Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

Prayer has a way to reveal our hearts, doesn’t it?

Here’s some prayers by some children that I found online that you may find enlightening, revealing what’s on their hearts.

“Dear God, my Mom tells me that you have a reason for everything on Earth, I guess broccoli is one of your mysteries.

Please forgive me for hiding my sister’s favorite doll. .

.and please don’t tell her where it is.

Dear God, when will my sister stop being annoying, I’m down to my last patience

The Cummings family would always pray together before eating supper.

Everytime they sat around the table to pray, the father would ask God forgiveness for their shortcomings.

Little Jimmy always thought that he was the short Cummings his father was praying about.

One time we were sitting around the table with some guests over.

We asked Judson to pray, who must have still been three at the time.

We’ve gone over with him many times before how to pray.

He prayed, “Dear God, please be with all the dead people.

Amen”

Of course to recover from such a social faux pa we had to explain that we had been praying for comfort for families who lost loved ones in a recent natural disaster.

Prayer has a certain way of revealing what’s on our hearts, and the same is true for Paul’s prayer.

Address

To whom did Paul address his prayer?

Look at 1 Thess 3:11 “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you,”

I want you to drink in the significance of this for a moment.

The loyal Jew would never address his prayer to anyone other than God.

The faithful Jew regularly recited the Shemah, “Hear O Israel the Lord is God, the Lord is one.”

However, Paul, in the lifetime of Jesus’s followers, not long after Christ’s death is already addressing prayers to Jesus.

You see a similar formulation in 2 Thess.

2:16-17 “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.”

For Paul, in this instance, praying to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is interchangeable.

This is not something to be taken lightly.

Paul recognized and revered the fact that Jesus is fully God.

Paul directs his requests to Jesus recognizing his divinity and his ability to effect the world.

In the Protestant tradition or stream of thought, we do not address prayers to non-divine beings.

We do not pray to Mary, the saints, the angels, nor Satan.

There is only one being to whom we address our prayers: God, who subsists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

There had not been enough time elapsed for some sort of deification legend to arise around Jesus.

In other words, some say, yes a real Jesus did exist, however, he was not worshipped as God until hundreds of years after his life.

This claim is completely false.

The New Testament authors, Jesus’s very own followers recognized Jesus for who he was: truly God and truly man.

Notice that Paul addresses God as “our Father.”

This shows the familial relationship that we have to God.

God represents our relationship to him as a parent-child relationship.

Now, certainly not everyone here had a perfect parent-child relationship (as a child or a parent).

However, the point of comparison here is one of ideals.

What is the ideal parent-child relationship?

It must be defined by the Scripture.

We can summarize it as the parent providing nurture and instruction, the child showing submission and respect all held together in a bond of mutual love.

This is the way that God desires to relate to us!

Not as a capricious tyrant that we have to guess at and bow to every whim.

Not as a successful business leader we have to suck up to.

Not as a selfish husband always looking to get his way.

But as a loving Father, and we are his sons and daughters indeed if we continue in the faith.

Second, Paul calls Jesus “our Lord.”

Of course the relationship depicted here is one of master and slave.

And because of the terrible practices of American chattel slavery in the 18th to 19th century, our idea of the “master and slave” relationship is tainted.

But notice how the early Christians saw themselves.

Oftentimes when introducing themselves in their letters, they called themselves a slave of Christ.

James, Jesus’s actual brother (as in they had the same mom) even refers to himself thusly: James 1:1 “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.”

James calls himself a slave to Jesus, his brother.

Think about the lines we just sang together, “Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let Thy goodness like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee”

You know what a fetter is, right?

It’s those chains you see tied usually around prisoner's feet.

We are asking God to chain us to him.

Chain me! Jesus our great master and we are his slave.

If you want to be great among many, you must be everyone’s slave.

The kingdom of God is not built by an iron fist but by nail scatted hands.

Jesus did not come into this world to be served but to serve, and may we follow in his example.

Request 1: Direct our path

Paul makes three requests in this prayer.

His first request to God and the Lord Jesus is to direct their path, or make straight their way to the Thessalonians. 1 Thess 3:11 “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you,”

This again reiterates Paul’s heart for the Thessalonians.

He does not view them as something he just started up and moved on from.

He does not see them as a means to get something he wants.

Paul’s motives are pure and on display before the one who sees all.

He wants their faithfulness.

This situation itself seems impossible.

You could almost imagine Paul’s image posted everywhere in Thessolonica as “undesirable No. 1” Journeying back to Thessolnica, humanly speaking, is impossible.

However, Paul recognizes the one who ultimately holds the power is God, not the human authority.

Paul asks God for something that seems impossible because he rests in God’s power.

And we could almost leave it there in terms of our application, right?

Ask God for the impossible.

Sounds like a new Christian t-shirt.

But the problem is it’s vagueness.

Paul isn’t asking for a new mansion or some other selfish desire.

Paul’s petition to God is motivated by his mission: producing faithfulness.

Ask God for the impossible in order to build his kingdom.

You all know the famous story about George Meuller who started an orphanage many many years ago?

On one famous occasion, the housemother of the orphanage came to George with the problem with which we started.

The was no food for breakfast.

George asked her to take the 300 children into the dining room and have them sit at the tables.

He thanked God for the food and waited.

Soon after a baker knocked on the door.

"Mr.

Mueller, last night I could not sleep.

Somehow I knew that you would need bread this morning.

I got up and baked three batches for you."

Soon, there was another knock at the door.

The milkman stood there, His cart had broken down in front of the orphanage.