1 Thess 1:1-10 How the church spreads the gospel Tim Anderson 8/4/2018

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1 1 Thess 1:1-10 How the church spreads the gospel Tim Anderson 8/4/2018 Today is kind of the first anniversary of our family coming to Hastings. It's not quite 12 months, but our first Sunday was the Sunday after Easter, and today is the Sunday after Easter - slightly earlier this year. So it's kind of an anniversary. And in the last week some people have been kind enough to make comments about how they believe God has made things go forwards in the course of the last year. People comment as if one year was a relatively short space of time. Which I guess in a sense it is. But how about three weeks? If you read Acts 17, it seems like Paul was in Thessalonica for three weeks before trouble makers had him run out of the town, and the church he had established was left fend for itself. Three weeks. Today we begin a sermon series on Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. And it's worth keeping in the back of your mind as you read it. This was a church Paul had three weeks with before they were left to cope by themselves. Not quite by themselves - the Holy Spirit was active in their midst. But humanly speaking, by themselves. Paul begins with a customary greeting, and then he tells the Thessalonians how he thanks God for them. "We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers." 1

2 What was he continually mentioning? Was he wracked with anxiety because he'd had such a short time to ground them in the faith? Is that what he mentioned in his prayers? Well it doesn't sound like it. "We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." What Paul mentions in his prayers are the things that make him confident about the Thessalonians. They are a constellation of virtues that are the hallmark of genuine Christianity. Faith, Love and Hope. Or because we've probably been shaped more by 1 Cor 13, we probably remember them in the order Faith, Hope and Love. "And now these three remain, Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is love." In 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions love last because it is the greatest. But here he mentions them in time order. Faith, Love and Hope. Faith is directed towards the past. God has made promises to us in the past. He's promised us salvation in Christ. He's promised to be with us by the Holy Spirit. He's promised to return and take us to be with him. In fact, you could go through and make a list of all of the promises of God given to us in the Scriptures. There are dozens of them. Faith is when we trust in those promises. Love is directed towards the present. 2

3 We love other people. Paul is particularly talking about the love of self sacrifice. Loving other people by putting their needs ahead of our own. When we live that way, we are imitating the Lord Jesus. He lived a life of perfect love which culminated in putting our needs first, by going to the cross for us. That is the standard of our love. Hope is directed towards the future. Christian hope doesn't mean being unsure. Like for example we might say, "I hope it's going to be a nice day for our picnic." Instead Christian hope is our longing for God's future plans for us. It's focused in the return of Jesus. The nothing uncertain about the return of Jesus. But we can't see it yet. So we look forward to it in hope. Faith, love and hope. These three virtues are markers of the Christian life. Every Christian has faith, every Christian loves, every Christian longs for God's future plans for us. Faith, love and hope. These virtues might seem a bit abstract. The more practical folk amongst you might be wondering, "Isn't there something that Christians ought to do?" Well that's one of the beauties of Paul's thanksgiving for the Thessalonians, the Christian virtues issue in action. "We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, 3

4 and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith gives birth to work. Love gives birth to labour. Hope gives birth to endurance. Faith and work go together. In Ephesians 2:8-10, Paul says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Works play no part in our salvation. Our salvation is purely and simply a gift from God. But when we are saved, we are saved to do good works. Good works are the evidence of true faith that is alive. There are two extremes to avoid. One is believing that we can do anything to contribute to our salvation. We can't. Our salvation is 100% God's work. Jesus died on the cross without your help. Your faith in Jesus was given to you by God. The other extreme is to believe that a person is genuinely saved when the evidence of good works is lacking. The reformer John Calvin said, "We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves does not come alone." When Paul looks at the Thessalonians, he is confident about their salvation because of their work produced by faith. It's the good work that shows him that saving faith is present. What is true of faith is also true of love. For Paul, 4

5 love is not just a mushy feeling. He thanks God for the Thessalonian's labour prompted by love. If you love someone, you will labour on their behalf. If I want to convince Cherida that I love her, sweet nothings whispered in the ear will only go so far. Real love has the gardening gloves on, or the dish cloth in hand. She won't believe she's loved unless she sees the evidence. Love without labour is mere sentimentality. Hope also results in action. Paul thanks God for the Thessalonians' endurance inspired by hope. I've been taking Elimelech on the parkrun on Saturday mornings. (When there's not a men's breakfast or a jumble sale.) He's probably told you about it, because he's been creaming me. Do you know, I find it much easier to keep going if he's only a little in front of me. If there's some hope that I might catch him, I can't feel the pain. I keep on going. But when he's a long way ahead of me, I mentally give up. Hope helps you keep on going when times are tough. The Christian life can be very difficult. Some people have to keep trusting God through significant illness. They might pray and pray and not get better. Some people have very difficult life circumstances. Their marriage partner is violent or runs off with someone else. Some people are persecuted because of their faith in Jesus. I read this week that the Chinese government has banned the selling of Bibles. Up until a week ago, you could order them on line on the Chinese equivalent of Ebay. 5

6 Now that's no longer possible. That's probably a sign that there's a new round of repression about to break out in China. If you are a Chinese Christian, it might be hard to keep going. What do you need when times are tough? You need endurance. How do you get endurance? You think about your hope. You think about how Jesus is coming back to take you to be with him. You think about how nothing that people can do to you can ever take away the future that God has prepared for you. And when you think about that stuff, you will be strengthened to keep on going. Endurance is inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well Paul has seen the evidence of the Thessalonians' faith, love and hope. And that gives him confidence in their salvation. In verse 4 he says, "For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you." That God chooses some for salvation and not others is a matter of some controversy. Some people can't cope with the thought of God not choosing everyone for salvation. Some people can't cope with the thought of God choosing at all. They insist that we choose God and not the other way around. However the teaching of the Scriptures is very plain. As in this verse - God chooses some for salvation. But here's a question. If God does the choosing, How is it that the apostle Paul could be sure of whom God has chosen? He says to the Thessalonians, For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you. 6

7 How does he know? Isn't this a secret known only to God? Well No actually. Paul has two good sets of evidence that the Thessalonians are chosen for salvation. The first is their faith, love and hope. They have the fruit of salvation. And the only way they could have that fruit is if God had first chosen them. The second set of evidence is in verse 5. It relates to how the Thessalonians responded to the preaching of the gospel. Paul says we know that he has chosen you, "because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction." When Paul preached the gospel he saw the evidence of the power of God at work in the Thessalonians' response. I have the opportunity of sharing the gospel with a range of people. Sometimes I just know the message is not getting through. The classic case is doing infant baptism preparation classes with couples from outside the church. They are just ticking the box, doing the thing I have told them they need to do to get the kid baptised. I watch Christianity Explored with them. And I ask them after the video if they have any questions. And they say, "No questions. That was a really nice video." But it's obvious they are just saying what they think I want to hear. It's obvious that the power of God has not impacted them. The Holy Spirit is not giving them a deep sense of conviction that they need to repent and turn to God. Other times I might watch Christianity Explored with a genuine seeker. And they are full of questions after every video. And they are reading Mark's gospel between sessions 7

8 and jotting down questions. And you can tell just by talking with them, that what they are watching is impacting them deeply. The words of the gospel message are the same in each case. But in one case you can be sure that God has chosen the person for salvation. Sometimes people say, "If God chooses people for salvation, then why bother preaching the gospel? If God has chosen them they will become Christians anyway." But in this passage, we can see that God's election and the preaching of the gospel go hand in hand. God uses the preaching of the gospel to stir people up by the Holy Spirit and give them strong conviction of their need for a saviour. The preaching of the gospel is what God uses to bring his electing purposes into reality. So God chose the Thessalonians, he stirred them up to respond to the preaching of the gospel, then he produced the fruit faith, love and hope in their lives. And finally he sends the gospel message out from the Thessalonians. See what happened when the Thessalonians became Christians. In verse 6, they became imitators of Paul and the Lord Jesus. But it doesn't stop there. Once the Thessalonians were imitating Paul, then other people started looking at them and imitating them. In verse 7, Paul says, "You became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia." The imitators became the imitated. And that is basically how the church spreads the gospel. It's like teenagers with some new word they've made up. Some kid decides that instead of saying things are 'cool' like they did when I was a kid, that the new word will be 'lit'. 8

9 It's really lit bro. So this kid starts saying lit. And then his friends copy him. And then their friends copy them. And soon even some of the wannabe parents are saying lit. And last of all the guy who writes the dictionary includes it. Paul imitates Jesus. The Thessalonians imitate Paul. The people in Macedonia and Achaia imitate the Thessalonians. And so the gospel spreads. In fact, the Thessalonians' example did such a good job spreading the news, that it left Paul feeling a bit redundant. This is how he puts it. "The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia - your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us." Now don't get the wrong idea. No doubt Paul didn't stop telling the remarkable story of God's work among the Thessalonians. It was a wonderful story. He would share it to encourage others whenever he thought it helpful. But here's the point. Many times he found people had already heard the story before he could tell them. The news travelled far and wide of its own accord. If Paul were writing today, he would say it went viral. There's a message in that for us. We can plug away preaching the gospel, living for Jesus in our usual way. Running the odd evangelistic course. 9

10 It's good to do. But if you want the message to really spread and spread fast, you need a story of remarkable transformation. That's a story that tells itself. You won't have to employ a marketing company, people will gossip it over the back fence. So if you want the gospel message to ring out from Holy Trinity Hastings, you need to pray that God would radically transform lives at Holy Trinity Hastings. A bunch of nice people a singing songs to Jesus like they have done for the last 130 years. Not particularly newsworthy, sorry. Someone comes to faith from a dissolute and vicious life, and has works produced by faith, they labour prompted by love, they endure because of Christian hope. You won't need to tell anyone about that. They will have heard before you meet them. What were the people saying about the Thessalonians? "They tell of how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath." That's a pretty good summary of the gospel. And it was non believers who were telling it. Everyone was talking about what had happened to the Thessalonian Christians. Why was it such a good story? Because they turned to God from idols. These were not God fearers who suddenly realised Jesus is the Son of God. These were idolaters, with all that means in terms of their sexual behaviour. 10

11 People in the ancient world worshipped idols with orgies. And the Thessalonians' lives had been utterly transformed. And so the story spread far and wide. Notice how what was recounted of the Thessalonians change fits with what Paul said earlier about their faith, love and hope. You turned to God from idols - that means they put their faith in the living and true God. You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Serving God with your life now - that's love. And to wait for his Son from heaven - Jesus who saves us from the coming wrath. That's hope. It's focusing on what God is going to do for his children in the future. So the message rang out as people saw the Faith, Love and Hope of the Thessalonians. Let's pray for an increase of faith, love and hope in our own lives. That would be good. But let's also pray for radical transformations. People who are idolaters turning to God and exhibiting such faith, love and hope that the message would ring out. 11

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