Dennis Tuuri

I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What thou seest write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches, which are in Asia, unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with the garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.

And his voice is the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. As we approach our Creator and our King and our Redeemer, let us remember his holiness and his judgments are in the earth. Remembering these things, may we also, as John did, fall down dead as it were, making confession of our sins before him.

Let us pray. Father God, we thank you for your call to worship this day. We thank you, Lord God, for calling us forward into your very presence in holy convocation this Lord’s day, this Christian Sabbath. We thank you for your scriptures and for the call to worship that you have ordained that we would use this very afternoon to approach you. We thank you, Father, that we are cognizant as we come before your presence, as John was, of his own sinfulness.

We thank you, Lord God, for bringing our hearts to acknowledge and confess before you that we are sinners born in iniquity and every path, our every footstep of our own before we came to conversion, went apart from you. We were enemies of you and of Jesus Christ the Savior. But we thank you, Lord God, that you have graciously made provision for our sins through the atoning death of Jesus, our Savior, and brought us into right relationship through the covenant made with him.

We thank you, Lord God, for his shed blood and plead nothing but it as we come before you as the atonement for our sins. We thank you for his imputed righteousness put to our account and we come before you clothed not in our own good works but in the righteousness of Jesus our Savior. We thank you Father then that you accept our worship and praise this day. You make us whole. We pray Lord God that we would have open ears to hear the message that you send to this church this day that we might be faithful messengers to take your word into everything that we do and every word that we say.

We thank you Lord God for this worship service then and pray that it would cause our lives to walk in conformity to our Savior and King Jesus Christ, and that it may redound to your glory and honor and praise. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not. I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

And have the keys of hell and of death. Jesus assures us that he indeed is the resurrection. And while our sins slay us, his life is imputed to our account and we are resurrected in him and regenerated by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The scriptures tell us that he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already. The scriptures themselves are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name and realize that your sins are forgiven the way that John was raised up.

By our Savior’s words. Therefore, as many as there be among you who despair themselves in their sins, and trust that their debts are completely forgiven to them through the merit of Christ alone, and resolve more and more to desist from sins, and to serve the Lord in true holiness and righteousness to those as they believe in the Son of the living God. I proclaim at God’s command that they are released in heaven from all their sins, as he doth promise in his holy gospel, through the perfect satisfaction of the most holy passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

He has given us new life. Let us praise him with the very breath that he gives us. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen. Amen.

The scriptures tell us we are ushered into the presence of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We read from the book of Hebrews that we are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, those who have departed in the faith, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

Let us sing praise to our Redeemer and our King and our Lord Jesus the Savior.

—

They shall see the glory of the Lord, excellence of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened. Then the ears of the deaf shall be opened. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart. For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams, and the parched ground shall become a pool, and the habitation of dragons where each lay shall become a way and a highway shall be there, and a way, the unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those. No lion shall be there. Nor shall any ravenous beast shall not be found there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

—

Praise God for the blessings to his church. Sermon scripture is found in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-3. Wherefore, when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone, and sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith, that no man should be moved by these afflictions. For yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.

At this point, the younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire that for them.

Going through our series of sermons through the book of First Thessalonians, we have reached kind of a pivot point in the book, a turning point as it were. Boy, have to work on that phrase. Chapters 1 and 2 were primarily Paul’s thanksgiving for the Thessalonians, what God had accomplished in their lives. And chapters 4 and 5 move to a specific set of commands. First some general and some extended sections in chapter 4 on specific problems. Then in some very short commands and very important ones that we’ll deal with in chapter 5. So chapter 3 really is kind of the hinge between all this thanksgiving going on in the first two chapters and all the commands that will happen in chapters 4 and 5.

Chapter 3 really deals pretty much exclusively with the purpose for the sending of Timothy to them and then Timothy’s response back to Paul in the sending of the epistle. So that really is what chapter 3 is about. We could just go over it very quickly, but I think it’s very important to maybe not rush through this particular chapter and think about some of the things that are said here and the implications in our lives for them.

It’s also important in the context of what I’m going to say this afternoon that we notice the shift in themes from the end of chapter 2 into these three verses here. Chapter 2, as our last couple of sermons dealt with, touched upon the Parousia, the coming of Jesus. And I think that primarily the reference there is to the coming and judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70. We went over some of that line of reasoning. Ken Gentry’s fairly new book, The Dating of the Book of Revelation, would be excellent for you to read in connection with that.

I’ve got some tapes by him also that I’ll be putting in the church library as soon as I get done with them, which may be a while. I’ve listened to him once and I’ll probably want to listen to him two or three times, but Gentry is very good on this subject. In any event, the point there is that Paul was talking about their standing. He wanted to rejoice in them that they stood fast at the coming of the Savior upon Jerusalem and upon the enemies of the church in judgment in the years leading up to A.D. 70. And so he—we dealt with some real big themes there in terms of the Christian life and the establishment of the kingdom in its fullest sense and the giving over the kingdom from the Jewish nation to the people of God and all that was accompanying the Parousia in A.D. 70.

Now what the shift today then is to some very practical sort of things that happened as a result of all of this. And while we talked about some big kind of weighty issues last week, we’re going to talk about some very simple things today. The last two weeks we’ve dealt about some big issues about the Parousia, A.D. 70, and the last coming, et cetera—big themes. And now we’re taking all that home. Okay, we’re taking all that home in terms of application. What does it mean? What do we do then? And that’s what our point today is going to be: strengthening the elect.

That really is in reference in the context of the Thessalonian church to the coming tribulation that was already there. But it also is an eternal command that the elect be strengthened, the elect be strengthened rather by ministers of God throughout all ages. So some very practical stuff here’s what we’re going to be talking about.

These three verses first describe a circumstance. The circumstance was that Paul could no longer forbear, not knowing if the Thessalonians were standing firm for the faith or not, if they were resisting the tempter. See, no longer can forbear his absence of knowledge about how they were doing. An incident may have brought this up. I don’t know. But in any event, the circumstance is that he then sends Timothy, a brother minister of God, a fellow worker, a fellow laborer in the gospel to them to do a particular thing. So the circumstance is this concern on Paul’s part that leads him to send Timothy.

The action then is that he sends Timothy and the specific purpose of sending Timothy is to establish and comfort them concerning the faith. That word establish means strengthen. That’s what we’re going to spend most of our time on. And I believe that the text indicates that the comforting, the exhorting there is part of the way that Timothy establishes the Thessalonians. So the action is this establishment by Timothy of the church through means of exhortation concerning the faith.

The objective of all this is also pointed out for us in verse 3 that they not be moved by appointed afflictions. So he has the circumstance; he has an action. The action is taken to strengthen the Thessalonian church to the end that they might not be moved by afflictions that come upon Paul and them which were appointed afflictions by God.

Now next week or within the next two weeks we’ll deal with temptation looking at verse 5 specifically of this. But now we’re going to, as I said, consider some very essential although simple points in terms of strengthening the church—that we are to strengthen one another. God strengthens us and we are to strengthen ourselves.

Now it is worth repeating here again that the context for this then, as he’s coming out of this discussion about the temptations that would come to the Thessalonian church and cause them to fall away from the faith prior to the judgment coming in A.D. 70. Now I—there’s a tension in the scriptures between on the one hand comforting people relative to their position in the Lord and on the other hand severely warning them that if they do fall away they demonstrate that they’re not part of that elect community.

The title of the sermon is “Strengthening the Elect.” The elect is strengthened in all these things and those that are not are not elect. And so there are real warnings throughout the scriptures not to rely upon your statement of faith and intellectual ascertainment of the faith. Your membership, for instance, don’t rely upon the fact that you’re a member of RCC in good standing in terms of your eternal destiny.

The scriptures want us very clearly to realize that there are some people that will be strengthened and they will resist temptations and they will be faithful. And there are others that we may think are part of the elect community now who will not become strengthened and who will prove that they are actually sand and not cement. And those people will fall away and they’ll be demonstrated they were not elect and they’ll be cast into hell eternally.

Now this is a real warning that Paul throughout the epistles gives to various visible congregations. And it’s a warning that you must hear in your own lives to not take your salvation for granted based upon a confession of faith or an intellectual statement or anything else. God wants you to evaluate where you’re at and he sends us trials and tribulations to help you do that. And he severely admonishes us to stay in the faith.

Now the tension is that he has a cause to be elect. It’s his work and he wants us to realize that these things are written that you might know. On the other hand, the tension remains that he warns us—what one fell in our church early on used to call the scary passages of scripture are there and they warn you not to fall away from the faith that judgment will come.

After all, in terms of this transition from the nation of Israel or the people of Israel to the Church of Jesus Christ and primarily people now by gentile believers in A.D. 70. That transition of the kingdom is accompanied by Paul’s warning to gentile believers in the book of Romans. Don’t get fat and sassy. They were cut off for unbelief and you will be cut off as well if you exhibit unbelief.

Okay. Now, the strengthening has a source. The source of the strengthening—the strength of the elect. We’re going to discuss first the source of that strengthening. The word strengthen, as I said in the King James, it says established. The Greek word is stērizō and it means to turn resolutely in a particular direction. Hence a better term than established might be to strengthen. And I mentioned sand and concrete.

The idea is that when you strengthen people, you turn them from sand into concrete or you make the concrete gel up. So Vine’s, for instance, describes this word as meaning to fix, to make fast, to set in place. And the sense of this word can really be seen in its first two occurrences in the gospel of Luke. In Luke 16:26, we have the account of Lazarus and the rich man after their deaths. And in the context of that account in verse 26, we read, “Besides all this, between us and you, between where Lazarus is and where the rich man abides, there is a great gulf fixed”—same word, okay? “Set in place.”

And the picture that you’re supposed to get from this is you got a mountain and another mountain. And there’s this gulf is fixed. It’s permanent. It cannot be bridged. Even if we wanted to bridge it, we can’t bridge it. The gulf is fixed. It’s set in place. And that’s what this word means. And so Paul sends Timothy to set them in place, to set up the concrete.

Luke 9:51, this word is used again in reference to Jesus and a volitional act of Jesus. Says that it came to pass with the time to come that he should be received up. He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. Steadfastly is the same word. He strengthened himself. He resolved. He volitionally acted in such a way as he set himself like concrete, like that great gulf. He set himself to a particular action to go to Jerusalem. That’s what it means to strengthen the elect—to set them with that kind of resolve.

Now I think that this is a very important requirement for the church in America in the 20th century to realize. I said a couple of weeks ago that this nation suffers from a terminal lack of manhood. And I might also—I probably should have said also that the nation suffers from a terminal lack of womanhood, biblical womanhood as well. The idea that women are weak ultimately in their very character somehow and the men are strong is wrong. And so the feminization of American culture—that concept, for the American culture has become feminized in a sense—it’s lost its true femininity as well.

We talked before about the Proverbs woman. The same adjective is used to describe her was used to describe the mighty men of valor, who were a class of people in the Old Testament who were mighty warriors for God and for the covenant people and who would have various states based upon their victories. And that very word—mighty men of valor—that word valor is the same word applied to the Proverbs woman. Women are supposed to be strengthened. The command to strengthen people and set them in place and have them be firm is not given just to men. It’s given to men and women.

T.S. Eliot talked about the hollow men and the hollow society. Steve was talking to me about one of his books or set of poems earlier this week and I heard a brief excerpt from it. I’ve never read the entire poem, but the idea that we have a hollow society and hollow men who have lost strength and resolve and become sand instead of concrete—and women the same way—I think is absolutely true. I think the term “the glory has departed” means that the glory has departed. And glory, if you remember that we’ve talked about before, has the concept of weightiness to it, substance. And when the glory departs a particular culture, God’s substance or weightiness no longer fills that culture.

The culture becomes hollow and becomes lacking in substance. In America today, as a culture that is lacking in substance, and our own lives in the secular sense before we come to the faith, we are hollow people today. There’s no substance to them and to ourselves. And when you become converted, that glory isn’t added all at once. What Paul describes here is a process of strengthening people, making them weighty, making them fixed, making them more glorious in that sense.

We have today a crying need for men and women who command respect by their presence and by their bearing in life, who are strong men and women. Now you probably have met some strong men and women in your time. I can think of several particular examples both inside our church and outside of our church that I’m working with now on a fairly regular basis and doing political action and some other things—men who don’t want favor, men who are firm in their convictions and move ahead on those convictions and get other people to do things for them.

What I have seen in our culture is that since this culture is so weightless in that sense, that when men are strong, they command a great deal of respect and they can accomplish tremendous things—good or bad—in the culture around them because so many men are weak today and so many women are weak today. I believe that this passage teaches, as well as other passages of scripture, that strong men—and the men that you might have think in your own mind as being strong men in faith and convictions and actions—that is what all Christians are supposed to be.

I think that Christians should stand out from, in terms of their identity as people and as called of God, they should all become strengthened. Timothy didn’t just go to strengthen a few people but to strengthen all of them. I believe all of us are to have that strength of character that is talked about here. And as a result of that, the society around us will change. Things will happen as a result of God manifesting that faithfulness, that strength through us.

I think we have a crying need for men then and women to be real men, real women, and to be strengthened in who they are. We need men who will stand up for their wives. We need men who will stand up for their families. We need men who will stand up for their church and stand up for their pastor and stand up for whatever is right, no matter how great temptations come upon them, no matter how much trouble or trials or tribulations that standing for the truth causes them to do.

And we need young boys and girls that will do the same thing, that will think it is more important that I stand up for Jesus than that I suffer isolation or ostracism from my friends or from my culture. We need today men, as C.S. Lewis put it, men with chest. Men with chest—strong men. And that’s what this passage is about—is that Timothy was sent to make such men out of the Thessalonian church.

It’s my belief that if Christian men and women shine forth in their full strength, they shall indeed in a real sense rule this world by exercising proper dominion over it. The hollow men, the vaporous women that we have in 20th century America will be blown by the breath, so to speak, of those who speak forth God’s command word and his authority.

I’m not speaking here of being a macho man, machismo or blustering or contentiousness. I’m not talking about being pugnacious. I’m not talking about guys who are strong physically and can punch you in the nose or who are rude. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a depth of character, a strength of one’s convictions and faith, a personal strength based upon their lifestyle of holiness and faithfulness, and who then exhibit a strong influence in the world.

Men and women who image God, the God who is omnipotent. He is strength and he is stability and faithfulness. And as I said, I’m talking about men and women in the pews, not men and women in the pulpit. I’m talking about each and every one of us are to be strengthened according to the word of God.

The source of that strength comes from God himself. Romans 16:25. Romans 16:25 says, “Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, the preaching of Jesus Christ, to him be glory.” Only God ultimately is the source for the strengthening that we’re talking about here. It is an attribute of God, his strength and his stability. And it’s an attribute that he only can empower us to do. He is the one who has power to establish us.

And that’s the same word used there. 2 Thessalonians 3:3 says, “The Lord is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil.” God is faithful. God is truth. God is veracity. He is stable. And he then has the power and will establish you in your truthfulness, veracity, in personal convictions and as a result he will keep you from evil.

In Colossians 2:7 we read that we are rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. Again, our standing in Jesus Christ is the source of our strength as you have been taught abounding therein with thanksgiving.

Hebrews 13:9 addresses the same idea of being established or strengthened. Remember I preached on this in the gluttony series. I’m going to talk upon this next this coming Saturday in Seattle. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with meats. It doesn’t depend on your diet, your strength before God. It depends on grace. And that grace flows from the throne of God. He’s the only one who can establish us.

To look to anything else for establishment and strength is idolatry. Okay. God, however, uses means to bring this to pass. And one of the specific means he uses, and this may seem rather obvious, but it’s very important to bring it up. According to Romans 16:25 is that God has empowered to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. God’s word is the first means that is important for us to emphasize in our lives as how he brings us into being those concrete men and women, strong and stabilized in the faith.

The word I heard at the very first church I went to in Oregon—a dispensational church—the Sunday school teacher said one of the first things I remember him saying was he said, “Seven days without the word makes one weak.” You know, a cute little saying, you know, “seven days without the Bible makes one weak.” And it sounds a little silly maybe, and you sort of might, if you’re younger, particularly you can snicker at such a thing. But the point is this statement is true. This statement is true.

If we want to be strong men and women and strengthened and established by God, then we must be people of the word. And that doesn’t mean coming to church and hearing the word once a week. It means being in the word throughout the week. I don’t mean by this necessarily that we all got to be Bible scholars. The scriptures say all of us are to be strengthened. He gives us all the ability to be strengthened. He doesn’t give us all the ability to be Bible scholars. Just doesn’t do it. Some men don’t have the skills, the training, the intellect even to be an in-depth Bible scholar. That’s not what I’m talking about.

But I’m talking about reading your Bibles and simply understanding what is there that the Holy Spirit will teach you. I came across an excellent reference book. Well, I came across it. I got a book by Richard Pratt called He Gave Us Stories. And I asked Mark McConnell—has volunteered to read the book and make a report to the men’s discussion group here in the next month or two. And Mark mentioned to me last week what this book really is. And I’m going to tell you what it is. It is essentially a way to understand—it’s a big book to teach you how to understand Old Testament narratives.

And it’s a book that can be used in your home schools, particularly with your older children, to teach them literature. And it does it by means of using Old Testament narratives. The book is laid out in three sections and I won’t get into the whole thing, but I would strongly advise you if you have children who are 11 or 12 or older to get the book and begin to work through it with them very slowly on a regular basis in your home school as a way to teach them literature and at the same time teach them scriptures.

You know, we were thinking about maybe having someone do a time management talk at the family camp this year. I don’t know if we’ll be able to fit it in or not, but one of the important things to remember is each of us are so busy. You want to try to get double duty out of whatever you can today. You got to try to do two things at once if you possibly can because we have so much we’re all trying to do being homeschoolers.

And here’s a way to teach two subjects at once—literature and Bible combined together. And it’s a good way. I bring it up here because the very first thing he talks about are presuppositions that you take to the text and how you prepare to do Bible study. And he points out very importantly that people swerve off to one error or another. They swerve off over to too heavy an emphasis on the Spirit or too heavy emphasis on study and they say either the Spirit’s going to teach me without personal study or my personal study alone will teach me what the Bible has to teach me.

The scriptures tell us that God has inspired the scriptures, that the Holy Spirit illumines, lights up, explains to our minds and souls what that word says. That’s one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit being with us—is to teach us the word. And so that’s why we pray. Remember I told you to pray when you read the Bible. Ask for the Holy Spirit to do that work as you read it. It doesn’t take a genius to do that, okay? It doesn’t take a great intellect or a high IQ. Anybody can pray before they read the Bible.

“Please, Lord God, help me to understand what this word says. Make me stronger. Make my family stronger as a result of this word we’re going to read now in our family worship.” Do that on a regular basis. Now if you just rely on the Holy Spirit and don’t study, don’t try to look up a couple of verses here and there and don’t do some studying of what the verse means, putting it in its proper context, that would also be wrong. Those two things come together.

But the point is that I’m trying to make here is I’m not saying that in terms of God’s word being the means he strengthens us, you got to do tremendous in-depth original language studies. You got to read the scriptures on a regular basis. You got to rely upon the Holy Spirit. And if you can’t figure out what something’s saying, don’t be so proud that you don’t ask some other man in the church what it might mean. Or don’t be so proud that you don’t ask your wife, “What do you think this means?”

You know, some marriages God gives husbands wives who are smarter than them. There’s nothing wrong with that. You know, native intelligence is not an indicator of value in God’s sight. We’re valuable in Jesus Christ. And if you’ve been given a wife who’s smarter than you, or even if she’s not, the Holy Spirit may teach her something about the text that he hasn’t taught you. So do those things. Listen to your wife.

If you can’t understand it, do a little bit of study. Try to figure out what it means. Have some other man come alongside you. Don’t be so proud you don’t do that. Okay? Seven days without the word really does make one weak. And the reverse of that is if we’re in the word, God uses the word as the means to establish us and to make us sure.

Acts 20:32 says that the churches, the original churches in the book of Acts, were established in the faith. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So the word is the primary means, the first means that God uses. But God also uses men. In Luke 22:32, Jesus tells Peter, and I think he actually addresses him here as Simon instead of Peter the rock, which is kind of interesting because he says, “But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

He’s warning him the devil is going to do things. He’s going to go through tribulation. But the result of that will be his strengthening. He prays that thy faith fail not. And when thou art converted, then—when you’re stronger as a result of the temptations that God brings into your lives through satanic agencies even and upholds you in that and you stay firm and you get strengthened—then what does he tell Peter? You go strengthen thy brethren. That’s one of the most important jobs that a calling in ministry entails—is to strengthen and turn men whose lives can be sand in your own life that can be sand into concrete.

Strengthen them up, make them stand fast. Paul himself in Romans 1:11 says, “I long to see you.” In the opening chapter of the book of Romans, Paul said he wanted to see them “that I may impart to you, that I may give unto you some spiritual gift. For what purpose? Just you have that gift? Say, ‘Oh, great.’ No. To the end that you may be established. That you may be strengthened and stand fast and have this faithful weightiness to your life that I’ve talked about here.”

So Paul’s job itself was one of the—Paul himself was a minister given to do just this. And of course in our text here from Thessalonians, Paul said that he sends Timothy to Thessalonians for the specific purpose of strengthening them. So God works through men and he works through different kinds of men.

Timothy was not the same personality type at all as Paul or Peter. He seemed to be a bit more timid, younger certainly, but God can work through him and did decide in his providence to work through Timothy to strengthen the Thessalonian church.

There’s an illustration in Exodus 17:12 that gives us an example of what I’m talking about today. The same word that means strengthened or established in our text in the Septuagint version of Exodus 17:12. One of those words is translated the same word meaning to strengthen. Now, you know, the Septuagint was a version produced in Greek of the Old Testament, which of course was written in Hebrew. And so can help us to see—and it was fairly contemporaneous to the time of our Lord, so at the time of writing in the New Testament. So it can help us to see what those words meant. It’s not an inspired translation of the Old Testament into Greek, but it can help us to see it.

And here’s what it says in Exodus 17:12. Moses’ hands were heavy. Remember, he was holding up his hands here to achieve victory for God’s people. Moses’ hands were heavy. And they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat there on it. They gave him someplace to sit. And then Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands. Okay, his hands had to stay up for the blessing of God to continue upon the people.

And it says that Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands. They held up his hands. And this word stayed up is the same word in our text meaning to strengthen. And so the job of Aaron and Hur was to strengthen Moses by going over and literally holding up his hands so that he wouldn’t drop them down—the one on the one side and the other on the other side. Aaron holding up one hand, Hur the other hand. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun because God used men to strengthen Moses for that task.

So Moses then was steady until the going down of the sun. So that’s what we’re talking about is God strengthening people in the same way—coming alongside, holding them up, exhorting and encouraging them to righteousness. Now I said before that this is for the elect. In Proverbs 28:17, we read that a man that does violence to the blood of any person shall flee to the pit. Let no man stay him. Let no man uphold him. Okay, so there is a conditional sense to this. And if a man becomes—demonstrates his unregenerate state and does violence to another, we’re not supposed to help him stand up.

So the strengthening we’re talking about is conditional. It’s to the elect people of God. And he does it through the word. He does it through men. Now what do these men do? They accomplish the strengthening of the disciples through several agencies here. First, they teach.

Colossians 2:7 says that we are rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. So one of the ways that faithful men strengthen or establish Christians and turn them into men of strength and substance and of standing—and women as well—is to teach them the scriptures. Again, the agency is the word, but God uses personal readings of the word, personal study, as well as men teaching people the word to strengthen them.

But secondly, we want to spend a little bit of time on this. They exhort them. And our particular text here says that Timothy was sent to the Thessalonians to establish them and comfort them. In the King James, that word comfort is the same word for exhort. And so this says specifically that one of the ways that Timothy—the primary way Timothy was going to establish the Thessalonians—was through exhortation. Now this word exhort, we’ve already looked at a couple of verses earlier in Chapter 2 of 1 Thessalonians.