan out.” Others still are so convinced Jesus is coming so soon now, with signs everywhere, that there’s no point planning for anything in the future because after all, there isn’t going to be a future except in the new heaven and the new earth.

So how do you wait for the end? There are four priorities to maintain. Three are explained in this passage. The first one is not, but it is so common in the New Testament that I assure you it is presupposed by Paul as he writes this chapter. In fact, at the end of 1 Thessalonians, he makes the first priority explicit.

1. Be ready at any time.

Thus, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 5. “Now, brothers, about times and dates, we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman and they will not escape.” Be ready at any time. This language of a thief in the night, serving as a kind of parallel to Christ’s return, is used by the Lord Jesus himself in Matthew 24.

The point of the parallel is not that Christ’s return is sneaky or that he comes back to rob people; the point of the parallel is that it’s unexpected. If you knew when he was coming back, you could guard against it. You could prepare. But his coming will be as unexpected as the coming of a thief. It is presupposed, as I say, in this chapter: be ready at any time.

There are huge implications to this priority. The first is sometimes simply called teleology, that is, a concern for the telos, for the end. If Christ is coming back and we’re supposed to be ready for it, then there is something to wait for. We’re not just living for this world, we are anticipating the end. We long for Christ’s return. That changes everything.

It means we cannot weigh anything in this world as if this world were the end in and of itself. It reminds us of what the Lord Jesus himself taught in the Sermon on the Mount. That we are not to lay up treasures here, where moth and rust corrode, where thieves dig through and steal, but we are to lay treasures up in heaven, the new heaven and new earth, the home of righteousness. Because there is an end for which to wait. Meanwhile, be ready at any time.

In fact, much of this is dismissed by another contemporary defeater belief. You’ll recall I introduced defeater beliefs last week. This defeater belief says that everything continues as it always was, it just winds down. In fact, that defeater belief was also faced in the New Testament. Peter mentions it in the second epistle. People were already even then mocking the prospect of the Lord’s return.

They would say, “Where is this coming you’re talking about? Things continue as they are. There’s a name for that. It’s called uniformitarianism, that is, everything continues exactly the same and there is no singularity of the Lord’s return.” But Peter says, “Back up. For a start, you’ve got to remember that God’s time scale is not quite ours. A thousand years for him might look like a day. I don’t know.” Meanwhile, then, be ready. We don’t know when Jesus is coming, but we don’t know when he’s not.

2. Be prepared to wait a long time.

That’s what we’ll spend the burden of our time on this morning because it takes up most of this chapter, verses 1 to 12. The general point is clear enough from the passage. Certain things Paul says must take place before the last day; otherwise, it cannot come.

Now that’s made explicit already when he says, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report, or letter supposed to have come from us saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come until certain things.”

Now there are many New Testament texts that make similar points. Not only the passage from Peter telling us of the possibility of long delay, but also a passage like Matthew, chapter 25, the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins. In those days, the groom went to the wife’s father’s house and some of the party happened there. Then at some point, there was a parade through the streets back to the groom’s house where there was an even bigger party that could go on for a week.

Some guests were invited only to the second part, often family for the first part and other guests joining in for the second part. In this parable, there are five virgins who are invited who are wise and five virgins who are foolish. What distinguishes them is what kind of preparation they make for delay. The five wise ones are wise simply because they have a whole lot of oil to keep their lamps burning just in case the groom is long delayed.

The five foolish ones, they’re looking forward to the second party just as well. They’ve been invited, but in fact, they don’t make any preparation for long delay. As a result, they’re excluded. The whole plot turns on the long delay and whether or not we’re prepared for it. In other words, the same point is being made as here: be prepared to wait a long time.

But the precise details of 2:1–12 are much disputed, as I’m sure many of you know. This is not an easy passage. I do not have time to sketch all the interpretations that have been advanced; I’ll simply run quickly through the text, I’m tempted to say, and tell you the truth. But I shall be a little more modest than that. I’ll tell you what I think is the mostly likely way to understand it and not fasten too much on the most disputed details.

Verse 1: “The coming of the Lord Jesus is here linked with the day of the Lord, with our being gathered to him.” Verse 2 says in effect that the Thessalonians have become unsettled in this area of doctrine not because of their misinterpretation of what Paul has said but by some prophecy, some apparently spirit-given word or some letter or some report, apparently ascribed to Paul even though Paul himself hadn’t given it.

In one sense, it’s encouraging to know that there were false doctrines running around the place in the first century; we didn’t have to wait until the twenty-first century for such things to take place. Some found it helpful to write in the name of Paul even though Paul himself had not written because that meant their false teaching gathered to itself a certain apostolic authority.

You will recall in many of his letters, he writes something at the end like this: “Even though I have dictated this through the hand of Tertius, I’m writing this final greeting in my own hand.” It was a way of authenticating things, you see, so people could recognize his handwriting and see that this letter really did come from him. The fact that he had to do this is already indication of the danger of false teaching in his name in the very first century.

One can imagine the sort of thing they said. After all, Paul did write, “We have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s own Son.” So you see, the kingdom is already here! If the kingdom is already here, that changes everything! Then you could go off in a lot of different directions. It’s not even quite clear which direction these false teachers did go off into. Apparently, they wrote or reported some ostensible prophecy from Paul and led some of these people astray.

You find a similar sort of thing in 1 Corinthians 4 where the Corinthians have been led to believe they’re already reigning with Christ while Paul himself is suffering at the end of the procession, the scum of the earth. Paul says, “I wish you really were in the kingdom in that sense. Then I wouldn’t be at the end of the procession eating everybody’s dust.”

So although we do not know exactly what these people were now beginning to hold to, the false teaching was clearly leading them astray and Paul was upset. Paul’s general reply is clear enough. He says certain events must take place before you can say that day has come. Certain things must take place before Christ returns or the day of the Lord dawns.

Now this is not the only passage in the New Testament to say something like that. Do you remember the exchange between the Lord Jesus and Peter in John 21? Peter has been humbled after his horrible betrayal of Christ in the high priest’s courtyard and then Jesus explains to him how eventually he will glorify God by his martyrdom. He’s going to die a martyr’s death.

Peter looks over his shoulder and notices that John the apostle is not too far away. He says, “Yeah? What about him?” Jesus says, in effect, “Mind your own business. What’s that to you? If I want him to wait until I come back, that’s my business. You follow me.” In the event, three decades later, Peter did die a martyr’s death in Rome; and John, so far as we can tell, dies as an exile on Patmos three decades after that.

That means that if Jesus’ prophecy regarding Peter’s death by martyrdom is to be true, Jesus himself couldn’t come back until Peter had died a martyr’s death. If Jesus had come back before Peter had died, then Jesus’ own prophecy about Peter’s death would have been shown to be false. But Jesus didn’t specify how long it would take before Peter died a martyr’s death. Nobody could say, “Oh, it’s going to be three more decades, so don’t worry.” He didn’t specify how long it would be. He did specify that it must take place. In that sense, Christ couldn’t have come back before Peter died.

Also here, Paul specifies a couple of things that must take place before the end. They are, first, the rebellion; and second, the appearance of the man of lawlessness. “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way,” verse 3, “for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and exalt himself over everything that it called God or is worshipped so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

That’s the sweep of his awful rebellion. But to what does it refer? You need to remember that things like this have happened even before the coming of Christ. Almost two centuries before Jesus’ birth, the Syrian governor, Antiochus IV Epiphanes he was called, sent troops into Jerusalem into the Judean area and sacrificed pigs in the temple and set up Pagan deities in the temple and made Judaism as the Jews knew it a capital offense, in effect. He made it an offense to own any part of the Old Testament.

He made it an offense, a capital offense, to be a priest. He started a slaughter that was horrific. It finally led to what was called the Maccabean Revolt; and eventually, they overthrew these troops by guerrilla warfare and rededicated the temple, which sets up the Feast of Hanukkah still celebrated today. So in that sense, you see, there was a rebellion where somebody set himself up, in effect, as God right in the temple itself.

About 15 years before this was written, a little less, the Roman emperor Caligula, who was mad, tried to do the same thing. Up until this time, the Roman senate had sometimes declared a dead Caesar to be God. In other words, after the Caesar had died, they divinized him. They made him out to be a god. Caligula, who was mad, made himself a god, declared himself to be God during his lifetime, and then also divinized his horse. As I said, he was mad.

One of the last things he did was insist his own image be set up in the temple of Jerusalem. He hated the Jews. He was going to paganize them completely. Mercifully, he died before his order was fulfilled. For if it had been attempted, in fact, there would have been a bloody revolt 30 years before the revolt that really did destroy Jerusalem in AD 70.

Now clearly that had taken place ten years plus before Paul wrote these words, which means Paul didn’t think that was the event that was going to take place. It was already behind him. What does he have in mind? Does he have in mind the destruction of the temple in AD 70? Or is there something else going on? Some have suggested instead that when Paul uses temple language here, he uses it as he commonly does in his writings to refer to the church.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul writes to the believers in Corinth and says, “You are the temple of God. You are God’s temple.” In which case what he’s looking for here is some kind of rebellion, some sort of man of sin who will be so awful in the church that he will in effect worship himself. He will take over things and want to be divinized himself almost and exercise an authority that belongs only to God and his Christ right within the church itself, which is why the reformers often saw in this passage a fulfillment in the medieval Catholic Church. Is that the Antichrist? And so we could go on and on.

What should we make of these passages? It’s important to remember a couple of other passages that help us, I think, understand things a wee bit. In 1 John 2:18–19, John writes about the Antichrist, the same figure who is pictured here. He says, “As you have heard the antichrist is coming, so also many antichrists have come. By this we know it is the last hour.”

In other words, it was common Christian belief that the Antichrist comes in the last hour, the last times. John says, “Yeah, that’s right. And already there are many antichrists, so we know it is the last hour.” John does not say, “Oh don’t worry, there’s not going to be a big antichrist at the end.” He doesn’t say that; he says, “As you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, so also already there are many antichrists.” In other words, the Antichrist keeps coming back.

And there is a passage in the book of Revelation, which I think rightly interpreted, says exactly the same thing. Revelation 12, 13, and 14 constitute a whole unit of thought. In Revelation 12, the Devil is displayed. The Devil himself. Satan. Then in chapter 13, there are two beasts. The first is Antichrist. He comes out of the sea and he’s vicious. He tries to destroy and persecute and kill. He is after Christians that way. The second beast is called a false prophet and this time he goes after Christians by deceiving them, by giving them false teaching. Not by opposing them directly but by coming in, as it were, on their flank.

Now one of the interesting things that’s said about the first beast, the Antichrist, is that he receives a fatal wound and then lives again. Isn’t that strange language? Normally if you receive a fatal wound, you don’t live again. If you get healed, then it’s not a fatal wound. If you have a fatal wound, you don’t get healed. But this text says, more than once to make the point, that this beast, this antichrist, receives a fatal wound and then is healed. What do you make of that?

I suspect it’s a very powerful, image-driven way of saying exactly what 1 John 2 says. There are many antichrists and they keep coming back. So there’s a sense in which Caligula is an antichrist, but he dies. He receives a fatal wound. But that doesn’t get rid of Antichrist. The beast comes back. The entire imperial cult of Rome served as antichrist for the Christians. The Caesars took on names and titles for themselves that Christians could confess as belonging only to Christ. Lord and God right on their coins!

But eventually, the Caesars died. Does that mean the end of the Beast? Because he just received a fatal wound. The empire is gone. But the Beast comes back. So Pope Innocent III comes along, and in some senses, he’s a beast too, but he dies. Eventually a Hitler comes along, promising a thousand-year Reich. But in 12 years, he’s gone too. But Christians are never to be snookered and think, “Well, that’s the end of that. The Beast is gone.” The Beast receives a fatal wound and gets healed; the Beast comes back.

So be careful about being too certain how to over-specify this. You don’t have to lay down the exact specification. It’s the principle that’s really important. There is a danger of being deceived by counterfeit miracles, false teaching, or false allegiances, when authorities arise and claim for themselves the rights of God alone. Don’t you remember verse 5, “When I was with you, I used to tell you these things”? Isn’t that remarkable?

You’ll remember from last week that Paul spent only four weeks in Thessalonica before he moved on, yet he dares to say, “When I was with you, I used to tell you these things.” Can you imagine the comprehensiveness of his teaching in four weeks? He taught them the Old Testament, how it moved toward the New, who the Messiah was, how the Messiah was both suffering servant and King of Kings, and what the church is, who the Holy Spirit is, what conversion looks like, what justification by grace alone, through faith alone, looks like.

He talks about the end of heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned. He talks about the whole structure. “I told you these things,” he said. Of course, he was only there for four weeks. In this church, you had Kent Hughes for 27 years. They had the apostle Paul for four weeks. Not too surprising if they got a few things wrong, especially if there were false teachers as well that were coming in on the sides. Still Paul says, “Don’t you remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things?”

Now you know what is holding him back, that is, this man of sin, this antichrist, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work. Already there are many antichrists, yes, but the one who now holds back will continue to do so until he is taken out of the way. That, I assure you, is hotly disputed, what it is to which Paul is referring.

In one sense, it makes very little difference. The point is, in God’s providence, the final antichrist is not here yet. And then the lawless one will be revealed, verse 8, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with a breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming, the coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan just as in Revelation 12, 13, and 14.

Satan works through the first beast and the second beast. Three parties, an unholy triumvirate, a kind false trinity aping the trinity, that’s what the book of Revelation says. The man of lawlessness is Satan’s own agent deceiving many, we’re told here, working all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders, and every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.

The Antichrist just keeps coming back, he snookers a lot of folk again and again. And you know what? There is on our side the danger of a willing participation. Do you see what the apostle says in 10b? “Those who are deceived, they perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who do not believe the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”

Some people find this terribly embarrassing. How can you say that God sends people a strong delusion? I mean, doesn’t God love people? Give them another chance? You see, there is a sense in which the truth itself blinds those who do not want to see. Do you remember the remarkable passage of John 8 where Jesus says to some parties in his day, “Because I have told you the truth, you do not believe.” If that were concessive, it would be bad enough. “Although I tell you the truth, you do not believe,” that would be bad enough. But it’s a causal. “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe.”

In other words, it’s the truth itself which in this case guarantees they don’t believe. It’s the truth itself which they find so repulsive that it guarantees their unbelief. “Because I have told you the truth.” Do you see? So what’s Jesus supposed to do, then? Tell lies? By persisting in telling the truth, the truth itself eventually condemns. You hear the truth of the gospel enough times and you harden your heart to it and eventually, it is that which condemns you.

By a judicial act of God, God finally says, “All right, believe your lie.” That’s the delusion. Believe your lie. The sentence is already passed. You can’t go back anymore. You want your lie? Believe it. The sentence has passed. And thus they believe that illusion, because they will not believe the truth. There may even be some people here who have heard the truth again and again. You harden your heart to it. Don’t play with God. The time comes when out of his judicial purposes, he will so blind you that there’s no way back. You can only believe the lie, the lie you’ve always wanted to believe. Have mercy.

Do you hear the point of this whole passage, then? The first point, be ready at any time. The second, be prepared to wait a long time. This means that for those who are not believers, you must face the fact that eventually, the end comes. It comes with judgment. The judgment may even fall on you now. You cannot second guess this God. He is the one who has presented his gospel truth, the truth of redemption in his own Son. His own Son bearing our sin in his own body on the tree. This God is not to be trifled with.

I have long loved reading the writings of and about Winston Churchill. His epigrammatic wit is often wonderful. But there have been times when he said some pretty horrific things too. Toward the end of his life, he was asked, “Are you ready to meet your Maker?” He replied, “The question is whether my Maker is ready to meet me.” That is not funny. All of us shall give an account to this God. The question is going to be.… What have we done with the truth?

They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion, so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who will not believe the truth but who have delighted in wickedness. But for those of us who are Christians, the point of the passage, and it’s primarily directed to them, is astonishingly important.

If we’re supposed to be prepared to wait a long time, then we must have built into our Christian discipleship long-term planning. Here we must hearken to the horrible example of Hezekiah. Start elsewhere. In 2 Timothy 2, the apostle Paul tells Timothy to watch out for young men to whom he can pass on the structure of the gospel so that they can pass it on unto others, unto others, unto others. Do you see?

In other words, however much we are to be ready for the end, Paul tells Timothy to build into a schedule, into his priorities, a planning of mentoring and discipline and evangelism and outreach. Do you see? That means that the pastors of this church and others ought to be looking around the congregation and saying, “I want you. You’ve got potential for this ministry. I want you.” But the church as a whole must be thinking about the future.

Not only who the next pastor will be (that’s important) but where this church will be in the mercy of God, should the Lord tarry, for another 50 or 100 years. Are you mere traditionalists? Are you merely thinking about today and tomorrow or who the next pastor is? Or do you start thinking about mentoring and disciplining and evangelism programs? Not programs as programs but programs as mentoring a new generation of leaders and teachers so that you’re thinking about and praying for your children and your children’s children and your children’s children’s children.

Because you have to be prepared for a long delay. Contrast that with Hezekiah. The prophet tells him that because of his iniquity, judgment is going to fall on the nation, but only after Hezekiah has died. Hezekiah says, “The word of the Lord is good,” because he thinks to himself, “At least it won’t happen when I’m still on the throne. I’ll be gone.”

Isn’t that awful? It’s almost the epitome of selfishness. Thinking only of his own generation when instead he should have fallen flat on his face and said, “God, be merciful not only on me but on my children and my children’s children! Bring about reformation and revival yet again! Lord, have mercy!” One of the ways we must wait for the Lord is by being prepared for delay, which means we are bound, honor bound under the lordship of Christ, to be thinking and planning and working ahead.

3. Be grateful for a pastime.

Verses 13 to 15. “But we ought always to thank God for you brothers loved by the Lord because from the beginning, God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Well you can’t get much farther back than that, can you? “From the beginning.”

In eternity past, God’s sovereign election resulted in the conversion of the Thessalonians. They did come to believe through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, the Spirit setting them aside through belief in the truth over against the unbelief in the truth in verse 12. Now it’s through the belief in the truth, or otherwise put, through the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ and who he is and what he’s done and what he succeeded in doing on the cross and in rising again on our behalf.

Be grateful for a pastime. For although there are all kinds of things which still await the consummation, there are so many good things we enjoy now. Because of the love of God, exercised in eternity past, brought about in history through the gift of his Son and in our own conversion: forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Spirit, the communion of saints, the things we already enjoy, and ultimately, the prospect of sharing in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What conclusion should we draw from this? Verse 15. “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.” In the light of what God has already done in us by the gospel, what we must do is hold onto the gospel, this Word of Truth, the Word of God. Thinking about it. Turning it over in our minds. Trying hard to be faithful in thought, word, and deed. Not only understanding but believing and obeying. Be grateful for a pastime.

4. Be steady and hopeful regardless of the time.

This is now cast as a prayer, verses 16 and 17. “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.” In other words, we are so to be delighted in the Father’s love that this is worked out in eternal encouragement and good hope.

It’s eternal encouragement, not just encouragement to get through a particular crisis, because the encouragement is grounded on what is coming in eternity. It comes from eternity in God’s elective love, and it works to eternity in the new heaven and the new earth brought about by Christ himself when he returns. You can’t get better encouragement than that. You can’t get it.

You don’t need only the encouragement of how to get through the next chemo treatment. You do need encouragement for that. My wife has been through it. But you need something more than that. You need encouragement that is an eternal encouragement, an eternal strengthening. Because of this good hope that God has provided, not merely a hope for something better around the next corner but this good hope of the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. It’s a good hope.

So Christians can never look at anything in this cursed-by-sin world in the same way that the world looks at it because we have this hope, this good hope, bound up with the gospel itself that God himself has given. And therefore Paul prays that we might be encouraged in our hearts and be strengthened in every good deed and word. We are to live out the gospel.

So why should we Christians be encouraged and hopeful? We’re to be hopeful because the Lord Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” We are to be hopeful because we can say with the apostle Paul, “I know whom I have believed and I’m persuaded that he is able to keep what I’ve committed to him against that last day.” We’re hopeful because we can say, “I know that my redeemer lives.”

We’re hopeful because the apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We’re hopeful because the Lord Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father’s house are many rooms. I’m going to prepare a place for you.”

We can be hopeful because the Lord Jesus says this side of the resurrection, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. So go therefore and make disciples.” We are hopeful because he must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet and the last enemy itself is death, and unto death, we’ll die. So be encouraged. Live in hope. Be steady and hopeful regardless of the time. Let us pray.

Merciful God, if there be some present now who see the desperate state of their own condition, the danger of believing lies, confirm them in this conviction and so open their minds and hearts that even now where they sit, they lift their voices heavenward and cry, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And for all of us, Lord God, help us to see that we live between the times. Teach us how to wait and to anticipate, that the glorious coming of your dear Son’s return strengthened with a gospel of grace and with the hope of the prospect of all that is to come for Jesus’ sake, amen.