Isaiah 53:1Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
In Ephesians we see that one of the blessings with which the church has been blessed is that the Lord will make our name great. He makes your name great by having you slay giants. The church is now in a battle with the Tech Giants who want to bring us into bondage, stamp out our liberty which we have in Christ. So let's look closer at this book.
2Thess 1:1 Paul, Silas and Timothy,
We need to remain in the fellowship of the apostles. It is a sure word. It has stood the test of time. The arm of the Lord has been revealed to them and they will help us to also to see. Isaiah 53:2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The apostles had the vision that the church, this tender shoot would grow up into the fullness of God. Think about what the church was at the time of Paul and what it has grown into today, that will strengthen your faith. At the time of Paul it might seem absurd to think that the church would become so mighty that the gates of Hades could not prevail against it, but look at how much it has grown. Paul had this faith because the arm of the Lord had been revealed to Him. and like a root out of dry ground. Isaiah also gives us this vision. The church has been wandering in the desert for the last 2,000 years just as the children of Israel did when they had an exodus from Egypt. The first step in bringing these tech giants down is to boycott them. Yes, it will be like going into the desert, having to fend for ourselves. But this is the path that Gandhi took and the path that Martin Luther King Jr. took. This kind will only come out by prayer and fasting, and fasting is to boycott. The Birmingham Bus boycott was a fast.
3 We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. 4 Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. The church has grown like a root out of dry ground. Consider the persecutions and trials we have endured these last two thousand years. The apostles are boasting about the endurance of the church. We have grown out of dry ground. But because of that our roots are deep, we can make it through intense droughts. We are equipped to endure this coming trial. The first stage of the trial is to slander, insult and ridicule you. If you have been trained in the gospel this is nothing, it is like water rolling off a duck's back. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. If this bothers you then you aren't worthy to be called the Lord's disciple.
5 All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.
Instead of getting upset realize that this treatment is evidence that what we are doing is right. Look if it was wrong the enemy would love to let us speak, they would love to publicly humiliate us as to why we are wrong, why we are naive, why we made a mistake. The fact that they cannot address any of the claims and only mock and ridicule is evidence that we are right. When you seek His kingdom and His righteousness there is nothing to attract you. The church is composed of those despised and rejected by mankind. The church is composed of those in low esteem. God’s judgement begins with the house of God. Therefore God is right to count you worthy of the Kingdom for which you are suffering. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.
We have to have faith that God is just, that God will repay, and that God will give relief. The prosperity gospel says that our wealth and success attract people to the church, but that was not what attracted us to the Lord. We thought He was being punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. We were like Job’s friends. But when we were troubled we were able to partake of the fellowship of His sufferings, this is our daily salvation. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.
8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.
This is what we believe, He came as a peace offering for us, to heal us and save us. Those who have rejected this peace offering will be punished with an everlasting destruction. We also believe that the Lord is coming to be glorified in His holy people. We will be “to the praise of His glory”. For two thousand years we have had faith in this. We didn't preach the gospel of the law courts, or the gospel of the state legislators or the gospel of Mike Pence. No, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
Yes, this includes us. We were sheep that had gone astray and Jesus was our sin offering. He healed us, saved us, and made peace with God for us. This is not a one time occurence. We are prone to go astray. The secret is to believe the testimony, the fellowship of the apostles. Obey that fellowship and we too will “be to the praise of His glory”. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression[a] and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.