Text:  1Thessalonians 3: 9-13

According to our calendars January 1 is new years and it is.  But today is also a new year.  A new church year.  A new year of grace in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Peace be with you!

Our church year always begins with the season of Advent.  And Advent means ____________?  It means coming.  Christ’s coming. You and I live between two Advents.  The Advent we will celebrate in a few weeks.  The birth of our Savior long ago.  We live between that Advent and the Advent that Jesus tells us to expect and be ready for. Will we see Him come this new year?  Or will this year come and go like the last? No one can say.

You probably noticed that our Sermon text is a prayer, a prayer for the Christians in Thessalonica. It’s a prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit in the heart of St Paul.  They too lived between two Advents.  So what Paul prayed for here is a good prayer for us today.

Our Advent Prayer to begin a New Year
I.  Lord, build up our faith
II.  Lord, increase our love
III.  Lord, make holiness our goal

            Paul came to Thessalonica on his second missionary journey.  This city was about 200,000 people back then.  It was on a major Roman road.  Once there Paul and the others went to the Jewish synagogue.  You can read about it in the book of Acts.  On three Sabbath days Paul showed them from the Old Testament how Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah God promised.  How he had to suffer then rise from the dead.  A good number of Jews and Gentiles were brought to faith.  They trusted that God’s forgiveness and life were theirs in Jesus.  It was by grace they had been saved through faith.

Like us.  All these years later someone brought that message to us.  That yes, we are lost on our own.  The wages of our sin is death.  But God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.  He put our sin on Jesus who  paid the awful price for us all.  So now we are free.  Through faith we will live and never really die.

But trouble wasn’t far behind for these new believers.  The unbelieving Jews incited a riot that they tried to blame on these Christians.  They went looking for Paul and Silas who by then had fled the city.  They went on to Berea and then to Athens.  And no doubt, Paul was concerned.  What would become of these people in Thessalonica?  After all, he had only been with them for three weeks. Would they give in to the pressure and give up on Jesus?

So Paul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to find out what happened and encourage them to hold on.  This letter is Paul’s response to what Timothy found.   ⁹ How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?  Thanks be to God.  They still believed in their hearts and confessed that Jesus was Lord.

But Paul’s joy was tempered by a concern.  He rejoiced at their faith, but they were like little children who had just learned to sing Jesus loves me this I know.  They needed to grow up and out in the grace and knowledge of their Lord and Savior.  And Paul prayed for that opportunity.  ¹⁰ Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. 

What about us?  Can we say that we have it all down?  What is lacking in our faith?  What have we learned since our confirmation class days?  Maybe less than we’ve forgotten.  The teaching of this Word is like a house with many rooms.  These believers had only got to explore a few.  What about you and me?

It wasn’t that long ago I offered a class on God’s promises.  I posed various situations and asked what promise of God could help you at a time like that.  I got a lot of blank stares that day. After the class, someone said to me, we don’t know our Bibles very well, do we?  Do we?  So let this be our Advent prayer to begin a new year.  Lord, build up our faith.  Make it stronger.  Make it wiser as we take the time to gather around your Word.

There is something we put in our bulletin for visitors.   We invite them to expect to hear a message from God’s Word, centered in Jesus Christ.  But we also invite people to expect something else from all of us.  Love.  Christian love.  What did Jesus say?  All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.  Well here again we find our Advent prayer to begin a New Year.  Lord, increase our love.

That love was evident in Paul.  ¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. He hardly knew these people but in his heart they were now his brothers and sisters in Christ.  His love yearned to help them know Jesus more and more.

But before Paul could do that he heard of the love in their congregation.  I get to see it here from time to time.  Members looking out for one another.  Offering rides.  Bringing food in sickness.  That love lives here too.  How can love not live here?  How can it not live in our homes?  How can it not show itself in the way we treat the people around us?  Our empty hands of faith have received the greatest love ever.  God’s own Son born for us all.  God’s own Son that he did not spare but gave up for us all!  So we love.  We love because God first loved us.

But here again we need to grow.  We need to mature like these Christians.  For all of us have that selfish streak that can get in the way.  We don’t take the time for others.  We let that memory of a thoughtless word come between us.  So when it comes to love, we can all do better as Paul prayed: ¹²May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.  That’s our prayer.  Lord, increase our love.

Now Paul points us to the day, when the Lord Jesus comes again.  And as someone once pointed out.  It doesn’t matter if Jesus comes this new year or even during our lifetime.  Either way, we will stand before him.  How do we want him to find us when we do?  How do we want this One who created all things, who bled and died for us sinners.  How do we want him to find us when we stand before his awesome throne.  Paul prays here:  ¹³ May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. So Lord, make holiness our goal.

What is holiness?  It means to be set apart from sin and evil.  It means to be pure.  Is it important that we be holy?  You bet it is.  …Without holiness no one will see the Lord, said the writer to the Hebrews. (12:14) So where does that leave us?  On our own, up the creek without a paddle.  For we are not holy.

But what is the good news?  We can stand at the cross of Jesus and know this.  By one sacrifice [Jesus] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Heb 10:14) Did you hear that?  Because of what Jesus did for you, you are holy before God.  On that day that you see him, Jesus will say, Come, you who are blessed.

But as Christians we don’t just breathe a sigh of relief and go on as before.  And certainly we don’t use God’s forgiveness as a license to swim in a cesspool of immorality.  No, we make it our goal to please God by the way we live.  For what does the Lord tell us?  Be holy, because I the Lord your God,am holy (Lev 19:2)  So this too is our Advent prayer as we look forward to Jesus’ coming.  Lord, make holiness the goal of our hearts.

And here it seems to me we need each other.  Our progress in faith, love and holiness are easy to put aside in this world and in this season.  We need each other.  That’s God’s design and it’s a good one.  It goes with our prayer.  Amen.