After confronting the false teaching that some were being fooled into believing in the church of Thessalonica, that is, that somehow they had missed the Second Coming of Christ, Paul returns to language in his letter that further highlights that he’s not at all mad or embarrassed by the believers in Thessalonica.  In 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, we read a prayer of Paul and his team for the people he’s writing to.  Next week, we are going to see what Paul asked the readers of the letter to pray for him and his team, and as such, we are going to spend two weeks talking about prayer!  But this week is all about what Paul and his team were praying for these young believers in Thessalonica who, on top of the hardships of life, were faithfully enduring all kinds of persecution while refusing to stop loving Jesus, one another, and engaging the lost world around them with the Gospel!  Paul’s love, respect, and pastoral heart for these followers of Christ comes out in a big way in how he prays for them.  Paul writes,

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

There are two components to Paul’s prayer in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 that help us learn how to pray for ourselves and others.

 The first component is on a theological truth.

 Praying for a person’s heart is a prayer for God to do what He alone can do

The fact of the matter is that if God doesn’t change your heart, then it will never change because man is incapable of changing His own heart! Man’s heart is like a fraction. What do I mean by that?Well, given most of the kids in our area just went back to school and that we have a bunch of young families with their first child just now working their way through elementary school, I thought it would be helpful to illustrate why Paul is praying this way with a bit of math … and it gives me a chance to let my oldest daughter help me out a bit.  I’m going to read my illustration, and as I do, Ada is going to help me illustrate it on our teaching TV!

Let’s say your child brings home some math homework that asks them to simplify the fraction 14/24.Easy enough, right?  Well, not these days!  Your child could come home with a way to learn math that’s in line with the “new math” and “critical race theory,” liberal educators feel is essential for every student in America to be thoroughly indoctrinated in, or we will totally collapse as a society … and even should collapse if we don’t!   These modern enlightened instructions for you to help your child learn how to simplify that fraction aren’t those old, non-complicated, mean ways of doing math that lacked cultural sensitivity and caused people to be self-motivated, driven competitors who thought capitalism and free speech were good ideas.  No, now there is a way of doing math that will lead your child to a much more “enlightened” human state that isn’t bound to an overly simplified view that works in every instance.  It’s a much more flexible approach that lets you decide if you got it right or not!  For instance, little Billy might bring home an assignment like this.

Draw a picture of the following story that demonstrates how the societal oppression and injustice caused by cisgendered white men properly reduces 14/24 to its simplest form:

Once upon a time, there was a cisgendered white man born to a woman who lived in a society oppressed by other cisgendered white men who refused to give women the legal option to abort a baby simply for not wanting one. One day, this man proved just how evil and devious cisgender white men are when he chopped down a tree that was innocently growing by a river that had become polluted by he and all the other cisgender white men who didn’t even exist until billions of years after the once pure and undisturbed river was formed entirely by chance.  This evil cisgendered white man then brutally cut up the tree, a once proud, self-sustaining living organism, into 24 small and demeaning pieces.  He then took 14 of the 24 sections and created a huge fire to warm his family and cook them a meal made from the meat he had cut from a deer he had savagely killed with his gun the previous day. Only a cisgendered white man could stoop so low to justify hunting a beautiful deer with a weapon that gives the deer little to no chance of survival.  As they cooked the deer, the smoke from their fire created global warming, which then caused a great flood that destroyed 7 of the 12 villages that lived on the river where the tree once grew.  The flood killed everyone in the 7 villages it destroyed, and it struck permanent fear in the remaining 5 that they too would one day be destroyed by cisgendered white men who clearly by their very nature hated the earth and everybody on it.  Now, obviously, this story also solves the problem of simplifying 14/24.  Because there are seven key things connected in the story (man, tree, river, fire, deer, gun, flood) and because that number matches the number of villages brutally destroyed by this evil cisgendered white man, we can be sure the numerator of the fraction is 7.  In addition, because the tree was originally robbed of its glory by being cut into 24 separate and demeaning sections to appease the selfish desires of the evil man and his family, which then impacted the lives of the people in exactly half as many villages (12), we can be sure the denominator of the simplified fraction is 12.  Furthermore, because burning 14 of the 24 parts of the tree by the evil cisgendered white man clearly caused all the people in 7 of the 12 villages to die, we can know for sure that 14/24 is properly reduced to 7/12.  See how easy that was!  Morally sensitive, sustainably just math is easy to do and great for everybody!

Now, obviously, so far my math illustration is ripe with sarcasm, and I’m exaggerating the extent to which “new math” and “woke” ideology have infiltrated the public education system over the last decade, at least I hope I am!But, nonetheless, all you young parents will no doubt soon discover all kinds of new ways children are being taught math that will cause you to thank God for Google; otherwise, you will have no idea how to help your child do what they are being asked to do!

However, what I’m not exaggerating about is that there were times when they sent some of the “new math” techniques home for my kids to learn how to use fractions, that Google couldn’t even figure out what in the world they were asking us to help our kids do!In those instances, I helped my kids do their homework with methods that got started when Adam was doing math in the Garden of Eden; you know, the simple way of doing math that eventually enabled scientists to invent things like automobiles, airplanes, refrigeration, computers, cell phones, the internet, and how to do nuclear fusion!

So, for instance, before the changes in our education system over the last few decades, to simplify 14/24, human beings divided 14 and 24 by the smallest common number that they can be divided by, also known as the least common multiple.In this case, the least common multiple is 2. When you divide 14 by 2 and 24 by 2, you get 7/12.  Therefore, the simplest form of the fraction 14/24 is 7/12.  We just did that without having to draw pictures or read a story! WOW!

What we were doing with that “archaic” method was simplifying the fraction to its heart, that is, to the aspect of the fraction that exists in every form it can take! Whether it’s 14/24, 21/36, or 35/60, at the heart of each is 7/12.  The heart of something is the aspect of it that no matter where it exists, still exists, and as such dictates what it can and can’t become on its own.  For instance, 1/3 can become 3/9 all by itself, but it can’t become 12/16 without the heart of what that fraction is being changed.  1/3 and 3/9 are, in the end, the same, but 12/16, nor any version of it, can ever be the same as 1/3 or 3/9, because at the core of that fraction, that is, at the heart of it, it’s fundamentally a different number. 3/9 and 12/16 have a different heart!  Something has to be done to 12/16 to make it become 3/9 because it can get there on its own.

In this way, the human heart is the same.When we speak of the heart of a person, we are speaking of who they are in the most simplified way, but that exists in every form of who they are.  Everything about us is a product of our heart.  The heart of a person is the unchangeable constant that is always present in everything we become or do.  It’s the truth of who we are, and as such, no matter our situation in life, it governs how we will exist in it.  How we think, feel, and act are all a product of the heart, so much so that how we think, feel, and act can never be anything else other than the product of our heart; and herein lies humanity's problem and why Paul just prayed for GOD to be the one who impacted their hearts!  Just as 7/12 can never be anything other than some version of 7/12, that can always be reduced back to 7/12; in the same way, the Bible says the heart of man can never, of itself, be anything other than a different version of itself.   14/24 is just another version of 7/12.  But 3/9 is altogether different!  Therefore, for us to truly change into anything other than a bigger or smaller version of ourselves, or a prettier or uglier version of ourselves, then who we are has to be changed by somebody other than ourselves!

It’s why King David prayed, 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, (Psalm 51:10). David knew he needed GOD to create a new heart within him; he knew he needed God to change who he was at the core, because David knew there was no way he could do it in and of himself!

This is also why Paul prayed for the church in Thessalonica the way he did.He knew the only way their hearts were going to be truly changed was if God Himself did it.  It wasn’t that Paul thought little of the believers in Thessalonica, but because, like Paul and us, they were humans who couldn’t change their own hearts.  So let’s look at the passage again and let me point out a few things that highlight this theological truth.

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

Notice that when Paul is praying for the heart of the believers in Thessalonica to be impacted, He appeals to “our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father,” to do this work. The words are not haphazard.  They emphasize the exclusive power and authority of God as well as the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is three distinct persons and yet always entirely one God, all at the same time!

Earlier in chapter two, Paul referenced the work of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies us (2:13).Paul now turns his focus to the work of the other two persons of the Trinity and what they did to accomplish our salvation.

“our Lord Jesus Christ himself”

In referencing Jesus as the Christ, he is reminding the reader that the man Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, the Christ, who was to come and take away the sins of the world by the sacrifice of Himself (Isaiah 53)!

Furthermore, the Greek word translated into English as “Lord” in verse 16 is the word “Kyrios.”It’s the same word the Jews who translated the Old Testament into Greek used for the word Yahweh – the personal name of GOD!  Therefore, in saying Jesus is Kyrios, Paul is clearly stating that Jesus is GOD!

Finally, he adds the pronoun HIMSELF! It’s an intensive pronoun, which means it’s added to emphasize the antecedent, which in this case is the Lord Jesus Christ.  The purpose is to massively emphasize the desire for Jesus to impact their hearts in a very personal and real way.  Paul doesn’t want them to just know about Christ; he wants them to KNOW Christ!  He wants them to have a personal relationship with Jesus that’s so real and so powerful it changes their heart!

He then points us to God our Father, who, as the Father, is the one who decided to send the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty of our sin so that we can have eternal comfort and good hope!

“Eternal Comfort” is a reference to the positional comfort God has already given us. We will talk more about comfort in a minute, but in short, here Paul is referring to the irrevocable position the Father has given us through the work of Christ!   The death and resurrection of Christ have accomplished all that was needed for us to be eternally forgiven and eternally adopted as God’s children.  Thus, the comfort God has given me is eternal, and thus I can’t lose it!

“Good Hope” is a reference to the good that is coming with Christ, which is again guaranteed by God for us through the work of Christ on the cross.

Finally, God the Father has already testified of His love for us in that He gave us ETERNAL COMFORT and GOOD HOPE, not because we earned the right to receive it from Him but rather by His GRACE, meaning we didn’t earn it at all, as a matter of fact, we can’t! We received all of this for one reason—God loved us so much that He decided to do it!

Now, with the understanding that what Paul is talking about is all the things God alone not only has done, but is the only one who can do, Paul prays for the hearts of the believers in Thessalonica to be impacted and changed.The context points us to the theological truth that only God can change the heart and that, to His praise, He does it because He said he would do it!

26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

The second component is what Paul was specifically asking God to do in their hearts.

Paul asked God to do three specific things in the heart of the believers in Thessalonica. 

The three things Paul prays for jump out pretty clearly in the text. He prays for God to,

 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

He prays for God to comfort their hearts, and to establish their hearts in every good work and every good word.By establishing them in good work and word, he’s asking God to make those things a permanent part of who they are and, as such, a natural thing they do no matter where life takes them, something that doesn’t change because its inseparable from who they are!  In other words, Paul is asking God to transform their hearts!  He’s asking God to make them into a new and different fraction, so that no matter what they become or do in life, the version of them that’s applied is a version of one that never lacks God’s comfort, good works, and good words flowing out of them!  So, really quickly, let me give you a statement that summarizes each of the three things Paul prays for.

First, when we comfort somebody, we give them courage and strength to press on through the sorrow and grief, not in bitterness or regret, but in an overwhelming sense of being loved.Therefore,

 In praying for God to comfort their hearts, Paul is praying for them to be so transformed by God’s love that the courage, strength, and love that naturally flows from their lives inspires others to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God!

 Note: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

In praying for God to establish their hearts in every good work, Paul is asking God to make them the kind of people that naturally and consistently do things that demonstrate the love and holiness of God in such a way that it inspires others to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God!

 Note: 26For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (James 2:26)

In praying for God to establish their hearts in every good word, Paul is asking God to make them into the kind of people who not only share the Gospel, but in general speak in a way that inspires people to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God!

 Now listen, I’m not supporting the Baptist word police in any way.I know Baptists who feel like certain parts of the Bible shouldn’t even be read out loud in public places, despite the fact that the entire Bible was written to be read out loud in public places!  There are no footnotes in the Bible to tell the reader not to repeat this verse in mixed company, or be sure to change this word before you say it to others!

There are some harsh and sharp words in the Bible, and even words that were considered vulgar, but they were not there to tear people down, but rather to be daggers sent to penetrate our hearts and turn us to faith in Christ!Words are nothing but the sounds of the heart and mind.  Sounds are not good or evil, but what they are sent from and what they are sent to do are good and evil!  Our words tell us and others where our heart is facing and what we are trying to accomplish.  Listen to how Paul told the church in Colossi that the new self, which Christ is making our hearts to be, is at the most basic level demonstrated by what our words communicate and do.

8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. … 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:8-10 & 12-17)

 Now, here’s the key.Paul wasn’t telling them to do something; he was asking God to transform their hearts in a way that they couldn’t help but do it.  He wasn’t asking God to reduce the fraction that is their heart, but to change the fraction that is their heart, so if it were reduced down to the simplest form, you would find the simplest elements of the person of Jesus alive and well in their hearts!

So, today’s challenge is similar to last week’s.

Challenge

Your attitude, works, and words are the simplified components of your heart?  What are they exposing about the condition of your heart, and what are they telling God you need to be asking Him to do?

It was the actions of David’s life that led him to cry out to God to change his heart; to give him a new one, because he realized the one he had was trashed!  He didn’t ask God for a revision; he asked God for a replacement!  What’s the condition of your heart telling you that you need to talk to God about?

Discussion Guide 

Praying for a person’s heart is a prayer for God to do what He alone can do (Read 2:16-17)

Have 1 (or a few) share their testimony related to hearing the Gospel and the change it made in their heart.  This can be somewhat broad because the points below will talk about specific works and words that God is creating or removing from the changed heart.

Paul asked God to do three specific things in the heart of the believers in Thessalonica. (Read 2:17)

 In praying for God to comfort their hearts, Paul is praying for them to be so transformed by God’s love that the courage, strength, and love that naturally flows from their lives inspires others to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God! (Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

Suffering in others is an opportunity for saved people to bring the comfort they have in Christ.

What are some ways your comfort in Christ could meet a specific affliction someone is facing?

In praying for God to establish their hearts in every good work, Paul is asking God to make them the kind of people that naturally and consistently do things that demonstrate the love and holiness of God in such a way that it inspires others to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God! (Read James 2:26)

What is a ‘work’ that Christ has specifically created in you and raised up in you as you’ve grown in Christ?

How have you used that to serve the mission of God?

What is a ‘work’ you would like to grow in?

In praying for God to establish their hearts in every good word, Paul is asking God to make them into the kind of people who not only share the Gospel, but in general speak in a way that inspires people to see the worthiness of a life lived in submission to God! (Colossians 3:8-10 & 12-17)

Name something, from the list, that you would like to ‘put away’ and something you would like to ‘put on’

DREAM:  Based on, either, point B (works) or point C (words), how would you like to use the ‘work’ or ‘word’ you mentioned wanting to take on?

Challenge:

Your attitude, works, and words are the simplified components of your heart?  What are they exposing about the condition of your heart, and what are they telling God you need to be asking Him to do?

*Use Psalm 51:10 in a creative way to pray for each other as you close your group today