The Lord’s Day Morning
October 28, 2012
“Enduring Trials in Light
of Jesus’ Return: Pauline Prayer
Request”
2 Thessalonians 3:1-5
The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
A very appropriate hymn for this Lord’s Day.
Four hundred and ninety-five years ago on Wednesday, Martin Luther nailed
his ninety-five points of debate on the church door of the castle church in
Wittenberg, Germany, and sparked the Protestant Reformation.
Five hundred million Christians in the world today trace their spiritual
birth to the truths that were articulated by Luther and the other great
magisterial reformers. We’re just
five years away from the five hundredth anniversary of that event.
Well, if you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians
chapter 3. We’ve gone to the final
third of the book and you’ll notice Paul begin this section with a “Finally,”
indicating that he has finished the main argument of the book. We’ve stated that
over and over as, “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return,” but he still has
some exhortations and some encouragements to give to the congregation and he
begins to enumerate them in the passage we’re going to study together today.
As we read through this passage, I’d like you to be on the lookout for two or
three things. In verses 1 and 2,
you’re going to see Paul make a prayer request and that prayer request will come
in two parts. One part is at the end
of verse 1; one part is in verse 2.
That’s the first thing I want you to be on the lookout for.
Then, in the middle of this passage in verses 3 and 4, you will see Paul
express his confidence. And again,
there are two parts to this expression of his confidence.
One, he says something about what God is doing that causes him to be
confident in verse 3, and then he talks about what God is doing in the
Thessalonians, and that causes him to be confident; and he mentions that in
verse 4. Then the third thing I want
you to be on the lookout for in this passage you’ll find in verse 5, because
after this prayer request in verses 1 and 2 and this statement of confidence in
verses 3 and 4, Paul pronounces yet another benediction.
We’ve already encountered benedictions in this book at the end of chapter
2. We’re going to see another one at
the end of chapter 3. Paul’s letters
are filled with benedictions, blessings that he prays or pronounces on the
people of God. And guess what?
This benediction has two parts.
So be on the lookout for the two-part prayer request, the two-part
confidence, and the two-part benediction in this passage.
Before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask for His help and blessing.
Heavenly Father, this is Your Word.
We do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from Your
mouth. So we ask today that You
would help us to see the truth which You have spoken in this Your Word, and that
by Your Spirit You would apply that truth to our hearts in each and every
situation of life in which we find ourselves this morning.
Lord, Your words are always timely and always seasonable and Your words
are timely and seasonable in ways that I have no idea how they will be timely
and seasonable to Your people. But
You know; You’ve known from before the foundation of the world exactly what
every hearer of this passage needs.
So speak to our hearts, O God, and get all the glory for Yourself, in Jesus’
name, amen.
This is the Word of God. Hear it,
beginning in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 1:
“Finally, brothers, pray
for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened
among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men.
For not all have faith. But
the Lord is faithful. He will
establish you and guard you against the evil one.
And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will
do the things that we command. May
the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of
Christ.”
Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
Paul, in this letter, does what he does, for instance, in his little letter to
the Philippians. He ends the formal
teaching section and he introduces his conclusion with the word, “Finally,” but
he still has a chapter to go, and so that reminds you that Paul does what many
preachers do. They say, “And in
conclusion,” and then they go on for a while!
But Paul’s doing this for a particular reason.
It’s almost like he’s looked back over the letter that he’s written so
far, or perhaps dictated to his secretary, and he’s realized that he still has
some things that he wants to bless this congregation with.
He wants to exhort them in some things and he wants to encourage them in
some things. And isn’t it
interesting that after announcing, “Finally,” — he’s into the final section of
the book — he begins with a prayer request.
He asks the Thessalonians to pray for him.
And one of the reasons he does this is Paul fully understands that the
work of the Gospel ministry is ultimately God’s work.
And it doesn’t matter how gifted he is, it doesn’t matter how faithful he
is; God’s work is God’s work and it requires God to prosper it.
It requires God to make it successful.
And so he begins by asking for them to pray for him.
And I’d like to look with you for just a few moments at three things that
we learn in this grand passage. In
this passage we find a double prayer request, a double confidence, and a double
blessing. And I want to look at
those two-fold prayer requests, confidences, and blessings with you today.
A DOUBLE PRAYER REQUEST
Let’s begin in verses 1 and 2 with a double prayer request.
Paul’s words are, “Brothers, pray for us,” but the language that he uses
indicates that he’s asking the Thessalonians to keep on praying.
It’s not like he’s saying, “You haven’t been praying and I’d like you to
start praying.” He’s saying to them,
“I know you’re praying for us and I’d like you to continue to pray specifically
for two things.” The first thing
you’ll see there in verse 1, “that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be
honored.” That’s very interesting
language and it’s a great prayer request to pray for anybody that’s in the
Gospel ministry. And guess where it
comes from? Paul’s language comes
right out of the Psalms. We’ve been
studying the Psalms on Lord’s Day Evenings.
If you take your Bibles and turn back with me to Psalm 147 and look
especially at verse 15, you’re going to see exactly where Paul’s language comes
from here, “that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored.”
Psalm 147:15, “He sends out His command to the earth; His Word runs
swiftly.” Do you hear Paul’s pray
request coming out of the passage?
“Pray for us that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead…His Word runs swiftly.”
And then turn further back in the Psalms.
Turn all the way back to Psalm 19.
Psalm 19 is the psalm where we’re told that “the heavens declare the
glory of God.” The sun and the moon
and the stars of the heavens declare God’s glory.
And in Psalm 19 verse 3 we’re told that even though the sun and the moon
and the stars don’t speak to us, we don’t hear their voice audibly in our ears,
nevertheless, their voice, their line, has gone out.
Look at verse 4 – all the way to the ends of the earth “and their words
to the end of the world.” Now when
Paul says, “Pray that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead,” he is thinking of
the Word of the Lord traveling swiftly to the ends of the earth.
It’s a prayer for the spread of the Gospel and for the success of the
Gospel. If you ever wonder, “How
should I pray for campus ministers or evangelists or church planters or
missionaries and for faithful Gospel preachers in other churches in our city, in
our state, in our region, in our nation?” this would be a great prayer.
Pray for the spread and the success of the Gospel.
He’s asking the Thessalonians to do this because Paul’s faithfulness is
not what brings that success. God’s
blessing is that brings the spread of the Gospel and the success of the Gospel.
So he says, “Thessalonians, I crave your continued prayers that the Word of God
would spread, just like it spread to you, and that it would be honored, just
like you honored it.” Remember what
he said back in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 13?
“I thank God that when you heard the Word of God, the message of your
salvation, from us, you accepted it not as the words of men but as what it
really is, the Word of God, which performs its work in you.”
He’s praying that just as the Gospel came to them and was successful,
that they will now turn around and be concerned for the spread and success of
the Gospel elsewhere. One of the
ways that you know that the Gospel has taken hold in your heart is that you care
about the Gospel taking hold of other people’s hearts.
If you don’t care about the spread of the Gospel, if you don’t care about
other people coming to faith in Christ, if you don’t care about the Gospel
changing the hearts and lives of other people, it’s very doubtful that your life
has ever been changed by the Gospel because those who have been transformed by
the grace of God, those who have realized the forgiveness of God, the
undeserved, the glorious Christ-bought and wrought forgiveness of God, want
everybody to experience that. So
isn’t it interesting? These people
that Paul has come to as a missionary and shared the Gospel with and they’ve
come to faith in Christ, he now asks them, “You get to work praying that others
would come to faith in Christ.” That
ought to animate the prayer life of our congregation.
This would be a great prayer, friends, on Wednesday night.
Whether you’re in your discipleship groups or gathered with us in prayer
meeting, this would be a great prayer for us to be praying for our campus
ministers, evangelists, church planters, missionaries, and ministers every
Wednesday night we’re together and of course when we’re in our private prayer as
well.
But that’s not the only prayer request that Paul has.
Look at verse 2; he’s got another prayer request. He says, “Pray that we
may be delivered from wicked and evil men.”
Now this is not theoretical for Paul.
You know because you’ve read Galatians and you’ve read Romans and you’ve
read some of Paul’s later letters that Paul had people that dogged his steps
everywhere he went in Asia Minor trying to undermine the teaching and the
doctrines that he was proclaiming.
There were people that contradicted the glorious Gospel of free grace that he
was preaching place to place to place.
This was not theoretical for Paul; these were real people.
We call them the Judaizers and of course there were others that
contradicted faithful teaching as well and they were trying to hinder Paul and
they were trying to hinder his ministry.
And Paul says to the Thessalonians, “Brethren, please pray for us.
Pray that we would be delivered from evil and wicked men.”
Now isn’t that an interesting thing?
These are people that are trying to hinder the Gospel, and I am sure that
in their own minds they were doing something that was good, but Paul calls them
“wicked and evil men.” And my
friends, ministers of the Gospel in our own country, more and more, will need
that prayer in our own day and age.
Do you know that the hindrance of the Gospel is more legally possible in our
land than it has ever been? And
there’s no sign of that sad tendency slowing down.
So that there are places where you could read the Word of God without
comment and you could find the Gospel and Gospel men hindered from doing the
work of the Gospel simply because it was read in a place where it offended
someone and the offended have decided that they don’t want to hear those words
in their ears. And so the Gospel
itself is closed off, shut down, and forbidden in those settings.
We need to pray for church planters and campus ministers and evangelists
and missionaries and ministers because there are people who want to hinder the
spread of the Gospel. These are two
good petitions that we ought regularly to pray for ministers of the Gospel.
That’s the first thing that I want you to see — Paul’s double prayer
request.
A DOUBLE CONFIDENCE
But here’s the second thing. After
asking for these two prayers to be lifted up for him and for his companions,
Paul then says, “I want to tell you, I want to tell you that I’m very confident
of what God is doing.” He speaks of
a double confidence. It’s an
assurance that Paul has in the Lord about what the Lord is doing
for the Thessalonians and about what
the Lord is doing in the Thessalonians.
Look at what he says. “The Lord is
faithful;” verse 3, “He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.”
Paul is saying that he is fully confident that the Lord will guard and
strengthen the Thessalonians. And he
says particularly that the Lord will protect them against the evil one.
Now the language there is ambiguous.
You could translate that “He will protect you against evil.”
It’s just like the Lord’s Prayer.
Our King James Version of the Lord’s Prayer says, in that great petition,
“deliver us from evil,” but it could be translated, “deliver us from the evil
one.” Here, Paul is certainly thinking of personal opposition to the
Thessalonians, just like evil and wicked me were seeking to hinder them in their
ministry, Paul is thinking of the evil one and how he wants to attack the
Thessalonians.
I want to pause here and say Paul is very clear that there is a supernatural,
personal force in this universe that wants to destroy you.
He’s just spoken in chapter 2 about the man of lawlessness and the man of
sin, an instrument of the evil one against God’s people.
And Paul says here that he is confident that the Lord will deliver us
from the evil one. Do we ever factor
that in, in the struggles that we experience in life, whether it be marriage or
family or vocation or whatever arena it may be, that the evil one is seeking to
destroy His people? I’m not talking
about blame shifting; I’m not talking about finding a demon under every rock,
but I am talking about acknowledging the reality of a supernatural, personal
force in this universe that wants to destroy us.
This is not about blaming our sin or excusing our sin because of what the
evil one has done.
Some of you are old enough to remember the comedian, Flip Wilson.
One of his famous catch-lines was, “The devil made me do it,” and it
always drew a big laugh from the audience.
That’s not what Paul’s talking about here, blaming our actions on the
evil one. But Paul is talking about
the fact, and it’s stressed over and over in the New Testament, isn’t it, that
the evil one is like “a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” or he is
“crouching at our door” waiting to pounce upon us.
This kind of language is used over and over in the New Testament.
Do we realize it’s not just our sin that we have to be on the lookout
for? It’s not just the opposition of
the world, but it’s the world, the flesh, and the devil, that are all arrayed
against the Christian. By the way,
Martin Luther sings about that in that hymn that he wrote, “A Mighty Fortress is
Our God.” He sings about the world
and the flesh and the devil in opposition against the Christian.
But what Paul is saying here is that he is confident that the Lord will
establish and guard us. He will
guard and strength us against the evil one.
He is with us; He will not leave us or forsake us. He will protect us.
And that is a tremendous truth that we so often forget right when we need
to remember it.
Just this last week a fellow PCA minister that I actually taught when he was a
student at RTS Jackson put this little post up on his Facebook wall.
He said, “Sixteen time in the Bible God says, ‘I am with you.’
Twelve times in the Bible He says, ‘I will not leave you.’
Eight times He says, ‘I will not forsake you.’
So please, tell me, what’s got you so worried?”
It’s a really good point. So
often we forget God’s promises that He is with us, that He will not leave us,
and that He will not forsake us. And
Paul’s trying to remind us of that right here.
He’s saying, “The Lord will protect you and strengthen you; He will guard
you and establish you. Don’t forget
that, Christian! Don’t forget that!”
But that’s not the only confidence Paul has here; there’s another confidence.
Here’s the twin that he offers us as an expression of confidence.
Look at verse 4. “We have
confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that
we command.” Do you remember Jesus’
marching orders to the disciples in Matthew 28:18-20?
What were they supposed to do?
They were supposed to teach the disciples to obey all the things that
Jesus had commanded. Remember,
that’s their job in discipleship. It
was not just to teach them the doctrine that Jesus had taught, but to teach them
to obey everything that Jesus had commanded.
And Paul is saying to the Thessalonians, “I have confidence that you are
obeying the Word of God and that you will obey the Word of God.”
But notice what Paul says his confidence is in.
“I have confidence in the Lord that you are and will do the things that
we have commanded.” In other words,
Paul is saying, “This isn’t just my confidence in you; it’s my confidence in
what the Lord is doing in you. I am
confident that I can see the evidence of the Lord’s work in your life, and not
only is He for you, to guard you and protect you, to strengthen you and
establish you, He is at work in you in order to grow you up in grace, in order
to grow you in holiness, so that you grow in obedience.”
Do you ever find yourself looking back and thinking about things that you
struggled to do or not do, twenty years ago, that you’re not have to struggle
with anymore. Oh, I know there are
things that we can look back twenty years ago that we were struggling with and
we’re still struggling with them today, I understand that, but have you ever
found yourself thinking, “You know, I used to struggle with that and the
struggle is not there anymore”? What
is that due to? Is it due to you
just being a wonderful person? No!
It’s the Lord’s work in you.
That’s why you’re not struggling with that anymore because over the years the
Word of God, just like Craig was talking about, the Word of God, as you’ve
gathered for worship, as you’ve opened the Scriptures daily, as you’ve gathered
in a small group, as you’ve prayed with your friends, your spouse, your
children, the Word of God has washed over you and washed over you and washed
over you and it’s changed you in that area.
It’s the Lord at work in you and Paul says, “I see those evidences,
Thessalonians. You may not be able
to see them, but I see them. I see
the evidence of the Lord at work in you.”
And he speaks of this double confidence that he has.
A DOUBLE BLESSING
And then finally, he speaks a double blessing to them.
And look at both parts of the blessing in verse 5.
He says, “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the
endurance of Christ” or the steadfastness of Christ.
Now look at each of these things.
He says, “May the Lord direct your hearts,” first “to the love of God.”
By this Paul means God’s love for you.
May the Lord direct your hearts to look at, to know, to contemplate, to
understand, to experience, if I dare say it, to feel the love of God for you to
know experientially that God loves you.
I know many Christians that struggle to know that God loves them.
They trust in Christ, they believe the Gospel, they believe every Word of
the Bible, but they struggle for a whole variety of reasons with the
experiential knowledge of the love of God. And when you’re there, you go out to
battle half beaten already. And
here’s the apostle Paul saying, “I’m praying that the Lord Himself, Jesus
Christ, would direct you into a personal and experiential understanding of the
love of God for you because it’s so absolutely important for what we have to go
through in the Christian life. So
there’s his first blessing. “May the
Lord direct you into an understanding of God the Father’s love for you.”
Secondly, this is so interesting — “May the Lord direct you” to what?
“To the steadfastness of Christ” or “to the endurance of Christ.”
In other words, Paul is saying that he wants you to look squarely at the
endurance of Jesus Christ for you.
He’s calling you to endure in your trials and tribulations, but God, never in
the Bible, asks us to do something that He is not prepared to do Himself.
And when it comes to endurance in the Christian life, God is saying this
to us, “My Son has already endured for you.
Look to Him. When I call you
to endure, I want you to look at Jesus’ endurance for you.
He endured depravation, poverty, suffering, pain, sorrow, rejection,
mocking, torture, and death. He
endured all of those things for you.
So when I call you to endurance, I want you to be directed into the
contemplation of the endurance of Christ for you.”
So often we run into experiences in our lives and we’re thinking, “I
can’t make it, Lord. I can’t get
through this. I’m not going to
survive this.”
About a week ago, I ran across a notebook that I had not seen probably in twenty
years. It dates from about
twenty-five years ago in my life and I opened it up and it was a portion of a
journal that I kept. Now I’m a
terrible journaler. I journal for
about three days and then I don’t journal again for six months. And then I
journal for two days and then I don’t journal for four years.
And then I forget that I had a journal and then I rediscover it again; so
I’m a terrible journaler! But in
this journal I was recording something that occurred about twenty-five years ago
and reading my words, I thought that I was going through the worst thing that
had ever happened to me and that the world was about to come to an end.
I would be embarrassed for you to read the words that I wrote in my
journal! You would say, “This man is
melodramatic” and you’d say a lot of worse things too!
In fact, that page will be burned soon so you will not be able to see
what I wrote in that journal!
(laughter) But looking back on that
journal, I had a conversation with my twenty-six year old self.
And I was saying to my twenty-six year old self as I looked at that
journal, “You have no idea! What
you’re going through now is nothing compared to the things that are ahead!
This was a walk in the park, buddy!
And you thought the world was coming to an end!”
That’s exactly why Paul says, “May the Lord direct you into the endurance
of Christ” because there is nothing that the Lord is going to ask you to endure
that Jesus has not already endured and more.
And so contemplating the endurance of Jesus is going to do what?
It’s going to put the huge things that you think you are facing into
perspective. Jesus has not only
already endured for you so that He is able to sympathize with you in the very
real things that we have to endure, but it’s also going to put what we have to
endure into perspective, because what He endured was far, far greater than
anything — thank God – that we will ever be called upon to endure as believers.
And so Paul has a double prayer request, and a double confidence, and he
pronounces a double blessing on you that you will be directed into the love of
God your Father for you and into the endurance of Christ for you for your
everlasting good. May God enable you
to take it in. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word.
Teach us to believe this blessing, especially — the love of God our
Father for us, the endurance of Christ our Savior for us.
We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Now let’s sing of that love of God which is so strong and true using number 81.
We’ll sing the first and the fourth stanzas.
Forever safe. Forever blessed.
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance
of Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace
to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.