So we're right at the end of
the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. We've been a few weeks working
through this book, chapter by chapter, and now here we have
come to the last few verses. So we're going to read together
in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 25. Brethren, Pray for us. Greet all the brethren
with an holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that
this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. So we've come, as I say, to the
end of our study in the book of 1 Thessalonians. And we have
before us here in these last few verses Paul's closing remarks
to the young church. And as we have reflected many
times in recent weeks, the new believers in Thessalonica. Not within the days or the weeks,
but these are a congregation of believers in what is Europe,
we made that point. And here is the Apostle writing
to them, we think probably one of the very first, if not the
first, epistle that he ever wrote to the churches, certainly, that
we have extant in our scriptures today. And simply taking these
verses at face value shows us some lovely insights into the
Apostle's thinking, his humility, his affection towards his new
friends, his concern for their well-being. But I'm also going
to suggest to you that in the wisdom of God the Holy Spirit,
these verses also grant believers of every age confirmation of
blessings and privileges that we all share in our union with
the Lord Jesus Christ and of course with each other. And accordingly,
I hope that today we'll find that these verses, that we'll
all find that these verses have something helpful to say to us. The first thing I want to draw
your attention to, and I'm just going to work through the verses,
I want us to think about the value of prayer as we think about
the apostles' words. I want us also to think about
the essence of fellowship. The third point I'm going to
address is the privileges of family. And finally, just a reference
to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with which the Apostle
Paul ends his thoughts. So first of all then, with our
first of these four verses, just a few thoughts on the value of
prayer. And the apostle here reveals
that he sought for, in this letter written to the Thessalonians,
he sought and he valued the prayer of these Thessalonian brothers
and sisters. He valued it both for himself,
and his fellow preachers. He says, pray for us. So it wasn't
just pray for me, he was referring to his fellow preachers. Perhaps
Silas and Timothy to the forefront, but others who may have been
with them also. Brethren, pray for us. And here the Apostle Paul is
humbly asking these young believers for help by their intercession
with God on Paul's behalf. Their intercession with God for
the preaching of the gospel. And I think from this, there's
a lesson here. We may learn that every preacher
has a need for more divine help in his ministry. Let me say it
this way. If Paul needed help, we all do. Paul had personally met the Lord. He had received visions from
the Lord. His ministry had been acknowledged
by the Lord. It had been acknowledged by the
other apostles, and it had been approved by the other apostles. Not that Paul needed their approval,
but he got it anyway. And he received countless affirmations
of God's sovereign power in preserving his life, in anointing his work,
and in efficaciously applying his words. When I was thinking
about this, I wrote efficaciously and then I thought, you know,
I should get a better word than that. And then I thought, no,
I'm going to pause on efficaciously and make sure that everybody
knows what it means because it is such a good word to know when
we're speaking about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
basically just means that it achieved what it was supposed
to do. It was effective in accomplishing
the purpose of God so that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
is efficacious for everything that it was intended, planned,
purposed, prophesied to do. So let's know the word efficacious,
and it's a good word to use and appreciate. But the apostle had
known the efficacy of the work of Christ in his ministry, in
applying his words spiritually and savingly to the hearts of
sinners, and also by enabling miracles to be performed at his
hand. So there were many reasons that
the apostle had confidence in the Lord with respect to his
ministry and his preaching. And yet, and yet, the apostle
sought more help. More grace, more support from
those believers to whom he wrote in calling down the Lord's help
and guidance and protection. And this does indeed show Paul's
humility, I suggest. And it ought to be a characteristic
of every preacher for all ought to preach with a sense of our
own soul's need and the needs of our hearers and the enormity
of the task that is before us. Every preacher should know he
is personally inadequate and insufficient for the job that
is set before him and he needs much divine assistance in the
matter. And there's another lovely strand
here in the Apostle's thought, I think, in this reference, brethren,
pray for us. Because let us remember that
this was just a young church of newly converted believers. And this young church could,
and let us assume did, contribute to the apostolic ministry and
the expansion of the gospel. though they themselves were but
babes in Christ. They had a role to play, and
the apostle encourages that and emphasises it. He would have
them pray for the gospel, even although they were so very young
in the faith. And this surely teaches us that
we all have a role to play in praying for one another and for
the work of the ministry. Paul elsewhere calls the gospel
the power of God unto salvation. And each of us has a function. More, we've got a privilege of
joining ourselves to the work, both to facilitate its going
forth and to entreat the Lord for its spiritual enforcement. Every week when I come to deliver
my messages to you, I pray that the message I bring will do good
to all our souls. But always, I greatly feel my
inadequacy. And as with Paul, it is a great
boost to me, and I would imagine to every preacher of the gospel,
to know that my spiritual brethren, my brothers and sisters in Christ,
are labouring with me in prayer to the Lord to the same end of
our mutual blessing and encouragement. So the apostle said, brethren,
pray for us. Another thing that he mentions
here is that he is speaking about the fellowship that we have. And he says, greet all the brethren
with a holy kiss. Paul asks for each member of
the Thessalonian church to be greeted with a holy kiss. And that is no doubt from him, even though he's writing it in
the letter, he would greet all of them with a holy kiss, and
they should greet one another with a holy kiss. But the key
word is holy. There's something just to note.
The key word here is holy. The greetings with which we greet
one another, be it a kiss, literally, be it a handshake, be it a spoken
welcome, it is to be genuine and it is to be founded on our
holy union in Christ. When we meet When we gather,
when we come together for worship, there should be a thoughtful
awareness of what it means to be gathered and formed as an
assembly of God's holy and sanctified people. Now I can't see your
heart and you can't see mine but we may examine our own hearts
as we come to worship and we can come with an earnest desire
for one another's spiritual well-being. And we can thank the Lord for
each other and for giving us friends and brothers and sisters
in the faith with whom to share our faith, with whom to hear
the gospel, with whom to enjoy common inheritance of spiritual
blessings and the family privileges that are granted to us by the
Holy Spirit. When I was young and in church,
I used to wonder if we should kiss everyone when we went to
church. Well, the answer is yes. And
whether that mark and gesture of affection is actually a kiss
or a handshake or a hug or simply a hello and a wave, Let it emanate
from a holy motive and a sincere desire for our mutual spiritual
good in Christ. The third thing that the apostle
directs us to, the third point I'm going to make from these
verses is in verse 27 where he says, I charge you by the Lord
that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. Paul expressly
asks that his letter be read to all the holy brethren. That is all of those professors
of faith in the church. It was to be generally, it was
to be publicly acknowledged and shared and read together. And actually, it's more than
an ask. He insists on it in the name
of the Lord. And from this we understand that
every believer has a right to read Paul's epistle. If it was
good for the Thessalonians, every holy brother and sister, it's
good for us. And we may deduce that every
believer has a right to read the whole of Scripture, the whole
Bible. And this, of course, contradicts
the notion of the scriptures being confined and restricted
to the sphere of the clergy and dispensed at their whim according
to their reading and their understanding, which many churches still persist
in today despite the widespread availability of the scriptures. The Church has for centuries
retained a monopoly on the Scriptures and we must be grateful to God
for raising up men like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale
and Miles Coverdale and Thomas Cranmer who laboured to put the
Word of God, the Word of Truth into our hands. It is a privilege
that we have in our generations, and it's not simply this generation,
it has been the case now for many generations, but it was
not always the case. And we should never take for
granted the sacrifice that has been made by faithful men and
women over the centuries to put the scriptures into the hands
of the common people. And we can extrapolate this because
the sainthood of all believers is a phrase that resonates well
with Paul's comment here, all the holy brethren. And as members
together of the body of Christ, there is no one whose rights
and privileges in the faith are less than another's. We are all
important to one another. We all hurt when one hurts. We
all rejoice when one rejoices. We understand that being one
spiritual body, we move forward spiritually together and we fall
back spiritually together. Let me give just a single example
of what I mean by these points. I think it's pertinent. Some
people. There usually isn't a teaching
today in churches that we shouldn't have access to the scriptures.
But some churches, and right up to this present time, some
teach that certain doctrines ought not to be widely discussed
or widely preached. And the doctrine of grace is
a prime example. There are some who teach that
election and limited atonement and imputed righteousness and
the preservation of the saints are doctrines too deep for ordinary
Christians to cope with. And they ought to be steered
clear of for risk of the damage they might do to new or naive
believers. Well, I trust we don't hold such
a notion. Paul wrote to these new believers,
these naive believers in many senses. In chapter 1, verse 4
and 5, he wrote these words, knowing, brethren beloved, your
election of God. So Paul preached election right
in the very first paragraph of his letter. There's a resistible
grace. And in the Holy Ghost, and in
much assurance, there's perseverance of the saints and imputed righteousness. And then he continued at the
end of his letter in chapter 5 verse 9, and he says, but to obtain salvation by our
Lord Jesus Christ who died for us. There's election and there
is limited substitutionary atonement. And I think I could get a whole
bunch of tulip sermons from those verses alone. So the Apostle
Paul preached the whole counsel of God, even the deep, even the
powerful, even the mysterious doctrines. because he would have
the people well qualified and versed in these great foundational
pillars of truth. And finally, Paul's fourth verse
here, he speaks about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And in our Bibles, the last little
bit there, the first epistle to the Thessalonians was written
from Athens. That's not part of the inspired
writings of scripture, and indeed, it may even be wrong. It seems to have been from elsewhere
that this particular epistle was written. So whoever put the
gloss on that little part there didn't get it quite right, I
suspect. So the closing of the Apostles
letter is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. I'll be with you. Amen. And here
we see that The Apostle brings his epistle to a close, as he
always did, by returning to the grace of God in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He began with grace, the grace
of Christ, in 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 1, and he ends with
it in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 28. The first verse is the grace
of Christ, the last verse is the grace of Christ. And that
ought to emphasise something to us. How important that we
look always to the Lord Jesus Christ through the prism of grace. And we should not overlook the
loveliness of the title of the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son. This title contains all the glory
of sovereign grace bound up in the person of the Saviour. He
is God, the Lord. He is the one in whom dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He is God, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he is the Lord Jesus, the
man who will save his people from their sin. He is Christ,
the promised and prophesied Messiah, our Redeemer, Deliverer and King. So when the Apostle Paul writes
of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is encapsulating all
the beauty of Christ there in that one little phrase. He is
our Messiah who died for our sins according to the scriptures
and was buried and rose again the third day according to the
scriptures. And let me just say in closing
that grace will not tolerate works. They are mutually exclusive
in the matter of salvation and in the matter of our approach
to God. You cannot have salvation by
any mix of the two. Paul, as we have seen from beginning
to end, is for grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. For
by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God and not of works. So we say in closing,
thank you, Paul, for writing your letter to the Thessalonians. Thank you for the burden that
you felt for them and the affection that you conveyed to them. Thank
you for training up these young believers and for the benefit
that we have all received from your apostolic wisdom and your
calling to serve the Church of Jesus Christ by the preached
word and the written word in this way. Amen.