2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
Amen. You can be seated. Turn
in your copy of the scripture to second Thessalonians chapter
two. Today, we’ll look at the last
two verses of this chapter. It’s a prayer. Some see it as
a prayer. Some see it as a benediction,
a declaration, and some see it as a well wish. Kind of think
perhaps it’s got some of all three, a prayer to God for strength.
a well-wish from Paul to the Thessalonians that they would
prosper in their spiritual growth and grace, their walk in the
Christian life under hardship, persecution, but also a benediction. This is something that we can
declare that God will do for us. And so perhaps all three
Now to God’s Word, 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 16 and 17. This is
Paul writing, but Silas and Timothy alongside him as they sit in
Corinth and write back to the Thessalonian congregation. Now
may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved
us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,
comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that
your word would accomplish its work, its errand, convince and
convert sinners to salvation and comfort and build up your
saints in the most holy faith. We pray in Jesus’ great name,
amen. Well, our eyes have been on the
heavens a lot lately. Perhaps not on the stars and
the sun and the moon, but on the return of a couple astronauts
from space. Two astronauts stuck up in the
heavenlies. Came home this week after, what,
eight or nine months of being up in the space station. That
was a good thing, but perhaps with the lengthening of the days, Earlier sunrise, the later sunset,
we’ve been thinking on the heavenly beings. Maybe we’ve been outside
at night. It’s a little warmer, not freezing
cold like it has been. And so you look up at the stars
and you see all those tiny dots in the sky and you see the constellations,
the galaxies, and you stand amazed. On another note, another creation
note, we’re in the throes of spring. You’re seeing the buds
on the trees. The grass is greening up. The pollen, sadly, has begun
to arrive. But in the weeks to come, we
will begin to eat from the fruit of the land. It’ll be strawberry
season, blackberry season, blueberry season, and on through apple
season. We’ll be getting corn on the
cob in a few weeks, a few months. And you think about the bounty
of the earth and how God feeds us well. You look at the stars
in the heaven, the stars and the planets, the constellations
in the sky, and you look at those two things, how plenteous they
both are. and you begin to read the promises
in the scripture, and you think about all the stars in the heaven,
all the food that comes from the earth, and then all the promises
in the Bible, and you begin to think how wonderful is our God
to provide a wonderful, vast creation for us to enjoy, how
wonderful a God we serve, that he provides so much food for
us, so much bounty, But then you begin to read the scripture,
and especially one like today, and you begin to see God gives
us so much more than we ever know, imagine, or even enjoy. And so what we want to think
about today is how God provides will. Yes, it’s wonderful to
see creation. Yes, it’s wonderful to experience
the fruit of the earth. But today we want to see how
wonderful it is that God provides us with everything we need, a
constellation of blessings, you may say, to satisfy our soul
in our salvation so that we can be at peace and at rest in this
world. We want to understand that, yes,
like the Thessalonians, we are living east of Eden. We are living
outside the garden. We are living outside the blessings
of an earth that was created good before sin, now it’s under
the groaning and the curses and the bentness and the brokenness
that comes through sin in the world. We’re living east of Eden
where the seed of the woman fights the seed of the serpent. It’s
Jesus versus Satan. There’s all kinds of hardships
that Christians must endure and must undergo. We’re now moving
from winter to spring, just did so this week. And we want to
see all the blessings God has. We want to see that our bounteous
God has given us everything we need to have a soul that is satisfied
in the specifics of salvation and how that helps us live east
of Eden in a sin sick, bent up and broken world. There’s five
things in this passage that I think will help us. Verse 16 first
tells us of our triune God. And that is the best starting
place. If we want to know how to live
well in this world that is bent and broken by sin, we have to
have a proper view of God. And that’s how the Apostle Paul
starts. Verse 16 says, our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God
our father. And maybe some of you are saying
in your heads, not so fast, Paul, you’ve got the wrong order. You
know, you’re like Joseph in Egypt when his father crossed his arms
and blessed one kid over the other. You’re going to tell God,
you’re going to tell Paul here, you got to uncross your arms.
You can’t say Jesus first and then the father second. But remember, Paul is under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Remember that he is speaking
to a Jewish audience who have a very high view of God, the
father. And on his second missionary journey, as he’s made his way
from Jerusalem and from Antioch and through the churches at Galatia,
they skipped over Asia because the spirit of God said, don’t
go there. Remember they’re on their word ministry, preaching
mission into Macedonia. They’ve been to Philippi. They’ve
been to Berea. They go to Thessalonica, Athens,
and now they’re at Corinth, but they’re writing back to the Thessalonian
church. And remember, there’s been a Jewish uprising. That’s
why Paul had to leave. The Jewish population did not
like that he preached and proclaimed and reasoned from the scriptures
that Jesus was Messiah. Yet his word ministry, his preaching
and proclamation of the word, the work of the spirit brought
forth many believing Jews who came to believe in the Messiah,
Jesus, and not a few Greeks, the scripture tells us. And so
to his Jewish audience, who perhaps are thinking this Christian thing
isn’t working out too great for us, we’re getting persecuted
for believing in Jesus. He wants to emphasize here, Jesus,
the second person of the Trinity first. Now we understand from
our theology, don’t we, that there is but one living and true
God. And we also understand that there
are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. Now, our typical brain order
is Father, then Son, then Holy Spirit. We’re good creed-saying,
confession-believing people, so we, you know, we’re Nicene
Creed people. We believe the Son is the eternally
begotten Son of God. We believe the Spirit proceeds
from the Father and Son. And so we have Father, Son, Holy
Spirit in our pecking order in our brains. And that is certainly
appropriate. But here Paul says, our Lord
Jesus Christ himself and God, our Father. And we remember there
are three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and that these three are one God. They are the same in substance
and equal and power and glory. And so we can give Paul permission
here, can’t we, to say Jesus first in that order and not get
too upset about it. But nevertheless, our triune
God here in verse 16, he is the fount of every blessing. So if
we are going to pray to him, If we are maybe of the mindset
that this is Paul’s will-wish for the Thessalonians, or if
we believe this is a benediction, a spoken word of God to his people
that they will get and receive these things, it’s rooted in
who our God is. It’s rooted in who the Son is. It is rooted in the power of
the Holy Spirit. I know one or two of you have
probably thought, well, he left out the Spirit. You never leave out
the spirit. You get one, you get all three.
You get two, you get all three. You get three, well, you get
it. You get the picture. It’s one
God, same in substance, equal in power and glory. Now, if this
is a prayer, and certainly this is a prayer in some sense, think
of that. we sometimes sing, I believe
it’s come my soul, thy suit prepare, a hymn about prayer, and it has
a line in it that says, thou art coming to a king, large petitions
with thee bring, for his grace and power are such, none can
ever ask too much. And so suffering Christians at
Thessalonica, persevering Christians here today, 21st century America,
Christians scattered around the world, whatever their situation,
we have a God who is able to provide everything we need to
live life in this world, spiritually and physically. And we come to
this, our triune God, for his blessings. The book of James
says we seek our blessings from the Father above, the Father
of heavenly lights. And that father delights to give
gifts to his children who come and ask. And so we think of our
triune God in verse 16. Also, verse 16 has a second important
thing for us to consider, and that is our great salvation.
So if we consider our great God, we must consider our great salvation
because it says that God uh, our, our father and the son,
it says that he loved us and by his grace gave us eternal
encouragement and good hope. And so we think of our, our great
salvation, particularly the phrase that our God has loved us and
in his love and his grace, he’s given us eternal encouragement
and good hope. So in Thessalonians so far, we’ve
considered the order of salvation quite a bit. We think of predestination. We think of effectual calling.
We think of regeneration, faith, justification, adoption, sanctification,
perseverance, and ultimately glorification, where we are brought
safely home to heaven. We sin no more. Our souls, our
bodies made perfect. We’ve thought of these specifics
in salvation as they appear in Thessalonians and other places
in the Bible. I think last week we looked at
the fact that we are Beloved by God the Father, chosen by
God the Father, regenerated or given life by the Holy Spirit,
and then granted belief. Belief being knowledge of our
sin and our need of salvation, knowledge of the Savior. Assent
to these facts would be included in belief faith. And then trust
or fiducia for the Latin. And so we thought of that last
week. Today, we just want to look at the word loved. Our triune
God, our great salvation. He loved us. Ephesians chapter
one says, in love, he predestined us for adoption. There’s that
order of salvation again. In love, he predestined us for
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. Now, remember the little
thing we have to think of. Everybody believes in predestination,
right? It’s just, what do you believe about predestination?
There’s some who say God looks down the corridor of time, whatever
that is. And he says, you know, Luke here
is going to be a swell guy. And out of his swellness, I’ll
love him. with an everlasting love. That’s
not how it works, because God looked down the corridor of time
and Luke was not a swill guy, right? He’s shaking his head,
he wasn’t. God loves unconditionally. In fact, if you read in Deuteronomy
chapter seven, God says, of Israel, the nation, he says, I didn’t
set my affection on you. That’s the basic meaning of the
whole chosen thing. I didn’t set my affection on
you because you were the greatest of nations. or you are the swellest
of people. I mean, he could have picked
Egypt. He could have picked Babylon. He could have picked Assyria.
He could have picked any bigger, better other nation. No, he picked
little bitty Israel by going into the land of the Chaldeans
and calling Abram from idolatry. I mean, golly gee, did God look
down the corridor of time and say, look at Abraham, he’s going
to be a righteous man and I’m going to pick him. No, he was
serving idols. He was worshiping idols and not
the living and true God. And so God loved him and brought
him to himself and saved him. And so in love, God predestines
us for adoption. Or think of John 3.16, for God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Now, I know, boy, we’re getting
into the sticky bushes today, aren’t we? John 3.16 is not about
the extent of the atonement that Jesus died for the whole world.
It’s about the extent of his love. God so loved the world,
you define world, it’s mankind that hates God. And since the
garden, since Eden, since Satan’s temptation, since Adam and Eve
delighted to be self, rulers. Since Adam and Eve delighted
to serve themselves, worship themselves, and satisfy every
heart’s desire, mankind has been against God, and that’s who God
so loved. And you think about your own
mind, your own heart, your own inclinations, your own idolatry,
and just the fact that God so loved you is quite an amazing
thing to ponder. And so the extent of God’s love
is to defectors. The extent of God’s love is to
detractors and dissenters and rebels. And his love is from
of old. In love, he predestined us. So
in eternity past, God loved us and set his affection on us.
But it’s also in the Old Testament, isn’t it? Jeremiah writes the
words of God, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Now,
remember, he’s writing this to rebel Israel, exiled in Babylon
for being wicked, wicked, wicked for generation after generation.
God put him in the promised land, just like he put Adam and Eve
in the garden, gave them everything they needed, just like Adam and
Eve in the garden. And what did they do? They live for their
own selfish ends and desires. We’re quite good at that. And
yet God says, I’ve loved you with an everlasting love. And
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. He could
have left Israel in Babylon, but as he promised, he brought
them back to the promised land. And so we think of our triune
God, we think of our great salvation, We think now of our eternal comfort. We find that also in verse 16. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself,
God our father, he loved us, but he also gave us eternal comfort. Or we might think of the word
consolation. We see somebody crying. We want
to console them. I have to say it, you know, there’s
a lot of people in light blue crying, right? You know, they
somehow got in the tournament and they’re out. So you see your
fellow Carolina fan, you wanna console them, right? I’m probably
gonna eat that in the next day or two, but that’s okay for now.
But we get ourselves in grief, we get ourselves in hardship,
we get ourselves in sorrow, and we need consolation. And how
does God, our triune God who saved us, do that? He gives us
eternal comfort, okay? This is not a trip to the yogurt
store. Right? Comfort food. This is
not a trip to the outlets. Retail therapy. This is not some
pie in the sky something you bought at the Christian trinket
store. Right? Usually those are not helpful.
This is our soul being absolutely satisfied with what is in store
for us in the eternal an everlasting city of God. That’s what Paul
thought of when he writes to the Corinthians. Now, Paul is
sitting at Corinth. He’s been to Thessalonica, he’s
been to Athens, he’s been to Philippi, he’s been to Berea.
Every city, the Jewish population runs him out, runs him out. So
he’s at Corinth for about a year and a half. Later, he’s going
to write to the Corinthians four really nasty letters. He had
to write a nasty one to the Galatians, yell at the Galatians. He writes
four to the Corinthians. We have two of them, but there’s
four total. And in second Corinthians, when
he writes to them, he’s sort of asking these questions. OK,
you’re suffering. You need consolation. How does
he console them? Go get some ice cream. How does
he console them? Go to the outlets at Corinth.
No, that’s not what it is. He, in a sense, says, how long
is eternity? He, in a sense, says, how long is forever? And what he’s presenting to them
is how brief are our afflictions. And in one place he says of himself
and his missionary compatriots, he says, we are afflicted. We
are perplexed. We are persecuted. We are struck
down. We are carrying in our bodies
the body of death. In fact, he says, we are soon
to be given over to death, the death of Jesus. But he says,
we do not lose heart. We are not crushed. We are not
driven to despair. We are not forsaken, nor are
we destroyed. And he says this, and I think
you know this verse, for this light momentary affliction is
preparing us for the eternal weight of glory. beyond all comparison. And we look to the things that
are seen in this world, but we’re to look to the things that are
unseen for the things that are seen are transient, but the things
that are unseen are eternal. And so where is our eternal comfort? We know where our short-term
comforts are. You swing through the yogurt
shop and get a double scoop because you’re feeling bad. And it’s gone. Well, not all
of it, but it’s gone. It doesn’t last. But eternal
comfort, eternal comfort lasts forever. And what we have never
seen on earth, what we have no comparison to will be for us
in the heavenly places. And so our triune God, our great
salvation, our eternal hope, our eternal comfort or consolation
leads us to think also of our eternal or our good hope. That’s
the fourth thing we want to think of is our good hope. It’s also
in verse 16. We think of our Lord Jesus Christ
himself. We think of our God and father
who loved us. He gave us eternal comfort and
it’s kind of a twin way to maybe saying the same thing twice.
He gave us eternal comfort, but he also gives us good hope through
grace. That’s the fourth thing, our
good hope through grace. Now I want to make a very important
distinction. There is, Hope that something
will happen and there is hope in something that is true. March Madness, we’re all hoping
that our team wins. Don’t know if it’ll happen. We
hope it will. We are also hoping that our enemy teams will lose. They’ll go down in flames, right?
They’ll get beat by you know, University of Maryland, Baltimore
campus, or whatever random team made the tournament, we hope
they’ll take down our enemy number one, number two seed, because
we want to have an easy path to the Final Four National Championship.
We hope that something will happen. Christian hope is very different.
We hope in something that is true and definite, something
that is firm and something that is fixed and something that is
final. And so there’s what we call bad
hope and good hope. bad hope, we might say hope,
hope that something happens. It’s something seen. It’s not
eternal, but we want to hope. We want to have good hope in
eternal things. We want to have hope in salvation
things. How do we find hope in this world
when all around my soul gives way? What are we saying? He alone
is my hope and stay. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus. blood and righteousness. We think
about how we can’t trust much, if anything in this world, but
we can trust in the everlasting covenant promises of God. I will
be your God and you will be my people. I will never leave you.
I will never forsake you. And so we can carry on in hope. We can carry on in good hope.
And that’s eternal comfort, that’s eternal consolation, because
we know our great salvation, we know our great triune God. And so we can carry on in hardship
in the promises of God. Whatever unfolds, whatever takes
place, whatever goes on in our lives east of Eden, our mindset,
our heartset needs to be rooted in the good hope in the eternal
covenant, in the salvation that is offered to us through our
great and triune God. Well, there’s a fifth and final
thing we have to think about, and it’s really the main point
of the passage. Now, Paul’s a wordy dude. He’s
got the most run-on sentences there are in the New Testament.
He’s good at that. And it takes him a long way to
get to the point, and the point is, our fifth point today, we
have a great provision for perseverance. That’s why we read that chapter
from our confession of faith on the perseverance or the preservation
of the saints. And verse 17 is the bulk or the
husk. or the nugget or the gold of
the request that Paul is praying. In his prayer, his well-wish,
his benediction is that God would comfort our hearts and that he
would establish them in every good work and word. Now, he said
a lot of things the same way twice in this passage as part
of, what is it, the art of being wordy. but he’s leading you up. How do you get comfort in your
hearts? How do you get an established
heart so that every word, every work of you is good? Well, it
takes the work of a triune God, saving a people, and it takes
a great salvation that leads us to have eternal comfort and
good hope. And that’s the foundation he
gives now to, you’ve got every reason to expect God will persevere
you. God will preserve you. You will
make it to the very end. Maybe you’re worn out. Maybe
you’re weary. Maybe your knees are worn thin from praying or
from crawling through this life. God can comfort your heart. God
can establish you and make you strong. And so when he comforts
our hearts, we get inner peace. You look around the world, it’s
chaotic. You look around your own life and the sphere kind
of where you live, the people you run with, the things that
are on your to-do list, your obligations, your burdens, and
you’ve got a thousand reasons for no peace. But spiritually
speaking, God can comfort your heart. He can call to your mind
the truths of scripture. He can call to your heart a sense
of calmness. and peace, and He can put your
hands to work doing the things that you must do in order to
live a Godly, God-fearing life in this world. And so He can
comfort your hearts. He can settle you. You know,
you think of how God in creation took what was formless and void,
and He formed it and filled it. And what did that? It was the
spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep. And so perhaps
you’ve got a lot of chaos in your life. You can appeal to
God. God, you made the world and everything
in it. And you hovered over the chaos. You hovered over the waters
and the land that was not separated. And as you hovered over it and
spoke, you brought order. And God can do that in your life.
Think of Jesus in the boat. He was asleep and the disciples
were terrified on the Sea of Galilee and they woke him up. And what did he do? He said,
peace, be still. He who made the wind and the
waves controls the wind and the waves. And he also hovers over
the seas, the tumultuous seas of your lives. And so he can
comfort your hearts, but he can establish you or firm you up
or strengthen you. That’s a spiritual condition
so that you can do every good word and work. All that you do,
all that you say. This is a very common theme in
the life of Paul. And you figure he’s living in
Corinth, all the chaos of the East of Eden world. And what
does he say to the Corinthians at the end of 2 Corinthians in
chapter 15? He says, therefore, my beloved,
be steadfast, be immovable, always abounding in the work of the
Lord. Sounds a lot like Thessalonians, doesn’t it? Knowing that in the
Lord, your labor is not in vain. And so brothers and sisters,
like the Thessalonians, like many Christians throughout Christian
history, maybe you’ve lost comfort. Maybe you’re shaken. Maybe you’re
not persevering so well. You think you will not make it.
Maybe you’re impatient in the coming of the Lord. Maybe you
are lacking courage in the Christian faith in this life. Maybe you’re
saying in your head and even in your heart, which has sunk,
I can’t take the pain of Christian living or God purifying my soul
any longer. It’s too much. It’s too hard.
And so a couple things to think about. One is perhaps your God
is too small. And perhaps you need to get to
know the triune God of the Bible who saves and who gives eternal
comfort and good hope. If you’ve got a too small God,
you need to get to know a great big God. And we have one in the
scriptures. It could be that you are living
in habitual sin. Maybe as we read that third,
uh, not stands, a paragraph of the
Confession of Faith on perseverance, where it says we can fall into
temptations, we can fall into grievous sins, and it can seem,
I think this is from the chapter on perseverance, it can seem
as if there is no light in our lives, God’s countenance has
disappeared, and we aren’t sure which way is up and which way
is out. And I love how the Confession
of Faith says, I believe it’s in the chapter on, assurance. It says, nevertheless, God’s
hands are always still beneath us. And so whatever dark providences
you may find yourselves in, and perhaps it could be because of
sin. If your God’s too small, yes, but you could be stuck in
a sin and not be assured that you will make it safely home.
And so it would be good to identify, repent of that sin. Maybe you’re
not in the word. Maybe you’re not in worship.
Maybe you’re not memorizing scriptures. Maybe no quiet in your life,
no contemplation. Let me encourage you this way.
If you want kind of inner soul peace, it’s not some mystical
thing, not some Pentecostal thing. This is something Presbyterians
can have too and should get, right? We should, we should strive
after assurance of salvation and perseverance. Let me encourage
you to get in the word. Let me encourage you, read your
doctrine. I love how Sinclair Ferguson
says our doctrine is like Velcro to which the truths of the scriptures
stick. Be in worship, sit under preaching,
be in the fellowship of the saints, partake of the sacraments, the
baptism and Lord’s supper when they’re offered, and be a person
of prayer. Great is thy faithfulness, we
sing. All that I need, your hand has provided. We sing that, but
we don’t live it. We don’t believe it. Why do we
suffer? Why do we look for comfort in
earthly things? Let me leave you with something
we’ve not read or said in a while because our, what do we say,
our good hymnals are put up till we get back to the sanctuary.
But we ask and answer this question all the time. What is my only
comfort? My only eternal comfort, we might
say, in life and in death. And that familiar answer is this,
that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in
death to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. And of Jesus, we
say he’s fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood. He set me free from the tyranny
of the devil. He watches over me in such a
way that not a hair can fall from my head without it being
the will of my Heavenly Father. In fact, all things, the good
and the bad, must work together for my salvation. And because
I belong to Him, because we belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing
and ready from now on to live for Him. Let’s pray that that
would be so. Lord, we do ask that Every promise you write,
every comfort you give would be ours today so that we can
say and do the proper things in the Christian life. Lord,
we don’t want to walk out of here in 15 or so minutes and
be back to lunch, back to laundry, back to basketball, back to the
work week, back to whatever. Give us some time to think on
this and to ponder it so that we can Have that soul satisfying
rest that you offer and that you promise. Hear us and help
us and bless us, we pray in the strong and in the mighty name
of Jesus, our Lord himself. And it’s in his name we pray,
amen.