Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3179
“Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, who has loved us, and has given us everlasting consolation and good hope through Grace, comfort your hearts, and establish you in every good word and work.” 2 Thessalonians 2:16,17.
[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon, upon the same text, are Sermons, #1542, Volume 26—FREE GRACE A MOTIVE FOR FREE GIVING;
#2363, Volume 40—COMFORT AND CONSTANCY and #2991, Volume 52—WHAT WE HAVE, AND ARE TO HAVE.]
ALL through his Epistles, Paul is continually expressing his best wishes for the friends to whom he writes. The Christian should be a well-wisher to all men. No cursing should ever come out of his mouth, but his lips should always distil blessings even upon his enemies—and much more upon his friends. Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, it should be a part of our religion to be desiring the best of blessings for our fellow men. As the high priest of old blessed the people, so should those whom God has made to be priests and kings unto Himself—a privilege that pertains to all saints— exercise the function of blessing the people by desiring good things for them!
The blessing invoked in the text is very comprehensive, but although there is much to crave, there is much more to acknowledge with gratitude. Blessings already secured in the Covenant are the foundation of a rich expectancy for the supply of all our present needs. We may reasonably hope that God will do in the future what He has done in the past. Hence the Apostle speaks very plainly of what God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ have already bestowed—and then he couples therewith the kindest wishes as to the future of his friends at Thessalonica.
With as much brevity as possible, I shall first speak on that part of the text which contains two positive facts. And then upon that part of it which expresses two holy desires.
I. The 16th verse contains A VERY CLEAR STATEMENT OF THE TWO POSITIVE FACTS.
Paul, writing concerning believers in Christ at Thessalonica and everywhere else, says, “Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, who has loved us and has given us everlasting consolation and good hope through Grace.” From this we gather that every true Believer—everyone who rests upon Christ and is saved through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit—is, at the present moment, first of all, the object of the love of God—“who has loved us.” So, my Friends, Paul does not speak of God as though we were strangers to Him and He is a stranger to us, but he says, “who has loved us.” Concerning this matter, he does not speak as one who was in doubt—with mingled hope and fear— but he says positively, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, and God, even our Father, who has l oved us.” He is quite sure of it! He is certain that these people to whom he is writing, and all believers in Jesus, are the objects of Divine Love!
Will you turn that Truth of God over in your minds, dear Friends, making a personal application of it at this moment? If you are now trusting in Jesus Christ, God loves you! That He should think of you is something! That He should pity you is more. That He should bear with you and have patience with you is no small thing—but think of God loving you! That Infinite Being whom the Heaven of heavens cannot contain, whose years are eternal, whose existence knows no limit nor shadow of a change—He loves you and yet you are, compared with Him, nothing—yes, less than nothing and vanity! Could you conceive of an angel loving an ant? Could you imagine one of the seraphs being in love with the gnat which dances in the sunbeam? It would be wonderful condescension for the august spirits to love such insignificant creatures, yet it would be only one creature loving another creature! And between one creature and another, the distance cannot be as great as between the Creator and the created one! That God, the Eternal, Infinite, Almighty I AM, should actually condescend to love us, who are but as worms compared with Him and who are but as things of yesterday, soon
gone, oh, ‘tis strange, ‘tis passing strange, ‘tis amazing! Yet though it exceeds marvel, it does not, thank God, exceed belief! But were it not that God has, Himself, revealed it, we might have cause enough to suppose it to be impossible that the Lord Jesus Christ and God, even our Father, should have loved us!
Is it not marvelous that we should have been the objects of a love that has been so constant? For, as there never was any beginning to it, so there never has been a period in which that love has grown dim towards those who were the objects of it! The river of God’s Love has gone flowing on in one undiminished stream even until now! He “has loved us.” He loved us when our father Adam plunged us into the ruins of the Fall. He loved us when He spoke the first promise in the Garden of Eden, that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head. He loved us all through the prophetic days when He was writing the Book of Love upon which our delighted eyes were afterwards to gaze. He loved us when He sent His Son, His only Son, to live our life and to die our death! He loved us when He exalted that Son of His to His own right hand—and in His Person exalted us there, too, and made us to sit in heavenly places together with Him. He loved us when we were little children, in the weakness of infancy hanging upon our mother’s breasts. He loved us when, in the follies of our youth, we seemed determined to destroy ourselves while He was determined that we should be saved. He loved us when we loved not Him. He drew us with the cords of a man and with the bands of love—and now, even at this day—we can, each one of us, look up to Him and say, “Abba! Father! You are mine and I am Yours by the Spirit of adoption.” Yes, we can say this! We can look back all along our past lives and right beyond our birth into eternity past, and we can thank Him that we can truly say, “God, even our Father, has loved us.”