Imagine a platoon of soldiers pinned down behind enemy lines. The enemy is advancing from every direction. Ammunition is running low. Casualties are mounting. They know they cannot hold out much longer.

The radio operator gets on the line and calls for help: “Need air support immediately. We’re being overrun.”

A voice comes back through the radio: “Air support is on the way.”

Those words give them hope, steel their courage, and help them endure.

Now imagine the air support doesn’t arrive until two thousand years later.

Something about that isn’t right. If men cry out for relief during a battle, and relief finally arrives long after their corpses have rotted away to dust, we naturally begin asking questions:

• How was that relief?
• When and how did help arrive?
• In what way was the enemy defeated?

That tension is one of the questions we feel when we read this passage. The Christians in Thessalonica were suffering real affliction. They were not imagining it, or exaggerating it. They were paying a price for their allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Paul writes to them and tells them that God sees, knows,  remembers, and repays. This is remarkable.

• God will repay those who afflict them.
• God will give relief to those who are afflicted.
• And Jesus Christ will one day return in glory.

The Thessalonians received a significant measure of that promised relief during the events that culminated in the First Jewish-Roman War and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The very authorities and institutions that had repeatedly opposed the gospel and persecuted the church were severely judged and dramatically weakened.

The persecutors were repaid. The sufferers received relief. And in the language of prophecy, Jesus came in judgment on the Old Covenant world.

But that was not all. The relief they received points us toward a greater vindication still to come. History continues moving toward the glorious return and ultimate victory of Jesus Christ.

That is what we will see this morning.

Vengeance. Vindication. Victory.

Remember where we ended up last Lord’s Day: 2 Thessalonians 1:4. That’s where we’ll begin reading, and then we’ll continue reading down through verse 10.

S&R 2 Thessalonians 1:4-10

⁴ Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. ⁵ This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— ⁶ since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, ⁷ and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels ⁸ in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰ when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

what they need to listen for

4 vital verities (truths) that we need to understand as we seek to truly taste and take to heart what this passage has to say

the first verity

VIEWPOINT is vitally important

You know this. If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you know that two people can stand on opposite sides of the same intersection, watch exactly the same automobile accident, and tell two very different stories about what happened. Perspective matters.

As we approach this passage together this morning, whose viewpoint do you think we need to consider first? Ours? Paul’s? Or the Thessalonians’?

I think we all know that we humans are pretty well hardwired to see things from our own perspective first. But we Christians should see things from the perspective of the authors of scripture and the initial audience of scripture first, and then look for how it applies to us. If we ever hope to truly get from the Bible what God thinks about things, how he sees matters, we’ve got to start at the Bible’s own standpoint. God calls us to read his Word from his perspective.

So how do we think the Thessalonians were approaching things? Remember that their reality was persecution. Do you reall the story of the start of the Thessalonian church in Acts 17? Do you remember the fury of the Jewish leaders? The mob they stirred up? The confrontation with the town authorities who indicted the Christians for the crime of saying that there was another king besides Caesar, a man from Nazareth named Jesus? Do you remember how Paul was forced to leave Thessalonica under cover of darkness that very night and was not even able to finish their basic training in matters of discipleship? Do you recall that Paul repeatedly spoke of their ongoing persecution in his first letter? Their perspective, their viewpoint, was persecution.

What do you remember about Paul’s perspective? Paul was raised to be a Pharisee. He knew the Old Testament from front to back. It’s likely that he could already quote the entire thing from memory well before he met Jesus. You’ve read his letters. You see how everything that he ever says or does is steeped in Old Testament language and imagery. He sees things through an Old Testament lens.

Keep those two viewpoints in mind as we try to understand this passage.

1. What’s on the Thessalonians’ minds is persecution, the intense pressure they’ve been under, almost from the moment they got saved.
2. When Paul thinks and speaks, it’s in “Old-Testament-ese.” I don’t mean in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament; he’s clearly writing this letter in Greek. I mean that the words and the concepts and the images he uses to communicate are the kinds of words and concepts and images by which the Old Testament speaks. You have to let the Old Testament give you the conceptual vocabulary that you need to understand the New Testament, especially the writings of the ultimate Old Testament nerd, the Apostle Paul.

Take Psalm 18 for example. Turn there in your Bible right now, so you can view this with your own eyes. Don’t trust me to read it right! See it for yourself. Look at the superscription, those little words that are written beneath the title of the psalm and before the beginning of the first verse. The superscription tells us that David wrote the psalm to celebrate God’s deliverance from David’s implacable enemy, King Saul. The last chapter of 1 Samuel tells us that Saul and his sons were slaughtered, and the entire Israelite army virtually obliterated, by the Philistines in battle on the slopes of Mount Gilboa. That’s the event this poem commemorates. It says so right there in those tiny words most of us never bother to read. And in case you missed it, the entire Psalm is reproduced near the end of second Samuel, including the superscription with its explanation of why David wrote the poem.

Yet the psalm sounds like the end of the world. The heavens bow down. The foundations of the world are laid bare, and so are the paths of the sea. God himself comes down, breathing fire from his nostrils, riding across the clouds on the back of a cherub.

The language used in the psalm to describe the event is epic, cosmic, apocalyptic. What literally happened? Saul died, his dynasty was terminated, his army was shattered, and David was delivered. It was a real historical event. A horrible, bloody, devastating, glorious historical and redemptive event. From heaven’s perspective, God came. From earth’s perspective, Saul lost a battle, and everything else.

The Hebrew poets and prophets often describe divine intervention in history using cosmic language. God comes against Egypt. God comes against Babylon. God comes against Edom. Historical judgments are described in heavenly language. I’ve shown you Isaiah doing this, and Daniel, and Joel, and (most recently, Ezekiel. It’s all over the Old Testament. Lurid poetic and apocalyptic language is almost as common as straightforward prose—maybe even more. Paul grew up immersed in that world. So before we read 2 Thessalonians 1 like twenty-first century Americans, we need to hear it the way a first-century Jewish apostle would have spoken it

Most of us are used to the idea that messianic prophecies, like the prophecy that the Messiah was supposed to be born of a virgin, or the one that foretold that he would be born in Bethlehem, were fulfilled in the actual birth of Jesus Christ. They were prophecies of future events when they were first spoken or written, but from our perspective they’re definitely past events.

So here’s my claim: some of the vivid prophetic imagery in this passage was fulfilled in the events surrounding the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Don’t panic. I am not saying that all the prophecies of the New Testament have already been fulfilled. Let me be crystal clear. Four massive prophetic events still remain in our future

1. The return. At some unknown point in our future, Jesus Christ will come back to the earth in power and glory, literally, physically, personally, and visibly, just as the angels announced to the Apostles in Acts 1.

Acts 1 ⁹ And … as they were looking on, [Jesus] was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰ And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, ¹¹ and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

2. The resurrection. The graves will open and the dead will rise. The righteous will rise to the resurrection of life, and the wicked will rise to the resurrection of condemnation, just as the Lord Jesus said.

John 5 ²⁵ “Truly, truly, I say to you… ²⁸ … an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [the] voice [of the Son of Man] ²⁹ and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

3. The Paul instructing Christians in Corinth

2 Corinthians 5:10  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. 

4. The Peter preaching at the Temple in Jerusalem to a crowd of his fellow Jews who were angry at him and John for healing a crippled man

Acts 3 ¹⁹ Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, ²⁰ that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, ²¹ whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

The Return, the Resurrection, the Reckoning, and the Restoration. Four immense events yet to take place at the end of history. Four prophecies still to be fulfilled.

Yet many other prophetic texts appear to have been fulfilled within the lifetime of Jesus’ first followers. Some of the language in this passage belongs in that category.

Still, what is also clear is that some aspects of this prophecy have a level of finality and absoluteness that cry out to be understood as referring to the final events of human history. So in each of the following three points we will look at things both from a 1st century perspective and from a 21st century perspective. Because God calls us to read his Word from his viewpoint, and he also calls us to let his Word point to us.

VIEWPOINT is vitally important

the second verity

VENGEANCE is coming on the enemies of God

In other words, God will repay those who afflict his people. The first thing Paul emphasizes is God’s justice. Notice the language he uses:

⁴ Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. ⁵ This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— ⁶ since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, ⁷ and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels ⁸ in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰ when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

God is promising to properly repay those who are persecuting his people. The books will not be lost. The accounts will not be forgotten. The wounds of God’s people will not disappear unnoticed into the mists of history. God sees every act of cruelty and oppression. And Paul says God is righteous to repay.

The Thessalonians desperately needed to hear this. Again and again throughout Acts, in city after city, opposition to the gospel arose from hostile unbelieving Jewish leadership.  Most rabbis did not want to hear that the Messiah had come to give God’s people definitive and final teaching on every issue and to clear away the generations of custom and tradition the rabbis were already piling on top of the Law. Most priests had no use for the idea of a Messiah who was going to do away with the whole need for the Temple or its sacrifices. The good news Paul was preaching did not sound like good news to them. It sounded like the end of their jobs. Predictably enough, many of them reacted with violence.

The temple and its authorities were known and revered throughout the Jewish world. The synagogue networks connected Jewish communities everywhere. Jerusalem stood at the center of that world.  And the Temple was the very heart of it all. Yet within a few years of Paul’s writing, everything changed. The First Jewish-Roman War erupted. Jerusalem was besieged. The Temple was destroyed. The priesthood collapsed. The sacrificial system ended. The city that had rejected Christ and persecuted his followers experienced devastating judgment. The authority and influence of the Old Covenant system were drastically curtailed. The very structures that had repeatedly hounded the church were broken.

This does not mean all Jews disappeared. Jewish communities remained throughout the empire, including Macedonia, where Thessalonica was situated. Synagogues continued to exist. But the power and prestige of the Jerusalem-centered system that had opposed the gospel were lessened greatly—as was their ability to persecute the Christian community.

The persecutors were not stronger than God. They were not beyond God’s reach. The Lord repaid. The Lord acted in history. The Lord kept his word.

I understand that it’s hard for a modern mind to look at a Roman military victory and see Jesus Christ’s coming in flaming fire with this mighty angels, wreaking the desolation of Jerusalem and its Temple. We feel there had to be a literal fire and literal heavenly warriors. I get it. But I’m convinced that our greatest difficulty lies in the fact that we don’t think in “Old-Testament-ese” the way Paul did. He was just talking like one of the poets or prophets from the Old Testament.

On the other hand, there are a couple of interesting stories from the siege of Jerusalem that you might find relevant.

The Jewish historian Josephus, writing about 10 years later, and the Roman historian Tacitus, writing about 40 years later, both relay reports that people in Jerusalem, during the seige, saw hosts of warriors in flashing armor in the clouds above and around Jerusalem. Josephus reports something even more remarkable. He says that the watchmen on the walls could see the whitewashed boulders hurled over the city walls by the Roman ballistae, and that they often cried “the Son is coming” when they saw the projectiles in the air. How the fact that a stone was coming got recorded and reported as the words “the son is coming” is a deep deep rabbit hole, far deeper than we can dig down right now. But it’s tantalizingly provocative. You can make what you will of those stories from historians of the day. I have my questions about them. They’re definitely not from the Bible, so they don’t carry any authority. But they sure are fascinating.

What I can say for sure is that Jesus came with judgment and vengeance against Jerusalem and its Temple and the whole Old Covenant system with flaming fire and a host of angels, just as Paul had predicted to the Thessalonians. He came in judgment by the hand of the Romans, just as surely as the LORD had come against King Saul and his armies by the swords and spears of the Philistines on Mount Gilboa.

Of course, it wasn’t just Paul who prophesied vengeance against Jerusalem by the hand of foreign armies. As Luke tells the story of the Olivet Discourse, it was the Lord Jesus Christ himself who prophesied the Roman siege that was to take place exactly 40 years from the time he spoke it. And he referred to that horrific tribulation as “the days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.” The Lord Jesus did not forget what had been done to him and to his people. He repaid the persecutors of his people—specifically that final generation of Old Covenant Judaism—with vengeance and horror.

Don’t stop yet. The worst judgment, vengeance, and horror was yet to come. Dying in the flames and on the swords that the Romans brought was indeed beyond nightmarish. Yet the flames of hell were also waiting. And those persecutors are burning there right now.

Of course, blessedly, not all of them. Nicodemus was a high ruler of the Jews, and he got saved. The same with Joseph of Arimathea. Who else was a credentialed Pharisee and a powerful persecutor of the Christians? [[ ]] Saul of Tarsus, the man who wrote this letter to the Thessalonians. And that’s not all. Acts 6:7 “And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly , and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” There is always mercy offered, even to those who are under the severest judgment from God. The repentant are never turned away unforgiven.

There are other important lessons for us here in Dundalk in 2026.

First, God does not call believers to pay Jews back today for what their ancestors did 2000 years ago. The idea that Christians should take vengeance on the so-called Christ-killing Jews is one of the most toxic and frankly satanic heresies that is ever gripped Christian hearts or minds. God took vengeance. He has always said, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay.” For Christians to imagine themselves the avengers of the crucifixion of Christ or the persecution of other Christians is frankly blasphemous. Vengeance is God’s. He will repay.

Second, God pays sinners back in hell.  He never calls Christians to any kind of vengeance. He calls believers to faith, hope, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We do not have to settle scores, because God will. He will judge rightly. He will repay perfectly. And what he most loves is to let his Son absorb the wrath on the cross.

Third, while most of us here today are not enduring truly savage persecution for our Christian faith, plenty of us know what is to lose a friendship or a family relationship or a job opportunity because of a stand that we have taken for Jesus. Paul’s message is clear: God sees. God knows. God remembers. And God will repay every evil according to perfect justice.

VENGEANCE is coming on the enemies of God

the third verity

VINDICATION is coming for the people of God

⁵ This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— ⁶ since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, ⁷ and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels ⁸ in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰ when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.  Verizon_VFLKQ3  abbe4-brant-had

Vindication means God will give permanent relief and public recognition to his suffering people

The key word here is “relief.” Paul did not merely promise the Thessalonians that heaven was waiting for them. He promised relief. And I believe they genuinely experienced a substantial measure of that relief when the great persecuting powers of the Old Covenant world were judged—twenty years after the church got this letter from Paul. When Jerusalem fell, the movement that had repeatedly pursued Christians across the Roman world was decisively weakened. Sufferers received relief. The church was vindicated. The gospel advanced.

But let’s be honest. That relief was not complete, or permanent. They were still a tiny minority community at the margins of the Greco-Roman culture. Their beliefs and practices continued to strike their neighbors as bizarre at best, or at worst downright subversive or perverted. And the organized persecution coming from the Roman imperial authorities would eventually dwarf by orders of magnitude anything the Jewish authorities ever perpetrated. Paul himself would lose his head to a Roman sword in Rome in AD 65 or so.

Beneath that, the Thessalonians were still living in a fallen world.  They still faced hardship and heartbreak. They still got sick and died. They still buried loved ones. We should remember that one of the key reasons for Paul’s first letter to this church was to answer queries about believers who had died and been buried. That sort of kicked off the whole conversation. And after the fall of Jerusalem, all those problems were still around. So the passage pushes our eyes beyond AD 70. It pushes us toward the day, still in our future, when Christ himself is fully revealed and his people are fully vindicated. That will be the day that Paul calls the day of the revelation of the sons of God. John also says that what we are will be revealed when our Lord is revealed. On that day, the children of God will be seen before the eyes of the entire universe as who and what we really are.

Some are battling illness. Some are carrying grief. Some are caring for aging parents. Others are bearing burdens nobody else even knows about. This fallen world afflicts all of God’s people in one way or another. We await final vindication.

There is coming a day when every false accusation will be answered. Every wrong will be made right. Every tear will be wiped away. Every burden will be lifted. Every struggle will find its purpose.

Brothers and sisters, we do not know whether we will see Jesus by going to him through death, or whether we will see him because he returns during our lifetime. But we will see him. The Christian’s future is not uncertainty. The Christian’s future is vindication.

The world may overlook you. History may forget you. Your sacrifices may never be recognized on earth. But Jesus Christ knows. And when he is revealed, his people will be vindicated with him.

VINDICATION is coming for the people of God

the fourth verity

Victory is coming for the Son of God

⁹ They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰ when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

The first thing we noticed in this passage was vengeance. God would repay those who afflicted his people.

The second thing we noticed was vindication. God would grant relief and recognition to those who had suffered for his name. But neither vengeance nor vindication is actually the climax of Paul’s thought.

The climax is Christ.

Notice where Paul finally lands. He speaks of a day “when he comes to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed.” The ultimate point of this passage is not merely that God’s enemies lose. The ultimate point is that God’s Son wins.

Think again about the Thessalonians: what did their neighbors think about Jesus? Virtually nobody in Macedonia would ever have laid eyes on him. They knew him only through the preaching of Christians. To many he would have sounded ridiculous. A Jewish laborer from an obscure province, executed by a Roman governor, and proclaimed by his followers to be Lord of heaven and earth. That did not sound plausible. It sounded absurd.

Nor were their Jewish opponents persuaded. They regarded Jesus as a false Messiah who had led Israel astray and whose followers needed to be stopped before they corrupted still more people.

In other words, nearly everyone around the Thessalonians fundamentally misunderstood who Jesus was.

Yet Paul tells these suffering Christians that a day is coming when the truth about Jesus will become impossible to deny.

Notice what he does not say.

He does not say that Christ will become glorious.

He does not say that Christ will acquire greater majesty.

He does not say that Christ will someday earn sovereignty.

The New Testament everywhere insists that Jesus already possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. He is already enthroned. He is already reigning. He already sits at the Father’s right hand far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

The issue is not whether Christ possesses glory.

The issue is whether the world recognizes it.

In the first century, part of that recognition came through the events that Paul and Jesus both foretold. Jerusalem had rejected her Messiah. The authorities who condemned Him and persecuted His followers appeared, for a time, to have won. Yet within a generation the city fell, the Temple burned, and the old order collapsed. The Jesus whom they had rejected was publicly vindicated. The Son whom they had condemned was shown to have been telling the truth all along.

But that was not the final victory.

It was a historical revelation of Christ’s kingship, not its ultimate display.

Just as the relief experienced by the Thessalonians was real but not complete, and just as the vengeance that fell on Jerusalem was real but not final, so also the revelation of Christ in those events was real but not exhaustive.

There is still a greater unveiling to come.

There is still coming a day when every creature will see what is presently seen only by faith.

At the moment, Christ’s lordship is confessed by believers and disputed by unbelievers. His authority is proclaimed by the church and denied by the world. His crown is visible to faith but hidden from sight. But Scripture repeatedly points us toward a day when concealment will give way to revelation.

On that day there will be no atheists, no agnostics, no skeptics, no rival claimants to the throne. There will be no debate concerning who rules the universe. Every power, every kingdom, every ruler, every philosopher, every celebrity, every billionaire, every emperor, every president, every peasant, every angel, and every demon will stand confronted with the same reality: Jesus Christ is Lord.

Some will acknowledge that fact with unspeakable joy.

Some will acknowledge it with unspeakable terror.

But all will acknowledge it.

And what is especially striking in Paul’s language is that Christ will be glorified in His saints and marveled at among those who have believed.

The glory of Christ will not merely be displayed over His people. It will be displayed in His people.

The Thessalonians who were mocked for believing in Him will become evidence that they were right to believe in Him. Their faith will be vindicated because He will be vindicated. Their glory will be a reflection of His glory. The transformed and resurrected people of God will stand before the universe as monuments to what the grace and power of Jesus Christ can accomplish.

And that brings us to the most astonishing part of all.

Paul says believers will marvel at Him.

A million years from now the redeemed will still be discovering new reasons to adore Christ.

The redeemed will never reach a point at which they have exhausted the wonder of who he is.

We will never come to the end of his greatness, the end of His wisdom, the end of His beauty, the end of His holiness, or the end of His love. Throughout the endless ages of the world to come, the redeemed people of God will continue discovering fresh reasons to adore the One who loved them and gave Himself for them.

That is where history is heading.

Not merely toward the defeat of evil.

Not merely toward the vindication of the saints.

Not merely toward the punishment of the wicked.

History is moving toward the universal revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ.

The Son will have the victory.

The Lamb will receive the reward of His suffering.

Every enemy will be beneath His feet.

Every knee will bow before Him.

Every tongue will confess His lordship.

And throughout heaven and earth one truth will shine brighter than the sun:

Jesus Christ was exactly who He claimed to be.

set the hook

Come back with me to Jerusalem in the summer of AD 70. Imagine a man in Jerusalem during the final days of the siege.  He is tired, hungry, frightened. For months he has watched Rome tighten the noose around the city. Food is gone. Friends are dead. Every day brings another rumor, another funeral, another reason to despair. Years ago he heard about a controversial rabbi from Galilee named Jesus. Some said he was a prophet. Some said he was a deceiver. Some even claimed he was the Son of God. Our man laughed at that. Most people did. But now the city is collapsing. The Romans have surrounded Jerusalem just as Jesus said they would. The Temple is in danger just as Jesus said it would be. Everywhere he turns, things that seemed impossible are becoming reality.

Then suddenly a cry goes up from the wall: “The stone is coming!” A white ballista stone arcs through the air. Men scatter. The stone crashes into a building. Dust fills the : What was that they were just yelling? Was it eben, stone, or ben, son, that is coming? What if those crackpots were right? What if that Jesus really was who they said he was? What if this judgment is from God? What if the One we mocked is now magbified? Suddenly the question is not just who Jesus was. The question is whether it is too late. The question is whether the rejected King has been enthroned. The question is whether the Son is revealing himself through the judgment that has overtaken the city. Paul had said there was coming a day when every question would be answered: “When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels…” For believers, that day was relief, vindication, and glory. For his enemies, it was the awful realization that the One they ignored, mocked, or dismissed had been Lord all along. The greatest terror of judgment was not the fire, the armies, or the collapsing walls. The greatest terror was the moment the man realized, “Jesus was the Son of God after all.”

what God wants them to do

Before we’re done, let me ask you a very simple question.

Throughout this passage, Paul has forced us to think about judgment. He has told us that God is righteous. He has told us that God remembers. He has told us that God repays. He has told us that a day is coming when every wrong will be answered and every account will be settled.

The uncomfortable truth is that the problem is not merely that there are sinners out there somewhere. The problem is that we are sinners. We have all disobeyed God. We have all ignored His authority. We have all failed to love Him as He deserves. If God were to deal with us according to strict justice alone, none of us could stand.

That is why the gospel is such incredibly good news.

The same Jesus who will one day come as Judge first came as Savior.

The same Jesus who will one day execute perfect justice first offered himself as a sacrifice for sinners.

The wrath that we deserve was poured out on him. The judgment that should have fallen on us fell on Christ at the cross. He died for sinners, was buried, and rose again in triumph over sin, death, and hell.

And now He offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and everlasting life to all who repent and believe.

In a sermon about vengeance, we must not forget forget mercy.

In a sermon about judgment, we dare not overlook grace.

In a sermon about the victory of Christ, we will not pass by how he won that victory. He won it by giving himself for rebels like us.

One day every person will marvel at Jesus. The only question is whether you will marvel at him as your Savior or grovel before him as your Judge.

Today, while mercy is still offered freely, turn to Christ. Trust in Christ. And discover that the Judge of all the earth delights to save those who come to Him in faith.

Eternal Father, in this very moment, we turn again from our sin and ourselves to you and your glory,

Trusting only in your Son’s sacrifice for our sins to make us right with you.

We want to shelter ourselves in the shadow of his cross,

Bathe ourselves in the blood that he shed there for us,

Rest ourselves on his redemption

Robe ourselves in his righteousness,

Renew ourselves in his resurrection,

Lose ourselves in his Lordship,

And find ourselves in his friendship.

We want him to become for us, for today and forever, wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and salvation.

For he is the One who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to you, our Father.