“Chosen As First Fruits”
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
I feel quite sure you have all old the famous saying: fool me once, shame on you—fool me twice, shame on me. We have all been fooled by something or someone at least once in our life. We’ve been fooled by our friends and co-workers. I know we’ve all been fooled by a politician or two. We’ve been fooled by that person we were following with their turn signal on for five miles on a two-lane highway that was impossible to pass on. And if you are like me you’ve been fooled by that charlatan disguised as an auto mechanic who rebuilt your carburetor saying that would fix the problem and you were broke down again twenty miles down the road.
I played Little League baseball when I was growing up and had the great fortune of being on the championship team. Now, granted, that team could have won whether I was a member or not. Chipper Jones I wasn’t. I was slow, was right-handed in the field and left-handed at the plate; I guess you could say I was screwed up from the very beginning—but the coach of that team was my neighbor, and he showed great mercy—grace faith—and guts in selecting me for his team. He wore a crew-cut and looked and thought a little like Pete Rose. If you walked out to your position or into the dugout you soon found yourself sitting in the dugout. We hustled to everything!
We only lost one game that year during the regular season which meant we played the championship game against the team that beat us. I played left field and though I wasn’t a star by any stretch of the imagination I did catch a ball that would have went over the fence for a home-run and in our last at bat, trailing, I earned a walk and scored a run that started the rally that carried us to the championship.
In the game during the regular season that we lost I was up at bat and the opposing pitcher was a boy named Jeff Cobb. His older brother Rodney owns a huge car dealership now in my hometown. Anyway, Jeff threw me a pitch that was headed straight for my head. Now I wasn’t opposed to taking one for the team to get on base because I wasn’t the greatest hitter anyway but the thought of getting hit on the head just didn’t appeal to me this particular day. So, I ducked down thinking the pitch would sail over my head but what I didn’t notice was the spin on the ball. When I ducked so did the ball and it hit me right in the eye. The umpire yelled, “Take your base,” and I probably said, “What base.” Three steps out of the batter’s box and I was lying in a heap on the baseline. For several days after that you could still see the stitches of the baseball cover on my face. Jeff Cobb fooled me once with his fancy curveball—but he never fooled me again.
In our text for this morning, it is obvious that someone has thrown a curve ball to the church at Thessalonica and fooled them into believing that Jesus had already returned—that they had been left behind—and that they no longer needed to be faithful or live as Christians were called to live.
We aren’t told the source of this confusion, but it’s assumed to have come in the form a prophetic utterance—teaching—or a forged letter from Paul. The Apostle foresees the possibility of endless confusion, whether by false doctrine, false prophets, or forged epistles and in his letter exhorts them most earnestly to stand firm and immovable in all that he has taught them.
In this letter Paul is describing the end of the world and Christ’s second coming. He says that great suffering and trouble lies ahead, but evil will not prevail because Christ will return to judge all people. Paul emphasizes that each person prepare for Christ’s return by living daily in a relationship with Him. If we are ready, we won’t need to be concerned about the preceding events or the timing of Christ’s return because God is in control.
What do the years 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, 1984, and 2012 all have in common? Well, these are the years that a certain religious group has prophesied as the year that the world would come to an end, and of course, they were all wrong because we’re still here.
When Jesus was asked when He would return and restore Israel do you remember His answer: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). By predicting the end of the world these religious groups are basically claiming themselves to be smarter than God.
Let me ask you another question. What do Napoleon, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, and Ronald Reagan have in common? They have all been identified by some religious group as the Antichrist. In case you are wondering how Ronald Reagan got in this group, his full name is Ronald Wilson Reagan; since each name has six letters, people associated with him the number 666.
Throughout history there have been individuals who epitomized evil and who were hostile to everything Christ stands for. These people, sometimes referred to as antichrists, have lived in every generation and will continue to work their evil.
It is dangerous, however, to label any person as the Antichrist and try to predict Christ’s coming based on that assumption. Paul mentions a man of lawlessness [the Antichrist] not so we might attempt to identify him so we might be ready for anything that threatens our faith. If our faith is strong, we don’t need to be afraid of what lies ahead, because we know that this lawless man has already been defeated by God, no matter how powerful he becomes or how terrible our situation seems. God is in control, and He will be victorious. Our task is to be prepared for Christ’s return and to spread the gospel [scriptural holiness] so that even more people will also be prepared.
All of this is enough to tell us something about prophecy. Prophecy is too important to be neglected—it is too important to be rejected—and it is too important not to be inspected. At a conference I attended a few years ago, Dr. Ben Witherington, a professor at Asbury Theological School shared that “A text without a pretext is just a text that tells you what you want it to tell you.”
In the church at Thessalonica a false prophecy had caused great confusion over events that were going to take place. Jesus spoke to this very thing when He said, “And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:11). He also said, “Therefore you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:44).
Waiting isn’t a virtue that I have been blessed with and evidently the same can be said for some of the church at Thessalonica. We all know how hard it is to wait, don’t we. How many times have you found yourself watching the hands of a clock move and wish they were moving faster? How many times have you caught yourself saying to the telephone: RING!
Do you remember waiting on Christmas and birthdays as a child thinking they would never get here? And now we wish that time could just slow down a little as adults. I remember waiting for the last day of school every year. I remember waiting to turn sixteen—then eighteen—and then twenty-one and the rights of passage that came with each of those events. Waiting for something important is hard to do and the Thessalonians struggled with it as well.
St. Paul is writing to the pillars of the church at Thessalonica. He is telling them how thankful he is for them. He is also telling them: “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you.”
When Paul instructs us to stand firm, he doesn’t mean for us to turn to stone. Rather we are to be like that tree planted beside a stream of living water:
Psalm 1:3
Jeremiah 17:8
May we continue to stand firm in what prophecy has taught us—despite what the world around us wants us to believe. May we continue to stand firm but also continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ! May we not be fooled by the curve balls the world throws at us. And may we be found prepared and waiting patiently for the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ! Fool me once—shame on you; fool me twice—shame on me!
Eastman First Methodist Church 