This Sunday's Music:
Everlasting God
Glorious Christ
Come Thou Fount
Now Why This Fear
You Never Let Go
Let Your Kingdom Come

This Sunday's Text: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Hope permeates throughout our lives, whether we realize it or not. You find out about an event that you want to attend and hope that you don't have something else going on that night. You can hope that your boss will give you some sort of promotion. And on the flip side, you can hope that your boss won't fire you. Hope is an expectation of something, whether good or bad. You could be dreading something upcoming, but even that is a kind of hope, perhaps hoping that the thing you dread won't be as bad as it seems.

The Christian life is characterized by hope. We have repented of our sins and trusted in the saving work of Christ, and by His grace God has counted us righteous because of Christ. Our dead souls have been brought to life, and we look forward with eager hope and anticipation to the day when we will be in the presence of God the Father forever. This happens in conjunction with the Day of the Lord, where God pronounces the final judgment on sin and evil. (The guys at The Bible Project have a great video discussing this topic in depth.)

In our Scripture text for this Sunday, Paul has to do some damage control with the Thessalonian church. Someone, or a group of people, had come into the church and spread the lie that the day of the Lord (in their case, referring to the rapture of the Church before the judgment) had already happened. This was devastating to the Thessalonians; it robbed them of the hope they had in Christ. Paul wrote this letter specifically to combat this false teaching, and also to encourage the church in Thessalonica not to be "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes" (Ephesians 4:14).

If we stand firm in the truth of Scripture, we have confidence that "our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13) is fully intact, and we can expect to see Him when that day comes and Christ calls His Church to Himself.