Powerlessness and Almightiness - part infinity - Luke 9:37-43 - May 28, 2023

 Luke 9:37-43 Powerlessness and Almightiness- part infinity

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter nine and verse 37, that’s page 867 in the pew Bibles.

I hope that hearing from the men with Teen Challenge was an encouragement to you. It’s always a blessing to me when they come and it’s always a real life reminder of the lesson of our text for this morning, namely, powerlessness and almightiness, our powerlessness and Jesus’ almightiness.

I’ve entitles this morning’s message, “Powerlessness and Almightiness- part infinity,” because it just seems like we are getting this lesson over and over. My prayer is that it would not be a discouragement to you but an encouragement and your faith and trust in Jesus. 

Let’s look at our text, Luke 9:37-43, page 867.

37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

Let’s pray.

I’ve said it before that I don’t look for secret codes or hidden messages, I’m not into numerology and giving special significance to the numbers mentioned in Scripture. I like to take an idiot’s eye view to the Bible, because, let’s face it, that who the Bible was written for.

So with that in mind, as we look at this text, it seems to me that the most important thing, at least for our study today not for all time, but the most important thing in our text is probably the most noticeable thing. 

What is that? The verse written in red.

So let’s set the stage. Jesus, Peter, James, and John had spent the night on the Mount of Transfiguration. You may remember that from our study two weeks ago. Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus being transfigured before them, glowing face, clothes like lightening, and then Moses and Elijah show up and are talking with Jesus. It was quite a night!

Now Jesus and those three disciples come back down the mountain to the rest of the guys and a crowd is there to meet them.

And out of the crowd comes the voice of a desperate father.

38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”

So here we have a desperate dad. His only son is suffering with what sounds to me like epilepsy compounded with demon possession. 

This brings up an important point, which is true though it may not be the intention of the author in this particular account. The point is that the power of Satan can reach into illness but that reach is never beyond the restraint of God. 

But when we think about the power of Satan reaching into illness we have to consider the purpose of illness and difficulties, which does steer us back towards the one point of this sermon.

When something bad happens to us or to someone we love we often wonder why.

Sometimes our troubles are just the natural consequences of our choices. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Most of this time troubles are a test of our faith and obedience and opportunities to recognize our powerlessness and the Lord’s almightiness.

This makes me think of John 9:1-3, which says,

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Ever think of it that way, that your troubles are designed that the works of God might be displayed in you?

As you consider that, think of the words of John Calvin, “We are worse than stupid, if a condition so wretched does not arouse us to prayer.” Let your troubles drive you to the arms of Jesus!

Let’s get back to our scene in Luke.

38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”

How does Jesus respond to this request?

41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

In my Bible most of verse 41 is written in red. That means that it’s Jesus speaking. That’s not to discount everything that is not written in red as those are the words recorded by the Holy Spirit so don’t get confused.

But this statement sticks out to me. Why would Jesus say that, who was He rebuking?

Matthew and Mark both record this incident in their Gospel accounts and fill us in a little bit on who was there. Jesus, Peter, James, and John were just coming on the scene and coming to this crowd that was made up of the nine remaining disciples, the scribes and Pharisees, the nameless crowd that seems to pop up sometimes and then go away and then pop up again, and then from out of the crowd this father and son.

So out of that group, who does Jesus rebuke?

It may be the crowd, this nameless mob of a mixture of curiosity, superstition, and desperation. Matthew and Mark both record Jesus having compassion on the crowd because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. These folks were victims of bad teaching and legalistic oppression, faithless and twisted.

It may be the Scribes and the Pharisees as they were always concocting some test to trap Jesus to say the wrong thing or to heal on the wrong day so that they could accuse Him. They were certainly faithless and twisted.

It may be the nine disciples. I say nine because three were with Jesus as He arrived.

The father had asked the disciples, who, right back in the beginning of this very chapter had had great success in casting out demons and healing people but were now powerless to help.

Maybe they didn’t have enough faith to cast out this demon maybe their understanding of where that power came from was wrong, they seem to be qualified as faithless and twisted.

Maybe Jesus was rebuking the father. Mark records this interaction in Mark 9:21-23.

21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”

John Calvin wrote, “We see how little honor he renders to Christ; for, supposing him to be some prophet, whose power was limited, he approaches to him with hesitation.”

Maybe the father didn’t have enough faith for his son to be healed. Maybe he’s the one who was faithless and twisted.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s everybody.

I’d like to read for you Galatians chapter five, verses twenty-two and twenty-three out of the New King James version of the Bible. King Jimmy uses a word in this version that really nails the point here.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control.

The word is, “longsuffering,” the ESV says, “patience.” Jesus is the ultimate longsufferer. We tend to think that Jesus’ suffering is confined to the cross, but I don’t think so. We could go on and on about how the disciples just don’t get what’s going on, they never understand what Jesus says as if we are any better!

What is on display in this scene is the powerlessness of people and the almightiness of Jesus.

The disciples were powerless to fix the problem, the crowd was powerless to fix the problem, the father and son were powerless to fix the problem, but at the end of the day the right thing happened: they brought the problem to Jesus.

I use the word, “almightiness,” the theologians use the word, “sovereignty.”

God is completely sovereign, He has power and control over all things, and He does all things for His glory alone. He uses the conniving of the Scribes and Pharisees, the ignorance of the crowd, the failure of the disciples, and the desperation of this father to bring people to faith in Christ. That’s sovereignty.

Alistair Begg said, “Don’t you have a large enough view of the sovereignty of God, that even when the disciples are a bunch of cloth-eared nincompoops that people still come to Christ? Because that’s exactly what happened there!”

When we start to get a grasp on the sovereignty of God, like everybody there that day, we too will be astonished at the majesty of God.

Amen. 

Transfiguration - Luke 9:28-36 - May 14, 2023

 Luke 9:28-36 Transfiguration

Good morning! I’m glad you all came back, after last week’s sermon I had my doubts that anyone would show up today! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 9:28-36, page 867 in the pew Bibles.

This morning we are going to look at one of the most fantastic events in the Gospels. It is an event of great importance in the history of redemption, perhaps only out shined by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that is the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain.

We have a lot of work to do this morning but it is not my goal to be exhaustive in dealing with this text and its theological implications but perhaps to gain at least a little more understanding of this event and its purpose and meaning.

So let’s look at the text and dive in.

28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

Let’s pray.

There has been considerable debate about which mountain Jesus led Peter, James, and John up to pray. Some say Mount Hermon, some say Mount Tabor. I say Mount Irrelevant. The name of this mountain and its exact location are completely irrelevant to the purpose and meaning of this event. But the purpose and meaning of this event are extremely relevant to our understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

What we do know is that Jesus led Peter, James, and John up a mountain to pray and something fantastic happened there.

There have been a lot of preachers and teachers that have endeavored to make much about the glory of Jesus and Moses and Elijah here and try to sort of stretch that over what believers will experience when they die, who they will see, and the idea that they will just know who everybody else is, all sorts of ideas like that. That is not the purpose and meaning of this event at all, not even close.

Some preachers purport that this passage emphasizes the importance of prayer in the life of the believer, that we will not be transformed in our Christian life unless we are much in prayer. Umm… maybe, but that’s a stretch for this text.

Some say that Peter’s desire to build three tents represents the threefold ministry of the church. I don’t even have a clue what that even means but the text clearly states that the whole tent idea was foolish.

Quite frankly, I think the purpose and meaning of the transfiguration of Jesus lies right on the surface, and though the disciples didn’t understand it at the time, once they were filled with the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension, it was made clear to them. Peter would even later write about it in 2 Peter chapter 1.

So let’s break it down into little bites and see what a wonderful and powerful event this really was.

Let’s start with verse 29.

And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.

Both Matthew 17 and Mark 9 describe this same scene. They use the word, “transfigured,” which is where we get our English word, “metamorphosis,” a change from the inside out, where Luke simply says that the appearance of His face was altered, and His clothing became dazzling white.

But the truth remains that Jesus’ appearance was changed before their eyes and his clothing gleamed like lightening, whiter than any bleach could ever make it. I think our imaginations’ ability to picture His appearance falls desperately short, just as the disciples’ ability to comprehend His glory fell short.

This wasn’t the appearance of a sudden sunbeam through the clouds, nor the sun shining off the snow that illumined Jesus’ face, this was a taste of the radiance of His glory, the glory of the One and Only Son of God.

And as He was transfigured before them two other men also appeared with Him, Moses and Elijah.

30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

One of my favorite preachers spoke of how the disciples just knew who these two men were, just like we are supposed to just know who everybody else will be in God’s eternal kingdom… I think they knew because they appeared and were talking with Jesus and the disciples could hear them. Not to take anything away from the amazing nature of this event but the disciples did hear the conversation they were having about Jesus’ departure, His exodus, that He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.

But regardless of how they knew who the two other men were, why did those two other guys appear, and why those two specific guys?

Moses and Elijah were the two greatest messengers of the Old Covenant.

Moses was the prophet who delivered God’s Law to the people of Israel. But Moses himself said in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…” 

And the Father also said to Moses in verse 18-19 of that same chapter, 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

Elijah was the prophet who delivered God’s people from worshipping false gods, and though he didn’t write any of the letters of prophecy we have in the Old Testament, he is considered to be the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. He is the prophet that didn’t die but was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire.

So the two representatives of the Old Covenant appeared in order to consecrate Jesus the Messiah for death in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:17,“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And that’s exactly what He did in His perfect life, His death, and His resurrection.

Our favorite theologian JJ vanOosterzee wrote, “The Christological importance of this whole event for all following centuries is self-evident. A new light from heaven rises upon Jesus’ Person. On the one hand it rises upon His true Humanity, which needed the communication and strength from above. On the other hand, His Divine dignity, as well in relation to the Father, as also in comparison with the prophets, is here made known to earth and heaven. Considered from a typico-symbolic point of view, it is significant that the appearance of the prophets is represented as a vanishing one, Jesus, on the other hand, as alone remaining with His disciples. Their light goes down, His sun shines continuously.”

“Not less light here falls upon the Work of the Savior. The inner unity of the Old and the New Covenant becomes by this manifestation evident, and it is shown that in Christ the highest expectations of the law and the prophets are fulfilled. His death, far from being accidental or insignificant, appears here as the carrying out of the eternal counsel of God, and is of so high significance that messengers of heaven come to speak concerning it on earth. The severity of the sacrifice to be brought by Him is manifest from the very fact that He is in an altogether extraordinary manner equipped for this conflict. And the great purpose of His suffering, union of heaven and earth, how vividly is it here presented before our souls when we on [the mountain], although only for a few moments, see heaven descending upon earth, and dwellers of the dust taken up into the communion of the heavenly ones.”

It’s clear that the disciples were taken with this whole scene even though it’s clear that they didn’t truly understand its significance.

32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.

I don’t believe that there was any great significance to the tents that Peter wanted to set up, no deep mysterious symbols for us to discern. Luke even goes so far as to say that Peter didn’t know what he was saying. Mark in his account, which we have discussed previously was Peter’s own telling of these events, said that Peter offered this suggestion because he didn’t know what else to say because he was terrified.

Maybe Peter was hoping that this was the beginning of God’s kingdom on earth but he would have to ignore Jesus’ own words saying that He had to go to Jerusalem and suffer and die and on the third day rise again.

Peter’s suggestion of building the tents points to his ignorance of God’s purposes and his desire to cling to the Old Covenant.

But there was another special guest at this amazing event, the Father Himself.

34 As he was saying these things[about the tents], a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.

The voice of the Father, which they had heard at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, once again reaffirms Jesus’ sinlessness, His being well pleasing to God the Father, and His elevation above the voices of the Old Covenant prophets, and the Father’s approval of the plan that would lead Jesus to the cross.

John Calvin wrote, “I willingly concur with those who think that there is an implied contrast of Moses and Elijah with Christ, and that the disciples of God’s own Son are here charged to seek no other teacher. The word Son is emphatic, and raises him above servants. There are two titles here bestowed upon Christ, which are not more fitted to do honor to him than to aid our faith: a beloved Son, and a Master. The Father calls him my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and thus declares him to be the Mediator, by whom he reconciles the world to himself. When he enjoins us to hear him, he appoints him to be the supreme and only teacher of his Church. It was his design to distinguish Christ from all the rest, as we truly and strictly infer from those words, that by nature he was God’s only Son. In like manner, we learn that he alone is beloved by the Father, and that he alone is appointed to be our Teacher, that in him all authority may dwell...

When it is said that in the end they saw Christ alone, this means that the Law and the Prophets had a temporary glory, that Christ alone might remain fully in view. If we would properly avail ourselves of the aid of Moses, we must not stop with him, but must endeavor to be conducted by his hand to Christ, of whom both he and all the rest are ministers.”

Hebrews 1:1-4 says, Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

So, have confidence that this has been the plan from the beginning, that the whole Old Testament points to the person and work of Jesus, that He is the fulfillment of it, of the Law and of the Prophets, that He is God’s One and Only Son, the Christ, the Chosen One of God, and that we should listen to Him above all the other voices that clamor for our attention even our own.

Amen.

The Cost of Discipleship - Luke 9:22-27 - May 7, 2023

 Luke 9:22-27 The Cost of Discipleship

Good morning! We are going back to the Gospel of Luke this morning. Turn to Luke 9:22-27, that’s page 867 in the pew Bibles.

We’ve jumped around a bit in Luke nine over the last few weeks to tie together some different thoughts and this time we are going to backtrack just a bit to give a little better context to this teaching of Jesus found in verses 23-27.

Jesus had been questioning the disciples on who the crowds said He was and who they said He was. The crowds believed He was perhaps John the Baptist raised from the dead, or Elijah, or one of the old prophets come back to life but Peter, on behalf of the disciples gave the good confession in verse 20, “You are the Christ of God.”

Well this morning we are going to look at the implications of that great truth, that Jesus is the Christ, the Chosen One, God’s Messiah. So let’s look at our text.

22 …“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” 

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Let’s pray.

Now it’s important for us to remember that the first verse we read, verse 22, was said to the disciples in private and in verse 23-27 Jesus addresses the larger crowd that was with Him as well as the Twelve.

Jesus had described to the disciples what their confession meant, what being the Christ of God meant.

It didn’t mean that He would go to Jerusalem and go to the palace and take His place as King. It didn’t mean that He would defeat the political oppressors of the nation of Israel and restore their country back to them. It didn’t mean that all of their desires for themselves and their country would be granted to them.

It did mean that He would go to Jerusalem and be mistreated and rejected by their religious leaders. It did mean that he would go to the cross and not the throne. It did mean that He pay the penalty for the sins of mankind and defeat our true oppressor, the devil, and restore our relationship with God our Father through faith in Jesus and His atoning death and resurrection.

And it did mean that instead of granting them the desires of their hearts for themselves and their country that following Him would cost them everything.

And here we have the most popular teaching of the church in the Twenty-first Century: that following Jesus comes at a cost. I know it’s so popular because all the most popular preachers are out there selling books on it and filling stadiums with people who can’t wait to hear what they have to give up in order to follow Jesus.

Now to be clear there is a distinct difference between salvation and discipleship.

Our salvation has already been paid for by Jesus on the cross. That is a completed work, there is nothing more that we could ever add to it nor take away, Jesus paid it all.

But after faith in Jesus comes following Jesus.

I’m not talking about earning our salvation, I’m talking about what happens once we are saved.

As Alistair Begg put it, “The entry fee [to the Christian Life] is nothing, but the annual fee will cost us everything we have.”

 Verse 23, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

This statement of Jesus used to really trip me up when I was much younger. I thought that because Jesus was the only person that I knew of that had ever been crucified that He was the only one who had been crucified and the disciples couldn’t have understood what the cross that Jesus was talking about could have been. This whole idea would have to have been a real mystery to them until after the crucifixion.

But that’s because I didn’t know my history. 

Around the time that Jesus was eleven years old the Romans crushed a rebellion in the city of Sepphoris about four miles north of Nazareth and they crucified around two thousand men along the road from Sepphoris to Nazareth. Jesus and the disciples had all seen those people crucified.  

Crucifixion began with the Assyrians and Babylonians and had been practiced by the Persians since around 600 BC and continued to be perfected and practiced by the Romans until Emperor Constantine outlawed it in the Fourth Century AD. That’s over a thousand years that this brutality was practiced.

What do you see when you see a cross? Maybe you see a reminder of Jesus’ death, maybe you look at a cross and see salvation.

What do you think the disciples saw when they looked at a cross? I think they saw humiliation, suffering, and death. They saw the MOST humiliating way to die, on display for all to see, a long, agonizing, slow death from blood loss and asphyxiation. 

So when Jesus says to those who would follow Him, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me,” it was a much more graphic picture of the cost of following Jesus than I ever imagined, maybe you too.

John Calvin wrote, “Let it be the uninterrupted exercise of the godly, that when many afflictions have run their course, they may be prepared to endure fresh afflictions.”

24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

Jesus here shows us the difference between two types of life, a lower and a higher, a natural and a spiritual, a temporal and an eternal. He also shows us the value or importance of each.

And if anyone is unwilling to surrender one for the sake of the other, they will eventually lose both.

To deny ourselves is to do just that, to surrender our lower, natural, temporal life, for the sake of our higher, spiritual, eternal life.

Perhaps the most famous denial is the denial of Peter, the same one who had just declared on behalf of the disciples that Jesus is the Christ of God would eventually deny Him three times saying, “I do not know the man!”

That’s what our denying ourselves has to look like, “I do not know the man driven by the desires of the flesh. I do not know the man that only seeks his own good. I do not know the man that is consumed by self and self-interest.”

What good does it do to follow such a one? We could gain the whole world, as Jesus put it, fill our pockets with gold and silver and all that we desire that is good in this life, but in the end it will only cost us the next one if we turn away from Jesus to get it.

The Apostle Paul, a man who once had it all by the world’s standards wrote in Philippians 3:7-11:

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Jesus said in verse 26,

26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

This is the warning, what will you choose?

To follow Jesus means to take up our cross daily, continuously, and not some gilded, gold-plated, fancy cross either, to willingly, daily, face what the cross meant for Jesus in Jesus’ Name: surrender, suffering, sacrifice, humiliation, and even death.

That’s the cost of following Jesus. And the day is coming that this might be exactly what is required of us. Things in this world are going from bad to worse, it’s not going to get easier to follow Jesus publicly, it’s going to get harder, but we have to keep our eyes on the horizon waiting for the coming of Christ and trusting Him moment by moment as that day approaches.

2 Thessalonians 1:5-12 says,

5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. 11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The reward far outweighs the cost of following Jesus.

Amen.