If you turn in your scriptures
again to 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul has thus far in this section,
he's turned from the shocking things that are bound
to happen, that are ordained of God to happen in this world
that we live in now, and they describe the world around us. But then in verse 11 of chapter
2 he says, or by our epistle. Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself
and God, even our Father, which has loved us and has given us
everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your
hearts and establish you in every good word and work." And then
he asks for prayer. Finally, brethren, pray for us
that the Word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified
even as it is with you. We have just read in the Word
of God an amazing litany list of promises. Just think about
them again. They're brethren. They are the
brethren. They're the brethren of Paul,
the apostle, brethren of the chosen of God. They're brethren
beloved of the Lord, because the Lord hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification and belief of
the truth. Titus says wonderfully, doesn't
he, in Titus chapter 1 verse 2. He says, God who cannot lie. God, in the hope of eternal life,
which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began. The verse that I would like to
spend some time looking at tonight is this one at the beginning
of chapter 3. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of
the Lord may have free course and be glorified even as it is
with you. May the word of the Lord run,
is what it's saying. May the word of the Lord Work
mightily and powerfully and actively and purposefully and may it abound. What a prayer. What a great prayer,
what a great word we have before us. I was going to read something
of what William Huntington wrote about the word of God. He said,
it's the first book, the best book, and the oldest book in
all the world. It contains the choicest matter,
gives the best instruction, affords the greatest pleasure and satisfaction
that was ever revealed. It contains the best laws and
profoundest mysteries that were ever penned. It brings the best
of tidings, affords the best of comfort to the inquiring and
the disconsolate. It exhibits life and immortality
from everlasting and shows the way to eternal glory. It is a
brief recital of all that has passed and a certain prediction
of all that is to come. It settles all matters in debate,
resolves all doubts and eases the mind and conscience of all
their scruples. It reveals the only living and
true God and shows the way to Him. It sets aside all other
gods and describes the vanity of them. and of all that trust
in them. In short, it is a book of law
to show right and wrong, a book of wisdom that condemns all folly
and makes the foolish wise, a book of truth that detects all lies
and confutes all errors, and a book of life that gives life
and shows the way from everlasting death. He goes on, I can read more of
it but it's just a wonderful description. We have in our laps,
don't we, before us, we have a word from God. It is a remarkable thing, isn't
it? A word from God. the living God of this universe. Without this word from God we
would know so little of Him, wouldn't we? Romans 1 says that
the people of this world know something of His power and His
character because He has made it known to them that God's children
know God in His true character as He's been revealed in the
Lord Jesus Christ. They know God See, Paul says
in 2 Timothy, I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded, I have
complete confidence in Him that He is able to keep all that I
am entrusting to Him. God's children entrust absolutely
everything to God. He has proved Himself faithful. Again and again He proves Himself
faithful. He proves Himself faithful in
revealing His purposes and revealing His promises in all of creation
and in particular in all of redemptive history. He reveals it. He reveals
it in prophecy and in type and then He fulfills it in the Lord
Jesus Christ. How would we know of His character?
How would we read those words and not find comfort in them
unless God had caused us to find comfort? God has from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit
and belief of the truth. It's a great, great privilege,
isn't it? The greatest privilege in this
world is to have the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. What would
the people in hell do now if they could get back to earth?
We are told in Luke chapter 16, as clearly as anything, the rich
man would do what? If he could get back to earth,
if he could send all of the inhabitants of hell back to earth, what would
they do? They would go and preach the
gospel. They would preach the gospel. Here we have in these verses
just some wonderful words from our God. And he sees the sovereign grace
of God revealed and he comes to prayer and he comes to ask
others for prayer. He immediately, on the basis
of what we've just read, immediately he wants for more. hungry and thirsty. He has seen God's work, a work
of miraculous sovereign grace, to take him out of where he was
and place him where he is, to take these Thessalonians out
of where they were and put them where they are. Taken you and
me, brothers and sisters. Think of what we were. It's horrifying
to think of it. It's horrifying to think of the
sin and the blasphemy and the wickedness that I drank in like
water. And what a remarkable word from
God, that all of those things that happened in all of my life,
like all of the things that happened in Paul's life, are worked by
God. You see, what happens in the
scriptures is when God's children see the Lord at work, they get
excited. When they see sovereign grace
revealed, it doesn't lead to them being passive, it leads
to them being active. Open your mouth wide, says the
scriptures. I love how the Lord encourages
Paul in Acts chapter 18. There he is having left Thessalonica
and having had a tough go of it down in Berea, being pursued
by these same people that went back to Thessalonica and pursued
the brethren there and still pursue and persecute them. In
verse 9 there he is in And in Corinth, then spoke the Lord
to Paul by night and a vision. He says, do not be afraid, but
speak. and hold not thy peace. And I
love what the next word says to all of God's gospel preachers. For I am with thee. I am with you. If the Lord Jesus Christ is with
you, it doesn't matter what the world says and it doesn't matter
what the world threatens. I am with thee and no man shall
set on thee to hurt thee. Why? Preach on, preach on, hold not
thy peace. I have much people in this city. Sovereign grace revealed leads
to activity and here he is encouraging Thessalonians, pray for us that
the word of the Lord may have free course. But he says brethren,
he says finally brethren, see salvation brings fellowship,
in the Gospel. They're brothers and sisters,
born from above, born again by the Word of God. And Paul reveals
something else that happens in salvation. In God's sovereign
grace is revealed, there's fellowship and there is a dependence upon
God. There's an expectant dependence
upon God. Pray. Pray for us. Pray for us. Pray for us. They are ambassadors. They are the servants of God. Pray for us. Pray for God's gospel
preachers. Pray for the churches. What an
amazing thing, isn't it, that the absolute sovereignty of God,
which we have just read about in those verses, that Paul is
so thankful that God has from the beginning chosen them, and
then people would then say, well, if God's chosen them and God
is absolutely sovereign, how often have we heard that argument,
God is absolutely sovereign, I'm going to do absolutely nothing,
and if God's going to save me, he'll save me. God's children
find the sovereignty of God. a cause for action, a cause for
encouragement and others, rather than passivity, isn't it? When
God works grace in the lives of His children, there's always
a desire for more. And what's His prayer? That the
Word of God The Word of God, the Gospel of God, may have free
course, that it might run, as I said earlier, it might be active,
it might be esteemed higher and higher. of that was made flesh and dwelt
among us. May he be honoured and glorified
even more. He's been honoured amongst these
Thessalonians. Think of the remarkable things
that he's done to keep them firm and keep them strong. He's been faithful. Again and
again Paul reminds them and he does here in verse 3, he says,
the Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from
evil. But there is in the hearts of
God's people a desire for the Lord to be honoured in this world
and honoured more and more. We find it offensive. we find
it deeply offensive that the great and glorious Saviour and
the extraordinary character of God that is revealed and His
love and His care and His sovereign rulership of all things is reduced
to the blasphemy of wicked men. And it's always attributed in
the scriptures to the church, to the very people who claim
to be the people of God. I love what David said when he
first went down In 1 Samuel 17 he is sent by his father and
he leaves someone else in charge of the sheep. I'll just tell
you something of the story. But he goes down and he hears
Goliath. He hears Goliath mocking the
people of God, mocking the God of these people. And his brothers
find him down there and they mock him as well. And David said,
who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies
of the living God? And his brothers say to him, why
do you come down here? And they know his pride and the
haughtiness of his heart, for thou art come down that thou
mightest seize the battle. And David said, what have I now
done? He was sent by his father. He
left a steward in charge of the sheep. And he says, is there
not a cause? What a great word. Is there not
a cause? There is a cause, brothers and
sisters. The cause is the glory of God. And God is glorified where his
word is honored. Paul like David and like the
Psalmist, are well aware of the absolute sovereignty of God.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. He is the
Lord, the sovereign God who sits on the throne of this universe.
He is all-powerful. He is almighty. I love how Revelation
describes our Lord Jesus Christ. I was looking at a passage in
Revelation 19 today and he says in verse 11, I saw heaven opened
and beneath the whole a white horse and he that sat on him
was called Faithful and True. You know who that is. And in
righteousness he does judge and make war and his eyes were as
a flame of fire and on his head were many crowns and he had a
name on and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself,
and he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name
is called the Word of God." What a name. What a name for our Lord
Jesus Christ. You cannot separate the character
and the promises of God as revealed in the Lord Jesus from what we
have written here before us. Let's read on about this Word
of God. And the armies which were in
heaven followed him upon the white horses, clothed in fine
linen, white and clean, and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword,
that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule
them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the
fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And he has on his vesture
and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a
loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of
heaven, come and gather yourselves together under the supper of
the great King." Our God, as we've just seen earlier in Thessalonians,
Paul reminds them that our great Saviour, our great God and Saviour
will destroy the enemies of God with the brightness of His coming. He shall consume them with the
spirit of His mouth. The Word of God will consume
all of the enemies of God and all of the enemies of God's people. And even the delusion, even the
delusion that is around us in so myriad forms, is a delusion
sent by God. He sovereignly rules it. So even though God is absolutely
sovereign, throughout the scriptures we have the people of God calling
out on God to do what He's promised to do. I love what Psalm 74 says,
74.22 says, Arise O God, Plead thine own cause. Isn't that lovely? Arise, O God,
plead thine own cause. Which is what Paul is saying
here, isn't he, to these Thessalonians. Pray that the word of God, the
word of God will run, will be free, will be unconstrained."
So the Thessalonians brethren, like all of the difficulties
we have, their difficulties came when they turned from the Word
of God, the Word of Paul, and they had been caused to take
note and listen to the Word of Man. And such is the case in
all of our struggles and troubles. The worst person I ever listened
to was a fellow called Angus Fisher. He's an absolute shocker. In his Adam flesh, completely
unbelieving, completely prone to sin and doubt and all of those
things of the Adam flesh. You see, we live. What did the
Lord Jesus say? Man does not live. by bread alone,
but by every word of God." And that was the situation for them,
wasn't it? They had Paul come remarkably and in this first
letter he just reminds them, he gives them a history. This
word of God, this word in Acts and these words in these letters
to the churches are giving us a history of our lives as well. They're giving a history of the
lives of all the people in all of the churches of God through
all of time. God's people, call on others
of God's children to pray. Pray that the Word of the Lord,
as Acts 19 says, might grow mightily. and prevailed. And that happened
in Corinth. And the people took their scrolls,
their astrological scrolls and the other mumbo-jumbo that litters
our newspapers and magazines these days, and they burnt them.
50,000 pieces of silver it cost. They burnt the books. And the
Word of God grew and prevailed. But it might run. that might
run like a stream in the desert, a gospel that living water, bringing
life and light. The Lord Jesus, I love the words
that he quoted from Isaiah 61 when he preached that first message.
That word of God, he speaks of freedom and he speaks of release. The Lord has anointed me and
he sent him to preach the Gospel. And do these words describe you,
brothers and sisters, to preach the Gospel to the poor? to heal
the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. broken hearted, captives, blind,
bruised. That's what God starts with.
That's what he starts with. And how does he do this wonderful
work? He does it by the proclamation
of the Gospel. Being born again, not of corruptible
seed but of incorruptible by the Word of God. which liveth
and abideth forever, says Peter. For all flesh is as grass, and
the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord
endureth forever. The word of the Lord endureth
forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached to you. preached unto you." This is the
word which by the Gospel, without the Gospel, without the declaration
of Jesus Christ and Him crucified as set forth in this book, there
is no Gospel preached and therefore there is no Word of God preached. It's a remarkable statement Peter
makes in 1 Peter 1.25. Remarkable statement that God
the Holy Spirit says, this is the Word which by the Gospel
is preached unto you. This is the Word of God which
by the Gospel. Gospel. There are so many Gospels out
there and so many and all of the perverse Gospels cause this
word of God to be just a word of man. We were dealing with
them in Galilee, these false teachers that came from Jerusalem,
came to Antioch, false teachers that went all the way to Galatia. They knew the Bible back to front,
inside out. Paul was the chief among them. He knew the Word of God, or so
he thought. You cannot know the Word of God
until you know He who is the Word of God, and you cannot know
He who is the Word of God until the Gospel comes with power. Romans 10 makes it very clear,
doesn't it? For whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. And then he makes these
statements, doesn't he? They're questions, but really
like lots of other questions Paul asks, they're questions
which are really statements. How then shall I call on him
in whom I have not believed? And how shall I believe in him
of whom I have not heard? And how shall I hear without
a preacher? And how shall I preach except
they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed
the gospel, for as Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then, faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God. the most important activity that's
happening on planet earth at this moment is the preaching
of the Gospel. Preaching of the Gospel by men
who know themselves to be vessels of clay, know themselves to have
no sufficiency in themselves. See Paul's asking these people
to pray that this Gospel would go forth that there would be,
as he says in Colossians 4, an open, a door, a door of utterance,
open to us to speak the mystery of Christ, to which I'm also
in bond. They were, these Gospel preachers,
they're waiting for God to do something and they know that
God has ordained the end from the beginning, but also is ordained
the means by which it happens. And so the prayers of God's people
are special. You read Paul's letters and you
find them littered with prayers, sometimes just a line or two.
But he knew his dependence. He knew that God, who said in
Isaiah 57, I create the fruit of lips. He creates the fruit
of lips. Peace, peace to him that is far
off and to him that is near, says the Lord, and I will heal
him. He knows, and we all do, taught
of the Lord. We know his absolute sovereignty. As Ezekiel is told, I'll give
thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them. And what's
the end result? When God gives the opening of
the mouth, they shall know that I am the Lord. And there will be opposition.
He says in 1 Corinthians 16, he says, for a great door of
effectual work is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries,
many adversaries. Paul is a man who is dependent
upon God. He's dependent upon God and he
likes to encourage his people, the people that he loves and
he cares for in the Gospel, to pray with him, to pray for him
as he prays for them. He wants the Word of God to run,
to have freedom, and he wants the Word of God to be glorified. God is glorified when His Word
is honoured, when His Name is honoured, when His attributes
are honoured, His perfections are honoured, when He is honoured
for all that He does in all of what He disposes, in all of what
He gives in nature, in providence and grace. To glorify Him is
to offer Him praise. The psalmist says, Whosoever
offereth me praise, says Jehovah, he glorifies me. And we glorify
God, and the Word of God is glorified when we believe Him, when we
just simply believe Him. when we are made to take our
place as poor lost creatures. One of the most beautiful and
memorable ones for me is that Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. She came with a demon-possessed
daughter. Like the others that were drawn
to the Lord, she was in a place where she had no resources and
no ability, and she was in desperate and dire straits. And she came
and she cried, she cried, have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son
of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with the devil, but he
answered her not a word. So even in his silence she keeps
challenging, doesn't she? She cries and she continues crying
and he answers and says to her, I'm not sent but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. Then she came and worshipped
him saying, Lord, help me. She cries, she pleads with him,
had mercy, she cries to him, she says, Lord, help me. And
he answered, it's not meek to take the children's bread and
cast it to the dogs. And then she says, that's the
truth, Lord. Yet the dogs eat the crumbs which
fall from their master's table. And Jesus answered and said unto
her, O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole.
Such is the glory of our great God. He creates the hunger and
the thirst, and He brings His people to a place of humility. That's why the Lord Jesus mentioned
people like her, didn't He? And Naaman the Syrian. They were
brought to Him, they were brought to their knees before Him, and
they were brought to a place where they, like all of God's
children and like the Thessalonians, they ascribe the whole of salvation,
the whole of their redemption, the whole of their security now,
the whole of their hope for eternity, is in the sovereign, free, unmerited
grace of God. Our great God, our great God,
who saves riches like me, riches, not the righteous but the riches. So here Paul is asking for prayer
that the word of the Lord might be glorified in the lives of
others as it has been amongst them. The gospel came to these
people, didn't it, as we saw in 1 Thessalonians. It came with
power because it came from the Holy Spirit and it came with
much affliction. It came with joy in the Holy
Spirit. In the midst of affliction there
was joy. And it was the Gospel that sounded
out to others and it came with great assurance. And they became
in their struggles, they became a place that was renowned for
the Gospel it proclaimed. And even in the midst of enormous
struggles, they have the manifest tokens of the righteous judgment
of God. Their patience and their faith
in the midst of persecutions, and they endured them, and they're
counted by God, worthy of the kingdom of God. God's children who have received
the manna from heaven don't want to go and hide it away. They
want it to be spread. They want it to be proclaimed. They want the Lord Jesus to be
high and lifted up. They want to see him glorified
in his saints and admired in all them that believe. And he
finishes This short sentence, this powerful sentence, it says
that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified
even as it is with you. So it's glorified with them. as he said in verse 10 of chapter
1, because you have obeyed from the hearts. You were servants
of sin and you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which
was delivered unto you. He says the same thing in Romans
chapter 6. They've held on, they've held But God be thanked that you were
servants of sin, that you have obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine which was delivered to you. You believed the Gospel. You've been made by God to endure
persecutions and tribulations and trials and hardship, and
God makes his people to stand firm because God is faithful.
The Gospel came with power, they became followers, they became
examples, and from them sounded out the Gospel. And Paul is hungry
for more. And what did they do? They received. They received the Word of God. not as a word of man but as it
is in truth. They received a word of God that
works effectually in you that believe. They received it and
they stood firm, they stood fast in the Lord, in Him who is the
truth and in the truth about Him and His character and how
He saves His people. And the Lord, Paul prays, make
you increase and abound in love toward one another, that he may
establish your heart unblameable in holiness before God. So the
essence of it all, the essence of it all is that God's children
are taught of God. They are taught of God that He
is faithful. They're taught of God to love
one another. They're taught of God by the
experiences and the trials and the tribulations that He will
take them through. They're taught of God. to love one another. They are
taught of God to stand fast. Stand fast in the Gospel. Whatever
my God ordains is right, said the hymn writer. His holy will
abideth, I will be still whatever he doth. doeth, and follow where
he guideth. He is my God, though dark my
road, he holds me, that I shall not fall. Wherefore to him I
leave it all. Whatever my God ordains is right,
he never will deceive me, he leads me by the proper path.
I know he will not lead me. I take content what he hath sent. His hand can turn my grief away,
And patiently I await His way.