Audio Transcript

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone — or, I guess, technically, happy Thanksgiving Eve. On this holiday built around gratitude we can learn a lot from the apostle Paul, a man who loved to celebrate God’s grace in others with heartfelt thanks. As we’ve seen several times on this podcast, Paul says learning to speak thanks is what cleans up the mouth — cleans it up from using crude and vulgar language. Thanksgiving has a powerful, cleansing effect on our lives. Paul’s life models gratitude. He mentions “thanks” about fifty times in his epistles, leading to one of my favorite quotes, a claim by New Testament scholar David Pao, who once wrote (quoting Paul Schubert), “The apostle Paul mentions the subject of thanksgiving more frequently per page than any other Hellenistic author, pagan or Christian” (Thanksgiving, 15). Wow. A high claim, but a claim that explains a text like 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14, where Paul writes,

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, [why?] because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this text, we see four truths that motivate our thanksgiving. Here’s Pastor John, at the end of 2001, to explain.

The first one is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:13. Paul says, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers.”

Dangerous Duty

Now notice: that’s prayer — prayers in the form of thanks. He says we should do this, so it’s a duty: should implies duty. However, it’s the kind of duty that, if you experience it as burden, you haven’t experienced it yet. If you experience gratitude as a burden, you don’t know gratitude, because true gratitude is not an exertion of the will; it’s an overflow of a sense of being treated better than you deserve.

“Gratitude is the kind of duty that, if you experience it as burden, you haven’t experienced it yet.”

A kid who gets black socks for Christmas from his grandmother when he wanted a fire truck might be told by his mother, “Say thank you to your grandmother.” And he might say, “Thank you, Grandmother, for my socks.” He does not experience gratitude at that moment. The words “thank you” are a burden and a duty, and it feels like hypocrisy for one simple reason: the emotion is not there.

However, had he opened the fire truck first (maybe that’s coming next; Grandmother’s not done), he might exclaim, “Oh, yes, woo-hoo! Thank you, Grandma.” That’s not a burden. That’s not a burden. You don’t know gratitude yet if this should here lands on you like law. You need to know him. You need to come to the end of this year, and look back over this year, with all of its horror, and feel something really freeing about how good he’s been to you, way better than you deserve — and me.

Reason to Rejoice

So it’s a duty here, but look at where it comes from. Look where gratitude comes from in verse 13, when he says, “We ought always to give thanks to God.” Here is a prayer happening called thanks. But where does it come from? It comes from four reasons — which come from knowledge, which come from the word — about how God saved the Thessalonians.

You are “beloved by the Lord” (verse 13).
God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation, “through sanctification by the Spirit and belief” (verse 13).
“He called you through our gospel” (verse 14).
The aim of this call was “that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 14).

“True gratitude is not an exertion of the will; it’s an overflow of a sense of being treated better than you deserve.”

Do you see where his thanks are coming from? God loved them. God chose them. God called them. God will glorify them. That’s what he knows in his head, and it produces the emotion of, “O God, how good you’ve been to the Thessalonians.” It just bubbles up. “Look what you have done for the Thessalonian church. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” And that’s the way I feel about Bethlehem over and over again, for reason after reason. But there have got to be reasons. Why? So that God will get the glory, not the Thessalonians. God has chosen you. God has called you. God is going to glorify you. God loved you. Praise God! Thank God for you!

Spirit and Truth

And if you need to see where I got the essential structure of this sermon, look at verse 13 and notice the word Spirit and the word truth. God saves us, it says, “through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.” Now there you have Spirit and truth, Spirit and truth — Spirit and word brought together.

How do you get changed? How do you get changed? Everybody in this room needs to change — and ought to want to change to be more like Jesus, more like Jesus, more affections like him, more behavior like him, more attitudes like him, more change. “Oh, make 2002 change city.” How’s that going to happen? Answer: Spirit and truth. Spirit and truth. And prayer corresponds to our reliance upon the Spirit, and meditation corresponds to our faith in the truth, and so we will bring the two together.

My Dear Globdrop,

I shall happily give you sex advice for your (thus far) happily married man.

As a most impure spirit, you admit a certain revulsion toward the “grotesque images of bodies enmeshed and limbs flailing.” While I may know some of their sexual enchantments — we can save talk of the Nephilim for another time, perhaps — I understand your natural aversion with the physical and primal urges of the humans. You wouldn’t give the act a moment’s thought if it did not mean so much to them and to the Enemy.

But oh, how much it means to them! What opportunity sex presents. The passions of their flesh, under our sway, “wage war” against their souls (1 Peter 2:11). The steps of lust — sensual and beckoning — go down to death, as the father once tried to warn.

It appears to me that you’ve chosen the proper time to begin your temptations. The honeymoon season is setting — now is the time for the paint to begin to chip. Little quarrels start to creep in; mice move in the walls. Gestures and quirks (so adorable while dating) start to shed their skin — real married life begins. Although he has heard of our designs already from other husbands, this doesn’t deter us. He sympathizes, sure — but such will never happen to him. Although he has done “fellowship” with a few graduates over the years, this is still a most excellent time to initiate our Marital Abstinence Program (MAP).

Untangle Bodies

Globdrop, I know how quickly you mean to steer your ox toward the muddy hillsides of pornography or the fresher pastures of his neighbor’s wife, but patience, young apprentice. First, we must place the hook firmly in his nose. Dry up his sex life with his wife. Dehydrate the marriage bed, and then, all in due course, lead him to other streams.

Is this not the strategy the apostle sought to expose? “Do not deprive one another . . . so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5). Wonderfully for us, they often miss the spiritual warfare surrounding their married sex life. And of course, they barely talk about it with each other (your man, somehow an exception). Which pastor is going to tell lazy husbands or selfish wives that their bodies actually belong to their spouse?

A few steps, then, for cultivating this blessed deprivation, this unholy untangling, this wintry and lifeless marriage bed so unthinkable to him at present.

1. Cool through familiarity.

The sex we offer is colorful, impassioned, daring, free. It is to swim with dolphins, soar with eagles, run with wild horses, soak bare under banned waterfalls.

But what of the married sort?

Sameness, dreary and inescapable. Slowly unveil monogamy’s monotony. “You mean fifty years of sex with the same person!” blurted one man he knew, mouth agape. That is the response we relish. A vineyard boasting of one cluster; a stock falling, diminishing returns.

Globdrop, they can hardly endure the well-known. The same picture on the wall vanishes. A symphony on repeat fades away. Hearing they do not hear; seeing they do not see — oh, blessed familiarity. They soon tire of heavenly bread and desire the meat pots of Egypt.

What happened to that raging fire that burned while dating? Stoking the dying flame now feels more like an inconvenience on cold and tired nights. As necessity arises, let them guzzle the wine (but forget to savor it). Most nights, let them sleep on either side of busyness, bitterness, or boredom. Several kids later, several fights later, the garden that teemed with wonder fills with weeds.

2. Behoove the husband.

We love it when the thought eventually arrives (and slip it in quietly after some time), This is not quite what I expected — often meaning (even without realizing), The marital sex life is not like pornography at all. Your man may have some distance from that gutter, but is he really out of gunshot? We must ensure that monogamy with a real woman (whoever she might be) is set up to disappoint. The new-car smell must wear off eventually.

In our videos, the woman is always desirous, has no children, shares no emotional life with the male, doesn’t argue with him or know his faults. She bears no scars from her past or sadness in her present. She is untiring, enhanced, and accessible — enticing and already enticed. She doesn’t want to talk or cry or sleep or share burdens; she is never insecure.

Intimacy — at its finest, you must gently remind him — is not intimate in those other ways. That which is of the flesh is flesh. Our versions transact thin, quick pleasure. The marriage bed, in comparison, is sadly distracted from this sensual single-mindedness.

And in frustration to this, if she is ever too drained, too distracted, too detached, or too selfish herself to be so vulnerable, wound him and send him immediately to the bottoms. “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights” — he is trying (1 Corinthians 7:3). Self-pity is a man’s (and therefore a demon’s) best friend. Let him sleep with resentment (if not his wife), and so afford an “opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27).

Feed this loop. He grows bitter and lazy; she grows oblivious and content; we grow fat and satisfied.

3. Weary the wife.

Considering different seasons of hormonal changes (a design that makes our job the easier), an unequally yoked sex drive may appear. Be prepared. At other seasons, if the two do have that baby, sheer tiredness from children hanging from arms and berating nerves usually helps us. With all of this, we must wonder aloud something like, How can he be so inconsiderate to even ask after such a day as mine?

The days fill with good things; the nights with exhaustion. We wonder why the Old Preacher did not add to his poems about the seasons,

There is a time for sex, and a time for children.

It is just like the Enemy to bestow the gift, and then give them offspring that threaten the gift that bore them. Let the Enemy name kids “miracles” all he wants — the marriage bed begets its assassin. He warns them not to deprive each other and then produces the chief competitor to the time and energy required.

And beyond that, realize, Globdrop, that her body will eventually begin to change. She will know it; doesn’t he? Will he start noticing other women? She will not feel as desirous, and so ensure she lessen in desire. Even the heroine in their Song admits it: “Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me” (Song of Solomon 1:6). The more naked, the more ashamed — we must turn this constantly to our advantage. Strangle to death any obedience to that enchantment love gives the eye, even into old age: “Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:18–19).

4. Lure to other trees.

At this point, Globdrop, you will be ready to reenchant him with the sheer exquisiteness of sex.

Its ecstasy and spell, its royal banquet, its private garden where fawns wander. Its hidden waterfall, its lands of hushed laughter, its secret vineyards. Its taste of Eden — naked and unashamed. Is it not the gift of the gods? Is it not embodied poetry, two bodies set to rhyme — copulate, or couplet? Uncover this beauty that breaks mathematics: 1 + 1 = 1. Ribs return to sides. The two become one flesh.

Oh, the intoxication of sex! “Sex,” of course, outside of marriage — not the knotty, shriveled thing his actual sex life will have actually become. To those unwed: sex, sex, and more sex. To the married: bickering, busyness, and a bed shared by a roommate. Turn his gaze away to the wild elsewhere. For what pleasure can really exist in the marital bed, stripped of the forbiddances, inebriating novelties, and the most greedy and devouring gratifications?

Deplorable Design

Busyness, lust, fantasy, fights, miscommunications, withdrawings, insecurities, changing bodies, knocking kids, manipulation, rejection, self-pity, and shame are only a few weapons at our disposal. Time fails. But let me finish with the worst of it.

Why did the Enemy make them sexual? Why not form all babies from the dust? The Enemy intended the marriage bed — I shriek to even write it — to foreshadow his own intentions of intimacy with the humans. Copulation was his cursive written into human relations that murmured something of his love to them — whom he even calls his bride. Did we need any other reason to storm down from heaven? He really meant to suggest a Marriage beyond all marriages, a vast intimacy beyond all marriage beds. The givenness, the belonging, the absorption, the two into one — telling something of man with deity — how could any free angel bear it?

Over our dead and damned spirits! To your post, Globdrop: dam the marriage bed, turn the river into a swamp full of swarming mosquitoes and frogs. Mar all the Enemy intended. Foment their neglect; muddy the fountain. Then drown them in the more sparkling streams of lawless sexual delights. Strip what he has now down to a transaction, a duty, a boredom — then offer them the delectable fruits of better trees.

Your marriage counselor and uncle,Grimgod

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Memorial Day here in the United States, a day when we remember and honor soldiers who died while serving in the armed forces.

War has been on the forefront of many minds here in the past fifteen months. No matter how close or far we are from the front lines, war has impacted us all. Of course, Jesus said we can expect to hear of “wars and rumors of wars” and that “nation will rise against nation,” which are “but the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:6–8). Jesus said this in the context of his return to earth, and what we can expect before he comes again.

Pastor John, you just published a new book titled Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ (Crossway, 2023). In it, Matthew 24:6–8 and mentions of war make many appearances, especially in the second half of the book. This new book is very relevant for our age of wars and rumors of wars.

Today, I have another open question for you. With the book’s release, you have done a handful of interviews with various ministries. I think our listeners would be interested if, in all those conversations, anyone asked you a question that you didn’t expect or ones that may have opened new insights into the biblical teaching on Christ’s return. Have any questions surprised you?

In fact, that did happen. In fact, it happened more than once. The one that was most provocative and caused me to see some texts in a different light was a question about how a healthy expectation of the second coming might actually bring stability to a person’s mind who is feeling psychologically fragile and vulnerable and off-balance — maybe because of personal circumstances, losses, tragedies, pain, or because of upheavals in society that disorient people and pull them this way and that and make them feel fragmented and shaky, maybe even agitated and frenzied.

Stability and the Second Coming

What was surprising to me about the question itself was that it seemed a bit counterintuitive. In other words, I think a lot of people would perhaps mistakenly say, “Well, the second coming is not a solution to that problem — it contributes to that problem.” They would say, “Wouldn’t it add to the vulnerability and shakiness and fragility of mind if you stir something as cataclysmic as the second coming into the mix of all the social and personal upheavals of our time?”

So I had to really step back and ask, Does the Bible present the hope of the second coming in a stabilizing way or a destabilizing way? Is it really presented explicitly in connection to this problem? Or do I have to just kind of manufacture connections with this problem of instability? And frankly, I was surprised. I mean, the question was, “Did anything surprise you?” I was surprised.

So in the hope of helping folks who feel like this (and we all do from time to time) — off-balance, wobbly, agitated, fretful, racing mind, can’t quite grab hold of peace of mind — let me show you what I saw and just draw attention to some of these amazing explicit connections between second-coming thoughts in the Bible and stability of mind that we all need in these shaking times.

Beware of Being Shaken

So here’s 2 Thessalonians 2:1–2. Paul said, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind.” Now, the reason that text jumped out at me after I heard this question was that a literal translation is even more surprising. It says, “We ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken from your mind” or “out of your mind.”

In other words, Paul saw that there were people in Thessalonica who were going out of their minds. They were no longer able to be rational or reasonable. You couldn’t reason with them. The upheavals that were happening around them and were shaking them loose from their minds were causing them to lose their stability. And a kind of hysteria or frenzy was taking control of them. And it had to do with a combination of social circumstances and misinformation about the second coming.

Paul’s solution — this is amazing, I think; for a lot of people it would seem amazing — to their frenzy was to teach the truth about the second coming rather than neglect the second coming. He didn’t say, “Wow, you folks are thinking way too much about the second coming. You need to stop thinking about it and get a grip on reality, like where you live now. Go to work.” What he did, in fact, was the opposite. He spent a whole chapter dealing with that instability by teaching on the second coming.

And so that’s what I take away. Paul believed that a right understanding of the second coming would not add to the frenzy or the instability of life. In fact, it would be part of the remedy. So that’s my first text.

Set Aside Alarm

The second one is from Jesus, and I think it’s where Paul got his thinking on this because the language is so similar. I’ve got a whole section in the book on the similar language between Matthew 24 and the Thessalonian epistles, which I think is just huge with implications for how they understood Matthew 24. Jesus said in Matthew 24:5–6, “Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” And then he says, “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”

“One remedy to our instability and anxiety is solid biblical knowledge about the second coming.”

So Jesus recognizes that the world is going to be a destabilizing, alarming, anxiety-producing place. False Christs, wars — the next two verses talk about famines, earthquakes, and endless difficulties as the end draws near (Matthew 24:7–8). And he realizes that it is natural for people to look around and be alarmed, frightened, uncertain, off-balance. So what’s his solution? His solution is to give true instruction about the second coming. Most of the chapter is for that purpose.

So one remedy to our instability and anxiety is not ignorance or disregard of the second coming, but solid biblical knowledge about the second coming so we can be expectant and hopeful but not be alarmed or fretful.

Guarded Hearts and Minds

Here’s another example of the connection between the second coming and the stability of our minds.

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:5–7)

Now, most of us, most of the time, make the connection between the guarding of the hearts and the guarding of the minds with prayer. “Let your requests be made known to God,” and it will guard you. But the preceding verse says, “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious. . . . The peace of God . . . will guard your hearts and your minds.” So there’s a connection between a right grasp of the nearness of the Lord and the Christian heart and mind being guarded from anxiety and instability in fretting about the world.

Unsurprised in Stress

Here it is again in 1 Peter 4:12–13: “Beloved, do not be surprised” — in other words, don’t be alarmed and thrown off-balance and anxious — “at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” In other words, a right perception, a right anticipation of the glory of Christ’s appearing and our joy in that day is a stabilizing force to keep us from being surprised, alarmed, or thrown off-balance at the end-time stresses and sufferings that are coming.

“A right anticipation of the glory of Christ’s appearing and our joy in that day is a stabilizing force.”

Let me give one more example.

You yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:2–5)

In other words, Paul’s remedy to fretfulness and alarm and instability in the last days is right and true and balanced teaching about the second coming and who we are in Christ as we eagerly wait for him.

So, Tony, I had seen all those texts, but I had not seen them in the light of that particular question of contemporary frenzy or instability. This is, I think, a really good example of how we keep on learning and growing and how the Bible is an inexhaustible reservoir of help for every kind of human problem.