2 Thess. 3:1-5 “Passion For the Gospel”

1:30About the glories of Brookshire Brothers. Now, you know what happened? They all looked at us like we were stupid. They're like, we know you're a Yankee, but what's wrong with you? So, if you haven't been to the Brookshire Brothers, it's real nice here in College Station. It's not like the Brookshire Brothers, other places. You know, I went to the one in Navasota, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it now. Right? So, the Brookshire Brothers here in town is real nice. So, go check it out. They didn't give me any money for that, by the way. So, but the point of that story is that when you experience something exciting, you want to tell your friends about it. And the main point, like if you get nothing else out of the sermon today, feel free not to tune out after this meeting point, though, is that the gospel is an exciting thing, and you should be passionate about the spread of the gospel.

2:29You should be passionate about the spread of the gospel, even more so than I was excited about the coffee bar at the Brookshire Brothers. You hate coffee. And I hate coffee. Yes, thanks, Austin. Okay, so. Verse 1. Verse 1: Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you. So, Paul's prayer request there in verse 1 is primarily about the spread of the gospel. And so. There's a very simple application, right? The simple application for us today is that we should be praying for the spread of the gospel. We should be praying for evangelists, we should be praying for missionaries, we should be praying for our pastors, we should be praying for ourselves that the gospel may spread. You know, Paul reminds the Thessalonians that the gospel was honored among them, and he wants and we should want the gospel to be honored here and around the world.

3:28Now, we have some things to help with that, right? So, we have prayer cards for our missionaries, we have our weekly prayer sheet and church center, and also Pastor Alan and I will be handing them out as you leave the service today. So, pick one of those up. Take time to pray for missionaries, for pastors. That's one thing that we do as a family at breakfast time. We have devotions, and then we pray together, and so we have like that little set of cards for missionaries on a little hook in our eating area, in our kitchen. And so, I'd encourage you really to be about praying for the spread of the gospel.

4:07So, a question that you could ask yourself is: Is your heart's primary desire, is our heart's primary desire for the spread of the gospel? In Romans 9:1 through 4, Paul is going to talk about his heart for his fellow Jews, and that's on the screen there. I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow. Unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. Listen to Paul's passion there. Now, I'm not real convinced that I would say, gosh, I'm willing to be cut off from Christ for the sake of, well, anybody.

5:02But Paul has such passion for his fellow Jews and for the spread of the gospel that he says, like, I would be willing if it were possible to be cut off from Christ so that they might come to faith. And so I think that's a real challenge to me and perhaps to you that we should, in fact, be really passionate about the people around us and them coming to faith in the gospel. And we should pray for God to increase our love for the lost. In 1 Thessalonians 3:12, which we went through a little bit earlier this summer, Paul says, May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all men. And we should pray that we would abound in love for one another and for all men that they would all come to faith.

5:51There are basically three prerequisites for those applications that I've talked about so far. And the first is you really have to believe the gospel. You really have to believe the gospel. And believe is a term that I think has lost some meaning in the church. And so sometimes we think about believing in terms of intellectual assent to facts. Like, I believe that the nation was founded in 1776. That doesn't really have a big impact. It's like an intellectual assent to factor. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

6:33Okay. But when the gospels, when the New Testament talks about this notion of belief, it's really this notion that you're all in, that you're invested. Are you really all in for Jesus? So belief, if we want to see a couple of examples of belief, look at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're asked, like, hey, you should bow down to the golden idol. You should bow down to the golden idol. And what do they say? They say, no.

7:06Now, I imagine that it would be tempting to be like, well, I'll just bow down, but that won't mean anything. Like, I know that there's a real God, so I'll just do this thing. I'll just get along. But they're like, no, they are willing to be thrown into the fiery furnace because they're all in for God. Their belief really matters and has. Impact in their life. And so you should think about like, how do things, you know, how has your life changed because of your belief in Jesus? Are you really all in for Christ? Now, one of the ways that our family, I like to think, is all in with the gospel is when it came time for us to have children. We were unable to have children the old-fashioned way. And so, you could ask your parents later what that means.

8:02But, you know, there's these old timey stories. No, just kidding. So we decided, you know, I'd read James, and James says, pure and undefiled religion is caring for widows and orphans in their distress. And so I said to myself, well, who are the orphans in distress of the United States of America and their children in the foster system? So we have a couple kids right now from the foster system. So that's point number one, of the prerequisites. You really have to believe the gospel has to have an impact in your life. And point number two is you have to believe that there's no hope apart from the gospel. Right? It's not like, well, you know, Jimmy Bob's a good guy. I'm sure it'll all work out fine for him, even though he doesn't believe. Or, yeah, you know, Sally worships a fake God, but it'll all be okay.

8:58No, really, the gospel says that there's. No harp, no hope, there's no other name by which men must be saved but the name of Jesus. And so, then, number three is that you need to be personally involved in the spread of the gospel. You know, who are you praying for in your life who doesn't know Jesus? Nicole and I have several people that we're praying for that we've been praying for for you know months, perhaps even years. And you may actually not even see the impact of those prayers. I was a professor at the United States Air Force Academy for a number of years. I was involved in a campus ministry called the Officers Christian Fellowship. And I talked to some number of students, like I'm not, you know, I'm not Billy Graham by any stretch of the imagination.

9:47I talked to some number of students about Jesus, and usually it seemed like nothing was happening. And one day I got down to Wichita Falls, Texas. And I think this was actually God sort of encouraging me in my sharing the gospel. I get down to Wichita Falls, Texas, to visit a friend who was an officer in the Air Force flying planes. And I meet this guy who's a navigator staff person there. And he thinks I'm a rock star. I'm like, what? Because what happened was like there were a number of these cadets who would go down and they would do pilot training. Wichita Falls, Texas, and they'd become Christians through his ministry in Wichita Falls, Texas. And so he'd talk to them about, like, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they'd be like, oh, you know, there was this guy back at the Air Force Academy, Doc, that's what they called me.

10:46And he talked to me about Jesus, but I kind of blew him off. But he was a, you know, he was a guy, and like, he had an impact in my life. There you go. So you may not see that thing. We're in a college town. There may be people that you have opportunity to share the gospel with who will just go off and you will never know. But I would encourage you to do that. You may have had a significant impact in these people's lives that will bear fruit later. So if you're discouraged in your evangelism, like there may be fruit that you just don't see.

11:19So be about sharing the gospel. Who are you inviting to fellowship nights at church? It's a great opportunity to get people to see Christian community. Who are you inviting to your life group? Who are you talking to about what's really going on in their lives? You know, sometimes people come to faith because they go through a crisis. And who's a person that they feel comfortable talking to about what's really going on? I'm now a professor here at Texas AM. And one of the things that I do to try to get to know students is I invite people to have lunch with me or sometimes dinner. And I announce it like at the beginning of the semester: like, hey, if you're interested, I'm a I eat lunch every day, would love to eat lunch with you. Nobody ever takes me up on that right away because that's weird, by the way. Apparently, I figured this out. Like, nobody wants to have lunch with their professor.

12:11But, like, sometime later in the semester, they'll figure out, oh, you know, this guy says he's okay. Like, maybe I'll try this out. And so people will have lunch with me. And sometimes, you know, students just want to talk about their internship or they just want to talk about what classes they should take or their career goals. And that's great, and I'm happy to do that. And sometimes people are interested in getting to know me a bit more personally. And so they'll ask questions like, hey, you know, I heard you say in class that you had kids and you foster, like, why do you do that? And so then I have an opportunity to talk about the gospel. Or they'll say, like, why did you become a professor? And if you don't know, the reason I became a professor was because I really, really, really wanted to be a campus pastor. That was my big goal in life. But as I thought about this and prayed about this, I realized like I would be the worst campus pastor ever because I'm like incredibly socially awkward and have like no social skills. I'm a little better now. I'm actually, you know, it's been over 20 years. I'm improving.

13:17But if you like, picture like the most geeky nerd, awkward, that was me. And so, you know, as I thought about this and prayed about this, I was like, well, I'm good at school. I'm really good at school. I could go get a PhD, and then I could work with people who have social skills, and I could try to make a difference on campus for Christ. So, anyway, who knew that was going to be so funny?

13:48All right, so verse 2. Verse 2: We may be delivered from wicked and evil men for not all have faith. Paul is asking for prayers secondarily about his own protection from evil. Now, we've already heard preach that Paul was there for three weeks before he got chased off out of town, right? That there was persecution. And there are and were religious leaders, government officials, influential people who made life hard. I mean, consider Paul himself, right? Before he came to Christ, he was going around rounding up people to be arrested, right? He was holding the coats when they stoned Stephen. So, there are definitely people who are opposed to the gospel of Christ.

14:38I was up in Colorado recently for a 50-year celebration of the Officers' Christian Fellowship Ministry at the Air Force Academy. And I got to meet the son of one of the cadets that I spent considerable time with. And he said that he was reluctant to join the military. He was reluctant to join the military because he was afraid he'd get kicked out for not calling somebody by the name. Desired pronoun. And, you know, I said to him, like, there was a couple things. And one was like, maybe you should be willing to go to a hard place so that you can talk to people there about the gospel. I don't think that we should be afraid to go to hard places to talk about the gospel. And, you know, I sort of challenged him and how he thought about people who might have different pronouns that they wanted to use about themselves. And, you know, these are people who need love and concern.

15:33But there does seem to be a notion that people feel somewhat embattled in the church in the United States today. I was reading in the New York Times, Tish Warren was interviewing Russell Moore. And so she asks, why do certain evangelicals feel so embattled now? And Russell Moore answered, Some of it is a response to legitimate fears. There are many people in American life who assume that religion itself is oppressive and should be done away with. And there is a general sense of crisis and decline in American life, and it's translated into religious terms. In many cases, I would not disagree with the diagnosis about some of the things that are wrong. What I would disagree with is the sense of futility and giving up on what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. I would also point to the decline in personal evangelism. When you have people who are trained to share the gospel with their neighbors, they have an understanding from the very beginning that people in my Community aren't my enemies. They're my mission field. This changes the way that you see people. When that starts to diminish, there's a lack of confidence and a frantic looking about for whatever tool is at hand. Ideological zealotry becomes the tool at hand. I mentioned in the book how many pastors are referencing Jesus' call to turn the other cheek, only to have blowback from people in their congregation because they say that doesn't work in times like these. The assumption is that we're in a hostile culture as opposed to a neutral culture. As though the Sermon of the Mount was delivered in Maybury, not ancient Rome. And the assumption also shows a lack of confidence in the means that God has given us to advance the church through proclamation and demonstration. End quote. Paul was not averse to going places that he thought he might experience persecution. In Acts 21, which will be on the screen here, while we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabas came down from Judea, and coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, Thus says the Holy Spirit, This is how the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said, Let the will of the Lord be done.

18:05Rather, the protection from evil that Paul is asking for is again about the spread of the gospel. He's not particularly concerned about his own life, but he is concerned about the spread of the gospel, and he wants prayer for his protection so that he can continue to do so. Now, I expect most of us do not experience significant persecution for our faith. There are people who oppose the gospel. As I mentioned, I was a professor at the Air Force Academy, and there was a big scandal at the Air Force Academy in roughly 2004-2005 timeframe about evangelicals forcing their faith upon others.

18:51And one day I got a call from a guy who had been in my freshman Bible study at Princeton. And he's like, Hey, long time, you know, blah, blah, blah, catch up, catch up. Oh, by the way, I'm a reporter for Time magazine, and I want to interview you about the scandal at the Air Force Academy. So they published an article, Whose God is Their Pope Co-Pilot. You can Google it, it's still there. And basically, there was a lot of heat.

19:30There was a particular graduate of the Air Force Academy who was very vehemently opposed to Christianity and was going about making life hard, filing complaints about one individual after another at the Air Force Academy that he thought was using their position unlawfully to force people to faith. And so there were policies that were coming down from the Pentagon about how we could practice our faith that were unhelpful. Let's just say that. After my experience with Time magazine, I actually got a call from Rolling Stone magazine. Like, who knew I was so hip? I, you know, I was like.

20:25So, you know, I said to the guy, like, Rolling Stone, like, why is Rolling Stone going to cover this? Like, but apparently, Rolling Stone had a religion reporter. And actually, our head for the Officers Christian Fellowship of the Air Force Academy was like, we should not interview with Rolling Stone. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, that's a terrible idea. If we don't do this interview, they'll put in print that we refuse to talk to them, and they'll use that to make us look bad. So I had, you know, dinner with this guy over at Subway. He was well prepared. He'd found some Bible study. Written by some OCF member somewhere in the world that was on spiritual warfare. He lifted a quote of it out of context and says to me, What do you think about this? And I was like, Well, you know, I'd kind of like to see the whole thing before I comment. He's like, Are you accusing me of taking this out of context? I'm like, No, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'd just kind of like to see the whole thing before I comment. And then I, you know, said some things about how our battle is not against flesh and blood, it's against the rulers and principalities in the heavenly realm. And, you know, then he went with me to the Bible study I was leading. And bless his heart, one of my cadets felt conviction by the Holy Spirit to share that night a sin he was struggling with in front of the Rolling Stone reporter.

21:55And, you know, there's a part of me, I'm going to have to say, there's a part of me that's sad that I was never quoted in Rolling Stone magazine. But apparently, I was so boring and inoffensive that he couldn't even write an article. So we can and should pray that we would not suffer, but we should be also willing to suffer for the cause of Christ. You know, in Acts 5, the apostles are flogged, and then as they left the Sanhedrin, what do they do? They rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And when we do read about or experience governments or people mistreating Christians, we still, we still need to, as Jesus said, pray for our enemies. And as Paul reminds us in Romans, submit to the governing authorities. And this is not easy, right? It's easy to think like, we should fight evil with evil, right? But we should fight evil with good. We should love our enemies and we should pray for them. And we should keep in mind that God can change evil men into good by the gospel. Look at the Apostle Paul, right, who is the fiercest of opponents to Christianity. And we should not consider anyone beyond the power of the gospel.

23:14So verse 3: The Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one. God is going to make our faith strong in the face of trials. In the parable of the sower, Matthew 13, 20 and 21, which should be on your screen, as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures it for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. And also in James chapter 1, verses 2 through 4, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness. Have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So, we should expect that God will make our faith strong in the face of trials. Some of you have been here for more than a year or two and saw our family walk through the situation with Bo.

24:24And so, you know, originally we had believed that we would be able to adopt Bo. The state found a relative in Alaska and then became convinced that was the right answer for him. We did a lot of praying, and it looked like, it looked like for a time God was going to answer those prayers. We managed to make it to the year point, which is when we were able to hire lawyers. But then things got dark and ugly, and things got dark and ugly, and that was a very hard time for our family.

25:06And in the face of hard times, like there are things you can do. You can give up on the faith, or you can push in. You can push into God. And God will, in fact, strengthen us in the face of trials. And also, you know, this is something that we should think about with regards to temptation. So, temptation can be a trial to turn us away from the faith. And God will make us strong in the face of temptation.

25:37We are promised in Corinthians that no temptation has overtaken us except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but he will provide a way out. Verse 4. Verse 4. We have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command. Paul's confident in the Thessalonian believers, despite the fact that he was only there for those three weeks. He's about to talk to them. I'll foreshadow, that's the sign of a good plot. Foreshadow that sermon next week. He's going to talk to them about idleness, and he's confident that he's going to follow their commands. The assumption here is that we as Christians will follow God's commands. And again, I'll emphasize this point that the Christian faith and walk is not about intellectual assent to a set of principles about God and Jesus. It's about being all in for Jesus. Now, one of the things that I teach at Texas AM is propositional logic. And so I'm going to drag you through some propositional logic this morning. So first off, I'm going to make a statement. And you're going to have to believe this statement is true. I'm not trying to trick you with this statement. So if it is raining, then the sidewalk is wet. Like nobody's put up a tent. Right, like no, no, nothing up my sleeves. If it's raining, then the sidewalk is wet. Are you with me so far? Okay, so then the new next thing that I usually do is I ask my students, what do we conclude if the sidewalk is wet? And so someone will invariably pipe up and say, it's raining. And I will tell them, no, you have made a logical fallacy. I could be washing my car right now. Right? So this is the law of the contrapositive. That's not super important. But what is important is that this gives us an analogy to the relationship between faith and works. Right? If we see lots of good works in somebody's life, if the sidewalk is wet, we cannot conclude that it is raining, that there is faith. But what do we conclude if the sidewalk is dry? Feel free to shout it out. It's not raining. It's not raining.

28:00See, I told you they might talk back. Okay, so. Yay! Yay! I come from an older Southern Baptist tradition where they say like amen during the sermon to like encourage the pastor along. So you sort of wish for that sometimes. There's just like courage. All right, Pastor Alan doesn't want that. But if the sidewalk is dry, then we know it's not raining. If there is no works, If there is no change in your life, if the gospel does not change who you are and how you live, then you do not have faith. I don't care what intellectual principles you say you assent to, if that does not really result in a changed life, then you do not have faith. And what about those commands of God? Do we consider them a joy, or do we consider them a burden? 1 John 5:3, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Or also Psalm 1, verses 1 and 2: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

29:24Verse 5: May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. There's a desire for the Thessalonian believers to grow in love and in steadfastness of Christ. So, you know, my best friend recently got a girlfriend. And that's, you know, that's kind of exciting. But imagine he comes to me and he's like, well, I have a girlfriend, so I want to know how to do this well. And I'm like, okay, well, let's work out it. Strategy. So, like, you know, every four weeks you need to buy her flowers, and like, you know, every two weeks you need to take her to a nice restaurant to dinner. And oh, you probably should text her on Tuesdays to let her know that you're thinking about her. Like, you're all laughing because that's like stupid, right? So, that's like not how you do relationships. I think sometimes we approach our relationship with God in that sort of like to-do-list kind of fashion in a way that we wouldn't in our other relationships in life.

30:37And so, we should think about like how do we grow in love of God? How do we grow in steadfastness of Christ? What's God's part in this? What's our part in this? And so, one of the things that we should be doing is we should be committing to spending time regularly in prayer in the Word. So, let's look at Ephesians 6, verses 10 through 18. Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up a whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand. In the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. So I usually, when I talk to students, I give them like several principles. The first principle that I give students about living the Christian life is give God your first and your best. And you should have time that you spend, preferably daily, with Jesus.

32:29Spend time in the Word, spend time in prayer, and you should make a plan for that. And so, you know, you can read some of the older saints who say, you know, like, well, you know, I had so much to do that I needed to spend two hours in prayer in the morning before. And you might think, like, okay, I'm going to commit to spending two hours in prayer every morning. And then you'll probably last about a day, maybe two, or a week. And then you'll be like, I'm super tired.

33:00Like, and you give up. So, I encourage people to make, like, start with small attainable goals. If you currently do not spend any time reading the Bible and praying, maybe you want to commit to like five minutes a day. If you want to grow in that, maybe you can expand that time or you can like bring in new resources. So, let's talk about some resources that are available to you. So, we have the Dwell app, which you can get where you can have the Word of God read to you. That's something that Nicole and I do at night.

33:34We have devotional guides that we use with our family in the morning, in addition to our personal times. You could also think about music and other podcasts or media that could help you and your family be more in love with God and more grounded in His Word. We love Slugs and Bugs. Slugs and Bugs has these Sing Through the Bible CDs. They don't pay me for this announcement either. Where you just hear the Word of God in song, and there are lots of verses that we as a family know because of that. There's Seeds Family Worship that does something very similar. We have lots of great sermons that you can get off the internet, including those from here. We do make those available on the internet, right? Yes, we do. Okay. We have a DVD series, What's in the Bible, with Buck Denver, which is from the guy who did Veggie Tales.

34:30Those are great, and you can have, like, you know, a pirate's guide to church history and whatnot. So, there are lots of things that you can do to really grow in your love and passion for God and for His Word. And so, I would encourage you to look into those resources. Now, in conclusion, I want to remind you of what was the big picture point. Like, if you get to lunch, you're like, What was Marty talking about anyway? The big picture thing that I want you to take away and think about is: Are you passionate about the spread of the gospel? And how can you grow in being passionate about the spread of the gospel? All right, let's pray together.

35:11God, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the opportunity that we have to come and worship you freely. Lord, I pray that you would work in us to make us more passionate about you, to be more passionate about sharing the gospel with people around us. We pray that you would give us courage in that, that you'd be showing us opportunities to talk to people about Jesus. Lord, we pray for our missionaries, for our pastors. We pray that you would help them and that you would protect them from opposition, that you would bring them to people who you have chosen, and that they would see people come to faith.

35:54God, we thank you for all of these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.