We started last time, last couple of times in second Thessalonians. So let's begin with prayer. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, once again, we pull aside from the weak. We delight to be with one another. We delight to be before you. We delight in your word. And we're praying that you will give us clarity and understanding it. And we're also praying that the things we discuss and read and talk about tonight might be etched in our minds and on our hearts that would encourage us in returning to you prayers that are large and worthy of who you are and what your kingdom is all about. So work in this time we're praying in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, the first week, you remember, was a week about basic lessons, things learned about prayer. I'm not going to repeat those. In the second week, as I mentioned, we started with 2 Thessalonians 1, 3 through 12, and you'll remember that What was interesting about that text is of those 13 verses or so, really very few were devoted to specific prayers. And the majority of it, we use the language of a framework, a mindset, kind of a structure through which Paul prayed, and picked up on two things that were emphasized. Paul, in his prayers, is thankful wherever he sees signs of grace, signs of God working in a saving way in people. He gets excited about that, and of course the obvious lesson is we can learn from that too, and ought to learn from that. So that was one thing, and the second thing that was interesting, and we will hit on that again tonight, is he had confidence in, the language we used was the prospect of vindication. there are these really awe-inspiring verses, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 5 through 10 of this description of the coming, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it means then for believers they will be vindicated for the life they have lived on this earth. In other words, that's a big word for saying It will be shown in that day that that was the way to live your life, even if it meant suffering. That is, in allegiance with the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, of course, for the others, there is retribution. Last week, We actually looked at the prayers of 2 Thessalonians 1 and there were two petitions that were there. He makes the general prayer. that Paul prays that God might count these Christians worthy of their calling. In other words, that they, and of course now as we bring it forward to ourselves, that we might live lives worthy of this tremendous calling of God to salvation, by his grace through Christ. And in all that that means, in other words, you begin to pile on the various aspects of what it means to be a saved man or woman. Members of the church, members of the kingdom, sins forgiven, and on it goes gifts given by the Holy Spirit, and all of this. And so he's specifically praying that they would live worthy of that. And the second one, was that by God's power, God might bring to fruition a Christian's good, faith-prompted purposes. And that was an interesting prayer. In other words, as a saved man or woman, you have impressions on your soul and mind. You have thoughts, you have leanings. I think I want to serve the church in this way. I think I want to give this widow a call. I think I want to do that. And Paul is praying. Man, that's wonderful. Lord enabled these good purposes to find fruitfulness. The goal of those prayers was the glorification of the Lord Jesus, that the Lord Jesus would be glorified in and through his people, and interestingly enough, secondly, he mentions that we ourselves would be glorified in that. And we talked about, certainly that takes place in eternity, but there's a process of sanctification. We made reference to 2 Corinthians chapter 3 in that. And the ground for those prayers, he says, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And so always being pointed back to the fact that we don't, we're not just simply trying harder. It doesn't rest just on on that that I will exert, you know 14 and a half hours of work today as opposed to four. Yeah, it's not it's not about Those things it's about the Lord being gracious in and through our lives. Okay, so tonight We're going to see the heart Paul has for people and how that impacts his prayers. And so we're in 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, excuse me, we're going to start in chapter 2. We'll start in chapter 2 and I'll read verses 17 into chapter 3. And we do that again to get some context for the prayers. A lot of material tonight. So, 1 Thessalonians 2, starting at verse 17. But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, again and again, but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's co-worker, in the gospel of Christ to establish and exhort you in your faith. that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction just as it has come to pass and just as you know. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain. But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you. For this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction, we have been comforted about you through your faith. For now we live if you are standing fast in the Lord. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith? 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." And that ends this reading of God's Word. So what we want to take a moment to see tonight is several things. First, Paul's passion for these people. And the first thing we see is that Paul's prayer is going to arise out of his intense longing to be with the Thessalonians. Take your Bibles and turn back to Acts 17, because I think it's important to see the actual history of the planting of the church in Thessalonica and what happened there. So, in Acts 16, they had been in Philippi, and now they're traveling, and you'll see in verse 1 of chapter 17, they pass through certain places, and they come to Thessalonica. There was a synagogue of the Jews there, and Paul goes in, as was his custom, and he reasoned with them from the scriptures. and explaining and you see he's explaining the gospel to him. This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. All right, so now you're getting a few of the Jews believing Paul, but mostly Greeks, and it mentions the women there, probably a mixture as well of Jew and Greek women. And what happens? Well, the Jews are jealous, and it's amazing, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, attacked the house of Jason. And what happens is, Most scholars think Paul was in Thessalonica just a short time, maybe three months, four months, something like that. And so this opposition arises, and this mob is formed, and the brothers, the brethren, send Paul and Silas away. They say, you've got to leave. And if you picture that, If you picture the Mediterranean, you know you've got Macedonia up here, and you're coming down to Greece. Thessalonica sits right at kind of that start of that Greek peninsula. And where Paul goes when he leaves, he heads further south. And he gets to Athens, and there's the event there recorded in the Book of Acts. And he moves further down into Corinth. That's his visit to Corinth. And most scholars think that Paul The most likely occurrence is that Paul will write 1st and 2nd Thessalonians from Corinth. And we're not just doing a history lesson here because you see his love. We said the main point is Paul's prayer is arising out of his longing to be with the Thessalonians. Now back to 1st Thessalonians 2. Look at the language of verse 17. He says, the scripture says, but since we were torn away from you, the more basic meaning to that is, he says, we were orphaned of you. Think about what it means for for there to be the separation between a parent and a child. That's the kind of intensity that Paul feels for the Thessalonians. He was torn away, orphaned from, and you just pick up the themes of that. He endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face. And so, here's a Christian. that is so committed to the well-being of other Christians, especially new ones, that he is simply, Paul is simply burning up inside to be with them, to help them, to nurture them, to feed them, to stabilize them. Paul does not descend to the level of being a mere professional. if that makes sense. In other words, he's not someone who wears a nameplate that says Apostle and, you know, I will engage in Apostleship for whatever, twelve hours today and then I'm gonna go watch TV or something, whatever you did back then in the first century. He never dissents that. He is intensely loving the Thessalonians. Secondly, We're picking up three things here about what feeds this prayer. The second thing is Paul's prayer arises out of passionate affection that seeks, here's the key thing, that seeks the good of others. Paul is not seeking praise from the Thessalonians. He's not seeking their gratitude, their thankfulness, their acceptance of him. And still, as I've just said, he's not seeking some sense of self-fulfillment as an apostle. He's not trying to win them over to be Paulites, so to speak. You know, what you see here is self-fulfillment is never permitted in the Christian life to be the controlling issue. What is the real issue in living out the Christian life? Well, from here we learn the issue is service. Service of real people. You know, the questions become, you know, how can I be most useful as opposed to how can I feel most useful? You see the difference in that. The real issue for Paul is, I want to be useful for your good. Whatever it takes me to do that, it's not about me being self-fulfilled. It's not about me thinking, well, here's an occasion for me to enhance my career, my resume. something like that. That's not what he's about. He is about their good. Look at 1 Thessalonians 3. We've read it. It's verses 1 through 5 that bring this out. But, you know, Paul is in agony out of his concern for their good. He wants to be with them I'm sorry, I didn't make a good note, but the point, anyway, the point is he's sending Timothy to them, and the point is for Timothy to begin the work of being that agent of encouraging the Thessalonians, because you got a picture. He's been torn away and this is a young congregation. This congregation may only be, I don't know, seven months old, eight months old. Paul hasn't had the opportunity to disciple them and train them as he normally does. So that's the second thing. Third thing is Paul's prayer springs from unaffected delight at reports of the Thessalonians' faith, love, perseverance, and strength. And here, He's already been thankful to them in chapter one, but you see the language of verse six, Timothy has come. He sends Timothy and Timothy comes back to Corinth with a report that is filled with good news. Matter of fact, it's the same language of, you know, the preaching of the good news, the gospel. You know, it's that kind of occasion to the apostle Paul, similar to, you know, you know, the day of his understanding of salvation in Christ. It's like that. Timothy brings the good news of your faith, your love, your perseverance. You're continuing there. So what does this mean? We said, you know, Paul is His prayers are going to arise out of his longing to be with them, out of his longing to be with them, especially for their good and his delight in seeing those signs of grace going, that I think it means if we want our praying to improve, then we must strengthen our loving of one another. as we love one another more and more, we'll find greater fuel, more issues, more things to pray about, to intercede about. That's what you see here. You see a passionate servant of the Lord Jesus, passionate in loving this congregation, and therefore he prays. Okay, so now we need to cover in the remaining time, these actual prayers. And there are four themes that arise out of verses 9 through 13. And the first is that Paul prays with rich thankfulness again for the people of God. He said we covered that last week and we're covering it again here because it simply characterizes so much of his life and so much of his praying. But there's some things I think to note about here. I remember, I don't think it was from this text, but I remember one Thanksgiving service as I had the opportunity to bring the message, I was struck by exactly what we see here. So what am I saying there? The first thing is that this thanksgiving is not addressed to the Thessalonians, but addressed to God for the Thessalonians, but It's done in the letter that they receive and in a way that should be encouraging to them. So what does all that mean? Look again at verse 9. For what thanksgiving can we return to God, so he's clearly thanking God for the Thessalonians, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God as we pray, etc. And so, you know, Paul is not some back-slapping flatterer that runs through the church body and no matter what you're doing, he's thankful, oh, you're great, you know, you're so good looking today, and this, that, and whatever. Neither is he that kind of stringent, sober, precise, theologically so type that says, well, the truth is that praise belongs to God alone. And therefore, if I say thank you to you, I will do so grudgingly. He's not that kind of person either. And he is the kind of person that he encourages Christians by telling them that he thanks God for God's grace in their lives, and he tells the Thessalonians that he sees the spiritual growth in his life, and he thereby encourages them. And what's interesting, you got these things going. He's written a letter saying, I thank God for you, for signs of grace. And so they ought to be encouraged. But the second thing is, he's saying, let's give emphasis to the first one, I thank God for these things. And so they have every reason to be humbled, too, because he's communicating to them where that came from. Does that make sense? But it is true that he is, and Paul just repeatedly does that in his times of prayer. And once again, I think there's application here. And I'm not saying we don't do these things, but there's application in terms of our church life together as a community can be enhanced if we make it a practice to do both of those things. In your time of prayer, to say, Lord, I'm so thankful for our pianists. plural, for our Sunday school teachers, for, you know, you make your own list. And then when you see somebody, you can say, man, Nancy, thank you so much for helping Cecilia in teaching Sunday. In other words, to actually verbalize those things. And you can't say, you might even want to say, Nancy, I'm so thankful, I'm just picking her out of the, you know, the crowd. We could do several. We could do for, in other words, but you see, in other words, if you've truly prayed in thanksgiving for these things, you can truly go to the person and say, you know, I'm just thankful to God for what you're doing. And, you know, it enhances the congregational life. Okay. We need to We need to move here. The second thing Paul prays for is that he might be able to strengthen these believers. See, this is interesting, too. This is in verses 10 and 11. He says, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. The lack is not due to their negligence or their sinfulness. The lack is just simply due to their ignorance. These are very young believers. Supply what is lacking, and then now may our God and Father direct our way to you for these purposes. And so, you know, here again is the apostle as servant. And a couple of things demand our attention here. One is, it is not by mistake that Paul says he prays earnestly night and day. This is not hyperbolic language. Neither does Paul float through the day in some, quote, spirit of prayer, where very little prayer is made. I think we're looking at a man who has regular times of prayer, and in those regular times of prayer, he remembers the Thessalonians. It is that plain and a challenge to me, and I hope to all of us, to look at our lives and wonder if our discipline of prayer has some semblance to that. Paul, you know, secondly the thing is to note, as I said, this is a prayer of a servant. It is interesting, Paul's burden is to supply what is lacking in their faith. He prays, if you see what we're saying here, he's praying for a very real need among the Thessalonian church. They need training and strengthening and their faith needs to be grown And it's one thing to just pray that and then go out and play your tennis or whatever. Paul prays that with the idea, Lord, let's just say, Lord, if it's in your will, let me be the instrument to assist them. He's willing to, you might say, put feet to his prayers. And I think it's something, again, for us to to ask about as we pray, you know, what is it that we may, that God, by placing this prayer burden on my heart, is God also saying, hey, maybe I'm saying to you, you get involved in the situation. Third thing Paul prays for is that there might be an overflow of love among these believers, verse 12. I'm just going to say that's that's just fairly obvious here And we in the obvious conclusion. You know today our society is just inundated with self-interest with lust with With you know mutual admiration of certain groups of people, but you don't see a lot of real love being displayed, certainly from the world, which maybe is not surprising, but even Christian love displayed is not that common. And so this is an appropriate prayer for us to pray. that the congregation of CRPC might overflow in love for one another and extending on out past our numbers. Final thing, To mention, Paul prays fourthly that these believers will be so strengthened in heart that they will be blameless and holy when the end comes. Verse 13, 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. The heart in the scriptures is that center of our personality, our will, our understanding, the place where motives are stored, so to speak, or act. And so what does it mean to have a strengthened heart? Well, it's to have a full resolve and a guileless and innocent, a devotion and allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ that is not, you know, that's without deception. In other words, pure, sincere devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, to have that kind of heart enlarged And so the result, Paul is praying, is that there is no need, when that prayer is answered in the lives of believers, there's no need to fear the day of the Lord. And I think that's important. Once again, we started this, and I've got to come to a conclusion. We said this lesson gets the title of a passion for people. We said last week Paul prayed with an eternal perspective, that of the second coming of the Lord. And you see how these things are still at work. that God would strengthen their hearts, that they'd be blameless until that day. When we pray for people, we do so knowing that these people and we ourselves are inevitably moving toward the last day. As I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, you've never seen a mere mortal. Everyone. in the sense that they will live on in one capacity or another, in Heaven or Hell. And that's what you see. His passion and love for these people is linked to what it means to be a person. that you have an eternal destiny. And so he's praying then this most fundamental prayer. No prayer more fundamental than this. Oh Lord, would you make sure the people, the faithful people of CRPC will have their hearts so enlarged in allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ that at that day, they and I will be secure in heaven with you. So those are some things to pray about. And the obvious application, how often are your prayers along those lines? And with that, I'm going to bring this to a conclusion and we'll go to prayer.