Well do please take your Bibles in hand once again and open them this time to the New Testament scriptures and to the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, chapter 1. You can find it on page 986 if you are using one of our church Bibles; 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. Paul writes, you’ll notice in verse 1, “To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now Thessalonica was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. You may remember Paul had been summoned there by a vision of a man of Macedonia saying to him and to his team, “Come over and help us.” And you can read about Paul’s Macedonian mission in Acts chapter 16 and 17. It began first in Philippi and then eventually he moved on to the capital of the province in Thessalonica where he remained, Acts tells us, only for three Sabbaths, so for about three weeks, just short of a month of ministry, in the synagogue where there was an opportunity for the Word. Acts 17:4 says as a result of his preaching “some of the Jews believed, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.” So there was some real good fruit after just three weeks of preaching. The nucleus of a new church was planted.
And yet the good fruit notwithstanding, Paul’s ministry, just as it had done in Philippi, Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica provoked an uproar. There was a riot and Paul was forced to flee. By the time he reaches Athens, as 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 will tell us as we’ll see in a few weeks, Paul was full of concern, anxious about the faith of the Thessalonian Christians, these new believers that he has left behind after being with them only for three weeks in the middle of persecution. And so he sent Timothy back to them and it was the good report that Timothy brought back to Paul, most likely while he was in the city of Corinth in Acts chapter 18, that became the occasion for Paul’s writing this letter. It was written about AD 49 or 50 so it competes with Galatians as the very first letter of Paul in the New Testament scriptures.
Notice, if you look at the opening chapter with me, that Paul begins, as was his custom, with his usual word of thanksgiving. He is very thankful for them, in fact, so thankful that unusually the thanksgiving really extends to include the whole of chapter 1. And there are three themes in particular to which I would like to draw your attention today as we look at verses 2 through 10. First, in verses 2 through 4, we are going to see what the Gospel does in us when we believe the good news. Secondly, 5 and 6, we’ll learn about how the Gospel comes to us to produce that dramatic effect. And then finally, 6 through 10, how the Gospel goes from us, having taken root in our hearts, how it ought to spread from us to others. What the Gospel does in us, how the Gospel comes to us, and how the Gospel goes from us.
Before we read the passage together, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, we pray now that the preaching of Your Word might not be in Word only but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction that we might become imitators of the apostle Paul and of the Lord and so receive the Word with joy in the Holy Spirit, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
1 Thessalonians chapter 1 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace to you and peace.
We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of 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 only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and 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 delivers us from the wrath to come.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Let’s look at verses 2 through 4. First of all, what the Gospel does in us. What the Gospel does in us. So Paul begins with thanksgiving, verse 2. “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.” And you’ll notice he lists three things that make him so very thankful as he considers the Thessalonians, three things provoke in him gratitude. Verse 3, “We give thanks for you in our prayers,” he says, “because we remember before our God and Father your work of faith, your labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” You see the three reasons for Paul’s thanksgiving? It’s their work of faith, their labor of love, and their steadfastness of hope.
Think about their work of faith first of all. Real faith, Paul says, works. Their work of faith. Real faith works. Faith does not merely believe. The faith that truly believes, works. It is active in leading us to live differently. Faith in Jesus Christ, in His obedience and blood, changes everything – our perspective, our values, our priorities so that we are now determined, as we trust in Christ, to live for Him. “Faith without works,” do you remember, James 2:6, “Faith without works is dead.” “Even,” James says, James 2:19, “Even the devils believe in that sense and tremble.” In other words, we must have more than mere mental assent to the Scriptural truth, warm feelings in our heart, we must have more; if our faith is the real thing we will go on, on the basis of our faith in Christ to live for Christ.
And so let me ask you, is yours a living faith, a faith that works? You can have a cultural faith, can’t you; an inherited faith, mom and dad’s faith, a second hand faith. You can have an intellectual faith. You can have a superstitious faith. You can even have a blind faith. But real, saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is demonstrated, it shows itself, it is revealed in this – it works. It makes those who trust in Christ new people. Because they trust Him, they are busy trying to crucify their sin, put off their old lives. They’re working hard to please their Savior who gave Himself for them. Do you have a faith that works? That’s the first thing the Gospel does in us – it produces a faith that works.
The second thing it produces for which Paul gives thanks and sees it in the lives of the Thessalonians is their labor of love. Now that phrase is passed into the English language as an idiom, isn’t it? “He’s always working in the yard. In fact, his beautiful flower garden is a labor of love,” we say. “Her work as a pediatrician takes an awful lot out of her, but it’s a labor of love.” We mean something like, “This person loves what they’re doing so much that it makes all their toil worthwhile.” That’s what we mean; it’s not really what Paul means. The love the Thessalonians have isn’t for their favorite hobby or for their vocations in life. No, their love is for the Lord Jesus Christ and because they love Him who first loved them and gave Himself for them, they labor, Paul says. They labor. That word “labor” is important. It has quite different connotations from the earlier word Paul uses for “work.” Your work, your work of faith, “work” in verse 3 refers simply to the fact that the true Gospel, true Gospel faith makes people live and act and do differently. It works.
But “labor,” that word points not so much to the mere fact of the work as it does to its intensity. It is strenuous and weighty. It demands a deep investment of mind and heart and will and energy and time and emotion and life. They pour themselves out. They have sweat equity invested. They work themselves weary. They toil away in acts of service and mercy, in worship and obedience, in evangelism and mission. Why? Why amidst persecution and open hostility with Paul taken from them after being with them only three short weeks? Why do they keep laboring on like this? Why not quit? They labor like this because to them Jesus is worth it. He’s worth it. They love Him and they know there’s nothing they can give, no labor too great to invest, that could ever adequately express the depth of their love for their Savior. Their love propels their labor.
Isn’t that challenging? Think about it this way. Apathy in a Christian – I think the Thessalonians would have instinctively understood – apathy in a Christian really is a failure of love. Boredom and indifference and carelessness when it comes to the Christian life, that’s a failure of love in the end. Love for Jesus, an adequate estimation of His loveliness that provokes love in our hearts for Him, makes us want to please Him, to serve Him, to spend and be spent for Him. And so we need to search our hearts, I think. Judged by our labor in Christ’s service, how would Paul rate our love for Him?
The Gospel generates faith that works. It produces love that labors. And thirdly, Paul says, “I’m so thankful for you Thessalonians because the Gospel has produced a steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s talking, this is actually one of the major themes of the letter, the first letter to the Thessalonians – the Christian hope. He’s talking about Christian hope. Not just the feeling of hopefulness but the great, bright hope of every believer – the final appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of the age to judge the world in righteousness and usher in at last the new creation. That is the Christian hope. That was the Thessalonians’ great hope.
And it was not simply for them an abstract, theological idea to which they gave mental assent. It wasn’t a distant wish without any relevance for today at church, at work, at the dinner table, among our friends. No, for them it was a living, vibrant expectancy that looked and longed for the great final day, knowing it was nearer now than when they first believed. And because the coming of Christ to make all things new was so vivid and so solid in expectation, it enabled them to endure drudgery today or the searing heat of suffering tomorrow or the sharp wound of disappointment in relationships week after week. They were steadfast. That word can also mean endurance. They endured. “Steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” because they knew, “This too shall pass. I’m not staying here,” they could say to themselves. “This is not home. I’m marching to Zion. I’m looking for the blessed hope. I can bear these slings and arrows in a fallen world because every day draws me one step nearer to a new world – home.”
If you don’t know where you are going, you are never going to get there. Right? It’s a basic principle for every journey – you’ve got to know your destination. The Thessalonians had a vice grip on their final destination. They were full of the Christian hope and it helped them, it will help you, to press on, to endure, to keep going, to take hold of the final reality promised on that great and glorious day. Paul gives thanks – do you see it – for their work of faith, their labor of love, and the steadfastness of their hope.
But the reasons for Paul’s thanksgiving don’t stop there. Look down at verse 4. “For we know brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you.” What an encouraging thing for Paul to say to them. The “For” there at the beginning of verse 4 connects what he’s saying here back to what he has already just said in verse 3. “I’m so thankful for the work of faith and the labor of love and the steadfastness of hope that I see in you, for they lead me to no other conclusion than that you are chosen by God.” Literally Paul says, “You are elect ones.”
Now the Biblical doctrine of predestination and election sometimes causes Christians some dismay, doesn’t it? If God chooses us for salvation before the foundation of the world based on nothing He foresees we would do, based on nothing that we have done but based solely on His free, unconditional choice alone, if that’s true, how can I ever have spiritual certainty? How can I possibly know if I am elect and chosen by God? Doesn’t the doctrine of election destroy the possibility of Christian assurance in the end? Well the apostle Paul disagrees with that logic completely here, doesn’t he? He rejects out of hand the notion that election renders assurance impossible. He has very clearly on the surface of the passage, he has a deep confidence that the Thessalonians are elect, chosen by God. Now how is that possible? He arrives at this conclusion not by some direct revelation from God but by looking at the evidence of their changed lives. He lists off the fruit he sees of the Gospel at work within them and he says, “There it is right there, clear as day – the evidence of the electing goodness and love of God written all over your life.”
The evidence of a changed life is immensely assuring, although take note carefully that it is the reassurance of Paul for the Thessalonians and not the self assessment of the Thessalonians themselves that we read about here in the passage. And I think that’s really important for us to see because while we should in the Scriptures call us to engage in careful self examination, and it is possible to trace the marks of grace in our lives and gain real assurance and comfort from them, nevertheless, not infrequently when we try to do that, haven’t you found that our self examination, if we’re not careful, it can collapse into a kind of morbid introspection – haven’t you found that to be true? We have a tendency, or at least I do, to look at ourselves and to find in our hearts only failure, only defeat, only sin. And so instead of assurance, our self scrutiny can plunge us into spiritual anxiety and we’re left wondering if we’re really converted at all. We see all the wickedness still festering away within.
But here’s the thing, when others come alongside us – this is perhaps especially the role of elders and pastors and spiritual leaders in our congregation – when they come alongside us and they put their hand on our shoulder and say with tenderness and love as Paul does here with the Thessalonians, “Every time I pray for you, my heart bursts with gratitude to God because I can see so clearly what maybe you can’t. I can see the marks of God’s sovereign choice of you, the evidence of His election written all over your life and your faith and your love and your hope. You are no longer who you once were. Yes, you are not yet who you wish to be, but you are not who you were by the grace of God. You are a new creature in Christ. His character, it shines more and more from you. I can see it!” The loving encouragement, you know, of an elder brother or an elder sister in Christ can make an enormous difference in the life of a struggling, defeated Christian. And I dare say that is a role many of us ought to be willing to play in the lives of others around us a bit more often than we do.
Before we move on, do notice the two corollary truths that must always go along with the doctrine of election. You’ll see them if you look again at verse 4. Look at what he says. “We know,” truth number one, “brothers,” truth number two, “loved by God, that He has chosen you.” If you are elect of God, chosen by Him in Christ before the foundation of the world, that means you are my brothers and sisters and it means you are loved by God. Isn’t that wonderful? The sovereign choice of God, it is the choice of love. He’s fixed His love on you in eternity, called you to Himself by the Gospel in history in order to make you His dear child forever. You are loved by God not because of your faith and love and hope. No, your faith and love and hope, your changed life, that’s the fruit, it’s the evidence of the love of God working in you. And what’s more, if you’re loved by God it makes us family. We are brothers and sisters.
The mostly Gentile Thessalonians have become, Paul says, “You have become my spiritual siblings.” Paul, the former Pharisee of the Pharisees, the most Jewish man in the New Testament perhaps, and “We are family now. We are one because we have the same Father.” We are loved by God. Election, the choice of God, brings us into a world of love – love from God and love between and among us as brothers and sisters in Christ. And since that is the world we now inhabit, a world of love, election, properly understood, ought always to lead not to doubt or spiritual uncertainty but to peace and settled confidence before God. We are eternally secure not because of any strength or gift of quality that we possess but entirely because of the sovereign love of God who places us in His family. That’s what the Gospel does in us. Isn’t it beautiful?
Now look down at verses 5 and 6 and see how the Gospel comes to us, how it comes to us to produce this work in our lives. Paul is really still thinking in 5 and 6 about the evidence that he can see in the Thessalonians’ lives of God’s electing grace. The first strand of evidence had to do with the fruit of the Gospel in their lives – their faith and love and hope. But now in verses 5 and 6 he offers a second strand of evidence that has to do with the way in which the Gospel came to them in the first place. Look at the text. It says we know He has chosen you, “because our Gospel came to you not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” When they were admitted into membership in the church at Thessalonica it was not a matter of course of mere routine, of going through the motions. It wasn’t that they knew the right words to say so that they could get waved through the process. No, Paul remembers how the mighty work of the Spirit accompanied the preaching of the Gospel so that the Thessalonians fell under a profound sense of the conviction of sin. His was a ministry not in word only. That means that it was a ministry, a faithful ministry of the Word, but to the preaching of the Word was added the power of the Spirit of God resulting in deep conviction in those who heard it.
And all across the history of the church you can find accounts of the same phenomenon – moments when the Spirit of God blessed the preaching of the Word with great power and effectiveness. Listen, for example, to how Robert Murrary McCheyne responded to inquiries made of him by the presbytery of Aberdeen who had heard there were some unusual things taking place in his congregation at St. Peter’s in Dundee. Here’s how he responded to their questions about what’s going on. “I have myself frequently seen the preaching of the Word attended with so much power and eternal things brought so near that the feelings of the people could not be restrained. I have observed at such times an awful and breathless stillness pervading the assembly, each hearer bent forward in a posture of wrapped tension, serious men covered their faces to pray that the arrows of the King of Zion might be sent home with power to the hearts of sinners. I have heard a half suppressed sigh rising from many a heart and I have seen many bathed in tears. I have also met with cases where the sight of souls thus pierced has been blessed by God to awaken careless sinners who had come to mock.”
That’s a ministry for which I think we all ought to pray, a ministry out of the ordinary, a ministry not in Word only but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. It is what has happened under Paul’s preaching in Thessalonica. It has happened again and again around the world across the history of the church. It is entirely beyond the capacity of any preacher to manufacture. I can shout and bawl and scream and slobber and cry and wail all you like and it won’t happen. We can play soft music and I can try to manipulate your emotions and it still won’t happen. It’s not the product of training or preparation or rhetoric or atmosphere. You can’t work it up. It is the gift of God by His Spirit alone. And so brothers and sisters, pray, pray that as the Word is proclaimed in this place Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, the Spirit of Christ might come in power and with full conviction.
Let me add a quick word of warning. If all that Paul’s preaching produced in Thessalonica was full conviction then he really could have no reason to be so confident of the election of the members of the church there because you see, you can have full conviction and still not have true conversion. You can feel the powerful tug of the Gospel call on your conscience, you can be stirred by an inner sense of religious duty, you can even be moved deeply by the beauty and the wonder of the love of Christ who died for sinners and still stop short of actively trusting Him to save you for yourself. How many people have tragically come so close and at the last moment have turned back? Please don’t be like them. Please do not rest content merely with conviction. You need conversion.
Mercifully, the Thessalonians had more than conviction; they had conversion. Verses 5 and 6, “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” There were strong incentives not to embrace Paul’s Gospel, weren’t there? They were enduring much affliction, Paul says. There were riots in Thessalonica in response to his preaching. Acts 17:5 says that a mob showed up at Jason’s house looking for Paul and Silas. When they couldn’t find them, they seized Jason and some of the brothers, the nucleus of this brand new church. It’s only been three weeks and already the city is in an uproar and violence has broken out against those who follow Jesus. There was massive social stigma attached to believing the Gospel in Thessalonica. If you did, it was going to be yard. You were going to suffer. It would cost you. And yet all the affliction notwithstanding, Paul says, “You were changed. You were changed. You became imitators of us and of the Lord Jesus. There was evidence in your life of a radical transformation and you received the Word, you welcomed it, embraced it in the midst of affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” Not just conviction, but conversion; a radical change inside and out because of their embrace of the good news.
Are you converted? Are you changed because you have received the Word, having counted the cost, and trusted in the Christ? That’s what has happened to the Thessalonians and the evidence of it makes Paul’s heart so very glad.
What the Word does in us and how the Word comes to us, and now finally notice how the Word goes from us. Look at verses 6 through 10 and notice this lovely chain reaction that takes place, a cascade of evangelism flowing down from the Lord Jesus to the apostle Paul and his team to the Thessalonians and then on from them out to the world. Do you see it? Verse 6, when Paul says the Thessalonians “became imitators of us and of the Lord,” he is really saying what he told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ. I am following Jesus, and to imitate me is to follow Jesus too and to seek to be like Him.” That’s what the Thessalonians did, and as they did they found themselves doing what Paul did as he sought to follow Jesus – they became witnesses to yet others, examples to still others. Verse 7, “You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.” Verse 8, “The word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything.”
You see what this is, don’t you, this lovely cascade of imitation from Christ to Paul to the Thessalonians and on out to the world? It’s a model or ordinary evangelism for everyday Christians. That’s what it is – a model of ordinary evangelism for ordinary Christians. Here’s how you do it. They shared their lives as an example to others and they shared the Word of the Lord as their central message. They showed people what the Gospel does and they proclaimed what the Gospel is. That’s how you do it. If you look at the last two verses of the chapter where Paul summarizes what others were telling him about the Thessalonians, you’ll see those two elements again even more clearly. First they told the story of their coming to faith in Jesus. Verse 9, the people Paul talked to “report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” People had heard from the Thessalonians that when Paul came to them, the power of the Spirit attended his ministry, they were swept away by the grace of God in the Gospel and everything changed for them. They heard how the fundamental course of their lives had been altered forever. They had made a U-turn in the road; they were headed in one direction before, serving idols. Now they’re headed by God’s grace in an entirely new direction serving the living and true God. They shared their stories, their stories of God’s redeeming grace. You can do that.
Then, verse 10, they shared the Gospel message itself. People told Paul the Thessalonians had now begun “to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” The future return of Christ, the historic resurrection of Christ and present deliverance that only Christ can give from the wrath and curse of God – those are the components of the message that Paul preached in those three weeks while he was in Thessalonica, and that was the message the Thessalonians now could not keep to themselves. How did the evangelism of the Thessalonians spread all over Macedonia and Achaia? What clever technique did they deploy? What subtle method of charm and disarm did they use? Well as it turns out, they simply lived an authentic Christian life before the eyes of the watching world and they told people the Gospel, clearly, simply. It’s not rocket science; it’s not complicated, is it?
You can do this. God helping us, we can do this – live the Christian life with honesty and integrity, clinging to Jesus for help, and then open our mouths to tell people about Him who delivers us from the wrath to come, the hope of heaven, deliverance from hell, all by the cross and the empty tomb of the Savior who loves us and gave Himself for us. That is the message that spread like wildfire from the Thessalonians throughout Macedonia and Achaia. It’s the message that turned the whole world upside down as Paul itinerated around the Mediterranean proclaiming it. It is the message that can bring men and women, boys and girls, out of darkness and into His marvelous light in this city from this place in exactly the same way.
You see what the Gospel does in us, how when it takes hold it changes us forever? How the Gospel comes to us if we wish to see that change happen in more lives – plead with God to pour out His Spirit on the preaching of His Word. And how the Gospel goes from us – an authentic Christian life lived before the gaze of the watching world and mouths filled with the Gospel of peace to proclaim to our friends and neighbors and loved ones and family. May God help us, having received such good news, to go and tell the world. Let’s pray together.
Our God and Father, how we love You that You have given Your Son for us and that He is at work within us by His Word and Spirit to change us till we become like Him. We are and long to be better imitators of Christ that we might be an example to other believers and encouragement to their hearts and that the Word of the Lord might sound forth from us throughout our whole city and region and around the world to the glory and praise of Your name. Would You make it so, for Jesus’ sake? Amen.