Maundy Thursday

SERMON - Jesus Died So that We Should Live with Him!

INI

Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11

For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.

In Christ Jesus, with whom we will by God’s grace live throughout eternity, dear fellow redeemed:

The Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians served a number of purposes. It was primarily a letter of instruction and encouragement, but it also served the purpose of cementing the relationship of the apostle with this newly established Christian congregation. Paul had only been able to spend three months teaching in Thessalonica before he was driven out by hostile Jews that had followed him to Thessalonica from Philippi. Paul, therefore, had to leave Thessalonica for his own personal safety as well as the safety of the new believers living there. He left praying that the Holy Spirit would use the seeds that had been planted to establish and strengthen the personal faith of these new believers. That faith was ultimately based upon the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, carried out and completed on Calvary’s cross. Paul alludes to that in our text, which comes in the final chapter of the epistle. He tells us JESUS DIED SO THAT WE SHOULD LIVE WITH HIM! Yes, He died, as Paul explains, because this was God’s plan from eternity, with the result, he further explains, that we might thereby comfort and edify each other!

Paul begins this epistle, as he does quite a few of his epistles, with a prayer of thanksgiving in view of God’s gracious work within the hearts of the Thessalonians. The Holy Spirit had used the gospel preached by Paul to instill faith within their hearts. That faith, in turn, had revealed itself in the patience and love with which these Thessalonian believers approached their new lives in Christ. Paul then reminds the Thessalonians of the integrity with which he had conducted his brief ministry among them. His behavior, unlike so many other religious figures, had been blameless. He then continues in prayer, asking God to help the Thessalonians grow in their faith, so that in spite of the persecution they were experiencing, they would not fall away from faith into unbelief, but rather remain firm to the end. He ends this middle section of the epistle with this beautiful prayer: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints” [1 Thes. 3:12-13]. Paul continues with an exhortation to sanctified living. The world in which the Thessalonians lived was a moral cesspool, into which they could all too easily fall. Paul urges them to “aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands” [1 Thes. 4:11] as a proper testimony to the world around them.

In the final chapter and one-half of this epistle Paul seeks to comfort the believers in Thessalonica by pointing their eyes ahead to our Lord Jesus’ return and His gift of life everlasting. He points out that the death of a believing child of God will not prevent his or her entrance into eternal life. Rather, when Christ returns the “dead in Christ will rise first” [4:16] and then join the living believers with Christ in the air, and thereafter they will spend eternity with Him!

How could the Thessalonian believers…how can we today be sure of that fact? Dr. Menton, in his presentation here at Immanuel last week, mentioned that one of the greatest challenges to his personal faith came as he buried his beloved first wife here in Mankato. As you watch your loved one being lowered into the grave, your heart cries out to God in pain seeking assurance that your loved one will indeed come out of that grave and be raised. Certainty for the Thessalonians, for Dr. Menton, and for us rests in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. Paul writes: “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.” [1 Thes. 5:9-10]

God did not appoint us to wrath—to suffer eternal damnation. No, the Scriptures clearly tell us that God has “no pleasure in the death of one who dies” [Ezekiel 18:32]. In fact, it tells us on the contrary: “God our Savior…desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” [1 Timothy 2:3-4]. The Scriptures further tell us that God acted on that desire before the world even began, when in the Epistle to the Ephesians we read: “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” [Ephesians 1:4-7]. Notice that Paul ties our certainty to God’s gracious good will, not to our own will, and to the redemptive work of Christ, rather than any good works of our own.

If our certainty depended upon ourselves in any way, we could no longer be certain. If God were to make us a proposition and say: “If you pray the Lord’s Prayer one time with total concentration and sincerity, you can go to heaven,” how many times would you pray that prayer just to be certain you had done it well enough. My guess is that on your deathbed you would be rehearsing it several more times…just to be sure! There is no certainty in our works, for we can never know whether they have been done good enough, or often enough, or with sufficient purity, or with adequate devotion. God’s expectations are perfection and nothing less! We simply cannot comply. No, if we are to be certain, that certainty must be tied to the fact that we, as Paul explains in our text, “obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us!” Jesus’ death was the “propitiation” (the satisfactory payment), the apostle John says, “for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” [1 John 2:2]. We can be confident of our salvation, for when Jesus said on the cross before dying: “It is finished” [John 19:30], He meant it. Everything required to cleanse us of our sins and clear the path to heaven’s door had been accomplished. You and I are “complete in Him” [Colossians 2:10], which means that by God’s grace as we are led by the Spirit to place our trust in Him, we can be confident that we will live together with Christ in heaven throughout eternity!

Yes, JESUS DIED SO THAT WE SHOULD LIVE WITH HIM! He died because this was God’s plan from eternity, as the Scriptures so clearly reveal. The result of that plan of God is that we might comfort and edify each other with that message! That is what Paul encouraged the Thessalonians to do: “Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.”

It was imperative that the Thessalonians comply with Paul’s encouragement and command. They were new in the faith. Their faith was being challenged by angry Jewish opponents and a seductive pagan world. They needed that comfort and encouragement—they needed to study the Old Testament Scriptures and the emerging New Testament Scriptures to become stronger.

What about you and me today? Most of us here at Immanuel are not new to the faith. Immanuel congregation itself is not three months old, but almost 150 years old. Does that mean we do not need the encouragement of the gospel message? Are we somehow immune today to challenges to our faith? Is the world less seductive than it was in Paul’s day? Hardly! While we probably cannot say that the world is any worse today than it was in Paul’s day, for after all total corruption remains total corruption whatever the age, the challenges and threats to our faith are just as real today as they were in Paul’s day. “How can a young man cleanse his way?” the Psalmist asks. “By taking heed according to Your word,” he responds [Ps. 119:9]. So it was in King David’s day, in Paul’s day, and in our own! We need to be in the Word of God on a daily basis. We cannot be “Sunday-only” Christians, for then we will not long be Christians! Could you possibly eat one meal a week and stay physically healthy? Of course not! Such a thought is ludicrous! In the same way, we cannot assume that hearing a message from God’s Word for twenty minutes on a Sunday morning is going to be adequate nourishment for our souls.

We need to be in the Word ourselves, and we need to share that Word with each other. It has been said that you truly do not know something, until you can explain it to another person. When we come to know the gospel Word we need to share it with others to comfort them. Dr. Menton stated that after his wife’s death, he looked up every verse in the Bible dealing with the resurrection, for it was only by searching for those passages, reviewing them, and taking them to heart that he found true comfort. Life without the Word will go smoothly only when you meet no challenges, but whose life is challenge-less? No one’s!

Having instructed the Thessalonians to comfort and encourage one another, Paul—recognizing that we will face many challenges, ends this epistle with the following exhortation: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it” [1 Thes. 5:16-24].

This evening we commemorate Maundy Thursday—the night before Jesus’ died. In a few moments we will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper—a meal instituted by Christ on that evening for the purpose of comfort, encouragement, and edification. He would die only hours afterward. He knew that His disciples would face their gravest of challenges, but by giving them together with the bread and the wine, the very body and blood with which He would redeem them, Jesus prepared them for the challenges to come. In the same way Jesus would prepare us! JESUS DIED SO THAT WE SHOULD LIVE WITH HIM! He died because this was God’s plan from eternity, with the result that we might thereby comfort and edify each other! Amen.

—Pastor Paul D. Nolting
Soli Gloria Deo!