SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/23/2014
9:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Paul’s Love
for the Thessalonians
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:1 Thessalonians 2:17-18a
Message of the
verses: In the two commentaries that
I am following to aid me in my study of 1 Thessalonians one of them, John
MacArthur’s commentary begins a new chapter for these three verses, while
Warren Wiersbe’s does not. MacArthur
entitles his chapter “Out of Site, but not Out of Mind.” As you read through these three verses you
can surely understand how he came up with that title. I want to quote a paragraph from his introductory
comments on this chapter as it meant a lot to me when I read it. “Conflict between people persists in spite of
all human effort to mitigate it. Some
reports estimate that ninety percent of the people who fail in their life’s vocation
do so because they cannot get along properly with other people. Ultimately, job failure usually has little
connection with ability or even performance.
Instead, such failure often stems from an inability to be unselfish and
to understand and care about the concerns of others. People may be well trained and highly skilled
in a technical or professional field, but they are a liability in the workplace
if they are self-centered. Likewise, the
most academically well-prepared pastor can be a liability in the church if he
does not seek to sacrificially love and serve his people.” We know from our study of 1 Thessalonians
that Paul was not like that, but Paul had a great love for all of the people
that he ministered too. You can search
his letters to the churches he wrote to and find out that he had a great love
for all of them.
As we begin this short paragraph it is not too hard to
understand that there were some of Paul’s enemies who were telling those in the
Thessalonian church that Paul deserted them and that he had no feelings for
them at all. This surely is not the
truth, for we know from the 17th chapter of Acts why Paul and his
companions had to leave. They were run
out of town.
John MacArthur sets up what he is going to cover in this
chapter of his book by writing the following:
“In this paragraph, the apostle focuses on how deeply he cared for the
Thessalonians by explaining three elements of his relationship to them: his desire to be with them, his understanding
of his spiritual enemies, and his anticipation of eternal reward.” We
will look at the first one in Today’s SD.
“17 But we, brethren, having been taken away from you for
a short while-in person, not in spirit-were all the more eager with great
desire to see your face. 18 For we wanted to come to you I, Paul, more than
once-”
Warren Wiersbe writes about Paul’s way of thinking as he
dealt with what happened to cause him to have to leave Thessalonica. “In times of trouble and testing, it is
important that we take the long view of things.
Paul lived in the future tense, as well as in the present. His actions were governed by what God would
do in the future. He knew that Jesus
Christ would return and reward him for his faithful ministry; and on that day,
the saints from Thessalonica would bring glory to God and joy to Paul’s
heart. As the familiar song says, ‘It
will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.’”
This is truly a great attitude to have when facing times of trouble.
It was because of the enemy that Paul had to leave
Thessalonica and not because he desired to do so. I want to make it clear that we truly can see
the attribute of God’s sovereignty in this section for it had to be the will of
God for Paul and his missionary friends to leave Thessalonica even though it
was painful and it was caused by the enemy.
We will look at that more in our next SD. This was one way that Paul could understand this
and as we looked at the quote from Dr. Wiersbe we can see that Paul was indeed
looking ahead even though it saddened him to have to leave this church that had
been established through his work only a short time before, probably on a few
months.
As we look at the beginning of verse 17 we see these
words: “But we brethren.” Paul is talking about himself, Silas and
Timothy who had been taken away from them.
We can contrast this with the fact that the Jews were the ones who wanted
them to leave. Paul and his companions
loved this small group of believers while the Jews surely did not. I have some friends who are ministering in a
country that I will not name, but they know a person there who is a believer
and who makes a living from his orchard.
His neighbor saw some different believers visit him and so he burned
part of his orchard because he says he hates all Christians. This is a similar kind of persecution that
happened with Paul from the Jews who lived in Thessalonica. I have been praying for the man who is being
persecuted, and also praying for the man who burned part of his orchard because
he could be like Saul of Tarsus who hated Christians until the Lord saved him.
My prayer is that God will do the same for him.
The phrase having been taken away from you could be
phrased having been torn away from you, for that is what this means. Paul and his missionary friends were torn
away from this new little church and it pained his heart.
We know from Acts seventeen that Paul’s enemies had taken
him away from this church physically, but they could not take away his spirit
from him to continue to pray for them and to continue to love him. We can see in these verses that Paul truly
had a great love for this little church.
We see this love stated in the phrase “were all the more eager with
great desire to see your face.” John
MacArthur writes “That phrase is loaded with intensity and emotion; it was as
though the apostle were short of breath with eagerness and anticipation as he
expressed his desire to see the Thessalonians.
Furthermore, that aspiration was no ordinary wish. Great desire translates polle epithumia, a general expression for any kind of dominant
passion or compelling, controlling desire, and which was most often used in secular
Greek to denote sexual passion. Such usage here indicates how dominant and
compelling Paul’s desire was to see the collective face of the Thessalonians
soon again.
In the first part of verse 18 we see that Paul changed
from the plural “we” to the singular I, Paul.
Leon Morris states that because the plural is used many more times in
the two letters to the Thessalonians when Paul uses the singular it is
important. Paul is saying here that he
personally wanted to come to them more than once.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Paul writes to
the Galatian church about the fruit of the Spirit and begins with the word
love. Jesus speaking to Nicodemus in
John 3:16 speaks of God’s love. The word
love has different meanings and when we speak of God’s love it is the Greek
word Agape. This word means, now this is
my own definition of the word, God loving us in a way we do not desire or
deserve. God giving us something that we
have never asked for just because He is God and can do this.
God gave me salvation when that was the farthest thing
from my mind and He gave it to me freely, but at a great cost to Him. This is the kind of love that Paul had for
the church at Thessalonica, and this is the kind of love that I as a believer
in Jesus Christ am to give to others.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Love others with God’s love.
Memory verse for the
week: Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with
Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ live in me; and the life I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
Himself up for me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The box in which the stone
bearing the Ten Commandments was kept.”
(There is much more to this answer than this.) The box held other things and it had two cherubim’s
on it looking down at each other. The
box was made of shitim wood and that name of this wood can be translated as
carpenter and it was overlaid with gold.
This speaks of both the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ. On the day of Atonement the high priest would
come into the holy of holies where this was located and put blood on it, for
himself and also for the people. We can
see the picture of both God’s love and God’s justice through the two cherubs as
God looked at sin with justice and blood as payment of those sins. This truly pictures Jesus Christ and His
offering for us on the cross.
Today’s Bible
question: “Why is a person who is hungry
now blessed?”
Answer in our next SD.
4/23/2014 11:19 AM
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