2nd Thessalonians

First Baptist Church Leominster

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The ABC’s of the Christian Life (3): Following Jesus unto Salvation (1)

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You know,

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Paul expressed the fact that when he was most weak, the Lord's strength was most evident in him, so I'm trusting that that will be true for us today.

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Now, last Lord's Day, we began to address verses 3 -5 of 2

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Thessalonians 3. It's the first paragraph of this last chapter, this epistle.

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And the major theme of verses 3 -5 is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And so let's read the paragraph once again, verses 1 -5.

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Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men.

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For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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And we have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command.

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May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

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The Apostle Paul asked the church at Thessalonica to pray for him, that the

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Lord would bless the ministry of the word. We not only proclaim the word, we must pray that God would bless the word, that the word would run swiftly, and once it arrives at that destination, it will be received, honored by those who hear it.

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Now the reason Paul was in need of prayer, he said, was due to evil men who opposed him and his fellow servants, probably

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Silas and Timothy. They were opposing Paul and attempting to discredit him and refute the gospel message he was proclaiming.

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These opposers of the gospel did not possess the faith, Paul declared, and Paul characterized them as unreasonable and wicked men.

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But in contrast to these unfaithful men, Paul made the declaration, but the Lord is faithful, thankfully.

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And it's to this blessed truth that we gave our focus last Lord's Day, the Lord is faithful, and really we're continuing that theme this morning with verse 5.

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Well after Paul declared that the Lord is faithful, he declared this faithful Lord would be faithful to them.

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He said that the faithful Lord would establish them and guard them from the evil one, that being the devil.

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And moreover this faithful Lord would continue to enable these Christians to live in obedience to the word of God.

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They were living in obedience and he knew they would continue to do so because of the faithful Lord who was bringing them salvation.

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And then Paul closed this opening paragraph, this last chapter, by appealing to the Lord himself that he would direct his people into the love of God and into the patience or steadfastness of Christ.

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And it's this verse 5 that we want to give our attention to this morning. Now last week we previously, we broke down this paragraph, verses 1 -5, actually verses 3 -5 in this way, first the

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Lord will establish and guard you against the evil one, and secondly the Lord will enable his people to continue to obey his word.

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We addressed those two points last week, but we want to address this point, this third point today.

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The Lord will direct the hearts of his people to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

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And so we read verse 5, the Lord will direct the hearts of his people into the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.

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Paul expressed his desire that the Lord, and here by referring to the Lord he referred to Jesus Christ specifically, that Jesus Christ would direct their hearts to embrace and appreciate two matters.

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First he desired that the Lord would direct their hearts to the love of God, and then secondly the apostle desired that the

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Lord would direct their hearts to the steadfastness of Christ. Now, the grammatical construction of each of these two phrases, to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ, can actually be interpreted in two different ways.

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Each of those phrases in two different ways, so there are four possibilities actually. And really it centers around that little preposition, the word of, because the word of can convey different meanings, and let me just give you an example.

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Suppose we spoke about the love of Christ. How did you interpret that, the love of Christ?

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Well it can mean either the love for Christ, we have the love of Christ, we love

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Christ. Or it could be speaking about the love that Christ has for us, the love of Christ.

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Or the little preposition of can simply mean possession, Christ's love.

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There are other possibilities too, we won't get into, but the little English word of is a word that can convey different meanings, and often times it's the context that will reveal what is intended.

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With respect to the first phrase, to the love of God, it can mean either may the

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Lord direct your hearts to the love that you have for God, or it may mean may the

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Lord direct your hearts to the love that God has for you. And the actual

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Greek text could convey either of those meanings. And so, there's a problem in interpreting this precisely, a 20th century commentator

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Leon Morris described this difficulty in translating these phrases.

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There is some difficulty in knowing exactly what the following expression signifies. An expression like the love of God might mean in Greek either

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God's love for us or our love for God. There you have it. Our first difficulty is that the logic of the prayer, in other words

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Paul's prayer, seems to require some meaning such as the Lord lead to love

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God. That seems to be what Paul is saying, but in Paul's writings the love of God always seems to mean

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God's love for man. And then he makes reference to J .B.

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Lightfoot, who is quite a well -known 19th century commentator. Lightfoot is probably right in suggesting that the apostles availed themselves of the vagueness or rather comprehensiveness of language to express a great spiritual truth.

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In other words, Lightfoot was reasoning, arguing, you shouldn't look at it as either or, but rather both.

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I think he's probably right. He goes on to suggest that the two senses are combined and interwoven.

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We may accept this then. The primary idea will be that God will be that of God's love to us, but there will be also the secondary idea of our love to him.

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Paul's prayer then will be that the inner life of his friends be so concentrated on God's love for them that this will evoke an answering love for him.

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And so both ideas may be suggested. And as I was going through the commentaries

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I have on 2 Thessalonians, it was interesting to me to pick up different writers, and they seem to take one view or the other to the exclusion of the other.

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Now again, the same dual way of interpreting that expression of the love of God may be seen as you look at the second phrase, being directed by the

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Lord to the steadfastness of Christ. It may mean the steadfastness that Christ demonstrated before you.

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In other words, Christ was steadfast. May the Lord direct you to consider that, reflect upon that.

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Or it may mean, may the Lord direct your hearts into the steadfastness that Christ is able to give you.

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And once again, grammatically it can mean either one of those. And we'll take the position that the

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Holy Spirit, who inspired Paul in writing it in the manner he did, was suggesting that both things are true, and both things are needful.

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And so all four of these statements then may be shown to be biblical, and you can look at different verses that emphasize each of these four statements, and we'll do so.

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But I'd like us to consider each of these four truths that are expressed by these two phrases.

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May the Lord direct you to the love of God, and may the Lord direct your hearts to the steadfastness of Christ.

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And here you have these four set before you in your notes. One, may the Lord direct your hearts to the love that you have for God.

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Second, may the Lord direct your hearts to the love that God has for you. Third, may the

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Lord direct your hearts to the steadfastness that Christ demonstrated before you. And fourthly, may the

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Lord direct your hearts into the steadfastness that Christ gives to you, or enables you to experience or encounter.

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And so first, let us consider that the Lord may impart to your hearts love for God.

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And this is certainly a great need that people have. It's essential that each of us love

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God richly and supremely. In fact, if we could just all of a sudden elevate in each of our souls a love for God, it would probably take care of most of the problems that we have in life with regard to our relationship with God and our relationships with one another.

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All that we are, all that we desire, all that we do with regard to our obedience to God is due to our love for Him.

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And the love that we have for God is a result of what God has produced in our hearts.

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So it's understandable why Paul said, may the Lord direct you to the love of God. May the

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Lord produce in you the love for God. God imparts a principle of love within His people, whom

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He has purposed to save from their sins. And with that love for God, we have therefore a desire to know

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Him, to serve Him, to be with Him, to please Him, to glorify

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Him, to obey Him. And it's that love we have for God that the Holy Spirit has given us and moves us in that direction, gives us the longing and desire for these things.

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And so we desire that our Lord would be pleased with us, pleased with our thoughts, pleased with our words, pleased with our attitudes, our actions, and our reactions, because we love

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Him and therefore we want Him to be pleased with how we live, how we think.

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And because of this love that God has infused in us, His Word has become precious to us.

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And so as we read and learn of His Word more fully and clearly, we both value and tremble at His Word and watch over ourselves as we attempt to live in accordance with what

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His Word teaches us, the Word that He's given to us. And so we may say as the

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Apostle, for the love of Christ compels us. See, there's the motivation. The love of Christ, and there you have the love of Christ.

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Is it Christ's love for us, or our love for Christ? I'll take a subjective here.

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For the love that we have for Christ compels us, because we judge this, that if one died for all, then all died, he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

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Matthew Henry commented on verse 5, Paul, he makes a short prayer for them.

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It's a prayer for spiritual blessings. Two things of the greatest importance the

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Apostle prays for, one, that their hearts may be brought into the love of God. Now he also talks about the steadfastness, and I have that quote at the end of the message.

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We're only looking at the one here. That their hearts may be brought into the love of God, to be in love with God as the most excellent and amiable being, the best of all beings.

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And this is not only most reasonable and necessary in order to our happiness, but is our happiness itself to truly love

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God for who He is. Not for what He gives us, although, you know, bless God for what

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He gives us, but for who He is. It is a great part of the happiness of heaven itself, where this love shall be made perfect.

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We can never attain to this unless God, by His grace, direct our heart to right, for our love is apt to go astray after other things.

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Is that not true? Note, we sustain a great deal of damage by misplacing our affections.

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It is our sin and our misery that we place our affections upon wrong objects.

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If we could fix that problem, we would be super saints, wouldn't we? If God directs our love or right upon Himself, the rest of the affections will thereby be rectified.

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Everything will fall into its proper place and proportion if we love God rightly.

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Thomas Manton, who I bought a couple of years ago, his 22 volumes, perfect, you know, complete works, and I find him so good and so helpful.

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He actually gave two lengthy sermons on chapter 3, verse 5, and he set forth the meaning of the text, that Paul's prayer was that the

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Lord would enable these Christians to have greater love for God. Now again, there's two possibilities, greater love for God or God's love for us.

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Thomas Manton took the position that Paul was praying that God would give us greater love for Him.

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He first addressed the need for God to impart this grace, because we don't naturally love

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God. He explained why it was needful for the unregenerate, that is, for the non -Christian.

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He won't be changed until God, by His grace, imparts love for God within the soul.

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He then addressed why Christians who are born again are also in need of recipients of this grace.

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Paul was praying for Christians, wasn't he? May the Lord direct you in the love of God. And so,

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Manton emphasizes that Christians, too, need this grace of God. And so,

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I want us to consider some of Manton's points that he made. First of all, by considering the need to have the

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Lord impart to the unregenerate, and regenerate means to be regenerate, reborn, born again, the unregenerate are those that are not born again, those who are not true

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Christians. They have a need for this grace of love to be infused within them, given to them by God.

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Manton wrote of the need of the non -Christian, the unbeliever, they cannot love till the

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Lord direct and set their hearts straight. It is a hard thing to say, but we must not mince the matter, that in the carnal, that is the unconverted state, we are all haters of God.

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Most people would react to that, but that's the statement of Paul in Romans 1 .28. People who are not

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Christians in actuality hate the true God. When the true God is revealed and manifested to those who are not

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Christians, they crucify Him, and things haven't changed. They would do so today too.

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And it were well if this enmity and hatred were thoroughly got out of our hearts. How can this be?

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Nature tells us that He from whom we receive being and life and all things deserves our love.

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That's rational, reasonable, isn't it? I answer, though men may see some reason of love to God as He is our

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Creator and Preserver, but as He is Lawgiver and a Judge, so we all hate

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Him. Three reasons there are that natural enmity that is in the hearts of men against God, I would have you consider them seriously, that we may feelingly bewail our own aversion to God.

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And so men set forth these three reasons why a non -Christian hates

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God. First, we hate God as unbelievers because of our natural inclination to carnal things that possess our heart.

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That runs in conflict with the true love for God. We love the things of this world, which squeeze out any love for the true

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God who made this world. Our Lord Jesus declared to a religious but unregenerate man, a non -Christian man, that which is born of flesh is flesh.

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Having no principle to incline them to God, they wholly seek to please flesh, please themselves.

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Because they are fallen men, they are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. An unconverted man can do nothing to correct this preference of love for self and for pleasure.

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He cannot change himself. That which is born of flesh is flesh. Nothing will change that unless God intervenes.

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So through the new birth, God sets the sinner on a course to desire delight in God, moving him to prefer knowing

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God and pleasing God above himself. This is a sovereign work of God's grace in regeneration.

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And sometimes in the scriptures, this work of regeneration or new birth is described as God circumcising the heart.

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And in Deuteronomy 30 verse 6, God through Moses declared that the time would come when

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God would circumcise the hearts of his people and notice the result of this circumcision of the heart.

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They would truly love God. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live. And so love for God is only possible for the one that's born from above, born of God.

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The circumcision of the heart. God must effect this change. You cannot change your own heart. You can't cause yourself to be born again.

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It's a sovereign work of God. And so Manton stated the heart must be circumcised before it can love

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God. Till God tear away the foreskin and till this carnal love be mortified, in other words put to death, there is no place for divine love to be raised and quickened in our hearts.

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We're entangled in the love of worldly things and shall so remain till God bend the crooked stick the other way and God set our hearts right to himself.

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And so the non -Christian hates God because the natural inclination is to carnal things.

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They possess the heart rather than God. A second reason why unbelievers hate

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God is because of our preference for what Manton described as carnal liberty.

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In other words, I want to be free to do the things I want to do when I do it and no one, not even God, should tell me otherwise.

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But because God does tell me otherwise, I hate God for that. We hate

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God as a lawgiver who would bridle our lusts. Because of God's laws, we cannot enjoy our lusts with full freedom.

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There was some action just this last week where there was a big defacing of the Ten Commandments that were on a monument somewhere.

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People hate them because you have an authoritative God saying, Thou shalt not.

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People want to. No, I will, I shall do what I want to do and who are you to tell me no?

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God has given each of us a conscience that will either accuse or excuse our thoughts, our words, our attitudes, and our actions.

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And he originally gave this conscience to every human being. And originally this conscience, early in life, was consistent with his law.

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You have to re -educate the conscience otherwise, and people do to the point where they start declaring good evil and evil good.

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But originally the conscience is shaped by God's law. And so even unbelieving

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Gentiles had God's laws written upon their consciences even in their unconverted state.

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You go out in the world, even in non -Christian places, and there is intuitive sense on the part of people, you shouldn't take what belongs to another man, you shouldn't steal.

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You shouldn't covet what somebody else has. There is a conscience that convicts people in societies and cultures of this because God has given them a conscience, a conscience originally shaped by God's laws.

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And so God's law prevents our sinning without accompanying guilt. His law would constrain us and we do not desire restraint, but rather the freedom to do what we please when we want to do it.

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And therefore when God says no, we hate God, the true God, as a lawgiver and as a judge.

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We hate God as unbelievers because he says this far and no more. Paul wrote, the natural mind is enmity to God.

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The natural mind is the unconverted mind, the non -Christian. The natural mind is enmity to God, not just an enemy to God, but the very opposite, the very hostility to God.

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For it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. A non -Christian cannot be truly submissive, obedient to the law of God, it's just not possible.

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A fallen man's nature and God's nature are contrary to one another. And so the mind of the unsaved hates the true

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God when God asserts his lordship over him. It may be said of every non -Christian, you are enemies in your mind by evil works.

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So as Manon wrote, we love sin, therefore we hate God, who forbids it and makes it so penal and damnable to us.

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And that's why if we're faithful in presenting the true God, Christians will love him, non -Christians will hate him, and probably hate us for presenting him as such.

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This is the way it's always been, it's the way it always will be, until the Lord Jesus returns.

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Then Manon sends forth a third reason why non -Christians hate the true God. We hate

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God as unbelievers because of the slavish fear we have of the true God.

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We hate God because we are afraid of his judgment, to which one day he will summon us.

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There is within every human being an innate sense of accountability before God that there is a day of reckoning when we will answer to God for our sins.

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And this is a universal concept on the part of the human being. Just about every religion of the world addresses the problem of sin and how to deal with it.

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Man's accountability. And this is why the practice of sacrifice is found everywhere in the world, because everywhere, everyone, if they think about it, reflect upon it, they think there's sin and there's accountability and somehow we have to deal with this in order to stand before God.

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And it's a slavish fear that squeezes out the possibility for true love for God.

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Because when there is the presence of a terror, a sense of terror toward God, there is no room for true love for God.

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When Adam sinned, he fled from God, for Adam no longer loved God but was terrorized by God.

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So, as Manton wrote, a condemning God can never be loved by a guilty creature.

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But after Manton dealt with how the non -Christian needs to have the love of God infused in him, may the

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Lord direct you to the love of God. He then begins to show how Christians also need to have this grace given to them by God.

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Even though you and I love God, because God has regenerated us, put this love within us, shed abroad in our hearts, love for God, nevertheless, the love that we need is not what it should be, is it?

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Not what it could be. And therefore we need a fresh bestowal of God's grace to move us to love

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God more. To love God in a more informed way, in a more enriched way, and in a more enduring way.

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And so, Manton spoke about the need of the Lord to impart to the true Christian, the regenerate, the grace of love for God.

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You and I need God to give us grace to direct our hearts in the love of God. And just in my own study of this verse in the last couple weeks,

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I'm realizing that this needs to be something that we need to be praying a lot more for, or I should be. Because again,

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I believe if the Lord infused in you and me a fresh, vivid love for God, it would take care of a lot of the deficiencies and departures and defections that we witness.

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It was to the Christians at the church at Thessalonica that Paul declared, may the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God.

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These Christians were behind no one in the number and degree of God's blessings of grace upon them. The church at Thessalonica was a stellar church.

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Nevertheless, they were in great need for the Lord to enable them to love God more greatly than they did presently.

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You remember what Paul had written of their love for one another? Not their love for God, but their love for one another? In 1

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Thessalonians 4, 9 and 10. But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another, however, he says, but we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more.

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Well that was with regard to their love for one another. We could say the same thing with regard to our love for God. We might say this, but concerning your love for God, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love him, but we would urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more.

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And so each of us need to have the love for our God increase within our souls. And this is what

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Paul is praying for, for these Christians. And so why did the apostle pray that the

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Lord would direct the hearts of these Christians to love God? Well, Mattin proposed two main reasons, and these include, first, because there are many defects in the love of the best of us.

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Find one among us who loves God the most right now. And there's still some deficiencies there, isn't there?

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Even in the best of us, there needs to be increase. And then secondly, there needs much to be done about our love after it's planted in the soul.

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In other words, although God has infused love within your soul when you were first converted, it needs to be much improved and strengthened and informed in many ways.

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And so, Mattin argues, this is why we need to pray that God would direct our hearts to the love of God.

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Let's take each of these two. The need to have the Lord to impart to the regenerate, the true Christian, the grace of love for God, because there are many defects in the love of the best, that is, of the best of us.

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Now, there may be several ways to consider our deficiency in our love for God. And so, assess yourself.

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First, there is much that we encounter in our daily lives that would draw our hearts after them and away from our full devotion to our

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God. Every day we are exposed to things. They would draw our love toward them rather than toward our

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God. Mattin asked, how much do we live to ourselves and how little to God?

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How great a passion have we for earthly things so that they can occupy and intercept the far greatest part of our lives?

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And then judge whether we had not need have that net kept up and the tendency toward God as our end and happiness.

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We have a natural inclination within us to give ourselves over to whatever is before us, what our eyes see, what our hands can touch.

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It's an easy thing for these matters to squeeze out our love for God. They squeeze out our attention to the things of the

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Lord, which results in the dulling of our affection for our God. As Mattin wrote, it's the natural disease of man's heart to be loosed from God and to be distracted in a variety of worldly objects, which obtrude themselves upon our senses, offer themselves to us daily.

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And therefore it's not enough for man once to resign him over his heart to God as we do in conversion, when this love was first wrought in us.

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But we need often to beg that God would reclaim us from this wrangling after carnal vanities, that he would direct and keep us straight and true to our end, that we may love him more and at a better rate.

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So if you consider the nature of love, the thing is obvious and plain, unless the Lord maintain this love in us and keep it up, what will become of us?

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And so yes, the regenerate, the Christian needs this grace. Is that not right?

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May the Lord direct you in the love of God. A second way we may consider the need for the true

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Christian to have the Lord direct him in the love of God is due to our proneness to slavish fears as we purpose to live daily before our

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Lord. And there are numbers of us, I think, that are susceptible to this.

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Some are plagued by their guilty conscience as they serve the Lord. And the truth be known, they are serving the

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Lord out of a guilty conscience rather than out of a true love for the

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Lord. They tend to shape their self -identity by their sin rather than their new life in Christ.

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Paul addresses that in Romans 6 and 7. We addressed it in our men's group yesterday from us.

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Rather than identifying themselves with their new life that God has given them in Christ, they identify themselves with their sin.

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Woe is me. How can I be a Christian and live this way? How can I love God and sin in this way?

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And as a result, they have this slavish fear that governs them rather than a true love for God in Christ that should govern them.

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One of the great blessings of the new covenant in Jesus Christ is the ability to serve God with a clear conscience before God.

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In other words, void of slavish fear. And so the writer to the Hebrews wrote of this.

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For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, talking about the

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Old Testament sacrifices, it ceremonially cleansed the body. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God? We should be able to serve the living God with a clear conscience, not slavish fear.

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However, although we know that we are saved by God's grace, we will tend nevertheless to look to the works of the law as a basis or means of serving our

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God. And the result is slavish fear that extinguishes true love for God.

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The apostle John wrote of this. There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment.

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And it's a sad thing that I think there are numbers of Christians attempting to serve

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God, walk with God, but they're doing so in a tormented fashion rather than out of a joyful, clear conscience that God has provided for them through the sacrifice of Christ.

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He who fears has not been made perfect in love is what John wrote. And sometimes this might be more of a problem in Reformed churches and in non -Reformed churches.

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And the reason is we emphasize greatly the use of the means of grace in our progress toward heaven.

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We show forth the scriptural teaching that though we cannot be saved or sanctified by the law of God, nevertheless the law of God continues to be the standard and measure of our sanctification.

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Paul the Christian wrote, so with my mind I serve the law of God. But sometimes

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Christians can be so focused on the means to holiness rather than the grace of the Lord that can only bring about holiness that they become troubled by their fears.

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They are motivated to live before the Lord and serve the Lord, not out of love for who he is and what he's done and what he's promised in Christ, but because they are fearful of what might result if they fail to do so.

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And that is not the way to live the Christian life as God has designed.

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And so may the Lord deliver us from slavish fear so that we will rather be moved by godly fear, a true devotion and desire to please

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God. Manton wrote, surely we should seek after a spirit of love that all we do for God may be done with great delight, that we may not serve him by compulsion but by inclination because we're inclined to do so, not as enjoined only, in other words not because it's commanded, but as inclined because that is our bent, that's our desire, not as putting a force upon ourselves but as delighting in our work as we serve him.

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And then Manton points out a third way that we may consider the need for the true Christian to have the love of God bestowed upon him, that the

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Lord would direct him in the love of God, and this is due to our frequent preferring the profits and pleasures of the world before the service of God.

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Esau is a signal example for us. When the blessing of God in the future was measured by a pole of pottage presently before him, he preferred the pottage to the future blessing of God.

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What an exchange! You talk about a bad trade,

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Esau made it, didn't he? We won't read the whole passage, but the warning is given, lest there be any of us professing

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Christians a fornicator or profane person like Esau who for one morsel of food sold his birthright, and the thing about it is each and every day some morsel of food can be set before us, and we may choose it because we see it and it's present before us, and that which

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God has promised off in the future is not keen to our thoughts and our affections, and we barter away that which

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God has promised us for that which temporarily satisfies us. What a pitiful exchange

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Esau made, bartering away God's blessing for something that would be satisfying only for a few hours, but that's what we do whenever we sin, isn't it?

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We wrongly think that that's going to give us pleasure and satisfaction, but only temporarily, but look what you forfeit.

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A fourth way we may consider the need for the true Christian to have the Lord produce in him love for God is due to the failure to be fully obedient and the tediousness we may find in our obedience.

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When our love is keen, our service is delightful, not tedious. Let us have love for God like that which

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Jacob had for Rachel. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her, and may our obedience before God be in a similar vein, because of our love for God, the duty, the servitude that we have for our

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God is a delight, not tedious. For the

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Christian who is thinking rightly and loving rightly, the Lord's commandments are not burdensome, but delightful. Love for God will make duty delightful and fulfilling, not troubling and tiring.

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And then a fifth way we may consider the need for the true Christian to have the Lord direct him in the love of God is due to the many conflicts we have in our souls with carnal self -love and our own foolish, hurtful lusts.

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This too shows us that our love for God is not what it should be, or not what it could be if the

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Lord answered our prayer that he direct our hearts to the love of God. Well not only is there need to have the

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Lord impart to the regenerate the grace of the love for God because there are many defects in the love of the best of us, there is secondly the need to have the

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Lord impart to the regenerate the grace of love for God because there needs much to be done about our love after it's planted in the soul.

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When the Lord caused you to be born again, he put within you love for him. But that love wasn't, although it was rich and wonderful and glorious, it wasn't all that it should be.

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And so the Lord has to give us greater measure, degrees of that love over the course of a lifetime.

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And so after the Lord has planted that love in us, we are in need of the love of God to get rooted in us after he has planted it within us.

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Manton wrote, Our first affection to God and heavenly things may hastily put forth itself as the earthly blossoms of the spring do, but they are soon nipped.

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And those high tides of affections which we find in our first acquaintance with religion, and he means by that true

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Christianity, afterwards sink low enough. Love is more passionately expressed at first, partly by reason of the novelty of the things represented to us, and partly because of our great need, our great necessity, as men that are in a violent thirst take large drops with pleasure.

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And because our love is not yet dispersed into the several channels of obedience, but wholly taken up with admirations of grace, but this may vanish and decay, our business is to be rooted and grounded in love.

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There you have it, after you're planted, you need to be rooted and grounded in love, as the apostle said, to get a more solid and durable affection for God.

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And then second, we are in need of love for God to be increased in us after it's been planted within us.

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And so Paul wrote to the church of Philippi, this I pray that your love may abound, in other words increase, still more and more in knowledge and discernment.

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Every true Christian has love for God infused in his soul, that comes with becoming a

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Christian. But that love lacks knowledge, and that love lacks discernment.

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And so we need to grow in our love, and growth in love is in the realm of knowledge, in the realm of discernment.

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Love needs to be instructed by the word of God. There's a lot of syrupy, incipient love that is set forth as Christian love, which isn't very informed according to the scriptures.

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There are some things we are to love, there are some things we are not to love. And these need to be taught us from the word of God, so that we might rightly distinguish them.

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But this will only occur if blessed of God, and this is why Paul continuously prayed for these

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Christians, that love may abound still more and more in knowledge. But not only must love be informed, instructed, but it must also be characterized by discernment.

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And so Paul prayed that their love would abound more and more in discernment. We must have wisdom on how to demonstrate love.

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Sometimes it's more loving not to give, but rather to withhold. And churches always have to deal with this problem, we deal with it all the time.

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There are people who make the rounds to churches not to pray in them, but to pray upon them. Now we will tend to err on the side of charity, but we do try to be discerning in how to manifest true love.

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Love needs to be informed, and love needs to be characterized by discernment. And then third, we are in need of the love of God to be excited and kept in, and exercised is how

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Manton put it. And what Manton meant by this, that if love is not manifested and kept at work, then carnal love will prevail.

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If and when our love for the Lord diminishes, our love for the world will increase.

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We're going to love something. If love is not kept in a measure of fervency and set forth in right activity, our motivation will lessen to live for God, and we will cease to strive toward the ends that God desires for us.

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And so the scriptures speak more than once about the labor of love that should characterize us.

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Love is more than a feeling. Love is what you do, how you live. And so we see in all that we've considered thus far, and we're still only dealing with one out of four points, but we're not going to be able to finish, no way.

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We have the need for God to infuse in us, to direct our hearts into the love of God.

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But again, as we said earlier, love for God is just one of two ways in which we may understand the expression, may the

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Lord direct your heart, for it may be understood completely differently. It may be understood as a prayer that requests, may the

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Lord direct your hearts to the love that God has for you. That's important also, isn't it?

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For you might have a lot of love for God, but that's not going to take you very far if you don't have a sense that God loves you.

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And maybe that's what Paul was emphasizing as well. The Reformed commentator

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William Hendrickson, and he's a great commentator, and I appreciate all his commentators. He actually took this position in his commentary.

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Manton took the other, Hendrickson took this, and he wrote, I think he is a little over -assertive in this statement, but he wrote,

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Both of God and of Christ are to be considered subjective genitives. Not their love for God, but God's love for them is what is meant.

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In other words, he just set aside everything we've just covered by Manton. And I think he overstated it, because grammatically it can mean either.

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Or we would argue both. That is regular calling usage.

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This is the love of God which has been shed abroad in our hearts. It's his own love toward us. It is the love of God and Christ which nothing should be able to separate us.

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It is his great love which he loved us. And so in Hendrickson's commentary, he sets forth what

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Paul is saying, is that he's praying that God would enable these Christians at Thessalonica to perceive and understand and realize

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God's love for them. Now that's an important matter. He wrote further, and here he's writing rightly,

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When human hearts are directed to this love, obedience results. For this love is not only a divine attribute, or that plus -favorable attitude toward believers, but also a divine dynamic force within them, a principle of life in their innermost being.

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And that's true. When a person truly senses the eternal God's love for him or her, that's a motivating force.

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And so it's argued the believer's knowledge of God's love for him becomes a motivating force in his life, to live before God in a manner that pleases

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God, and that's true. God loves his people. He loves them with an everlasting love.

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We won't cite those verses, they're listed there for you, but those are many verses that speak of God's love for his people, and we need to understand this and embrace this.

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Perhaps the passage, top of page 9, that speaks most clearly to this is Romans 8, 35 -39,

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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? This is not God's love for the whole human race, this is love for God's people.

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The love of Christ. Shall anything separate us? Nothing. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril of sorts, nothing.

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Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And Paul reasoned,

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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principality, nor power, that's the devil too and his forces, nor things present, nor things to come, nothing, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. There's a love of God that's in Christ Jesus that only believers encounter and experience.

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A love that God has set upon them from eternity. And when we become keenly aware of that, it is life transforming.

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And we should understand it. We're going to close, but I might just draw your attention to the last two points

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I didn't give a lot of attention to. But it speaks of the second portion of verse 5.

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Paul not only was asking the Lord to direct their hearts into the love of God, but also he was asking the

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Lord to direct their hearts to the steadfastness of Christ. And this could be understood in one of two ways.

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May the Lord direct your hearts to the steadfastness that Christ demonstrated before you. In other words, it speaks about Christ's patience and endurance and suffering and overcoming.

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And that Paul was asking them to have their hearts directed to that. And indeed, an understanding and comprehension and appreciation of the sufferings of Christ instructs us and informs us on how we should deal with problems in our lives.

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And the scriptures speak about that. And I quoted that from Peter. The way Jesus dealt with his sufferings instructs us on how we are to deal with our sufferings.

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Or secondarily, it may mean, rather, may the Lord direct your hearts into the steadfastness that Christ gives to you.

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The Lord is able to make you stand, enable you to stand, regardless of what you may encounter.

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And so if this is what Paul intended, his meaning follows this line, the love of God into which the

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Lord directs us will lead us to experience the steadfastness of Christ. And it's true.

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If you love God, you're probably going to be more stable than the one who loves

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God less. And so may the Lord direct us in this way, that we are loving him supremely, being aware that we're loved by him supremely, to the end that we might be made more stable and steadfast in Christ, even as we consider the steadfastness of Christ in his life and his suffering on our behalf.

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Amen. Some practical things here, I believe. And, again, this prayer that was voiced in 2

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Thessalonians 3, 5, I think would be a good prayer for us to post somewhere and keep it before our eyes, because as I'm thinking about people and some of the difficulties and the problems that they're having currently,

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I'm thinking, you know, if they had more love for God, this wouldn't be a problem. So, may the

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Lord do a great work among us and inform us, inspire us, and direct us in his love.

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Thank you, our Father, for your word. And we do pray, our God, that you would direct our hearts into your love and also into the steadfastness of Jesus Christ.

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Forgive us, our God, of our hardness of heart that we exhibit so often.

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Forgive us, our God, of the affections of our heart that so often is given to things rather than to you, the giver of all things.

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Help us, our Lord, to love you, and help us, our Lord, to be faithful to you. And we'll give you the praise and glory, for we pray in Jesus' name, amen.