2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Pentecost 23 Sunday, November 16, 2025 “God’s Righteous Verdict Will Be Revealed”
Judgment is a bad word in our society today. Perhaps you’ve noticed that. This is a time when people want to believe that anything goes. You can not only have your own opinion about things, you can have your own truth. Our society tells us that it doesn’t believe in placing limits on choices, lifestyles, or decisions. If you think that something is right for you, not only is it OK, it is what you should be doing. And if that is the case, the worst thing someone can do is judge someone else’s decision. It seems like the only thing that is not OK in our society is telling someone that something is not OK. Most don’t see how ironic that is, either. They simply think that disagreeing with someone’s lifestyle or choices must be mean and cruel. And that seems to imply that if everyone just avoided judgment, let everyone else do what they want, that would be the best for our society and everything would be fine. If that’s the idea that not only floats around in society but also affects us, the idea that Judgement would cause Peace seems strange and far-fetched. We can understand a lot of the other pairs of causes and effects that are listed in the front of our worship folders. Sainthood causes stamina. Grace causes joy. Cause and effect. But Judgment seems the opposite of Peace. Judgment appears to bring strife and conflict. That’s not the case, however, when the judgment belongs to God. We’re not talking about people judging others, though there is certainly a place for that. We are talking about God judging, proclaiming a verdict, and his verdict is righteous. These last few weeks of the church year call on us to think about the End Times and specifically the last day, Judgment Day. We can’t help but feel a little apprehension about the extreme sort of judgment that day brings. But the reason God would have us think about these things is to provide us with peace right now, peace in the face of, and as a result of, judgment. The words we’re considering this morning come from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians. God led him to write these things, along with his associates Silas and Timothy, to people who were being persecuted for their faith. From the time Paul first preached in Thessalonica, he and those who listened faced trouble. When people believed what God said through Paul and started following him, the Jewish leaders were jealous and stirred up all sorts of trouble. They instigated riots and ran Paul and Silas and Timothy out of town. And they didn’t stop there, the trouble-makers followed to the next stop on the missionary journey. That sort of opposition and trouble continued for the believers in Thessalonica. What Paul was so thankful for, though, was that these believers continued to worship God and grow in faith and demonstrate love. That’s how this letter started before the verses in front of us. Paul was thanking God for these believers and for the fact that they are standing up to persecution and growing in faith and love in spite of it. And then he writes, “This is evidence of God’s righteous verdict that resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also suffer.” God’s righteous verdict had already come for these believers. God had declared them not guilty. He had rescued them from their sins. He had connected them to Jesus as Savior. He assured them that Jesus had taken all the punishment that they deserved. He had taken all the guilt that they had acquired. It was as though they had never sinned and had no guilt. And what was the evidence? People opposed them. They faced persecution. They suffered. They didn’t suffer because they had done something wrong. They suffered because they believed in Jesus, and the sinful world around them punished them for it. That was real evidence of God’s righteous verdict. I suppose, though, we could call that incomplete evidence. How do we know that this suffering was righteous suffering? How do we know it wasn’t because of something they had done? How do we know that it wasn’t the same sort of suffering that plagues believers and unbelievers in a sinful world? After all, people who go to church and people who don’t get sick, have car accidents, have relationships that sour. How could Paul assure the Thessalonians that they were right to hold on to Jesus and continue living for him? He could point them to the promises Jesus had given. We heard some of those promises in Luke 21. We heard Jesus talk about how difficult and how challenging things would be for his people as the end drew closer and closer. And we heard him assure believers that they would gain their lives. Not a hair on their heads would be destroyed. Paul could take those same promises and offer them to the Thessalonians. Jesus