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Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: September 6, 2015 | 10:00am
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SERMON SERIES:
Practicing Faith, Hope, and Love
This week, we are concluding our journey through 1 Thessalonians. Throughout this journey, the red thread Paul weaves through his letter is that this community would be formed together in Faith, Love, and Hope. But Paul does not want them to be naïve or uninformed about what they will face now that Jesus has come and the future is ultimately decided and has its direction. Paul wants these people to see that at every step of the way, they will encounter resistance, and that resistance does not always come in the form of physical opposition.
The opposition we face comes also from the spiritual realm. There will be forces that come from outside ourselves, that are not found within the physical and observable world. This is something that I have become aware of through my wife Amy’s calling to be the Chaplain at White’s Residential.
Last week, Amy traveled to a new facility that White’s recently obtained in Wheatfield, Indiana. It was a struggling residential care facility that housed some of the roughest, most threatened youths from “the region.” She traveled there with her boss, Jay Driscoll, and while she was leading the group of young men and women in a game, all of a sudden one of the students was overtaken by something or someone that was not her. The next thing everyone knew, she was on top of another student physically dominating her, yelling, swinging, gnashing, groaning. This young lady, who had come into chapel like every other, now appeared not only to be oppressing this other student, but was herself oppressed by something from outside her.
Once the two were separated and the young girl was taken to another part of the room, Jay Driscoll – who, if you know Jay, know that he is at once cool as a cucumber and at the same time physically intimidating – calmly walked up to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, “Peace, daughter.” And it was as if the weight that was upon her had now been lifted and a look of calm swept over her and her behavior changed.
We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, Paul addresses the fact that Jesus Christ is the one who has conquered the powers of evil and sin. He has said that one day soon, and without warning, Jesus will return and set all that is wrong in the world to right. In light of that hope, how are we to live now, in this present age?
Download the entire transcript here: 1 Thessalonians 5 6-11 Armor for Battle
