The absence of Paul and joy for new believers. cut off after...
1 Thess: 2:17-20 · Andrew Molloy · Mar 21, 2021
Thessalonians, No. 09
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/41026163920821

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so we're in 1 Thessalonians. We're down at chapter 17, and we'll finish up the chapter, chapter 2, today. Next week, start off with chapter 3. Here's the passage, three verses, starting with verse 17 of chapter two. But we brothers, having been orphaned from you by absence for a short while in person, but not in spirit, were all the more eager with great desire to see your face. For we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, more than once, but Satan hindered us. For who is our hope or joy or crown of pride in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming? Or is it not indeed you? For you are our hope and glory. Paul writing that from the city of Corinth a few years later, maybe a year later, or six months or something, to the Thessalonians.

Let's review really quick where we're at with this journey he's on with Timothy and Silas. They were just up north in Philippi, and they got run out by the Jews up there in Philippi. They preached in the synagogue, and they were put in jail. An earthquake came. God caused an earthquake to come. They didn't escape, and they stayed there. And the Philippian jailer was saved. Up there also saved was Lydia, a seller of fine purple fabrics, as you recall, of course. But then the Philippians wanted them, for their safety, to get out of town.

So they went down to Thessalonica. They were battered, bruised, and beaten. And then in Thessalonica, Paul goes into the synagogue, as always, and truthfully and methodically explains the gospel to the Jews there in Thessalonica. and any Gentile satellites that revolve around the Jewish religion and faith. There are several Gentiles that were very interested in the God of Israel. So they're a small group of Jews, very small probably, but a good number of Gentiles, including prominent women and slaves, were saved in Thessalonica. But the Jews, the officials ran them out of town in Thessalonica again.

And this is all chapter one and two of Thessalonians in Acts chapter 17. So they go down to Berea and they have very good success there. The Berean Jews are very nice and they study the word diligently. But the Thessalonican Jews came down and harassed them down in Berea, so they had to go on to Athens. So at Athens, Paul sends Timothy back to Thessalonica and Silas back to Philippi. So he stays there in Athens and he goes to the university, the Pantheon, where all the intellectuals hung out and preached there. I see you have all these idols. And let me tell you about this one idol that you have, this one statue to an unknown God. I'm gonna tell you about that unknown God. And because it's a university town, they kind of are like, lukewarm about it.

So eventually he presses on to Corinth and he stays there for quite a while. And Silas and Timothy both return to Corinth from Philippi and Thessalonica about a year and a half later. So he hasn't seen these Thessalonians in that long of time. And there's great news from Timothy about Thessalonica. And Merriman points out in Acts chapter 18 that Paul is very distressed and very pressed in and maybe has a lot of anxiety about these Corinthian Jews. They're not believing. So, the good news of the Thessalonians really cheer him up and give him strength to really preach the gospel down in Corinth.

It really emboldens him. And I just threw up this map. There's his second missionary journey route. There's Philippi up at the very top. He goes down to Thessalonica. There's Berea down a little south. Then I guess he hops on a boat to get to Athens. He doesn't go by land.

But then I have the, if you can see, he sends Timothy back up to Thessalonica and there's the arrows. Silas goes back up to Philippi and I tried to give their return route, that little dotted line, they return back to Corinth to give them the news. Although I don't think they, take that nice circuitous route, and I don't think they, I think they made a more direct route, but I just wanted to show that they do return to Corinth.

Okay, 2.17, verse 17. But we brothers, having been orphaned from you by absence for a short while, in person but not in spirit, were all the more eager with great desire to see your face. And I'm going back to chapter two, verse seven, and I'll read that.

But we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her. Up there before from the other week, he says, just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. So you have these two former verses that really established Paul's familial sense of belonging with the Thessalonians. And they to him, you know, he treated them as his spiritual offspring. And that's very correct. And so the point I'm making is that brothers is a very natural relationship. for Paul to them and they to Paul as brothers.

I was studying and I had the I brought up the verse and it said, I copied it over to my lesson and said, but we brothers and sisters have been orphaned from you by absence for a short while. And then I was studying in my old New American Standard and it didn't have the word sisters. So in the last year or so, they added sisters in there. So, So I took sisters out just because it's not in the Greek, nor it's in the older versions of the Bible.

But it appears that they're putting things in that like that now, which is great. That is true. Of course, there are sisters there. But I think that brethren, the word brethren, we all know covers It's brethren, it's a general term for all people of Christ, right? And so I don't think you women are too offended if I took out the word sisters, but it was added in. Somebody object if you object.

Point three, having been orphaned from you by absence for a short while. The word for orphan up there is a perfunizo. I think I've got it right there. You see it there, but it's just being separated from your parents or parents being separated from children as Eugene and I were, you know, we're orphans now. from these three foster kids that we had for a short while. And now they're not quite orphaned because they have new parents up there, but we're orphaned from them.

So Paul was a father to these believers and a mother. He fed them a spiritual milk tenderly as a mother would. William Kelly, I like this, how he sums up these verses, verse 2-7, 2-11, 2-12, and then 2-17 here. He sums it up this way. Love adapts itself to the needs of those loved. So did Paul when new converts needed more than the food of babes. And what earthly father ever made good his relation to his own children as Paul to his beloved Thessalonians? Exhortation, comfort, testimony never failed to stimulate, cheer, and direct in the ways that befit the God that calls unto his kingdom and glory.

In the Greek interlinear, that short while, that little phrase for a short while, you see up there, is in its raw form, it reads like this, for the face of an hour, for the time of an hour in face, but not in heart. So it uses the word hour. So it's not a literal hour, but it's a, a figurative hour.

So it's a very short time. Now we know that Paul never got back up there. In fact, when he's writing this, he hasn't seen these believers for a year. But I think even if he never sees them again, he considers it a short, the time of an hour and face a short time when he sees them in glory, right? At the rapture. We'll get to that a little later.

On to verse 18, for we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, more than once, and Satan hindered us. And I think in some, I don't know if I have it in mine, let's see. Yeah, and I have, and yet Satan hindered us. I bet some of your Bibles might have, but Satan hindered us.

So I have a Vern-ism, a Vern-Peterman-ism here at point number one. Paul really, really wanted to see the Thessalonians again. When Vern wanted to make a point, he would put in two reallys like that. So you get the point. I think that's pretty effective, but that reminds me of Vern. Paul really, really wanted to see the Thessalonians again. That's the point he's making.

In the interlinear, it reads in the raw form, just like this, for we wished and desired to come to you, I indeed Paul, both once and twice again, is how it reads before it gets kind of transmortified into English. or proper English. So you see that there's a once and then a twice. So he's made at least two efforts to get up there to further encourage Thessalonians. And I make the point in 1b here that that would give them a lot of delight and pleasure, joy to see them.

I think being face to face with these believers would and to help them grow more, and because it went so well, I think he's really longing to see these people again. And he really makes that clear in the text. And a face-to-face showing is what he desires, is what it says. But Satan hinders him. And there is, I'm putting Satan in red so you know exactly who we're talking about.

And the word hindered is EGKOP, and you see it there, E-G-K-O-P. cutting off his path or his way. And I guess in the old westerns, you could use the word ekapto to mean cutting someone off at the pass, you know, in the old westerns that I used to watch as a kid. But hindered, that word ekapto, it's a verb, and it's an aorist active indicative, so it really happened, and it was a fact that Satan was hindering Paul's ability to go back up there, go back up north to see the Thessalonians again. Macaulay says that it's a thwarting of one's way as an army would break up or take giant jackhammers, I guess, they didn't have those back then, but, and break up a road to make it impassable. So an army can't, you know, use the road to come and do battle with you. So that's, That's what Macaulay has, that's a good definition of ectopto.

And I wanna note that all three of, how many, I don't know, there's four commentators that I found that is Macaulay, it was A.J. Ironside, it was Keithley, and it was Merriman who said that naming Satan here in verse 18 by name is not an accident. Satan, was named by name because he was personally involved in this, this thwarting of Paul. You know, I think that nowadays, you know, we have 7 billion people on the planet and many, you know, million, maybe a billion, I don't know how many believers there are in the world, maybe about a billion. But back then, all Satan had to do was focus on who, Paul, Peter, James.

Wait, head to the 12 maybe, right? And a good guess would be As you recall, the Thessalonian Jews took Jason as a hostage or a prisoner. He took him and he said, Paul, if you ever preach the gospel or come to the synagogue again or come back here, we're going to do harm to Jason when you both come. We don't know, but it could be that Paul knew that Jason's life was in danger if he went back to Thessalonica.

And that, even though that's men, that would be Satan's, Satan is behind the scene there. Satan, he's the will of God here. And we all know this, but Satan is under the limitation of a permissive will of God. God will actually use Satan's wiles as a tool for his purposes. Whatever purpose God has, he can use. whatever Satan might do to further God's purposes. Macaulay says that some evidences to our well-laid plans are from the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit blocks us, as you remember from a couple weeks ago, Paul was blocked from going up north and preaching in Bithynia. He was stopped by the Holy Spirit there. So he went on to trod us. Yet in Mexico, he called us from the Holy Spirit. Well, some of these human beings are from Satan. And, of course, in the case of Bethlehem on Acre, this one is from Satan.

Verse 19. For who is our hope, or our crown, or our joy, or our crown of pride? does it not indeed hew? For hew are our glory and joy. Al-Anis has this translation for verse 19. For what is our hope or joy, or victor's war relief and glory? are not you yourself such in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming.

And I don't know in the Greek, it's the word what, and they've changed it to who, because the meaning is who, but in the Greek, it's what. So I find that interesting. I do not know. why or how they make that change. But there it is. So if you ever see what, it's just, I think, that they're trying to make it more clear in English because it's a rhetorical question. So Andrew is our hope and joy. Any comments there? Yeah. Yeah. Andrew, it's Bob.

You know, isn't maybe the use of Satan hindering here kind of even the way we use it today, I mean, kind of stoically or kind of just The question is, how many people do you hear say Satan's influencing their day-to-day walk? I mean, not really. I'm sorry to go back to verse 18, but I just wanted to bring that up and see what your thoughts were. Does it really have applied meaning that actually Satan is really influencing the walk of the believer who is Holy Spirit-led?

Or is this just kind of Epicurean or Stoic in terms of just his interpretation? Yeah, I would agree with you. I would think in, yeah, in this day, I would, you know, we have this saying at Hollyhoes, if Satan is at your house, he can't be at my house, too, you know, at the same time.

Because we all know he's at Courtney's house all the time. And Courtney's in the other class. I'm just saying. Courtney's in the wrong class, that's it. Yeah, I think about this a lot. And I don't think it's the same. I think it's that your fallen agent, your old ally, is capable of Tremendously, the things that bother you, throwing you off course, that's what it is. It's the indwelling sin that we all have. Unless you cut off this signature by Romans 6, consider it a record of the dead, and take it offline as we teach that up, I'm not you here. I call the ills, which is good. I have to put them off.

I think that's, I think it's our still nature, not Satan. But Satan, I think, is in control of a lot of the ideals that we have, a lot of the systems of politics, things in entertainment that we can be interested in, Do you say I shouldn't watch March of Madness? Is that what you're saying? It's not positionally based, is it? I wonder whether its interpretation isn't like it is today.

Satan hindered me. Well, welcome to the world system and the events of the world system and how they modified the preaching and teaching of the gospel. Anyway, I'll get talking. No, I agree with you 100%. It's not a position of faith. Yeah, I don't think it's.

But I think in this case, for the purposes of Paul, And Paul only. It is Satan personally, because boy, the Gospel was in the hands of Paul. And that's the only one on the planet who had the Gospel. And Peter too. So Satan was actually right there. who's the, I'm blanking there, who's the, Judas. Judas, yeah. Who betrayed Christ. He was personally involved with that. You know, Job, he was personally involved with, you know.

So, I think in this case, since we're studying this at this time, in 50 AD, we can say Satan, but yeah, I don't think we can say that with all of us today, or even even other believers, sometimes even non-believers. It could just be the world system that he produced and a sin nature. It's the heart is evil. You can know it or not.

So the crown in verse 19 is the word to Stephan. Stephanus, it's a victor's twined laurel wreath. brief given at an athletic competition in Greece. Let me get my computer back up. I've used this chart before that Verbe produced many years ago. And also, I found it in Pentecost's book, the five crowns. And here are the five crowns that will be given out at the Amon judgment seat. The pictures crown.

And the first reference is there for Scriptures 9.25. The church founders' crown, sometimes it's called the crown of rejoicing or soul-making. And that's the one that we're dealing with here today, that crown. Because Paul, the church of Thessalonica was founded by Paul. There's an elders crown for service.

And I know we covered that briefly in 1 Peter, when Peter was talking about elders, the role of elders in the church. And then finally, there's the trial crown, the crown of life. And that's James 1, 12, Revelation 2, 10. And we're going to study trials next week. And many of you will get a trial crown. at the rapture for enduring tribulation.

Now, this phrase, who is our hope or joy or crown of pride in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming? So this phrase, meeting the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming, let's look at that a little. The word presence is an imposter. It's the idea of meeting. face-to-face.

And then that made me think of 2 Corinthians 3.18. So I looked that up, and where it says, from we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, I transformed it into this image. Unveiled face. And the word face in that verse is cross-upon.

And cross-upon means looking at or behold And that's the force of, say, Corinthians 3.18. You can see, and I'm not a Greek expert, but I can see that element in that those Greek words cross are the same. So you have a face-to-face presence is what it's getting at there. We get this word coming, and it's our main theme for First Thessalonians is the parousia of the Lord. And it just means his physical presence as a result of him arriving. So if I, if Vaughn in, Vaughn in Roger, I was blanking on your name. That's OK. And more for Raj.

And it's a word that both includes the act of coming over and me sitting and eating all your food for six hours. My presence there for the whole lunch period is my heresy. So it's a crude word. So our word, come, doesn't cover as much as it can. I would point here to see that these Greek words, in prosim, parousia, and prosodont, seem to be wrapped up and entwined in Greek. So it's face-to-face and it's electricity. It's like he's going to ride and rapture us up to the air.

So it's a very unique thing, what you're talking about in your personal view. I made this point in D. Think about that. When you are raptured and you're standing there, And if you don't have your car, or your shoes, or your cell phone, or your house, or your pets, or something like that, you're totally at his mercy. So in that moment, and forevermore, he takes custody of us. Just think of it. We can't deliver it. Forever, it is custody from Matt. And even without a soul, I don't know, I won't get along with him. Implied in verse 19, it's unimplied. Paul is talking about his church founder's track.

I'm going to very quickly review, however we need the time, a faster review of the gema. It's a raised platform. If you mount it, you step up to it by steps. It's a tribunal used as the official seat of the judge. It's a judgment seat, where it's an evaluation by Christ for the things done by the believers, whether they're good or bad, bad works, or good works done through the power and energy of the Holy Spirit remain through the fire. So that's the Bema judgment seat of Christ. William Kelly says that the Bema judgment is related to the glorification of God through the manifestation of his righteousness through the believer, which is a good way to state it. The subject is really glorifying God. But we're looking at how the glory of God was manifested, His righteousness, in and through the believer. And I like that statement about it.

So it separates the destructible works of God in body from eternal, indestructible works of God in body. The indestructible works would be the works that the Lord himself has done through you, but the destructible works would be the ones that you've done in the power of the flesh. So all that would remain would be what your father has done. Right. that he had to do, that he did through, it's kind of hard to say, but through, he is, and he said those, what's that verse, he said that, he said the words beforehand. He, God prepared beforehand in Ephesians. Yeah, in Ephesians, that's the one we're talking about. So that's that, exactly right. So I want to make this, I think it's the last point.

Paul, more than really this venus-y judgment of Christ, he's saying that the Thessalonian church themselves, these people, are his personal joy and crown. So he's making a personal statement here, too, in Matthew 1, independent of these venus-y rewards and crowns. But if I now receive, this is my thought here, seeing, when you think about Paul is raptured. Well, no, Paul's not raptured, because he's there already.

But we'll see him there. And you'll look across to see the people in the air. And you'll see the specimen. The men in the room that he hasn't seen for 2,000 plus years. And his heart is just going to be joyous. That's the people that he wanted to get back to seeing. He birthed those people. He's a spiritual father of those people.

And that's his pride and joy, is what I'm trying to say there at Point C. Riddler's crown of pride is crown of boasting. And in this case, it's OK, I think, to boast in someone's... If you're Paul, you can boast in what God did for the flesh on the line. is defined this way in that point F here. Persons, the Thessalonians, whose excellence is to prove the glory of others, or Paul, are called their glory. So if I say my son is my glory, my pride and glory, he's pitching today, and I hope he is my pride and glory, which is a good thing. But that pride of kicking him. his pedestal at the same time.

So a final thought here is, why would God allow Paul to be harassed and hated from going back to Thessalonica? He just had three weeks or a month and a half of obstruction with them, face to face. And then to have him blocked from the Thessalonians, blocked from seeing Paul one more time seems like a tragedy. As an added difficulty, safety was mentioned by me as being involved in the handling.

And this thought continues on through next week we'll look at. But this little booklet that I have, published in Denver, gives a good reason. And the first reason is, as a display of his glory, Charles wrote, he wanted to demonstrate that Satan cannot know, after approximately a year and a half of being orphaned from Paul, a genuine work of the Holy Spirit, and how that work can stand the test of time. I like that. I like that reason for this Paul not being able to get back up there. Perhaps God is trying to show that just two or three weeks of time of intense effort by all will result in permanent fruit, even if experienced leadership is absent, if the source is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

I like those two reasons for this verse, this hindrance verse that we looked at today. OK, so there we are. about time. Any final thoughts or emails? OK, I'll close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this study today. We thank you for all our tremendous blessings of Christ that we're saved, that we'll see and face the face someday, and that we have grace beyond measure for living today. And we just thank you for all that. We praise and praise you.