First Thessalonians 5:16-24
You don’t need for me to tell you this morning that these are tough economic times.
About a million-and-a-half Americans have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year. Some of them are members of Saint Matthew.
Two of the country’s Big Three automakers are saying they could go out of business soon without a bailout.
State governments, like our own in Ohio, are putting together contingency plans in case projected revenue shortfalls resulting from people making less and paying less in income and sales taxes. If the cuts have to go into effect, it may mean fewer services for some people at the very times they most need them.
Retirees and workers alike are watching the values of their pension funds decrease. (I checked my own pension account while preparing this sermon and found that it's lost one-third of its total value since the beginning of this year. Well, I don’t want to exaggerate; it’s actually only lost 32.9% of its value.)
How do we Christians, people who believe in a loving God Who cares about our every moment, people who believe in a God Who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and people who trust in a Savior Who promises to come again--how do we--deal with the grim realities of life? And not just grim economic realities, but all of life’s grim realities?
The people of the first-century church in the Roman colony of Thessalonica had similar questions. And for good reason.
Thessalonica, a city that set on the Aegean Sea in the northeast of the Greek peninsula, in the province of Thessaly, next to Macedonia, owed its existence and its fortunes to the Roman Empire. It was a key stop on a major trade route that connected Europe and Asia. Most of the people who lived in Thessalonica were economically well off, in no apparent need of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ when they first heard of Jesus.
Yet about three years before Paul wrote the words in our second lesson for this morning, in the summer of 50A.D., a few Thessalonians dared to confess that their hope wasn’t in the Empire or the emperor or their money, homes, or possessions, but in Jesus Christ alone.
In the intervening time, the Thessalonian church had been subjected to opposition from the local synagogue and Roman officials. They had suffered economic pressures, persecutions, and beatings. Members who had believed that Jesus' return to the world and the Day of the Lord were imminent, had died, leaving survivors wondering where Jesus was and what had happened to those who had died believing.
To help the Thessalonians cope with their circumstances and to prepare for Christ’s intervention in their lives, Paul gives the Thessalonian church--and us--two sets of three imperatives on how best to await Christ’s coming to us. The first set is short and sweet:
- Rejoice always;
- pray without ceasing; and
- give thanks in all circumstances.
In fact, to be ready for Christ’s return or for the moments when we meet Him at the ends of our lives, adopting Paul’s three imperatives is essential.
Through them, God answers the prayer Paul mentions in our lesson, a prayer he offered not just for the Thessalonians, but for all followers of Jesus, including you and me: that God would sanctify us, make us holy, make us more like Jesus, more like the people we were made and redeemed to be.
We can rejoice. Last weekend, I heard a sermon by Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois. He talked about things he’d learned from God in previous economic downturns. One of the lessons he mentioned happened in 1982, during our last major recession.
Three years before, he had founded the Willow Creek congregation. It was still meeting in a movie theater. He and his wife were struggling with their personal finances and saw it as a great personal turning point: They were able to put away $1000 in their savings account.
They were savoring the knowledge that their adoption of the Christian discipline of thriftiness had led to their achievement when an elderly man who was part of the church approached Hybels. This man was living in a condominium and would soon be turned out. All of his investments were either tied up or had gone south in the recession. He’d also accumulated uncovered medical bills and simply didn’t have the money to pay his mortgage. “Does the church have the money to cover what he owed, a thousand dollars?” he wondered.
Hybels explained that the congregation was in the process of paying down the land on which its first unit was to be built and was barely covering its expenses as it was. The man said, “I understand. I was just wondering.”
On his drive home, Hybels had a thought: What if he and his wife Lynne just gave this man the thousand dollars he needed? He stewed about how he could share this proposal with his wife. But when he explained it to her, she said, “Bill, that’s a no-brainer. Of course, we can give him the thousand dollars. That’s probably why God gave us the money in the first place.”
So, that’s what they did. The thousand dollars allowed the man to stay in his condo, helping to ease him through the recession.
Months later, that same man approached Hybels again, this time offering to begin repaying him in installments. Hybels immediately refused the offer. You can’t put a price tag on the good things God taught him and his wife from the experience. They had learned to rely on God completely, not on money; that every good and perfect gift comes from God; and that God gives to us so that we can give to others. Above all, maybe, they experienced the joy that belongs to people who are living in sync with God’s will for their lives. If we’re walking with the God we know in Jesus Christ we can rejoice no matter what our financial situation.
We can also pray in all circumstances. George Mueller was a pastor and social reformer in nineteenth century England, a time and place where the poor had it particularly rough. If you were indebted and couldn’t pay your bills, you were thrown into prison. Disease and alcoholism and abandoned children were everywhere. Most of Dickens' novels convey something of what that era was like. It was a tough time!
After his conversion to Christian faith at the age of twenty, George Mueller became a pastor and moved to the city of Bristol. The small church he pastored grew over the course of his lifetime and starting with just a few pennies, he founded an orphanage for which, before his death, he had raised the equivalent of about $7.5-million.
Mueller was a hard working person of action, but he was also a man who spent hours praying. Everything he did was built on the foundation of waiting for God's direction through seasons of prayer.
His diaries record that in November, 1844, he began praying that five different young men, children of friends, would come to faith in Christ. He prayed for them every single day, no matter where he was and no matter how he felt. Eighteen months after he began these prayers, one of the young men came to faith. He thanked God and kept praying for the other four. Five years later, the second one came to faith. Mueller thanked God and prayed for the other three. Six years later, the third one came to faith. One year after Mueller died, fifty-three years after he began praying for those five young men daily, the last two surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.
I’ve had similar experiences with prayer. One that especially stands out, which I’ve shared with many of you before, involved a source of real, deep personal anguish for me. I prayed about this issue every day for thirteen years, sometimes wondering if God was telling me my concern weren’t really important. I had just about given up on praying about this item, when God answered my prayer suddenly and more wonderfully than I could have ever imagined. I want to urge you today: even in the tough times, even when your hope is running out, pray without ceasing.
Finally, give thanks in all circumstances. It was Advent, days before Christmas, when I got the telephone call informing me that Margie, who had suffered a long time from a debilitating disease, had passed away. I had visited with Margie and her husband hours before she died.
During that visit, her husband Carl told me, “Advent has always been Margie’s favorite time of year.” He explained that Margie loved everything about the Christmas season. But she also loved remembering that some day, whether at the end of her own life or the end of the world, Jesus would come to her and take her to be with Him forever. “Maybe, this Advent will be Margie’s Advent,” Carl had said.
I rushed back to the nursing home. “It is her Advent,” Carl told me as I walked into Margie’s room. And then, Carl and I gave thanks, not that Margie had suffered and died, but that Christ had come to her and taken her home. That experience underscored for me that we can give thanks, not for all, but in all circumstances. Carl taught me that even when times are tough, Christ is still with us and we still have blessings that deserve our thankfulness.
If I had to summarize the three imperatives in our second lesson today, it would be simply: When tough times come, hang in there with God.
We can do that because God has demonstrated His love and concern for us in the baby born in a cattle stall, Who died and rose for us.
This Savior is returning. In the meantime, we hang in there by rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks to God for our lives, our salvation, our hope, our purpose, for the joy of Christmas, for the love of Good Friday, for the promise of Easter, for the presence of Christ with us always, and all of our blessings in this world and the next.
When we hang in there with the God we know through Jesus Christ, we’re ready to welcome Jesus whenever He comes to us. We can join in the ancient prayer of the Church, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus."
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