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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. We are in day 5 of our look through 2
Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 13 to 17 today. I want to say to you
congratulations for making it to day 5, one of the most difficult chapters of
the entire Bible to walk through and to understand.

And here you are at the end of this chapter with me, and I am glad, and you'll
be glad too. Let me read for you verse 13 to verse 15. "But we ought always to
thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God
chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through
belief in the truth.

He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of
our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings
we passed on to you, whether by word or by mouth or by letter. " We've been
talking about what's going to happen at the end.

It's interesting these verses talk about what's happened from the very
beginning. From the very beginning it says here, "God chose you to be saved. " I
can live my life in fear of what might happen at the end, or I can live my life
in the spiritual confidence that comes from knowing what God did at the very
beginning.

At the very beginning, he decided to send his Son Jesus Christ into this world
to deal with the problem of evil that we've been talking about this week. From
the very beginning, he decided to personally love you and to call you and to
save you. God chose you from the beginning.

Anytime we say, "God chose you," and we say, "from the beginning," it makes some
people feel like, "Well, I had nothing to do with it then. I had no choice in it
at all. " No, no.

God, the Bible, tells us, "Wove your ability to choose somehow into his choice
of you. " Now, how he does that, I don't completely understand. That's in the
understanding of God, I have to admit.

But, "God wove your ability to choose into his choice of you. " This isn't some
kind of fatalistic determination that's talked about here. This is the sovereign
will of God at work in the lives of people that he loves.

Now, for some reason, we tend to get hung up on the predetermined side of this
and miss the personal side. God chose you. Hear the "you.

" God chose you. If you've ever been in a situation where you were not chosen,
maybe it was for a team on a playground in grade school, or maybe it was by a
woman or a man who you really wanted to love you, or maybe it was for a job that
you really desired. If you've ever been in a situation where you were not
chosen, those words have to thrill you.

God chose you. Hang on to that today. Hang on to that truth, hang on to that
truth no matter what happens.

You see, as we come to this, the end of this chapter that talks about some of
the confusing things that will happen at the end of times, these verses remind
us we don't have to be afraid. We don't have to be anxious because God has
chosen us. Now, what's interesting in these verses, talks about, reveals to us
some things about how God chooses you.

How does God choose a person? Well, it says, "Through the sanctifying work of
the Spirit, through belief in the truth, He called you to this through our
gospel. " How does God choose a person?

He does it through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, even before you became a
believer in Jesus Christ. Jesus talked about this over in John chapter 16. God's
Spirit was already at work in your life, already convicting you and convincing
you of your need of the truth.

You didn't come to the recognition of your need of the truth all on your own.
God's Spirit prompted you all the way, also through your belief in the truth.
God's Spirit prompted you to a point, to the point of belief, to the point of
trust in the truth.

As I said, God has woven your choice into His choice, and your choice is that
choice, that moment when you say, "Yes, I believe the truth. " Belief here does
not mean just intellectual assent. It means trust.

It means relational trust in God. I lean on Him. I trust in Him.

And then these verses say He does this by calling you through the gospel. The
good news of Jesus Christ is a call in our lives. When I hear it preached in a
sermon, when I hear it on the radio, when I hear it in a song, when I hear
somebody at my office talking about it, something in my heart was drawn towards
that.

That is how God's choice happens in a person's life. The Spirit works. You
choose to believe because God called you.

You heard the call. Now don't miss here. It talks here about how God does this,
but don't miss what you are chosen for.

Notice it says in verse 14, "We are chosen to share in the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ. " Although we've just looked at this week about a time of
rebellion and Satan's evil and doomed to destruction, these verses put it all
into perspective. That's not what we're looking forward to.

What we're looking forward to is sharing in the glory of Jesus Christ. Which
would you rather have, doomed to destruction or sharing the glory of God? It's a
pretty easy choice.

The truth of the matter is Jesus Christ wants us to share in His glory. He calls
us to share in His glory because He loves us. And so Paul says, "Stand firm.

Hold on to the teachings that I've given to you. " It's interesting. This word
"teachings" is literally the idea of traditions.

Paradosis, traditions, makes some of us nervous because we don't want to be
traditional. We don't want to hold on to the traditions of man over the will of
God. Well, that is not what is being talked about here.

This word simply means truths that have been handed down to you by somebody
else, someone else that has taught you the word of God. Some traditions are good
and there's none that are better than when someone has personally handed you the
truth of the word of God by example, by sharing it with you, by living it out.
And what are these traditions, these truths of the Bible that God wants us to
hold on to so tightly?

Let me read for you verses 16 and 17. "May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God
our Father who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good
hope. Encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

" Do you hear the truth in those few verses? God loved us. God loves you.

Hold on to that. When you hold on to that, it helps you to stand firm no matter
what. And God gives to you.

He loved us and by His grace He gives us, and I love these phrases, He gives us
eternal encouragement. Don't you love that? I mean sometimes you get
encouragement, it lasts for a moment.

Sometimes it doesn't even last for 10 minutes and somebody discourages you. But
God's encouragement, it's eternal. It lasts all the way into eternity.

It's not some false pat on the back saying go on out there and you can do a good
job today. It's the eternal encouragement of the fact that He loves you and He
has chosen you. He gives us eternal encouragement and He gives us good hope.

The genuine hope, the real hope that we need to hold on to. We've been talking
in these books of 1st Thessalonians and 2nd Thessalonians about how to live the
real life, the life that God made us to live. Well, that's how to live it.

You live it by recognizing every day that God loves you. That's real. By
recognizing that God gives to you by His grace.

That's real. By recognizing the eternal encouragement and good hope that He
offers out to you. That is real.

It is more real than any evil you're going to face today because it is the
reality that's going to last into eternity. Someone in our research team wrote
to me about this chapter. Although Paul focuses a lot on the antichrist, the
application I got from chapter 2 is the urgency and need to spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ.

Lawlessness might escalate as we wait for Jesus to return. So while these things
take place, I have to recognize that I have a job to do for Christ. I have to
love others as Jesus loves and share the good news.

That's the way to live this out. Realize that you have something to share that
the world needs to hear. Not just experience it for yourself and keep the hope
to yourself, but realize I've got some really good news to share.

What God has done for me, He wants to do for others. God does not desire that
any should perish. So I should share with everyone this good news of what God
has done in my life.

But I'm not going to share it unless I stand firm in it and hold on to it. So
begin there. I love this prayer at the end of this passage.

God, give me strength in every good thing I do and in every good thing I say.
God, help me to share in the glory of my Lord Jesus Christ. As we close our look
at these books, I'd like to pray this prayer for you.

Lord, I pray for each person listening to this, that right now they would hear
and understand your choice of them through your spirit, through your truth,
through your call. They would understand that the future they have to look
forward to is the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, sharing in that glory. And
that God, right now we would, no matter what we're facing today, no matter what
we're facing this week, we realize there is nothing more important than that.

No doubt or difficulty we're facing in our lives this week is greater than your
glory so we can be comforted. And no wonderful thing that's happening in our
lives this week is greater than your glory so we can be strengthened not to
trust in ourselves. And Lord, I pray that you, our Lord Jesus Christ, and that
God our Father who loved us and by your grace gave us eternal encouragement and
good hope.

God, right now encourage our hearts and strengthen us in every good word and
every good deed. I pray this in your name. Amen.

Well, next week we're going to finish our look at 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. We
look at chapter 3 of the second letter.