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  THESSALONIANS CHAPTER 4 GOD
  by A.B. Simpson
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"Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you
worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his
goodness, and the work of faith with power." (2 Thes. 1: 11.) There is a
good, a better, and a best. It is a good thing to be saved; it is a
better thing to be sanctified and consecrated unto the Lord; but there
is a best and highest life into which we may enter, even all the good
pleasure of His goodness and the highest possibilities of faith and
love.

There is such a thing as graduating from college after passing the
required subjects and receiving your diploma; but there is also an honor
class, and a prize awaiting the successful competitors and the men who
reach the highest proficiency.

St. Paul wanted to be the best. "All run," he says, in this great
conflict, "but one receives the prize. . . . I therefore so run, not as
uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beats the air: But I keep under
my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I
have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway" -- not lost or
cast away from the presence of God, but deprived of the incorruptible
crown when the reward is given, and the eternal prize. And in another
place he tells us, "Forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." The day
came when the prize was won, and even he could say, "I have fought a
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

This was the prize to which James and John aspired, and Jesus did not
discourage them or tell them that it was unattainable. He told them it
was dependent upon their willingness and ability to be baptized with His
baptism and to drink of His cup. It was not His to give, except to those
for whom it was prepared -- the heroes, the conquerors, the highest and
the best.

This principle of hope is an element of human nature, and God appeals to
it in the promises of His Word and the recompenses of His kingdom. God
is not looking for great quantities today, but for high qualities.

We are in the closing days of the New Testament dispensation, and we may
expect the same things that marked the last days of the old economy.
Then God had to turn from communities to individuals for the
accomplishment of His great purposes. The kingdom of Judah failed to
fulfill His expectation and stand as His witness against an evil world;
and so He had to reject Israel and Judah and let them go into captivity,
and even allow His own glorious temple to fall because His people would
not be true to Him.

Then He picked out a little woman named Esther, and a young man called
Daniel, and three Hebrews in Babylon; and through these weak instruments
He compelled the proud Babylonians to acknowledge His power and bow to
His glory, and He wrought in a single generation more for His great name
than all the dynasties of Israel had accomplished in centuries.

So again the day is approaching when even His own Church may fail Him.
The pure apostolic church of John and Polycarp became the apostasy of
Rome, and we need not wonder if the church of the Reformation should
have begun already to resemble the picture of Laodicea, "rich and
increased with goods" and saying, "I have need of nothing," and about to
be rejected with disgust because of its lukewarmness.

God forbid that we should utter aught against its true spirit, but every
earnest and true Christian knows that, at best, we have today a small
minority for fidelity to the truth, and no sort of approximation of
Christian living up to the standard of His Word and the power of His
Spirit. It is the old story of Gideon once more, not only the thirty
thousand picked out of Israel, but the three hundred picked out of the
thirty thousand.

God is looking today for pattern men; and when He gets a true sample, it
is very easy to reproduce it in a thousand editions, and multiply it in
other lives without limitation.

All the experiences of life come to us as tests; and as we meet them,
our loving Father is watching, with intense and jealous love, to see us
overcome; and if we fail, He is deeply disappointed, and our great
adversary is filled with joy and triumph. We are a gazing stock
continually for angels and principalities, and every step we take is
critical and decisive for something in our eternal future.

When Abraham went forth that morning to Mount Moriah, it was an hour of
solemn probation; and when he came back, he was one of God\

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/ab-simpson/thessalonians-chapter-4-god/
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