2 Thess 2:16-17; Comfort Is Divine Ecstasy.

Class Outline:

October 3, 2023

The love of Christ the Son and the Father will create in you an absorption for the action of divine love towards others. It will be like falling headlong into a deep pit from which there is no escape. The beginning of that fall will be the most fearful time of your life, but as you descend the same love of God will absorb you and all fear will be gone. This pit or crevasse is where God’s love in you acts on behalf of others for their good in a way that releases you from all thought of self, reckless abandonment of all restraint, and so complete absorption into God Himself in an experience of divine ecstasy.

 

The ecstasy of falling into divine love with its loss of all self-restraint, limitation, control, and detachment.

 

2TH 2:16-17

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, 17 comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

 

Comfort: doing all that is commanded with strength and joy (despite people and circumstances).

 

Notice that comfort is not doing nothing. The end goal of so many who long for great amounts of wealth is that they can retire early to doing nothing. “We’re going to sit on a beach, sipping umbrella drinks for the rest of our lives.” But what will actually happen to your mind and body if you do that?

 

Article this morning by Jeffrey Tucker:

          One of the great movies of the 20th century is “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” from 1948 starring Humphrey Bogart. Two burned out and impoverished Americans living in Mexico join a grizzled old gold prospector on a hunt. The main action is psychological: what the discovery of gold does to their minds, their trust, their morality, and their lives.

          The viewer gets a front row seat to how normal people can truly lose all sense of proportion and moral clarity when faced with the prospect of unlimited wealth. Once trust in each other is gone, everything including sleep is vanquished.

          Ask any truly wealthy person you know. They will tell you that they learn to suspect every bit of flattery, every new friendship, every kind word. It is very often true that others are only after their money. The hangers on don’t want to work for it. They want to scheme for it. The prospect of something for not much effort makes people crazy.

          The topic comes to mind as news reports say that Mick Jagger has no intention of passing on his half-billion fortune from his catalog to his kids. Why not? Surely every parent wants to bring comfort, wealth, and security to the kids. Why would a parent deny them that?

          The reason is clear to every wise person: infinite financial privilege and access does not build good character. Ultimately, people do not obtain happiness by living well without having earned it through the sweat of one’s own brow. We need to experience the relationship between work and reward. This is what affirms us as thinking, creative, and productive human beings.

          Take that away, replace it with infinite financial reward, and what becomes of us? We become spoiled, entitled, slothful, and unempathetic. We see ourselves as above others, and end up treating others badly. Our very morality and humanity come to be diminished. And it does not yield a happy life either. The caricature of trust-fund babies is true. They rarely amount to much because they don’t have to. They very quickly take their cushy lives for granted and coast until the bitter end.

          This is a huge problem for every parent, even those of modest middle-class means. From the time they are infants, parents want to provide: shelter, food, health, safety, happiness, experiences. This is the job of parents and they do it well. They make every sacrifice to make sure their children do not suffer but rather enjoy a better life than they did growing up.

          But at some indiscernible point in the child’s life, the parents must withdraw and let the child find their own path to happiness. Very often, the kid does not want this.

          Still, the comprehensive support cushion has to be taken away. All children at some point must be kicked out of the nest, even if that means a hard landing on the ground, before they have really learned to fly. [end article]

 

God does not comfort us by giving us nothing to do and then taking care of our material needs as if we were infants.

 

God’s love for us in infinite, unchangeable and of a nature that is impossible to truly define.

 

God’s love is our comfort, but this comfort is not akin to sleeping on a cloud or lounging in a chair on a beach or doing nothing at all and having a hundred servants getting you everything.

 

God loves us and calls us to love others in the same way.

2TH 2:16-17

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, 17 comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

 

Every good work and word are going to come from love.

 

And we love because the Son and the Father first loved us.

 

It is vital that we look into the love of God and see all that we can.

 

The Bible shows this plainly and labels it love: Romantic, erotic, marriage, parents for children, slaves for masters, friends.

 

God’s love is stated and demonstrated. 

 

ZEP 3:17

The Lord your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in His love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

 

How does the love of God compare with romantic love, erotic, the love of marriage, parents for children, or the love of dear friends? We must understand that though love is so flawed in fallen mankind, it is a result of God’s love. Man’s love is like a small tributary that has come from a vast river that has its source in a mountain spring. Some of these tributaries are polluted, some much more than others.

 

Love is a strong emotional attachment (desire) to possess or be in the presence of.

 

It is really impossible to define fully, but this is an overall view of the word from its use in the Bible.

 

The first time the word is used in the Bible is telling. We’ll save that. The second use of it is in Isaac’s love (marriage, sexual relationship) with Rebekah.

 

God’s love acted so as to possess us in His presence.

 

But we must be careful. It would be easy to say that God wanted us in His presence and so He gave Himself for us. Was it God’s number one goal for us to be with Him?

 

God is love.

Love is not God.

God’s top priority was not us, but Himself.

 

Though the love of God will bring many questions to our minds, we can do only is go with what the Scripture tells us. God is love and so He acted on our behalf.

 

1JO 4:8-10

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

 

God is love and love acted on behalf of those who were perishing.

 

The gift that love gave was the very life of God. He didn’t send another creature (cults). He sent Himself.

 

The life of God had to be given by grace. It could never be attained.

 

It had to be given by faith. It could not be forced.

 

ROM 5:6-8

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 

God’s love is demonstrated by its action on behalf of those who are described as helpless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies (vs. 10).

 

More than wanting humans to hang out with for all eternity, God’s love acted in a way that demonstrates itself. This is the key to the love of God in our own lives.  

 

Love risks all with no guarantee.

 

God’s love is expended in precarious endeavor, ever poised upon the brink of failure.

 

For he gave his Son to die, taking the risk of yielding up control over himself. God’s love is seen waiting in the end, helpless before that which it loves, for the response which shall be its tragedy or its triumph. For in giving his Son to die for sinners, God made himself vulnerable to the possibility that they would snub him and turn away.

 

ISA 49:1-4

Listen to Me, O islands,

And pay attention, you peoples from afar.

The Lord called Me from the womb;

From the body of My mother He named Me.

2 He has made My mouth like a sharp sword,

In the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me;

And He has also made Me a select arrow,

He has hidden Me in His quiver.

3 He said to Me, "You are My Servant, Israel,

In Whom I will show My glory."

4 But I said, "I have toiled in vain,

I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity;

Yet surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord,

And My reward with My God."

 

And we must learn to love like He does - to all; friend and foe.

 

The love of Christ the Son and the Father will create in you an absorption for the action of divine love towards others. It will be like falling headlong into a deep pit from which there is no escape. The beginning of that fall will be the most fearful time of your life, but as you descend the same love of God will absorb you and all fear will be gone. This pit or crevasse where God’s love in you acts on behalf of others for their good in a way that releases you from all thought of self, reckless abandonment of all restraint and so complete absorption into God Himself in an experience of divine ecstasy.