When The Gospel Comes To Sin City (part 3) - [1 Thessalonians 1:5-10]

This is a letter that Paul writes to encourage Christians, to encourage these

Thessalonians, to give them assurance of eternal life. And this is one of those books that is very uplifting, very encouraging.

After spending three years in Corinthians, that church was carnal. This is the exact opposite.

As carnal as Corinth was, the Thessalonians, because of God's grace, are holy and set apart and honoring the

Lord Jesus Christ. I started this series, 1

Thessalonians, some time ago, and we've come to verses four through 10. When the gospel comes to a pagan city, what happens?

This city's been pagan for generations, no, for centuries. And then the gospel of life comes to town, what happens?

It says in verse four, for we know, 1 Thessalonians 1, four brothers loved by God, that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you.

And what happens? We learn last time, in verse five, unregenerate elect people believe by the power of the

Holy Spirit. 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 prove to be among you for your sake.

Not only that, even in the midst of persecution and trials, sanctification begins. When you get saved, you're justified, declared righteous based on the work of Christ.

And at justification, sanctification begins. You learn to say no to sin and yes to righteousness, just like Titus chapter two that we read this morning.

It says in verses six and seven, and you became imitators of us and of the

Lord, for you received the word with much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.

And then he says something that he doesn't say about any other church. He doesn't say it about the Ephesians.

He doesn't say this about anyone else. So that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

This is amazing. The gospel had such an effect that these people were examples.

They were types. Now, I don't do this on Sunday morning, but this is a Sunday night. Turn your Bibles to the very back and find the book of maps.

And specifically, I think if you go to the last map, the missionary journeys of Paul, it would probably be helpful for you to see this in your mind's eye because what is

Macedonia? What is Achaia? Where are these things? Some of you are gonna go to Greece with us this spring.

You'll be able to see these things. But if you look at the back of your Bible, missionary journeys of Paul, and you look to the left hand side, you're going to see

Athens and Corinth. And you'll see where Greece is today. And if you look at the very top of the

Aegean Sea, you're going to see Philippi, Berea, and there you see

Thessalonica. Thessalonica is in Macedonia. Do you see the big letters there?

Athens is in Macedonia. But there, just south, this land mass south of Macedonia is

Achaia. And these Thessalonicans were so influenced by the

Gospel, they became examples to Christians and unbelievers as well in this whole area.

This is a very large area. When I was in Greece last time, it took us about, oh,

I think, a day to drive from Corinth up and over into Delphi.

This is a large area. And so the Gospel of Christ affected these people. And Paul says, you are a pattern, you're a model because the

Gospel has so affected your life. Okay, let's go back to 1 Thessalonians. I just thought that was interesting since I don't do

PowerPoint preaching. John, do you do PowerPoint preaching? No, I don't. No, you don't. Okay, why is that?

Okay, I think we need no PowerPoint. That's right. Number three, when the

Gospel comes to a sinful city, not only do the unregenerate elect receive it and sanctification begins, number three, this is new information for today, evangelism is spontaneous.

People begin to evangelize. And this is fascinating. Look what's happened. For not only has the word of the

Lord sounded forth, trumpeted forth, reverberated forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, see that super large landmass, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything.

Let's think about that for a second. There's so much going on in the lives of the church, the apostles don't really need to preach.

I wonder if that could be said for Bethlehem Bible Church. The word of God has so affected you, it's so reverberated through you, the elders don't need to do any evangelism because you've covered this area.

That's a kind of, and that's a big area. I wish somebody would have compared for me

Massachusetts compared to Achaia and Macedonia. This is a very large area.

Outside missionaries are no longer needed. Now what's the source of this message?

Do you see it in verse eight? For not only has the word of the Lord, very, very common

Old Testament expression, the source of this message isn't the apostles, the source isn't the

Thessalonians, the source is not Dr. Phil, the source is God Himself.

This was the message truly of divine origin and it goes forth everywhere.

Reminds me of Acts 13, and when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And so what happened?

They got saved and they had an urge to evangelize. Now ask yourself the question, remember when you first got saved, what's one of the first things you wanted to do?

Well, you probably said, Lord, thank you, I don't have to pay for all my sins. But then what else started happening?

It didn't take very long for you to say, if this is what salvation is and I'm saved from sin and from Satan and from myself, from judgment, from the wrath of God and saved unto a following Christ, that means every one of my family members, every one of my neighbors, every person who's not born again is going straight to hell when they die,

I better tell them the good news. Remember how zealous you were? Maybe some of us were too zealous.

Anybody here maybe too zealous when you first got saved? Some were, some will admit it.

The text here, to trumpet forth in verse 8, to sound forth, the root word of this

Greek word is the English word, did you figure that out? The root word of the Greek word of the English word, echo.

The Greek word contains where we would get our English word, echo, to ring out.

Imagine taking the Liberty Bell and if I had one of Johanson's sticks here, are you allowed to have a drumstick in this church?

Are we against drums? If I took a stick, a drumstick, and hit the side of the Liberty Bell, crack and all, it would make a sound and then what would it do?

It would reverberate. It's like if you go to the piano and you push down a key, there's a certain pedal that you can push down to make that note sustain.

What's it called? I want to say sustinado or something like that, is that right?

Something close? Is that right, is that a Spanish word? Puerto Rican, Brazilian. We don't know what kind of words they are.

I am in trouble. I have a special book for Nyada today to give.

Love. There's this echo.

It's like you throw in a big boulder in a lake. Maybe I can make up to you by talking to your son.

Mykaia, you take a big rock and you throw it in the lake and it splashes, it makes a big sound. And what happened to those waves?

Do you know what, if it's a calm day, those waves will go all the way to the other side of the lake. And here the splash of the

Gospel has happened in the lives of the Thessalonians and off it goes. It reverberates out.

That's the idea here. Sounding, echoing, ringing out.

And you know, God had accidentally on purpose, kind of by chance and luck, put the Thessalonians perfectly on the main highway, the

Ignatian Way. You know what it really reminds me of here in New England? I wonder if it's chance, serendipity, fortune, luck, or providence that Bethlehem Bible Church is in the very center of New England.

I don't know if it's perfect center, but when I look at those six New England states, who's in the very center?

People drive up here on Sundays from Rhode Island, from Connecticut, drive down from Haverhill, the list goes on.

And God had strategically orchestrated the Gospel goes to the Thessalonians and I will do a great work in their heart and it will ring out right down the

Ignatian Way from Macedonia all the way down to Achaia. And if you look at the text, sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere.

Acts 18 says, when Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the

Jews that the Christ was Jesus. Sometimes this word would be used for maybe some kind of relay station.

So I would have some news and I would run to this far and then hand over the news to the next guy and then he would keep running.

Now here's the great point. You don't know how tempting it is as a pastor and as an elder board to try to say, we wanna reach the people for the

Lord and we need to have an evangelistic program. Can you think of any evangelism programs that you've heard of over the years?

Name some for me out loud. Evangelism Explosion, one of the better ones, right?

Evangelism Explosion, D. James Kennedy. What else? Way of the

Master, okay, good. 1999,

Bethlehem Bible Church was Bethlehem Baptist Church at the time. We said, we'd like to reach the community. And so the Jesus video was very big in those days.

And so we got a Jesus video for every household in West Boylston.

Who was here with me for that? Nobody else liked it, they all left the church. Okay, but we have new people here.

And so we said, all right, you don't get saved by a video per se, but that's going to be our gift. We're gonna give some information about the church and then a

Bible tract about salvation and forgiveness of sins and a plastic bag. And we'll put one of each of those and invite them to a concert or VBS, I think it was.

And we're gonna break up in teams. And then we're gonna go deliver these to every person's house in West Boylston.

And if they're not home, we'll hang it on the door. Now I love doing it because just to knock on people's doors, pray ahead of time, talk with people, it was all worth it for what was done in the body here for edification.

We didn't get one person to come to the church because of that program, except I'd say five to 10 people came to the church because they didn't like the little baggy left on the door.

And then they hung that little baggy with the Jesus video on our door. So they did come back to the church to say, we don't want this at all.

And I did see for many years, the Jesus video in the library sale where people bring all their old books and all that back.

There's nothing wrong with evangelism program unless the leadership ignores this fact.

People who realize how bad they were and then how much they've been forgiven want to tell other people.

Friends, we ought to see people as those who need the gospel.

There's a reason why you have a male man or male woman, a butcher, somebody down at the shop, somebody that you meet at work, somebody at school.

I hope you see them all as targets for the gospel. And even if you can't say anything about Jesus, I hope you pray for them.

I hope you have a desire. What kind of love would that show if we don't have the desire for our friends to be saved?

I said this morning so I can say it again now, but some maybe weren't here this morning. We have no Bible evangelism program at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Why? Because you are the program. We are the program.

You teach people about doctrine. You show people about who God is and His attributes and how He's high and how

He's lifted up. And then you want to go tell people. Who's got to preach the gospel to somebody in the last week?

And then after you get done preaching, by the way, good job. Everybody else, bad job. No, just kidding. There's better ways to motivate people than saying bad job.

The feeling that you get, and I mean I'm talking about feeling on purpose, that here we got to open our mouths and preach the gospel.

You know, no one had to tell the Thessalonians, do you know what? Got that neighbor who needs the gospel?

Pray for leading. God, I'm not quite led to tell my friend.

Is that how it works with the Great Commission? Go therefore and make disciples? I just need a leading.

I know the leading thing doesn't work. At least if you have children, the leading thing doesn't work. Children, we'd like you to clean your rooms.

We're having company over tonight. Mutos are coming over for burgers and we want you to clean your room.

Yes, Dad. Three hours later, your rooms, pigsty's.

Well, Dad, I didn't feel led. What would you say?

We have a bunch of Christians walking around. Well, I wasn't quite led. Well, no, you've been given the command.

Now you have an opportunity. And then you open your mouth and you say, these people at Thessalonica were no greater than I am.

They're not better. They're not wiser. They're just as weak, just as pagan. God saved them.

God gave them the message. It's the message that saved. I have a message about Jesus Christ to give to you.

Our problem is we hide behind leading because we really are people pleasers.

I wanna please people. I don't want anybody to think I'm a kook. The news, what'd you just say?

You know what? Ushers, we have some visitors tonight

I want you to know. The pressure from Paul wasn't, how lame are you if you don't evangelize?

The pressure wasn't, well, you know what? If you don't evangelize today, how can you call yourself a

Christian? There wasn't that negative pressure. This was just something that just went forth. It was just inside of them.

We want to preach the gospel to other people. The good news advances. It reverberates.

Now I think the elders at Bethlehem Bible Church should be good examples of evangelism. But we're not the ones who are the main evangelists.

Sadly for Steve and I, we hang out with Christians all day long. And guess who you get to hang out with?

More pagans than we get to hang out with. You are the evangelism program. And this is gonna kind of sound cheesy, but I'll say it anyway.

I actually like to support smaller businesses, not because I think Walmart is satanic, but because Walmart has such a high turnover of people,

I don't get to know anybody at Walmart. But if you go to the same butcher shop all the time, you get to know the people at the butcher shop.

If you go to the same little deli all the time, you get to know the same people at the deli. And if you want to do the large chains, then it's not unbiblical.

It's not sinful. Now, I don't know if it's hyperbolic or not.

If you look at the text again, your faith has gone forth everywhere. Most think it was hyperbolic.

Chrysostom didn't really think it was, that it just rang forth everywhere. Macedonia, Achaia, across the

Aegean Sea. Every place, here's the gospel in that area.

What happens when the gospel arrives in the heart of a person? They want to evangelize.

Well, something else happens found in verse 9. The unregenerate elect receive the gospel.

Sanctification begins. Evangelism is spontaneous. And number four, repentance is rampant.

Verse 9, people repent. Now remember, pagans, Gentiles, idolatry.

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you. And how you turned to God.

By the way, this is all vocabulary of the street. This is pagan vocabulary in the sense that we're not using a bunch of technical, biblical terms.

It's like we're using the language of someone who used to follow this God, and they turned and they followed this God. It's the language of the people.

It's recognized vocabulary. How you turned to God from idols and then positively to serve the living and true

God. These people were mainly Gentiles, and Gentiles are caught up in idolatry.

The gospel comes. It affects them. This is the mark of the work of God in the heart of an idolater.

They begin to not like the idols that they used to love. Let's have a little quick survey.

I wanna look at three passages in Acts to let you see this kind of language. Acts 3,

Acts 9, and Acts 26. So let's go there quickly. Acts 3, first of all, the language of turning from and turning to is a great way to think about repentance.

Acts 3, remember the story when we have our little kids and they were small, we're doing family

Bible time. How do you teach a kid an abstract concept? Well, you try to make it concrete. And so you have little kids.

I hope if you have little kids, you teach them this. What is repentance? How do you teach a kid repentance? So what you do is you have a kid start to walk.

Everybody walk this way, and you don't stop until I give you another command.

It's kind of fun to see how close you can get them to the wall. And they're walking. And then the second you say, repent, they turn around and begin to walk.

This is the language of repentance, except it's just called turning. Let's just look at a few illustrations.

Acts 3 .19, repent therefore, change your mind, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the

Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed to you, Jesus. Now let's go to Acts 9, a very well -known passage,

Acts 9 .32. My point here is I just want you to feel the flavor of turning.

Biblical language. If you're going to ask a young person to describe repentance, this is how they describe it.

You were to ask a brand new Christian in Thessalonica, how do you describe this? They'd say, oh, turning. Now as Peter went,

Acts 9 .32, here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.

There he found a man named Anais, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed.

Peter said to him, Anais, Jesus Christ heals you, rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose, verse 35.

And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they what? Turned to the

Lord. And one last one, because I like this language so much, to turn is found in Acts 26, verse 14.

Acts 26 .14, this is a word turn that ended up being a technical term for conversion as time went on.

Turning from darkness to light. When God transfers us from His kingdom, or into His kingdom rather, our response, the human response is turning.

Acts 26 .14, and when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Is it hard for you to kick against the goads?

And I said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

But rise, stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and a witness to the things in which you have seen me, in which you have seen me, and to those in which

I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you.

Here's our key verse right here, verse 18 of chapter 26 of Acts. To open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.

They're turning from darkness, turning from Satan, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by me in faith.

All right, let's go back to 1 Thessalonians. They were turning to serve a living and true

God. Remember the idols? Dead gods, hand -fashioned gods.

And you know what I like about this language here? It's not, they turned to God along with all their idols.

So we don't have any pluralism here, no syncretism, that's an easy word for me to think, but not to say, syncretism.

That's what I said the first time, didn't I? Belshazzar. The old loyalties are gone.

No more polytheism, no more pluralism. They turned to a living

God. True or false? There were a lot of atheists back then. Answer was false, because most everybody believed in some kind of God.

They had a variety of gods for a variety of things. And if you met an atheist, they were pretty much a rare person.

Now, here's my question for you tonight. When you meet unbelievers, do they worship idols of some sort? What kind of idols do your friends worship who aren't believers?

Okay, did somebody say NFL? Okay, probably our visitors think we're fundamentalist.

Down with the NFL. Okay, you could worship sports, right?

I don't mean you, I mean, you could, of course, but sports can be a God. Self, somebody said.

What else? Money, work, career. How about power, fame, children?

The same God in the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. He's a jealous God when it comes to this.

It says in Exodus 20, I am the Lord your God, a jealous God. People that we know don't really have carved images, but do they give undue honor or regard to someone or something in God's place?

The answer is yes. Do they value someone or something in a way that refracts the love and trust that they owe to God?

Yes. J .C. Ryle said, idolatry is worship in which the honor due to the triune

God and to God alone is given to some of His creatures or to some invention of His creatures.

Many times in Scripture, idolatry is considered a divided heart.

Why would it be called a divided heart? Well, part of your heart is clinging to God in your mind, and the other part is clinging to an idol.

It's a broken allegiance. We need one -hearted people, not divided -hearted people.

And the weird thing is, if you are an idolater, you become like what you worship.

You're transformed in the image of your God one way or another. And these Thessalonians, look at the text again, they had come to serve the living and true

God. They used to be divided in their hearts, and now with wholehearted worship of God, they serve gladly the living and true

God, not the dead and fake God. Now, sometimes missionary stories in other countries are pretty far -fetched.

It's kind of anecdotal evidence. But John Stott has a couple of interesting accounts of what happened to idol worshipers when the gospel arrived.

A letter of a young Burmese national, who a few years ago went with some friends to evangelize a village inhabited by animists.

They said, we explained to them the pure and simple gospel and Christ's lordship over the devil and all evil foes, after which they were counseled to confess and forsake their evil deeds and to receive

Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Now, listen to this. With brokenness and tears and guilt, they responded.

Then we burned up the charms and amulets, took a wood -cutting knife and broke down a spirit's house made of bamboo and wood, claiming the lordship of Jesus Christ and singing

Christ's victory songs and putting all of ourselves under the blood of the

Lamb of God and the rule of the Holy Spirit, claiming God's protection. Just think, you go to these places, they're worshiping these false gods who have a stranglehold on their mind because they're going to be punished if they worship any other god.

The gospel comes in and now they say, I have to admit, I would like to do this. I would like to be part of a group who heard the gospel and then they said, let's go destroy that house of worship of the cult god.

Wouldn't that be fun? That's exciting. That reminds me of 2 Kings 10. Hey, all you

Baal worshipers, come to Israel. Everybody come. We don't want to miss anybody now.

Get them all here. Get all the Baal worshipers here. Alright, is everybody here a

Baal worshiper? There's no Yahweh worshipers in this place, are there? Burn the thing down.

Eighty assassins surrounding the thing. They kill them all. And then what do you do to a place that used to worship pagan gods, taking away the glory of God?

Well, in 2 Kings 10, they built a latrine on it. I don't know if it's because I'm a guy or I'm just kind of fleshly sometimes, but I'd want to be a part of that.

Pray for Grace Church in Hartford. Ted Bigelow is considering with the elders to buy an old planned parenthood building for their new church.

Can you imagine destroying little babies in this for how many times, how many days?

And then now, here's grace. Here's forgiveness. Here's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Probably they'll say, if you've ever had an abortion and you'd like to be forgiven, this is the place to come. You know the address.

Sott gives another illustration of how in a pagan world, they just get rid of their idols, which is kind of hard for us to think of because our idols are a little more sophisticated.

Australian missionary and anthropologist, Alan Tippett, tells us how Pomare II, the chief

Christian of Tahiti, baked and ate a sacred turtle without first observing the customary rituals.

You don't eat this turtle unless you did all the mumbo -jumbo prayer stuff all over it.

Then you eat it. But if God saves you, it's just a turtle. Eat! Imagine waiting for some false god's ire to attack.

How one chief of Tonga struck the priestess of his old god with a soft banana club.

It should be a hard banana club, don't you think? Why the soft banana club? Saying, I will strike the devil god with this.

And how one chief of Samoa, taking no precautions, ate a sacred mullet, which was forbidden food.

These were deliberately daring and provocative acts. They were performed in public with relatives and friends watching in silent apprehension of the god's revenge.

They were also symbolic, each being a public rejection of a power which had bound them for all ages.

So if you look at 1 Thessalonians again, they turned to God from idols, and with that same energy and service and fervency, they served the living and the true

God. Thomas Watson said, repentance is the side of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, spite for sin, and a turning from sin.

With your whole heart, no reservations, with finality. By the way, is it okay to preach repentance today?

Why do not people preach repentance today? Accountability?

Okay, what else? What was that again?

Well, yeah, you repent from what and to whom, yes? Okay. And also, there's a group that goes around saying, you can't teach people to repent.

An evangelical group, a very famous evangelical group, don't tell people to repent.

And why do they say that? One of the reasons they say it is, the Gospel of John is the Gospel for evangelism, and nowhere found in the

Gospel of John is the word repent. It's just believe. Well, I want you to realize that contrary to what some of these other folks say,

Ezekiel preached repentance. Repent and turn away from your idols. John the

Baptist, any guesses? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus, the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe the Gospel. From that time forth, Jesus began to say, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

If you ever drive by the Ferris house on your bicycle, that's your verse. Jesus, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

The twelve that were sent out by Jesus, they went out, Mark 6, and preached that men should repent.

Peter, after Christ's ascension, repent and let each of you be baptized. Paul preached repentance.

God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, and you are to preach repentance.

That repentance for forgiveness of sins, Luke 24, should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.

Well, we've got one more to go, so let's do that. We're just going to skip some of the repentance stuff. Number five, what happens when the

Gospel comes to a pagan town? Fifth and finally, verse 10, Christians can't wait for Jesus to return.

The unregenerate elect receive it. Sanctification begins even in trials. People evangelize, people repent, and Christians can't wait for the

Lord to return. Look at verse 10, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom

He raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Now, maybe some of you grew up in Christian churches, but I really didn't.

Did you long for Jesus to come back before you were saved? Some of you don't know any different, you just think, oh, that would be nice if He comes back.

I didn't want Him to come back. He's going to spoil things. I've got a life to live.

But here, if you're a Christian, you can't wait for the Lord to come back. Maranatha.

And He's going to come back, what does the text say? From heavens.

He's going to come back from heaven. Literally, it's from the heavens. The same way

He went up to heaven, He's coming back. And while they were gazing into heaven as Jesus went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said,

Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who is taking up from you in heaven will come again in the same way as you saw

Him go into heaven. Yeah, but you know what?

If Jesus is dead, He's not coming back. He's dead. But what does the text say?

He's the one who is raised from the dead. You've got to have

Jesus be raised from the dead if He's coming back. Now, here's what happens when people go to verse 10, who delivers us from the wrath to come.

Here's what a liberal does. You know what? Cause, effect. This isn't

God actively giving wrath. This is, you know what? If you sin, kick against the goads of God, just bad things happen.

This is not impersonal wrath. This is personal wrath. But the wrath is not for the

Christian. The Christian waits for the Son from heaven. Paul can't get over it.

Look at chapter 2, verse 19. For what is our hope or joy or crown or boasting before our

Lord Jesus at His coming? Chapter 3, verse 13.

So He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our

Lord Jesus with all His saints. People living holy lives love this.

Chapter 4, verse 15. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the

Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. Chapter 5, verse 2.

It's just in every chapter. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

And then finally in 1 Thessalonians, verse 23. Chapter 5. Now may the God of peace

Himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ. So isn't this kind of neat?

You get saved to serve actively and as you're serving actively, you're waiting passively for the

Lord. One writer said, thus working and waiting belong together. In combination they will deliver us both from the presumption which thinks we can do everything and from the pessimism which thinks we can do nothing.

The Son is coming back from heaven. He's been raised from the dead.

Interestingly, I have to give you this because we've got a pastor or two in the congregation. Raised from the dead, more exactly, from among the deads, from among the deads.

Jesus comes back. He's been raised from among the deads. His name is

Jesus. It's a historic person, a real person.

And then he rescues us from the coming wrath. Well, what am

I doing now with all this silence? Just thinking whether I keep going or stop.

Silence is good though. It's reflective. You have to think about things. It's no pipe dream the

Lord Jesus is going to return. We should be waiting for that day.

Lord, today, could it be today? You know, there's a lot of argument about when

Jesus will come back, pre -trib, mid -trib, pre -wrath, post -trib. We'll see in 1

Thessalonians and in 2 Thessalonians. No matter what your particular view, these believers felt an imminent return was the way

Jesus was going to come back. It's going to be soon. It could be soon. Well, let's pray.

Father, we thank you tonight for your word. We're thankful that we can wait for your

Son from heaven. Wonder what that day will be like.

Revelation chapter 19, we learned some. In 2 Thessalonians, we learned some. If it wasn't for you, in your work, you'd come back for us wrathfully.

But we have a risen Savior, Jesus, who bore your wrath in our place, who made propitiation.

Jesus, the righteous one. And so we're thankful we're delivered from the wrath to come. But we want our friends and our neighbors.

Some here have spouses who aren't Christians. And I pray, Father, that by your working in their hearts this week, that you'd give them a wonderful opportunity to sit down and talk about sin and the

Savior, to talk about guilt, grace, and gratitude, to talk about Christ Jesus, who can turn planned pregnancy centers into church buildings.