Three Prayer Requests - 11

Our text today is the last three verses of 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, which is, as I mentioned, the conclusion of the chapter and really the conclusion of the first section of this epistle. At first glance, we would consider these verses to be a prayer, an expansion of the prayer that is mentioned in verse 10 where Paul tells the Thessalonians that he is praying for them. Now in verses 11 through 13, we find a fuller description of that prayer, but as we look at it more carefully, we realize that these verses are not a prayer as such, but they are a description of the prayers that Paul has been praying for the Thessalonians. In other words, these words are not addressed to God.

They are addressed to the Thessalonians, but he's telling the Thessalonians the words that he does address to God. We're getting an insight into the life of the Apostle Paul as he prays for others and here particularly as he prays for the Thessalonians. And so these verses cause us to focus our attention upon the subject of prayer. And what is prayer?

And I think we have some concept of prayer. Prayer is worship, prayer is praise, prayer is thanksgiving, prayer is confession of our sins, prayer is petition to lay our requests before the throne of grace, but prayer is something else that we often do not consider and that is prayer is instruction. That is public prayers. As we listen to others pray, as we listen to mature Christians pray, we're not only entering to worship with them in their prayers, and I trust that's what you do, but we also are reminded of great truths. We are instructed about God. We are instructed in theology. We are instructed in the truths of Scripture as we listen to these prayers.

We can learn much Bible truth by listening to godly prayers. And in this particular prayer, Paul prays for three things. Number one, renewed fellowship in verse 11. Number two, increased love in verse 12. And number three, practical holiness in verse 13. These are his three prayer requests that he prays for the Thessalonians believers. And we can learn a lot from these.

And so let's take them up one by one. His first prayer request doesn't sound very much like the prayer request that we often mention in our prayer meetings, but his first prayer request is this. Now, may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you.

That's not surprising. We've heard Paul earlier lament the fact that he was not able to get back to visit them as much as he wanted to. We've heard about his anxiety for their condition because he couldn't check on them and learn exactly what their condition was in relationship to their faith in Jesus Christ and their relationship to Paul and to his ministry among them. We've learned how that he sent Timothy back to visit them and to evaluate their spiritual condition and to report back to Paul concerning that.

And yet Paul still desires himself to go and to be with them. And so we are not surprised that he prays that that may be allowed, that God may cause that to happen, that our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ may direct our way to you. But if we look at these words of petition about renewed fellowship with the Thessalonian believers, there are some important matters that we can learn about. We can learn something about God the Father, we can learn something about God the Son, and we can learn something about the Apostle Paul.

And we begin by noticing what we learn about God the Father. Now may our God and Father himself two titles, two names by which to identify the one true divine being, God and Father, two titles that are united in the original Greek by one article which ties them together. We see two, and yet Paul wants us to understand the two are one. God and the Father are the same.

These are two aspects of one being. In one way of looking at this divine being, he is God. And all that that entails, all that that means, all that that reveals to us about the Creator of this universe, he is God. And then in another way of looking at this one, at least for Christians, he is Father, our Heavenly Father. He who is God, Almighty God, high and lifted up, dwelling in unapproachable light, so holy that no one can approach to him without a righteousness which none of us have and only God can supply. This one who is eternal, who's had no beginning and no ending, this one who is all powerful, this one who spoke and the worlds came into existence, this one who knows all the things, this one who is everywhere present at once in all this universe, this one who is Almighty God is also at the same time our Father, our Father who art in heaven. This intimate relationship which believers have with God through grace, to be able to approach such a God, such a magnificent and unapproachable God, such a high and holy God that we could never fully comprehend and yet to be able to draw into his presence with enough comprehension to know that he is our Father and that he delights in having a relationship with us and that he hears our petitions and that he attends unto our needs, this intimate family relationship that Christians have with God Almighty. Paul prays that may God and Father himself and himself is in the original language both emphatic and intensive.

Emphatic because of its position in the sentence as the first word in the sentence which makes it emphatic and intensive because that reflexive form himself which can be either reflexive or intensive is obviously in this case intensive which simply means that only God can do this. Paul is praying to God to do something that only God can do. May God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ himself direct our way to you because if he doesn't do it, it won't be done. If he doesn't do it, it can't be done. He's already talked about the great obstacles that have come across his path and his endeavor to get back to them.

You remember that? How he has been unable to visit them, how Satan has stopped him from doing that. That's back in chapter 2 verse 18. Therefore, we wanted to come to you, even I, Paul, time and again, but Satan kindred us. And Paul is recognizing by this that he's no match for Satan. He can't overcome the power of Satan. Nobody else can overcome the power of Satan. But there is one who can and that one is at the same time Almighty God and that's why he can overcome the power of Satan and he is also our Father. And so we come as little children to him and we say, Daddy, please help me. Please do for me what only you can do.

May God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ himself direct our way to you. And so what do we learn about God the Father? He who is majestic beyond comprehension is intimate with his dear children. He is able to defeat Satan and accomplish that which no one else can do. And he is our God.

Did you notice that? Personal, plural, pronoun. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you. He is our God through grace. He is our God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our God as children of God, born again once.

Is he your God? But not only what we learn about God the Father but what we learn about God the Son. May God our Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you. Our Lord Jesus Christ, and again if I may be excused in giving you in this case the literal Greek rendering, it is the Lord of us, comma, Jesus. May the Lord of us, Jesus. In other words, this man, Jesus, is Lord. We have a duality here, like God the Father. The Father is God Almighty, and he is Father. But the Son is Lord, which in its ultimate sense means God. He is God Almighty, but he is Jesus, the man.

We find both of these here. The man Jesus is Lord. The man Jesus is God.

This is amazing. And he is, if you will notice carefully, the co-recipient of this petition. Paul plays to God the Father and to our Lord Jesus Christ. He is addressing both of them equally in this petition.

He is directing his petition, his request to both of them alike. And of course we know as Christians that prayer is properly addressed only to who? To God. We don't pray to anyone but God. It's blasphemy to pray to anyone but God. So if Paul is praying to our Lord Jesus Christ, then he is acknowledging that Jesus is God. So both by that phrase, the Lord Jesus, which indicates his deity, and also by the way he presents his petition, we know that Paul believes that Jesus is God because to address Jesus equally with the Father is to ascribe deity to him.

In theological terms, we would say that Paul has a high view of Jesus Christ, the highest possible view. Some have what is sometimes called a low view of Christ. They do not ascribe to him deity. They don't believe that he is virgin born.

They don't believe that he really performed these miracles on and on it goes. With some people who still say they honor Christ, they believe in Christ, but they have what the theologians properly call a low view of Christ. But if you come to Scripture, you won't find that. You'll find nothing but the highest possible views of Christ. And it's clear here that Paul has the highest view of Christ that anyone could have. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is God. Our petitions in prayer go as much to Jesus as they do to God, the Heavenly Father. That's what we learn about God the Son. Thirdly, in this first petition, what do we learn about the Apostle Paul when he prays that God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ might direct our way to you, might direct, some translations might have clear, that he might clear the way to you. That is, make a straight path, remove the obstacles out of the path, anything that blocks the path. That he may direct, and here again, we just can't get away from it.

We run into it over and over again. We learn that direct, we know that direct is a singular verb, though it has a plural subject. It's not so clear in the English, but again, take my word for it.

And I'm taking others' word for it, those who are students of the Greek language. We clearly have a plural subject. We have God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, these two persons who are yet one glorious being in the mystery of the Trinity. But in joining together these two persons in his petition, the verb in his petition is the singular form, not the plural form. They are one being. It is one God. God the Father and Jesus the Son are one, even though they are two. You say, I can't understand that.

Join the club. Nobody can understand that. Nobody understands that. It's a mystery, one of many mysteries about God that is beyond our human comprehension, but it is revealed truth. And so we don't understand it, but we do believe it because God has revealed it to us.

We don't understand it. We don't have to understand God fully to receive what he has given. We don't have to understand everything about God in order to believe what he has told us about himself. We don't have to understand everything about the Bible to receive the word that is given to us and to believe it. That's one reason why accepting it is called faith. And it's not faith that is a leap in the dark. It is faith that is based upon divine revelation. But it is faith that recognizes that we don't comprehend all these things fully, but we don't have to.

We accept them like children. He is our father, daddy. I don't understand this, but I believe it because you said it.

If my daddy tells me it's so, then I believe it. And yet in human terms, sometimes that fails, but when it comes to our Heavenly Father, there is never any error. There is never any mistake. There is never any, whoops, I didn't understand that or I misspoke that.

That never happens. When our Heavenly Father speaks, we can take that as absolute truth. And here is another indication of the deity of Christ. One singular verb with a plural subject.

May God direct His way to you. And what we learn about Paul in regard to this is, number one, he truly believed in the deity of Christ and taught it. He didn't really have to stop and explain this to these people about his prayer. He'd already taught them that, obviously, they knew this.

And that's more significant than you may realize. We live in a day when a lot of Christians, according to polls that are taken, don't know hardly anything about Jesus Christ. There's an incredibly large percentage of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians who are not sure that Jesus Christ never sinned. In other words, they don't know much about Jesus, do they? They haven't been taught much about Him. They've heard about Him. They've heard the name. They've heard certain things about Him.

They've gone to church. They've heard about following Jesus and loving Jesus and Jesus loving me and Jesus dying on the cross. They've been taught certain things about what Jesus has done and certain things about what Jesus is doing.

But they have been taught precious little about who He is. He is Almighty God. And we learn that by listening to the prayer of the Apostle Paul. We're receiving instruction from this prayer. So we know that Paul believed in the deity of Jesus and he taught it to others. And Paul believed in the invincible power of God because he believed that God could overcome the obstacles of Satan and clear the path for Paul to get back to the Thessalonians. And he believed in the value of face-to-face Christian fellowship.

He longed to see them. We've already covered this because it's come up before, but we see it again in this prayer. We're going to meet with them again. It's wonderful to hear the report from Timothy to get that secondhand news from them. That's wonderful if that's all we can do at the moment.

We're thankful for that. It's wonderful to write to them an epistle and communicate with them that way. It's wonderful even to send to them a portion of inspired scripture, which of course is what the first Thessalonians epistle turns out to be. But even all that isn't enough to satisfy the need of the hour, to satisfy the need of Christians, to satisfy the heart of the apostle Paul and the need of the Thessalonian believers and the need of all believers. Paul valued the face-to-face fellowship of Christians one with another. We know that about the apostle Paul from this prayer. So he prayed for renewed fellowship. Petition number two, verse 12, he prayed for increased love.

And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all just as we do to you. Let me give you four things that this tells us about love. Number one, the source of love. And I should actually give you some definition of love before we get into that. Paul doesn't give one here.

And this is one I picked out of a commentary. There are a lot of accurate definitions of this love, this agape love of God. But one commentator said love is giving to the needs of others without thought of reward. Giving to the needs of others without thought of reward, without doing it in order to receive something back from them.

No thought of that. That just doesn't come into the thinking, into our expression and exercise of love. That's what divine love is.

So we begin. Where does it come from? What is the source of love? And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love. Here's that word Lord again. We've seen it used in connection with Jesus in the previous verse. And we find it all throughout the scriptures used in connection with God the Father. The word Lord, which means master, which means ultimate ruler, is used both of Father and Son. So we don't know exactly which one Paul has primarily in view here.

It really doesn't matter because we've already seen the two are one. But what he's saying is that God must do this. God must make us increase in love because this kind of love does not arise from within me or you. To love like this we have to be empowered by God. May the Lord, and notice this, make you increase. That almost sounds like Paul was a Calvinist.

May the Lord make you increase. And yet he doesn't mean to make you increase in love against your will. That's a misunderstanding of the sovereignty of God. That's a straw man caricature that the enemies of the doctrines of grace often throw out. When Calvinists talk about God doing something, God bringing people to himself, it means that he forces them to do things against their will.

No, no, no. You misunderstand. How does God make us increase in our love one to another? He makes us willing. He makes us desire it. And he enables us to do it. He gives us the power to do it. A love, a type of love, an agape love, an unselfish love, a giving love without any thought of reward, a love that is unnatural to the human nature, certainly to our Adamic nature, that we can't really come up with on our own, but God can give it to us. And God can give us the desire to exercise it.

And when he does, we do. It's not that he makes us do something and we say, I don't want to do that, but I've got to. That's not the exercise of love at all, is it? It is, oh, I want to.

Lord, help me to do it better. God has given me both the will and the enabling. God has given me the desire and the exercise of this love.

And so God makes you by creating both a desire to love like this and an ability to do so. The source of love, the extent of love, may it increase and abound. Increase means become more. We know what increase means. When something increases, you have more of it than you had before. And abound means go beyond.

Abound means an oversupply. So what Paul is saying is, may the already present love, which is within you because you are the children of God and you therefore have a measure of this love within you, but may it grow, may it increase, may it abound, may it overflow. You can never have too much of this.

You can never exercise too much of this. There really is no limit to the extent of this love which we learn to exercise as God's people. Who are the objects of this love? He tells us, May the Lord make you increase and abound in love first to one another and secondly to all. First to one another. In other words, the objects of our love have an order first to the saints and then secondly to the unconverted.

We find this order again and again throughout Scripture. This love, first of all, is exercise to one another. As the children of God, we learn to love one another and we owe to one another love.

This is so highly important. Jesus said, By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love to one another. And John the Apostle in 1 John makes it very clear we aren't Christians at all if we don't have love toward other believers. And so our first expression of love is to fellow believers. We first serve one another in love, but after that the unconverted.

It doesn't end there. We also love others beyond us, everyone else, including our enemies, as Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 44, including our political enemies. I'm afraid a lot of Christians fall short on that one.

I hear an awful lot of angry speech, vitriolic language, hate speech, that is directed toward those whose politics are different from our own. And that is totally uncharacteristic for a child of God. That's wrong. That's sinful. We may have and we have every right to have differences of opinion based upon what we understand and believe, but we don't have the right to be hateful and angry toward others, not toward anybody, not toward the people of God and not toward those who are unconverted.

How can we show them the love of Christ if we are spewing angry hate toward them? So the objects of our love are both the people of God and the unconverted. And that, as I say, is certainly not natural. It doesn't come easily.

It's supernatural. It comes only as enabled by God. And we learn to love others by loving fellow believers. And in that day, no doubt, abounding in love one toward another was particularly necessary, particularly needed because of the persecution which they faced as they got very real animosity and persecution from the world without.

They found consolation. They found encouragement, help, and strength in the fellowship of the believers as the love of Christ was poured out to each one, to one another from fellow believers in the midst of this persecution. I couldn't help but wonder as I was studying this text if we need more persecution to begin to behave like Christians as in America. Maybe we haven't had enough persecution yet. We haven't learned to act like Christians. I'm speaking broadly. I'm not speaking about everyone individually, of course. What will it take?

Apparently more than we've had so far. What will it take until we stop acting like the weapons of our warfare are carnal and realize that they are only spiritual to the tearing down of strongholds and begin to act like Christians are supposed to act? And we see finally the examples of love. We've seen the source of love, the extent of love, the objects of love, and the examples of love because Paul ends this verse by saying, just as we do to you, that is to say, I want you to learn to love one another in the same way that I and Silas and Timothy, the missionary team, demonstrated Christ's love to you. We are the examples that you can safely follow when it comes to abounding in love. We are the models of Christian love to you.

And Paul and this team certainly gave unselfishly of themselves to the Thessalonians and really to all people wherever they ministered without any thought of anything in return from them. And I had to be rebuked in my own soul as I thought about this as I wondered, is my love a model for others to copy? Apply that to your own life. Is your Christian love exemplary enough that you could tell others, copy my love. I'll show you what love looks like. You do what I do and you'll learn what Christian love is like. You can safely follow my example.

That's a good model. You can learn and grow by following that example. Can you say that? And if not, why not? And if not, maybe you've got a little growing to do.

I guess we all do, don't we? Which is why Paul prays. May your love increase and abound because it needs to increase.

Whatever level it's at, it needs to increase and abound. So that's his second prayer request. First, for renewed fellowship. Secondly, for increased love. And thirdly, for practical holiness, verse 13. So that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. I've got five things here.

We'll need to go through them quickly that we can learn. Number one, the need for holiness. May he establish, that word means to make strong and firm. Unblameable, that means beyond the ability to find fault. He said, may the holiness of your life be such that nobody can find fault with you.

Wow. It is a present ongoing process, the need for holiness. We secondly notice the motive for holiness and that is love.

We see that by that introductory phrase, so that. It connects with verse 12. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all just as we do to you so that in order that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness. There's a connection between growing love and growing holiness. Or another word to use is growing love and growing sanctification because that's what Paul is talking about here, progressive sanctification. Holiness, he tells us, is a fruit of increased love. It is love that motivates holiness. As our love for God grows, our desire for holiness grows. As our exercise of love to one another abounds, so our holiness of life increases. Which brings us, number three, to the fountain of holiness and Paul says it's your hearts. That he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God. It flows from within.

It flows from your inner life, from your hearts, your thoughts, your feelings, your will. Holiness doesn't come from external rules. That's ceremonialism. That easily becomes self-righteousness. That all too easily becomes hypocrisy. But external rules cannot produce, cannot establish true holiness.

It's not that there's no place for them altogether. And the Bible clearly has rules, whatever you want to call them. Instructions, that's the same thing. Commands, if you please, that's the same thing.

That's rules. There are plenty of them in Scripture, so I'm not saying that there's no place for them, but I'm saying that those things cannot produce holiness. That's why the Old Testament failed. The first covenant failed because though it could tell us what was required, it couldn't produce the ability to produce what it required. It took the coming of Christ. It took the second covenant. It took the death of Christ upon the cross.

It took a spiritual power. It took a change of heart and life in order for us to be able in any degree to obey those rules, those laws, those regulations that showed us what a high standard the holiness of God requires. So the fountain of holiness is your hearts. It is the inner life. If it doesn't come from within, it's not true holiness, whatever it is. It's an attempt to look holy, to act holy according to some kind of external standard, but it's not true holiness because true holiness comes from a change of heart.

It comes from the life within. But not only the fountain of holiness, but number four, the judge of holiness, because he says, establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father. Who's going to judge our holiness as to whether it's satisfactory or not? God is. He's the judge of holiness before God, our God and Father. Others are not authorized to define holiness.

Only God is. You say, that's right. Get rid of all those legalistic rules and regulations.

I don't want to go back to that again. If they're biblical, then don't get rid of them. If they're not, if they're added to Scripture, then get rid of them. That's Pharisaism. But God is the only one who is authorized to define holiness. Others cannot do that for us, and we're not bound to obey the rules and laws of men if they are not Scripture. The things that are added to Scripture, like the Pharisees in Christ's day, they have no authority over us whatsoever. Only that which is given to us by God has authority in our lives, and that has authority in our lives. Others do not have the ability to define holiness for us, but listen to me. You don't have the authority to define holiness for yourself either. Only God does. It's not what I think. It's not what I believe.

I'm not going to pay any attention to those others. I'm going to decide for myself what is holiness. Your holiness is before God. He defines holiness. God judges our holiness in life, and God is going to evaluate us someday regarding our holiness, and thereby we will be rewarded or lose rewards. That brings me number five to the culmination of holiness of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.

That's where it's all going to finalize. Our holiness will be complete at the second coming of Christ. And both soul and body will be completely holy. And this is the third time Paul mentions the second coming of Christ.

He's mentioned it in every chapter, the end of chapter one, the end of chapter two, and now at the end of chapter three. When he comes with all his saints, he'll explain that more in chapter four. But that tells us that the present life is preparation for the life to come. You say, well, if he's going to sanctify as fully at his coming, then I don't see why we need to work at holiness now. Well, there may be several reasons, but you only need one, because God told you to.

Do you need any other reason besides that? Which brings me then to review very quickly three lessons that grow out of this passage. Number one is the importance of holiness, and number two is the importance of love, and number three is the importance of Christian fellowship. And I'm going to elaborate most upon the first one, the importance of holiness now. It's a present development. It culminates at the coming of Christ, but it's a present, ongoing development in our lives now. And those who deny this teaching are false teachers.

And that's not uncommon. It's not uncommon in our day to hear evangelical ministers making fun of a holy life, making fun of purity, making fun of people who try to grow in holiness and to live godly in Christ Jesus, calling them legalistic. And there is such a thing as unbiblical legalism, and I've already described it. It's adding things that aren't in the Bible, and that's Pharisaism. But to take away the commands that are in Scripture is sinful, terribly sinful. It is disobeying our Lord. There is a requirement to holiness and to downplay that and to deny that and to try to encourage people to throw that off, Christians to throw that off, or just live any way you please, is the height of disobedience, the height of error.

It is the mark of a false teacher. We live in a day when it's not uncommon for evangelical preachers to see how close they can get to scandalous blasphemy in their coarse language as they're trying to be cool, as they're trying to relate to the ungodly culture. And you hear their coarse and vulgar language, and sometimes even they're taking the name of the Lord in vain in their sermons, in the pulpit. It certainly runs contrary to what Paul is teaching us here. We're supposed to be increasing in holiness as defined by God, who tells us there's no place for this kind of coarse jesting and foolish speaking and certainly no place for taking the name of the Lord in vain.

Let me say it again. Anyone who does that, listen. Sometimes God's people have difficulty figuring out who's safe to follow. Anyone who behaves that way is a false teacher.

Mark it down and get as far away from them as you possibly can. Those who deny this teaching of holiness are false teachers. Those who believe the error of these false teachers are worldly minded. They're not godly. They're worldly minded. You say, are they worldly Christians? Well, they may call themselves Christians. That's for God to judge. I'm afraid many of them have never truly been saved at all, but we'll just let it go at that. They're worldly minded. They are certainly not thinking like Christians. They are certainly not behaving like Christians.

They are following, in many cases, a line of teaching which they gravitate to because their own hearts are rebellious against the word of God. This prayer of Paul indicates the importance of holiness in the lives of God's people now. And it impresses upon us the importance of love, growing love in our lives now. And it impresses upon us once again the importance of Christian fellowship. We need that, shall we pray. Father, thou whose love profound a ransom for our souls has found before your throne, we sinners bend and receive with gratitude the pardoning love that you extend. Teach us, O Lord, your ways and show us your paths, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.