Now would you take your Bibles in hand again and turn in your own Bible to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, or if you’re using one of our church Bibles you can find that on page 987. Cruel circumstances have separated Paul from the Thessalonians, and when during his stay in Athens he could stand it no longer and his concern for them has become unbearable, he sent Timothy, his right hand, he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to minister on his behalf to them and then to report back to Paul on their welfare. Last week, in verses 9 and 10, we considered Paul’s summary of the way in which he was praying for them in light of Timothy’s report having returned and told Paul how well the Thessalonians are doing. This week, we are considering 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, 11 through 13, where we have a record of the content of that prayer, what it is exactly that Paul prays.
And as we work through this remarkable prayer together, we are going to see three things. First, the apostle tells us what God is like. Here’s the foundation of Paul’s prayer. What God is like – the foundation of his prayer. Then secondly, how God works. And here we’ll look at the logic of Paul’s prayer. So what God is like – the foundation of his prayer. How God works – the logic of his prayer. And then finally, what God wants – the priority of Paul’s prayer. So those are the three things. Have you got them? What God is like – the foundations of his prayer. How God works – the logic of his prayer. And what God wants – the priority of Paul’s prayer. Before we look at each of those, let’s bow our heads again and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit as we seek to understand and obey God’s Word. Let us all pray.
O Lord, would You now come and open our eyes that we all may behold wondrous things out of Your Law, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
First Thessalonians chapter 3 at the eleventh verse. This is the Word of God:
“Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
Amen.
October 18, 1913 was opening day for the new 1 million bushel Transcona grain elevator in Winnipeg, Ontario. Designed with the latest technology, the facility consisted of a 16 story workhouse and 65 reinforced concrete silos, each 10 stories high. The fatal mistake of the builders, as anyone who’s lived in Jackson, Mississippi for any amount of time would immediately have been able to tell them, was to build this giant grain elevator on a foundation of clay. And you can guess what happened next? Within hours of initial loading, the massive structure began to lean. Over the next 12 hours, it continued to sink into the ground until it listed a shocking 28 degrees. Full of grain, holes had to be bored through the concrete to get it out. The point of course is that foundations really matter. Foundations really matter. You don’t see them, they’re under the surface, you rarely think about them, but everything depends upon them. That’s especially true of theological foundations, doctrinal foundations. If your theology is sinking sand, everything you build upon it will be unsafe.
But in the prayer before us this morning, the apostle Paul is careful to build on solid, theological rock. Look with me please at verse 11 and notice what we learn about what God is like as we trace the foundations of Paul’s prayer. What God is like – the foundations of Paul’s prayer. Verse 11, “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you.” Paul is praying for the very thing he told us back in chapter 2 verse 18 and again in chapter 3 verse 10 he has longed for and even attempted again and again without success. He is asking the Lord to bring him back at last to Thessalonica. But as he records for us that prayer, I want you to notice two things about God that aren’t so much taught here as they are assumed and asserted as foundational truths upon which this whole prayer is built. The first thing about God has to do with His nature. Look again carefully at the way this opening petition of Paul’s prayer is framed. “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you.” Who does Paul ask to direct his way? Not “our God and Father” only, but “our God and Father” and together with Him, “our Lord Jesus.” So Jesus is coordinated with the Father as together the great object of Paul’s prayer and the joint source from which he seeks this overruling direction back to Thessalonica.
And then add to that the unusual grammar of this sentence. Would you look at it again with me please, verse 11? In English, when we have a singular or a plural subject, the verb stays the same. So we might say, “May Peter direct our way” with a singular subject. Only Peter is acting. Or we might say, “May Peter and Paul direct our way,” a plural subject, so both Peter and Paul are acting but either way the verb doesn’t change. But in Greek, the verb changes. There is really no English equivalent, but if you were to translated the Greek ———–, you would have to say, “May Peter, may he direct our way.” Or if it is a plural subject, you would have to say, “May Peter and Paul, may they direct our way.” The “may he” or the “may they” is included as bound up in the verb form itself, depending on whether the subject is singular or plural.
Now look again at verse 11. Is the subject of the verb singular or plural? Who is doing the directing of our way in verse 11? “May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way.” So it’s a plural subject, and you would expect there to be a verb form that would agree with that plural subject. You would expect Paul to say, “May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus, may they direct our way.” That’s not what he says. He has a plural subject, “our God and Father” and “our Lord Jesus,” but a singular verb – “May he direct our way. May our God and Father and the Lord Jesus, may He direct our way.”
In the 4th century when the Aryan controversy and heresy had all but taken over the church, a bishop called Athanasius stood virtually alone for the orthodox faith. He was “Athanasius contra mundum – Athanasius against the world.” And one of the passages to which Athanasius pointed in his defense of Scriptural Christianity was our text – 1 Thessalonians 3:11. He did so to make the crucial point that for the apostle Paul, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was no mere creature as the Aryan heretics were alleging. If he were a mere creature, Athanasius said, you wouldn’t pray to him in the same breath as you pray to the Father, putting them on the same footing as equally the source from which you should seek direction. And you certainly wouldn’t speak of these two distinct persons, the Father and the Lord Jesus, using a singular verb like this. You wouldn’t do that unless of course these two persons are nonetheless somehow in the mystery of the blessed Trinity nevertheless really one and the same God. The three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the Scriptures teach us, are not three gods but one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ is not taught in the New Testament. Not only is it taught, it so pervades the New Testament in such a way that Paul can’t even pray, he can barely even talk about Jesus without honoring His full deity and His entire equality with God the Father in the fellowship of the blessed Trinity. And so the first foundational truth here has to do with God’s nature.
The second foundational truth has to do with God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty. Paul, remember, has longed to get back at last to Thessalonica. In 2:18, as we said a moment ago, he had tried to do exactly that, again and again he says, “but Satan hindred us.” Oh, but now, Paul says here, “Satan may hinder us, but I can appeal above Satan’s head to a greater authority than he. May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. If God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ direct our steps back to Thessalonica, Satan may do his worst to prevent our return, but nothing can stop it.” Paul is frustrated at the devil’s schemes, preventing his return thus far, but Paul is not defeated by them.
What is the proper response to the activity of the evil one as he works to thwart the cause of the Gospel in the world all around us right now? How should you respond? Well, we’re not to shrug and throw up our hands and say with an air of resignation, “Oh well, what can you do?” We’re not to quake in fear or retreat from our mission in defeat before the rising tide of wickedness and hatred and the warped and twisted ethics of a society wandering in the dark away from God. No, “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure” – and Paul shows us how here, doesn’t he? We are to go over the devil’s head to the very throne of God, knowing that even Satan must come to heel at the sayso of King Jesus. The devil is not free to do whatever he wishes, and so the hindrances of Satan that have so frustrated the apostle Paul, he now says to us never forget all his malice, all his schemes, all his activity. It all must be placed into the broader, wider context of the overarching and governing providence of a sovereign God who truly is the one who, in the end, directs our steps and who can make even the malice of the evil one “work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” So that’s the first thing I want you to see here as we consider the foundation of Paul’s prayer – what God is like. He is the triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and He is the sovereign God who reigns even over the devil himself, and therefore He is one to whom you may come with confidence as you pray.
And then secondly, would you notice how God works. What God is like. How God works – the logic of Paul’s prayer. Now I don’t know about you, but reading Paul’s prayer here in verses 11 through 13 makes me really glad indeed that no one is recording my private prayers for public consumption. This isn’t the case for any of you I’m sure, but my prayers are often rambling affairs. My mind wanders. I get sidetracked. I have to fight to stay on track. But Paul’s prayer has a remarkable simplicity and logic to it and it leaves us in no doubt at all about what he wants for the Thessalonians and how he expects God to achieve it. Look how he puts the prayer together. There are two petitions, two requests, each signaled in our English text with the appeal, “May our God,” verse 11, “May the Lord,” verse 12. The first petition asks for Paul to be reunited with the Thessalonians. The second asks that the Thessalonians might love one another more and more.
And these two prayers may seem at first glance really to have very little to do with one another, that is, until you look at verse 13 and you see what Paul expects the result of God’s answer to these two prayers to be. He prays to return to Thessalonica and for the Thessalonians themselves to love one another more and more, verse 13, “so that the Lord might establish their hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with his saints.” So hearts that are “blameless in holiness” – that’s the goal, that’s what he’s after. And his return to Thessalonica and their mutual love for one another in the church in Thessalonica, they are the means by which that goal, holiness, will be achieved.
I want to focus for now on those two means and then in our third point we’ll consider the end, the goal – holiness. So look at these two means. Here’s how God works. God works by means. Paul’s return to Thessalonica, we saw last week in verse 10, while it is driven by deep affection for them, he loves them and wants to be reunited to them, has much more in view simply than a wonderful renewal of fellowship. Paul wants to come to them, remember, “to supply what is lacking in their faith.” He has Word ministry on his mind. He wants to come and teach them and instruct them and strengthen them. And so the first and great means by which God is going to establish the hearts of the Thessalonians in holiness is through the continuation among them of apostolic teaching. That’s what he wants to get back to them. It is through the ministry of the Word.
The Westminster Larger Catechism, in question and answer 155, focuses on the preaching of God’s Word as God’s great and principled means of saving sinners and sanctifying saints. And significantly, it uses the language of 1 Thessalonians 3:13 to do it. Talking about preaching, it appeals to our text and God’s design to establish hearts blameless in holiness and says preaching is the way this, 1 Thessalonians 3:13, will get done. So listen to the catechism. “The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves and drawing them unto Christ, of conforming them to His image and subduing them to His will, of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions, of building them up in grace” – and here’s 1 Thessalonians 3:13 – “and establishing their hearts in holiness.” So the divines understand what Paul is saying here in verse 13 – to depend on the ministry of apostolic teaching. The means, the way that God will make us holy is by the proclamation of the Word of God, by the preaching of the Word of God. that raises the value, or it ought to raise the value and importance of the public preaching of the Word in our hearts and lives and in the life of our church. God aims at your holiness and He has sent preachers to proclaim apostolic truth to you that He might accomplish that great end in your heart.
But then look down at verse 12 and the second means by which God will establish their hearts blameless in holiness. The first is Paul’s restored and continued ministry at Thessalonica, strengthening what is lacking in their faith by the preaching of the Word. The second is verse 12 – “the Lord would make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you.” Now the question is this – How does growing in love for one another lead to God establishing our hearts in holiness? What is the connection between love and holiness?
Well you may remember that last week, as we looked back at verse 6, we noted the order of the graces of faith and love that Timothy celebrates and said to Paul were shining so brightly in the hearts of the Thessalonians. And we said faith is foundational; that’s why it comes first. Faith is a trusting word, a resting word, a receiving word. It’s not a doing word. But love, he said, love on the other hand, love follows faith in Christ because love is a doing word in the New Testament. “If you love Me,” John 14:15, “you will keep My commandments.” “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets,” Matthew 22:40. “Love fulfills the law,” Romans 3:10. Paul prays that the Thessalonians would increase and abound in love for one another, in the church, and for all people even those outside the church because he knows love keeps the law. Love obeys Christ’s commandments. Love is the word that summarizes the New Testament’s teaching on the daily practice and cultivation of Christian obedience. Holiness, in other words, is love lived out. Holiness is love lived out.
And that is crucial to understand, otherwise, if you don’t understand that, otherwise you might begin to worry somewhere deep down that actually holy living is a rather unpleasant business at the end and begin to expect that holy people are a rather unpleasant bunch to be around. But Paul says the identifying mark of real holiness is not a hair trigger intolerance of other people’s mistakes. No, real holiness is love to God in Jesus Christ, displayed in love of neighbor. Holiness is love lived out. And that makes holiness beautiful. If you think of holiness as a list of things you’re not allowed to do and of holy people are church folks whose faces look like they’ve been sucking lemons, well then no wonder you struggle to want to pursue holiness! If that’s holiness, who’d want it? But Paul knows that the way of holiness is the way of love. Love to God and love to neighbor. Love that keeps the law. Love that obeys Christ’s commandments. The way of holiness is the way of love. And that should change everything for us. There is no such thing as a cold, angry, loveless holiness. The path to a heart established blameless in holiness is a path paved with love, a heart that beats with love. You’ve misunderstood holiness at a fundamental level and you’ll never make any progress toward practical holiness in your Christian life until you see that love for Jesus Christ and love for His people and love for the lost, love is the engine that drives all Christian obedience.
What God is like – the foundations of Paul’s prayer. How God works – the logic of Paul’s prayer. God works by means – the ministry of the Word and love, one for another. And then finally, notice what God wants. Here we come at last to the goal of Paul’s prayer, the priority of his prayer. Take a closer look with me now at verse 13 please and the great objective in the Thessalonians’ lives for which he is praying. This is what he wants for them, what we ought to want for ourselves and for one another. Look at verse 13. May the Lord direct our way to you, may He make our love grow for one another, “so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Blameless there is a negative word, isn’t it? Blameless – someone who is blameless cannot be reproached, against whom no accusation can stand, who is unimpeachable. But holiness is a positive word. A holy person is consecrated, devoted to God, according to God’s Word, for God’s glory. And to put these two words together like this as Paul does here, to be blameless in holiness, is to cover all the bases. It’s a way to talk about total holiness. No accusations can stick, no reproach can land because this person is utterly consecrated to God and to life God’s way for God’s glory.
To have your heart established “blameless in holiness” is another way of saying to be made completely and comprehensively and immovably and unchangeably holy. It’s to be holy with the reflected holiness of the character of Jesus Christ Himself, shining from your own character and life. That’s what Paul wants for the Thessalonians. That’s what we should want for ourselves – not to settle for a few minor tweaks to our routine here or there, but to pursue final and complete likeness to Jesus Christ. Have you settled for mediocrity, for a vague approximation of holiness, for slight improvements? Do you appease your conscience by telling yourself, “Well, I’m not as bad as I used to be”? Or, while you are grateful for whatever progress you’ve made by God’s grace thus far, are you never satisfied until the goal is achieved? There is a godly restlessness of spirit, a holy discontent we need to cultivate that is never satisfied until we are made at last like our Savior. Until we are like our Savior – that’s the goal, that’s the priority for which Paul prays.
Now let me be clear, Paul has no expectation that the Thessalonians will be made holy like this all in one single, sudden flash of entire sanctification any time soon. He is not praying here for a second blessing to bring them up in an instant from the average Christian’s struggle with remaining sin into a higher life of sinless perfection this side of eternity. Paul has no such conception and this is not at all his teaching in our passage. Look again at the text and notice the horizon of Paul’s prayer. When does he expect this completed holiness to be displayed? “May the Lord establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.” He does want perfect holiness for the Thessalonians, but that holiness takes aim at the end of the age when Jesus comes to judge the quick and the dead.
When people are learning to drive, driving instructors will often have to remind their students not to look at the road directly in front of the car as they drive along. Look all the way down the road, as far as you can see in the direction you want to go. If you look at the road right in front of you, you’ll oversteer and you’ll react poorly to the challenges that lie ahead that you have not seen or anticipated. But if you look all the way down the road, your hands on the wheel will follow your eyes and so will the vehicle as you drive.
That’s really what Paul is modeling for us here, isn’t it? He knows that progress in holiness requires Word ministry and so he prays to come back to see the Thessalonians in person. And he knows that progress in holiness depends on ever deepening Christian love because love keeps Christ’s commandments. But those are the means. These are the steps along the way. This is the road right in front of the car. And they matter, for sure, but if you fix your eyes on the final destination, look all the way down the road to the great climactic end when Jesus comes in glory, you’re far more likely to make the journey safely. You want to be ready for that great day. You want to be prepared to welcome Him when He comes at last without shame and with great joy. You know, one of the great defeators of real progress in practical Christian holiness is an unrealistic expectation of immediate present victory and an almost complete disregard for the final target of our sanctification. You won’t ever be nearly as holy as you’d like to be at any given moment in your Christian life, but that moment in your Christian life isn’t the target. The target is judgment day. Get ready for that day. Sanctification, the long, hard work of getting ready for eternity is the target of Paul’s prayer and it must be the target of our Christian lives.
If you knew that in one month’s time this whole congregation was coming to your house – we’re going to look in every room, we’re going to open every drawer, every cabinet; we’re looking in all the closets, under every bed, every inch of your home, every inch of your garden – what would you do? After you recover from your panic attack, what would you do? You’d tidy up your teenager’s bedroom, wouldn’t you? You’d throw out the trash. You’d mow the lawn. You’d paint the fence. You’d fix the gutters. You’d recover the stained sofa. You’d do whatever you had to do to get your house ready because we’re coming.
Beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming to visit your life. He’s coming, and Paul wants you to be ready. What are you doing to get ready? Or are you telling yourself every day, “Well, there’s still time, time enough to indulge, time enough to play. I’ll fix it later.” Living carelessly in your mess. In the chapters to follow, as we’re going to see God willing, we do not have the time that we think. He is coming.
What God is like – He is the triune God and the sovereign Lord. You may go to Him and call upon Him with confidence. How God works – He uses means, the ministry of the Word and deepening Christian love. And what is it He wants? What is the end toward which these means lead us? He wants your holiness. He wants you to be like Christ so that you may enjoy Him and live with Him forever with a happy heart when He comes to take you home. May the Lord give us grace then to pursue that holiness “without which no one shall see the Lord.”
Let us pray.Our God and Father, we come now to praise You that You do indeed work by means, the means of Your Word. O God, may Your Spirit bless it to our hearts to sanctify us in the truth. Your Word is truth. Slay our sin. Forgive us for playing with it, for coddling it, for indulging and excusing it, for living in our mess instead of seeking the renovation necessary to make our hearts ready for the great day when Christ comes to visit at last. Help us to fix our eyes on that day and with longing to cry with the apostle John, “Even so, come Lord Jesus!” For we ask it in His name, amen.