2 Thessalonians 3:1-5

What It Takes to Live as a Christian

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on June 7, 2020 at Beacon Church

How was Ezra going to get a caravan of priests and women and children from Babylon to Jerusalem, 1400km without protection? The journey would take four months. There were bandits. Raiders. Enemies along the way. And he couldn’t ask the King of Babylon for a military escort because he had been boasting to the king that the true God is gracious and powerful. Ezra 8:22 says, “For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, ‘The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.’…” I wonder if he ever thought, “if only I’d kept my big mouth shut about God, then I could ask for the protection I need!” The awkward truth about letting people know you believe in God is that sometimes they expect you to live like it. For Ezra, God’s reputation was on the line: is His God the true God? Is God sovereign? Is God gracious? So he gathered his people together and held a week-long prayer meeting. Then they set off, without any armed escort, for Jerusalem. Four months later they arrived in Jerusalem—Ezra wrote, “The hand of our God was on us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes by the way,” (Ezr 8:31). Christians today don’t seem to have as much faith in God’s sovereign grace as Ezra did. We are more practical, aren’t we? We like to hedge our bets just in case God doesn’t answer our prayers—we like to have a backup plan, right? In 2 Thess 3, Paul says “wrong.”

Christians aren't just upheld by God now and then. In verses 1-5, Paul implies three truths that show the whole Christian life, from conversion to resurrection, is so utterly dependent on the sovereign grace of God that to be a Christian means you must trust Jesus absolutely. To put it more simply, we learn here that the whole Christian life is so dependent on sovereign grace that to be a Christian for even one day you must trust Jesus absolutely. Paul begins with asking for prayer in verse 1, then ends with offering a prayer in verse 5. So before verse 5, let’s look at three ways Paul shows the whole Christian life is dependent on sovereign grace. Then, when we get to verse 5, to Paul’s prayer, we will be able to see that without what he prays for, nobody could make it even one day as a Christian.

Without sovereign grace you can’t spread the Gospel

Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you,  2 and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith. (2 Thess. 3:1-2 ESV)

The letter of 2 Thessalonians reads like it was written during brief interruptions in a prayer meeting. In the second verse, they pray, then they say they should never stop praying thanks! At the end of chapter 1 they pray again; and again at the end of chapter 2. Now, in 3:1 they ask for prayer, and by verse 5 they start praying again! You know what? It’s like Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy think prayer is really important. Not to inform God, or to get God to change His mind—but because prayer is the act of depending on God to do what only God can do. So, chapter 3 begins with a prayer request. And the request shows that the writers believe only God can make anyone believe the Gospel.

They wrote this letter when fairly early in Paul’s 18-month stay in Corinth. Around the time when things were not going well. When the people in the Synagogue were making him about as unwelcome as headlice. How was he going to get through to them with the Gospel? So, like Ezra in Babylon, he asked the Thessalonians to pray. Pray that God’s Word would do in Corinth what God’s Word had done in them: “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you,  2 and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith,” (2 Thess. 3:1-2 ESV). They write, “pray for us” but then the prayer they ask for is actually that “the Word of the Lord” will “speed ahead”—like the Gospel of the Lord Jesus will take on a life of its own! It’s like praying the Gospel will take off and explode in Corinth. And what would that look like for Paul? The Word of the Lord would “be honoured”—or glorified—like it was among the Thessalonians when they believed in Jesus. Paul uses words here that take an image from Psalm 147:

Psalms 147:15-19 He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly.

The psalm says God’s Word “runs swiftly” and makes the snow and frost fall—God’s Word command the Winter to come. But then God’s Word runs swiftly to command the Spring to thaw and melt. God’s Word runs swiftly to accomplish God’s sovereign will. And just so nobody misses the point, v 19 says, “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel.” Is God’s Word honoured in your life like it is in the weather? 2 Thess 3:1 is a prayer request that God’s Word will accomplish God’s sovereign will in saving lots of hearers in Corinth! It is God who sovereignly thaws the hearts of some who hear His Word; God who sovereignly and graciously makes some hearers believe what they hear; And God who can make sure evil men don’t make them stop preaching.

When the people in the synagogue opposed and reviled Paul, Acts 18:6 says, “he shook out his garments and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’” And that’s what he did. Right. Next. Door. Some of the Jews honoured the Word of the Lord Paul preached. Lots of Greeks believed and were baptized. But opposition was brewing. And God gave Paul a vision at night—“Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people,” (Acts 18:10). Shortly after that, the Jews organized a mob to attack Paul and drag him before the Court, before a Judge named Gallio (and we know from history he was judge there from 51-52AD).[i] They tried to charge him with treason, but Gallio wouldn’t even listen to their charges—he threw them out of his court saying this was an internal religious matter. So, Acts 18:18 says, “Paul stayed many days longer…” God’s sovereign grace caused the Gospel to spread in Corinth; God’s sovereign grace frustrated the plot to silence the Gospel in Corinth. Verse 1 is a prayer request that God would do what only a sovereign and gracious God is able to do. And that’s what happened. Because evangelism depends on the sovereign grace of God.

Without sovereign grace you can’t persevere in faith

The beginning of verse 3 is like a mirror image of the end of verse 2. “For not all have faith.  3 But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one,” (2 Thess. 3:2b-3 ESV). In Greek, the word for “faith” and “faithful” are the same word, so this contrast is striking. Not all trust God but God is always trustworthy. Not all have faith, but God is faithful. In verse 3, Paul counts on the faithful, trustworthiness of God and says this is why he know, for sure, that God will uphold the Thessalonians in their faith. Because just like nobody can be evangelized, or become a Christian, apart from the sovereign grace of God, nobody can keep believing, or persevere in faith, without the sovereign grace of God. God is the only one who can uphold you. He is the only one who can “deliver you from evil”---this is why Jesus taught His followers to pray the Lord’s prayer, in the same words, “deliver us from evil” (Mat 6:13). Paul might even have the Lord’s Prayer in mind: praying that God’s Word will be honoured is like praying that Our Father’s name will be “hallowed”; verse 3 is very similar in meaning to “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”. Jesus taught His followers to pray this way so that we would be utterly dependent on God’s sovereign grace: because for those who believe in Jesus, it is a promise—God will (that’s a future tense fact in verse 3!) establish you and guard you, protect you, from evil. Your salvation, the effectiveness of the Gospel preaching you heard and believed, and the reason you keep believing, upheld and protected, all depend on sovereign grace; on that rock-bottom, pivotal, ultimate reality that makes every eternal difference between those who are Christians and those who aren’t: (v3) “But the Lord is faithful.”

Take the Book of Acts for example—the account of the what Jesus’ apostles did after He ascended to Heaven. Acts 2:23 says Jesus’ death was “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God”; Acts 3:18 says, “what God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that this Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled”; Acts 4:27 says all those responsible for killing Jesus were doing “whatever [God’s] hand… had predestined to take place”. Acts also says that’s how people got saved: Acts 2:39 says, “the promise is to… everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself”—just before 3000 people got saved! Acts 2:47 says, “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved”; Acts 13:48 says, “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed”. Even repentance and faith depend on God’s sovereignty in Acts: Acts 3:16 says faith is “through Jesus”; Acts 5:31 says, “God exalted him… to give repentance to Israel”; Acts 11:18 says, “to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life”; Acts 16:14 says, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul”; and Acts 18:27 says, “those who through grace had believed.” From the work of Jesus to the repentance and faith of those whom He saves, the Book of Acts testifies it all depends on God’s sovereign grace.

God’s faithfulness, His trustworthy dependability, is also the decisive cause behind your Christian obedience today and tomorrow and the day after that! Verse 4 is also like the Lord’s prayer: “your will be done on earth (in the obedience of the Thessalonian church) like it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10).

Without sovereign grace you can’t obey God’s Word

“And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command,” (2 Thess. 3:4 ESV). This is the definition of well-placed confidence. Many brides who have heard their husbands-to-be promise, “I do,” find out later that their confidence was not well-placed. But here in verse 4, Paul says he and Sylvanus and Timothy are absolutely sure that the Thessalonians will keep on obeying God’s Word, their commandments as apostles of Christ which we have recorded in the New Testament. But unlike a bride destined to be disappointed by an undependable husband, these missionaries are 100% “confident” the Thessalonian believers will keep obeying God’s Word because they know that Christian obedience does not depend on Christians but on Christ. Just as faith that perseveres, in verse 3, depends on the fact that the “Lord is faithful,” so too, Paul writes in verse 4 that the reason they are confident these Christians will keep on continuing to obey the Bible—“that they are doing (now) and will do (for the rest of their lives)” what God’s Word commands—is because their confidence is “in the Lord.” Not in the Thessalonian believers themselves. Christian obedience is not about keeping God’s Law perfectly. Only Jesus did that. Your continuing obedience starts with obeying the Lord’s command to “repent and believe the gospel.” Every day. Repent of the ways you have disobeyed. And then start obeying again. Stand up again and follow through in the place where you just fell. And when you fall again, repent again. It is because of the sovereign grace of God in Christ Jesus that any of us keep on obeying, keep on submitting to the authority of Scripture. John said something similar in one of my favourite passages:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.  3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.  (1 Jn. 2:1-3 ESV)

When we start obeying and keeping his commandments, John says, we know we have come to know Jesus. Because it is Jesus who causes us to persevere in faith; Jesus whose Word brings about our continuing obedience; Jesus whose faithfulness is the reason Paul was confident that God’s will in heaven would also be done on earth, in the lives of the Thessalonian Christians.

In verse 1 we saw that evangelism, the sharing of the Gospel that made you a believer, as well as every time you share the Gospel with someone else, depends on the sovereign grace of God; in verse 3 we saw that your perseverance depends on the sovereign grace of God; and in verse 4 we have seen that your obedience depends on the sovereign grace of God. There is no part of the Christian life that doesn’t utterly depend on the sovereign grace of God through Jesus. You can’t be a Christian for even a single day without relying on God’s powerful, steadfast love.

Without sovereign grace you can't be a Christian 

“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ,” (2 Thess. 3:5 ESV). Do you believe God is honest? That Jesus is who HE said He is? That the Lord is not a liar but that He keeps His Word? In other words, Paul’s prayer in verse 5 shows us that to be a Christian at all, you need, from the bottom of your heart, to rely absolutely on God’s love and the dependability of Jesus Christ. Every part of being a Christian, from your conversion to the second coming, depends on this.

Do you see how the apostles’ prayer request in verse 1 comes down to his readers wanting and longing for God’s Word to be honoured? How their being “established and delivered from evil” in verse 3 depends on them believing that “the Lord is faithful”? How even their obedience to what the apostles command them depends ultimately on that same faithfulness of “the Lord” in verse 4? Your whole life as a Christian not in name only, but as a genuine follower of Christ utterly depends on Christ being “steadfast”—and on you believing He is steadfast; it utterly depends on God being loving—and on you believing God is loving. That God so loved the world that He sent His steadfast Son. So, ask yourself this: Is the love of God and the steadfastness of Jesus what keeps you going as a Christian?

Paul prays “May the Lord direct your hearts” to this: the love of God and the steadfastness of Jesus. “Direct your hearts”—uses exactly the same word the father of John the Baptist prayed when he said, “because of God’s mercy, the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those in darkness… to direct our feet in the way of peace” (Lk 1:77, my translation). In the previous letter to the Thessalonians, 3:11, Paul prayed God would “direct our way” back so they could see each other again. Now he prays God would “direct their hearts” to always see the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. You couldn’t be a Christian for even a day without depending on God’s sovereign grace. But once He shows you His love; once you understand the trustworthy, dependable, steadfastness of Jesus Christ, you can’t help but depend on Him. Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians is my prayer for you: that God will make sure your heart is set on Him like this, every day of the rest of your life. That’s what it takes to live as a Christian.