I Thessalonians 1:2 – “Really”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²We give thanks to God always concerning all of you, making mention [of you] upon our prayers …

At first glance, these words would seem like simply part of a courteous introduction to Paul’s letter. However, since this is God’s Word, every sentence is precious and certainly packed with encouraging truth if we but slow down and ponder it.

And so I do.

First of all, stop and ponder that Paul immediately says he “gives thanks to God.” That might seem almost cliché, but is it? Is it not rather the very essence of faith itself that we see God in everything? When Paul is moved to gratefulness for his friends at Thessalonica, his heart immediately thinks of God. Why? Because he sees God as the Great Cause. He sees that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” that “of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to Whom be glory for ever. Amen.” Think about it: Peter could walk on water, as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus. He only sank when he looked away and saw instead the wind and the waves. I would suggest that it is true in my own life -- that as long as I can “see” the Lord, as long as I see Him in everything that is happening around me and to me, I can stay calm, love, and work hard all at the same time. My problem is that so easily I see only the wind and the waves and my heart fills with fear. In a sense, the problem is not that I’m seeing the wind and the waves, but rather that I’m not seeing God! Oh, the power in those simple words, “I thank God …” I need to be much more deliberate about thanking Him constantly – no matter what is happening – because in so doing I remind myself He is the Great Cause. We can totally trust Him who is our Rock and our Peace and our Shelter, our good God who does us good, and so, no matter what, we can thank Him. Seeing Him we can thank Him. Thanking Him we can see Him. Lord help me be more thankful and let me know the joy and peace Your presence brings.

Note too he says he thanks God for “all of you.” Again, that might seem like simply a polite cliché, but is it? I want to pause and remember for a minute this is one of the wonders of grace, this love “to all.” “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden …” “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me …” “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” “Whosoever will may come.” Other than my parents, from my earliest memories as a child, it was always true that people’s love was very conditional. Whether it was just adults in general, or teachers, or coaches, or even church people, if you did well, you were on their A list, when you didn’t do well, your name was mud. Approval was always very, very conditional. I had one teacher/coach, Louis Baker, who always, always, always encouraged me and supported me whether I was having a good day or bad. But sadly, including my parents, that makes three people who loved me unconditionally.

Such is the world we all live in. Conditional love. Performance-based approval. But, thank God, that is not His world. It is our world, perverted by our sin. Being incorrigible legalists, our very being is shot through with this performance-based approval system. God’s world is rather a world of grace, a world of “whosoever will.” His love is offered and available and free to all who will simply accept it. Is this not precisely why Jesus was so loved by the tax-collectors, prostitutes, and ‘sinners?’ It’s because He loved them – unconditionally – because He communicated a respect that could even say, “Go and sin no more,” but say it in a way where they knew He loved them. As Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he’s not stupid. He’s not somehow delusively imagining they’re all perfect. But he can honestly say to them, “We thank God for all of you.” Why? Because he sees them through God’s eyes – as people who Jesus died for. That is exactly how each of us needs to be seen. Right? If I’m loved conditionally, I’m lost. I need to be loved unconditionally. And what about how I see the rest of the world? I need to see them God’s way. I need to communicate to them the same love their God in Heaven loves them with. Grace will make us that way. It made Paul that way.

Finally, I want to note Paul’s words, “mentioning you in our prayers.” What a blessing is it to know someone somewhere actually prays for me? For me. They mention me by name. To God. In prayer. The Thessalonians could be confident that this guy Paul actually, really prays for them. What a blessing is that? What does it mean today to have someone who actually, really does pray for you? Then let’s turn it around: who knows I’m praying for them? Is there anyone I am praying for? Do we all realize just how much it would mean to others to really know we’re praying for them? I say this almost fearing that the words “I’m praying for you,” are so cliché that I wonder if we even believe each other? We need to make it a point to in fact lift people up in prayer and then make it a point to follow it up with asking them how it’s going.

May I really be a far more thankful person, seeing our good God as the Great Cause. May knowing Him really make me a gracious person who not only enjoys grace but then extends it to others. And finally may I really truly bless other people by being one of the people they can genuinely count on to keep their name lifted up in prayer. Really.

I Thessalonians 1:1 – “Blessings”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹Paul and Silas and Timothy to the church of [the] Thessalonians in God [the] Father and [the] Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace.

This should be an interesting study. I actually studied through this book about 25 years ago. At the time I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt like I learned a lot. What usually happens when I come back to something I studied years ago is I feel like I just skimmed it the first time. Everything is so much more meaningful now. It doesn’t mean anything different than it did before, just so much deeper. So it should be fun!

The main reason I’m going back to it is that some time in the last few years Joan gave me a copy of John Eadie’s commentary on I & II Thessalonians. He is my favorite commentator and exegete and this work is the only one of his books I’ve never been through. So it will really be fun to follow along with my old friend once again.

This first verse is, as usual, chalk full of profound truth, even though it is, in a purely human sense, “just a greeting.” As usual, the Bible reminds us there are and always have been people who do things “differently” than us. We start our letters with whom they’re written to and sign them at the end. In the ancient world, they first said who they were, then identified the intended recipient. Perhaps this came from writing on scrolls? If they had put their name at the end, their recipient would have had to unroll the whole scroll just to see who was writing to them! Perhaps that is the case, but, regardless, they did things “differently.” It is very provincial and, I would suggest, unchristian to think everyone else should be like us, do it our way, and that if they don’t, they’re wrong. The Lord gave us a world with only a very few non-negotiables and beyond that, He intended it to be a world of almost infinite variety.

I also notice some encouraging thoughts. Note that it is “Paul and Silas and Timothy” who address the Thessalonians. Of course only Paul is writing the letter, but he has Silas and Timothy with him, they were very familiar to the Thessalonians, and they wholeheartedly support Paul’s ministry to the church there. My thought is that the Lord could have sent Paul alone, but one thing our Lord is never is stingy. He always gives a full measure, pressed down and running over. He sends not one but three men to care about the Thessalonians. So it is with all of us, if we have the eyes to see it. He has blessed our lives with countless hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have benefited us in a million different ways. “More are they that are for us, than they that are against us.” It is a good thing from time to time to stop and just remember all the people who have done us good, from parents to teachers to pastors and leaders to bosses and co-workers and friends. The night sky of our lives is lit with the stars of those who’ve done us good. Paul and Silas and Timothy were those people in the Thessalonians’ lives. God help each of us to be one of those stars in someone else’s life today.

Notice too it is “to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Thessalonica was a large and very important city in Paul’s day. Yet he didn’t write to the whole city. He wrote to the church that was there. It is easy to forget how singularly we are blessed to be found “in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Of course, God loves everyone, even the “120,000 who don’t know their right hand from their left, and much cattle,” but, if I am born again, I have a very special place of blessing in the eyes of God. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ …” Paul isn’t writing to just anyone and everyone in Thessalonica. He’s writing to the church. He’s writing to what is probably a very small segment of the total population. He’s writing to this small gathering of people who know what it is to be saved, to know God, to be indwelt by His Spirit, to have hope, to be forgiven, to be loved and to be able to love. May we never forget how blessed we are. I don’t know why the Lord chose to save me. I certainly don’t deserve it. But here I am today in my 59^th year and, although I’ve made a lot of very bad decisions and failed Him almost constantly, yet He has been my Savior and my Rock and my Redeemer. He has carried me all these years and I live in the hope of who He is and always will be. Let us never forget our blessing and may it move us all to pray for that blessing on everyone He puts around us.

Finally, notice what the Lord wishes for us: grace and peace. Paul is an apostle. He is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He’s writing the Word of God. He’s writing God’s words. He’s writing the very words that God Himself would speak to the Thessalonians. And he’s writing the very words God Himself would say to us. And what does He say? What does the Creator of the Universe wish for us? What does the Judge of all the earth, He who holds the keys of death and hell, the One who sits on High, wish for us? Grace and peace.

The vast majority of the human race (and that of professing Christians too, I’m afraid) sees God as austere, demanding, dissatisfied, irritated, distant. He says in one place, “You thought I was such a one as you are.” Well, He’s not. That isn’t who God is at all. God is love. His thoughts toward us are not judgment and hell. He Himself describes hell as a place “prepared for the devil and his angels.” Not people. He is the father who runs to the returning prodigal. He is the One who says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to do you good and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.” He is the One who bore a Cross and said, “Whosoever will may come.”

Can He be angry? Of course. Can He mete out horrible judgments? Of course. But even that is done in love. He is a good Father, a good Coach, a good King. And in a fallen world of evil, He’d better be able to swing a sword against evil and even to subject His children to hardship to whatever extent is necessary to help them rise above their self-destructive sins. In Deut 12:28 He said to the Israelites, “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you …” “So it may go well with you …” Even in the OT, even under the Law, what the Lord wanted for His people was that “it go well with them.”

He hasn’t changed. His name is Jesus. He is a redeeming God. Jesus came into the world, “Not to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through Him” (Jn 3:17). Grace and peace. Unmerited kindness and the peace that flows from it. That is what our God, the true God, the only God, wants for you and me. If we don’t enjoy grace and peace, it will be because we refused it, not because the God of the Universe was somehow unwilling to give it. It’s what He wishes for us.

And that is what godly people are like too. The closer we get to God, the more we see the world through His eyes, the more we’ll wish for others grace and peace. The Pharisees’ “religion” of rules and “standards” made them into proud, cruel, judgmental, hateful people – people who would crucify Love itself. But, for all their “religion,” they did not know God. It’s only in looking into His face that we are “changed into that image, from glory to glory.” It was Mary who sat and the feet of Jesus while her sister was “encumbered with much serving.” And it was Mary of whom He said, “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” To know Him, to see His face, to know His grace and peace, transforms us into people of grace and peace.

Oh, may we ourselves embrace the grace of the gracious One and enjoy the peace He gives, His peace, and may somehow the world around us see the One who would give them grace and peace as well.

Lots of blessings in one little verse. On to the treasure trove!

Ruth 1:8-13 – “Clear Commitment”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸And Naomi said to the two of her daughter-in-laws, “Go. Return each to the house of her mother. May the LORD do love with you as you have done with [the] dead ones and with me. ⁹May the LORD give to you and may you find rest each [in] the house of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voice and they wept. ¹⁰Then they said to her, “No. We will return with you to your people.” ¹¹Then Naomi said, “Return, my daughters. To what you will go with me? [Are there] again to me sons in my abdomen and will they be to you to husbands?  ¹²Return, my daughters. Go, because I am [too] old to become to husband. If I say there is hope to me also to be tonight to a husband and also I bear sons, for them will you wait until which they grow, ¹³for them will you restrain yourselves to not to be to a husband? No, my daughters, because bitter to me much from you because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.

I’m thinking today about this whole section, from verse 8 through 13. One question that many have pondered over the years is whether Naomi is right to send these girls back to Moab.

Obviously, Moab is the dominion of their god Chemosh with all the evil practices which that idolatry imparted, not the least of which was child-sacrifice. I have lamented before how this one practice must have utterly destroyed any culture, not just because it was so evil, but because growing up in that world would mean a child couldn’t even trust his own mother’s embrace. No matter how much your parents might profess love to you, at any second they could decide to propitiate their evil god by killing you. I hope anyone reading this can see what I mean. These children would grow up in a world without the security of parental love. The entire nation – mind you – grows up suspicious, grows up having to always fear even another’s embrace. This is NOT the world the Lord wants children to grow up in. His world, the world of the Jewish people when they were even remotely following the law, is a world where children are born and raised surrounded by genuine love, where parents actually sacrifice themselves for their children, where “home” is a place of security.

But Moab’s godless world is where Naomi seems to be sending these girls.

She certainly seems to be trying hard to get these girls to go back there. Three times she tells them to “return.” She does her best to paint a bleak picture of their future with her – a future where it is very unlikely they will ever remarry, and so to discourage them from following her to Israel.

So is she right or wrong?

I would say most modern commentators are quick to condemn Naomi. They would accuse her of being concerned only for the girls’ temporal state, that, as a mother figure, all she cares is about is getting these girls “hitched.” The modern writers compare her to mothers who are more concerned that their daughters marry at all, than that they should marry good godly young men.  They condemn her because there would seem to be much greater hope for them spiritually if they at least live in Israel rather than in Moab, that she should actually do almost anything to get them to “come with her” to the Lord’s land.

All of that may be true. Maybe in her grief that is all Naomi is seeing – just the very temporal issue of whether these girls are married or not.

Interestingly, reading the old writers, they almost unanimously commend Naomi for her kindness and wisdom. What they see is the selflessness in Naomi’s urgings. She could easily have thought how much she needed these girls to take care of her. To urge them to leave is cutting off the only support Naomi is assured of. She’s leaving herself not only husbandless and destitute and old, but now she will also be alone. The older writers believe this good godly woman is too kind to put her own welfare ahead of theirs.

Personally, I am strongly inclined to agree with the older writers. As I described above, this is the very difference between these two cultures. In Moab, parents sacrifice their children for themselves. In Israel, parents sacrifice themselves for their children. In fact, I would suggest this very difference is exactly why Ruth will be so determined to go with Naomi. In being married into Naomi’s family, Ruth has seen for herself what a totally different world Israel must be. Instead of all the suspicion and fear, it’s actually possible to bear children and raise them in a world of love and security. She, for herself, has already resolved in her heart to go with Naomi back to that world.

So, what I see is that this admonition from Naomi is just more of the selflessness of good and genuine believers.

But the older writers go on. When it comes to this issue of faith, they would suggest that what Naomi is doing is a very good thing – that she is actually pushing the girls to “count the cost.” The old writers would suggest this is actually a matter of considerable wisdom for Naomi. If the girls would follow her into what potentially could be nothing but destitution and poverty and hopelessness (as far as remarriage is concerned), then she would have them make that decision fully realizing what they were getting into.

Interestingly, what the two girls say to Naomi is “We will go back with you to your people” (v10). “…to your people.” When Orpah decides to in fact go back to Moab, Naomi says to Ruth, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods.” “…and her gods.” What Ruth says to Naomi is “…and your people shall be my people and your God my God.” At least based on these few words recorded for us, this is the underlying difference between Orpah and Ruth. Orpah obviously had seen the difference in this Israelite family and she longed for that world – the world of Naomi’s “people.” But Ruth saw much deeper, that it was not only a better “world” of people, but it was so specifically because in Israel, the Lord was God. She somehow could see that the Lord Himself was the root of it all.

The old writers would commend the wisdom of Naomi to actually force these girls to make a decision. The parallel with Matt 19:16-22 is to me striking. There a young man comes to Jesus and says, “What must I do to be saved?” Jesus’ answer was, “Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor.” The young man of course went away sad, because he couldn’t part with his wealth, even to gain eternal life. There stood that young man, like Orpah, right on the border. Both had their sights set on the “right” place. Yet both clearly needed to count the cost of going forward. Unfortunately both apparently chose poorly, but that was their choice.

I am again inclined to agree with the old writers. Naomi is an “old” woman. She’s seen them come and she’s seen them go. She has the wisdom of years on her side. And I personally see throughout this book the evidences of a very strong and mature faith (like Job’s). She is not so much encouraging the girls to go back to idolatry as she is getting them to make a very clear choice of their own.

I guess I would like to say I think this is a huge case in point of the shallow immaturity of our current world of faith. If someone came to us and said, “What must I do to be saved?” we would immediately give them the Gospel and urge them to pray. It would be almost unthinkable that we should do anything that might “discourage” them from such a profound interest. Yet that is what Jesus did. I remember reading once in Richard Baxter’s “Directory” (ca. 1650) how a woman asked him that very question and he simply sent her home to read the Bible. I remember reading that and being “surprised,” and yet being vaguely aware of his wisdom.

Just as with the sower and his seed, there is good ground and there is rocky ground. Although some of the sower’s seed invariably falls on the rocky ground, it is clearly his intent that it should all fall on good ground. So should it be in our hearts, I think. Naomi had that wisdom.  Frankly, I don’t think I do, except it does make sense that we have to give people the space to genuinely come to their own conclusions. I fear our Arminian over-emphasis on human effort has taught us to push and shove and extract “decisions” from people who simply are not ready. I suspect Naomi didn’t have that problem. Obviously Jesus did not. Perhaps the  whole matter even reaches all the way back to respecting the dignity of the individual human being, granting them the freedom to make their own choices, even when that leaves open the possibility they might make bad decisions. That is precisely how God deals with the human race. I wonder if that is how the rest of us think. I wonder really if that is how I think?

Naomi pressed the girls. One made what we think was a bad decision, but the very circumstances allowed the other to make a very clear and very positive decision. When Naomi and Ruth reached Bethlehem, even Boaz could say to Ruth, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law … May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (2:11,12).  How did he know so much about Ruth? Because it was true and because there was no doubt in Naomi’s mind exactly where Ruth was coming from. You can bet she's introduced Ruth with something like those exact words, "This is Ruth. She has come here to be a worshiper of the Lord." There was no doubt where Ruth stood. Having to make clear commitments does that for us.