1Thessalonians 5:23-28
Paul Says Good-bye
I. \\#1Thess 1:1-2\\ Paul’s Greetings to the Thessalonians
II. \\#1Thess 1:3-10\\ Paul’s Knowledge of the Thessalonians
III. \\#1Thess 2:1-16\\ Paul’s Plan for the Thessalonians
IV. \\#1Thess 2:17-4:12\\ Paul’s Heart for the Thessalonians
V. \\#1Thess 4:13-5:10\\ Paul’s Message for the Thessalonians
VI. \\#1Thess 5:11-22\\ Paul’s Commands to the Thessalonians
VII. \\#1Thess 5:23-28\\ Paul’s Closing to the Thessalonians
A. \\#5:23\\ A Prayer
B. \\#5:24\\ A Statement
C. \\#5:25\\ A Request
D. \\#5:26\\ A Challenge
E. \\#5:27\\ A Charge
F. \\#5:28\\ A Farewell
We move into the last verses of this book. Like the introductions, the closings
of the epistles are sometimes overlooked for their content. However, there is
good meat on that bone. Let’s spend a few minutes looking at this closing.
I. \\#1Thess 5:23-28\\ Paul’s Closing to the Thessalonians
A. \\#5:23\\ A Prayer - While this is a prayer, we can also learn some things
by looking at the individual components of the prayer.
1. Notice that this prayer contains two descriptions.
a. A description of God
(1) Jehovah is the God that gives peace.
(a) God is not One to give confusion, suffering, or
discouragement to His followers.
(b) Those who turn to God do not spend their lives fretting,
stewing, or worrying.
(c) No, this is a God who removes the chaos and confusion
from the lives of those who seek Him.
(2) Jehovah is the God that sanctifies.
(a) Sanctify means to separate from sin and dedicate to God.
(b) We often think that God merely commands us to turn from
sin and be holy; however, Paul is praying that He would
actually do this work in the lives of the believers.
Hence, God is the God that changes us.
(3) Jehovah is the God that preserves us.
(a) To be preserved is to remain as you are.
(b) God preservation speaks of our salvation.
(c) God keeps us as we are, saved.
(4) Jehovah is the God that preserves us blameless.
(a) Not only does God keep us saved, but He keeps us saved
with no blame, that is, with no sin laid to our
account.
(b) God lays the sin of the Christian upon Jesus so that our
record remains clean.
(5) Jehovah is the God that preserves us blameless until Jesus
comes to claim us.
(a) God is not in this saving business for the short haul
but for the long. All the way until Jesus comes for us.
(b) Even in this prayer, Paul is alluding to the eternal
salvation that God gives.
b. A description of Man
(1) All the things that God does, Man needs.
(a) We need God’s peace for we have none of our own.
(b) We need to be separated from sin and dedicated to God
for our efforts are to separate ourselves from God and
run ourselves deeper into sin.
(c) We need to be preserved for we would certainly sin away
all the grace God would give us if we could.
(d) We need to be made blameless for we are certainly guilty
of sin.
(e) And we need to be held onto until this life is over for
if salvation can be sinned away, we will surely do it.
(2) Here is the beauty of God and man.
(a) What He has we need and what we need He has.
(b) What’s more is the fact that He desires and delights to
meet our needs.
(3) Paul also describes our total being, listing our parts in the
proper order of dominance.
(a) We are spirit, soul, and spirit.
i. spirit
aa. The part of man that connects with God.
bb. This is that part of man which can hope, have
faith, communicate with God in prayer and
worship.
cc. The Bible says that this part of the unsaved
person is dead.
Colossians 2:13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
Ephesians 2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
Ephesians 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with
Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
dd. I do not take it to mean that a lost person has
no spirit, but that a lost person’s spirit is
separated from God and incapable of having a
relationship with him.
ee. I don’t know for certain but I do not think
that the spirit s a permanent part of man.
ff. It is possible that the Holy Spirit Himself
will keep us connected to God when we receive
our glorified bodies.
ii. soul
aa. The essence of every person.
bb. Every human not only has a soul, he is a soul.
cc. The soul of man has will, emotions, and
intellect.
dd. The soul is eternal and will either abide in
in heaven with God or the Lake of Fire
forever.
iii. body
aa. The shell in which we live.
bb. The body is the physical house in which the
invisible soul is housed.
(b) Somehow, these three are combined and connected in an
invisible, unknown means.
i. When that connection is broke, the body dies and
passes back to the earth from which it came.
Ecc 12:6 …ever the silver cord be loosed…
7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was….
ii. The soul goes either to hell or heaven.
2Cor 5:8 …to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
Luke 16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes….
iii. The spirit returns to God.
Ecclesiastes 3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they
have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is
vanity.
20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast
that goeth downward to the earth?
Ecc 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it.
(c) Our need is to find out how to strengthen that spirit.
Ephesians 3:16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to
be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they
shall walk, and not faint.
i. The only way to strengthen the spirit of man is by
practicing the disciplines the Bible gives us.
ii. Things like prayer, Bible reading, worship,
fasting, walking by faith—these are the other
commands repeatedly given in the Scripture will
build our spiritual dimension.
2. But this is a prayer, not just components to be studied.
a. Paul is praying that these Christians would be WHOLLY sanctified.
(1) Sanctification is the act of separating from the world and sin
and being dedicated to God.
(2) God is not only interested in our soul being sanctified, but
our body and spirit too.
(3) When it comes to the body, some would argue that you can’t
judge a book by its cover; that is, that you can’t tell what
is on the inside of a person by what the outside looks.
(a) My answer to that is that most of the time you can.
(b) Now, you might find a nice cover that houses a nasty book
but if you find a nasty cover, you can bet it is going
to have nasty content.
(c) I see no reason to think that a book with lewd and
vulgar images on the cover will have anything different
than lewd and vulgar content.
(4) My question is, "If God has re-written what is on the inside,
why can’t we clean up what is on the outside?"
(5) So Paul is praying for a sanctification that affects all three
aspects of our being.
b. Why? Why is Paul wanting the believers to be sanctified?
(1) In seeking the believers’ sanctification, Paul is seeking a
blameless conclusion for the believer.
(2) God does not require holiness just for the sake of being holy.
(3) He requires holiness for the purpose of keeping us out of sin.
(4) We must live in this world, but the more we are entangled with
this world, the more like this world we are going to be.
(a) People require likeness for acceptance.
i. Most of the world does.
ii. Most Christians do as well.
(b) It offends the world for Christians to be different.
(c) God, knowing the pressure that would put on Christians to
conform to the world, has called us to His standard of
holiness.
c. In looking at sanctification, I see several things that it can do.
(1) Sanctification keeps the saved different from the world, thus
keeping them blameless.
(2) By keeping the believer different from the world, it is likely
to anger some of the worldly.
(a) Part of the reason that gays and liberals and Bible
doubters become so angry with Christians (other than
the fact that some Christians are rude and harsh on
them) is that we will not conform to their likeness.
(b) The worldly movement in the church today is an effort by
some Christians to unite the saved and the lost, but it
is misplaced.
(c) The church is not to conform to the world; rather, the
world is challenged to be saved and to conform to the
image of God.
(d) I have not seen that movement produce many godly lost
people but I have seen it produce many worldly people
who claim Christ.
(3) At the same time, by keeping the believer different from the
world, sanctification attracts the spiritually hungry.
(a) A long term guest (tornado victim) from Greystone knows
both JoyAnna and me. He and I have talked a little
about me being a pastor and briefly about salvation.
He lays claim to having been Pentecostal.
(b) He went on to say that he would like to come visit our
church and is thinking about living for Jesus himself.
(c) By seeing two people from our church, this man has
concluded that we have something worth having.
d. Paul is praying that these believers might be wholly sanctified
until Jesus returns for us.
(1) As Paul taught earlier, Jesus is coming again.
(2) While we need to pray for the kind of sanctification that Paul
wanted for this church, we need to also put some effort into
making it a reality.
(3) The Holy Spirit will prompt us to do right, but we must obey
Him.
(a) Obeying the Holy Spirit is work—sometimes very hard
work.
(b) And to maintain that determination until Jesus returns
will take commitment.
B. \\#5:24\\ A Statement
1. Paul winds down with this encouraging statement about God.
2. The God who called you to Himself is faithful. He will do whatever He
has promised to do.
C. \\#5:25\\ A Request - Paul seeks prayer from those he is praying for.
D. \\#5:26\\ A Challenge
1. The near-miss kiss of the cheek is still practiced in Arabian world
today.
2. They practice that custom like we practice a hand shake.
3. It is a sign of greeting, especially to someone for whom you have
respect, so Paul is essentially say, demonstrate respect to your
Christian brothers and sisters.
4. Whether we give the "holy kiss," the handshake, or practice some other
means of greeting, we should always show respect to each other.
E. \\#5:27\\ A Charge
1. Paul charges the Thessalonians to share this epistle with all the
Christians they can.
2. Paul was writing before the printing press.
3. The only way to duplicate written material was to hand copy it.
4. It was not uncommon for churches to send those from their church to
other churches with copies of the manuscripts, even though the other
churches might be one hundred or more miles away.
5. Paul may have been encouraging that very practice in this statement.
F. \\#5:28\\ A Farewell
1. Paul ends the epistle as he began it, but praying that God’s grace
would be upon these converts.
2. Could we not all do with more of God’s grace?
Closing Note - As mentioned at the onset of this study, the small phrase "The
first epistle to the Thessalonians was written from Athens," is not a part of the
original writing. It was added as a footnote later and may or may not be true.
I tend to think that it is not.
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