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WHOLLY HOLY

Paul’s First Letter, Part 7

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

February 18, 2007

Pastor Bob Sanders

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 (Today’s New International Version)

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

    16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

    19 Do not put out the Spirit's fire. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject whatever is harmful.

    23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

    25 Brothers and sisters, pray for us. 26 Greet all God's people with a holy kiss. 27 I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters.

    28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Important Endings

This morning we come to the end of our sermon series on Paul’s first letter – 1 Thessalonians.  How something ends can be very important.  Take the final resolution of a Beethoven symphony, or the closing scene of a Hitchcock movie, or the last paragraph of a story by O. Henry.  The ending is crucial.  The same can be said in our personal relationships.  How we close a letter to a friend, how we say goodbye to someone we care about who’s moving away, or the final words we share with a loved one who is dying – these endings are more precious and more important than words can tell.

I find the ending of this letter very significant.  As we’ve seen, it was a wonder of God’s grace that the church in Thessalonica survived at all.  Paul came and preached the gospel there and a congregation was formed from who responded to his message.  Paul remained with them for a time, but then he was forced to flee for his life and these new Thessalonian believers were left on their own.  And Paul is very concerned for them.  Will they continue to stand firm in the Lord?  Will they grow and mature into the people God wants them to be?  Or will the pressures around them and the uncertainties within them cause them to abandon their commitment to Christ?

These were the issues that prompted to Paul to write this letter.  He wants to strengthen this little band, to put fresh courage into them.  And so in chapter one instead pointing out their problems Paul affirms the good things God is doing in and through them.  In chapters two and three he reminds them of his love for them and prays their love for each other will increase.  In chapter four he tackles some of the tough practical issues they face – like how Christians deal with sex and how we face death.  And finally in chapter five, as we saw last week, he reaffirms the Lord Jesus is coming again and calls them to live in light of that great hope.

As he wraps up his letter in our passage today, Paul reminds me of an anxious parent saying goodbye to a son or daughter who’s about to leave home.  There’s so much he wants to tell them, but so little time.  So he rattles off this list of things he wants them to remember and to do.  There are over 20 commands in these 17 verses.  First, he reminds them to love and respect their leaders.  Then, to take special care with those in the congregation who are having a tough time – those who are unemployed or disheartened or weak. 

And then in verses 16 and following he really speeds up, and we have this staccato burst of short commands:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. . . Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.  Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject whatever is harmful.

Then, suddenly, he stops.  He realizes that if these people are going to make it what they need is not more apostolic advice.  What they need is the power of God.  What they need is prayer.  So Paul ends this letter with a brief but wonderfully comprehensive prayer.  Look at verses 23 and 24, highlighted on your bulletin cover:

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.  May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Like a parent, there was only so much Paul could do for them.  He could love them and encourage them.  He could teach them and guide them.  But at the end of the day only God can make them into the people, the church, God wants them to be.  And I suspect the greatest thing Paul did for them was right here when he prayed for them. 

A Pastor’s Praying

And I suspect that’s the greatest thing I or any other pastor can do for you – to pray for you, to lift you up by name before God, to ask God to make you the person he wants you to be.  You may not know it, but one of my major responsibilities as your pastor is to pray for you.  Our Presbyterian Book of Order has a lengthy section describing the duties of a pastor.  It says I’m supposed to study, teach, and preach the Word.  I’m to administer the sacraments: baptism and communion.  I’m to encourage you in your worship, equip you for your personal ministries, provide pastoral care, and participate in governing bodies of the church.  But then comes this important and often overlooked item: “The pastor is responsible . . . for praying with and for the congregation.” 1

Part of my job as your pastor is to pray regularly and faithfully for each of you.  That’s a high privilege and, given the fact that there are some 1,500 of you, an enormous challenge.  It’s interesting to me that in over 30 years of pastoral ministry this has never come up on an annual review.  I’ve been asked about my preaching style, my management skills, my theological conviction.  But I’ve never been asked by a personnel committee or by a Presbytery official: “So, how’s your praying?  What steps are you taking to fulfill your pastoral duty to pray for your people?”

It’s something I work on, because it doesn’t come easily or naturally to me.  Over the years I’ve used a variety of techniques.  I have a prayer schedule and I pray through different aspects of our life together over the course of a week.  I keep a prayer list of those who are going through especially tough times (a number of you have been on that list).  From time to time I take out our photo directory and pray through a few pages of faces and names.  One of my goals is to encourage our church officers, our elders and deacons, to spend a little less time on budgets and policies, and a little more time praying for our people by name – and I know that’s what a lot of elders and deacons want to do.

How do we do that?  How do we pray effectively for people, some of whom we know and some of whom we don’t?  Do we just rattle off names and say, “God bless this one.  God bless that one.”?  How do we pray for those around us? 

Over the years, I’ve found Paul’s prayers to be a helpful tool.  Paul prays in just about every one of his letters and he always prays for big things – for a deeper experience of Christ, for spiritual power to do ministry, for courage to face evil, for perseverance through tough times.  Paul has this passion for the spiritual welfare of the people he loves, and I’ve found that Paul’s prayers give me a template for my own praying.  I take one of Paul’s prayers and I insert the names of the folks I’m praying for into the specific requests Paul is making. 2  That’s what I’ve been doing with this closing prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5.  Let me show you what I mean.

More Like Jesus

Look at how Paul begins: “May God himself, the God of peace sanctify you through and through.”  Not, “May God make you happy and healthy.”  Not, “May God make you successful and pain free.”  It’s “May God sanctify you.”  That literally means, “May God make you holy – glorious and whole and beautiful and joyful.”  It means, “May God make you more and more into the person he wants you to be – more, in fact, like Jesus himself.” 

And I pray that for you – as a congregation and for the people on my various lists.  “May God sanctify you: make you holy, make you more like Jesus.”

It sounds so pious and religious, but in fact it’s a very radical, very dangerous prayer.  It’s asking God to do whatever he has to do to shape and mold us into the image of his Son.  It’s not a prayer to take away the tough times, the painful times.  It’s a prayer that we’ll be able to get through those tough times, to be able to say, as Jesus did, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”  It’s not a prayer to change the outward circumstances.  It’s a prayer to change our inward character as we go through those circumstances.  “May God sanctify you and make you more like Jesus.”  I’ll be honest with you: praying like that for people may very well lead them into deeper pain and struggle.  If God is going to sanctify them, make them more like Jesus, it may mean taking up a cross, or working through some broken stuff in their lives, or getting personally involved with the pain of others. 

But I believe this is what God wants to do in our lives.  I believe God is absolutely committed to making us more like Jesus.  More gracious and genuine, less self-absorbed, more forgiving, more effective in our caring.  More like Jesus in our compassion for the hurting, the lonely, the hard-to-love people we all deal with.  This is God’s stated goal for you and me – that we become more like Jesus Christ – conformed to his image (see Romans 8:29), changed into his likeness (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).  So Paul prays for the Thessalonians, and so we pray for one another: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.  May he make you more like Jesus, whatever it takes.”

In His Grip

And then Paul prays (verse 23 again), “May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Once again, notice he doesn’t pray, “May you be kept free from pain, free from problems.”  That’s how we tend to pray for loved ones.  But not Paul.  Paul prays, “May God keep you – every part of you – in his grip, and bring you safely home no matter what you have to go through.”  And I pray that for you.  I pray that every part of your life will be given to God.  Your spirit, yes, but also your soul and your body.  Every part of you.  Your job, your finances, your social life, your marriage and family relationships, your dreams, your successes, your failures – all given to God. 

And I pray that through it all, God will keep you.  I love the promise of Psalm 121: “The Lord is your keeper . . . He will keep your life.  The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.”

That’s what Paul is praying – that the Lord will keep us, hang on to us, never let us go – even when we wander off, even when we try to run away, even when we’re hurting or angry or feel utterly alone.  “May God keep you – spirit, soul, and body – until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”  Go and see the movie, and those words will take on still greater meaning.  God’s grace is amazing because it can save any of us.  God’s grace is amazing because it finds us and forgives us, claims us and cleans us up.  But it’s also amazing because it keeps us.  It holds on to us.  It’s why I love the third verse best of all:

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far

And grace will lead me home.

God’s grace saves us.  And God’s grace keeps us – all the way home.

The Invisible Companion

A couple weeks ago in my sermon on facing death I closed by reading a paragraph from one of C.S. Lewis’ books, the Chronicles of Narnia.  And I was delighted to learn that a number of you have started reading them (or re-reading them).  They are wonderful stories for children, yes, but also for adults.  I read them for the first time during Christmas break of my final year at Princeton Seminary – all seven books in about ten days.  I learned more about Christology – more about the person and work of Jesus Christ – from the Chronicles of Narnia than from all I’d read and heard to that point at seminary.

In the fifth book, The Horse and His Boy, Lewis gives us a picture of God’s keeping power.  The hero of the story is a boy named Shasta.  Traveling alone and at night along a perilous mountain trail, Shasta discovers that in the midst of darkness and danger he is not alone.  His unseen companion turns out to be none other than the great lion, Aslan – the central figure of the Narnia stories, and one of the most winning portraits of Jesus you’ll find in all literature.  Let me read of Shasta’s discovery:

Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him.  It was pitch dark and he could see nothing.  And the Thing (or Person) was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls.  His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale, and Shasta got the impression that it was a very large creature.  And he had come to notice this breathing so gradually that he had really no idea how long it had been there.  It was a horrible shock.

He bit his lip in terror.

“Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.

“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing.  Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep . . .

“Who are you?” asked Shasta.

“Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost.  But a new and different sort of trembling came over him.  Yet he felt glad too. 3

The invisible companion.  The One who walks beside us, even when we can’t see him, and keeps us from falling.  The One who has waited long for us to speak.  The One to whom Paul prays: “Lord, keep them.  Walk beside them, even when they can’t see you.  Hold them tight, even when they wander off and don’t let them stray too far.”

Think of your children.  Think of your friends.  Think of the people seated around you this morning, whether you know them or not.  Think of yourself.  Every one of us needs to be prayed for in this way.  Some of us are feeling alone.  Or afraid.  Or angry.  Or abandoned.  Some of us are wandering.  Some of us are dangerously close to the edge.  That’s why Paul’s words are so helpful as we pray for each other: “May God keep you – every part of you – in his loving grip, now and always.”

He Is Faithful

Paul closes this brief prayer with a wonderful promise (verse 24): “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

Would you read those words aloud with me now?  “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

That’s how we ought to end every prayer we pray.  Every time we ask for help – for ourselves, for those we love, for our church, for our mission partners, for our world – before we close, before we say “Amen,” we ought to pause a moment and remind ourselves that “The one who calls us is faithful, and he will do it.”

What an incentive to keep praying!  God is utterly faithful.  God is completely reliable.  He is the One who calls us into this new relationship.  He is the One who began this good work in us.  And he is the One who will one day bring it to final completion.  He will make us more and more like Jesus Christ.  He will keep us – spirit, soul and body – to the very end. 

Whatever you’re going through today, whatever your loved ones are going through – may this promise sink deep into every troubled heart, every anxious mind.  The God who calls us is faithful, and he will do it.  Amen.

Let’s follow Paul’s example as we pray for one another.

1. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II, Book of Order 2005-2007, G-6.0202b.
2. For more on this use of Paul’s prayers, see Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Zondervan, 2006), p.177.
3. C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy, pp.155-159, passim.