Jesus Uses Christians Like Us in The Progress of The Gospel in The World:

weeks are so at the book of Second Fessalonians. It's a timely book because it's dealing with the group of Christians who are in a world where it looks like it's all coming to an end. Great threats. They are experiencing persecution, and they have been told in the midst of that that they have entered into the day of the Lord, that they have God's judgment upon this earth, and Paul had promised them that Christ would take them out of this world before judgment came into the world, and so Paul writes to straighten that out, but he also writes to another problem. And that other problem is what he mentions in First Fessalonians as those who are unruly in the church, and all churches have occasion to deal with unruly people at times, and all of us who are Christians, most of us have experienced those times when we have been a bit unruly.

I was thinking this morning about this because Jeff and Denise just took a trip to Virginia, Kentucky, where was it? Tennessee. They went to Tennessee, and they had four small children. The oldest is how eight, all the way down to a baby, in a crew cab truck. Now, children typically on that kind of a trip will have occasion that has short seasons of unruliness, and dealing with unruliness is a very difficult thing, especially in the life of the church. One of the most difficult things that the church ever has to do is to deal with unruly believers, in obedience to the word of Christ. And so after speaking about the first problem was the faint-hearted among them who were so afraid that everything was coming apart, and that they had entered into the day of the Lord, Paul spends the first two chapters of 2nd Thessalonians dealing with that.

And now in the third chapter, he's going to instruct them about how to deal with unruly believers, but there is a bridge here in the first five verses of chapter three that the transition that takes place. And before Paul speaks about this very difficult commandment to deal with unruly believers, and this difficult commandment of telling these unruly believers who are unruly in the sense that they are idle and they are not working, before he instructs them on how to deal with them, he makes this statement, notice in chapter three verses one through five. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did also with you, and that we may be delivered from perverse and evil men, for not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.

And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you that you are doing and will continue to do what we command, and may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.