Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Our sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 3, verses 8 to the end of the chapter. We’ll read verses 8 through 13.

“For now we live if you stand fast in the Lord. For what thanks we render to God again for you. For all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God. Night and day praying exceedingly we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.

Now God himself and our father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men even as we do toward you to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God even our father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”

At this time the younger children may be dismissed to go to Sabbath schools. Their parents desire that of them. I wanted to wait till the kids left where I took my coat off so I set a good example for him.

Well, there’s a mistake on your outline. We’re actually going to deal with verses 9 and 10 instead of 8 and 9. And we will touch briefly on verses 11 and 12, although next week we’ll spend most of our time on verses 11 through 13 from the text. So we’re actually going to look at verses 9 and 10. We dealt with verse 8 a few weeks ago. And I want to, as your outline suggests, take this frame phrase at the end of verse 10. Actually Paul says that he wants to come to them that he might perfect that which is lacking in their faith.

So our topic is perfecting the Christian’s faith. Although the tape will say something like filling up faith, I decided to change it a little bit to bring it more into line with the specific way the verse is worded. Perfecting the Christian’s faith, filling the faith up, whatever. Harold Thicket in his commentary on this passage talked about how Paul wanted to come that he might fill up any little cracks that they might have in their faith.

Perfecting, filling up. We’ll talk about what that means as we go through this. But first, we’re going to look at that particular phrase and its place in this prayer of Paul that is found in verses 9 and 10 and then expanded in verses 11-13. Then we’ll look at the place of that phrase in the Thessalonian epistle. We’ll see that it’s quite a pivotal phrase as we go from the first half of the epistle to the second.

And that’ll be good to remind us about what this epistle is all about and give us an overview again of what’s going on in it. And then third, we’ll look at the place of this phrase in the life of the Christian. What is the perfecting of the Christian’s faith? Not just in terms of the Thessalonians, but in terms of applying to all of our lives. And then finally, we’ll look at four ways that faith is perfected—God-given means to achieve that end.

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**First, the place of this phrase in the prayer of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 9 and 10.**

Paul says, “For what thanks can we render to God again for you? For all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God night and day, praying exceedingly that we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.”

This is a prayer of Paul that is summed up in these verses 9 and 10. He talks about being in the presence of God. He talks about giving thanks to God and praying exceedingly, very strenuously, that he might see their face and might perfect that which is lacking in their faith. And so we want to just look at the place of this phrase in that prayer.

Now the word “perfect” here—”might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.” That’s the first thing we want to make sure we have a grasp on. And it is used, oh I don’t know, 15 or 20 times roughly in the scriptures. And the basic idea means to bring to completeness or filling out details. The word actually is composed—it’s a compound word of kata and artizo. And the word artizo in the Greek is the basic root word for our word artisan or artist. And an artisan is a craftsman or a tradesman.

Interestingly, Webster’s 1828 dictionary actually says it was also a mechanic. An artisan is somebody who attends to the details of a thing and fleshes them out. And the word kata, which is the prefix to the word artizo here in this Greek word that is translated “perfect,” is itself a perfective term.

So in other words, it means to not simply fit something out as an artisan would do with a piece of work, but to fit it out so that it is thorough and complete, brought to perfection. And so what Paul is asking here in terms of his coming to visit them is that he might bring them to completion. He might fully prepare them for the tasks that they have been given by God to accomplish in their lives.

And so the basic idea is that this word is used in the gospel accounts in Matthew and Mark to refer to the mending of nets. So you can see a real practical illustration of what this word means. A net has a hole in it and you mend it up. It doesn’t mean something that’s broken necessarily, though. It can also mean just to bring something to perfection as a process. It’s used in Matthew 21 to speak of how out of the mouths of infants there will come—God has ordained perfected praise. Praise brought to fullest completion and order.

In Luke 6, we read that “everyone that is perfect shall be as his master.” And so it refers in that passage of scripture to a process whereby somebody comes to the place of perfection as his master who has taught him is. So it’s to come up to full journeyman status perhaps be one way to look at that.

In Romans 9:22 it’s interesting that the same word “perfected” is used in terms of the reprobates. It says, “What if God, although willing to show forth his wrath and to make his power known, endures with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?” And it means there—the same word is used for “fitted perfected” to destruction. And in fact we’ll look a little bit later about sort of a corollary to this passage with one earlier that talked about the sins of the Jews. But it means there that the character of the reprobate that God has brought into being for the purpose of showing his wrath upon them—their final death that he has spoken of in their perfecting of them. They’re actually fitted for destruction. That is what they’re being prepared for in the providence of God and in his sovereignty.

Later in 1 Corinthians 1, it talks about being perfectly joined together. Talking about the unity of the church developing and maturing. And so the basic idea here is that something becomes fully furnished, fully equipped, fully fitted out as it were for whatever God’s purpose for that particular thing is.

And so when Paul prays here for this, he prays that he might come and perfect that which is lacking specifically in their faith.

Now Paul’s prayer here can be seen as a model for us. In verse 9, his prayer includes the element of thanksgiving. “What thanks can we render to God?” The word “render” means to repay. Now remember what we’ve seen. It’s been a while since we looked at the verses immediately preceding this in their original meaning. But remember what he says is that he’s very joyous because their faith and their love—the report of them has come back to him from Timothy. And so Paul’s concerns about them have all been met and he’s very joyous with this report he’s received. And his response is, “What thanks can we render? Can we repay to God for the grace of his that brought you to such a great place of exhibiting faith and love?” And he says really we can’t repay God enough, but he attempts to with his prayer. And his prayer has this element of thanksgiving to it.

Yet also it has the element of joy to it. He says, “What thanks we render to God again for you for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God.” And it’s interesting here that we have a picture of Paul at prayer thanking God for the Thessalonians and for his grace given to them. But we also have a picture of Paul in prayer rejoicing before God in his presence.

Now, when you do a study of rejoicing in the presence of God, one of the things that we do weekly here to remind us of the need to rejoice before God’s presence is the rejoicing time downstairs around the agape or love feast leading up to communion. And it’s interesting—we’ve stressed the idea that the Sabbath day worship service includes this element of rejoicing in the presence of God. But I’ve never explicitly put it together in my mind that one of the things we are rejoicing together for at the love feast downstairs is each other.

See, we’re rejoicing. We come together to do that instead of just rejoicing off in our own homes by ourselves because one of the great things that God says we are to rejoice for is his grace as exhibited in the lives of the saints. And that’s what Paul is doing here in verse 9. He says, “We joy for your sakes before God in his presence.”

And so it’s very important by way of application immediately to our situation that when we go downstairs and rejoice in the presence of God, we remember that one of the things that we’re supposed to be rejoicing for is each other and God’s work in each other’s lives. And this is a model, as I said, for our own prayer life.

Our prayer life should include joy. It should include thanksgiving. And then Paul gets to the third part of his prayer, his petition, his request of God. And his request essentially is one request, although it has two elements to it. He, after he gives thanks and joys before God, he then prays that he might come to see them, that he might see their face, to the end that he might perfect that which is lacking in their faith.

And so that’s Paul’s prayer. He gives us this three-fold model of prayer which is good for us to remember in our own prayer lives as well.

Now Paul—let’s remember here of course that the reason for all this, as we said, is that Paul had awaited the news of this new church, this newborn church as it were. The news was all gladness. Everything was good news. And he was then filled with the remarkable joy which ushered forth in thanks that couldn’t fully thank God enough for what he had accomplished. But still, thanks directed to the throne room of God. And then Paul’s immediate next step is he wants to go to continue to build them up and mature and develop and deepen their faith. And so that’s what he wants to do.

Matthew Henry, by way of application, said that when we are most cheerful, when we’re most joyful, we should be most thankful. What we rejoice in, we should give thanks for.

Now, yesterday was a day of great rejoicing for many here at church as we attended the marriage ceremony of Jill and Derek. And certainly, that’s a day of great joy. Weddings are tremendous pictures of joy because of new families being formed and great human love is at work. And ultimately, of course, beyond that, it points to the great joy that we have as being part of the bride of Christ and being married to our Savior.

But in any event, when we give great joy for such an event such as Jill and Derek’s wedding, and joy for their joy, we should also remember to give thanks to God in that context to thank him for bringing these things to pass.

Matthew Henry went on to say that when we are most thankful, we should always give ourselves to prayer, and those we give thanks for have yet to be prayed for. Those whom we most rejoice in and who are our greatest comforts must be our constant care while in this world of temptation and imperfection.

I heard a talk by Reverend Rushdoony in one of the latest Easy Share tapes about him and Otto. Did a second tape on people they have known, remarkable men from the past. And Rushdoony was talking about a doctor down in Rhea, California, who saw it as his calling in life to minister to saints of God who were called to do various kinds of work. One of the men that he ministered to in terms of being a doctor and assisting with his health was Cornelius Van Til.

And this doctor, when Van Til had a heart attack—I believe because of various things that had happened—took Van Til under his wing. Van Til and his wife would vacation and spend the summers in Rhea, and I guess that’s where they first got to know each other. But this doctor saw it as his calling in life to be a medical doctor and to attend to a practice. But beyond that also to look out specifically and take people such as Cornelius Van Til and also at a later point in time Reverend Rushdoony himself under his constant care and guidance relative to their physical health.

He saw it as his job to help them keep healthy, you know, like tuning up their car or something. He was helping them keep the body that God had given them intact for the work of the ministry they were called to do. And there’s a correlation there to what Paul is doing here for the Thessalonians and which we should all do for each other on a regular basis. Give thanks and rejoice in the men and women that God has brought into our lives as demonstrations of his grace.

But then beyond that, to prayer. Pray for, and in whatever we can minister unto each other, to the end that we all might carefully move ahead and be perfected in our faith. So that’s the pattern for prayer that Paul lays out.

Now this particular petition is a common one in the epistles of Paul—the perfecting of the faith. Turn to 2 Corinthians 13. We’ll look at verses 9-11. And we see this applied there to that church as well.

2 Corinthians 13, right toward the end of the book, verses 9-11. The same word is used in a couple of different forms, a noun form and a verb form. Verse 9, “For we are glad when we are weak and ye are strong. And this also we wish even your perfection.” Same basic word is used here. This perfective artisan at work so to speak, bringing the perfection of their faith to a completion. He’s saying there of course that if you are strong, we don’t have to be strong in our language toward you. We can be weak. Then we can be had a less influence in your life as to continue to grow and mature in the faith to become strong. And what we really want is your perfection that you’d become up to the master as it were that has been training them.

Then in verse 10, “Therefore I write these things being absent lest being present I should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification and not to destruction.”

See, he’s edifying. He’s building them up. Verse 11: “Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect. That’s the same word here. Be of good comfort. Be of one mind. Live in peace. And the God of love and peace shall be with you.”

This is a common prayer of Paul and admonition to the church to be perfect, to have the faith that God has given you built up to a completion. Common request. So that’s basically the place of this phrase in the prayer of Paul.

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**Now we’ll turn to the place of this phrase in the epistle itself and its central place in the epistle.**

First, there are a couple of particulars that help us to understand that this is somewhat of a transition here. Earlier, going back to 1 Thessalonians. Now, earlier in chapter 2, verse 16, you remember we talked about this before—the judgment that was coming upon the Jewish nation that had rejected the Messiah. “Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles they might be saved to fill up their sins. Always for the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.”

They were filling up their sins. Remember we talked about the cup of their sins being filled up to a particular point at which they were now fitted for destruction. They were made perfect under destruction and God’s judgment would fall in 70 A.D. And this is kind of the flip side of that.

For the believer, for the one who’s been given grace by God and brought to a position of belief and saving faith, the faith that God has given them continues to grow and fill up and they become fitted for their purpose in life—not as vessels of destruction, but rather as vessels of grace to manifest God to the world. And so that’s the flip side of this.

Additionally, earlier in the epistle, Paul had talked about all the distress and persecution that had attended him in his ministry to the Thessalonians and in his missionary journeys. And here Paul talks about all the joy that he gives thanks to God for. “All the joy with which we joy before God for your sake,” he says. So all the distress and persecution is now out of sight. And now Paul is stressing that the counterbalance to that is all the joy that he finds in the Thessalonians.

There are some particular details that correlate this to a transition passage within the middle of the book.

But secondly, this book itself, this prayer itself, is, I believe, the crux or bridge of the entire book rather explicitly. Now it’s interesting—a man named W.S. wrote a long study of intercessory prayer passages in the Pauline epistles. And he argues that such sections as this intercessory prayer serve to, and I quote now, “announce either the central message or the precise occasion of the letter and anticipate its main parenthetic or exhortive thrust.”

And what he is saying is when you come to a prayer like this—an intercessory prayer in an epistle—this is kind of the core of the issue. And this serves as then the introduction into the exhortive material in the letter. What he’s going to try to admonish them and exhort them to do now, having gone through an introductory section.

Now it’s interesting that we are now at the end of the third chapter essentially. And we have had almost three chapters here essentially of thanksgiving—a portion involving a narration of what had happened with the Thessalonian church and its founding and the missionary journeys. And which centered around the theme of thanksgiving. And all these things. Repeatedly throughout there we saw Paul giving thanks for what had happened in the Thessalonian church and then narrating the details. This is, as some have written, the longest thanksgiving section in any Pauline epistle.

And now what’s happening is it’s now being wrapped off by Paul. And he’s moving to the second half of the book, which is exhortive—which will be more involved in giving specific commands and doctrinal instruction.

So this phrase—”the perfecting of the faith of the Thessalonians,” “he might perfect their faith”—this is now moving us by transition into the rest of the book in which he will actually accomplish this. So Paul has prayed to God here that he can come to them to personally involve himself in the teaching of the Thessalonians, to build up their faith to maturity. And he then begins that process with the rest of this epistle.

So this phrase is very pivotal in the context of this book. It moves from the first section to the second section, the second half of the book. And that’s where we’re at. We’re done with all the narration, all the thanksgiving. And now we’re moving toward exhortations and specific doctrinal instruction in the balance of the book. So the end of chapter 3 marks that transition. And this phrase really is the central bridge as it were between the first and second half of the letter.

Now remember again that this was written to a young church that Paul wants to come and instruct them personally. But he must instead rely upon his epistle, in his second epistle, until he can come face to face to them, which he will do many years later. Paul desires to correct, to restore, and to equip the Thessalonians. And that’s what the balance of the epistle does.

There’s no suggestion here in this phrase—don’t get it wrong—there’s no suggestion that the Thessalonians lack faith. We’ve just seen an extended narration where he compliments them again and again for their evidence of faith, and for their labor of love, and for the steadfastness of their hope. Remember, that’s how the epistle started. And it was referred to again in chapter 2 and in chapter 3. He’s commended for that over and over. It’s no lack of faith in the Thessalonians. He simply wants them to mature in that faith and to bring them along in it.

Now it is an interesting comment on this. What does this mean and what’s the purpose for all this? Believe it or not, I read a commentary this week on this passage by Oliver B. Green. And Oliver B. Green used to have a radio ministry. He says this about this, and this is a fairly typical analysis of Paul’s purpose in perfecting the faith of the Thessalonians.

He says: “Paul’s desire for the Thessalonians was that they be fully equipped and perfectly fitted for whatsoever the tempter might hurl at them as well as for whatsoever door of opportunity might open to them as witnesses of the truth and the pure Gospel of God’s saving grace. He wanted them to be fully grounded in the inner man.”

Now, I won’t read that again. But basically what Green is saying is that the purpose for the maturing of their faith is twofold on Paul’s part. One, to keep them from attacks by Satan so they might fall. And two, that they might be equipped to go out and evangelize other people, to preach the Gospel. You see?

Well, now, those are both good things. Those are both good things. But I don’t think that it really is the sum of what Paul is doing here.

Verses 11-13 rather flesh out what Paul talks about in this prayer. In verse 11, he says, “Now may God himself direct our way unto you.” And he just prayed. He says “we pray that God might bring us to you.” He prayed. And he says in verse 11, he repeats that by saying, “May God direct the way to you.” And then he repeats the second half, the perfection of their faith.

When he says this: “And the Lord God make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you, to the end that he might establish you unblameable at the coming of Christ.”

Paul, in his repeating of this prayer in a more elaborate form in these next three verses, changes the perfecting of the faith to the increasing and abounding of their love one for another and then for all men.

And indeed, as we go into then—this is a bridge, these passages—we go into chapter 4. Paul says that same thing. He says, “Well, I know that you love each other, but I want you to abound and increase in your love toward each other.”

Paul’s major thrust appears not to be—even though he’s made slight reference to an attack by Satan—it’s not defensive. Nor is it ultimately restricted to the preaching of the death, burial, resurrection of Christ on the part of the Thessalonians.

What Paul wants them to do is to be perfected in their faith as evidenced by the fact that they might have increased love for the brethren.

Now, I stressed that the last few weeks. We’ll stress it again in the coming few weeks because the text stresses it. Quite important that we see this. What Paul is doing here is he’s taking a new church. And a new church like this church, or like the church that we’ve been growing up in Seattle, is composed of a lot of different kinds of people. Rich, poor, old, young, different walks, different vocational calls, professional people, self-employed people, laborers—lots of different kinds of people. People that really have, for the most part, no common denominator that holds them all together.

And what Paul is doing is he’s instructing the Thessalonian church in how to live together in community. I think that’s bottom line what he wants out of them as their faith is perfected.

He wants them to see things from God’s perspective, trust in God as faith does. But more than that, their lives might be filled with meaning and purpose in understanding all aspects of their life on the basis of the scriptures. And he directs that specifically to their interaction with people. He says that your interactions with people must be a demonstration of your faith and you must see that God has brought you together into a body. And in the context of that body you are to grow and mature in your faith and in your relationships one with another.

Waker in his commentary says that Paul desires to continue the process of resocializing the Thessalonians into the Christian way of life. And I think that’s a good way to put it. Resocializing.

Now, Paul does this in a couple of different ways. Hendrickson points out three specific things that the balance of these next two chapters are concerned with. First, Paul addresses the doctrine of the state of the dead in Jesus Christ. He gives them doctrinal instructions. Secondly, the graces that have been demonstrated are desired by Paul to abound more and more.

So, for instance, look in verse one of chapter 4. He says, “For as much that as we beseech you, brethren, exhort you by the Lord Jesus.” You see? That’s he’s saying, “We’re going now into exhortation and beseeching. New commandments for you. That as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God. You’ve done that. You’ve received it of us. That you would abound more and more.”

Verse 10: “Indeed, you do it love that is toward all the brethren which are in all of Macedonia, but we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more.”

So Paul is going to give doctrinal instruction in chapters four and five relative to the state of the dead in Christ. But secondly, his goal is that they would continue to abound in the graces that they have already demonstrated.

And then third, some members are disorderly, some are faint-hearted, and some are weak. And in the last portion of chapter 5, he addresses those three people. Essentially, Hendrickson says what Paul stresses is the subjective exercise of trust in the Lord. Trust God, he says, for the state of the dead. And as you love each other self-sacrificially, and as a result, open yourself up to hurt from each other, he stresses a subjective exercise of trust.

And he also stresses the objective revelation of God with respect to the work of redemption, particularly of the body. So Paul is going to spend the next two chapters exhorting by two means—subjective and objective—exhorting them to walk in obedience and giving them doctrinal instruction in terms of that obedience. And that’s what Paul is going to do.

And so the perfecting of the saints that’s spoken of here in this phrase that we’ve chosen to look at as the bridge phrase from the first and second half of the book is quite critical in helping us now understand how we should interpret all that follows.

And so we’re leaving that first portion of narration and thanksgiving. We’re moving toward the resocialization process, as Waker puts it—how to live in community together, what the demonstration of faith is, the love for the brethren. And that’s what the portion of this plays then in the second part of the epistle.

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**Third, what does this tell us about the place of the perfecting of the saints in the life of believers?**

I mentioned 2 Corinthians 13:9-11 where the same phrase is used. And I think that the first thing that we’re in—that this phrase indicates in the life of the average Christian—you and me, in other words—is that there is a corporate as well as an individual aspect to the use of this phrase.

Hodge in his commentary on 2 Corinthians 13:10 reinterprets or translates the word “be you perfect” in that phrase to “reform yourselves.” Reform yourselves. And I think that’s a good way to look at it. Paul, when he prays for the perfecting of the faith of the Thessalonians, essentially wants them to be reforming themselves at all times as they grow into maturity in Jesus Christ. And that’s the first application for us. We are to be reforming our lives. We are to be reforming our lives on the basis of God’s word. And we’re to be reforming our lives corporately as well.

2 Corinthians 13:9, when Paul says, “We don’t want you to be weak. We want you to be strong that you might come to perfection.” He’s speaking to them as a unit, as a church. And what was the Corinthian problem? Divisions, disruptions, disorderliness. And so he wants their perfection to be in the context of the church as well. And Paul stresses both these elements in the epistle to the Thessalonians as well.

He’s writing this to individuals. But he’s also writing it to the church itself that it might be reformed together. The Reformed church has always had this phrase that “a reformed church is always reforming.” And that’s what we want to be. We want to be a reformed church continually reforming ourselves. Never arriving, thinking we’ve arrived at full maturation. But always reforming ourselves according to what? According to the teaching of God’s word.

And as we understand, “faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God.” As we expose ourselves to this word and exercise faith and trust in it and understanding all meaning in life on the basis of it, then we reform ourselves individually and corporately.

Second, notice that in terms of the life of the Christian, this is accomplished in the context of the word obviously, but also in the context of men. Paul wishes for him to come to perfect them. Ephesians 4 says that God gives gifted men to the church for the purpose of what? For the purpose of perfecting people and bringing them to full maturation in Jesus Christ. And so God has given us particular individuals with special callings, people with special callings to assist us in this perfecting or maturing of our faith corporately and individually.

But he also wants us to do that one toward the other as well. That is a general requirement that we all assist each other in the reforming process that he has called us to do.

Third, and I’ve already stressed this a little, but I want to stress it again. Now, I think that properly understood, this phrase in the context of 1 Thessalonians shows us the need for community and for growth within community as a direct result of the perfecting of our faith.

Waker says that Paul’s goal was basically twofold. His overall goal as a missionary: one was converting people to the faith in Jesus Christ, of course. And the second was to resocialize people to be Christians. And that resocialize is a funny word. But the idea is that Paul’s goal was not accomplished when he simply preached and people were brought to saving faith. He then worked with those people to bring them to maturation. And he always saw that maturation in the context of the body of Christ corporately and institutionally, and in the growing love of Christians one for another in the context of the church. That was Paul’s twofold goal.

That’s why Green is wrong, you know. It’s not kind of a “get saved, defensive posture until the end, and in the meantime we just try to bring more people to Christ to become Christians.” No, God’s goal is that he has established a new humanity in Jesus Christ. And we walk in terms of that new humanity. We walk in terms of a new understanding of the way the world works based upon what the scriptures tell us about the world. And we walk in terms of the love that new humanity has won for one another.

And God stresses, as we said several weeks ago, that love for each other is the demonstration of our faith. If we say we have faith and yet don’t love each other, we’ve got it confused. We’re wrong. We’re in rebellion. Faith issues forth in love. And that’s the point of the transition in Paul’s prayer from verse 10 to verse 12. Perfecting of the faith leading to the super abounding of their love one for the other.

Again, Waker says that evangelical Christianity needs to strive to create a social context or community in which converts may be resocialized into a new and distinctively Christian pattern of behavior and practice. Without this, conversion is not complete and has little chance of being genuinely transformative in the long term. There is a centrality in all of this as we perfect our faith together to walk together in love and in community.

Matthew Henry, and by way of application also in terms of the place of this phrase in the life of the Christian, says the following: “The best of men have something wanting in their faith—if not as to the matter of it, there being some mysteries or doctrines or such that are not sufficiently known or believed by them, yet as to the clearness and certainty of their faith. There being some remaining darkness and doubtings. Or at least as to the effects and operations of it, these being not so conspicuous and perfect as they should be.”

All of us, he says, in one way or the other, our faith needs to be matured and perfected. Maybe we don’t exercise that faith. Maybe we don’t understand various doctrines in the scriptures. Maybe we haven’t brought our lives into full conformity to them. And maybe we need more wisdom in how to apply the word of God in various callings or aspects of our lives. We all need this.

We all have the need of the perfecting of our faith. Particularly in our world—particularly in our world when meaning has been ripped out of the world. And I’ll mention again some things I was referring to yesterday in the wedding. It was a good picture of what’s happened in our world. We have a world in which these ceremonies, we have these ceremonies and manners and various things left over from a Christian context. And nobody understands what they mean anymore.

You know, it’s kind of like Planet of the Apes, you know, or some of those science fiction shows where guys go forward and there’s been a great war and they find these books and stuff. And they don’t know how to work anything. They don’t know anything is all about. We’ve been given this heritage, these traditions, these ceremonies that imply a basis which at one time usually was pretty biblical. We are left over with those things. We have no idea what the meaning is. And what do we do? We make fun of them.

Kent was mentioning that he went to a wedding recently in which at the end of the service, during a marriage ceremony, still though, I believe the groom, the bridegroom’s attendants, his men all turned around at the end. They had these funny noses on their face, you know, these little plastic things. They all turn around, look at the audience. Well, you know, you’ve probably seen things like that in various weddings. Why do people do that?

Well, it’s not usually because they’re turkeys or idiots. What it really is—they don’t know what the ceremony means. It has no meaning for them. They’ve not been taught the meaning of the ceremony. And it seems stupid then, and it seems something to be mocked or made fun of. The problem ultimately isn’t those fellas. The problem is we live in a world in which the meaning has been stripped out, and we don’t have a Christian worldview anymore.

And the answer is to perfect our faith. We’ve been brought to saving faith by the grace of God. We know certain things at the beginning. We know about sin. We know about our failure to conform to God’s word. We know about the blood of Jesus Christ, and the perfection and the imputed righteousness of Christ. We know those things. We know about our own soul and eternal destiny. But beyond that, all too many Christians haven’t thought through then that what God now has given us is a mind that can be renewed according to the word of God.

And perfecting faith can help understand wedding ceremonies, church, the institution of the church, eating—as I tried to point out in my series on gluttony. Paul’s going to get to some very practical areas immediately in chapter 4. The sexual relationship within marriage. He’s going to talk about that right away in chapter 4. Really, you know, nitty-gritty earthly sort of stuff that we do every day in life.

And what Paul is going to get them to see is that in terms of the marriage bed, for instance, it has to be reformed in our minds and understanding and actions according to the word of God. The word of God must provide the meaning back to our world.

And so in our world today, when we live in a secular context, meaning has been ripped out. We have a great need. All of us in the context of this church—and anybody I know has lived in this world and grown up in it—has a great need to perfect our faith. To take what we know and add to it based upon God’s word.

Faith is certainly belief in God and trust in him for eternal salvation. Yes, but it is meaning. It gives us meaning and order to the world. It helps us to understand the purpose of all of life in every aspect. So we all have a great need to accomplish this in our lives, us as well.

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**Now, if that’s true, and if we have this great need, what are the ways in which faith is perfected in our lives?**

I list four of them. There are probably others that you could think of, but I looked at these mostly in terms of what 1 Thessalonians tells us.

And just a reminder again—kind of an overview of the book, so it’ll hang together in your mind. Paul has spent three chapters doing something, I think, much more than simply preparing them for his exhortative section of the book. We said that this phrase is a bridge between the first half and the second half of the book—chapters 1 through 3, 4 through 5. But it hasn’t just been, you know, kind of an introductory fluff paragraph like some of ours write in our letters.

This is the inspired word of God. What Paul has done is he has recounted what has happened in the past, in the immediate past, in terms of this church and in terms of him and his missionary partners. He has recounted the evidence of God’s activity in his life and the life of the Thessalonians. And I’m sure that is one way that faith is built and brought to perfection and filled up, as it were.

**One means that God has given us to perfect faith is to recount the evidences of God’s activity in our lives and the lives of others.**

My wife was reading a book last night about Joyce Landorf and how her and her husband both had, pretty much apart from each other, decided to commit suicide about the same time. And then they both were brought to the Lord, apart from each other again. What a belief and what an evidence of faith in those person’s lives! Well, all of us have examples in our own life of how God has been faithful and has brought us through circumstances and has worked actively in our lives.

We were talking—my wife was reminding me about just this last weekend—about how my oldest son, Elijah, wanted a bicycle and didn’t like the bike we had. It was a girl’s bike, etc. And Chris had him pray for it and then reminded him, you know, that God will answer your prayer. When he does, we’re going to give God thanks. And that. And sure enough, yesterday at a garage sale we went to on the way home from the wedding, there was a bike there that was much cheaper than the bike Elijah wanted us to buy at the store. And it was God’s answer to the prayers that we had put up for a bike for Elijah.

Small thing, but very important in the life of a young boy to demonstrate to him the reality of God’s activity in his life.

I think Robert used to—I don’t know if Robert’s doing this anymore—Robert Jones used to have a big jar of stones. Probably many of you have heard this story. But whenever God would demonstrate activity in their lives in a special way, in terms of answered prayer, etc., he’d take a rock and put it in this jar. If I understood it correctly. And then it would be a visual reminder to the children of answered prayer from God. And that’s a very important way to fill up the faith of our children and ourselves as well—to recount the activities of God in our lives and the lives of others.

We begin today with a monthly bulletin insert to hand out, put out by the people that do the Christian history magazine. And right now they’re going through some of the early founders in the of America. The Jamestown colony today. And then next month I think it’s going to be the Plymouth people. In any event, these are important too. They’re reminders of our Christian heritage in this country. And they’re evidences again of God’s faithfulness and God’s activity in the lives of those who have gone before us.

Prayer journals are another way to do this. Prayer is important to God in terms of reminding ourselves of God’s answers to those prayers when they occur. So these things can both remind us of God’s faithfulness and also teach us then of God’s faithfulness as well. And I would encourage you to do this in the context of your household.

**Secondly, of course, is the impartation of biblical truth.**

Paul, having gone through this recitation of the activities of God in his life and the life of the Thessalonians in the first three chapters, moves in chapters four and five to teach some doctrine. To examine the deficiencies of the Thessalonian life in which they needed more biblical teaching to help them exercise faith and give biblical meaning to various aspects of their life.

As I mentioned, the sexual relationship and marriage, work. He’s going to address that in both this epistle and the next to the Thessalonians. Vocational calling. He’s going to talk about, as I said before, friends that have died. What is their state? What happens? Should we grieve over them? What’s the deal there? He’s going to teach them from the scripture. He’s going to teach them God’s word relative to these issues. And that impartation of biblical truth and doctrine is an important part of perfecting faith.

Calvin, commenting on this passage, says that from this it is clear how much we must devote ourselves to teaching. For teachers were not ordained only that in one day or in one month they should bring men to the faith of Christ, but that they should bring to completion the faith that has just begun. Calvin says it’s obvious that we need a lot of teaching as we grow through, grow in our Christian life in terms of this perfecting of the faith.

And I would just point out that means probably more than just meeting together here on Sundays and hearing a sermon once a week. You should do as much as you can to expose yourself to teaching via tapes or in other ways—you can Bible studies or whatever—in the context of your community—that you might continue to be perfected in the faith. These men’s discussion groups are another way to accomplish that.

And simply men and women getting together socially and then speaking of things of the faith and bringing the word of God and its instruction in the faith into those conversations is an excellent way to perfect or fill up faith.

2 Timothy 3:16 says that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect.” So we’re told explicitly in 2 Timothy 3 that one of the means that God uses to perfect our faith, and all of us, is the scriptures themselves.

Colossians 1:28, talking about the preaching of Christ, says that “we preach Christ warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” Same word as is used in our text. Colossians. Paul wrote that we teach every man in all wisdom to the end that we may present man perfect in Christ Jesus.

We are to examine all of our lives on the basis of the scriptures and then build in biblical knowledge about these things.

I wanted to just take one opportunity now to fill up faith on the issue of Sabbath-keeping. Many of you probably are aware of the fact that there was an article in the latest Calvinist Report about Sabbath-keeping. John Loft wrote an article several months ago. And then somebody wrote in saying maybe you shouldn’t have been eating out on the Lord’s day. And he took great offense at that.

For those of you who have been exposed to that, I would just encourage you to be filled with a better understanding of the Sabbath now than was given in that article. Mr. Loft said that to imply that the cessation of work required by God of the Sabbath means a cessation from purchasing and from commercial activities of the Sabbath is an unbiblical inference from the text.

Well, it could be pointed out that the man whom I’m sure that Mr. Loft would see as his mentor in the Christian faith, R.J. Rushdoony, recently—well, about a year ago—was asked if doing homework on the Sabbath was wrong. He said, “Well, certainly it is.”

Now, there’s no verse about doing homework. But that’s an inference from the text relative to work that is proper. And I think most of us would see that it’s properly made. Indeed, I think the commercial transactions of having other people work and you then paying them to work to fix your dinner is a logical inference from the sabbatical…