Grace and peace to you from God our Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Paul had spent many days hoping, hoping that this little church he planted in
Thessalonica still existed. Paul was able to spend extended time in Ephesus and
other areas, but when he got to Thessalonica he probably spent less than
a month there, certainly less than two months. It wasn't long after proclaiming
the gospel that those who opposed his message stirred up the crowds and
created a riot and drove him out of town. Drove him out before he really had a
chance to fully establish this church in the faith. And so he'll tell us a bit
later in the letter to the Thessalonians that when he could stand it no longer he
sent Timothy to find out was there anything left. And what he discovered was
a thriving church. You understand Paul's excitement upon hearing that his hopes
had been fulfilled. He began saying we give thanks to God always for all of you,
constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father
your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ. Steadfastness of hope, that catches my attention, perhaps because I
look around in our world and I see a great loss of hope and the hope that
remains is largely a misplaced hope. We all have hopes. Some are casual hopes.
Hopes that it doesn't rain or that the cooler weather will remain for a bit.
When those casual hopes aren't met we're disappointed, maybe frustrated, but we
typically can move on in fairly short order. But in addition to casual hopes we
have critical hopes. We hope for something that matters deeply. And as
creatures made in the image of God, you have God-given hopes. Hopes for things
like justice. A world in which all wrongs are made right. You watch the news and
you hear reports of the powerful getting away with terrible things and something
within you cries out, that's not right. And you hope that they may get what they
deserve. You hope for things like transcendence, that sense that there's
more to life than simply getting through the day and paying the bills. There's a
sense of meaning and purpose. We all have this deep hope for relationships, that we
could be known, fully known by someone and yet deeply loved. And certainly I
trust all of us who have had that experience of seeing something
beautiful, a piece of music, a sunset, a mountain vista, and something stirring
deep within you can't fully put words to. Something that you wish you could hold
on to. But life continues and you have to let it go. When these critical hopes are
disappointed, we grieve. We often struggle for a period of time. It takes time to
get over those disappointments. But in addition to casual hopes and critical
hopes, there are ultimate hopes. These are the hopes that you've bet everything on.
It's the only hope that's left when all other hope has been lost. If your ultimate
hope is disappointed, everything is lost. The problem comes when we promote hopes
to the next category. We take hopes and view them more highly than we ought. For
example, we take casual hopes and we promote those to critical hopes. I hope
there's no traffic becomes how dare these people block my way. A casual hope
that you might have an uneventful trip to work has become a critical hope. A
demand even that these people treat you with the respect that you think you
deserve, that these people serve you, that these people take care of you. It can
leave you as a person always offended, always frustrated. But even more dangerous
is when we promote critical hopes to ultimate hope. You might say, I hope my
marriage grows. That's a good hope. But it's not a good ultimate hope. To expect
that your spouse will be the missing link to your happiness. To expect that your
spouse can make you feel secure in no way a human can. It puts more weight on
the marriage than it was designed to hold. I hope my children turn out well.
Certainly the cry of every parent wanting your children to flourish is a
critical hope, one of our deepest hopes. But it becomes ultimate when their
success is a verdict on us as parents, when their struggles feel like our own
failure, when their rebellion feels like our own ruin. Here's a test. What happens
when this hope goes unfulfilled? If the answer is a season of grief, a season of
disappointment, a season of struggle, that's a critical hope. But if it's
devastation that you can't recover from, there's a chance you've made that
critical hope an idol or a god. When we make critical hopes ultimate, we demand a
return to Eden. We demand to live in a world that is untainted by sin, in which
our every need is fulfilled by a good and gracious God. We're like toddlers who
have made a mess of things and then demand our parents clean it up. The
Thessalonians' hope had been in idols, not just the little carved images on a shelf,
but a whole way of life. In their day, the Thessalonians were surrounded by Greek
and Roman gods. They were everywhere. If you're going to plant a tree or get
married or take a business trip, you made a visit to the appropriate shrine to
make an offering to the right deity in hopes that they might show you favor. The
gods of that day were unpredictable, often at war with one another. You were
never sure that you had quite done enough to stay on their good side. And by
the day's time of Paul, even the emperor, the living emperor, had become a god to
be worshipped. It's tempting to look back and to think, how could they put hope in
such silly things like men and idols? But the explanation of the small
catechism stops us from passing judgment too quickly. It asks, what does it mean to
have a God? And it answers, to trust in and rely on something or someone
wholeheartedly to help us in times of need and to give us all good things. We
each must consider, what is it we trust in, in times of need? What is it we look
to, to give us all good things? The truth is, our culture is no different. We just
name our gods and idols with different names. We take good things and we promote
them to ultimate things and we make them our gods. Things like a good education, a
high-paying job, our child becoming an athletic star, a fully funded retirement
account. Perhaps all good things to hope for, but they become gods when we make
them ultimate. Here again, the first commandment, you shall have no other gods.
In Thessalonica, Paul arrived announcing that there was not any other God, there
was one true God. And this God had a son whom he had raised from the dead. And
Paul, in chapter one here, describes the impact of announcing this good news to
the Thessalonicans. He says, the gospel came to them not only in word, but also
in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. They received the word
with the joy of the Holy Spirit. They turned to God from idols to serve the
living and true God, even in the face of much affliction and persecution. That's
some steadfast hope. How were they able to thrive in this new faith? Because the
one they were waiting for, his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. You see, there's a wrath stored up
for those who would worship idols and false gods. There's a wrath stored up for
those who would place their hope in anything but the true God. But the
announcement of the good news, Paul says, we place our hope in Jesus who delivers
us from the wrath to come. Delivers, that's present tense. It's not a hope that it
will happen someday, but it's a statement that it has happened on a cross just
outside Jerusalem, that you have been delivered. Jesus is your deliverer today.
He bore your idolatry. Every hope that you promoted to an ultimate hope, he has
died for. Every false trust you have placed, he bore that on the cross. And on
the third day, he was raised from the dead. That was the Father's yes to Christ's
offering of himself for your sin and for mine. The receipt that says your debt's
been paid in full. The wrath stored up for idolaters has been satisfied. It has
already come and has fallen on Jesus in your place. There's no more wrath to come.
Only your deliverer who comes to you with peace and forgiveness and life.
That's why this hope is steadfast. It's steadfast because the one it rests on is
steadfast. Your grip on Jesus may fail at times that his grip on you does not.
Your ultimate hope is outside of you, outside of the circumstances of this
life. Your ultimate hope is in Jesus, your deliverer, and he will come for you.
And notice Paul says, while they wait, we're still waiting, aren't we? We're
still waiting for that deliverer to come. So how do we live in this time of
waiting? Something beautiful happens when your ultimate hope is set right on Jesus.
For it restores those critical hopes to their proper place. We no longer demand
Eden, but we look forward to the restoration of all things. The
Thessalonians were treated with great injustice. They were persecuted, falsely
accused of rebellion against Caesar. They suffered financial loss, and yet their
ultimate hope was unmoved. They were confident, and Paul assures them later in
the letter, that your deliverer will come and make all things right. That those who
have done you wrong will not ultimately get away with it. They will pay their
price in full. They will know the wrath that God brings upon them. But you, you
he will restore. He will bring full healing. He will make you whole. He will
see and wipe away every tear. We all in this life suffer relationships that are
strained and at times broken, and we will lose those we love to death who
proceed before us. But our ultimate hope, even as we grieve those losses, is in the
return of Jesus who reconciles us to himself and to one another. That there is
a great reunion coming that does provide comfort in this life, even as we grieve
those we have lost. There's a day coming in which you will find, you will see for
the first time, just the purpose and the meaning that God has placed on your life.
That though you carry out your vocations day to day, and perhaps don't see much
happening, you will one day see how God used you, through your daily vocations, to
accomplish his great purposes. And so we continue on in this life. We wait. We wait.
We get we get those small taste of beauty that reminds us that someday, someday that
sunset endures. Someday, someday that beautiful scene never goes away. Someday
is coming. And today, today we grieve when those critical hopes are disappointed. But
as Paul will say later in the letter, we do not grieve as those without hope. We grieve
with a hope that cannot be taken away. With the crucified one standing with us in our
sorrows today, assuring us that grief will not have the final word.
Brothers and sisters, there's no God in this world that can save you from the wrath
to come. The wrath to come belongs to idols and those who worship them. But Jesus has
delivered you from that. You've been baptized into his death and resurrection. He has borne
that wrath for you, and he is coming back. Until then, as Romans 8 says, we moan, we
groan, we grieve when those deep hopes are not satisfied in this life. But we grieve
as those with hope, knowing that the day is coming when all will be made right, when
our Deliverer returns for us. We pray to him now. Father, we give you thanks that you have
sent your Son, that you have raised him from the dead, that you have placed your assurance
on him that, in fact, his offering has satisfied your wrath. That we, your people, by your
grace, only look forward to the joy of his return. Father, would you strengthen our ultimate
hope in Christ, that we might not lose hope when we run into the disappointments and the
hard things and the trials of this world, but that we might grieve with you, knowing
that one day you will make us whole again. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.