The Worlds Lighthouse No.2 A powerful combination

Let's just speak out together that first verse again before we sing once more. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

I'm going to sing it then how it's going to come and just commit the offering and ourselves to the Lord. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. Our reading is found in Corinthians and the first chapter, or rather the first epistle, and also in Thessalonians and once more the first epistle.

Corinthians in chapter one, sorry, Corinthians chapter two of the first letter, here is Paul doing something which modern preachers often do, alas, and apostolic preachers rarely did, and that is talk about themselves. Paul invariably only talks about himself to his detriment, apart from when he's glorying in his office. This is Paul's estimation of his ministry as he stumbles into the Greek city of Corinth.

1 Corinthians 2, when I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaim to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling.

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. Now Thessalonians in chapter one. The second verse, we also 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. Verse one, chapter two.

You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. We have previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know. But with the help of our God, we dare to tell you His gospel in spite of strong opposition.

For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We're not trying to please men, but God who tests our hearts.

You know we never use flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed. God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

Verse thirteen. We also thank God continually, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you, who believe. I'd be grateful if you'd have your Bibles open at once, Thessalonians.

Immersed in the oil of the Spirit and touched by the fire of God, his life became incandescent. The secret of his effectiveness lay in the fact that his whole personality was dominated and interpenetrated by the Holy Spirit. So quote I give you at the beginning of our Notes and News supplement, which we ask you to take away from the tab and to use, especially page three in its prayer selection during this coming week.

The quote speaks of something that I think we need to regain. In fact, I put it more positively, something we definitely need to regain in terms of the Church in the 20th century. We have, I feel that you will agree with me, constantly to be reminded that one of the problems, allegedly of the 20th century, is the problem of communication.

I mean, we have our email, we have our faxes, we have our satellite televisions, we have our ordinary letter facilities, we have the most sophisticated equipment even in a church like this. It's a long throw from my granddad and his crystal radio set. I don't think if he came back, and it's not that many years ago, historically speaking, on the whole spectrum of the human agenda, I don't think he'd recognize us.

I think he'd be scared stiff. But it's not so much the area of communication in terms of the modern ability to transmit a message from place A to place B that I have in mind. It's the communication, the explanation, the successor otherwise with which the Church proclaims its message today.

And we are being told on many a front that the only way to communicate with modern man is by the exploiting of modern technology. Now, that may be okay as far as it goes. I'm an avid supporter of FIBA and radio ministry.

But you see, the comment that is made is more subtle than that. If you're going to get sophisticated man in the West in the 20th century, well, there are certain things you've got to realize. This man has changed, you see.

He's no longer what he was in the 19th or 18th century. Some of us would say, more's the pity. He can't sit still, not for very long.

I mean, he's a man who goes back home or a lady who goes back home, flicks on the box, and there he's got audio, video equipment immediately available, the ear gate and the eye gate. You know, it's all very exciting. He's got the soaps.

He's got his computer. He can bring in the signal from the other side of the world. He can sit there and spend hours.

He can dip into libraries. He can communicate across the globe to other people. And this man, this modern man, he doesn't want your church, at least not the way that you conceive it.

He's not to come and sit in a pew and listen to an address. And if he does, then be warned, you've got to dish up something special for him. I mean, we live in a day when we don't make distinctions.

I mean, the church is not to make any distinction at all. The church is for everybody. You know, it's a welcome club.

It doesn't matter what you are, you're welcome. So you can put on your service for every type, every condition of man, be he homosexual or heterosexual. The church has got a message.

You cut it, you trim it, you taper it, you make it fit the requirements of modern man. This is the way to fill your cathedrals. This is the way to continue Christianity on into the millennium.

As though the millennium does not take as its hallmark the birth of Jesus Christ, 2,000 years after his birth and life and death and resurrection. That's what we're moving on to celebrate. And there are those who say for the church to maintain its credibility on into the next 1,000 years, it has got to do something very different from what it has been doing heretofore.

The Apostle Paul was not a charismatic figure in the modern sense of the word. You would not have found him, for example, donning the lid of some chocolate box or on your calendars with a new picture of him every month. Nothing the matter with those whose pictures don chocolate boxes or with those who give their pictures for a yearly calendar.

All I'm saying is that the Apostle Paul was not like that. Small, bald-headed, hooked nose, little man, suffering probably from repeated bouts of malaria. I tell you, neither the Tory party nor the Labour party would have allowed him to give a party political broadcast because he doesn't have it.

Not in terms of personality, no. And yet, this hooked nose little man, as he went from one place to another place 2,000 years or so ago, preaching the gospel had incredible success. Incredible success.

My good friends in AWM and FIBA and the rest of the missions that are represented here, as well as our church congregation, it's not easy for you or for me to think through what life was like in the first century, is it? I mean, there was no church in terms of a building, there was no microphone, there was no literature, there was no radio, there were no hymns. So, what does this little man do when he finds himself in the middle of a Greek city, an environment which is hostile to the new message of the gospel? What do AWM brothers and sisters do in the back quarters of India when they go into a Hindu village? Give tracts out they can't read? Tell them to tune in to a radio station? They haven't got a radio. I mean, where do you start when you're in a society where laptop computers are utterly unknown? How do you proclaim the gospel? What do you do then? Can Mr. modern advisor of the church give us some prescription for evangelizing India? Well, how did Paul do it? The answer is, we came to you with a message and we declared that message not only with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.

Sociologically, the Christian church in its origin is a phenomenon which is inexplicable. You say, on what grounds do you argue this? Well, it was successful. It was successful without the publicity machine that is reckoned to be vital to any people trying to promote a message today.

It had everything against it. This man had no prior warning given to the Thessalonians that he was coming. There were no posters.

There was no advanced publicity. He comes struggling with his back smarting because he has been so terribly treated in Philippi, his last port of call. And yet, when he has been propagating the gospel for some years in the unreached area of the Middle East and South and Eastern Europe as it is today, he seems to be singularly successful.

He looks back after a missionary journey of a couple of years and he writes to the churches that he has instituted by God and they're going, they're vibrant, they're maintaining a witness even though they don't have many of the modern supports which we think are vital. And so the question has to be put, how did he do it? In fact, another observation has to be made. If he was so singularly successful, then maybe the way forward for the church is the way back.

Maybe what the church needs in the 20th century is not something new, but a dose of something old. What did Paul have? He had the Word of God. One Scottish preacher said, if you've got the Word of God in your hand and the Spirit of God in your mind, you've got all that you need to be successful.

In terms of your Christian living on this earth. So, here is the Apostle Paul, who I placard in front of you as an example of ministry that the church needs to learn from today. The Times has been running successfully, I'm told, for the last two or three years, maybe the last five.

A competition for the best preacher in the United Kingdom or the best sermon. And a conglomeration of sermons is produced in the Times Sermon Annual each year. Nobody has ever sent me a copy, I'm so grateful.

And I want to tell you that if the Apostle Paul was here today, he wouldn't make it. He wouldn't get in the book. And neither will any Bible expositor.

And the reason is this. One is the length of the communication. And two is the content of what is being said.

Because you see, the Apostle Paul was not anecdotal. He rarely, as I mentioned, speaks about himself. And what's more, he doesn't make his message contemporary to the needs of a society that is a Greek society and hostile to a Judo-Christian society.

What Paul does is preach the uncompromising word of the Lord. And so he tells us here, you see, he's thinking back on the occasion when he first came to Thessalonica. What happened? Well, we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you.

We know that our ministry has been spectacularly successful. Why? Because you're there. Because we can write a letter to you.

Because we can speak to you through this means of communication. And we know that in Thessalonica, there is a vibrant, growing church which has an influence permeating the whole of that area to the extent that really you have made us redundant. For us to come back and evangelize would be unnecessary because you have been so utterly successful.

Now strip away all that you think in terms of the modern helps of church, as I've been trying to tell you. This was a raw bunch of converts who responded to what Paul had to say yesteryear, and when he moves on, after a short preaching bout in Thessalonica, they take on his vision and they relay it to others. And for my money, that sounds far more successful and far more ideal than the majority of stuff that you come across today in the West or in the East as far as church life is concerned.

So you ask the Apostle Paul, what is the secret? What is it that you did, Paul, that was so blessed by God yesteryear that you formed churches which lasted for centuries? And Paul will tell you. The reason is primarily we did not compromise on the content of our message. We preached, and we preached powerfully.

We preached what we would know, what we knew. Well, what was the content of the Apostle's preaching? And the answer is, he gave succinct definitions of the faith. Now, here we pause again, and I'll justify my comment in just a moment or two, but I must go back to this 20th century.

You see, definitions of faith are not in. Credal statements are not in. What is in is compromise.

What is in is fudge. It has to be, or else you cannot have a megachurch that will take all departments of society without any change in those departments before they come into the church. The Prince of Wales is quite right in one sense when he speaks persuasively to some about faith over against the faith.

And his concern, if he ever became the king of the United Kingdom and its dominions, to be a defender of faith. You see, faith is a wishy-washy term. Anybody can get in there.

It doesn't matter. Hindu, Muslim, bring them all in. It's part of the word faith.

There's no definition. There's no delineation. Now, the Apostle Paul, he's not in that category at all.

I doubt whether he would even understand it. He's a man of dogma. He's a man of doctrine.

And so he tells us about the preaching that he released in Thessalonica. What was this preaching like, Paul, will you tell us? Well, he says, We, when we came to you, we told you a message which you passed on to others. It was a message about God, verse 9, and turning from idols, in order to serve the true and the living God.

It was a message about Jesus, verse 10, his advent to the world, and his removal to heaven, and his future return. What does Paul tell these people in Thessalonica? Well, he tells them about this great God. He doesn't even start with Jesus.

He starts with God. The holiness of God, the awesomeness of God. He appeals to what every man and woman who is rational and reasonable will recognize, and that is that God is.

God is. But moreover, that this God has revealed himself. How does he reveal himself? Well, he comes into the world in the person of Jesus.

So he speaks about the nativity. He speaks about the virgin birth. He tells them the story of Jesus, how he went around doing good, but more than that, what he had to preach, and how what he had to preach was so alien to the religious leaders of his day that he was hounded like a common criminal, that he was persecuted, that he was beaten, that he was done to death on the cross.

This is what Paul told them. And he told them that on the third day he was raised again, and that after he'd been with the disciples for some 40 days and 40 nights, he was taken back to the place where he had come. And there, in front of a holy God, he would speak on behalf of a bruised and broken world.

And one day, Paul says, this Jesus will return, and he will return to deal with the sins that have not been forgiven. He will come to deal with the guilt that has not been dealt with in terms of men and women recognizing the precious blood of Jesus and what it has achieved. You see, what I'm saying here is this, that Paul took a message that was dogmatic, and he proclaimed it to a heathen people.

And they responded, not all of them, but some of them, a good number of them. Now again, I repeat it, I risk wearying you, but I'll take the gamble. He does it without any helps whatsoever that we call vital for the propagation of the gospel in these days.

In other words, what the apostle Paul is telling you here is that preaching is essential. The pulpit has to do its work. Not necessarily in such a beautiful building as this, but what the pulpit stands for.

The very concept of pulpit, historically, is pulling people from the pit of sin. And someone who is committed to that concept of proclamation realizes that what he, what she is dealing with are the most important things in life, and they will not, for any reason at all, even though Buckingham Palace does not agree, they will not compromise on their faith because the pulpit is higher than the monarchy, and the pulpit is higher than parliament, and the pulpit is higher than the judiciary because the pulpit has as its authority not the word of men, but the word of God. Which is one of the reasons why the apostle Paul, you see, congratulates these Thessalonian Christians.

What did you do? Well, you received the gospel. You accepted what we had to say. Verse 13 of the second chapter.

You received the word of God, which you heard from us. You accepted it, not as the word of men, but as it actually is the word of God, which is at work in you who believe. You see, when the church acts as the church, then she is the most authoritative source in the universe because she is linked into the mind of God.

She is related to the heart of God. That's why pulpits, I'm not arguing for pulpits, incidentally, I'm not arguing for high pulpits, but one of the reasons why there are pulpits, why they are high, was because when in medieval times the monarchs used to come in, they recognized that superior to the throne and the mind of the monarch was the pulpit and the mind of God. Now, when you realize this, you become very bold, you see.

You may be a little man, you may be hook-nosed, you may not have a charismatic personality, but when you realize that your authority comes from God, you will speak it out, so they do you to death. So what? You can't lose. Absent from the body, present with the Lord.

The Christian, you see, is boxed in by faith and by hope. He's untouchable as far as his spirit is concerned. You can lock him up in prison.

You can do to the Christian what Pharaoh did to Joseph. You can have Joseph languishing in jail for many a year on a trumped-up charge. And then, when Joseph is released, and he stands before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh tells Joseph about dreams he cannot understand, Joseph speaks with a matchless eloquence.

And Pharaoh realizes that this man is peculiar, he's distinctive. He's far different from any of the wisdom of the counsellors in Pharaoh's court. He has far more ingenuity than anyone that Pharaoh knows.

And Pharaoh comes to the conclusion, this is the man in whom the spirits of the God reside. Now, I'm arguing that exactly the same is in the New Testament. I'm arguing that exactly the same is applied throughout the whole of history.

Take John Calvin, this asthmatic man who dies in his early fifties. Why is it that he brings Europe to its heels? Why is it that Martin Luther can come along with a message that revolutionizes Western society and has placed into Western society the foundation of its educational system, and so on and so forth? Well, the answer is this, that Luther, like Calvin, recognized an authority in the word which God had entrusted to the church in his day some 1,500 years ago. And, my friend, it's still the same.

Compromise on this word and you compromise on your faith. There is only one faith. Contend for the faith, says the apostle Jude as he's writing just that short letter.

Contend for this faith. Battle for the faith. Hold on to the faith.

Wrestle for the faith. Don't give it up. Never give in.

Never compromise. Why? Because when you compromise, you're finished. You really are.

When you water down this great and glorious gospel, you're left with nothing. You're left with a candy floss theology which when you bite into it has got no substance whatsoever. So here is Paul, you see, and he comes and he knows.

He knows that he has an authority that rests upon him because he's not just a wordy man. For we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with words. This world is full of words.

It came to you with word and power. Power. You see, how do you explain Paul? As I've said before, you can't explain him in terms of just making an impression because of who he is.

He's not much. But there is Paul Plus. Some of you oldies will remember the advert that knocked up millions of pounds for one petroleum company.

Esso, put a tiger in your tank. Those of you who are smiling are betraying your age. Paul had more than a tiger in his tank.

He had the Spirit in his belly. He knew something of what it was to be propelled by the power of God. Here he says when he's speaking to the Corinthians, I came with the natural stuttering tongue that is mine but suddenly the exousia, the power of God, came upon me.

And you can only understand what happened in Corinth. You can only understand what happened in Thessalonica by realizing that this is a man plus. Plus what? Well, a man plus the Spirit of God, plus this authority, this incredible irrational force that sometimes comes upon a man.

And not only comes upon a man, but also comes upon the hearer. William Carey, as you know, is one of my heroes. God knows how much I wish that my life had been like his.

How do you explain Carey? Small, bald, not hook-nosed. I'm not incidentally making out a case for small, bald Christians. If you fit in that compartment, go away happy this morning.

But I'm not suggesting that everyone does. I was going to mention someone from the church, but I won't by way of illustration. What kept Carey in Bombay, or just north of Bombay? Well, he believed that God had many people in India.

What did he mean? Well, let's go back to the New Testament, because that helps to explain. Why does Paul stay in Ephesus, another Greek city, for so long? Because God said, Paul, I have many people in this city. Now, how does Paul know who the people are that God has? That's one of the great mysteries.

He doesn't know. What he does know is this, that the missionary extraordinaire is the Holy Spirit. He goes on before, you see, and he prepares the hearts and the minds of people.

You see, these folk in Thessalonica, though they bask in, though they dwell in paganism, they don't glory in it. The poverty in Calcutta and its slums, and the superstition that many of those people have, they don't glory in this at all. They want to be released from it.

And the work of God, the Spirit of God, he anticipates the work of the proclamation of the Gospel. And here there are men, women, in Thessalonica, and they've been prepared. Paul comes along.

He speaks about Jesus. And it's a message that makes sense to them, as though they've been waiting every moment of their life for someone to come and tell them about Jesus. God goes on before in the person of the Spirit.

And the anointing does not just rest upon the preacher. The anointing rests upon the hearer. This is why the inordinary member of a congregation is not ordinary.

He's extraordinary. She's extraordinary. There is a possibility that the aflatus, the unction of the Spirit, will rest upon you.

Because the unction of God is a three-way thing. It comes from the Spirit. It hits the preacher.

It hits the congregant, and not necessarily in that order. So here is Paul in Thessalonica. And when he starts to preach, although he's handicapped with all these limitations, he has this massive advantage of knowing what he believes and recognizing that the authority of God through the power of the Holy Spirit is working with him.

And so Paul says, When we came, we preached you a message. It wasn't in word only. It was also in power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit.

What does he mean by demonstration? Well, it's an interesting term. And again, you get a similar sort of recognition of this in 1 Corinthians 2-3. The power of the Holy Spirit.

There are some who believe that the demonstration of the power of the Spirit is always in terms of some sort of visible physical phenomenon. Now I would argue that it can be. But it's not necessarily.

And very often it isn't that. The great working of the Spirit is not somebody falling down in a meeting, although that could be a very valid experience. It's not necessarily some miraculous happening where someone is healed, although that can take place.

Nor is it to be seen just in terms of an exorcism. Though thank God that the power of Jesus is greater than the power of Satan. The demonstration of the power of the Spirit, generally speaking, in the acts of the apostles and in the history of the church has been when societies have been changed.

When they were once that, but now they have become this. Now don't you see, here is an example of it in this opening chapter of 1 Thessalonians. We do not need to come back and to tell anybody else about what's happening to you.

Why? For the reports that we already hear, they tell us of the kind of reception that you gave us and what has happened as a result. How you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. How it was that your life which was at one level just a life of superstition and hurt and it was meaningless, it's now come together.

There's dignity in the individual. You're living for something. You have an expectation.

Your community, it has a life that is different from anything else in Thessalonica. And when people say, well what has happened to that man? What has happened to that woman? What has happened to that community that they are so different? The answer comes back. They're Christians.

They embrace a message about a carpenter born in Bethlehem, died on the cross. They speak about the power of God. And not only do they speak about the power of God but there seems to be a joy within them.

And tenaciously they cling to the truth that they believe and they gather together on a regular basis and they go over the old ground and they break into new ground. They encourage one another. They come together on a regular basis.

And there are those among them who are particularly gifted in teaching and they listen to them but they also make contribution themselves. And don't you see the greatest evidence as far as the New Testament church was concerned of the power of the gospel was its effects. It changed.

It changed the society in those days. And no, it doesn't just change the society in Thessalonica. It did so in Athens.

It did so in Rome. It did so throughout the whole of the then known world. Little pockets of Christians.

Now it seems to me that when church growth was so spectacular in the acts of the apostles in that first century and the reason for the growth as confessed by the apostle Paul was that they had the word and the spirit alone then to compromise or to put that on one side and suggest that in the 20th century you've got a better methodology is crackers as they would say in the north of England. It's pure crazy. Why does Paul preach? Paul didn't even preach just for the response of his audience in Thessalonica.

He preached because God was listening and what he wanted to say was what God wanted him to say. So the apostle is not preaching for effect and I'm not being critical of the times. I'm glad anyone who creates any interest at all in sermons these days but when I say the apostle Paul wouldn't have cared a fig about being amongst the 100 best preachers in the United Kingdom I'm exactly and accurately interpreting what he says in the fourth verse of the second chapter.

We are not trying to please men but God. Not the homosexual community. Not the interfaith movement.

Not the politicians. Not the queen. Not her family.

The pulpit is higher, remember, than the throne. The pulpit is higher than parliament. This is not a madman speaking of the south coast.

This is the historic position of the Christian church. I go further. It's the historic position of the prophets in the Old Testament.

It was the position of our Lord Jesus. He didn't debate. He didn't discuss.

He called an eye an eye. He crossed the T's. He dotted the I's.

He spoke what he believed. And he believed what he spoke. And for us, in the 20th century, to compromise on the methodology of the 1st century is plum crazy.

Paul says, what I wanted to do was not to please you, folk in Thessalonica. I wanted to please the one who stopped me on the Damascus road and infused into me an understanding of his gospel. God is our witness.

We were not looking for praise from men nor from you or anyone else. And so we conclude this address. What was its title? A powerful combination.

What did I give as an example? A quote to the description of the life of our Lord Jesus which also actually would have described the life of John the Baptist. What made John and our beloved Savior and the Apostle Paul so effective? They believed the Word. They had the Word in one hand.

And they had an experience of the Spirit, so to speak, in the other hand. And with this combination, Paul made an impact on Thessalonica. And as it was then, so it is today.

There's only one message. It's the message of the cross. And that's the message we are called to proclaim in the power of the Spirit to the world at the end of the 20th century.

Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for the record of Scripture and for the way that the Apostle tells it plainly and illustrates it graphically. That the message of the Evangelist made an impact in that day.

And we pray that it may continually make an impact today. Preserve your church from folly. Help us from selling out to a bowl of soup when all the promises of God are there for us to enter into.

Give to us not an understanding of your Word alone, but give to us the power that is behind your Word. To speak with an authority that comes from you, which people recognize in their guts, is different from anything that they have come across in the world heretofore. Bless your church, your persecuted church, your church in Muslim lands, your church in China, your church in Europe.

Bless your church today in the confused situation in the United Kingdom. Oh God, bless your church. And return us to the concept of the Word and the Spirit.

For Jesus' sake. Amen. Well, let's please all the ex-Methodists here as we sing Jesus' name high over all.

In earth, in hell, or earth or sky. 385. The last verse is wonderful.

Happy if with my latest breath I may but gasp His name. Preach Him to all and cry in death, Behold, behold the Lamb. The angel whose pure and mild Was the next of those old and guilty free Returns the world to her Returns the world to her As the greatest souls He sees And life into the dead Returns the world, Christ Jesus Christ to you Open heart and praise for all mankind I may but cry to all and cry in death