1 Thessalonians No.1 A Model Church

We turn to the book of Thessalonians, an epistle that I've rarely preached from in the years that I've been here, and it now seems right to bring some studies on a Sunday morning from Thessalonians. We'll be taking fair chunks, not going through it very meticulously, but nonetheless listing out what I think the Lord wants to share with us in these days. 1 Thessalonians, just after Colossians and towards the end of Paul's epistles as catalogued in the New Testament.

Though chronologically actually it was one of the first letters to be to be written. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, we'll take the first 10 verses. Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We always thank God for all of you. Mentioning you in our prayers, we continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers, loved by God, 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. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord in spite of severe suffering.

You welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 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.

They tell 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. Now just keep your Bibles open there as it's most important. It seems to me not dishonorable to want to be part of a family of God that might be described by some as a model family.

And I wonder to what degree. It could be said of Worthington, 500, maybe more, maybe less people who come to us Sunday by Sunday, actually more if we add up the variety of folks that we get in both our congregations and take the Maybridge Fellowship in. I wonder to what degree we're a model church.

To what degree we're an inspiration. It's not dishonorable to ask that. It's not dishonorable, is it, to have a great expectation not only for our experience of God but for our quality as disciples.

You see, in one sense this church is very widely known because of our mission, interest and commitment in many lands and the people that we've sent out and the finances that we're pleased to give. And so I want us to be asking ourselves in these little studies from Thessalonians in which we're going to have very much at the forefront of our thinking the return of our Lord Jesus, I want us to ask the complementary question. What sort of church are we? Let's not be negative and put ourselves down for the sake of it.

There are no prizes for mock humility. And let's always be honest and expose our weaknesses where they are obvious and then make a corrective or find stimulus as we push our way through this particular letter which Paul wrote some many centuries ago to the Thessalonian Christians. Paul came to Thessalonia, you remember, if I can just fill in the background details.

That's a very hard series of events when he'd been in other Greek cities and he'd been handled in a very, very unfortunate and shameful way. Difficult to plant churches, you know. I think of some womenfolk whom I was with just these last two weeks who were out there on the Comoros Islands doing pioneer work for ten years in a Muslim society.

I often blush when I come back home about the male dominance of evangelical churches when we are, in terms of leadership, when we are prepared to let our womenfolk go and do pioneer work on the forefront. I'll leave that one for you two to think through. Difficult to plant churches.

Paul had been in Philippi. They'd whipped him there. They'd imprisoned him there.

It was quite illegal. He had Roman privileges as a citizen and so he left that place limping somewhat with his wounds and he comes on a 100-mile trip to the coastland of Thessalonica where there is this large port which is really a sort of intermediary port between the east and the west. Centre of commerce.

Lots of Jews there. Jews are good merchants as well as money. You'll find Jewish people are present because they seem to have expertise in the whole area of economics and so on and so forth as it was today.

So it was then. And it was to these people, you remember in Acts chapter 17, that Paul first went. It was his custom to go to the synagogue, went for three consecutive Saturdays, told them about the Lord Jesus.

They didn't want to know, at least not all of them, so he went to the Gentile God-fearers and some of them and some of the Jews received what Paul had to say and then it was just as though all hell was let loose in the city because Paul was very badly dealt with once more and he sets off to another place but he has founded a Christian church. Another one in Thessalonica. And now when he's in Athens, he's thinking about those early Christians.

Have you ever stopped to consider this? I wish in one sense we could pull this church down and we could get rid of, just for a while, allow me this theoretical experiment, we could get rid of all the helps that we have in the Christian faith in our country in 1988. With no CPO, we've got no radio, we've got no books, we've got no Christian bookshop, we've got no so-called ordained pastors, we've just got the words of people who came, shall we say, onto Montague Street, preached three consecutive Saturdays, we listened to what they had to say, we agreed with their teaching and here we are, a group of people, we haven't got a hymn book, we haven't got an organ, we haven't got a Bible, we've only got the words of those men. Have you got the context? Is that sufficient to build a church? We would say no because you see we're so tuned in to parachurch ministries and all the regalia, all the paraphernalia rather, of church life, I'm not decrying it, I'm thanking God for the books that I personally own, the books that George Davlis was selling, if I know him, last Sunday evening.

I'm grateful for all this but I want to take you back in stark realism to what it was like at the beginning when there was nothing of this. Paul, in Athens, is thinking about this group and as he does so, there is what I'd call the sweet recall of precious memory, the sweet recall of precious memory. Look at verse 2. We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers.

You haven't there very long and they really had great difficulty but they're going on with the faith. They're young Christians, it's one of the first churches to be established. When Paul writes, the memory of these people is such that he immediately leads off by just mentioning himself and his colleagues who were in Thessalonica right at the beginning of their evangelism.

He doesn't have to defend his position as apostle, does he? There's no difficulty in this church, you see. They're all in perfect unity with Paul and the two co-founders. And notice how he describes this church in the first part of the, the second part of the first verse, to the church of the Thessalonians in God, in God, not the church of Paul, church of Martin Luther, the church of John Wesley.

We use these prepositions carelessly to the church of the Thessalonians in God. Jesus prayed one day, Father, as I am in you, may they be one in us. You see, when you've done with all your ecclesiology, that means all your church structure, infrastructure, government and so on and so forth, the only thing that really makes you a Christian is if you are in God.

Being in God means that the very life of God is directed into your life. It's what I was trying to explain to a lady who occupied two hours of my time on the flight over on Friday evening. It's what is meant by being born again.

She said to me, don't tell me you're a clergyman. She couldn't recognize what is an obvious fact. I said, what do you mean? She said, for three flights running, I sat next to ministers.

I said, perhaps somebody out there is trying to tell you something. For two hours, I had a gift opportunity, a lady getting on into her sixties with her life in an absolute mess. Within an hour, she was crying pitifully as a child.

She was telling me about one affair after another affair and running off to America trying to get rid of all the back cloth of her life in Africa. I said, no, you never run away from your situation, resolve it. You just need another compass point.

You need to know what it is to be born again, to be in God. Well, this is what this early church knew, did it not? Paul is reflecting upon it. Well, he's filled with a sense of gratitude to the Lord.

We always thank God for all of you. Mentioning you, verse 2, in our prayers. Continual intercession.

That's what Paul has nailed in the conviction of the Thessalonians. Paul knows the value of prayer, you see, and he's so concerned that his churches, the churches that he has helped to found in God, reproduce the intercessory ministry of the Apostle Paul and his colleagues. And as he's thanking God, the sweet recall of precious memory for these people, he reflects upon their activity.

Look at that little triplet there in the third verse. We continue to remember before our God and Father, your work produced by faith. Your labour prompted by love.

And your endurance inspired by hope. Here he just changes the sequence of the triplet. As he employed it earlier, you remember, writing to the Corinthians.

Faith, hope, love. Here he talks about their faith and their love and their hope. He puts hope last because he's going to be referring to the soon coming of the Lord Jesus.

And they've got that very much at the forefront of their mind. Now these Christian people of this model church, when they receive the gospel, they didn't become passive. In fact, in one sense, I can help you.

If you say to me, am I really a Christian? My answer is this. What are you doing in terms of living for Jesus? You see, these people, they'd listen to what the apostle had had to say. And their receipt of the message stimulated activity.

Your work produced by faith. Faith is always active. We've commented before on the partial grammatical accuracy of Negro spirituals, but sometimes their classic theological accuracy.

You don't go to heaven on a rocking chair because the Lord don't have no lazy bones there. Okay, well, it ruptures the Queen's English, but preachers have done that before now. But it does encapsulate the point that faith produces activity.

Your work produced by faith. Your labour prompted by love. And this endurance that you're having in Thessalonians when there's so many, many difficulties breaking out upon you because of your Christian commitment, you've still got this hope that Jesus is coming back again.

Do you ever think about that? You know, I love the Book of Common Prayer. I don't apologise to any non-conformist that I like the Book of Common Prayer. In fact, most of the church's 39 articles I agree with.

I just get hiccups now and again on baptism, but let that one pass. It's not that important. But in the Book of Common Prayer, you've got the creedal statement.

And the creedal statement guarantees that every member of the Anglican community on a Sunday will say that, I believe that Jesus Christ will come again. I don't know what some of the bishops do when they get to that point because they don't believe it, or at least don't believe it as the Bible teaches it. But nonetheless, there is this basic to the Christian gospel that Jesus is going to come back again.

And it was the thought of his return that was inspiring hope on the part of these Christians, these early Christians in Thessalonica with none of the props that we count as absolutely necessary. And when Paul thinks about them and how they're going on for the Lord, there's a sweet recall of precious memory. I wonder if people think that way of us at the time.

When they're reflecting upon experience that they've had, of fellowship with us. Maybe they're serving the Lord in various parts. Maybe they receive our tapes.

I do hope that when you're looking at our local church too, when you're thinking of the body of Christ here, there's something precious. Something that makes this place beautiful to you. Not because of the building, but because of the people.

Let's hasten on. Not just a sweet recall of precious memory, but sound reasons for producing maturity. Look at verse 4, will you? For we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you.

Paul is convinced that the faith, that the conversion of these Thessalonians is really genuine. We know. Look how he refers to them, brothers, twenty, thirty odd times.

He uses that lovely, affectionate term. And he uses it in a sort of bisexual fashion. He's referring to brothers and sisters in that community.

For we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you. And when he uses the word loved by God, he doesn't use the present tense. He uses the perfect tense.

As though God has always been loving them since the foundation of the world. Now that's a little theological shaft of light because we know that that is the case, don't we? In one sense, the cross of our Lord Jesus, though it occurred in time and space, its benefits are just as though it was out of time and space. The blessings of the cross, they apply to people in Old Testament times and New Testament times and right on to the twentieth century.

In one sense, it's true to say that God was always loving us. God was always loving us. Did you get that? God was always, is always loving you and me.

For we know, brothers, loved by God. Sound reasons for producing maturity, well, the apostle develops because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power. In other words, there is the demonstration of God at Thessalonica which has made certain the conversion of the recipients of this letter that Paul writes.

He came to them with the word of God. But the word of God was not just in word alone. You say you don't understand that.

Well, let's take it quite carefully and slowly, shall we? We're in the heart of verse 5. Notice he says, our gospel came to you. He's not concerned so much about saying, we came, the preacher came, but the content of the message, that gospel came to you. What he actually said, you can discover from Acts 17 where Paul's preaching program is at least summarized.

He told them about Messiah. He said that when Messiah came, he would suffer. He said that when Messiah came, he would not only suffer but he would be raised.

He said that not only was Messiah to suffer and be raised, but it would be a fulfillment of Old Testament scriptures. So he told them, the Jews to start with and then the Gentiles. He told them about these things.

But it wasn't just in word. You see, there's an oratory, isn't there? You know the difference between a man who's naturally eloquent but doesn't have the Spirit of God resting upon him and the man who has the Spirit of God. His words become cutting, incisive, bold, powerful.

I think sometimes of Jonathan Edwards. He was a great preacher, one of the greatest the Americans ever produced. And you know, he was as short-sighted as I am but didn't have the blessings of glasses or contact lenses.

And he used to read to his people with his notes because he wasn't an extemporaneous preacher. He used to read with his notes in front of him. And revival broke out.

Can you imagine that? Revival breaking out. Now why was that? Well, not because of the theatrical ability of the preacher. He just didn't have it.

But because his words were clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit. And when Jonathan Edwards was bringing the people of America to the feet of God some 300 years or so ago, he had tremendous power that enabled his words to cut them down and show them the awful sinfulness of sin and the greatness of the salvation of Jesus Christ. Well, says the Apostle, this is how we came to you.

There was a demonstration of power. Our words, they were not just clothed with the wisdom of man. There was a demonstration of the Spirit.

Perhaps he's referring also to miraculous accompaniments in the way that God vindicated, authenticated his word amidst these superstitious people. And so, as he reminisces on sound reasons for producing maturity, he refers to the demonstration of the Gospel of Christ. But not only is that one of his main reasons for confidence, but also he goes on to speak about the imitation of these people.

They imitated Paul. There was the demonstration of the Spirit and the imitation of the preacher. I'll qualify that in a moment, but look at verse 6. You became imitators of us and of the Lord in spite of severe suffering.

You know, says the Apostle Paul in the preceding sentence, how we lived among you for your sake. Now just pause there a moment, you see, because it's not sufficient in analysing what a model church is to check the theology of the church. Did you hear that? Now some of you may really feel that that is a most uncautious statement for me to have made, but I repeat it.

It is not enough to check the theology of a church. I have known churches whose theology has been impeccable and whose life has been negligible. You see, it's not only the task of the preacher to proclaim Christ.

It's the task of the preacher to illustrate Christ. You became imitators of us. You know how we lived.

We didn't come as sort of proponents or propagators of a prosperity gospel suggesting that if you came to Christ, well, all your material prosperity would be guaranteed, though Paul is at pains to tell the Corinthians that spiritual and physical blessings have their origin in God. But what he does illustrate in Thessalonians when he gets there is by his lifestyle that he means what he is teaching. You know how we lived amongst you.

Examine our lives. As Charles Spurgeon, as he preached his final address on that great text I have preached before the great congregation, quoting from the book of Psalms, he was prepared to ask his people to examine his life. People do read us, you know.

You may not want that to happen, but it is true. That's why the apostle makes reference to us being living epistles, read and seen of all men. Remember that lovely little verse that sometimes I quote? On the part of someone who has been led to Christ, not because they understood always what the preacher was saying, but they read what he was.

For me it was not the truth you taught, to you so clear, to me so dim, but when you came to me you brought a sense of him. And from your eyes he beckons me, and from your lips his truth is shed, till I lose sight of you and see the Christ instead. Here's the apostle and he says, you became imitators of me, and then of the Lord.

You see, you can use an inadequate model, a Christian is bound to be that, and he, she can direct you to the supreme example, the Lord himself. And so these Christians, they merit the approval of the apostle Paul, because there were sound reasons for their maturity. There was a demonstration of power.

There was the imitation of the ambassador. You welcomed the message with a joy given by the Holy Spirit, even though it brought for you great difficulty. The apostle precedes his comment, speaking of severe suffering.

And then look at that glorious conclusion in the seventh verse, and so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. You know, my friends, people do read the tab. There aren't that many churches in the United Kingdom that are as big as ours.

We're not boasting on our size. But what we do and how we live and how we behave and how we interact, it does affect other fellowships. So it's good for us to have at least as our goal, even if we miss it by a mile, to be a model church.

The apostle, as he's reflecting on the Thessalonians, has the sweet recall of precious memory. Sound reasons for producing maturity. Let me conclude with my little study.

In the final verses, startling results of a primary ministry. Startling results of a primary ministry. Look at verse 8. The Lord's message rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has become known everywhere.

Macedonia and Achaia, put them together, you've got the old land of Greece, as perhaps you used to study it in ancient history. Now, isn't this extraordinary? Again, go back to what I was saying 15 minutes ago. This church had no Bible, probably no paid leaders, no tracts to hand out, just a quality of life.

And that quality of life affected a whole country. You say, yes, but Mr. Preacher, that was 2,000 years ago. It doesn't happen today.

Do you know how many Christians there are in India? Well, 2% of the total population, and the population last time I was counted, it was around 800 million. That was a joke. Not the total, but the fact of my counting it.

You took it so seriously. Do you know, if you go to north, let's get the geography right as I imagine the map, northeast India you'll come across a place called Nagaland, a state in India where there are more than 95% who are Christian. Why the difference? It really is inexplicable at a sociological level.

You can only understand it in terms of revival and the impact of one man's ministry in that area. And I refer to William Carey going back a couple of hundred years. You see, the influence of a church, of a group of people can be so widespread it can affect a whole nation.

That's what happened in Thessalonica. So the Apostle Paul, maybe there's a smile on his face as he goes on to congratulate them, says, therefore we do not need to say anything about it. In other words, you've made us utterly redundant.

There's no policeman who's worth his salt who's not trying to get himself out of a job. Think that one through. I mean, wouldn't every policeman who's really called for the preservation of law and order, if the ideal came about, he would be redundant, wouldn't he? It would be rather lovely.

I mean, we would give them other jobs, I'm sure, being so grateful for their professional expertise. But it would be rather nice if you didn't need policemen. A policeman wants to work himself out of a job.

Ideally, there perhaps aren't many idealistic people like that in the police force. I don't really know. But this is how I see it.

Now, I also see this in terms of an evangelist. An evangelist wants to work himself out of a job. There's no need for me to come here.

Why? Well, you've already done the work. And they did the work in such a winsome way, didn't they? You see, they too, like the Apostle Paul, were not just men of words, they were men of actions. For they themselves, verse 9, the people who recounted the exploits of your ministry, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us.

They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Do you notice how the Apostle Paul isn't frightened about denouncing idolatry? It's not often that I make reference to a cleric publicly. But I do wish the Archbishop of Canterbury would watch it when he makes comment on Hinduism.

And going out to India, and seeing in the temples some of the deities, and how moved he was on one occasion by the way that the Hindus had got a concept of God in which they had shown just how wide and broad God was. Perhaps he would like to qualify what he said, but he did say it publicly and in a lecture. Don't read the Apostle Paul coming to Thessalonica and being sort of spellbound by the gods and the idols and say how nice that you've got such a wide concept of God.

Now hear me, I say that critically, but I also say it lovingly, and I stand to be corrected if you feel that correction needs to be made. You see, as far as the Apostle Paul is concerned, there's one name given amongst men under heaven whereby we must be saved. That name he preached in Thessalonica.

It nearly cost him his life. And he left these early Christians in turmoil as far as the authorities were concerned. But they didn't backtrack, did they? They didn't go back to their idols.

They didn't go back to the old way of life. And remember, their jobs are often hooked into the idolatry from which they came. They risked everything for the sake of Christ.

And it was that turnabout which became an eloquent statement to those who heard them in the rest of Greece that their profession was genuine. That's what the world wants to know, isn't it? What difference has your conversion made to you? Well, it made a lot of difference. They turned from the idols and they turned to the living God.

Notice the emphasis on the prepositions there. From and to. Not from into a vacuum, but to.

To the living God. To the living and the true God. To the living and the true God.

And to wait for His Son from heaven. The only use of the verb wait in that sense in the Greek language is just there. They waited with an anticipation that just round the corner was the greatest event of all time and that everything else in their lives ought to be regulated by this event.

That's how they cottoned on to the doctrine of the second advent and they didn't have a book. They didn't have a Bible. They didn't even have a resident Bible teacher.

How marvelous were these people! And what a testimony. Their experience of God's grace and the way that they handle their responsibilities. What a challenge it is to you and to me! Here we are.

We've heard cartloads of sermons, many of us, haven't we? Lengthy ones at that. But what about ensuring that our church fell ship? And I say we're not approaching this negatively. Thank God for what He does amongst us.

But how wonderful it would be if we could slip alongside the Thessalonian model more and more. So here is Paul, I'm through. Here is Paul in his opening address.

Lovely little letter that he writes to the Thessalonians. And I suggested to you three seed thoughts. There's a sweet recall of precious memory.

When he thinks about them, he's filled with gladness. Sound reasons that produced maturity. There was a demonstration of the gospel.

There was their imitation of the messenger and ultimately their participation in the life of Christ. And then there was the startling results of primary ministry. They caused the gospel to be so broadcasted around that country that the Apostle Paul would have been redundant if he pitched in for another evangelistic bout.

Well, may God inspire us to live the life that the Thessalonians lived in terms of commitment to our Lord and Savior. More of that next week. Let's turn to 102, shall we? In hymns of faith.

Thou whose almighty word chaos and darkness heard and took their flight. Hear us, we humbly pray. And where the gospel day sheds not its glorious ray, let there be light.

It's really John Marriott's missionary prayer for the propagation of the gospel on a global basis. 102. Now, just a further prayer before we come around the Lord's table to which all are invited if they confess Jesus Christ as Savior.

And incidentally, I have a word that's burning my heart for this evening which I want to share regarding a man who more or less took on the nation on his own and fought against great odds in the cause of Christ. I'd be glad for you to be present if you can. Father, we thank you for the example of the early pioneers of the gospel.

We praise you that we stand spiritually as their descendants. And we ask that something of the pulsations of the Spirit of God which caused them to live so vibrantly for you that they may be felt within our own hearts and lives. Bless every brother, every sister here, old and young, whatever our conditions may be.

Help us to realize in the outworking of this message there is a place for us in terms of the improvement of our discipleship. Grant to us each day, each hour the sweet consciousness of your presence and allow us to live as model Christians imitating our Lord Jesus, participating in his life and making an eloquent statement of the difference that there is when a man has committed himself to you. Here is then, blessed God, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost we ask these things.

Amen. Amen.