Peter Barnes: 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4
(11 March 2018)
SERMON NOTES: A STEADFAST AND GROWING FAITH (2 Thessalonians 1:1-4)
– 1:1-2. B. B. Warfield on Paul: ‘God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are not to him two objects of worship, two sources of blessing, but one object of worship, one source of blessing.’ One could not imagine any of the Old Testament prophets writing of Israel being in Yahweh and Isaiah or Jeremiah. Paul writes of faith and love and steadfastness, within a context of prayer (1:3a) and boasting (1:4a).
1. Our faith ought to grow.
– 1:3. Paul had raised this subject in his first letter – 1 Thess.3:9-10. Their their faith is growing ‘abundantly’ or ‘exceedingly’ (NKJV) or ‘more and more’ (NIV). It grows in terms of content.
– faith also grows in terms of trusting God e.g. in implementing Rom.12:21. Spurgeon spoke of Christians who live in ‘Norwegian years’, with very long winters and very short summers.
– 1 John 5:4.
2. Our love ought to grow.
– 1:3b. The NEB has ‘each for all and all for each’. Again, Paul had raised this in his epistle – read 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9-10.
– This love is more than the natural feeling that people have for those like them – not Luke 6:32 but Eph.5:2. It is not ‘I love some of them and tolerate the rest’.
3. We ought to be steadfast in all persecutions and afflictions.
– 1:4. Recall Acts 17:5-9. The temptation is ‘Anything for a quiet life.’
– the second soil is not the fourth soil – Matt.13:20-21.