Brent Kuhlman

+ Jesu Juva +

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

After Thanksgiving all the decorations go up.  Here at Trinity it’s blue paraments.  Blue vestments.  Red poinsettias.  Banners.  Trees.  Lights.  Decorations.  Everything looks so wonderfully different today in our church home.  What’s going on?  Looks like we’re getting our house ready for a king’s visit.  WE ARE!  FOR OUR KING’S most grand and magnificent visit.  For His splendid and glorious Advent visit.  No wonder we prayed earlier:  “Stir up, we implore you, your power, O Lord and come.”   

And He does.  What does the Lord’s stirred up power and advent coming look like?  First, the eternal Word meekly takes on human flesh.  The Virgin Mary gets pregnant – not by a man -- but through the creative Word spoken in her ears.  In her womb she carries the King of kings and Lord of lords.  Stirred up power and coming of the Lord in the helpless Baby Jesus lying in the crib and nursing from the Virgin’s breasts.  Stirred up power and coming of the Lord in the humiliated, beaten, crushed, bloody, and dead Body of Christ Jesus hanging on the Cross.

He rescued you from the threatening perils of your sins:  hell’s damnation.  Crib and Cross -- His most gracious advent visit. A mighty deliverance.  Blessed are you!  He forgives you all your sins by His Good Friday blood and His Good Friday innocent suffering and death.

So the King has come -- in the Crib and at the Cross.  Quite an advent visit.  And He’s coming again.  More stirring up His power.  The Last Day.  Another advent.

On that day He will come in great power in the clouds and with all His angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.  He will come:  for you.  You know that “for you” coming is at hand because of the perilously perilous times in which you live. 

How are you to live before you’re put in the grave or before the Last Day comes?  We are helped by today’s text from 1 Thessalonians 3. 

“Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.”  

What was lacking in their faith?  Well, as Greeks they still believed they could do anything sexually.  You know, the Three’s Company, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, Hugh Hefner, Howard Stern, Rosie O'Donnell stuff.  Anything that adulterated marriage and the gift of sex was still par for the course for them.  One fleshing themselves or hooking up with whomever they wanted.  Using their minds and bodies as if they weren’t died for.  As if their minds and bodies were not even baptized. 

Are you like the Thessalonians?  Where anything goes sexually?  Playboy mansion stuff?  Swapping, swinging, or straying?  Maybe you just fantasize about it.  Living and thinking like your not Good Friday-ed?  Like you’re not even baptized in God’s most holy name?  Then your faith is lacking.  And Paul, in chapter four, exhorts you too stop any naughty stuff that desecrates your died for and baptized body.  “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified:  that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.  The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.  For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (1 Thess. 4:3-8).

The Thessalonians were also confused about the Last Day.  They believed that all Christians would be alive when Christ returned in glory.  And then when Christian loved ones starting dying and the Last Day hadn’t happened . . .  well . . . what’s going to happen to those that have died?  Is death the end of everything for them?  For us?  Is this life all there is?  Is the promise of Christ’s glorious return just a sham?

You’ve lost loved ones too.  What do you believe?  Are you confused too?  Then Paul wrote this letter to “supply what is lacking in your faith.” 

Listen to the apostle’s help.  “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.  We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and THE DEAD IN CHRIST WILL RISE FIRST.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:13-17).

Until then, you are given to live in the full trust and confidence that Jesus is the Savior.  His death and resurrection have changed everything – even death itself.  Death does not rule.  Death is not lord.  Jesus is.  And so there will be a resurrection of the body on the Last Day.  “The dead in Christ will rise first.”  And then life with the Lord forever in a magnificent reunion with our Christian loved ones in heaven.

Again, until then, there is also the life of love.  Living not for yourselves but for others.  “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.”   

You’re redeemed and forgiven to live sacrificially for the people God’s put into your lives.  Your children need your love.  Your grandchildren do too.  So does your spouse.  Even your brother or sister needs your love.  I know you’d like to exclude them.  Nice try.  And you kids would also like to exclude your parents.  Another nice try.  But no cigar.  They desperately need your service of love.  Your love is to be extended to your fellow Christians here at Trinity and so on.  That ought to keep you busy.  

Do these people deserve your love?  Of course not.  They sin against you.  They disappoint you.  They hurt you.  Fail you. 

So are they supposed to earn your love?  No.  The divine call for your love is their need and whatever they lack.  If they need forgiveness, give it!  Recklessly!  Generously!  You love freely without strings attached.  No scorekeeping.  No bookkeeping.  Just as God in Christ has loved you. 

Learn that today at the Supper of the Lord.  Freely He loves you.  Freely He forgives you.  Proof is His gifts of His most holy Body and Blood for your holiness.  For your sanctification.  To strengthen your faith in Him.  And to strengthen your love for your neighbors.

Now:  “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.” 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.