First Thessalonians 16:13-24 Parting commands and salutations
1 Thessalonians 16:13-24 · Roger Henderson · Oct 10, 2021
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 78
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261924382867

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

I borrowed the title from Macaulay, Parting Commands and Salutations. So actually we've been covering, the last two weeks we looked at the collection to be made and we had a lot of good stuff about giving for the body of Christ and then Paul talked about his personal plans and then he talked about his personal friends. and their plans to visit him, back and forth, you know, kind of some interesting stuff.

And so the remaining part is actually what's been called his parting commands and then salutations. The salutations section actually can be broken in, and Jim read it really well, there's the household of Stephanus And there's a whole part about that. And then there's a part about his companions and rejoicing at their coming. Apparently these three men, Stephanus was kind of the leader of that group, they went back and forth at least one or more times between Ephesus and Corinth. And we'll see the picture again that kind of shows the the lay of the land there. And then finally he ends the book with a series of I greet you, so and so greet you, and he has a whole list of those.

And then he ends up with my love be with you in Christ Jesus. So actually there's some good stuff here. So let's get into it. I'm not going to reread it again. So let's just go on to the first two verses. Actually the first two verses really Actually, some have thought they're kind of a summary of the exhortations that Paul wanted to leave with the Corinthian church.

So it says, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love. So these are five commands, they're all in the present tense, so the idea is that of continuous action, keep on doing it, keep on being alert, keep on being, stand firm, and so on.

And these are some of the, Merriman says they were some of the needs that he needed to admonish them about. And they constitute a summary, Constable says, of the exhortations of the whole letter. So you have to kind of think through each of these and kind of look back on the whole book and say, well, what is this one talking about? What is that one talking about?

So we'll try to do some of that. Okay, the first one is, be on the alert. And it's to watch, it's used of spiritual alertness, present tense, so keep on being alert. Weest has it, be keeping a watchful eye, ever open. And then there's a cool verse in Colossians that uses the same word. It says, devote yourself to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving. So actually, I looked through, there are some other verses that use this word as well. I didn't actually put them up here today, but the idea is to be alert, be awake, And it's something that every believer should be in tune with.

We're to stay awake when we read God's word, when we interact with people. We're alert about what we hear. Sometimes we hear people sharing things that we say, hey, that's right, brother, sister, that sounds good, that's wonderful. And sometimes we think, well, I have a question about that. Maybe that's not exactly what scripture says. So we're to be spiritually alert is the first admonition. And the idea is that attitude of mental alertness.

Okay, the second one, you stand firm. And it's the idea of standing firm in the faith, or actually in the sphere of the Christian faith. And it can be rendered with the present tense, be standing firm in the faith. And faith, you know, in scripture, we've seen this quite a few times, and this is part of Mike's study he did on faith, is this is one of the categories here. This is the faith.

It's a body of Christian doctrine, which was delivered by the apostles. And there's several verses that talk about that. In 2 Thessalonians it talks about, so then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you are taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. It's funny, in Sunday school today we were talking about standing firm in the traditions, and Andrew went through, did a great job in Thessalonians there, and that was more the traditions that they saw in Paul's life.

But these are more the traditions about the faith, what has been presented to them. And one of the key verses here is in Jude, which we'll be covering, for those Jude fans out there, we'll be covering this in Sunday school, a little plug for a Sunday school class. So if you get weary of the other classes, the other class, you could wander over to You can wander over to Jude sometime here with us coming up in November. We're going to start in Jude. And this is one of the key verses here.

The B part of it says, I felt the necessity to write to you a pilling that you can tend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. So that. So again, that's the body of truth about who Christ is, the gospel, all that, that whole body of truth about that. And someone said that's basically, you know, almost the entire New Testament, you know, certainly Paul's writings.

Okay, number two. Number three is act like men. And when I was preparing this, I was thinking, well, what about the women? And so we'll come back to that in a second, but let's just act like men, behave oneself with wisdom and courage of a man, present passive.

So from Deuteronomy, actually this word, you know, if you're, and I haven't actually used it in my study much, but you can, you know, there's a Greek translation of the Old Testament, and so what you can do is you can get insight into words by saying, well, what Greek word did they, when they translated the Old Testament into Greek, which word did they use? And this is one of the words they used here, this act like men word, and they translated it to be strong and courageous. So it's used quite a bit in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy and in Joshua. And with the present tense again, it's be acting like men. And one thing I thought, just kind of go back to the you know, the women aspect of this. Certainly this is Paul's talking to the leaders. Think about the letter he wrote to Corinth. He was admonishing the leaders many times, right?

You know, you've got to be careful about what you do. If you have a brother that's sinning, you need to address that. You need to address this and that. So he talked a lot to the leaders, which were men, but actually, you know, What we see about acting like a man, much of that applies to being a woman. You act in a godly way and with wisdom and courage. So we'll see more of that as we go on. The Corinthians had distorted how men were to act. And we see an example of that, Constable points out, rather than acting like immature children saying, well, I'm a Paul, I'm a Paulist, I'm this, I'm that, I'm very concerned about that, they should behave like mature men or mature women.

Number three, number four, be strong. And it's keep on being mighty. And the idea here is that keep on being strong again. And I liked, in Listen to Merriman, he talked about the word having guts. He says guts is a good word, you know. Internal fortitude, having guts. And we think of that in football, right? Okay guys, get out there. But actually there are an awful lot of ladies that have a lot of guts. In my experience, they're pretty gutsy ladies. So that's not totally a term exclusive to men. In Ephesians, this is a cool passage.

Ephesians 3.16. and that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man. So all of these here, certainly all of these commands really would make no sense of living them out in your own power and strength. They have to come from a relationship with our Savior, depending upon Him, walking by faith in who Christ is. They come out of you, they're not going to go very far. And then Macaulay says, finally, with the words, be strong, Paul is saying, not only be manly or womanly, but also be mighty. And then the fifth one is kind of a phrase, or more of a, it's another verse according to the ones who divided it up.

Let all that you do be done in love. So dividing this up with the subject, all the things, all of yours, all of you, yours, all the Corinthians, let be doing, or let be done, and this is the word ginome or ginomi, And it's the idea of, the core word is the coming into a new state of being to become, in its present tense, so it's gonna read a little bit rough if you use that definition, in love, in the sphere of love. So above all, love should be motivated and mark them, like we saw in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. The great need of this church was love. And then, let all things, so this could be like a paraphrase, let all the things of you Corinthians be conducted in the sphere of love.

So those are the five charges, the five commands that Paul kind of leaves at the end of this book with the Corinthians. And so you can kind of imagine, he's writing the final chapter, if you will, and so here are the things that really came to his mind, those five aspects that he wanted to make sure they understood. So now he proceeds in 15 and 16, he proceeds to talk about different final topics he wants to talk about. So the first one is, he starts off, now I urge you brethren, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use 15 and 16 and kind of the middle part, and this is a place where there actually are parentheses in scripture. There's a description about this Stephanus, his household, and that's kind of the parentheses, but the thrust is in 15 and 16, so it reads, now or but, brethren, in Corinth, I urge you, parakaleo, to pursue, is to pursue a course of action or conduct object is you and it's with a purpose that you also be in subjection.

And this is one of those military terms. We'll see those in Paul's writings a lot. And this is the idea to rank under. And this is one we shouldn't be uptight about. We're to rank under. And one of the ones I like is the one in Ephesians 5.21. be subject to one another, believers, in the fear of Christ. We're to rank under. We're to put ourselves below, not above our brothers or sisters.

And then God, in the description of the marriage relationship, He uses this word a lot between husband and wife, the ranking under. It's not that one is superior to the other. That's the order that He has placed on His creation. So here's what he talks about ranking under two. First of all, is to such men.

So in the context, it's back to this household. This household that was, they were the first to believe in the Lord Jesus in Achaia. In Achaia, we're going to have a map shortly. Achaia was a part Let's see if I get it right. We got Asia on the right. When I get the map I'll show this to you. But anyway.

So Achaia was an area that Paul visited and that's where Corinth was at. And this was the first fruits of Achaia. And he says basically, now I did baptize the household of Stephanas. They devote themselves for the giving, the giving up, and to the ministry of the saints. So the house of Achaia was exceptional, it seems like.

They were a tremendous support to Paul, and they were exceptional people, and he points that out, and they served the Lord well, so he's pointing that out to the Corinthians. And he says, not only to the house of Stephanas, but also to those who help in the work and labors.

So he's talking about Christian workers, people that you would, so we would say, like in our body, if there's a brother or sister that's working for the Lord, doing something, we're to rank ourselves under that. We're not to be above our brothers and sisters, we're to be under our brothers and sisters.

And that's a hard, I mean, that's a hard concept to first grasp onto. You think, well, I'm under everybody. and everybody can walk all over me? Well, that's interesting. That's what scripture talks about a lot. And it's all, none excluded. To everyone who joins and cooperates with you, this is how the Amplified has it. To everyone who joins and cooperates with you, laborly, earnestly.

So now we go on to 17 and 18. So now we have three gentlemen here. I rejoice with the coming of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus. Okay, Achaicus, okay. Because they have supplied what was lacking on your part. So Stephanas had recently visited with Paul in Ephesus. This is according to Constable. And the two others, that are named. So it seems like, like I mentioned before, these gentlemen, they traveled between Ephesus and Corinth. And they went back and forth.

And they would take messages, so they might possibly carry the questions. You know, we saw in, starting in chapter 7 of Corinthians, that there were questions that the Corinthians had. And so it's possible that these are the gentlemen that carried the questions to Paul. and took the letters back and forth. So they supported both the Corinthian church and Paul's needs.

He says, because they have supplied what was lacking on your part. So it sounds like kind of a negative, but actually it's really more the idea that they supplied the presence of you in your absence. or they had made up for your absence. I was thinking about this, if you have a friend or a relative, and they come from another household, and you really enjoy being in that household, when they come, it reminds you, reminds you of, well, I really like it when I'm at Grandma's house, or I'm at Uncle Ben's house, or whatever it is. It reminds you of being there.

So that's what these gentlemen were doing. They were reminding Paul of being with the Corinthians. So that's why he phrases it that way, I think. And he talks about how they refreshed, for they have refreshed my spirit and yours. So they actually had an effect both in the Corinthian church of reminding them of Paul being with them, and the reverse. When they were in Ephesus with Paul, they reminded him of the Corinthian church. They served both ways. So the same word used here.

I really like this. I had not come across this verse before, but in terms of refreshing or to give rest or to encourage you. So in Philemon it says, Yes, brother, let me benefit from you and the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. I think we've all seen that to some degree with people that we come in contact with as we talk about the Lord. Maybe a fresh view of Him or something comes to our mind that we hadn't thought about before and it's really encouraging to us. Therefore, acknowledge such men And the word here is to recognize a thing for what it really is, to give recognition. So therefore the Corinthian church should recognize them, highly value them for what they are doing.

So now in this section, and Paul does this a lot, in this section we have the phrase, greetings, greetings from, you know, so Paul would write down, end of his letters, he would write down, it would be like me saying, okay, Vonnie greets you, Ryan greets you, and all our family members, and I'm writing a letter to Mike or somebody, and you write down all the people that you might want to hear, what are they doing? So they're greeting you too. So that's what Paul's going to do. And he used that greet you phrase in Romans, in 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and Timothy, and Titus, and Philemon.

And so the first one is the Church of Asia greets you. Several of the churches in Asia province had come into existence while Paul was in the capital city. So I want to show you this picture here in just a second. So in Acts 19.10 it says this preaching took place for two years. So Paul was in Ephesus for two years writing to the Corinthians and doing other things and preaching the gospel. And it says this marvelous at the end, it says, so that all who live in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jew and Greek. So here's my picture from last week.

So it has a lot of busy lines on it, but those lines are the missionary journeys. But look at to the right of the picture there, I have Asia underlined. And just look at the names of some of these these places, these are all places, these are all churches, right? If you look in Revelation, we see Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Pergamum. So all those places are churches.

And I was just kind of thinking, it said Paul got the message out So all the Jews and Gentiles heard the message. So Paul's ministry from Ephesus for that time period seems immense. And maybe those churches didn't all come into being right when he was there, but the result of that, just a tremendous number of churches in that area in Asia. And then across the ocean there, across the Aegean Sea, you see there's Achaia, which includes Corinth and Athens, and then you have Macedonia, which Paul also visited on the journeys. Okay, so we're getting close to the end here. All right, so now actually, you'll find in scripture sometimes we'll have different names will pop up.

So we got Aquila and Prisca or Priscilla is the name that you see in other passages. So I'm just going to use Priscilla. rather than trying to do both. So I'm going to use Priscilla. So basically, Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord with the churches in their house.

So this couple, and we see the first mention of this couple in Acts 18. They were a significant couple and they had their home church was really pretty significant in Paul's ministry. He mentions them many times. And it says in Acts 18.2, it says, he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. So they actually moved around and they moved to different cities that Paul was in.

So in Romans, it has a very similar passage to this passage about the greetings from people. It says, greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. And then in Timothy, it says, greet Priscilla and Aquila in the household of, I'm gonna call him Mr. O. I labored over this word and I said, Bonnie said, why don't you just call him Mr. O? I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'd kill the word, so I decided Mr. O is good enough.

And the last part of this, they left Corinth for Ephesus. So they were in, the Corinthians knew Priscilla and Aquila and they left for Ephesus with Paul and settled in that city. So they seemed to actually follow Paul around at some extent. They were a home church and they greatly helped Paul in his ministry. So mentioning them, people would know who they were in Corinth.

And all the brethren greet you. one another with a holy kiss. So we see this in various places. So basically a holy kiss, actually some think that the reason it got the name holy kiss is because you have two people that are both holy in the Lord and it was a common practice at that time. At that time, basically, I guess we see it today, but not as much. And unfortunately, probably a handshake is a little bit safer today in today's world. It's basically kissing on the cheek, either women kissing women or men kissing men. So a handshake probably does a better job these days.

Alright, so then he says, greetings in my hand, in my own hand. You remember back in, back several years ago now, back in Galatians, you know Paul says, what large letters I write to you. And he would do this, he would write things in his own hand because he had a secretary that he would dictate apparently letter to. And actually in Romans, the person who identifies himself, he says, hi, I'm Joe here. I'm writing this letter.

Other places. So it seemed like you would see in the text that the secretary had a very tight hand, so the letter spacing was very tight. And someone actually has mocked up one they think would look like that possibly. You'd have a very tight script in Greek and then you'd have a very maybe scripty type Greek. So you could see where Paul would start writing and he would do that as authentication that he actually wrote the letter.

So that's why he mentions here, I believe, greetings in my own hand. Okay, now we come to one of the gems in here. Okay, if anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be a curse, Maranatha. So some, you know, some might say, can I lose my salvation? I know, that's one thought you could have about this.

Okay, so first of all, let's start off with the word for love here is not agape, it's filio. And filio is the word for tender affection, or actually it could be a passionate type of love, So I thought, looking back, there's a really instructive passage in John's Gospel, in John 21, where Peter, Peter had this kind of love for the Lord Jesus. He had filial love. If you remember, and I'm gonna read part of it here, he had this dialogue with Peter, and it goes like this.

He starts off and he says, And Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? And he asked him, he said, do you agape love me? Then Peter comes back and said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I phileo love you. And the Lord said, attend my lambs. And then it goes on, there's two more iterations, right? So the Lord asks him, do you agape love me? And he comes back with, I phileo love you. And then at the very last, the Lord changes it to, do you phileo love me? And Peter says, I phileo love you.

So without being too... you know, technical there. What you see here, what struck me about this is that filial love is really something that would identify a believer and not so much an unbeliever because Peter says, in his very last statement, kind of got me onto that. He says, Lord, the third time the Lord asked him, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. So I feel that the filial love was prompted by the Holy Spirit, and Peter said, I love you.

But he hadn't gotten to that point where he understood about God's love, about agape love, it seems like, at that point in his life. He later on, when he writes his book, we see a mature Peter. But at that time in his life, he passionately loved the Lord Jesus. So one of the questions is, can an unbeliever have this kind of love? And so it's something to think about.

I don't think he can. That's my opinion. So the verse says, if anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. And accursed here is to set aside for judgment or condemnation. So certainly we know that an unbeliever's fate, unfortunately, is judgment and condemnation. That's their faith. If they haven't trusted the Lord Jesus as their Savior, that's their fate, judgment and condemnation. So this is actually, and Merriman kind of confirmed that in my mind. He said, this passage is a condemnation of those who do not love the Lord Jesus.

It's basically saying, if you don't love the Lord Jesus, which are unbelievers, this is your faith. to be a curse, to undergo God's judgment and condemnation. And that actually ends that sentence. There's a period there if you noticed at the end of a curse. And the last part is Maranatha. And Maranatha is an Aramaic expression meaning our Lord come.

And that actually, what's interesting is, in the New Testament we have a little bit of Aramaic and mostly Greek. And this is one of these occasions where you have Aramaic. So Constable kind of observes, he thought it was strange to have your writing in Greek and all of a sudden you put in an Aramaic expression. And then you continue in Greek. But I kind of thought, well, that's not that unusual, really.

In our own writings, we may put in foreign phrases, foreign languages, so Maranatha seemed to be something that was, a phrase that was used by the early church, a very encouraging phrase, our Lord come. All right, so that's that verse. And then it ends up with the last two verses.

The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus, amen. So if you think about the letter began with grace, we talked about the grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then it ends here, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

And Paul used the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in all these books here, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and so on. So Paul closes with the expression of his love in Christ Jesus to the Corinthian church. And then J. Vernon McGee said, if you love the Lord Jesus, your love, you will love the saints.

Okay, so for my closing thoughts, I kind of think something to kind of wrap it up. And actually, I like what Merriman did at the end. He gave a quick summary of what we studied in 1 Corinthians. It's only two pages, so you won't have to get lunch before we finish this up. This will be fast.

So the book of 1 Corinthians, the book deals with difficulties in the local church. God, and it's amazing, God revealed himself, think about this, look how much information we've had about our Savior and about his love for us, especially like chapter 13 is one of the most incredible passages of scripture we have about Christ's love and the character of it. So God chose the problems of the church to reveal himself even more. So we start off in verse in chapters 1 to 4 we have the distortion of the message due to the over exaltation Of the teachers of God's Word.

I'm a polis. I'm a Paul. I'm so-and-so in Chapter 5 there was indifference In the leadership you could say that's why be like men indifference to moral conduct a man living with his father's wife and And 6A, we have taking your brother to court rather than solving the issues in the court, in the church rather. And then 6B, we have moral conduct.

All the warnings we had about sexual immorality. Then with 7 was questions about Christian marriage. A lot of incredible stuff there we talked about. Then 8 through 10 was Christian liberty. Just a lot of stuff back, we were talking about that in Sunday school today, a lot of really, you know, critical stuff in that. Then 11, 11A was women's role in public prayer. Then 11B was the Lord's table. Then 12 to 14, all the time we spent in spiritual gifts this year.

And then, you know, kind of the pinnacle of that, right, is the description of Christ's love, you know, just, you know, Just incredible. And then in chapter 15, it's been a long time on Christ's resurrection and the believer's resurrection. And then finally, we've been talking about giving in chapter 16, the first part, and the final instructions. So that's been the, you know, almost a year and a half, or maybe almost two years now.

So now we're gonna start in next week. Mike's gonna start with 2 Corinthians, and so we're gonna continue. It's pretty amazing, amazing stuff. All right, so I'll just close. Thank you, Father, for our time in 1 Corinthians. We thank you for your care for us, for just your marvelous word, how it meets our needs, it tells us, directs us in problems we might have in a local body, and also it directs us just in our life, living our life with you. In Christ's name, amen.