Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: What We Pray for You


Sermon by J. Ligon Duncan on September 23, 2012 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

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The Lord’s Day Morning


September 23, 2012



“Enduring Trials in Light of
Jesus’ Return: What We Pray for You”


2 Thessalonians 1:11-12


The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians
chapter 1 verses 11 and 12. The
apostle Paul often fills his letters with prayers that he prays for the
congregation that he’s writing, sometimes there are prayer requests that he asks
them to pray for him and for the mission team that they’re supporting and that
may be writing them, other times he actually exhorts them to prayer, and then
there are prayer reports where he tells that congregation what he has been
praying for them. The passage that
we’re reading today is a prayer report.
Paul is telling the Thessalonians what he has been praying for them.
And that’s very important for us because it’s a guide for us as to how we
can pray for one another. This is
also a very rich passage which helps us to understand how we go about
undertaking sanctification in the Christian life.
What Paul has to say here is very, very significant for understanding
just how you go about the pursuit of holiness and growth in grace.

And I want you to be on the lookout for several things as we read this passage
together. In verse 11, for instance,
I want you to note what Paul says about how he continually prays.
Secondly, in verse 11, I want you to be on the lookout for that wonderful
phrase, “that God may make you worthy of His calling.”
And I want you to be already asking, “What in the world does that mean?
What does it mean to be made worthy of His calling?”
And we’ve already met that phrase in this passage back in verse 5.
Third, again in verse 11, I want you to note the phrase, “may fulfill
every resolve for good.” I want you
to think for a second about what it means to resolve to do good.
And also in verse 11, the phrase, “every work of faith” – what is a work
of faith? And then in verse 12, I
want you to notice what Paul says all of this is supposed to lead to — “that the
name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.”
And I don’t want you to miss what he says — “glorified in Him, glorified
in you” — may be glorified in you and you in Him.
Don’t miss that phrase. And
ask yourself, “What does that mean?”
And then finally, notice how he emphasizes that all of this is “according to the
grace of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of chapter 12.
Be on the lookout for each of those things as we read God’s Word
together. Before we do, let’s pray
and ask for His help and blessing.

Heavenly Father, as we attend to a passage that reports to us Paul’s prayer for
the Thessalonians, we ask that by Your Spirit we would not simply understand it
or come to have greater views of Your power and grace by studying it or come to
have higher thoughts of You because of Your work in these things, but that even
more than that we would pray. We
pray that this report of prayer would move us to pray and to live in accordance
with the truths that it articulates.
We ask that You would do this in us by Your Holy Spirit even as we read and hear
the Word, in Jesus’ name, amen.

This is the Word of God. Hear it:

“To this end we
always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may
fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the
name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the
grace of our God and the Lord Jesus 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 passage, is telling the Thessalonians what he prays for them and
it is a prayer not only for their final glorification, it’s a prayer for their
present sanctification with a view to their final glorification.
In fact, in this prayer, Paul prays that they would be sanctified by God
Himself, that they would be sanctified by God, by God’s power, and by God’s
grace for Jesus’ glory so that at the end they would be counted worthy.
It’s a magnificent prayer and it’s a prayer that puts perspective on so
much in our lives. And I want to
think with you about it for just a few moments today.


CONTINUALLY PRAYING

First of all, don’t miss the phrase in verse 11 where the apostle Paul says, “To
this end, we always pray for you.”
Paul is saying, “We pray for you continually.”
Now think about that a little bit.
The apostle Paul was a man with missionary zeal, with evangelistic
fervor. He was a man with a
prodigious worth ethic. He worked
hard, he worked zealously, he worked passionately, but he depended upon prayer.
Why? Because he understood
that the mission that he was undertaking was fundamentally a spiritual mission
and he did not have the power to accomplish that mission; only God, the Holy
Spirit, can accomplish the goal that he has for his ministry amongst the
Thessalonians. So as hard as he
worked to share the Gospel, as hard as he worked to spread the Gospel, as hard
as he worked to make disciples, as faithful as he was in his teaching, in his
preaching, in his administration, he was dependent upon prayer.
And I wonder if our prayerlessness in the church today, both individually
and corporately, is not only due to the torrid pace of our lives — and our lives
do have an incredible busyness to them — but is due to the fact that we do not
understand the profound spirituality of this mission; the work of God in the
hearts of people is a supernatural work.
No human being can accomplish it.
Not the most powerful preacher in the world, not the most humble disciple
living in a remarkable way can change the heart of another human being; only God
can.

And so the apostle Paul says to the Thessalonians, “We always pray for you”
because he is totally dependent on God.
This is one of the ways in this passage, and by the way, it’s only one of
four ways in this passage, that Paul stresses that in all of his ministry he is
totally dependent upon God. First,
he stresses that because he says, “we always pray.”
Second, look at the next phrase, “that our God may make you worthy of His
calling.” Now whatever it means to
be made worthy of the calling, notice that the apostle Paul says that it’s God
who does that. So he prays to God in
dependence upon Him, he shows his dependence on God because whatever it is that
he wants to happen he wants us to become worthy of His calling; it’s God that’s
going to do that.

And notice again at the end of that sentence in verse 11 — how does it happen?
“By His power.” That’s the
third way that he emphasizes if his ministry is going to be accomplished then
God is going to have to do it. He
prays to God, he acknowledges God is going to have to work, and then he
acknowledges that this is going to happen only according to God’s power.
And then look at the end of verse 12.
He says, “How’s it going to happen?”
“According to the grace of our God.”
So he prays to God, he says God is going to accomplish it, he says it’s
going to be by God’s power, and by God’s grace.
Paul, in this passage is teaching us something about sanctification.
Sanctification is utterly dependent upon God’s work and so we must pray
showing that we know that only He can give the victory, we must acknowledge that
He is the one at work so that we would be counted worthy of His calling, that
it’s by His power, and that it’s by His grace.
Paul is telling something very, very profound about sanctification in
this passage. Let’s look at some of those things with more detail.


WORTHY OF HIS CALLING

Look at verse 11 in the middle of the verse where Paul says, “That God may make
you worthy of His calling.” Paul’s
saying, “I pray, one of the things that I pray is that God would make you worthy
of His calling.” What in the world
does that mean? Well we’ve already
met that phrase in this passage.
Look back at verse 5. In verse 5
Paul says, “This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may
be considered worthy of the
kingdom of God.”
Now in that passage Paul says that they are counted as worthy of the
kingdom of God and here again he says, “I’m praying that God Himself, on that
great day when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, will count you
worthy, will declare you worthy of His calling and of His kingdom.
It’s a picture of the final judgment and our being declared worthy.

Now my friends, if that worthiness ultimately boils down to our personal
goodness we’re in trouble, and that is why Paul says, “I am praying that God
would count you worthy, that God would be the one at work, so that when you’re
standing before the throne you are counted worthy.
I’m pray that He would do this by His power, that He would do it by His
grace.” He’s asking you in every
scene of life to be conscious of that final judgment.
You remember how we said both 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians are
about living life in light of Jesus’ return and one aspect of Jesus’ return is
the final judgment. And the apostle
Paul is saying, “I want you, in every situation and circumstance of life, to
remember that your ultimate goal is to stand before God on that great day and to
be counted righteous in Christ.” And
Paul is saying, “That’s the finish line.
There’s nothing short of that that I’m working for, for you,
Thessalonians. I don’t want you just
to be a little bit better than other people.
I don’t want you just to stay away from the most horrifying sins that you
can imagine. I want you, on that
great day, to be counted righteous in Christ.
I want God to declare you to be worthy of His calling and His kingdom.
And only God can do that and only God can do it by His power and only God
can do it by His grace and so I’m praying that for you.
I want you to know that,” he says.

By the way, is that something that you pray for one another?
You know sometimes friends ask you to pray for them and very often it has
to do with a health circumstance or a circumstance in vocation or in family and
we know how to pray for them, but do you wonder sometimes how you ought to pray
for one another? This is a really
good way to pray for one another, that you would pray that your brothers and
sisters in Christ that when they stand before the judgment seat of Christ would
be counted worthy in Christ of His calling and His kingdom, by God’s grace and
by God’s power. And by the way, it
would be a wonderful thing for you to pray that for a Christian from which you
have experienced estrangement.
Nothing knits the heart of estranged brothers and sisters together like praying
deep and powerful spiritual petitions for one another.
And so the apostle Paul says that he prays to the end that God will
consider you worthy of His calling, will count your worthy of His calling in the
great day of Jesus Christ.


PRAYING THAT BY GOD’S POWER,


EVERY RESOLVE FOR GOOD WOULD BEAR
FRUIT

But he doesn’t stop there. Look
again at the end of verse 11. He says, he prays that by God’s power, every
resolve of yours to do good would bear fruit.
Look at the language — “that our God may fulfill every resolve for good.”
You know, half of growing in grace is wanting to.
Half of growing in grace is wanting to.
Half of doing the right thing is wanting to.
If you’ve ever had the experience where you know what the right thing is
but you don’t want to do it — either you don’t want to do it because you know
what it will cost you or you don’t want to do it because very frankly your heart
is just not in it. And the apostle
Paul is saying, “My prayer for you is first of all that you will want to do the
right thing. You will want to do
what you ought to do. But then, that
that desire, that will to do what is good, will come to fruition.
You won’t just resolve to do it; it will come to fruition.”

Those of you who are in court have probably sometimes had a coach to tell you,
“You’ve got to want it! You’ve got
to want it more than they want it!”
And what’s that coach preaching?
That coach is preaching resolve. And
there’s something really true about that.
We’ve probably seen contests between teams in various sports where we
could literally perceive with our eyes when we’re watching the contest unfold
that one team wants that victory more than the other team.
Well the apostle Paul is saying, “You want to grow in grace?
Good, but resolve isn’t enough.
Determination isn’t enough.
God must, by His power, bring fruit from your resolve.”
In other words, even when you are committing yourself and consecrating
yourself and resolving to do what is good, you need God’s strength, God’s power,
so that truth will be borne by that.


PRAYING THAT GOD WILL FULFILL


EVERY WORK OF FAITH

And he doesn’t stop. Look at the end
of verse 11. He goes on to say, “I
pray that God will fulfill every work of faith by His power.”
In other words, Paul is saying that by God’s power he is praying that
every work done from faith would bear fruit.
What in the world does it mean, “every work of faith”?
It means a work, a deed, an action, a word that is done that flows from
our faith in Jesus Christ. It’s not
done to get chips with God. We’re
not doing it to try and merit His favor; we’re not trying to do it to get God to
love us or get God to bless us. This
is not some sort of a bartering practice.
We’re not trying to build up our storehouse of merit.
It’s a work of faith; it flows from faith.
We already know that God loves us; He’s given us His Son; He’s accepted
us in Christ. But the reason we’re
doing this work flows from faith.
And Paul says, “My prayer is that every work done from faith would bear fruit.”
And it will require the power of God for it to do so.

Imagine a woman married to a difficult man and for four thousand days she’s
gotten up and she’s resolved before she’s gotten out of bed, “Lord, today is
going to be different. It’s going to
be different.” She’s resolved it’s
going to be different. In spite of
the way that he infuriates her, in spite of the way that he disappoints her, in
spite of the way he lets her down, it’s going to be different today. And fifteen
minutes after her feet have hit the floor it’s already begun and the cycle
continues. And the apostle Paul
says, “Don’t you understand that in the living of the Christian life it takes
more than resolve; it takes more than determination?”
First of all, it requires that you hold in front of your eyes that great
judgment seat of Christ. What I’m
aiming for in the Christian life is not necessarily that my circumstances will
go away or even get better. My goal
in the Christian life is when I stand before Jesus, He says, “Come, you blessed
of My Father. Inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.”
That ‘s what I’m aiming for.
And that means that it may be that what God does in my life is not lift me out
of my situation or change my situation, but change me in my situation so that in
being changed in my situation I am prepared for the day when I stand before God
and He says, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”

And my resolution, as important as it is, isn’t enough.
Unless God fulfills my resolution to do good, no fruit can come from it.
And my deeds of faith are of no avail unless God is at work by His power
to bring fruit from those deeds of faith.
Do you see how Paul is emphasizing, “Yes, we must pray.
Yes, we must want to grow.
Yes, we must resolve to grow. Yes,
we must do deeds of faith. But it’s
God who is at work in us. He is the
one who brings the fruit.” He is
more concerned about your sanctification than you’re concerned for your
sanctification. And when He’s not
relieving you in situations that you’re longing for relief and He’s not giving
you victory in situations for which you’re longing for victory, you can still be
sure that He is at work in you for your holiness, and even more than that, He’s
at work in you for your glory.


GLORIFIED IN HIM, GLORIFIED IN
YOU

And that leads us to the next phrase because notice what Paul says all of this
is supposed to lead to – that in the end, that God would count you worthy of His
calling and that every resolve of yours to do good would bear fruit and that
every work of faith would bear fruit by His power so that…what?
Look at verse 12 — “so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified
in you.” There it is.
All of that growth in grace in you in the here and now is to lead to
what? So that the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ may be glorified. I
love what Calvin says about this passage.
“Here he calls us back to the chief end of our whole life — that we might
promote the Lord’s glory.” It sounds
like the first question of The Shorter
Catechism
, doesn’t it? Paul’s
saying, “I want you to be counted worthy in the great judgment day, I want every
resolve that you make to do what’s good to bear fruit, I want every work done of
faith to bear fruit — why? Because I
want Jesus to be glorified, because I want Jesus to get glory out of this.”

Ah, now there’s another thing that impacts our sanctification.
Our work in the Christian life, our living in the Christian life, our
resolve in the Christian life is not just to change our situation, it’s so that
Jesus gets glorified. And Jesus may
be glorified in our situation changing or He may be glorified in our situation
changing not one iota but our persevering in faith.
So Paul says, “I’m consciously desirous that whatever happens in my life
that the Lord Jesus gets glory.”

It doesn’t stop there. Notice what
he says — “that the Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him.”
Now that sounds like something that comes right out of the Upper Room,
doesn’t it? It sounds like it comes
right out of John 13 to 17. It
sounds like John 15 — “I am the Vine; you are the branches.”
It sounds like the High Priestly prayer of John 17 where Jesus talks
about us being in Him and He in us.
The apostle Paul is saying, “It’s my prayer that the Lord Jesus may be glorified
in you, that as God works in you for your sanctification, that Jesus is
glorified because what He set out to do in you He is in fact doing.”
And then he says, “and you in Him.”
It’s mind-boggling! That you
would be glorified in Him? Yes!
Yes!

There has been a lot of controversy this last week if you’ve been following the
news media or social media about a manuscript scrap from the fourth century that
claims to state that Jesus had a wife and Jesus said, “My wife.”
By the way, we just read about Jesus’ wife in Revelation 21:9, didn’t we?
He says to the Bride, “Come, My wife,” and who is it?
It’s the Church. Jesus did
have a wife. She’s called the
Church. And the book of Revelation
says that She is going to be spotless, perfect, without blemish.
She is going to be glorified in Him.
And that’s what Paul is saying here.


BY GOD’S GRACE

And all of this, he says — look at the end of verse 12 — is “by God’s grace.”
Only God can accomplish the work of sanctification.
He does it by His power and by His grace.
Yes, we resolve. Yes, we work
by faith. But He’s at work by His
power and by His grace. You know,
the Christian life is not rocket science, but it is impossible, without God.
The Christian life is not rocket science, but it is impossible without
God. To live the Christian life, you
need more than answers, you need more than resolve, you need more than
determination; you need God. You
need God’s power and you need God’s grace.
You are utterly dependent upon God, His power, and His grace.
But you have a God who loves you and a Christ who died for you and the
Holy Spirit who is at work in you.
And the love and the power of the Triune God that is at work in you for your
glorification and for your sanctification, it is vast, unmeasured, boundless,
and free. And if we understood that,
it would dramatically change about how we go trying to live the Christian life.

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this time in Your Word and I pray for us that
You would count us in Christ, worthy of Your calling at that great day and that
here and now, right now, in the present, You would make every resolve that we
have to do good bear fruit, and every work of faith bear fruit, by Your power,
and that the name of the Lord Jesus would be glorified in us and we in Him, all
by Your matchless grace. We pray, O
God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Now let’s sing of the love and power of our great Savior using number 535, “O,
The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.”

What does it take to be considered worthy of His calling and to have fulfilled
in you every desire for good and every work of faith?
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

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