2 Thessalonians 3:1-5
Lord, we give you thanks that
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, holy men of old set these
things down for our instruction, for our growth in grace. We pray
that we would receive the word as it is, not the word of men,
but the very word of God. May it be at work in each of
us. May it convince and convert sinners
unto salvation and comfort and build up saints in our most holy
faith. We pray for this in the name
of Christ. Amen. One of the things that
the scriptures can do for you is it can answer the big questions
we have in life. And one of those big questions
in life is this, what is the meaning of human history? And
if you read the first couple chapters of Genesis, you get
a picture of creation, fall, and redemption all in those couple
of chapters. God made the world and everything
in it. He made it good. He made it to be a habitat for
humanity. He made Adam and Eve. He put
them in the garden to work or make it produce. He put them
in the garden to keep it, to protect it. And their job was
to spread the glory of God across the face of the earth. But we
know Adam and Eve sinned against God. God sent them out of the
garden east of Eden and into the jungle, as it were. And he
banned them. He barred them from the tree
of life, lest they take the tree of life. the fruit of it and
eat and live forever in sin. He left room for redemption.
And so one of the answers we get to what is the meaning of
human history is something like this. God made the world as a
theater for his glory and no sin will not stop. the glory
of God reaching the ends of the earth where Adam fails, Jesus
succeeds. And when Adam and Eve failed,
when they sinned, when they fell short of God’s glory, when they
rebelled against his goodness, and his graciousness and his
provision, he promised Eve and Adam there would be a cosmic
battle, that the seed of Eve, that’s ultimately Jesus, and
the seed of the serpent, that’s Satan, the evil one, the ancient
serpent, the devil, those two would be in this cosmic history-long
battle that would culminate in the devil bruising the heel of
Jesus but Jesus crushing the head of Satan. And so human history
witnesses too, until that great day, the battle of light and
dark, the battle of good and evil, the battle of seed versus
seed, the enmity of the seed of the woman, Jesus, the enmity
that he receives from Satan. Now, what a blessing it is in
the book of Genesis in chapter three also, When we get the bad
news, we get the good news. From Eve will come Jesus. From
Eve will come the serpent slayer. From Eve will come the serpent
killer. And so we get a glimpse, even
in a life of darkness, East of Eden, we get a glimpse of the
hope of glory. But until then, there’s a tug
of war. There’s a tug of war between the Redeemer over the
redeemed and Satan seeking to destroy and devour those who
are loved by God. Now, here’s the great thing,
and Paul’s going to teach us this today in 2 Thessalonians,
we have a secret weapon. And it’s a secret weapon that
we have, as the church, have largely laid down. And we’ve
done that for the past 50 or 75 years. And that secret weapon
is prayer. Maybe many of you were in church
as a young person and you went to morning and evening church.
And on Wednesday, what did you do? You went to prayer meeting. And somewhere in the fifties
and sixties and seventies, well, people got busy. You know, there’s
scouts and there’s dance and there’s soccer. And, you know,
today it’s on steroids, isn’t it? We don’t, we don’t even go
to church now because Sunday is Saturday part two, but we’ve
systematically laid aside the secret weapon that God has given
us. And that is prayer. And so very
simply in verse one, Paul says to the Thessalonian church, pray
for us. That’s a simple phrase that ought
to sink into our minds and hearts today. And so in order to help
us do that, we’ll think of prayer in a handful of ways. There’s going to be pray for
Paul Silas and Timothy. There’s going to be pray for
the ministry of the word. There’s going to be pray that
Paul Silas and Timothy will be delivered from evil or wicked
men. We’ll think about praying with understanding, praying with
confidence, and then finally praying that the Lord will direct
our hearts. And you can pick up each of these
along the way. First, pray for Paul, Silas,
and Timothy. Verse one simply says, pray for
us. And there’s an implication in
Paul’s writing and the grammar that he uses. It’s a constantly
pray for us. Other places, especially in Thessalonians,
Paul will say pray without ceasing. Does that mean we drive around
with our heads down, our eyes closed, hands folded? No, we
don’t do that. But we, we understand what praying
without ceasing means. It means a heart oriented towards
heaven. It means with a mindset looking
for ways to praise God, confess sins, give thanks, and bring
our petitions before him. And yes, we do that in church,
we do that in formal settings, but we also do it in private.
But also, we live a praying life. One of the great privileges we
have as believers is to go straight to the throne of grace. We don’t
have to go through an earthly priest We don’t have to go sit
in a booth or sit in a box or wait for someone to say, Oh,
it’s okay. Now we can pray directly to God, the father through the
son. He is our great high priest who
ever lives above to make intercession for us. Uh, we think of Christ
having been raised from the dead, ascending up into heaven, sits
at the right hand of God, the father almighty. But the scriptures
tell us he is our great high priest. We have the privilege
of boldly approaching the throne of grace, seeking for help in
our hour and our time of need. But again, it’s our secret weapon
that we have laid down. But what a privilege. Many of
you know of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Prince of preachers,
the Baptist preacher in London in the 1800s. Spurgeon’s tabernacle
was known to be full of people Sunday by Sunday as he gathered
the people for worship and prayer. And someone asked Spurgeon, what’s
his secret? Now you might think, well, I’ve taken a Dale Carnegie
course, how to win friends and influence people. I’ve gone to
a speech class, how to land words just the right way. I’ve taken
a psychology class. I know how to manipulate people. None of those were his secrets.
He hadn’t read, you know, the latest and greatest books. He
took this person who asked, as the legend has it, down below
the tabernacle into a room and he opened the door. That room
was full of people who were praying. And Spurgeon referred to that
as the boiler room. Usually we think of a boiler
room in a basement where the steam is made, the heat is made
that flows through the radiators and it heats up the building.
And you think of this praying people, praying for the ministry
of the word. And that’s what Paul is simply
asking the Thessalonians to do. Pray for us, pray for Paul, Silas
and Timothy as they minister as they minister at Corinth. The apostle, as we know him,
was a brilliant guy, probably had the equivalent of two PhDs. He sat under Gamaliel, the great
teacher in Jerusalem. But Paul was also self-aware
and humble. He knew his gifts and abilities,
I’m sure. He knew that he was among the
best and brightest minds. He knew that he had been taught
by Jesus himself. His mind, his knowledge, his
heart, his zeal, his ability to be a man for all seasons were
great, but he knew that he needed the power of God to make the
Word of God, the ministry of the Word, effective. How much
ministry happens without prayer these days? How much ministry
happens because we lean on our gifts and graces? Those themselves
are a gift from God, but the power of God is needed. And he’s going to ask people
in his other letters for prayer. He says in Romans at the end,
strive together, he says to the Roman church, strive together
with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. He’s always asking
for prayer for ministry. In another place, he says, I
know that through your prayers and with the help of the spirit
of Jesus Christ, I will succeed. In another place, he says, pray
also for us that God may open a door. And that door is that
he might declare the word or the mystery of Jesus Christ to
yet another people. And so pray for us. Pray for
Paul, Silas, and Timothy. Pray for those who preach to
you. Pray for those who minister to
you. It’s an important concept. The boiler room was the secret
of Paul’s success. It’s the secret of Spurgeon’s
success. And it’s the secret to any success in ministry. Well,
in addition to pray for Paul, Silas and Timothy, we want to
think about praying for the ministry of the word. And that’s really
the request here. It’s not pray for Paul, Silas
and Timothy, you know, that, that, um, you know, they can
get some new clothes or have a good meal or maybe a weekend
away. No, it’s pray for Paul, Silas
and Timothy. They’re laboring in the word
as they preach Jesus to the ends of the earth. And so pray for
the ministry of the word. Verse one says, finally, brothers,
pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead. Pray
that the word of the Lord would be honored as happened among
you. And then if you jump to the end
of our passage, he’s going to say, I want you to be doing the
things that we’ve commanded you. Give thanks you’re already doing
them, but I hope you will keep doing the things that we command
you. So Paul’s going to write some stuff in a letter to them.
I hope they’re doing it. So pray for the ministry of the
word. You can imagine the apostle Paul is a pretty excited person. He has been called by Jesus.
to be a living witness to all that Jesus has done. Paul is
called to be a light to the Gentiles and to bring Jesus to the nations.
And so here on a second missionary journey, already had success
in Tarsus, his hometown, already great success in the gospel in
Antioch and on the island of Crete and through the regions
of Galatia. Now he is ministering over in
Macedonia and in Achaia, and you can’t imagine what is welling
up in his heart as he’s seeing gospel success. He’s experienced
gospel joy, and in a sense he’s saying to them, we want more
of it. Preaching the word, declaring
the gospel of Jesus, seeing men and women, boys and girls coming
to faith in Jesus and growing in grace is something that ought
to be contagious. We pray thy kingdom come, right? In the Lord’s prayer, we pray
that the kingdom of grace would be ushered in, the kingdom of
darkness would be put away and put down and that people would
quit listening to Satan and start listening to Jesus. That’s what
we pray. And so pray for the ministry
of the word, pray for preachers, pray for heralds. Pray that the
word would convince and convert sinners and comfort and build
up saints. Those are really the two simple
ministries of the word, aren’t they? Convincing and converting
sinners to salvation, comforting and building up saints in the
most holy faith. And so there’s four things under
this. Pray for the ministry of the word that it would speed
ahead. Pray for the ministry of the word that it would be
honored. Pray for the ministry of the Word that it would be
honored as happened among you. It’s a reminder to them how good
God has been. And then pray for obedience to
apostolic commands. So they’re to pray for Paul,
Silas, and Timothy. They’re to pray for their ministry
of the Word. And there’s four things they
want to happen. The gospel speed ahead. Remember how news got
around in those days. It wasn’t by text message. It wasn’t by cable news channels.
It wasn’t by the telegraph or the telephone or any other thing
we’ve known in the last hundred years. It was by a person who
received a note and they ran to the next town and gave the
news. And so we have always looked
at biblically prophets as being runners of the gospel. We say
of John the Baptist, he was a forerunner of the gospel. He prepared the
way for the coming of Jesus. And so when we pray that the
gospel would speed ahead, we pray that it would make progress
in the world, that it would gain ground. But we also pray that
it would be honored or glorified. We pray that people would hear
and receive the King’s message. As God, through these men, preaches
light to the Gentiles and Messiah to the Jews, we pray that it
would be received and honored. And he says, as happened among
you, remember the gospel fruit of the Thessalonians? Acts chapter
17 says Paul went into the synagogue, he preached, and he was only
there about three Sabbaths. But many Jews believed and many
Greeks and many leading women believed. And of course, that
upset the apple carton, so they got run off. But he’s still ministering
to them by sending Timothy and by writing these letters. But
we want the gospel to speed ahead. We want it to be received and
honored and glorified as it lands. But we want to remember, like
the Thessalonians, that it happened to us. Remember when you first
heard. that you were a sinner in need
of grace and that grace was offered to you in Jesus. And we should
want that same blessing for others. And so as we pray for the ministry
of the word, that’s something to be on the forefront of our
minds and hearts. But he also says, he’s hoping, praying, wishing
that they would be obedient to the commands that Paul gives
to the Thessalonians. He’s about to give them some
in the rest of chapter three. Um, as you have received them and are
obeying them. Hope that you’ll keep on obeying. Remember what
did Jesus say in the great commission that he said, go out in all the
world and get as many people as you can to sign prayer cards.
Go out into all the world and hold these big tent revivals
and get as many people as you can to walk forward.” No, he
said, go into all the world, preach the gospel, baptize people. That means bring them or enfold
them into the church. And then once they’re in the
church, you teach them everything Jesus commands. Well, what is
Jesus commanded? Well, it’s 66 books. It’s the
Old Testament. It’s the New Testament. It’s
the Old Covenant. It’s the New Covenant. It’s history,
it’s wisdom, it’s prophecy, it’s apocalypse, it’s gospels, it’s
epistles. And so we preach and teach the
whole counsel of God. And there’s an expectation that
as the word of God goes forth, it will speed ahead. It will
have success as it is honored and glorified, that as we receive
it and have joy, that we will want others to receive and have
joy, and we will live a life of new obedience because of hearts
changed, living by faith in Jesus. So pray for Paul, Silas, and
Timothy. Pray for the ministry of the word. But there’s a third
thing, pray for deliverance from wicked and evil men. Verse two
says, pray for us that we may be delivered from wicked and
evil men, for not all have faith. We talk about opposition to the
church. We talk about opposition to the
gospel, and it’s outside the church, and it’s inside the church. Inside the church, we understand,
as Jesus taught, that there will be wheat and tares. There will be those who love
God and serve God, and there will be those who don’t. And
so we accept people by credible profession of faith. We look
for fruit, fruit and fragrance, or fruit and rottenness. No fruit
will come, time will tell. And so sometimes within the church,
we have opposition because someone professes faith but does not
possess faith, and so they cause trouble. And Paul is saying,
we need deliverance. We’re here at Corinth, we’ve
preached the gospel, we’re building up the church, and there’s opposition
within the church. These are wicked and perverse
people, they are evil, they are malignant, they are faithless.
and they’re causing us trouble. But also there’s outside opposition. Pretty much from the point where
Apostle Paul started preaching Jesus as Messiah, every town
he went in, there were a group of Jewish people who hated his
preaching of Jesus as Messiah. And they ran him out of Thessalonica.
They’re already causing trouble in Corinth. And if you read,
I believe it’s in Acts chapter 18, they raised up a pretty big
stink and they had him hauled in before the Roman proconsul
Gallio. And Gallio’s like, who cares?
You know, he’s obeying Roman law. This is Corinth. We believe
anything and everything, right? He had a coexist sticker on his
chariot. And he says, what is him causing some to worship your
God differently than you do? What is that to me? And so Paul
sort of got off with a free pass. But that probably had not yet
happened. But the trouble and the need for deliverance was
there. And so he said, pray for deliverance for us from wicked
and evil men. Remember the gospel to one is
a fragrance. to everlasting life and to others,
it is a fragrance or a stench from death to death. Not all
hear the gospel and believe it. Not all receive with joy the
gospel and sell all they have and buy the field and get that
pearl of great price. No, some reject it. Some are
hostile. I think of a couple years ago being involved in a
local school teaching, you know, a little short Bible study. And
there was always a teacher who, when he saw me walking up, was
hostile. I remember, what are you doing
here? What are these Bible-believing people doing? And it made me
feel really small. And I had to remember I’m here
as a herald of Jesus. And yes, there will be opposition.
And we live in a day where we need deliverance. We need deliverance
from bad laws that do not protect freedom of religion. Perhaps
you step onto a college campus and as a believer in Jesus Christ,
you are treated poorly. We live in a land where free
speech has been under attack of late. And so we pray for deliverance,
not just for Paul, Timothy, and Silas, but we pray for our own
in ministry, our own in the faith today who live in this hostile
world. Well, we pray for Paul, Silas, and Timothy. We pray for
the ministry of the word. We pray for deliverance from
wicked men. I want us to think for just a
moment about praying with understanding. This isn’t in the passage, but
it is. Verses two and three tell us that there are wicked and
evil men. Verses two and three tell us
that not all have faith. Verse two and three indicate
that the word of God could go out and not be honored. It could
be dishonored. Verses two and three tell us that the word of
the Lord could be hindered. It may not speed ahead. It could
be hindered. Verses two and three remind us
there is an evil one. And so we want to pray with understanding. We want to pray understanding
the reality that we live and minister East of Eden. We live and minister in light
of the cosmic battle that’s laid out for us in Genesis 3. We live
and minister as Christians, as believers, where Satan masquerades
as a servant of righteousness. He masquerades as an angel of
light. And so Satan, Paul says in a
couple of places, has hindered us. from our gospel work. And so we wanna pray with understanding,
understanding of the spiritual realities of living in this present
evil age, living in this present darkness. And we remember there
are wicked men, there are evil men, there are faithless men.
The gospel will be dishonored, the gospel will be hindered.
We remember from Jesus’ parable of the soils that Satan is a
seed snatcher. Remember, the seed falls on good
soil. It falls among the rocks. It
falls among the weeds. It falls among the path. And
on the path, the birds come and they snatch up the seed. And
that seed, explains Jesus, or that snatcher is Satan. He snatches
the gospel before it lands in the hardened mind. of a soul
that needs to be saved. And so we must understand the
times. And I think as we pray with understanding,
we again want to pick up our weapon. And that great weapon
of the church is prayer. And so we go to our boiler room
and we pray. And so we pray for Paul, Silas
and Timothy. We pray for the ministry of the
word. We pray for deliverance from evil or wicked men. We pray
with understanding. We also want to think about praying
with confidence. Verse three says the Lord is
faithful. He will establish you and he
will guard you against the evil one. You know, you can live in
21st century America with all its blessings, all its joys,
all its prosperity in a sense. And you can think, oh, this is
great. But then the spiritual realities sink in and you can
be shaken. You can have no hope. You can
figure this is a lost cause. The country’s gone to pot. The
culture is rotting. All that. And we must remember
Jesus high priestly prayer in John 17. He says, I’m going to
leave the world. but they’re not. I’m going to
leave them behind. I’m not asking you, Jesus says, to take them
out of the world, but to guide and protect them while they are
in it. And so we pray with confidence.
We pray remembering the Lord is faithful. We pray that God
would establish us and guard us against the evil one. Remember
Jesus, after that high priestly prayer, praying for us there,
goes to heaven where he ever lives above as our high priest
to make intercession for us. And so when the going gets tough,
when things seem dark or God is not at work or all is lost,
we go to the throne of grace. And we go to the scriptures and
we are reminded God will get us safely home. I think of the
words of Jude, that little bitty one chapter letter. the half
brother of Jesus wrote. It’s in our Bibles just before
the book of Revelation. He says that we are called by
God, beloved by God and kept by God. That’s at the very beginning
of that little letter. In the end, it says now to him
who is able to keep you from stumbling or falling and present
you faultless before his throne. And then it breaks into a doxology.
We pray with confidence, remembering the Lord is faithful. He will
establish you. He will guard you against the
evil one. Not a sheep of the fold of Jesus
will be lost. We sing great is thy faithfulness.
Do we believe it? We sing thus far, the Lord has
helped us. Here I raise my Ebenezer. And we trust that God will establish
us. He will strengthen us. He will
make us firm. He will guard us. He will protect
us. And he will get us through the flaming darts of the evil
one. And so we must stand firm and
stand in the strength of the Lord’s might. Jesus tells us,
the gospel tells us, the word of God tells us the whole world
lies in the power of the evil one. Satan’s got a lot of control,
a lot of power, but we’re also told God protects his own and
Satan cannot touch us. And the scriptures triumphantly
write that we have overcome the world and we have overcome the
evil one. And so we pray with confidence.
The last thing we want to think of is that we should pray that
the Lord will direct our hearts. We’re going to pray for Paul
Silas Timothy. We’re going to pray for the ministry of the
word. We’re gonna pray for deliverance from wicked, evil men. We’re
gonna pray with understanding, pray with confidence. Finally,
verse five tells us we should pray that the Lord will direct
our hearts. Verse five says, may the Lord
direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness
of Christ. Simply means this, God, Jesus,
make the way straight so that I can see the love of God and
the steadfastness of Jesus, our hearts. are so cluttered with
stuff. And you know how it is when you’re
cluttered up, you just don’t even want to go in the room,
right? You shut the door. And what happens when our hearts
are so cluttered up with love of this world, love of things
in this life, there’s no way for our hearts to get to the
love of God and the love of Jesus. And so we pray, may God direct
our hearts. May it see past all the mess.
And may our hearts go straight to the love of God and to the
steadfastness of Jesus. And what do we see when we get
there? We see the love of God, as we
sang, how strong and true. And we understand as we’ve thought
about Psalm 103 today, as we think of the compassion of Jesus,
he’s been made like us in every way, he suffered under every
temptation, yet without sin, we think of the steadfastness
of Jesus to put up with us. I think that’s where this lands
very practically. And so if you have done a reality
check on your mind and your heart, you know that remaining sin prevails
in you at times. You know that your love for the
world and your love for the things Satan offers is great and grand. We confessed our sins a little
bit ago and said, you know, Lord, we’ve known the thing we ought
to do. Don’t do it. We’ve known we ought to love our neighbor
and we hate him. And on and on it went. We’ve not revered the
name of God. We’ve not done the things of God. And this helps
us say, Lord, show me the love of God through the steadfastness
of Jesus. He puts up with my mess. He knows
our frame. He remembers that we are dust
and he is patient with us. Think of this question as we
end. What does our nation need? Well, for many of us, we got
our political wishes maybe in the last election or two or three,
whatever stripe or brand you are. And so you say, well, we’re
settled. No, that won’t solve the issue.
Because remember, the cosmic battle is not about America and
economics and taxes and tariffs and culture and whatever. It’s
about light and dark and good and evil, and it’s on a cosmic
scale. Our nation is but a drop in the
bucket. What, a couple hundred years old? But we have this eternal
and cosmic battle, light, dark, good and evil, the seed versus
the seed, the enmity of the seed of the serpent against the seed
of the woman, the heel nipping and the head crushing, that whole
thing. And we know because of the gospel
that there will be a great end to all this evil, wickedness,
darkness. But for now, we live in the tug of war, the tug of
war between the redeemer and the redeemed and Satan who has
lost another one to the power and love and steadfastness of
God in Christ. It’s like a custody battle. It’s
a tug of war. And so what are we to do? Well,
we pick up our secret weapon and that’s prayer. And what can
our little church do in our little small part of the world? Well,
we can pray for one heart change at a time through the success
of the ministry of the word. But how will that take place?
There’s a very simple answer. we need one of those boiler rooms.
May it be so, pray with me. Lord, we ask for your help and
blessing. It’s not by might nor by power, but by your spirit,
says the Lord. So help us to think on these
things and to act on these things, we pray in the mighty name of
Christ our Savior, amen.