Our Faithful God

All right. Good morning brothers and sisters. It is an honor to be here with you guys. Can I just take a moment before we get started to tell you how encouraged I am by everything I've seen since I've been here from spending time with your interns to just hanging out with Ben. I mean what a blessing it is for you guys to have a pastor like that in Ben and in Keith, and to just see the various ways that the Spirit is working to glorify Christ and to advance the cause of the gospel here in Charlottesville. Honestly, I feel like revved up, encouraged, empowered to go back to Decatur and to keep trying to be the best shepherd that I can be. So thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and a privilege. So, I do CrossFit and Like every CrossFitter, I make it known within five minutes of being in any room where I happen to be. I'm not a vegan though, so I'm one for two there. Now, in the sport of CrossFit, there are different kinds of workouts, and one kind of workout that we do is called a Hero WOD. These workouts, these hero wads, are usually dedicated to fallen servicemen, firefighters, police officers, first responders, those who have given their lives in the line of duty. Now, these workouts are programmed to be brutally difficult, next to impossible. The purpose of a hero workout is to help CrossFitters understand what it must have been like to be that first responder in that situation, right? So to be that firefighter running up the stairs of the World Trade Center even as it was collapsing down on top of them, right? To be that guy in a firefight in the hills of Afghanistan after a three-day foot march with no sleep, little food, less water. What must it have been like to keep pushing, to keep going when you want to quit but you can't? The worst hero workout for me personally is one called Murph. Maybe you've heard of it. It's been made famous by the Navy SEAL that it was made after they made a movie about him. But it's named after this Navy SEAL whose name was Murph, and he died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. And he used to do this workout three days a week. He called it his body armor workout. You know, you're busy. You're a soldier. You don't have time to be working out. You've got to be out on mission. So he would just knock this out three times a week, and here's what it is. With a 20-pound vest. you would do a one mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and then another mile run. So Memorial Day is coming up and all CrossFitters around the world typically use Memorial Day as a time to do Murph together to celebrate the fallen. Now this is a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible workout, okay? For me, the urge to quit comes about a third of the way through, and then it just never goes away, right? You know, sometimes you can be running and you feel like, oh man, too many donuts, right? But then you kind of get your second wind and you're like, okay, I still got it, you know? That never happens for me in MRF. It's a true test of mental fortitude, physical grit. Now, when you're doing a hero workout, You're supposed to be thinking about the fallen, right? You're supposed to be remembering their courage, their fortitude, their determination. But whenever I do Murph, I usually end up thinking about my Christian faith. I usually think about my walk, my life trying to follow Christ in a fallen world. In my experience, trying to walk the path of holiness in a fallen world feels very much like trying to make it to the end of a hero workout. Sometimes it feels like I just cannot possibly keep going. How do we remain sexually pure in a pornified culture? How can I prioritize time with God in a society that is always on the go? How can I battle anxiety when the world is pressing in on me from every angle? About three quarters of the way through Murph, All I want to do is take my vest off, go sit down in the shade, and give up. And sometimes that's how we feel about sanctification. Sometimes we just want to stop fighting. We just want to give up, to give in, and to let the world take over. This morning's text is all about being found holy and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And like the end of a long CrossFit workout, sometimes that day just seems so far away. I wonder if you've ever felt as tired as I feel in the middle of that workout. I wonder as you're sitting there listening to me talk about my experience of the Christian life and how exhausting it can be to try to remain on the path of holiness, to be found pure and blameless on the day of the Lord. I wonder if you hear that and you say, brother, listen, yes, amen, I'm with you. Or if you hear that and you say, actually, I don't know what you're talking about. Not that bad, not that hard. Just kind of do what you're told, you know, follow the rules. At the end of the day, finishing a CrossFit workout, it really does depend on me. People can cheer me on. They can give me some water. They can shame me, which they will and they do. But at the end of the day, finishing that last little bit of the workout, it is entirely up to me. I either have it in me or I don't. No one can carry me across the finish line. I have to make it across in my own strength. Friends, the good news that I have for you this morning is that our sanctification is not like that at all. According to this morning's text, our ability to make it to that last day depends wholly and entirely on the God who has saved us and who will carry us to the end of the race. So let me pray, our sister already read the text for us this morning, but let me go ahead and pray, and then we'll open up our Bibles and just make sure we have our fingers there so we can reference it again, and then, yeah, we'll jump in, so. Father God, we adore you for who you are, for what you've done for us. We recognize every last part of who you are. You are exceptionally holy, and because of that, we can not only love you, but trust you, Believe all the good promises that you have for our souls. Father, I pray that your word would convict us this morning as well as encourage us. For the glory of your name. Amen. So let's go ahead and just have our Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians 5. I'm in a little bit of an awkward spot preaching on the smallest pulpit I've ever preached on. out of the largest Bible I've ever preached out of. So I'm gonna have to like have the Bible set aside and then grab it whenever I need to reference it again. Yeah, I need an armor bearer. Y'all remember that in the Old Testament, an armor bearer? Let me pull this a little back here. Is it like a budget thing? I know lumber is expensive right now. If it is, just talk to me after the service, Keith, and we'll see if Sixth Avenue can help you guys. All right. Have you ever had a conversation with someone where it seems like no matter what, they always find some way, somehow, to bring the conversation back to them? Doesn't matter what you're talking about, when you're talking about it, they always find a way to get the conversation back on them. This kind of me-centered way of having a conversation is not atypical, and it's also a symptom of just kind of our me-centered way that we view the entire world. And we can bring that tendency to the Bible, and we can tend to read the Bible through a me-centered lens, a self-centered lens. So when we learn to read our Bibles like this, we do things like read the story of David and Goliath, and we think that this is about me, rather than about God. Or, as I taught in our little mini-seminar this weekend, we'll read the Lord's Prayer and we'll think that the Lord's Prayer belongs to me more than it belongs to the church. Even though it says, our Father in Heaven, we tend to think about it like my Father in Heaven. With this kind of me-centered hermeneutic, we can come to a text like this morning's text, and we can fail to see that this text is really more about God than it is about us. If you read this morning's text with a me-centered lens, you'll think, oh, this text is all about me being found holy on the day that Jesus comes back. And that's almost right. That's almost right. But really, this morning's text is a benediction. wherein Paul is encouraging the Thessalonians in their sanctification, but he's doing so by pointing them back to God, the one who is the guarantee of their sanctification. They're being found holy and blameless on the last day. I know our sister just read it for us, but let's just go ahead and read it again. 1 Thessalonians chapter five, verses 23 and 24. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. This is God's holy, inspired, inerrant, and infallible word. Amen? Now, I also want you to know that I understand that this morning's text does address the coming of the Lord. I'm not really going to address that. That's not my concern in this morning's sermon. In this morning's sermon, I'm less concerned with showing you how God will help you to be found blameless on the day of the Lord. And I'm more concerned with helping you cling to the promise that God will enable you to be found holy and blameless at the coming of our Lord. So with that in mind, I have four points for you this morning, each of which I think should anchor your faith in the concrete foundation of God. So note takers, here we go. Point number one, the God of peace. Point number two, the God of holiness. Point number three, the God who keeps. And point number four, the God of power. If you didn't get all those, we'll state them as we walk back through them. So point number one, the God of peace. As Paul begins this benediction, he refers to God as the God of peace. That's where I get the title of this point. Why peace? Why does Paul refer to God here in this benediction as the God of peace? Why not the God of wrath? Or the God of holiness? Or the God of sovereignty? I think any one of those might make more sense in this context. This is about us being found holy and blameless when Christ comes back. And if he's rooting our ability to do that in God himself, why not refer to God's holiness as our surety of being found holy? Why peace? Well, in the Bible, you can see that the peace of God is very closely correlated to the comfort and order of God. You can see that just by way of contrast, for example, if you look in 1 Corinthians 14, 33. You can turn there or you can just listen, I'm just gonna say it quickly. There Paul says, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. So the contrast is clear. Confusion creates chaos, and chaos robs us of peace. Now, if you know anything about the context of 1 Thessalonians, you know that the Thessalonian church is battling chaos in a very real way. They're enduring persecution from outside of the church. They're wrestling with doctrinal controversies inside the church. Did Jesus already come back? Did we miss it? What does that mean for people who have died? That sort of thing. And then on top of those, you know, persecution on the outside, doctrinal controversy on the inside, you just have the normal slog of being a Christian and putting sin to death and dealing with issues and Satan trying to disrupt the unity of the church. Now, if you were to just put yourself in Paul's shoes for a moment, if you were pastoring a church like this, if you were trying to shepherd these Thessalonians, And if you wanted them to continue to fight for holiness, how might you approach them? Would you come at them like a drill sergeant, you know, barking orders? You know, this is how you do holiness. This is how it works. Would you approach them like a seminary professor, you know, throwing a whole bunch of $2 words out, you know, cleverly articulated arguments and syllogisms. Well, if you were a wise pastor, you might just find a way to help your people anchor their fight for sanctification in the gospel itself. And more specifically, in the God of the gospel. You might remind the people that although they are in the midst of turmoil, although their sanctification is being threatened in a multitude of ways, the God who has called them is in His very nature. a God who works against such chaos and confusion. The God who has called them is, in fact, a God of peace. You know, throughout Scripture we are told that God is holy. And whenever God calls His people to Himself, He calls them into His holiness, right? That's a refrain that you see throughout all the Old Testament and on into the New. Be holy, therefore, as I am holy. Well, the same thing is true of other attributes of God, like His peace. God is a God of peace, and when He calls us to Himself, He calls us to enter into that peace with Him. He calms the storm. He delivers the oppressed. He conquers our enemies. He quells the chaos. Let me give you another example of where Paul uses this title, God of Peace, in a very unexpected way. Listen to the way that Paul uses this same title when referring to God in Romans 16, 20. He says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Again, this feels very weird. Why does he call God the God of peace in this verse? Why not the God of power? Why not the God of victory? Why not the Lord of hosts? As he so often referred to as in the Old Testament, you know, like the leader of the angelic armies, right? The guy who's gonna crush Satan. Why not refer to him something more like that? Because what he's trying to communicate to these Christians is the idea that God will get rid of the thing that is trying to rob them of their peace. Or in this case, the person who is trying to rob them of their peace. This is exactly what Paul is saying to the Thessalonians in this morning's text. I know that you are feeling the weight of everything that is happening in this fallen world, outside the church, inside the church. You feel that bearing down on you, but your God is a God of peace and he's calling you into that peace and he will resolve these things. Friends, he's saying that same thing to you this morning. One of the things I love about preaching at my local church is I know who I'm talking to, right? It's one of the reasons why you probably shouldn't be discipled by a pastor on the internet. You can't be discipled by a pastor on the internet. I don't know you this morning, I don't know this congregation, I don't know what you're going through, but I know enough about the human condition, the plight of saints of God in a fallen world to know that in some way, every single person in this room this morning is in a battle. Every single person in this room is wrestling against the flesh, the world, and the devil. I know that all of us are in danger of losing our peace, the peace that has been purchased for us by Christ on the cross in the gospel. Friends, take comfort. The God who has called you will ensure your peace. And one day he will call you to be at home with him at peace forever. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, I want you to know that I've been right where you are. First of all, congratulations on being here. And also, kind of weird, when I wasn't a Christian and I would sit in church services, I just could not wait for it to be over, you know? Another song and we're singing all four stanzas, you know? And could the prayer have been any longer? And when is this guy gonna shut up? Am I allowed, I'm not, I shouldn't say shut up. But if you're here this morning, I want you to know that I've been right where you are. I've been a non-Christian sitting in a church service. And I want you to know that I know that you have no peace. That doesn't mean that you don't think that you have peace. That doesn't mean that you don't try to tell yourself that everything's okay, that you are at peace, that things are going pretty well, things could be worse. But I know, and I know that you know. Even if you only think about it in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, I know that you know. And you should also know that God knows. He knows that you're not at peace. He knows the angst in your soul. He knows the turmoil. You weren't created to live the way that you're living. You were created to have communion with the God who made you and the God who loves you. And I want you to know this morning that God cares so much about your peace that he sent his son to enter into the chaos on your behalf. His son came to the earth, lived in this terrible fallen world with cancer and drug abuse and sexual victimization and racism and every bad thing that exists in this world. He sent his son down here to be with you, to experience that, and then to rescue you from it. And it cost him dearly to do so. He entered into the lack of peace called death so that you might have life and peace with God forever. And the good news about how you achieve that is it's pretty easy. All you have to do is turn away from your sin and trust in Christ. If you want to know more about what that means for your life, I'd encourage you to come find me after the service or Ben or Keith or any of the Christian brothers and sisters who are here this morning. I'm sure that there's nothing that they would love to do more than talk to you about the peace that you can have in Jesus. Point number two, the God of holiness. This next point is going to seem fairly obvious, but sometimes those are the things that we need to hear most, you know? So here goes, you ready? God will sanctify us completely because He cares about our sanctification. Yeah, not that mind-blowing, right? Let me say it another way, maybe this one will take your breath away. God will make His people holy because he desires holiness in them. No, no, it's still pretty self-evident. Well, let's explore this a little more. This may seem obvious to some, if not most people in this room, but you should know that not all self-professing Christians understand this very basic concept. We all know the truth that the gospel says, come as you are, right? Like if you're waiting until you're healthy enough to go to the doctor, you've misunderstood the gospel, right? Jesus says, no, come as you are. But what many of us, all too many of us don't know is that the gospel also says you can't stay that way. The gospel is not a call to complacency. In reality, when God calls him to himself, he says something like this, come as you are, broken, damaged, hurt, sinful, and let me transform you into my image. Let me heal you, let me fix you. So to misunderstand or to reject or to neglect this aspect of the gospel is to do serious damage to the vital organs of the gospel. I mean, just listen to the way that Paul talks about sanctification in Ephesians chapter five. He says, Christ loved the church and he gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her. So how important is our sanctification to the Lord? As important as it can possibly be. It's because he loved us that he gave his life for us. And one of the reasons why he gave his life for us is that we might be cleansed and be found holy. This is a really, really big deal. So as we talk the rest of this morning in our sermon about God's faithfulness and his sovereignty and sanctification, I just wanna make sure that we don't get ahead of ourselves. I just wanna make sure that we don't just assume that everyone in the room understands this. I want us to pause and make sure that we understand that the God who is committed to the sanctification, the God who saved us is also the God who's committed to the sanctification of those whom he saves. Even when you think about the doctrine of predestination, I'm just going to light this match and then leave on a plane this afternoon, hope it goes well. Just listen to the way that Paul talks about predestination in Romans chapter 8, verse 28. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son. God so ordered the universe, every molecule of every atom that has ever existed has been so ordained in such a way as to bring about the sanctification of God's holy people. So if you're here this morning and you know that you're a believer, I mean, you have confidence that you belong to the Lord. But sometimes you wonder if you can make it all the way home. I want you to remember this, brothers and sisters. Jesus died to purchase your sanctification. He didn't die to purchase your salvation and then leave you to kind of figure out the rest of the stuff and hopefully you make it all the way home. Jesus did not give his life for you on the cross only to leave you behind on the battlefield. When I was about four years old, I fell into the deep end of a swimming pool at a friend's house with a belly full of nachos. Bad situation. Didn't know how to swim. The nachos were the best part of that situation. They were really good. Now, thankfully, the dad of the house, he heard me yelling as I was going under the water, and he jumped in and saved me. But by the time he got there, I was down at the bottom of the pool, you know. So he swam down to the bottom, he grabbed me, he got to the top, took me to the edge of the pool, put me on dry ground. I don't really remember what happened after that. Sometimes when we think about salvation, and what God is accomplishing for us in salvation, we think about it like a man who's drowning. You think about your soul as being at the bottom of the pool. And we think that God is like the lifeguard, you know, the dad who comes in, he saves us. But we think about it like he comes to the bottom of the pool, the pit of sin, the depths of despair, and he grabs us and he swims up to the edge with us and then he lets us go. If that man would have taken me from the bottom of the pool all the way up to the edge of the pool, and then let me go back down to the bottom, would you say that he really saved me at all? No. I was only saved when I was on dry ground. So brothers and sisters, remember, the God who initiates salvation for us will always bring it to completion. Point number three, the God who keeps. I know that transparency has become the new highest virtue of our age, right? You can say whatever you want, and then somebody says, hey, that's not appropriate. And you can say, I'm just keeping it real, right? I'm just being transparent. And they go, oh, well, you got to respect that. Even so, most of us really deeply fear true transparency. We feel like if we open ourselves up to others, we will become vulnerable. We believe that if those who are really close to us ever get to know the real us, they might just walk away from us. And to be fair, we tend to feel that way because many of us have experienced that very thing. People have gotten to know the real us. We have let the wall down. We have opened up the doors to our hearts, let people see us as we truly are, warts and all. And sometimes when people see that, they do choose to leave, to walk away, to cut ties. Human relationships are fickle, delicate, superficial things. The reality is that most of our love is conditional. But then there's Jesus. Jesus knows every bad thing about us. Not just our quirks and eccentricities and foibles. He knows our sins. He knows the thing about you that you hope that no one ever knows. The thing that you won't share in small groups. The thing that maybe you might share with your pastor if you can develop a strong enough sense of trust. Maybe you're trying to find the right way to bring it up to your spouse. He knows that. We're like the woman at the well who thought she could keep her sins hidden from Jesus. But the fact of the matter is we can't hide anything from God and yet he does not leave us. He doesn't cut ties. He doesn't walk away from us. He pushes into us. He doesn't abandon us. He grabs us with an even tighter grip. Why? Is it because there's something inherently worthy in us that makes him stay with us? Well, that can't be it. I mean, when you stop and you think about who you really are, honestly, at your core, you have to know that the answer to that is no. He doesn't stay with me because of who I am. And maybe you're not that self-aware. Maybe you think, yeah, he does. I'm actually not that bad of a person. I wish you could just put like a tape recorder around your neck and just have it running for like the next five years of your life. And then you could just sit and listen to your life. You just know that that's not true. God's commitment to us has to be because of something pertaining to who God is in his very nature more than who we are in our very nature. Now in verse 24 of this morning's text, Paul tells us why Jesus is so doggedly committed to his people, sinful though we are. It's right there. He who calls you is faithful. It is because of the attribute of God's faithfulness that he sticks with us, even when he has every reason to abandon us. Now, in order to understand what Paul means when he says that God is faithful, we have to ask a question that I think will pretty quickly get to the heart of the matter. Do you think that you are faithful? Let's ask some diagnostic questions. Let's kind of drill down into our own hearts for a moment here. Do you guys have a church covenant in this church? Yeah? And every member who joins this church has to sign the church covenant? No? Or basically agree to it? Okay, so essentially, yeah, you consent to do all the things in the church covenant, okay. And in that church covenant, is there something about gathering together with the Lord's people for worship on the Lord's day regularly? Maybe unless like providentially hindered? And would you guys say that there have ever been any Sundays where you could have been here and you were not providentially hindered and you just chose to not be here? What about on your job? Have you ever stolen company time? Have you ever taken something from the supply room without permission? Have you ever engaged in some kind of unethical behavior, minute though it I'm sure is, that if your boss knew, it would lead him to consider you as less faithful than you would hope that he would consider you to be? What about in gospel ministry? The Lord has entrusted to you this gospel of salvation. He's called you to be an ambassador, to call the nations to repentance and faith back home to him. How are you doing with that? I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip. I'm just asking you to be honest. Have you ever been too embarrassed or afraid to share the gospel with someone when you had the perfect opportunity to do so? Have you ever been talking about some implication of the gospel, some entailment of the gospel, just the way we live our Christian lives around unbelievers and found yourself embarrassed to agree with God about what he says in his word? What about with stewardship? Can you honestly say that you have been maximally faithful with your time and your talent and your treasure? All that God has given you for the glory of his name and for the good of the church? What about if you're married? Have you been faithful to your spouse? Well, Sean, are you asking me if I've committed adultery? No, not in one sense. I'm sure you remember that when Jesus taught on adultery, he said adultery is first of all a matter of the heart. So, Men, women, have you been faithful? My hope is that I ask, as I ask these questions, that you're not sitting there like a good little Pharisee and grading yourself. Okay, five. He asked me those five. I think I'm doing pretty good on the first two. Big miss on number three. And I think like a C minus on the fourth and then good again on the fifth. That's not what I hope is happening this morning. Rather, I hope that every one of us in this room can begin to see with just five questions, there could have been 50 questions, that we are not faithful. Not the way we're supposed to be. This is the story of all the Old Testament. God says, I love you, I'm gonna marry you, I'm gonna be your husband, I want you to be faithful to me. And Israel fails over and over and over again. And then it comes right into the New Testament from the 12 tribes of Israel to the 12 apostles, where you just look at Peter. He's a good little, you know, standing example of all of the apostles who are just wildly unfaithful to their master and Lord. But then there's God. God has never promised to do something and then changed his mind out of laziness, spite, or fear. God has never made a commitment that he has failed to keep. God has never started something that he was incapable of finishing. God has never over-committed and under-delivered. God does not break his promises. And the great hope of the Thessalonians is that the God who saved them has promised to take them all the way home. And so as Paul is encouraging them to continue the good fight all the way to the last day, he does not point to anything in them and say, cling to that. He says, look away from yourself. What will you find when you look at yourself? Nothing but discouragement. You'll find your hope just dwindling, diminishing. No, look to God, look to Christ, and see there in Him a faithful Lord, the great anchor of your soul. If our sanctification depended on our faithfulness to God, no one would ever make it to heaven. Not the holiest, wisest, most godly person that you know, whether that's some dead white theologian or your grandma. Paul makes this kind of contrast explicitly clear in places like 2 Timothy, listen. 2 Timothy 2.13, if we are faithless, he remains faithful, why? because of who he is in his very nature. For he cannot deny himself. Going back and thinking about Israel in the Old Testament, where God is pictured as the faithful husband to an unfaithful bride, it blows my mind that God never rips up the marriage certificate. I mean, he gets close. But he never takes the wedding ring off. Even when Israel goes into exile and it seems like there's a kind of temporary separation, He still never finally draws up the divorce papers. Even when he is furious with them over their sin, he never packs his bags and leaves. Amber and I, me and my wife, we've been married for 15 going on 16 years now. And we've had a ministry to drug addicts throughout that entire time because we came from that world. We're just not very good at many things, and we at least know that, so okay, we'll do that. And we've had drug addicts come and live with us in our home and with our children. If you've never lived with a drug addict, let me tell you, it can be very rewarding and pleasant in some ways, and it can also be very unpleasant. We've been stolen from, we've been lied to, we've been manipulated, deceived, even embarrassed. But when you're doing this kind of ministry to like, you know, a heroin addict, you cannot decide to continue or to give up on the drug addict living with you based on them acting like a drug addict. If that's how you thought about your commitment to them, You would never minister to anyone, because they're going to act like addicts. That's just part of it. You have to know that going in. Your commitment to serving the addict in their addiction, it has to be grounded in something outside of their worthiness. The same thing is true with God and us as people. And friends, we are sin addicts. And God's commitment to helping us become spiritually sober has to be grounded in something outside of ourselves. And praise God it is. is grounded in the very nature of who he is. Listen to God describe himself from Numbers chapter 23, verse 19. God is not a man, praise God, that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? In verse 24 of this morning's text, Paul says that God is faithful to those whom he has called. That's the language of election, the language of calling. One of the reasons why I am so zealous to championing things like election and predestination, what some people call the doctrines of grace, is because I see in those things the great comfort and hope and anchor for our Christian souls. In eternity's past, God the Father elected, He chose, He set His heart upon, He loved us in advance, His people. And then He predestined us. That is, He set up all of destiny in such a way as to accomplish our salvation. And then He sent His Son for us. And His Son accomplished this work of redemption. He gave His life to purchase all those that the Father elected and predestined and adopted. And then when the Son left, the Spirit came. And the Spirit applies this work of redemption to our hearts. He seals us for the final day. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the economy of the Trinity, working throughout all of eternity, from eternity's past to eternity's future, to make sure that we make it home. Our God is so faithful. He has a plan that's so big and so glorious, we can barely wrap our minds around it. Friends, God's commitment to display his faithfulness through us is really, really good news for us. It's the anchor that scripture tells us to cling to when we become fearful or anxious about whether or not we can really make it to the last day. I mean, just listen to Hebrews 10, 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Don't even waver. Okay, well, how do I do that, you know? How do I hold fast like that? For he who promised is faithful. That's how you do it. You don't focus on your holding fast. You focus on the one who gave you the ability to hold fast in the first place. You believe that he is who he says he is, that he'll do what he says he will do. So if you're here this morning, brother or sister, And if you feel like you are wavering in your faith, hold fast. You do your part, you work, you strive, you confess, you put your sin to death, you take advantage of the means of grace and scripture and prayer and fellowship with the saints. But you do all of that knowing that the only reason you can hold on to God through those things is because God is faithfully holding on to you. Amen. Point number four, the God of power. At the end of this morning's text, Paul says, he will surely do it. So just right there in verse 24. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. This is confidence. Paul is 100% rock solid, without a doubt confident that the God of the Thessalonians will be faithful to them and persevere them and carry them all the way home. My question this morning is, how can God be, excuse me, how can Paul be so confident in God's faithfulness? I mean, we've already said we can trust in his faithfulness, we can be confident, but how? Like, what is it about his faithfulness that we go, oh yeah, I can definitely lean on that, I can definitely trust in him? I just think about my own self in this. I try to replace God with myself, and wow, that's a contrast. I can certainly plan to remain faithful to my promises, but that doesn't mean I'll actually have the ability to do so. So I've been talking a lot about jujitsu this weekend. Why not? When I first got into jujitsu, I made a commitment that I was going to do three competitions in three months. I was like, okay, I don't want to do this, but they say you should, it's good for you. I'm old and broken, but I'll do it anyways. And so I'll do three competitions in three months. But right before the first competition, after I had trained and studied and really prepared, I sustained a not so insignificant injury. I couldn't go. I was willing to go. My plan was to be faithful to that commitment I had made to myself, but my tendons and ligaments were weak. I think that's a pretty good picture of our inability as fallen creatures to fulfill some of the promises that we make. You think about when Jesus tells his disciples, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The disciples wanted to pray for Jesus. They weren't being rebellious. Jesus says, pray for me. They're like, yes, we got it. For sure this time, not gonna let you down. Love you, don't worry, we'll be right over here. We got you. They can't. Jesus comes back. You expect them to kind of sculpt. Hey, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The spirit is willing, but Satan is scheming. The spirit is willing, but the world is working against us. We can and should strive to remain faithful to all of our promises, but we cannot have the kind of confidence in our own faithfulness that Paul has in the faithfulness of God. Well, what's the difference between us and God? Well, the difference is the power of God. We're weak. God is strong. We're frail. God is durable. We are finite and limited in our energy and resources, but not God. Friends, I hope you understand this morning that the God who loves you, loves you with an invincible love. Not a weak love, not a feeble love, not an impotent love, but with a mighty, powerful, unstoppable love. A love that cannot be defeated. So I wonder what it is today that's got you feeling like you won't be found blameless on the last day. I wonder what it is that has you wondering if you will be found ashamed on the day of the Christ's return. Is it anger? Sean, I just feel like, I just can't, I'm trying, I'm doing counseling, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, I just can't help it, I'm so angry all the time. Is it greed? Mark says, you know, greed makes the world go round. Is that true for you? Do you just feel like, man, I want to sacrifice my treasures for the sake of the kingdom, but I just feel like the rich young ruler, I feel like I just can't give it up. I just feel like I can't conquer this desire in my heart. Maybe it's lust. You know, Freud says, no, no, it's actually sex. That's the most powerful thing in the world. Maybe you feel like you just cannot break the grip that pornography has on you. Or you just cannot stop sleeping with your girlfriend or boyfriend. Or you just cannot stop rolling through the mental Rolodex of lustful images in your mind. Whatever it is, I want you to know, friends, that God is more powerful than all of those things. There's not anything that you can tell me this morning that is going on in your life. There's no sin that you are battling. There's no experience that you're going through that you can come up to me after this service and say, Sean, you don't understand. Because actually, here's what I'm going through, and this is why I doubt that I'll be able to make it to the last day. There's nothing that you can tell me where I will go, ah, you know what, that's an exception. God's not more powerful than that. Friends, I can speak about the power of God quite confidently for a couple of different reasons. One is that I've experienced it in my life. I remember being a young man, and the only thing I cared about in the whole world was money, sex, drugs, and violence. I was a drug-dealing gangbanger. Everyone who knew me thought that I was definitely going to end up dead or in prison, and I was on my way to prison, and I had narrowly escaped death a few times. People were afraid to open their doors to me in the neighborhood for fear that I might put a gun in their face and rob them. I had no one, I had nothing. I had given my life entirely over to this fallen world. I was completely captive to sin. I was a slave until I met Jesus. I went to counselors, psychiatrists, boot camps, halfway houses, rehab facilities, new age, mystics. When I was 17, I had a shaman do a dance over me, thought maybe that might break my drug addiction. I was locked up. I mean, everybody thought they had the answer to my antisocial behaviors. But none of those things were powerful enough to break the grip that Sin had on me. And then as soon as I met Jesus, the chains fell off. And then as I began to read the Bible, it made perfect sense. It didn't surprise me in the slightest. I started reading passages like Ephesians 2, turn there with me. I still remember the first time I read this, I thought, yeah, that's what happened, Ephesians chapter two, verse one. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. You were not sick, you were not asleep, you were not inebriated, you were not slightly disabled, you were not under anesthesia, you were dead. Guys, I've been around a lot of dead people. My time in the army, I saw a lot of people die in front of me. I never once saw anybody who was dead ever come back to life. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. So not only were you dead, but you were taken captive by Satan. And we all live like that. Verse three, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, that's my whole testimony. Those two words right there, that was me. Maybe you're thinking, well, Sean, I was never a drug dealer. It doesn't matter if you were a drug dealer or not. Prostitute, soccer mom, doesn't matter, dead in sin. Rebellion against God, pursuing your own glory, your own truth, trying to do this your own way. Every single person in this room either has that testimony right now as an unbeliever or had that testimony. But if you're in this room right now, this is your whole testimony as a Christian. But God, you came into contact with a God who is powerful enough to raise you from the dead. And because he's rich in mercy, and because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead, even when we didn't deserve it, he made us alive together with Christ. I know it's easy to lapse into doubt. I know it's easy to let unbelief creep in and to forget. about the God of the universe who saved you. I know that sometimes his power doesn't always seem present. And so we forget about exactly who it is that we serve. Friends, I'm here to remind you, God is powerful. He will surely do it. He's already done it. It's done, it's accomplished. And now you work in his working. On the cross, Jesus uttered these words of the psalmist. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I think there are a couple of different reasons why Jesus said that on the cross. I think at least one of the reasons why he said that was so that we, his people, could identify with him in our weakest moments. So if you feel like this morning God has forsaken you, if you wonder where God's power is in your life, if you wonder if he has abandoned you, forsaken you, like he won't raise you on the last day, if you feel discouraged, like you could just die, I want to encourage you, brother, sister, look away from yourself, look up to the cross of Jesus Christ, and I think you'll find your confidence restored. As Paul was sitting in chains, he was a prisoner of Rome. He was soon to meet his maker at the hands of an executioner. He wrote these words to one of his beloved churches. Same kind of confidence. Listen to his confidence. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. God began the work. God will finish the work. He is faithful. He will surely do it. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we are desperate. We cling to you even as you keep hold of us. Father, we pray that if your word has been spoken accurately this morning, that you will, by your spirit, apply it to our hearts. We pray that you will strengthen our faith, that you will encourage us as we go back out into this world, trying to tear us away from you, trying to weaken our faith, trying to knock us off the narrow path. Father, may your word protect us and guide us and keep us until you bring us back together once again. We pray this in your son's most holy name, amen.