Sermon Transcript
The verses we’re looking at today are some that many Christians can quote, but almost no Christian actually does. We might have learned them when we were young in Awana or Sunday school, but, but we just were never able to actually do them. So let’s look at them together again. This morning. It’s 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.
It’s 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Rejoice always, pray continually, Give thanks in all circumstances.
Always, continually, in all circumstances. We don’t do that. Let’s just say that together. We don’t do that. Ready?
We don’t do that. Wasn’t that comforting? Isn’t that just therapeutic to know that there are people sitting next to you that are in the exact same position that you are? That was wonderful. We know, many of us know that we’re supposed to do this.
Many of us are familiar with this verse, but it doesn’t happen. So if you’re here today and you aren’t a Christian, first, welcome. I’m so glad that you’re here, and I hope whoever brought you comes through on whatever it was you were promised to get you in the door. I hope that actually happens for you. And second, A bonus, you can use this verse in your life.
Rejoice always, give thanks in all circumstances, pray continually. You can use this in your life. The next time that one of your Christian coworkers who you really don’t like— hopefully that’s not the person who brought you, but the guy at work who’s a Christian and you really don’t like. We don’t like that guy either, just FYI. He does not represent our group.
At all, but the next time that you see him having a bad day, you can just hit him with this verse. If you really want to add some fuel to the fire of his bad day, you can see he’s just about to crack and you want to just give him a little extra nudge, you can just lean in and say, I thought Christians were supposed to rejoice always. 1 Thessalonians 5:16, and then just kind of, just kind of take a step back and see what happens. That’s probably gonna be all he needed to just step off over the edge, which is what you’ve been waiting for all these years that you’ve been working with him. You’re welcome.
See, that was for free. Now you’re glad that you came, right? That same phrase, by the way, the rejoice always, is one of the worst things you could say to your spouse when he or she is having a bad day. They’ve had one of those days with the kids, whether it’s a morning or evening or afternoon, however your family is structured, where one parent is alone with the kids, and you walk in from wherever you have been that has allowed you to miss out on the craziness that has just ensued in your house, and you walk in, the house is disheveled, your spouse is disheveled, everyone is screaming, you don’t know if your spouse is going to cry or faint or leave. Don’t say it.
Don’t do it. Resist that urge, which you might have that urge now after this sermon. Don’t say it. Don’t say, you know, honey, we’re supposed to rejoice always. You know that, right?
Don’t say it, okay? I warned you. And if you do, you will find out what all husbands and wives have found out at some point during their marriage, that you can say something that is both true and wrong at the same time. So here’s the question: why would Paul, the author of this little letter, why would he say that? If it’s a bad idea to say to your spouse, and if it’s going to make a coworker even more mad, why would Paul just drop it in here?
He’s writing to a whole church, some people in the church who are obviously going to be struggling, and he just comes by and blasts them with, you know we’re supposed to rejoice always, right? You know that, right? Or at even a higher level than that, we, as Christians, of course, believe this is God’s Word, and it’s meant for all of us all the time, and there’s people in any church, this church, who would say, Not in my circumstance.
If God’s telling me to rejoice right now, then there’s something wrong with God.
It wouldn’t even be healthy for me to rejoice right now. If I tried to put a smile on my face right now, that would be fake. That would be inauthentic. That might be lying. I’m pretty sure the Bible says something about lying, doesn’t it?
That might even be psychologically damaging if I tried to rejoice right now.
So what’s the answer? Why just drop this in here? That the answer is this isn’t just dropped in here. The answer is we are at the end of a letter. And like any letter or email you would write, it’s hard to make sense out of the last few lines of the letter or email without having read the rest of the email.
And by the way, that reading the whole book idea is a good Bible study tip in general. Sure, read one verse at a time, read one chapter at a time, but as you are able, read the whole book at one time. Read all of 1 Thessalonians at one time. Read all of Galatians at one time. Read all of Romans at one time.
If you’re not familiar with what the Bible is, these are all individual little books or letters that were collected and then bundled up and packaged together as the Bible. So the original audiences would have read each one of these little individual books in one sitting, the same way that you would read an entire email in one sitting. And there’s often things that will make more sense if you read it in the context of the whole letter. So in this case, when he writes at the conclusion of his letter, we’re at the conclusion of the letter, when he writes at the conclusion, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus, he is, of course, This is obvious, right? Of course, he’s thinking about things that he wrote in the body of the letter.
And those things that he wrote in the body of the letter will actually help us apply and make more sense out of the thing that he wrote in the conclusion of his letter. So there are at least 3 connections that Paul must have had in mind when he was writing his conclusion. There may be more, but at least 3. He’s thinking our joy and thanksgiving are connected to our past pain, our present people, and a promised person. Connected to our past pain, our present people, and a promised person.
So let’s take those one at a time. Our past pain. 3 different times in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, verse 6, Chapter 2, verse 14, chapter 3, verses 3 and 4, Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the suffering that they have previously endured. And this is paradoxical, but we have all experienced it. We just heard it in some of our Thanksgiving sharing.
When we have just come out of suffering, when suffering is just over, it’s relatively easy for us to rejoice. And give thanks and pray, even if things still aren’t that perfect. This is the story of the first Thanksgiving, right? This is what the first Thanksgiving was. The Pilgrims had just had a terribly hard voyage on a ship.
People died on the way across the Atlantic. Then when they landed in North America, they had a terribly hard winter. More people died. But then spring came, and the story goes they met some locals, they planted some corn, and they looked back on the suffering that they just came out of, the suffering they had just experienced a year before. They rejoiced.
We’re still alive. We made it. If you can put yourself in their shoes, you can almost feel the relief that they must have felt. We’re here. We had a harvest.
A year ago we had nothing. We didn’t think we were going to make it a year ago. And now we’ve had a harvest. Thank you, Lord. And they had a big feast.
It’s fairly simple. After pain, life is sweeter. There’s probably no one who has a clearer understanding of this right now than Chicago Cubs fans.
108 years of pain, no championship. And then 2016 rolls around, the light at the end of the tunnel appears, and they win. Chicago explodes with joy. They show us how to party in Chicago. There might still be people partying over there right now as we speak.
And whatever happens this next season, I’ll bet that there will be some fans, even when frustrating moments arise, there will be some fans who will be able to carry with them a sense of joy and relief and gratitude for what has passed. Some player will strike out, but there will be some fan that will probably say, yeah, But we won the championship last year. The suffering is over. The curse is over. I can feel relief now.
So again, this sounds backwards, but if you wanna have more joy right now, remind yourself of pain that you’ve made it through in the past. If you hate your job, remind yourself of when you were unemployed. Or remind yourself of when you were almost fired. You’ll be more grateful. Call to mind something in your past that is over and done with, and you’ll find some more joy right now.
So second, our present people. The people currently in our lives are connected to our joy and thanksgiving. This letter is filled with references of the joy that can come from being in a loving community. And it’s filled with reminders to encourage one another. So some examples of that, just in 1 Thessalonians, Paul had written, we always thank God for you, mentioning you in our prayers.
So just right there, did you catch that? You have thanks always and prayer always, just because community existed. We already have 2 out of our 3 covered on the rejoice, pray, and give thanks always. Just because there’s a community. Or he writes later, we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel but our lives as well.
Or he writes, out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you. Or he writes, how can we thank you enough in return for all the joy we have in the presence of God because of you? Or encourage one another and build one another up. And what Dave will cover next week, and we actually switched the verses, switched the order of the verses. These verses come right before what we’re covering this week, but these verses were about Thanksgiving, and it’s Thanksgiving, so we’re covering Thanksgiving this week.
But next week, Dave will cover respect one another, encourage the timid, be patient, be kind. Now, if you were in a community like that, Do you think you would have more joy than you do right now?
Do you think you’d be able to walk through life with a sense of gratitude?
So let me do some advertising, coaching, and vision casting for our life groups right now. This is why you need to be in a life group, and this is what a life group should look like. I love it so much I’m actually in 2 of them and kind of partly in a couple more in addition to that. So if your life group doesn’t look like these verses and feel like these verses, intense longing to see them, and they have an intense longing to see you. Or if you’re not saying, how can I thank my life group enough for all the joy that they’ve given me?
If it doesn’t look like that and feel like that, then you be the person to begin to change it to be like that. One of the challenges that can arise in building community is a new person wants to be part of the community, but isn’t comfortable taking that step into community until he or she feels welcomed by the community. And, and at the same time, the people in the community only feel comfortable with the existing people in the community and don’t feel comfortable making the new connection to the person out here. They actually want that new person to reach out to them so they feel comfortable reaching out to the new person. And of course, the new person’s waiting for the community to reach out.
So what you have is 2 parties each wanting a connection to be made but neither one feeling comfortable to reach out, and so you’re stuck. So here’s what you need to do: reach out.
Keep reaching out. Keep knocking on that relational door. Some people need their door knocked on 55 times before they can feel comfortable stepping into community. So if you’re in a life group and there’s a person who’s just kind of sort of around sometimes, reach out and keep reaching out 50, 100, 150 times, 1,000 times. If you’re a new person and you feel like, hey, I’ve kind of been around for a while, but I don’t really feel like people are reaching out to me, I don’t feel like anyone’s reaching out to me, here’s what you need to do.
Reach out and keep doing it. Ask someone to lunch or a movie or whatever it is that you do, because, because we need people in our lives to encourage us and love us. Life is better with friends. That’s not very profound, I know. Um, thank you, but it is necessary.
So, so we’ve talked about past pain, present people, and now finally the promised person. In the last couple of weeks, Dave has done a fantastic job talking about the future return of Christ and the peace and confidence that should give us right now, no matter what is going on in life. And there’s, there’s no doubt Paul has this in mind when he writes at the end of his letter to to rejoice always, to pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances. Because no matter what we have going on, we have someone on his way who is going to bring joy into every sadness, who will wipe every tear from every eye. He’s, he’s on his way.
It’s, it’s kind of like if you knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that in one week In 7 days, you will be given $5 billion.
Somehow Bill Gates has contacted you. This is not some kind of scam email situation. You two have had a sit-down with lawyers. It’s really going to happen in 7 days.
But tomorrow, You walk into your office and your boss says, you’re fired, effective immediately. Now what’s your reaction to your boss saying that, knowing that you have $5 billion on the way? You just shrug your shoulders? Maybe you laugh and say, okay.
Bye! He might even dance on his desk. You know what, actually, you didn’t know I’m gonna buy this company in 8 days and then you’re fired. I don’t know what your reaction would be. But even, you might be disappointed because hey, who wants to be fired?
But even in that case, you wouldn’t be devastated. You can walk out of there with your head held high because you know what is coming. That there is a way in which what is coming in the future impacts us emotionally right now. The brighter the future, the more joy we will have right now. And the promised person who is coming is bright enough to outshine every current pain.
Jesus is that good. Being with him is that good. Do you know he thought being with you would be that good? This is Hebrews 12:2, but it tells us, for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
But what did Jesus get out of the cross? What, what was this joy on the other side of the cross? It was you.
He got you.
He took the punishment we deserve so there would be nothing between us and our relationship with him. There’s no tension or guilt or distance or banishment in our relationship with him because he took that on the cross. He took the cross so that he could be with us. That’s what the cross is about. And he looked forward to it with joy.
If he could look at something as horrendous, and it was as horrendous as the cross, with joy because you were on the other side, How much more can we rejoice knowing that we will be with him? Now, yes, of course, Bible scholar, he was also as stressed and as worried as a human can be while he was thinking about the pain involved in the cross and the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance. But that’s not all that was going on inside of him. Jesus gives us a picture. We can be sorrowful and yet rejoicing at the same time.
So if you’re in the camp that would say it’s unhealthy to put on a fake smile and act like everything is okay when it is not okay, I agree with you. That is unhealthy, maybe psychologically damaging, but that’s not what the Bible teaches. Scripture gives us this category, 2 Corinthians 6:10, that we can be sad, that we can mourn, that we can grieve, but at the same time, Look forward to who and what is coming and rejoice. His coming will set every wrong right and it will end all evil. So we can always give thanks that it won’t always be this way, even if it’s really wrong right now.
We can say, it’s not always gonna be this way. His coming will reveal how everything was ultimately worked for our good. So again, we can be thankful that one day we will see how every moment fit into the plot that all comprehensively worked for our good. And of course, his coming will bring him. He will be here.
Finally, fully, he will be with us. The dawn is coming. No matter how dark the night is, we can see the first few rays exploding out over the horizon already. Our best days are always ahead of us if we are Christians.
Holding onto these things, walking with a sense of our future with Him, letting that comfort us in every moment, that is praying continually. If we’re doing that, we are praying continually, and it will lead us to rejoice and be thankful always.
Let’s pray together.
Father, you are enough.
Our future with you is enough to bring a smile into every sadness, even if the sadness is still there.
Lord, let us see that this morning. Let us see our future with you and comfort one another and be grateful for pain that you have brought us out of in the past. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
