1 Thessalonians 3

¹ Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, ² and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, ³ that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. ⁴ For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. ⁵ For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain. ⁶ But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us, as we long to see you— ⁷ for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith. ⁸ For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. ⁹ For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, ¹⁰ as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith? ¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, ¹² and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, ¹³ so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Some years ago I read a fascinating and troubling interview with John Derbyshire, at that time at National Review. Derbyshire was talking about his own lack of faith and reported this anecdote form his own family.

I have the depressing example, in my own family, of an uncle who lost his faith at the very end of life. He’d been a staunch Methodist…Fred was, in fact, the only close relative of mine to be religious in a busy, dedicated way helping with church functions, lay reading, that sort of thing…Then in his late 70s he got esophagal cancer, and spent several months dying slowly. It’s an awful way to go: slow starvation and slow choking, simultaneously. At some point he lost his lifelong faith, and died an atheist, railing at the folly of religion…Anyway, the example of Uncle Fred has been lurking there in the back of my mind ever since. You hear a lot about deathbed conversions, but not much about deathbed apostasies. Well, let me tell you, it happens.[1]

“Deathbed apostasy.” Derbyshire is right: You do not hear a lot about that. But it does happen.

In many ways, life seems to assault our faith. Some stand strong like unmoved citadels. Some collapse. But many are in the middle: They continue to believe, but their faith is buffeted and in need of strengthening.

The young Thessalonian church was suffering. They were undergoing persecution. And Paul (who himself had had to flee Thessalonica earlier) was worried. Would the church there hold on to their faith in Jesus? Would the devil use their sufferings to tempt them to abandon the faith? Or would they stand firm?

As it turns out, these are the same questions that confront us today.

There will be times when your faith is challenged.

Let us begin with a well-established fact: There will be times when your faith is challenged.

¹ Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, ² and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, ³ that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. ⁴ For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.

“We could bear it no longer,” Paul writes to the Thessalonian church. Could bear what no longer? Their distance from the Thessalonians, yes, but more so Paul’s worry about the state of their faith, the health of the church, whether or not they were standing strong. So he sent Timothy specifically “to establish and exhort you in your faith.”

What was Paul’s intended goal? “That no one be moved by these afflictions.” Moved where? Moved away form their faith, moved away from Jesus.

The phrase “that no one be moved by these afflictions” can be rendered “So no one should be wagged about by these afflictions.” This is how David Bentley Hart translates it, noting that the verb translated “moved” in the ESV is sainō, “which properly refers to the wagging of a dog’s tail, and by extension to fawning or cringing behavior; it can also refer to making someone glad or to deceiving or beguiling someone.”[2]

The afflictions we face bear with them the possibility of “moving us,” of wagging us about like a dog’s tail. The storms of life can push us to the breaking point. Paul knows this. And he knows something else. Watch the last line of verse 3 and then verse 4:

³ …For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. ⁴ For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.

Church, hear me: There will be times when your faith is challenged.

I wonder if we tell people this when they come to Jesus or when we are calling upon them to come to Jesus? Do we say, “Your faith will be tested. There will be a time when your faith will cost you something…and that cost might tempt you to abandon your faith.”?

These challenges may come in the form of a literal beating, of literal persecution. Or it might come subtly, craftily. For instance, the challenge of:

• the young person who realizes that if he tones down his belief in Jesus he will not be thought of as a religious weirdo;
• the person of any age who realizes that if he or she will just abandon biblical truth on this or that issue then he or she will not have to be at odds with the dominant world system;
• the spouse who is under the constant drip-drip-drip pressure of an unbelieving spouse and who thinks, “If I just stopped going to church, the tension in this house would be gone”;
• the believer in Jesus who receives a devastating medical diagnosis and who either thinks or has it suggested to them by another: “If God is good, why is He putting you through this?”;
• the person who realizes that it is their devotion to Jesus that is putting a ceiling on their career trajectory;
• the young person who is madly in love with that other person and realizes that if she dialed back “the Jesus stuff” he might would be interested her;
• the person who wants to be thought intellectually sophisticated by his or her peers who, he or she knows, view Christianity as a farce;
• the person in the church whose pastor falls into public scandal and who, in his or her pain and disappointment, is tempted to distance himself or herself from Jesus in an effort to distance himself from Jesus’ church.

In all these ways and others, faith takes a beating in life. But hear the word of the Lord again:

³ …For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. ⁴ For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.

The scriptures keep telling us that there are going to be times when your faith is buffeted by life! In Matthew 5, Jesus says:

¹¹ “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Ah! Did you see it? “When others revile you and persecute you…”

This is not to say that every believer suffers in the same way or even to the same extent. It is simply to say this: We have good reason to expect, on the basis of God’s Word, that our faith will, at some point or many points, be challenged.

In those times when your faith is challenged, the devil will try to attack you.

Paul continues by offering another layer to his concern for the Thessalonian believers: the ways that the devil can use challenges to our faith to attack us. Watch:

⁵ For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.

First, note that we have a repetition of the earlier idea that Paul could not stand it any longer (i.e., “Therefore when we could bear it no longer” (v.1)). Paul was, in fact, anxious for the Thessalonians. This is why he sends Timothy with the letter we are reading now.

Then, the added layer: “for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.”

First, who is the tempter? The title is used in the gospels, in Matthew 4, in Jesus’ wilderness temptations.

³ And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

The tempter is the devil. And, as it turns out, Paul’s usage of the term that Matthew used of Satan in telling the story of the wilderness temptations is quite significant. There is a parallel between Jesus’ wilderness temptations and the Thessalonian’s sufferings.

In Matthew 4, we are told:

² And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Jesus was hungry. He was physically weakened. He was physically vulnerable. And it was when Jesus was in this state that the devil attacked.

So, too, the Thessalonians. Indeed, the devil was behind the persecutions and sufferings they were enduring. Nonetheless, the devil stepped in especially in their vulnerable (physically, emotionally, psychologically) state. And, given Paul’s usage of the words “the tempter” we can conclude that the Thessalonians, like Jesus, were tempted. Tempted to do what? In the context of chapter 3, it seems clear: Tempted to abandon the faith, tempted to walk away from Jesus.

In the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn away from the Father.

In Thessalonica, the early believers were tempted to turn away from Jesus.

How has the devil tempted you in your vulnerable moments, in your weak moments, in your painful moments? Is it not so? When you look at your life (either in the past or now), is it not the case that the devil has attacked your faith most viciously when you are exhausted, frustrated, weak, suffering, or distraught?

I believe this is important to know. It is important to know those states or frames of mind or emotional conditions or physical circumstances that render us especially vulnerable to the tempter. The Thessalonians were in such a state. Paul knew it, so Paul fretted over them and wrote this letter. And we must know it too when we enter into such states.

But through Jesus, faith can not only survive these challenges, it can thrive!

So…what happened? Did the suffering Thessalonians cave? Did they fall? Did the tempter convince them to abandon the faith? Were Paul’s fears well-founded? Let us see!

⁶ But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us, as we long to see you— ⁷ for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith. ⁸ For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. ⁹ For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God,

Wow! Herschel Hobbs writes, “This passage reads as if the sun came out on a gloomy day.”[3] Yes, yes it does! The Thessalonians did not give in to the tempter’s diabolical suggestions! They suffered, but they did not fall! As a result, Paul and his team could exhale at last. In fact, “For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord”! How beautiful! And their faith leads Paul and Silas and Timothy to give thanks to God for the Thessalonians! Furthermore, they now feel great joy!

Notice, however, that even in this celebration, Paul recognizes that the faith of the Thessalonians yet needs help. With pastoral care, Paul says:

¹⁰ as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith? ¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, ¹² and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, ¹³ so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

This is powerful and it is hopeful. Paul acknowledges that there is something “lacking in” their faith. This is not a criticism! Rather, it is a sensitive acknowledgment from one who loves them that, while he is elated at their faithfulness, he knows that their sufferings must have taken a toll. He is not suggesting that they are in the wrong. No! He simply is saying that he wants to see them as soon as possible and help strengthen them in their faith!

Why does this matter? It matters because it means that one can be struggling in their faith (i.e., have something “lacking” in their faith) and yet not be faithless, and yet not have abandoned Christ and the gospel. Paul applauds their faith even as he says he knows it needs to be buttressed. But this is part of the Christian life: to help one another in our weakness!

What, then, should we do when our faith is under attack? How do we respond to these weak moments?

May I suggest three things?

First, remember that Jesus is interceding for you, that Jesus is with you! In Luke 22, Jesus tells Peter that he is going to be tempted by the tempter.

³¹ “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, ³² but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

He is referring to the coming temptation for Peter to deny Jesus (a test Peter failed). But the important part is this: “but I have prayed for you.”

Church, Jesus intercedes for you in your weakest moment! He is at the right hand of the Father speaking your name! You do not suffer alone!

Second, remember the cross! Why? Because the cross stands as a reminder that our great God is not unacquainted with suffering. In your weakest moment, see Jesus in His weakness! In your moments of pain, remember Him in His suffering!

Third, when your faith is challenged, surround yourself with the faithful! See in Paul’s desire to come to Thessalonica and help the believers there a principle: Believers need the help of believers to keep their faith strong! It is one of the most indispensable ministries we can offer one another! Lift each other up! Help one another look to the cross! Come alongside one another in the weak moments just as you do in the happy moments!

Your faith will be challenged, believer…but the Jesus who has called us “friends” will not abandon us in our moment of weakness. He is with us, both through His Spirit and through the fellowship of His bride, the church.

Are you struggling? See Him there, interceding for you! See your brothers and sisters, praying for you! You are not alone! Praise God, you are not alone!

 

[1] http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDBmYzcyZTgzNzNkYWM0MzY3YjE1ZThhZGJiMDRiZWE=

[2] Hart, David Bentley. The New Testament. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), p.407nc.

[3] Hobbs, Herschel. “1–2 Thessalonians.” The Broadman Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed. Clifton J. Allen. Volume 11 (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1971), p.275.