I'd like to invite you to turn your Bibles, please, to the book of Second Thessalonians, chapter three, please. Second Thessalonians, chapter three this morning. Trying to focus in 2013 on love God, love people, spread the word, and I've been trying to pound that into our brains for us in the first two Sundays of the year. Really, what I was trying to do was drive home the importance of these priorities, the two Sundays of Prayer Week, the importance of them, that the great commands, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and love your neighbor as yourself, and the great commission should be the control center of our lives. That is, everything in our lives must be subordinate to those three responsibilities. Love God, love people, make disciples of all the nations. That we have those responsibilities given to us from God and really should become, in some sense, the simplifying grid by which we evaluate everything. Everything fits under those. Jesus said about the great commands and these hang all the law and the prophets. Right. And everything that the church is to do and we are a part of the church comes under that commission to make a mature disciples. And so we should be living in light of that. And those should be sort of the touchstone for us that we keep coming back to. Am I maintaining the priority structure that God wants us to. Last Sunday morning I tried to press home the truth that loving God means, loving God truly means we'll be committed to protecting and respecting those made in His image. So I was trying to show us that there is an organic connection between loving God and loving people. People are made in God's image. So if we truly love God, then we will love people. We can't separate them and act as if, oh yeah, we love God. It's just people we can't stand. We really do have to respect and honor the love of God by loving those made in His image. And in the evening, I try to focus in on one of the keys that God has given us about loving Him. is that our love for Him is deepened through prayer. Psalm 116 says, I love the Lord because He heard my voice. That is, we actually are drawn closer to the Lord in devotion through prayer. And particularly, we looked at prayer that joins God's glory and our joy. That we're seeking for the things that God wants by prayer. and challenged us to be specific and committed to that. What I'm really trying to do a little bit in weaving it this way is to show that these three things, love God, love people, spread the word, are not isolated, but actually sort of intertwined. Remember that I'm not going to ask you to say them, all right? But the four keys on loving God, talk to him, listen to him, worship him, and obey him. And what I showed when we did to love people, the fourth key for love people was intercede for them, right? So talking to God, love for Him, and loving people, intercede for them, they're integrated. And what I want to show this morning is that the talking to God also extends to the spread of the Word, that God has woven our relationship to him via prayer into how we would express our love for other people, but also how we would carry out the mission that he's given to us of spreading the word to the ends of the earth. And so that's what I'd like us to zero in on. And I'd like to do so by hope, looking at a verse that is not unfamiliar to us. Look at verse one of Second Thessalonians, chapter three. Second Thessalonians, chapter three. and verse 1. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did also with you. Let me just read it again because this is going to be the focal point for our attention. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did with you. Here the Apostle Paul is laying out what I think, and we could probably state this truth a couple of different ways, but here's the core of the truth that I want to take and show us from the text of Scripture that apply to us. The rapid advance of the gospel is assisted by prayer. The rapid advance of the gospel is assisted by prayer. And I think when we just look at the text here, you can see the parts of that truth, right? Pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did also with you. Paul wants them to pray and he uses us because he's a part of a missionary team. If you look back to the first verse of the book, Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, Paul has a group of people with whom he's ministering, and so he's asking prayer for them as they go about the task of fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ, that they would pray, and that their prayer would specifically be that the Word of the Lord would spread rapidly. And that's why I use the phrase, the rapid advance of the Gospel, that the Word of the Lord would spread rapidly and be glorified. That's what he wants them to pray for. So let's just think about the parts of this here. The Word of the Lord. I think Paul's speaking primarily about the Gospel. But I wouldn't want to exclude what we normally think. We tend to, because we live in the day we live in, we see the phrase, Word of the Lord, and we immediately think of the entire Bible. And that's not wrong. But I think the specific thing that Paul is talking about here is the word about Christ. Remember in Romans 10 it says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. It's the word of the message about Christ that brings salvation. That's the word that he's talking about. In fact, I alluded to this a couple of weeks ago, but if you look at the book of Acts, the scenes in the book of Acts take that phrase, right? The word increased. The Word grew and multiplied. The Word spread throughout that whole region. Because the Gospel message, the Word about Jesus Christ is the message from God to man. And that's the message that Paul wants to see advance. He wants to see the Gospel spread. Whether that's called the Word of Christ, or the Word of Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5, or the Word of God. as it is in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, that this is a word from God about salvation in Jesus Christ. And He wants it to spread, and He wants it to spread with a rapidness to it. He wants it to advance aggressively in that regard. Notice the wording here, spread rapidly and glorified. There's a number of different ways translations handle it. Have free course, run swiftly. What Paul is talking about here is a kind of advance. For instance, it's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament of a warrior who runs swiftly and victoriously into battle. So the idea, I mean if you picture a scene where you have military armies spread out and you watch one just sweep across the other. Nothing can stop it. It just plows through the ranks of the enemy and makes its onward march to victory. That's what Paul's asking. Pray that the Word of the Lord would do that. That it would come sweeping down and destroy all obstacles. Overrun every enemy. That it would advance quickly. And notice he says, and be glorified. How is the Word glorified? How is the Word given its proper glory acknowledged as the glory that it has? It's not really a difficult question. The answer is simple. When the word is received, it's glorified. Let me just show you, I think, the backdrop for what Paul would be talking about, because notice the last part of this verse. Just as it did also with you, okay? So Paul wants to have happen in other places what happened in Thessalonica. So let's look at what happened at Thessalonica. Go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, and particularly verse 13, because I think this gives us insight into how the Word is glorified. 1 Thessalonians 2.13. For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which performs its work in you who believe." Now, you see the key to their response and why it would be described as glorifying the Word? Because when Paul showed up, and his missionary team showed up in Thessalonica, they stood and they preached. They proclaimed the Word of God. They said, there's a God who made us, who has sent his Son, and he's the only hope of salvation, in that he died to pay the penalty for sins, and he rose again from the dead. And you need to turn from your idols and worship this true and living God and wait for His fun to come back. And the reason I'm saying it that way is because that's exactly what chapter 1 says happened. The gospel came. They received it. They became imitators of Paul and the Lord, the text says, and became examples to all the believers. And here's the report that was given about them. They turned from dead idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for a Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, who rescues us from the wrath that comes. So there's what they received. So Paul shows up in this town of Thessalonica, starts preaching this really strange message. I mean, if you think about it, the message is strange. There's a God who created everything, who sent His Son, who was born of a virgin, lives sinlessly, The Roman government and the Jewish leaders conspired, put him to death, nailed him to a cross. And three days later, he rose from the dead. He talked to people, showed himself with many evidences to people, had people touch the wounds, hear from him, interact with him. And then he went back to heaven. And he told us that he's coming back. And when he comes back, He's going to be the judge of all people. But if you will trust in Him, if you will accept this Word that we are giving you, He will rescue you from the wrath that's coming. That's the message. And we know what happened when that message went out. I mean, for instance, in Acts 17, Paul preached that message and it says, when he got to the resurrection, some of them began to mock him. Some believed. Some said, we want to hear some more. And that's pretty much a summary of what always happens. Some will laugh. That's crazy. How can you believe that? Some will accept it. Some will say, hey, let's talk about this some more. This category accepted. Think about the difference between this category and the reject category. This category says that's not true. Right? Isn't that what they're saying? I don't accept it. Is that honoring to God and His Word? Isn't it saying God's a liar? Isn't it saying that Paul's a liar? What is this position? When it receives it, Paul says, like 2.13, receives it not as the word of men, but as the word of God, as it truly is. What is that saying about God when you say, I accept it, I believe that? It's saying that God is true. It's saying that his messenger is speaking the truth. it is the Word being glorified. Or as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, that when the Gospel comes, the good news comes from God to us through Jesus Christ. All of His promises in Christ are yes. And through Christ is our amen to the glory of God. When we say that is true, we are saying, I believe you. As Romans chapter 4 says, faith gives glory to God. Receiving the Word gives glory to God. It's glorified. So what Paul is asking them to pray is that as the Word goes out, it spreads that not just that it will go into a region, and now you can check it off the region. The Bible has been preached there. The Gospel has been preached in this place, in that place, as if the goal is just sort of show up and say the message. Okay, that's a goal, but it's not the goal. The goal is to take that message to people and have it proclaimed and see people receive it. That the Word would spread rapidly and be glorified. That is, they would say, I believe that and give glory to God through the exercise of faith. They say amen to the Gospel. They receive it. That's what Paul wants them to pray about. Let's go back, if you would, to 2 Thessalonians 3. Now, he wants them to pray in that way. That the Word would spread rapidly and be glorified. And at the heart of that is recognizing, as I said, that there are going to be obstacles and enemies that the Word must conquer in that regard. For instance, the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, that when the Word goes out and people don't believe it, it's not a flaw of the message, And it's not a flaw of the messenger. He said the reason people don't believe the gospel, 2 Corinthians 4, verses 3 and 4, is that the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. So here's the problem. They want the word to spread rapidly and be glorified. So we just grab the word and we go running out. Let's spread it out there. And don't take into consideration that there is an evil one who has powerfully taken hold of the minds of those who don't believe. The only way there's going to be a difference between the group that rejects the gospel and the group that accepts the gospel is if that blinder is removed, right? That's the only thing that's going to make a difference, and that blinder involves a supernatural power that is keeping them held captive. Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 26 says, they've been taken snare by the devil to do his will. That's why we must pray. Because if the Word is going to overcome The resistance of the evil one, it must be divinely empowered, right? It must have the power of God that sets people free from that captivity. And so Paul wants them to pray like that. He wants them to pray so that the same thing that happened at Thessalonica would happen in other places. And the only way you can describe What happened to Thessalonica is the rapid advance of the gospel. And I've walked down this path before, but I think it's good to just remind us from the book of Acts, we know that Paul's ministry was at least three Sabbaths long. OK, so so that could be anywhere from 15 to 22 days, right? I mean, three Sundays. If you start on a Sunday, you can go Sunday, Sunday, Sunday at the end of two weeks. All right. Obviously, Sunday is not Sabbath. I'm just talking for our language, right? So you go Sabbath, Sabbath, Sabbath. It could be just 15 days that he was there. Could be that short. I don't think it was that short. But even if you get the most aggressive spreading out of the time, it is still an extraordinarily short period of time. And here's what happened. A congregation of God's people was formed. that was so strong spiritually that they became an example to everybody that lived in Macedonia and Achaia. And in fact, God had worked so powerfully among them that they were holding on to the gospel in the face of persecution. I Thessalonians chapter 2 says that they were suffering for Jesus Christ. And they were remaining steadfast in the gospel. That's a powerful and rapid advance of the work of God as He sets people free from the captivity of the evil ones. That's what happened. And Paul says, pray for that to happen in other places. Now, I'm just going to fill in the picture a little bit from what we know of Paul, because Paul requests and makes reference to prayer many, many times in his letters. I mean, he talks about praying for these kinds of things. And if you were to read through the letters of Paul, you'd see Paul asking people to pray for opportunities for the Gospel, for clarity when the Gospel is being communicated, for boldness with the Gospel, for God to send out people so that they will tell the Gospel. Paul, I think, is alluding to that in Romans 10. Certainly, Jesus explicitly told us to pray that way. in Matthew chapter 9. He is here praying for the success of the gospel. In the next verse, the safety of those who are preaching it. He even tells Timothy to encourage people to pray for the government so that we'll have an atmosphere conducive to the preaching of the gospel. Pray for kings and those in authority, because God desires all men to come to the knowledge of the truth. So we pray for our government and society, not mainly to preserve our rights and advance our economic interests. Mainly for the advance of the gospel. That the glory of Jesus Christ in the good news would be made known. And Romans chapter 10, I think, would clearly indicate that we would pray that people actually be saved. Paul said his heart's desire and prayer for Israel is her salvation. He doesn't just have to pray around people. He can pray for God to lift the blinders. And in fact, I think he tells us a lot of stuff that we should be praying. We should pray for God to remove the hardness of their heart, to open the eyes of their understanding, to draw them to Himself, to open their hearts to the Gospel, that the Spirit would convict them of sin, righteousness, and judgment, that they would be granted repentance so they'd come to a knowledge of the truth. All of those are biblical ways the Bible describes the need of a lost person under the sound of the Gospel. And we should be praying. in all those ways about the rapid advance of the gospel. But let's be honest. All right. Why don't we pray for this and like this? And why? What keeps us from praying like this? Well, I think I think sometimes it's a lack of confidence that God will. And perhaps even can do this. Let's just walk it back for a minute. Paul is saying, pray for us. The word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did with you. And I just described what happened at Thessalonica. Paul went in. Three Sabbath days in the synagogue. Probably a period of time around that. And then a riot breaks out and Paul takes off. And you have Paul having left behind a church strong enough to handle persecution with spiritual leaders in place that have charge over you and give you instruction. Chapter five. You have an amazing work of God's grace that we might easily say, well, that's an anomaly. OK, that that is not the standard, Paul. That's an exception to the rule. But Paul says, pray for us that it will happen just as it did with you. Paul wasn't thinking they were the exception. Paul was thinking that they should be our expectation. That we want to see that happen. That we long for it. Paul's not saying this is guaranteed. That every place is going to be like that because it's not like that. At Mars Hill, it was a little bit different. But his heart's cry was for the rapid advance of the gospel. He longed to see the gospel spread rapidly and be glorified. And I think sometimes we just have thought, that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Sure, it happened back there, but it's not going to happen today. That is, we have what I would consider to be sort of a twisted, shallow view of history. And we go, that's an exception rooted in the first century with an apostle present. Can't happen today. Because that sort of frees us from feeling the burden. It's just an exception. And I would suggest to you that Paul doesn't tie this to anything that was limited to the first century. He doesn't say the reason it happened at Thessalonica was because we did signs and wonders. In fact, we really don't have them. a whole lot of record of miraculous gifts taking place that caused this. We don't see him saying, pray for me, the apostle, because that's what's going to cause it in other places. He says, pray for us, which includes Timothy and Silas, right? So he doesn't root it in an apostle. He roots it in the word of the Lord, because Paul says in Romans 1 16, it is the power of God unto salvation. And the gospel didn't have only a battery of power that would be really strong in the first century, but diminish so that it has no power by the time it gets to us. It is still His power. And I think awakenings, the kind of rapid advance of the gospel that we're talking about, Though they're clearly and definitely a sovereign work of God, we can't command them, we can't create them, but there's no indication, biblically or historically, that one can't happen today. Yes, the days are dark, but I mean, when I said shallow history, if you just read a little bit about what this country was like before the Great Awakening, Or read what this country was like before the Second Great Awakening. I mean, the time of Voltaire and deism and the colleges were full of rejection of biblical truth. There was apostasy in the denominations. It was not a moral country that was just sort of waiting around for something to stir it up. You hear of the French Revolution? Relatively same time periods. That was the atmosphere of the day. God graciously poured out an awakening that brought thousands of people to Christ. In Northampton, Massachusetts, in one year, 300 people professed faith in Christ in the first year of the Great Awakening. In one small city. where the power of the gospel began to spread rapidly and be glorified. And that's happened multitudes of times in the history of God's people. There is no biblical or historical warrant for thinking that something like what happened at Thessalonica cannot happen today. For us to think that way is really to make an excuse fueled And I'm talking to myself, I'm not trying to be harsh about it, but an excuse fueled by ignorance and indifference, not biblical truth. God has not closed up shop, folks. The gospel is not powerless any longer. The reality of it is that we have to hunger and thirst and pray for it, like Paul talked about. I think often We lack the confidence because we have a distorted theology that on one hand takes hold of a view of the sovereignty of God and uses that against the realities of how God carries out his purposes. And clearly I'm stating in a way that probably no one would really say, but I'm stating it to try to capture us. And that is that sometimes we can move over here and say, You know, God's sovereign and he does what he does. And my prayer neither helps nor hinders it. And so so we come away basically going, well, if there's going to be a rapid advance of the gospel, you know, God's going to do it or he's not going to do it. I mean. Me praying for it's not going to affect that. And I would suggest to you that that has taken a truth of God's word and has abused it. against God's Word. Do you think Paul was just engaging in an exercise of futility here, asking people to pray for this to happen? Do you think Paul thought their prayer was irrelevant? Do you think James was lying when he said, you do not have because you do not ask? Was James lying to us? Or is there a way of understanding the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man that doesn't pit them against each other, but sees them as operating complementary? That really believes what James 5 says, that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. You see, we don't pray For the rapid advance of the gospel, sometimes because we don't think it can happen. But also sometimes because we don't really believe praying makes a difference. I mean, if we really believed it, then we would pray. And I think I think if we're honest, sometimes we'd have to wrestle with the fact that we've felt some personal disappointment at times when we've prayed and we've not seen happen the thing that we'd like to see happen. And I'm not saying in any way, I've already said that awakenings, rapid advances of the gospel, are under the sovereign control of God. And so we can't name it and claim it. I'm not going to say, hey, let's get together a prayer petition. And if we get enough names on the petition, then God's going to do this. So let's have a prayer sit-in. You know, we're just going to stay here and pray until God does it, and we can sort of force the hand of God. No. Cotton Mather spent his whole life praying and longing for a great awakening. It didn't happen. He died. John R. Edwards is just a kid, basically. Stepping into the ministry of his grandfather, and boom! It breaks open. Okay, so God's in control. So if we think that we do it to get what we want more than we do it because it's what we ought to want. That is, I should hunger in my heart to see multitudes come to know Christ. And should want that so badly that I will pray for it and pray for it and pray for it. If God takes me home before it happens, praise His name. If it happens in the next generation or the next week, praise God. But to think, well, you know, I've tried before, so I'm not going to try again. I would suggest it probably means we really didn't try to seek God. We tried to get something we wanted. I'm going to ask you a couple of times, and if you give it to me, great. Well, you didn't give it to me. All right, let's move on. And what we need to do is have a hunger to it. And so the point would be, we lack a commitment to begin and stick with fervent, focused prayer like this. And I think this is the tender spot that we might be protecting with the other objections. That is, it's easy for me to go, well, you know, that was a historical anomaly, because that frees me from conviction. Or, you know, God's in control, so He's going to do what He wants to do, and it's really not something that is an obligation of my heart tied into that, because I can protect myself. Or I can have past times when I've sought God and haven't achieved or received the thing that I desired, and it hurt, and I don't want to go there again. What I'm protecting is a tender spot of potential conviction that would cause me to begin and stick to fervent, focused prayer for the rapid advance of the gospel. And God expects us that if the word is going to spread, it will only be spread by His power. People will only glorify the word as God opens their eyes. There will only be opportunities to make that word known as God opens the doors. Everything about it must be saturated with prayer. And we must see the importance of doing it because it really matters to us. I remember Dr. McCune used to use an illustration in chapel regularly at the beginning of the semester that, you know, I remember the first time I heard it, I thought, that's a little weird. But it's really true. It's a little story about a couple of frogs that were, you know, hopping across the road and one of them, dropped into a deep rut, a tire rut. And the other frogs were going, come on, come on, get out, get out. And then the frog tried to jump, tried to jump, but couldn't get out. So finally they left the frog. And then a little bit later, they saw that frog. And they said, how'd you get out? And the frog said, well, a truck was coming down the road, so I had to get out. And the point was, That until the frog realized that there was no other option than to get out of there, he didn't really commit to it. And I think that is true across the board in our lives. That we can make excuses. We can talk about why. But you know what? When it comes to prayer, when we know we have to, Somebody, you, somebody you love, gets the cancer diagnosis. Somebody gets rushed into emergency. Somebody's life is about to blow apart. You're about to lose your job. You become like that little frog. I had to get out. And you start to pray like crazy. How often does that spirit of prayer translate over to the advance of the gospel. Or are we just sort of down the rut going, Lord, save some people. Hope the gospel works. Save somebody. But it doesn't really take hold of us. Till it's that person whose heart we're breaking for needs to trust Christ. Till we know that if God doesn't open their eyes, they're lost and we feel it deep in our heart. And so we start praying. But the prayer for the rapid advance of the Gospel should not be so hit and miss among God's people. It should be something that burns deeply in our heart that we want to see Jesus magnified. We want to see people come to know Him and have life in Him. We want to see We want to see the Word spread rapidly and be glorified. And so I want to challenge us as we talk about how we can be more faithful to the priorities that God has for us. Love God. Love people. Spread the Word. That we make it somehow woven into the very fabric of our prayer life. That something would be missing If we finished praying and hadn't prayed for the word to spread rapidly and be glorified. For God to magnify his mercy. That there would be an ache in our heart if we have not sought God about it. Because we want to see his glory in the power of the gospel. We need to be radical like Paul and the Thessalonians, and following God completely, ready to risk our lives for the cause of Christ. But we also need to be committed to fervent, focused prayer like Paul was, and he called the Thessalonians. And the Word of God calls us to this morning. Let's bow together in prayer.