Turn in our Bibles to Numbers chapter 6, and then 2 Thessalonians, and let's stand together. Numbers chapter 6, again, a little different than your bulletin. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. The mistake in your bulletin is next week's readings are there for this week. This week's readings are the priestly blessing, and then the last verses of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Hear the word of the Lord. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and his son, saying, This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So they shall put my name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them. Now from 2 Thessalonians 2, beginning at verse 13. But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which he called you by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast. and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. And may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. This is the word of the Lord. The preaching of the word this morning, we're turning again to 2 Thessalonians 2, and looking at the last two verses of the chapter. I would hazard a guess that many Christians live... Some professing Christians perhaps live their whole life this way. All Christians, to some degree, we do more and less at some times or another, unaware of the grace that sustains us. Sometimes it can even happen to Presbyterians who should know better, should know much better. You could say that you could think of probably people with bad theology, with man-centered theology, with a low view of grace. What it really does, you could understand how. If you just think that grace is what you need at the beginning, and that you get yourself over the finish line, or that salvation is some of grace and some of works, whether it's Roman Catholicism or Arminianism, it would make sense then to lose sight of grace. Presbyterians pride themselves sometimes in better theology. It's a problem to deal with another time. I mean the pride part, not the careful theology part. But it is part of the human condition to think. And it's part of an ongoing temptation even for the believer to think, even subtly, that what God began, I need to finish. And maybe God opened my eyes, maybe it was sovereign grace at the beginning, that powerful unmerited favor of God that opened my eyes to see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ. But now I need to finish this thing off by my own power. Now, you might say, well, I would never say that. But you might live that way. What are some of the signs? How about this? Very little prayer. A spirit of prayerlessness would be a pretty good indicator that you didn't think you needed a lot of grace. If you're not asking God for a help, then you must think you're doing pretty good on your own. How about a low view of the means of grace? the way God communicates His grace to us. You just saw baptism and the waters of baptism flow. A few weeks ago, you were at the Lord's table. Here, you're under the preaching of the Word. Do you really think about how much you need these to grow and to keep running the race that is set before you? Do you live in a constant awareness of your need of the grace of God? The grace that he gives to us at the beginning of the Christian life, but then continues on. James chapter 4 and verse 6, there's this beautiful little phrase, but he gives more grace. That's going to be our main theme this morning, that God gives more grace, grace to run the race. A little bit of review before we get to that from verses 16 and 17, our context of the last verses of chapter 2. The biggest context, the bigger context that we're going to get to, the most broad in this sermon today is going to be from chapter 2 and verse 1. We'll start there. There's a revelation of dramatic spiritual warfare. There was a problem that could have arisen in the church at Thessalonica that some people thought that Jesus had already come and that they had missed the second coming. And Paul corrected that, you remember, by saying, no, you haven't. Here, let me teach you. the great work of Jesus Christ, the great spiritual battle of the ages. And let me remind you, as I did before, he says, that there is coming before Jesus Christ comes first, a great apostasy. And then secondly, this man of lawlessness, this Antichrist figure at the end of the age, a particular singular figure, I believe the scriptures teach, But here Paul is both telling them what will happen before Jesus Christ comes, but also he's preparing them for a life now of spiritual warfare. And he's saying you're in the midst of this warfare and it isn't finished yet. And it will finish like this and that future Second coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh to vanquish his enemies, to gather his own to himself, chapter 2 and verse 1. It's still coming. You haven't missed it. Between here and there, the warfare of the ages which will intensify greatly shortly before Jesus comes. So keep fighting the good fight. You're in a clash of spiritual kingdoms. Verse 7, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work now. The narrower context is verse 13 through 15. Against the backdrop of that great spiritual warfare of the ages, Paul makes this beautiful statement, but we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because from the beginning, God chose you for salvation. You're going to be spared. You're going to go through the crucible of this spiritual warfare, the great conflict of the ages. Paul goes on to say, rooted in the electing love of God, confirmed by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, beginning with the faith you exercise in Jesus Christ when you believe the gospel that we preach to you, and the very end, You will obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And there Paul, in a few words, talks about election, justification by faith, sanctification, and glorification. He's saying, you're going to be carried through this storm because God has saved you. You're going to be carried through this storm. You're the first fruits of a great harvest that Christ is going to bring through the ages before he comes. You are going to make it through this warfare. You have been saved. And you will obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. You will enter into glory. You will obtain the fullness of fellowship with the triune God before the presence of His throne. We are bound to give thanks to God because He has chosen you to make it through to the end. And that, these thoughts, the warfare, the so great a salvation has led Paul in verses 15 through 17 now to come to a conclusion of this section. And last week, We dug into the first part of his conclusion, verses 15 through 17. We dug into verse 15 more deeply, and we touched just for a moment on verses 16 and 17, and this week we're going to do the opposite. We're going to touch on verse 15 to keep the thought in our mind, the logic, and then we're going to dig into verses 16 and 17 more deeply. The two conclusions, or the two things that Paul has to say now, after he paints the spiritual warfare, after he declares the salvation, in verse 15, he gives a command, in verses 16 and 17, he proclaims a blessing. Now, what was that command? Therefore, brethren, stand fast, hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by our word or by our epistle. He's encouraging them. He's saying, this is your great salvation. This is what God has promised to do, rooted in His electing love, all the way to the end of the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hold on to Jesus and the salvation you've been given. Don't let go. Hold the tradition that you were taught. Take the Word, whether we preached it to you, whether we wrote it in our letter. And take the truth of the gospel, verse 14. We called you by our gospel. Stand fast and hold this gospel. Don't let go in the storm. He commands a personal, active response. The personal, active response of the believer. Not only to believe the gospel in the first place, but this gives us an indication into what faith is. Faith continues to hold on to Jesus. Not a one-time momentary act, but it is the continual disposition of the believer to hang on to Christ. Now, a few weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video, and it was a man who had decided to sign up for a glider ride in Switzerland, a hang glider ride. Some of you may have seen this video. It was a viral video for a while. And if you know anything about hang gliding, you're supposed to be, you lay in a harness, and that harness is supposed to be hooked up to the hang glider. And this man was gonna go on this ride, and there was a pilot, and if you know what a hang glider is, it's this little aluminum triangle and a wing above it. It's not a lot of room. And the man, the pilot was clipped into the hang glider, But before they went off the edge, the other man was not. And the second they got airborne, he just was hanging off the bar by his hands. Now, at that point, you can imagine that he was hanging on. And that he wasn't going to let go. Because what happened is, very soon, the pilot has to gain elevation, he's got to go over trees, and they're way up over a mountainside. If he lets go, he's going to die. And he knows, that man knows, that the only way he's going to live is if he doesn't let go. He knows that that little contraption above him is his only hope of survival. It's terrifying to watch because what happens is he begins with his arms up like this and he slowly slips down and his one hand slips off and he's hanging on to the other guy's pant leg. And they're way up. If he lets go, he's gonna die. And he lasted in that position 90 seconds. 90 seconds, a minute and a half. Minute and a half. Now, If the message of salvation of the Christian life, which was here to stand fast and hold on, if that was all you had, if that was the sum total of it, just hang on. You wouldn't even last 90 seconds. You wouldn't last at all. You would slip away. The warning of the scriptures, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. You're not as strong as you think you are. Matter of fact, we're profoundly weak. We need the grace of God, not just for 90 second intervals, we need it all the time or we'd be lost all the time. Unceasing, sovereign, keeping, preserving grace. So the command to hang on is accompanied by a blessing in verses 16 and 17. It's in the form of a prayer of the Apostle Paul for these believers. You remember who they are. They're in Thessalonica. They've embraced Jesus Christ at great cost. They've been persecuted for righteousness' sake. Some of them were dying. They were acquainted with tears and sadness. They knew what it was to count the cost to follow Jesus Christ. Paul said, here's the salvation rooted in the eternal past, all the way to the eternal future. Hang on, stand fast. But he knows that they need the grace of God in order that they might hang on. It's accompanied here with a blessing. The genre of the next statement, really, it's prayer-like. If you look at verse 13, we are bound to give thanks to God always for you. This whole section has the note of prayer in it. It's not actually actual prayer. He's saying what we are bound to do, so it's not a prayer verbatim. The genre of the statement then is, when we think of you, we give thanks to God. It's followed by the command, stand firm. And then critically, the next language in verses 16 and 17 is the language of an apostolic prayer for blessing. It's akin to a benediction, a good word. And get the idea of blessing as a genre in your mind, the blessing of God pronounced on his people. You think of Jacob and Esau. God had ordained that Jacob would be the one who had received the foremost blessing from the womb. God revealed it to Rebekah. Throughout the lives of these two men, we know that Esau, though he was born first, despised the birthright of the firstborn, and traded it for a bowl of soup, his spiritual inheritance, confirming his lack of interest in those covenant promises. However, Isaac was still determined to bless Esau anyway. And so he was going to go out, remember, Esau was going to go out and get some of the game that Isaac loved, and he was going to come back and bless him. And in between, Rebekah and Jacob took the situation into their own hands, conspiring Get that blessing on Jacob. And God, in His mercy, even used this to establish His purposes in order that Jacob might receive the blessing that had been ordained for him according to the decree of election. And Isaac blessed Jacob. He laid his hands on them and blessed them. And as he kneeled before him, think of the power of these blessings. The words spoken by God's spokesman Isaac calling for divine favor bestowed on Jacob both revealed and shaped his future. They were powerful words which declared like Jeremiah to the people of Israel in Jeremiah 29 that God had a plan and a future and a hope for Jacob. And He promised to fulfill that future. Think of the Beatitudes as Jesus proclaims blessing after blessing. Blessed are the meek. And then with that blessing is the promise that will be fulfilled. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. And this language of blessing really sets the tone and context for verses 16 and 17. And blessing is remarkable. God speaks to His people again and again with words of blessing. Think of Numbers 6 that we just read a few moments ago. Think of 2 Corinthians 13, which you often hear. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all as God places His name on His people and promises His blessing of grace. Think of the first words that God spoke to humanity, Genesis chapter 1. God made man after his image, male and female. He created them and then he blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And in the last words of the scriptures, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. The apostolic blessing, benediction, finishes the scriptures. And here, there is a prayer for such blessing on the church. Look at the prayer for a moment. First that it identifies the source of the blessing asked for and pronounced. Who does it come from? May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and our God and Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. This phrase is already packed. Our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who we can say is ours. We are His. He is ours. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The one who now lives and reigns. Who Paul saw speaking on the road through Damascus. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. Paul is pressing here on the church at Thessalonica, God's present active, particularly Jesus Christ, present active conscious interest in them, our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and then our God and Father. And here we have the Father and the Son in perfect harmony like Psalm 110, the Father's scepter wielded by the Son. Here, the Son, who is the agent of blessing, together with the Father, to do what? Don't forget that the Spirit is also in the background in verse 13, active in saving the people of God. The blessing reveals three more things about the Father and the Son. The Father, who has loved us, and that love surely goes back to the decree of election here, and that God has loved us with an everlasting love. And Paul here is just piling up words of comfort, really. He's saying, this is what I pray for you, that the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the God the Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation, never-ending comfort by His Word and Spirit, and good hope by grace, The good hope here seems to be a reference to that final hope, the great hope, the blessed hope of the second coming of Jesus. He's saying, let me tell you what the Triune God's interest is in you. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, our God and Father, who has loved you, given you everlasting consolation and good hope all the way to the end that you'll obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now comes the pronouncement of blessing. By grace, the blessing here is connected. You get the sense of the text here. From our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God the Father, who has already given us these great gifts, love, comfort, and hope. by His grace, the same grace by which first your eyes were opened in which you stand. There's a picture here that the river of that grace, that it would continue to flow. That's what Paul is praying for. Verse 17, for two things promised and given. And now we get to the present active promises of God, the blessing of God. Two things, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. He's saying, may the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God the Father, who's already given you love, everlasting consolation and hope, deepen that comfort and strengthen you in your sanctification. That's what he's saying. And he would work the comfort of the gospel deeper into your heart and strengthen you in the holy life lived to God. That's what it means, establish, strengthen. The promise here, the blessing here is that the Father and the Son would apply everlasting consolation. And the second gift promise here is divine power, strengthening power to establish you in every good word and work. Now, you're probably aware of the fact that when I gave that illustration a moment ago, I didn't tell you what happened. And it's been kind of uncomfortable for all this time. One of the heartbreaking things to watch in that short clip of 90 seconds is that the pilot realizes what's wrong, and he tries to help. He tries to grab the harness, tries to hang on, but he's trying to fly and trying to hold and trying to fly and trying to hold. And you really see two helpless people, two helpless people. He does a remarkable job. Actually, by the end, he lands the thing safely, and both of the men survive by seconds. But when you look at it, it's a picture of two people on the edge of dying with no real power in them to save themselves or anybody else. Paul's saying, not so with God. He's saying, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and our God and Father who has already given you these gifts, now, May He, by His grace, continue to comfort your hearts and establish you, strengthen you in every good word and work. And so you have two things here. You have the command, stand firm. And now you have the promise, the divine blessing of comfort and power in order that you might hang on. Some lessons for the church. First of all, the great comfort of the gospel. Notice the language of comfort here throughout this section. If you're here this morning and you're sad, God knows your deepest sadnesses. He knows them more profoundly than you know yourself. He knows sadness. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself knows sadness more than you know sadness. Some of you are having trouble believing that this morning. You think, the trial I'm going through right now, no one could understand. That would be wrong. Don't make that mistake. There's a reason why twice in this text, both in the past, And the promised blessing of the future is the past is everlasting consolation. He's given you and then by grace, he will continue to comfort your hearts. He knows why you're sad. You ever remember an old sin that you did a long time ago and you recoil with shame? How could I have ever done that? and you're heartbroken all over again. He knows that. He knows your most painful loss is Psalm 56. He stores up your tears in His bottle. Nothing misses His attention. Paul says to these Thessalonians who were losing their loved ones, perhaps to persecution, certainly to death, who so desperately needed the comfort of God, he's saying, now may God Himself visit you with that everlasting comfort, that divine comfort, the comfort of God with which we comfort others, he writes of the Corinthians. By his word and spirit, Paul here is praying that the blessing of God would be the application of gospel ointment, medication for your soul. Some of you parents, you use Neosporin or Polysporin or whatever it's called. At our house, we call it fixing cream. Because it goes on easier when we call it fixing cream than medicine especially for little ones and There is a heavenly physician Who applies the balm of the gospel again and again to our hearts in sadness and sin and Here Paul says here's the promise of God the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God the Father by grace will comfort your heart It's what he does actively and presently. How about the enabling power of the gospel promised here? If you look at the context, it's not just comforting power, it's enabling power. And establish you in every good word and work. What is he interested in? Establish here means to strengthen so that you are Like the wise man who built his house on the rock, unmoved in the storms of life. But for what reason unmoved? He's actually talking about a growing commitment to holiness. To not be moved or swayed by temptations. He's talking about sanctification. He's saying establish you in every good word and work. in a life of obedient service to Christ. That's what he talked about earlier. He's saying that you were chosen for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. He's talking about the active reality of the regenerated, now living believer holding on to Christ and living for His glory. And he's saying, I am praying that this blessing would rest upon you, that God would strengthen you for every good word and work, that you'd be stronger every day, in your obedience to Christ. You know when some people buy a house, they buy a fixer-upper, they move in. Maybe I said this last week, I can't remember. It gets worse. Some people buy a fixer-upper and they make it better, right? Some people transform what they own. They work to maintain and beautify and improve. It's actually interesting as an aside that When the apostle commends the women in the church to Titus to be workers at home, to be homemakers, this is a very high calling. To beautify, to reorder, to make a safe place of rest and peace, of comfort, home. In John 14, 23, The section where Jesus is teaching about the ministry of the Spirit, he reminds us that part of the Spirit's work, well, the Spirit's work is not only to regenerate us, to make us alive, to be our helper and to be our comforter, ministry of the Spirit and comfort already promised here, but also to make our homes a fit habitation for the Father and the Son, to transform. The Holy Spirit is the divine homemaker. He makes the temples of our hearts holy. Transforms them. So that we live more and more to Christ. So that the triune God who inhabits eternity would have a home in our hearts. That we would be renovated and conform more and more to the image of Christ. we would live new holy lives. And the promise here is not only the power of God for comfort, but the power of God in order that your heart and your life would be, your heart would be a fit habitation for God. For God Himself. He's praying for power for a total internal renovation. He's praying that we would live out of our union with Christ. He is the vine, we are the branches. And that there would be, by divine power, something new in us. New life. Particularly, what is He interested in? That you'd be strengthened in every good word and good work. He's getting very practical here what he's praying for. This isn't complicated. He's praying that you, rooted and grounded in the eternal electing love of God, being sanctified by the Spirit, united to Christ by faith, hoping for that blessed hope, the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, that your words and your actions would manifest the new life that God gives. Very practical. Good words. My counseling here at Covenant, and also sadly in my own heart and life too often, is it not true that the words we've been using have not been what they should be? They've not been words that are seasoned with salt, that give grace to the hearers, Colossians 4. But instead, so often we, by our words, have quenched the spirit. Paul is praying that the salvation that we so praise God for, give thanks to God for, would actually be worked out, not only in comforted hearts, everybody wants that, but in new words, a new way of speaking to one another, new life, new patterns. He's praying that the things you say to each other would change, new words and new works. He's also praying that you would have obedience to Christ, an obedient life, that you would say, look at the end of verse 17, Christ, you are my king, command me, I am here to do what you will. I want my life to be a ceasing, unceasing flow of good works to the glory of God. Now what a shame it would be this week if nothing changed. Spiritual warfare of the ages. We thank God that out of His electing love, He has brought you from a state of condemnation to salvation. that He's given you His Spirit in your heart, that He has given you the gift of faith to believe the gospel in the first place, that He has given you a hope that transcends all the tears and sufferings of this life, that you will obtain the glory of God, that He's called you to stand firm and hold fast to Jesus Christ and this eternal hope, and then that He has promised Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and our God and Father, listen carefully, to give you everything you need to wipe away your tears, hold fast to Christ, and live a holy life manifested in a changed way of speaking and new obedience. What a shame it would be if we like as Paul said, Stephen rather preached on in Acts chapter 7, if we resisted the Holy Spirit and went back to the way we used to be. With this kind of promise, with this kind of blessing, here's the point of question. What are you waiting for, for repentance? Because you have everything you need in Christ to live a new life. You have the interest of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God the Father together with their promised power for blessing, comfort, and strength for every good word and work. Finally, the gospel of sovereign grace. Do you remember when you were a little child, if you had a loving father or mother, what it meant for you to be in your parents' arms? Do you remember that? When your tears flowed and they held you close, they comforted you. When you were injured and weak and scared, they picked you up. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in Deuteronomy 33, 27, where Moses is giving his last words to the people of Israel, and then he reminds them of Jeshurun. He calls them by that name for Israel, and then he says this, that God is your refuge. And then this little phrase, underneath are the everlasting arms. What Paul is saying here is, underneath are the everlasting arms. He's saying, you, if you just had to hang on, you'd slip away, you wouldn't make it. But the promise of the gospel is for the whole thing. that he who began a good work in you would be faithful to bring it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus. And everything you need between here and there, he gives. Comfort and strength. If you were to sum up this benediction, this prayer for blessing at the end of this chapter, Paul is saying to the Thessalonians, now hear me. You're in the warfare, but underneath are the everlasting arms. Trust. You're God. You wouldn't last 90 seconds without this grace. With it, you'll make it to the very end. Let's pray. Our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for these blessings to you, the God who has loved us given us everlasting consolation and good hope, and who by grace continues to comfort our hearts and establish us in every good word and work. Lord, we pray that you would help us to see both your grace at the beginning of the Christian life throughout and all the way to the end. We pray again this morning for new power to live, believing that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, that he who abides in you, Lord Jesus, bears much fruit. To think on the reality that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Lord, to take to heart the command to hold fast, knowing that even as we cling to you, that indeed your promise is that underneath, are the everlasting arms. Lord, we pray that you would help us begin not only with this prayer, but throughout this week with new prayerful dependence on you. Lord, that the fruit would be quiet, calm hearts, the repudiation of sinful and angry words. Lord, the repudiation of disobedience and the embrace of a life that brings glory to you in everything. So we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.