“A Higher Cause for Joy”

1 Thessalonians 2.17-20

But we, brethren, having been taken away from you for a short while-- in person, not in spirit-- were all the more eager with great desire to see your face.  ¹⁸ For we wanted to come to you-- I, Paul, more than once-- and yet Satan hindered us.  ¹⁹ For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?  ²⁰ For you are our glory and joy.

What brings joy to your heart?  What do you boast in?  What do you exult in?  What do you glory in?  What do you revel in?  For what do you hope?  What circumstances bring a smile to your face?  What is it that brings a tear of joy to your eyes?

The answer to these questions, I think, will be a sort of barometer for measuring your spiritual condition, because the circumstances that bring the greatest joy to a person’s heart will vary widely depending on the condition of that person’s heart before God.  For some the greatest joy would come from getting a coveted promotion at their work.  Nothing would bring them greater excitement and nothing would elicit a greater celebration than that.  For others it might be a relationship.  You see this especially in high school—the young girl who practically goes berserk when she finally gets asked out by the boy of her dreams.  Some people never grow out of that.  They think the greatest thing that could possibly happen in their lives is for them to get together with the person they are madly in love with.  It becomes an idol.  Several weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with a man whose life was in shambles.  He went on and on and on telling me his story, and he kept going back to this girl.  I think he was forty or fifty years old, but he just couldn’t let go of this girl that he had met in his twenties.  She had long since been married and it didn’t work out, but he couldn’t let go.  That was his hope.  His whole life seems to have been built around the possibility that he might get together with this gal.  That’s what he thinks will bring him joy. 

For some, it’s the simple thought of a new house, a new car, a new job or a set of circumstances entirely different than their own that will bring them joy.  But what brings you joy?  What circumstances rejoice your heart?  What do you revel in?  What do you glory in? 

In the passage of Scripture before us, Paul talks about what brought joy to his heart, and he does so in a larger section in which he begins to talk about his relationship with the Thessalonians after he and Timothy and Silvanus were forced leave Thessalonica.  For the majority of chapter two, his discussion centered on his relationship with the Thessalonians during his stay in that city.  Chapter two, verse seventeen through the end of chapter three forms a sort of narrative of the events that transpired from the time of Paul’s separation from them to the time at which he wrote this first letter to them.  In giving those details, it also reveals the deep love Paul had for the Thessalonians together with his abiding concern that they grow in their walk with Christ.  

Our section for today seems to come as yet another response to charges coming from Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica.  They were constantly trying to attack his character and ministry.  If they could succeed in doing that, they could practically decimate the faith of the new converts in Thessalonica, because Paul was the first messenger to bring the gospel to them.  Here it seems that they were claiming that Paul had run from Thessalonica at the first sign of the persecution the new converts were left to endure.  Such a hasty departure, they must have said, was evidence of the fact that he cared very little about them. 

Paul’s response in these verses couldn’t be more convincing.  At the end of it he essentially says this to the Thessalonians: “You are my hope, my joy, and the crown in which I boast.”  Can you think of a more powerful way to express your deep affection and longing for someone?  Wow!  Has anyone ever said that to you?  Nobody’s ever said that to me.  Can you imagine someone telling you, “You are my hope; you are my joy; you are my crown of exultation?”  How would you respond?  “Well, I . . . I had no idea I was so great.  There must be things so wonderful in me that not even I myself know.”  What did Paul mean when he said that?  In what sense were the Thessalonians his hope and joy and crown of exultation?   

Well, if we are going to understand that, we’ve got to go back to verse seventeen and work our way forward from there.  As I preach and as you follow my teaching, I hope that your skills in handling the Scriptures are refined.  Now I know that there are some seasoned Bible interpreters here who know the Scriptures better than I do, and that is great!  I will learn from you.  But we are all at different levels, and this passage affords us the opportunity to review or learn some principles of interpretation.  Verse seventeen begins, “But we, brethren, having been taken away from you for a short while . . .”  If we as modern readers were simply to crack our Bibles open to this verse and begin reading, we would not know what Paul was talking about.  I used to remind my students in the youth group that the New Testament epistles are personal letters written from one individual to another or to a group of people.  If you were to write a personal letter to a friend of yours and I was to pick it up and read it, I would probably come across several things that I wouldn’t understand.  I would have to know the context, the setting and the background of that letter.  Obviously, the same is true when we read the New Testament.  And here, Paul is apparently referring to a particular historical incident.  What was that incident?  Well, most of you know already because we’ve referred to it several times.  It is recorded for us in Acts chapter seventeen.  It was that time when the Jews caused an uproar in Thessalonica which forced the city authorities to act and eventually led to Paul and Silvanus and Timothy’s premature departure.     

The Separation

 That is what Paul is talking about here, and when he says, “having been taken away from you,” he uses a graphic term.  It appears only here in the New Testament, but it was used of children being orphaned from their parents or of parents being bereaved of their children.  Paul’s opponents must have said that he left at the first sign of persecution and that his departure was a sure sign of his careless attitude toward the Thessalonians.  But Paul gets the facts straight.  He says in essence, “We were ripped away from you like parents being torn away from their children, and it was too soon, and we didn’t want to go.”  When you read the Acts account, you find that it was actually the new believers in Thessalonica who sent Paul away, and they did it by night because they were evidently so concerned for his safety (Acts 17.10).  Every indication seems to suggest that Paul wanted to stay.  He wanted more time with them to see them built up and established in their faith.  The believers there probably almost had to force him to leave.

And it was a painful experience for Paul and his teammates, because he says, “When we had been taken away from you for a short while—which literally means, the season of an hour; “just a little while” is the idea—we were all the more eager with great desire to see your face.”  This is passionate language!  It reads literally, “All the more we were eager your face to see with much longing.”  “Just a moment’s separation from you intensified our desire to be in your physical presence.”  When Paul says, “with much longing,” he uses the word epithumia, which is used most often in the New Testament for that inordinate, passionate, sensuous desire that we call lust.  But here he uses it in a positive and pure sense for a passionate desire to see them face to face. 

 I remember when Kelly and I first started dating, it became obvious to me fairly quickly that this was the girl I was going to marry.  And to this day, we look back so often on that time when we were experiencing the joy of getting to know each other; it was a wonderful experience!  But in December of that year, I graduated from the Moody Bible Institute and moved back to Oregon.  Kelly was still in Chicago, and our relationship entered into a new stage—long distance.  It was during those months when she was more than 1000 miles away that we both experienced a longing to see each other face to face.  We talked about what a joy it would be to have a conversation with one another “eyeball to eyeball.”  And this longing was more than superficial.  I could say that I was “all the more eager with great desire to see her face.”   

That was the heartbeat of Paul’s longing for the Thessalonian believers.  In verse eight he said, “Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.”  He loved these people, and when he was taken away from them it was like a father being ripped away from his own children.   

But you know what, he wasn’t defeated by that.  He describes the nature of that separation as being “in person, not in spirit”—literally, “in face, not in heart.”  The idea is “out of sight, but not out of mind.”  “We were physically separated from you, but still very much with you in heart.”  That is the blessed reality of the union that exists in the body of Christ.  Paul described the Thessalonian believers as being “in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1.1).  That is the new sphere of a believer’s existence; we are “in Christ,” as Paul says so many times in his letters.  When Paul was physically separated from the Corinthian believers he described himself as “absent in body but present in spirit” (1 Cor 5.3).  He said it this way to the Colossians: “Even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ” (Col 2.5).  Believers may be separated, but we are always together in spirit by virtue of our union with Christ.  “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,” said Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.13.  The body of Christ is one living organism that always exists in spiritual oneness on account of the indwelling Holy Spirit in each of us (cf. 1 Cor 3.16; 6.19).  So there was a very real sense in which Paul could say, “We were ripped away from you, but only in face, not in heart; we are still very much spiritually present with you.”   

Kelly and I experienced that while we were separated by so many miles.  The one thing that was most precious to us in our relationship was the union we experienced through Christ.  To share with one another what we were learning through Scripture and how God was challenging and leading in our lives was the most significant aspect of our relationship.  And the regular time that we spent in prayer over the phone was vital in deepening our fellowship.  There was a very real sense in which I was present with her in spirit and she with me on account of our union with Christ.    

The Attempts to Visit 

Paul goes on in verse eighteen and adds greater weight to his longing to see the Thessalonians face to face.  He says, “For we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, more than once.”  This was more than just a desire on Paul’s part.  He had actually attempted to go visit them on more than one occasion—the text says literally, “both once and twice,” which means at least more than once, but could mean “time and again.”  So what was the problem?  Why didn’t Paul just go visit them? 

The Hindrance 

Paul tells us very clearly why his attempts to visit the Thessalonians failed: “Satan hindered us.”  This was Satanic opposition!  The word means, “to make progress difficult or slow, hinder, thwart.”[1]  It literally means, “‘to cut into.’  It was used as a military term in later Greek to picture an enemy force cutting up (or destroying) a road so as to make it impassable. It was also used to denote any hindrance in general and conveys the thought of obstacles preventing the accomplishment of an intended movement.”[2]   That’s what Satan was doing to prevent Paul’s visit, and let me tell you, commentators have spilled a lot of ink trying to figure out what exactly the physical circumstances were that hindered Paul.  Some suggest that it was the pledge that Jason made to the city authorities in Acts seventeen.  Others think is was a physical sickness or weakness, or perhaps Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor 12.7).  But the fact of the matter is that Paul attributes the hindrance to Satan himself, and that is precisely the point.  He and his spiritual forces of wickedness are the actual power source Paul saw behind this and all opposition to the gospel (cf. Eph 2; 6; 2 Cor 4, etc.).  

            It was the Jews whom Paul said were “hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved” (1 Thess 2.16).  Satan was no doubt behind that opposition, because the point of Paul’s preaching was as he said, “so that they may be saved.”  If anyone stands to preach the gospel, to bring the word of God to people so that they might believe and be saved and sanctified, you can be sure that Satan will be there to oppose that effort.  And that is exactly why he was hindering Paul’s attempts to visit the Thessalonians.   

            Paul loved the Thessalonians; he had fond affection for them so that being taken away from them was almost more than he could bear.  Like a father bereaved of his children, he longed to be with them again, but that wasn’t just so that he could “hang out” with them.  He had a greater purpose for his visit.  Notice what he said in chapter three: “Therefore when we could endure it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s fellow worker in the gospel of Christ” (vv. 1-2).  Why?—why did he send Timothy when he was yet prevented?  “To strengthen and encourage you as to your faith” (v. 2b).  That’s why Paul wanted to go see them.  He wanted to be in their physical proximity so that he could build them up in their faith.  In verse five he said, “For this reason, when I could endure it no longer, I also sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor would be in vain.”  Paul wanted to know if their initial profession of faith was real.  He wanted to know if they were standing firm in the Lord.  He was so concerned that all the persecution and the attacks from his opponents might have rendered all of his efforts there to be in vain.  He was so desperately concerned about their spiritual well-being, and that is precisely why he wanted to visit them—to build them up and strengthen their faith.

           So of course Satan stood to oppose his visit.  This is such an important lesson for us to learn.  Turn to Ephesians chapter six.  In verse eleven Paul says, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (vv. 11-12).  That is where the real battle is fought.  Satan is described in Scripture as the serpent (Gen 3.14; Rev 12.9; 20.2), the devil (Matt 4.1), the enemy (Matt 13.25, 39), the ruler of the demons (Mark 3.22), a murderer (John 8.44), a liar (John 8.44), the ruler of this world (John 12.31), the evil one (John 17.15), the god of this age (2 Cor 4.4), a roaring lion (1 Pet 5.8), a dragon (Rev 12.7, 9; 20.2), the deceiver (Rev 12.9), and the accuser (Rev 12.10).  That’s the enemy, and the real battle takes place behind what we see in the spiritual realm.  Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (vv. 3-4).   

            Do you remember when the prophet Elisha was in a certain city that was surrounded by the armies of the enemy?  2 Kings six tells us, “Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city.  And his servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master!  What shall we do?’  Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’  And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (vv. 15-17).  The armies of heaven, God’s holy angels are engaged in a battle with Satan and his minions that we don’t even see, but that is where the real battle is happening.  And that is why God’s instruction to us in Ephesians six is so important.  If you are going to “stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (v. 11), what do you need to do?  Do you need to “bind Satan?”  Do you need walk around chanting magical formulas and trying to cast out demons?  NO!! The text says, “Put on the full armor of God” (v. 11).  That’s what you need to do.  And notice that it’s not your armor; it’s God’s armor!  To try to stand against the devil on your own is insane.  Peter speaks of men who are “daring” and “self-willed,” who “do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord” (2 Peter 2.10-11).  What we need to do is clothe ourselves with the armor of God—the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.  How are we going to do that?  How are you going to put on the armor of God?  Look at verse ten: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.”  It’s a spiritual thing.  The only way you are going to be strong is “in the Lord and in the strength of His might.”  Look at the end of this section—verse eighteen: “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit.”  It’s the one who is walking in, filled by and led by the Spirit of God who will be wearing the armor of God.  You’ve got to be in intimate communion and relationship with God if you are going to stand against the wiles of the devil.  You’ll never do it in your own strength.   

            And at the end of the day, let’s not forget who is ultimately in control.  “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4.4), right?  And what Satan does he only does in so far as God allows him to do it.  We learn that from the book of Job.  In our text in 1 Thessalonians, it was Satan who hindered Paul from visiting the Thessalonians, but Paul was not by that defeated.  He was still with them in spirit and he continued to do the ministry that God had for him to do in Corinth.  And that was all evidently part of God’s plan.  Think of this: if Paul had been able to immediately return to Thessalonica, we probably wouldn’t even be studying this book today, because he would not have felt the need to write it.  God had other plans.             

The Reason for the Attempted Visits 

Now we come to verses 19-20, where we first began.  Paul essentially told the Thessalonians, “You are my hope, my joy, and my crown of exultation.”  The condition of the Thessalonians’ spiritual walk with God was in a very real sense the cause, in terms of circumstances, for Paul’s joy.                    

These two short verses open up into a whole theology that sort of under girded Paul in his ministry.  He is talking here about a hope and a joy and a boasting that are connected with circumstances.  He is talking about a group of people and something about that group of people that he hopes for and rejoices in and boasts in—something in relation to them that brings great joy to his heart.  This is not the hope that we all have as believers; the forward looking anticipation toward the glorious return of Christ and all the joys associated with forever being in his presence.  That is a hope that no one can take away from us and we enjoy it regardless of circumstances.   

That is also true of the joy that we have as believers.  We are told, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Phil 4.4).! That’s a command, but it’s perfectly reasonable, because it is in the Lord that we are to rejoice.  That is a relationship that we will always have and it is the source of our joy.  This is the “joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess 1.6); that joy that is produced deep within us by the indwelling of the Spirit of God.  We have this deep seated joy regardless of circumstance.  But that is not the joy Paul is talking about here. 

And what about this boasting?  Paul said, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1.31), and, “May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6.14).  Paul didn’t want to boast in anything apart from Christ.  If he ever boasted in anything related to himself, it was only of that which pertained to his own weaknesses so that the surpassing power of Christ might dwell in him (2 Cor 12.9).  Yet here we find him boasting of the Thessalonians.  He says, “You are the crown in which I boast.”  This was Paul’s way of telling the Thessalonians—in spite of what the opponents were saying—how precious they were to him.  But he had something particular about them in mind.  Notice how he put it: “For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation?”  He asked a question and then answered it with another question: “Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?”  This question anticipates a definite positive answer.  They are his hope, joy, crown . . . “in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming.”  He is speaking of a time in the future when he and the Thessalonian believers will be in the very presence of Jesus Christ.  When is that time?  The text says, “at His coming.”   

Now this verse doesn’t tell us when this coming will be.  But if you look at the larger context of 1 Thessalonians, it becomes clearer.  In chapter four (vv. 13-18), Paul talks about this time when Christ will return to gather all believers to Himself: “The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord” (vv. 16-17).  It is speaking of this “catching up” of all believers to be with the Lord.  That is what the believer is waiting for and anticipating.  We are not looking for wars and rumors of wars, or fires or floods, or for the Antichrist to assert himself.  Believers are, as 1.10 says, those who have turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.  That is what the believer is looking for, and there are no signs, no events, nothing that had to happen before Christ returns to gather the church.  It is imminent.   

And when Christ gathers the church, we anticipate a time when we will be brought before the Judgment Seat of Christ; the bema, where each man will be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5.10).  There will be no judgment of sin here.  For the one who has truly placed his trust in Jesus Christ, his sins have already been judged at the cross.  This judgment will be for the distribution of rewards.  And that is what Paul is anticipating here.  When he says that the Thessalonians will be his joy and the crown in which he will exult, he is using reward terminology.  He was commissioned as an apostle to the Gentiles, and he was very serous about being faithful to that call.  When he stands before the judgment seat of Christ, he will be able to present the Thessalonians as evidence of his faithfulness to that call, and in that sense he will be rejoicing and glorying as if the Thessalonians were the very crown on his head. 

There seems to be a sense in which Paul saw Gentile converts as his opportunity to boast or exult before God at the judgment seat of Christ.  This would not be a boasting in what his own efforts and abilities brought about, but a glorying in the work God accomplished through him (“I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me”—1 Cor 15.10).  He told the Romans that he was “a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15.16).  He actually saw those Gentile converts as being his offering to God.  So he said, “Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God” (kau,chsij “boasting;” same word as in “crown of exultation”) (v. 17).  Again, this was not self-exalting boasting—“For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me” (v. 18a)—but that which acknowledged Christ as the source of spiritual fruit.  His work through Paul resulted in “the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed” (v. 18b).  Such evidence of genuine salvation was indeed cause for great exultation, and in the case of the Thessalonians, Paul saw the same spiritual fruit and progress in them as the crown in which he would boast in the presence of the Lord Jesus at His coming.    

 Then back in 1 Thessalonians 2.20 Paul says this: “For you are our glory and joy.”  Note the present tense: “You ARE our glory and joy.”  Not only would the Thessalonians be Paul’s glory and joy in the presence of the Lord at His coming, but they were that when he wrote to them.  If there was any circumstance that would bring Paul joy; if there was anything that he hoped to see; if there was anything that he would boast in, it was the genuine salvation and resulting spiritual fruit of those who had come to faith in Christ through his ministry.  That for Paul was a higher cause for joy, and it served as a barometer for his spiritual condition.  He wasn’t after money; he wasn’t after women; he wasn’t after fame or power or all the trappings that this world has to offer.  The one thing it seems that he wanted to see more than anything else was people getting saved and then growing in their relationship with Christ.