READINGS ON FIRST THESSALONIANS (3)
READINGS ON FIRST THESSALONIANS (3)
JT The specific features of the truth in this chapter are not as striking as in the others, especially chapters 4 and 5. These two chapters will afford much for us as to the Lord’s coming. One thing that has come to mind that we have not touched on as much as the truth requires, and that is the matter of God Himself, God as such, according to the way the Spirit may help us as to the titles that we should use. We should know how to use them, and use them as needed, and it is thought that we should therefore begin with the different titles. The first title in the Bible is God; God Himself is in mind, and the reference is to Him as Creator in Genesis 1. The second chapter of Genesis has much that we should look at; that is to say, the modifying effect of Jehovah, which will eventually work out in the truth of the Father. The second chapter of the book of Genesis modifies the first; that is to say, the first refers to God as such, as the Creator. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. That is how it begins. “And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. The Spirit of God is alluded to as well as God Himself, but the first title is God; it is a plural word. It is the word used to specify the Creator as such. It is thought that we should become more familiar with the idea of God as the Creator, and how He is referred to throughout the Bible in this sense, especially in John’s gospel. We have in John’s gospel, for instance, the idea of the world, that God loved it; “God so loved the world”. Not that we want to cover the whole Bible at one reading, but just to touch on the divine titles, the divine names of God, and how they differ and how they bear on [p. 36] the various phases of the truth. Of course, it is hoped that we shall work out the thoughts that are in mind even in connection with this third chapter where God is not spoken much of, but He is spoken much of in the whole epistle and especially in relation to the Lord’s coming. So that the first title is Elohim, which is God. The translator tells us it is in the plural and refers to the Creator. We should at least go away from these meetings with a clear view of God as the Creator and how He speaks of things in the creation. Another thing that comes up is why the creation of man is reserved for such a recent period as we get in Genesis 1: 26; he comes in on the sixth day of the so-called creation. Therefore to clarify expressions that are much used as to God and as to the creation it is well to keep in mind that it says that God loved the world. While the idea is not here in this chapter, it is thought that there is very little idea of what is in mind, that is, that God loved the world. God is so spoken of as being God of many things as well as persons. The first thought is that God loved the world, so loved it. According to John’s gospel, “God so loved the world”; and why is it said that He loved it? It is not a question of man in it, but the world itself, not a question of persons in it but the world itself. There must be something that draws out God’s thoughts in love. The question is whether we understand all this. It is readily understood if we think of the persons that are in it, beginning with Adam, but the things that are in it without specifying man at all.
FJF Do you think that that involves that all creation, even the smallest thing, had in some way reference to Christ? God loved the world because everything in it had in some way reference to Christ.
JT Well, it is doubtful that the reference to Christ should be brought in so early, because the things that are in the world must be [p. 37] in mind.
FJF I was thinking of what it says in Colossians, that He is the beginning.
JT Quite so, but it is too soon to go into that. We are rather to get the thought of why it says “God so loved the world”. We know that there is a great deal of evil in the world, but it is not that that is in mind, it is something else. It is something that came from His own hand that is in mind.
AMacd With reference to the city of Athens, mentioned in this chapter, it is interesting that Paul preaches in Athens and says there, “The God who has made the world and all things which are in it”, Acts 17: 24. Is there a link with what you are saying?
JT That is a good thought to bring in if you are preaching the gospel, but we have to go behind that, and see what it says in John’s gospel about love, God loving the world. You can bring in the gospel conveniently in what is said about Athens, but then, why, in John’s gospel, is God said to love the world?
RWS Is there the thought of order and beauty in the thought of the world in John 3: 16?
JT That must be what is in mind, because God expended much on the creation. We can hardly compass it, especially when we think of the word world in the plural, that God made the worlds by Christ, “by whom also he made the worlds”, the plural; we do not know how many worlds, but He made them, Christ made them. What we are saying is preliminary to the great thought that is in mind, that we should become more conversant with the great idea of God, God Himself, and then the variation of titles that are found as to Him in the Scriptures.
LES Would the last few psalms support what you are speaking of, bringing in the greatness and glory of the creation? The variety and vastness of [p. 38] the realm of creation consummates in celebrating in praises the greatness of God.
JT Quite so. The Psalms finish up with God. But then the question arises at once as to why love is brought into it, merely as to the creation itself, that God loved the world, not the worlds; we do not know how many there are, but we do know the one we are in now, and that is what is in mind, because that is where the gospel is preached. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. That is the great thought that is in mind, and how much the brethren generally are conversant with that great thought of the world.
Rem It says of the earth that He formed it to be inhabited.
JT Yes, but we have not the people yet, because it is a question of the world, nakedly, the world. God so loved it. We may say, and rightly, that the persons must be in mind, because “He gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. We have to come back to that. We ought to work up to it and get the whole thought underlying it, and see how John deals with it, and then see how it comes into our chapter.
CAM In connection with this great subject we have the thought of the power of God. We have possibly connected this idea of power largely with God’s first creation, but the thought you are expressing now seems to stress that the idea of love was there in a special way originally.
JT God is over all and through all and in us all. That is an Ephesian thought which, of course, ought to come into what we are talking about, but then why should He love the world? Why is it put as the world? Why should He love it?
[p. 39] AR Does your remark bear on the first five days of the creation as well as the sixth day?
JT Well, we have to go back to the first five days of the creation as you say. It says, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, that is to say, God made it Himself, not the Father, nor Jehovah, but God Himself; that is to say, Elohim. The translator tells us that it is God in the absolute.
Ques Is your thought that the world was a perfect sphere for the bringing in of Christ and all that was to be consummated through Him?
JT That has been said already, but I thought it was better to get back to the basic thought of the world, without coming on to Christ or the people that are in the world. Of course, Christ must be in mind. There is no question about that because He has made everything. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. “All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men”, John 1: 1 - 4. It was not the light of angels; it was the light of men. That must be touched on, but then, before that we have to come to the basic thought of why God loved the world. It does not say He loved the people in it, but loved it.
MO Does this matter stand related to the will of God? In Revelation 4 the elders say, “For thou has created all things, and for thy will they were, and they have been created”.
JT Quite so. You have the same principle in Colossians. But we must get back to the idea of Elohim; that is to say, to Him who is the absolute in everything, that in all that happens historically we must go back to the source of it. Why should it be? He deals with the naked thought of the world.
[p. 40] Why should it be said that God loved it? It is God, Elohim, not Jehovah, not the Father, but just God, God Himself. What is in mind is that we should think of God, what God is, and our minds trace back everything that happens to God.
GS Do you have in mind God’s own handiwork of which it is said that it was good?
JT That is right, and there is something, if we can ever get at it or ever understand it, that affects the heart of God. I should say more the mind of God, that God’s mind has been active. Why was it active? It was to bring out all that exists at the present time; it is to be in our minds to think of it, and how God is using it.
ABP Did the Lord Jesus have this in mind when He said, “Consider the lilies, how they grow”?
JT Just so.
AJG When Paul in Romans speaks about the Creator, he says, “who is blessed for ever. Amen”, Romans 1: 25. Does that enter into what we are saying?
JT Very good; that brings God in peculiarly, as we have already had, that God in Romans is more the Creator, and that things are of Him and that He is the Author of the gospel. But then we have to go back, if we preach the gospel for instance, and ask why it should be said that God loved the world and why it is God, God Himself, and why it is the plural. Who are the Beings that are behind it all, and what do we know about Them, and what do we know about the other worlds that are spoken of that God made through Christ in a mediatorial sense? He made the worlds by Christ.
FW In Colossians before Paul speaks of men he speaks of all things in heaven and on earth. Would you say a word about that?
JT That is another thing, reconciliation. We have come to a new heaven and a new earth too,
[p. 41] but we are now dealing with the present earth. Why should God make it and what is there in it that draws out His mind or His approval or, we might say, His affections, that He loves it?
Ques Do I understand that it was the world before sin came in? “God so loved the world”, some people think it is the world as it is now, but is it Genesis 1: 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Is that what He loved?
JT Well, the word beginning helps in your thought. “In the beginning” and then we have the same expression in John 1. It relates to the Word, “In the beginning was the Word”, the Logos. But now we are dealing with God, not the Logos, but God Himself, Elohim, a plural word. Why should He be engaged with it in His mind as something to be admired or loved? Why should it be, that is the question, not that I wish to puzzle the brethren, but that we should be conversant with God as Creator and see what part He has in it, and how it works out and how He brings us into it, so that we get Colossians and Ephesians all touching on this point.
RS Do you think Romans 1 helps in that, that what He created and made became a testimony to His eternal power and divinity?
JT That is right.
JLP Would it be covered too in 1 Chronicles 29 when David said “Thine, Jehovah, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the splendour, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is thine”, and then David goes on to speak of God as “Head above all”.
JT It is good to bring that in too, that God is Head. It is a peculiar word and applicable to God, that He is Head, and it must apply to the creation too, that is to say, the thought of God in His [p. 42] knowledge creating.
FNW Is there a link in that way with Proverbs 8 where wisdom speaks of “rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth”?
JT Very good, some may say that wisdom is Christ there, in the way He is spoken of, but it is not Christ exactly, it is an element by itself. Wisdom is an item by itself that attaches to God. It used to be regarded that Christ was wisdom there; in a certain sense He is, but properly speaking, wisdom is a thing, not a person. Wisdom is a thing attachable to God.
TW Is the expression world in John 3 a development on the thought of earth in Genesis 1?
JT The word world must include the heavens too; it must include the whole system of creation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
AB Is it not that God loved an ordered system governed by fixed principles?
JT Very good, fixed principles, not simply a principle, but principles. It is a question now of getting our minds active in what is needful if we want to get at the truth, because the truth implies the creation, not the creation of man exactly, but the creation by itself as specified in the first chapter of Genesis. The word is “God created the heavens and the earth”, not made it, but created it.
GH The last verse of Genesis 1 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good”. Would that bring out how God looked upon it with delight?
JT That is what He made in the days that are mentioned; it was a question of days. But what we are talking about now “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is not what is alluded to in the days. The first verse is just the bare thought of creation, and after that Satan had something to [p. 43] do with it. There was a chaotic condition that came into it, and then the days came in so that God might order it as He wanted it for the present time as we have it now.
GW What is meant in 1 John 2 where it says, that we are not to love the world?
JT That is the moral system, but what we are talking about is the physical system as God made it, before ever it was touched by sin. It was before sin came in that God created everything, and then we come to the fact that it is all by Christ.
Ques Is John 3: 17 in line with John 3: 16, “For God has not sent his Son into the world that he may judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him”?
JT That is the moral side, the moral condition.
FJF Did God love the world, because it was to be the arena where He would display Himself?
JT That is right.
HB Would Isaiah 45 help? “For thus saith Jehovah who created the heavens, God himself who formed the earth and made it, he who established it, — not as waste did he create it”.
JT That is to say, what we have now is not what is mentioned in the first verse of Genesis. The latter is what God did in the beginning before Satan had anything to do with it or sin had anything to do with it. “In the beginning God”, not Jehovah, not the Father, but God, “created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and empty”. He did not create it that way. It is first the bare thought, that “God created the heavens and the earth”, without saying anything more.
RWS When it says “the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38: 7), would they reflect what was in God’s heart at the time?
JT No doubt they had some light, that would be the angels, showing that the angels were created [p. 44] before men, but they must have been created after the first verse of Genesis, when “God created the heavens and the earth”. As far as I understand, the angels must have come in after that. They were to be used, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out for service on account of those who shall inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1: 14. They serve not only God but men, therefore they are in view after the creation, after the first of Genesis. The bare thought of the creation must come in before anything that we have had to do with, because we read “before the foundation of the world”. The Lord Jesus says the Father loved Him “before the foundation of the world”, John 17: 24. We must make way for that, that God did something before the foundation of the world.
FJF Mr. Darby said when he looked at a rose that he loved it because of the One who made it. Would that be right?
JT The flowers, the growth of the earth, that would be the third day of the creation when all that was made. We have vegetables on the earth and all that, but then we have to go back to the first verse before we come to that. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. What did He actually create? We have an atmosphere attached to it too, necessary for it, so that we have to work all that out in our minds, that “God created the heavens and the earth”. Elohim, that is the God of power, because the word implies His power.
JVW Would Psalm 90 help in that? “From eternity to eternity thou art God”.
JT Well, that is Moses, and he brings it down to our condition here. It is the bare idea of creation that we are talking about. We should not stop at that because we want to get at something else, but we do not want to leave what we began with without some thought to carry away with us in our minds to [p. 45] educate us in the things of God that will work out in regard to moral things.
AJG Is it to be noted that in the day of eternity God still has heaven and earth, “a new heaven and a new earth”, as though what He started with in creating the heavens and the earth was His prime thought that He goes right through with?
JT Very good. The final thought implies that something has happened, some adverse or sinister thing had happened and that originated with the devil, and the book of Revelation shows how that is finally met. There is no formal evidence or statement as to anything happening save that “the earth was waste and empty”, not the heavens. We should stop there and get something into our minds to carry away that we can use in working out the truth in a moral sense.
FKC Do you think when God takes up the matter with Job following on Elihu’s speech, that He helps Job in what is moral, but He calls attention to the physical universe, the stars, the heavens, the light, darkness, and calving of the hinds. He says, “Where wast thou when I founded the earth?” Job 38: 4.
JT Just so, so that it is a teaching subject from the standpoint of the book of Job, that Job is to be taught. He is teachable although it takes a long time to bring him to perfection in teaching; he is teachable and of course that may come out in the thought we had in mind. The whole book of Job will come out in what we have in mind, because what helps us as to that is that Satan comes in in that book. The young people get things from the schools that are damaging and defiling, but we are to have in our minds to connect everything with God. Then we come to the mediatorial side, that all was on mediatorial principles, that Christ made the world, but God made the worlds by Christ. He is the Mediator [p. 46] of creation first; the Mediator of redemption second. We can leave the thought of creation now and come to redemption and then the chapter we have read.
Ques In verse 11 it says, “But our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus”. Would it be right to connect that with redemption? Would the person that we have in mind in regard to redemption be the Lord Jesus?
JT We have not yet come to redemption; we have been engaged in the thought of creation. There are two great thoughts, that Christ Himself is Mediator, firstly of creation and secondly of redemption. He is Mediator of both, and then when you come to a further thought of mediatorship, it is the law. Moses was mediator of the law, ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator; that is, a law to govern things. The question now is to come to the idea of redemption; that would bring us into our chapter, because we want to see the idea of God as lovable in this book, particularly to be loved by young Christians.
EAL In Thessalonians you have been bringing forward a great deal the thought of youth. In Ecclesiastes we have “Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth”, and it says in the footnote that Creator is plural. We cannot come into the sense of remembering our Creator unless we have right basic thoughts about creation.
JT If you look around the earth and the heavens, everything is in your favour. Why should not young people be enjoined to remember God as the Creator? “In the days of thy youth”, that fits in with the point in these meetings, that God is to be known and remembered as the Creator. We can come into it and think of it, how God appears in the way in which He does appear in the third chapter, leading up to the fourth chapter and the fifth that we will have later. It is a question of the young people [p. 47] getting something into their minds to carry away as to creation, because creation is a learning book, full of things that are instructive to our minds and profitable in a moral sense in all that relates to us, leading up to the assembly.
FHL Can we link up Psalm 19 with what you are saying? Behind that is there the thought of God being love, so that there is glory to shine in that way?
JT Quite right, and then the idea of the law comes in after that.
RWS So that all that we have had up to this point would remove any thought of evolution which might be imbibed by the young in the schools.
JT Quite so. As soon as the children go to school, they are face to face with things that are not according to God. Evolution is a direct lie of the devil. The young people are to be taught by us, by their mothers and fathers, that it is a false thing, the work of the devil. Therefore, the point now is that the young people might carry away something in their minds to defend them, to protect them, to enable them to look into moral things profitably, and see where they are in relation to God, that God is the Creator of everything and that Christ is the Mediator of creation.
FJF Is it true that God never works up to a thing; He works down from the top?
JT That is right. God is in heaven and we are on earth. Then we can work out our thoughts to the idea of mediatorship and the high priesthood of Christ. He is in heaven, and the Holy Spirit is here among us today, that is to say, God and Christ in heaven and God in the Spirit here in the assembly. These are all profitable things, especially for young people, to carry away with them to defend themselves from the evil things that are taught [p. 48] in the schools.
RWS All that bears on our chapter, for in verse 5 Paul says, “For this reason I also, no longer able to refrain myself, sent to know your faith, lest perhaps the tempter had tempted you and our labour should be come to nothing”.
JT Not the devil, but the tempter; the Lord Jesus had to do with the tempter. The young people should get into their minds what the tempter may do to them. So it says, “For this reason I also, no longer able to refrain myself, sent to know your faith, lest perhaps the tempter had tempted you and our labour should be come to nothing”. Well, it is very important to get something on those lines, that the work of God should not come to nothing. The tempter would seek to bring the work of God down to nothing in our mind.
RWS The next verse is beautiful: “But Timotheus having just come to us from you, and brought to us the glad tidings of your faith and love, and that ye have always good remembrance of us, desiring much to see us, even as we also you”; so that there is great comfort.
HEE It is remarkable that Paul did not send an older brother to the young christians. He sent Timotheus who was young and would fit in.
JT Quite so. He was a young man, a lovable young man. There was no one like him, and we want such persons.
FJF It is important what you are saying, because we have an example in Africa of a young brother who was very happy in the Lord, and he went to the university and a professor there taught him terrible things. The result was that he gave up the fellowship, and he did not believe what it says in the word of God.
JT That shows the danger to young people in the universities, and we could cite many cases here in this country of that same thing. Parents should [p. 49] be careful to watch over children in the schools to see what they are learning, and to see that their minds are refusing evil and entertaining the good, because we get the good in these meetings, in all our meetings. The good is found in the Lord’s supper, the prayer meetings, the reading of the word of God, and the preaching of the gospel, and so forth. Provision is made for the young people in our meetings, wherever they are held, whether small or large. The point is to get them to see what is good. The good is of God, and the Spirit of God is here to help the parents to bring the good before their children and to keep it before them.
Rem Would not the devil use anything he possibly can to overthrow faith; if not evolution, he will use suffering or affliction, such as we have in this chapter.
JT Quite so. The young people get it too. If they are faithful to the Lord, they will get it from their school companions. They will get the evil and persecution with it. That is alluded to here.
Ques Speaking about university education, would it not be advisable for the young people among us who elect to take a university education to be careful to see what subjects they take? Certain subjects are worse than others. Should we be careful what we select for our studies?
JT I think parents could get the hearing of the teachers and urge them not to bring certain things before their children. Very often teachers are amenable to influence on the part of the parents, to keep the children from what is damaging. Tell them why. Young people in the schools are very often used of God as a testimony to others.
CHH Would you say there is a great necessity for home teaching, that they might be instructed in the counsels of God so that they might not be discouraged by the breakdown and wreckage they see [p. 50] around, but see what is going through? The knowledge of the counsels of God would preserve.
JT Something better than what the schools present. In earlier days we had Sunday schools for children, and it was found that they were allowed to go out wherever they wished while the readings were going on. The brethren began to see that it was better to bring the children to the reading meetings on the Lord’s Day afternoons than to let them be by themselves. So that Sunday Schools as far as I know have been altogether abandoned by the brethren. They have not been found to be helpful spiritually.
CHH Someone alluded yesterday to Deuteronomy 6. It speaks about impressing the children as you sit down in the house. In chapter 11 it says you are to teach. Impressing and teaching children is a home necessity, is it not?
JT The believer’s house is the greatest place for the children to learn; it is the safest place for them to learn because God is there. God is in the believer’s house. It is well to stress upon the children that the devil is outside, but God is inside a believer’s house. Keep young believers in the house, where the parents are, where the good influence is, where the Bible is, see that the children are saved from the street.
WWM Do you think we have an example in Moses that would stimulate every parent? Some of us have missed it, but one sees that Moses was put into the hands of his mother and she instructed him, evidently, in the ways of God, in such a way that when he came to years he turned to the people of God and did not turn to Egypt. In speaking of Sunday schools, I experienced as a boy myself what I fear has been damaging. Parents send children to Sunday schools to give them a spiritual education that they should get at home. Any of us who have missed it with our families, it is because we did not [p. 51] take care of them at home when they were young. Do you agree with that?
JT Surely. So children are baptised. There used to be difficulty with some in getting the children baptised, but now there is hardly any difficulty at all. They are baptised in the houses. They are baptised, according to Peter in the name of the Lord (Acts 10: 48), and secondly, according to Matthew 28, “to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. All that is available to children, and parents who have them baptised ought to bring them up under the power of the word of God, because that is what is provided for them.
JK This morning you were giving us a word as to the supremacy of God in Genesis 1, then in Genesis 2 the modified term, then God coming into revelation as Father. Is that not the great anchor to our souls as we see God has been pleased to move and reveal Himself in Christ?
JT Very good, so that the second chapter of Genesis is Jehovah. It is a modifying thought from the word Elohim, but that leads up to the New Testament where we have the name Father. The children are brought up in the households according to the power of that name.
JK That is what I was thinking, so would that not be the great anchor to the soul as we lay hold of the fact that God has been pleased to reveal Himself and to bring us into the marvellous truth which we are enjoying today.
JT Quite so. So it is that Hagar went away from her mistress. She was to have a son; the Angel of Jehovah found her and spoke to her and she called the name of Jehovah who spoke to her, “Thou art the God who reveals himself”, Genesis 16: 13. The thought was to bring the child up in the light of that, of the God who reveals Himself.
[p. 52] Rem In regard to an earlier remark about the young brother in fellowship going to a university and becoming an unbeliever, I cannot understand how a believer can become an unbeliever. Would you say something about that?
JT It is the tempter. The apostle speaks of it here in verse 5, “For this reason I also, no longer able to refrain myself, sent to know your faith, lest perhaps the tempter”, that is the devil, “had tempted you and our labour should be come to nothing”. That is how a believer becomes an unbeliever, or partially so. That is, he is damaged in his soul by the tempter.
Rem He is never really entirely an unbeliever again. You say he is damaged in his soul.
JT He might be, of course; if he is born again he can never become an unbeliever again, but suppose he was not. He might be brought up under good influence and yet he might not be born again. We want to be sure that the children come into new birth. If they are not born again, you cannot trust them, therefore we have to keep in mind that the influence indicated in the power of the new birth is there. We can count on that.
CHH Reverting to the verse quoted earlier “that ye have always good remembrance of us”, would that not indicate the importance of having young people at the meetings so that they might get acquainted with those who serve, because I suppose that would refer to Paul and those who were with him. There would be a certain amount of attractiveness about their ministry and deportment which the young people really ought to be helped by.
JT Another thing is that the young people very often congregate with other young people, whereas to get the good of the truth they should be with their elders, with their parents, because the damage is when they get with each other. The good influence is not there. The parents’ influence is a protective influence and can be relied upon.
AR Bearing on that would it be confirmed in Acts 21, “all of them accompanying us, with wives and children, till we were out of the city. And kneeling down upon the shore we prayed. And having embraced one another, we went on board ship, and they returned home”? You get the children there accompanying Paul.
JT The children were with them to see Paul away. Now we have here something that confirms all this in speaking of the tempter, and the children are especially the objects of the tempter. “But Timotheus having just come to us from you, and brought to us the glad tidings of your faith and love, and that ye have always good remembrance of us”; that is to say, young people are to think of the elder brethren, to get the truth from them: “desiring much to see us, even as we also you”, that is how Paul regarded them, the young people, “for this reason we have been comforted in you, brethren, in all our distress and tribulation, through your faith, because now we live if ye stand firm in the Lord”. That is to say, the apostle’s very life was bound up with the Thessalonians standing firm in the truth.
Rem “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him”, Genesis 18: 19. Abraham’s household were all subject to him.
JT Abraham is said to be the father of us all, and Sarah is said to be the mother of sisters.
EAL Would the “good remembrance of us” underlie the thought of paying attention to the present ministry? When we leave these meetings we may have a good remembrance of you, but when we think of you we think of the ministry that proceeded from you to us.
JT Well, that is the idea. There are many here that young people can think of, and that is [p. 54] what the apostle had in mind, that the young people he was speaking to had remembrance of him. They would think of Paul as their teacher, they received the gospel through him. That was the case with the Thessalonians, the gospel had come to them through Paul. Then the question is for the household and the parents to carry on unceasingly with the right thing to keep the truth before the young. So that he says “For this reason we have been comforted in you, brethren, in all our distress and tribulation, through your faith, because now we live if ye stand firm in the Lord”. His very life, you might say, was bound up with the Thessalonians, showing what a heart he had; indeed, that heart ought to be reflected in every parent here today. “For what thanksgiving can we render to God for you, for all the joy wherewith we rejoice on account of you before our God, night and day beseeching exceedingly to the end that we may see your face, and perfect what is lacking in your faith?”. He mentions faith several times for that is the point. They were not simply getting instruction, but growing in faith, because the dispensation we are in is the dispensation of faith, and if we do not have faith we are nothing. What is not of faith is sin, it says, a very solemn thing.
JLP Would this help the young people to become contributors to the joy of the servants? John mentions in his epistles to Gaius and the elect lady that he had no greater joy than to see his children walking in the truth. Is that your thought?
JT Just so. It goes on to say, “and perfect what is lacking in your faith? But our God and Father himself”. Now we have come to the names of divine Persons, it is “our God and Father himself”, first of all, and then “and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you. But you, may the Lord make to exceed and abound in love toward one another, and [p. 55] toward all, even as we also towards you, in order to the confirming of your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints”. “All his saints”, not some of them, so that the thought of the Lord’s coming is seen peculiarly throughout this epistle, and the next one too. Here in every chapter, the coming of the Lord is mentioned. The Lord is coming with us, not here that He is coming for us, but He is coming with us. The next chapter will tell us that God is in that too, that God will bring us, but here it is the Lord Jesus bringing all the saints with Him.
AR How far back does that go? Does that include the Old Testament saints as well as the New?
JT I would think so, all the saints up to the present time, a wonderful thought. How comprehensive the Lord is as to His saints. He gathers them as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings. We shall see in the next chapter that God will bring them with Him, showing that divine Persons are differentiated. They are interchangeable in some cases. Here it is the Lord Jesus bringing all the saints with Him. In the next chapter it is God bringing them with Him.
F Would you connect Zechariah 14: 5 with the last verse here? “And Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with thee”.
JT I am not sure whether it is the same idea. In Jude it says, “The Lord has come amidst his holy myriads”, a great thought. We have all that in our minds as to the Lord’s coming, what will happen, what a great thing it will be. The word is in 2 Timothy 4, “to all who love his appearing”, that we love the thought of the Lord showing Himself to the universe. “Behold, he comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which have pierced him, and all the tribes of the land shall wail because of him”, Revelation 1: 7. These are glorious things that are ahead of us when the Lord comes, and it is very imminent. We shall have more about it in the fourth chapter, because it is a chapter that is more pungent as to the truth of the Lord’s coming than any other one. We are to “encourage one another with these words”, that is to say, the words of chapter four.
JRHJr In the latter part of this chapter, touching the activity of divine Persons, is there an allusion to it in the thought of “may the Lord make to exceed and abound in love toward one another”? Is the working out of it the activity of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is not referred to directly in this section which makes so much of the activity of divine Persons.
JT I would say the Spirit would be implied in that, because the Spirit is here. We can well recognise that to be so when it is a question of love, as it says “may the Lord make to exceed and abound in love toward one another ... before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints”. The idea is what we are going to be when the Lord comes. The Lord Jesus Himself is mentioned here, so that we must define the Persons we are dealing with, but undoubtedly when it is a question of love the Spirit, being here Himself, is active. His operations are in mind.
JTJr Verse 8 of the next chapter shows that: “given also his Holy Spirit to you”. The Holy Spirit is in us.