1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

The Shepherd's Church

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Oh, it's a joy to meet with all of you before we got started this evening. It's a little bit different for me to meet on a

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Saturday night, I guess, but I'm more than happy to be here. I'm honored to be here, to be able to bring the word of God to you this evening.

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I want you to think of these things as I list them, and maybe this list will make you remember something in your past, maybe not.

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Start with a poppy seed. A fig, an onion, and then an eggplant.

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Move up to a cabbage, and finally to a pumpkin. So the title of this message is

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Godly Church Growth, and so being the, I guess technically I'm a millennial, that I am,

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I went to Google and searched for ways to measure growth, and thanks to parents .com,

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we have a handy list of fruits and vegetables that we can use to measure the size of an unborn baby.

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In an eager desire to relate somehow to the tender life inside the womb, we look for the next object to compare it to, and the list goes from peppercorns all the way up to watermelons, watching the growth of our little ones.

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And even when that baby is born, those measurements will continue. I think most of us had a door jam, you know, when we were growing up, that we would all stand up, you know, just a little bit of tippy -toe.

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We wouldn't really admit to mom and dad that we were just giving it a little bit extra, but you could go back to the house you grew up in and you could probably still find that door jam that might have all of the different lines,

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Andrew, 1998, Andrew, 1999. Well, I don't think I was measuring by that anymore, but you get the idea. At my house, we have a chart that we hang on the wall because I painted that house when we moved in and I don't wanna be writing on those walls.

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So we bought a chart, we hung the chart up, and you know, it's good enough. Now, of course, height isn't the only way, or I guess length, with a baby that we measure our kids, right?

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We measure their weight. We have those BMI charts that everybody looks at and we're like, I don't know how these numbers make any sense, but even beyond that, there's psychological measurements, there's intelligence measurements, standardized tests, all these different ways and metrics by which we measure our children.

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That's not the microphone, this is, there we go. My daughter is in sixth grade, so I'm really looking forward to going from, like, not acceptable, satisfactory, and above average to, like, actual

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As, Bs, and Cs that I understand, you know, I don't know what you do for work, but in my job, our managers track our effectiveness with these things called

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KPI. Anybody know what KPI stands for? Key Performance Indicators.

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Year after year, they track these KPI, and over time, they can use those

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KPI to measure my relative growth as an employee. And they can use that, essentially all they're doing is tracking to figure out how valuable

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I am to the company. That's really what they're doing. Of course, they change the KPI every year, so I don't really know how they trend this stuff, but that's why

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I'm not a manager. But what about the New Testament Church?

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What are the KPI of the New Testament Church? How do we look at the New Testament Church and measure its growth?

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How would God look at you, see how the Shepherd's Church is acting, and serving, and worshiping, and evaluate you?

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What metrics would God look at to determine whether the global church is growing and maturing in a godly way?

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And I talked to Pastor Kendall on Thursday, I think, and I told him to take some NyQuil and go to bed.

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He sounded terrible. And then I texted him today, he said he sounded worse, so I'm rooting for him. But I talked to him about my love for the book of 1

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Thessalonians. I talked a little bit about what we do at BBC with our pulpit supply ministry, and we don't have as many opportunities as lay preachers to go and preach the word, but I have been slowly working through the book of 1

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Thessalonians through my pulpit supply ministry. And just like Pastor Kendall, we're taught to study the text and preach through it verse by verse, and so that's where I've been, 1

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Thessalonians. And most recently, I've been in chapter two, and that's where we're gonna find our passage this morning, this morning, this evening.

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That's automatic, it even says evening in here, but it's automatic for morning. You know how you're driving somewhere and you turn, and you're like, whoops, why did

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I turn? It's just muscle memory? This evening, so if you'll turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter two, today we're gonna look at God's church in this

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Greek city. So as you're turning there, because we haven't been through the beginning of the book of 1

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Thessalonians, I'm gonna kinda talk a little bit about this book, about the context of this city, where we are, what's happening.

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Paul wrote two epistles to the Thessalonian church. And unlike the letter he wrote to the

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Galatians, which was filled with rebukes for their inability to maintain hold of the gospel truth, they were going every which way, right, they were listening to all these false teachers, you foolish

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Galatians, remember that? Paul loved the church in Thessalonica, he loved it, they were great, and he wrote these letters primarily to encourage these churches, this church.

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It was a young church, right? It was not unlike you guys, but they were under fierce persecution right away, immediately from the get -go.

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Thessalonica was a city established on the Ignatian Way. Now what is the Ignatian Way? A couple of people

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I was talking to before asked where I came from, where I live. I live in a town called Auburn, which is right next to Worcester.

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The Mass Pike is kind of like the Ignatian Way of Massachusetts, right, it's the main primary thoroughfare.

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The Ignatian Way cut through Macedonia, it went from the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Black Sea, it was probably about 400 miles long, okay?

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And I feel that way about the Mass Pike. First of all, it always seems 400 miles long when I'm driving into Boston, but where I live, we've got the

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Mass Pike, Route 90, we've got 290 coming right down, it turns into 395, right, you've got 146 if you wanna go down into Providence.

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The area that I live in is really a busy area from a traffic perspective. We have trained ourselves on Sunday, just don't get on the highway, because the

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Mass Pike is a disaster on Sundays, it's just bad, it's just bad news, right? It's a major thoroughfare for people in New England going back to Connecticut or to New York, it's where everybody goes.

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And when we think about the Ignatian Way, where Thessalonica sits, it's right on this major thoroughfare.

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But wait, there's more. It's also sitting at the tip of this huge gulf off the

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Aegean Sea. So you've got the Mediterranean Sea, and then the Aegean Sea is like a gulf off the

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Mediterranean Sea, and then you've got this gulf called the Thermaic Gulf, which is sort of like that fractal thing where they keep getting smaller, it's kind of like that.

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But Thessalonica is like right at the tip of this thing. And so anybody who wants to travel across the Aegean Sea, and they don't have a boat, guess where they're going?

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They're going through Thessalonica, because it's the easiest way to get around. And so there's a lot of traffic, everyone is traveling through Thessalonica, major highway, port city, shortest land path from one side of the body of water to the other.

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Super, super busy place. And so in Acts 17, Paul and Silas and Timothy are traveling through Thessalonica.

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Paul goes to the synagogue and preached there, and he reasoned with the Jews there. That's the pattern of Pauline ministry.

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He was there for about three weeks. And then, when he was rejected by the Jews, he pivoted and he would preach to the

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Gentiles, explaining Acts 17, three, and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, this

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Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. This is the gospel message that Paul would deliver to the

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Gentiles in Thessalonica. But the Jews there, the unbelieving Jews there were angry and they rejected

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Paul's teaching, so much so that even as Paul established this fledgling church, these unbelieving

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Jews raised up a crowd and basically attacked the house of the man who was hosting this.

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They raised all sorts of accusations against the evangelist and the persecution was so bad that Paul snuck away by night.

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But although he left, his heart stayed with them. And later in 1

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Thessalonians chapter two, we see this, but since we were torn away from you brothers for a short time in person, but not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face.

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Chapter one of this book of this great epistle is filled with encouragement to the Thessalonians and commendations for their faith and for their example.

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Verses seven and eight of 1 Thessalonians chapter one talks about how this young church had become an example throughout all of Macedonia and all of Achaia.

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Hundreds of square miles filled with pockets of believers who can trace their spiritual heritage to Paul through the

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Thessalonian church. This church was not shy about their faith.

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Their faith of the Thessalonians had gone forth so strongly that the writers, the apostle

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Paul says, we do not need to say anything. That's incredible. Could you imagine

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Pastor Kendall comes in here, I mean, first it seems like it might need to be a miracle from Jesus to get him well at this point, but imagine

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Pastor Kendall comes here, or Derek comes up here and he says, I've received a letter and he reads this.

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This is directly out of chapter one. We give thanks to God always for all of you constantly mentioning you in our prayers.

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Remembering before our God and father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our

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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

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Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake.

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Could you imagine receiving a letter like that and hearing from someone like the Apostle Paul commending you for that kind of spiritual leadership.

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Those are precious words. Chapter two opens with recounting the treatment that the writers received.

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Remember we talked about how busy Thessalonica was and as you can expect, this business led to lots of people and all these people led to a lot of different ideas.

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There were apologists for all sorts of different belief systems. A lot of these preachers had different motives. Traveling teachers would come through teaching many different things and sometimes their desires were not necessarily as scrupulous as those of Paul and Silas and Timothy.

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But you can imagine, oh great, so we rose up a big ruckus and we woke up the next morning and all of the sudden

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Paul and Silas are gone. I wonder what they really wanted, right? These are the stories that would come out after they left.

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And then I would scroll and lose my entire thing. That would be great. So Paul writes about his personal testimony.

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Chapter two he says, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.

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Verses seven to 11 show the parent -like love that the apostle had for this church.

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The gentleness of a mother in verse seven, the leadership of a father in verses 11 and 12 and now starting in verse 13, this is our passage today, we're gonna look at the focus not on the way these missionaries labored among the

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Thessalonians, but instead on the actions of the Thessalonians themselves. We'll see the observations made by Paul during and after his labors among them.

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His joy in their perseverance and ultimately the contrast between these believers and the world around them.

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So let's take a look at our passage. First Thessalonians chapter two verses 13 and following.

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And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God in which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

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For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the

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Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the

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Gentiles that they might be saved. So as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them at last.

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I'm reading from the ESV. So as we travel through this passage, we'll see from the eyes of Paul, godly church growth in the

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Thessalonian believers. And so as we see this church growing, it will be twofold through both maturity and also in numbers.

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Hengel said, we find in this passage a strong word of God theology. And so looking through the eyes of Paul, reading his words, there are three observations.

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So I don't know if you take notes, I'm a note taker. I can't ever remember anything anymore. I'm lucky I remember what I ate this morning.

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I never remember anything. If you take notes, we have three observations that we're gonna be looking at today.

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The first one is the recognition of the word of God. The second is the submission to the word of God.

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And finally, sharing the word of God. Recognition, submission, and sharing.

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They're not all S's. I didn't do the alliteration thing, I'm sorry. I actually tried, but before we deep dive into that, let's take a look at the word of God.

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It's 2020 now, right? We are incredibly blessed to have the word of God in so many forms at our fingertips.

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I have my iPad here, I've got the ESV app. My phone over there has the literal word app, which by the way,

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I strongly recommend, it's really nice. I also have the ESV app, I have my Logos Bible app on there.

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I've got four or five Bible at home. There's a glut of them. I'm a giant Bible nerd, you can go to codexsinaiticus .org

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and see the old Sinaiticus, like high quality scans.

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It's really nerdy, but really cool to see the old Greek manuscripts. It's at our fingertips, we can get whatever we want, whenever we want, pretty much for free.

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But that's not what it was like for them, right? They didn't even have the New Testament written down, right, it hadn't happened yet for a lot of them.

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But what is the word of God? D .A. Carson said plainly, Paul's purpose in these chapters is essentially to show the

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Thessalonians how he tried his best to get out of the way of the word of God, to let it loose so that it would have its full impact on their lives.

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It reminds me of the Grace to You mission statement, which is what, unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

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But what is it, right? Back a few verses to verse eight, we see Paul describe it as the gospel of God, the good news of God.

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We saw what the good news was in Acts 17, we see it over and over again in the epistles of Paul. He wrote to the

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Corinthian church and said, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

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And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of the power.

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Paul was a Roman citizen. They debated, they philosophized, they did all of these things. Their concept of deep understanding was how well they could speak and how well they could reason.

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And even though he grew up and was well -trained and he was a Pharisee and he was a Roman citizen and all of these things, he says what?

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My speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom. He denied the wisdom of the age, but in demonstration of the spirit and power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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Call the words of James when he says, therefore, James 121, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

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The word of God is the unvarnished truth of the gospel of God which is able to save you.

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But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable grace, the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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For grace, you have been saved. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not as a result of work so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

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Created by a perfect God, we all rebel against him, right? My two favorite words in the

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Bible, but God. We rebel against him, but through God, but God, because of what

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God has done, we receive salvation through the work of Jesus Christ and we are saved through his grace. In light of this, we receive the gift of faith and we respond to what

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God has done with repentance. This is the gospel. This is the power of God.

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This is the word of God. And that is what Paul is talking about when he says that I delivered to you the gospel of God.

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And the Thessalonian church recognized that. That's our first point, the recognition of the word of God, verse 13.

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And also, we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

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What I'm talking about here is it's not my wisdom in putting this message together, right?

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It's not my goal to look fancy. I talk fast, I know that. But my goal is to get out of the way of the word of God.

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That's why I'm reading so much directly out of the Bible. And in this passage, there's like a parallel, right?

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Verse 13 parallels chapter one, verse five. Remember in chapter one, Paul is talking about the faith and the example of the

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Thessalonian church. He says in verse five that his encouragement was because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the

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Holy Spirit, right? And that's what we see here. When you receive the word, you knew it wasn't just what we said. It was also the power of God, right?

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There's a parallel there. We see this more in depth. This verse is fascinating.

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It's a compound sentence, and it's got two different parts to it. On one hand, we see this transaction, right?

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We gave, you received. There's a transaction there. On the other hand, we see the method by which this transaction took place.

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First, transaction. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, right?

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That's the reception, the taking, which you heard from us. You accepted it, not as the word of men, but what it really is, the word of God.

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Now, story time. When I was in college, I worked for FedEx. There were good times of year.

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There were bad times of the year. Christmas season was a bad time of the year. It was called peak season, right,

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P -E -A -K. We used to joke that it was because you can't peek over the boxes because it was just chaos. There was just boxes everywhere.

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It was terrible. We were super busy. Now, sometimes busy is good, but we were ready for January, right, when

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Christmas was over. And I worked there for about five years. So through this,

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I started to understand the ebb and flow of the seasons. I knew when to get ready for, you know, the horrible peak season and all this stuff.

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My favorite time of year was February, right? So December happens, everything's crazy.

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January comes, and it is dead, right? And I was an hourly employee. Dead is not good for an hourly employee, right?

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Like, peak season, like, it's terrible, but you get a lot of hours. Dead is bad. Dead is not good. I was in college.

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I needed to make pizza money or whatever. But February, February was great because we'd get back into a new rhythm, and then

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Valentine's Day would happen. I worked out of the office, the central

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Worcester office. It actually used to be in Auburn. Now it's in West Boylston. It doesn't really matter, but you guys know what a 53 -foot trailer is?

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It's the big trailer, right? I would say, on average, every day, we had two -and -a -half 53 -foot trailers full of flowers.

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Now, those flower boxes are like eight inches by eight inches by two feet long, probably.

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Just imagine opening the doors on a 53 -foot trailer, and it is floor -to -ceiling stacked with these flowers.

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That's a lot of flowers, right? But we would have to go through, and it was great because they didn't weigh anything, right? So it wasn't like it was hard work.

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It was just a lot of it. So we'd go, and we'd deliver these things. They'd go on these cool conveyor belts, which would just split out, and they'd go to all the

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FedEx vans that you see, and they would kind of do all their thing. Every day, couriers would come back to the central office, and they would have a bunch of boxes left over.

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And these were boxes that were sent as gifts, but I don't know, somebody really messed up? I don't really know. They were sent as gifts, but the gifts were not accepted.

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The recipient refused to accept what the sender had sent to them. The transaction was not completed.

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Now, this was perfect for me. And the reason why is because when you call 1 -800, anytime a package refused, we have to call the sender and say, what do you want us to do with this?

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So you'd call 1 -800 -FLOWERS, and they'd be like, well, it's just gonna be dead, so you can just dispose of it. Well, my now wife was my girlfriend at the time.

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Everybody's laughing, you know where I'm going. And I would come home with, I don't know, like a couple dozen roses, like whatever.

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Be like, hey, honey, here you go. I mean, she knew, right? You know, I wasn't gonna lie about it. One time, though,

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I got a full New York -style cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. Yeah, that's what she said.

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It was delicious. But the point here is that there was a transaction.

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The word of God thundered forth from these men, and it was received by the Thessalonians. Of course, we saw from the quote in Ephesians 2 that this can only happen because God changed the hearts of these men.

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But the transaction, word received, paralabontes in the Greek, is identical to the word in 1

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Corinthians 15, where Paul writes, for I delivered to you of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

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Same thing in Galatians 1. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel was preached by me.

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The gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was

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I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. The very same gospel, the very same gospel received by Paul on the road to Damascus was preached to the

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Thessalonian church, and they received it as well. That's the transaction.

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So we have this transaction in this passage, and we also have the method. Read it again.

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And we also thank God constantly for this, for when you received the word of God transaction, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you, believers.

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Transaction, then method. Just as we see in Galatians, the giving of the word of God was accomplished through the preaching of the word of God.

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How will they believe if they have not first? Paul and Silas and Timothy, in this case, were the method by which the word was conveyed to the

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Thessalonians. They were the FedEx courier. But the package is not flowers.

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The package is the word of God, not the word of man, but as James called it, the power of God.

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Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians. He said, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is, what?

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The power of God. And it's so different from the world that we live in.

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If you can't see it, if you can't hold it, if you can't observe it, it cannot possibly be true, according to the world.

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And so this word of God to the world, it cannot be described as anything other than foolishness. You can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't do any of these things.

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How can this be a real thing that has power in and of itself? And yet we can tell, even in this verse, that it cannot be the words of men because how will those words dwell in it, be at work inside the believer?

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Listen, I am not offended if you go home and you don't remember every word that I said. That's not my goal.

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This message conveyed by the preacher is a supernatural message that has taken root in the Thessalonians.

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I told some cool story about flowers, so what? That's not the power of God. The gospel is the power of God.

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The word of God is living, it is active, it is sharper than any two -edged sword. And the word of God is active in you,

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Christian. Does it revive your soul? Does the word make your heart rejoice?

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That song, Behold Our God, by the way, I love that song. I love that song. And my heart does rejoice when

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I think about what that will be like when I can behold our

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God. Do others know that you've accepted the word?

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When Paul looked at the Thessalonian church, he knew they had, not only because they recognized it, but because they submitted to it.

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He could see it with his eyes. He could hear it with his ears. The second observation Paul had of the growing church is the submission to the word of God.

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He saw that they recognized it, he saw that they recognized what it was, and then he saw that they submitted to it.

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All right, what does it say? The demons believe and they tremble. They did not submit.

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So recognition and then submission. Verse 14 here. For you, brothers, became imitators of the church of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.

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That's interesting, we'll get there in a minute. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the

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Jews. I mentioned that parallel earlier, as verse 13 parallels chapter one, verse five.

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Verse 14 parallels chapter one, verse six. They go together quite nicely. I'm sure there's some fancy literary word to describe that that my pastor knows that I don't, but they do parallel each other.

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In chapter one, verse six, the writers commended the Thessalonians for becoming imitators of them. And you became imitators of us and of the

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Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit. We see a fragment of that in Acts 17.

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I encourage you, by the way, if you read through the epistles, especially the epistles of Paul, to match them up with the narrative that we have in the book of Acts and figure out when these things happened.

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Maybe not when the writing happened. I mean, it's kind of hard to understand that, but when events are talked about in the epistles, it's very helpful to understand by reading through the narrative, by reading through what happens in the book of Acts.

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It's very, very helpful to look at those things in tandem and understand what's going on. So this is

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Paul's interaction with the Thessalonian church is all in Acts 17. But what we see in this verse, when it talks about affliction, when it talks about how the faith of the

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Thessalonians persevered over this affliction, it's not just this persecution from Acts 17. It's what happened after.

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See, Paul wanted to go back to the Thessalonian church. He wanted to go back. He was unable to return multiple times, and so they sent

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Timothy, and Timothy came back, and he gave a report. Paul probably feared the worst.

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He was usually at a church for a number of months. He would spend anywhere between three to six months at a certain church.

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He would go through almost this kind of systematic theology. In fact, as you look at the books of 1 and 2

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Thessalonians, you see Paul teaching the Thessalonian church about things like the return, the imminent return of Jesus Christ, and he's doing that because he was not able to teach them when he was there with them because his time with them was cut short, right?

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And so we see the continued shepherding of the Thessalonian church through the epistles of Paul. And so Paul probably feared the worst.

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He knew that he was prevented from going to see them. He didn't know necessarily why that might be the case. He knew these believers were young.

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He knew they were untested. They appeared to produce fruit while Paul was there, but I mean, think of the parable of the rocky soil, right?

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There were some who would appear to produce fruit, and then when those trials would come, and they would just beat them down, and they would stray from the faith.

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So he wasn't sure. He probably feared the worst. And yet when Timothy returned to them, he brings this report back.

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It's full of good news, different good news, but same good news. Chapter three, verse six, the church was flourishing even under this persecution.

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The Thessalonians had endured with joy leading to this continued thankfulness that these writers are talking about.

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Now, we wonder, maybe, perhaps, maybe not, how it was that Paul was so intimately familiar with the kind of persecution that this church was going through, right?

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He talks about the churches of Judea and the persecution that they went through from their own countrymen, the

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Jews, right? He talks about that in the past tense, why? Because it had already happened, and by the way, when it happened, he was the one who was leading the charge, right?

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This is before the conversion of Paul when he was Saul. Prior to his salvific meeting with Christ, Paul, as Saul, was the leading persecutor of the church.

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Again, back to the book of Acts. We see this in Acts 7. And Saul approved of Stephen's execution.

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And there arose on that day a great persecution against the churches in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

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Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him, but Saul was ravaging the church.

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And entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. That is exactly, by the way, what we see happen in Acts 17.

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Paul witnessed firsthand the active submission of the Christian church to Christ in their refusal to denounce the

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Lord when he was persecuting them. And so it is in no small way, when he writes to the

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Thessalonian church, that he compares them to the churches in Judea. And it is a remarkable testimony to the

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Thessalonian church that Paul would say this, right? But even still, if you think about this, if you know your geography, and if you don't, guess what?

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I'll tell you. These words might have come as a surprise to Thessalonians.

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Judea and Thessalonica are about 1 ,000 miles apart, which for us, I live in Worcester, I can get on an airplane in Worcester and fly down to Orlando, it's great.

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By the way, it is great. It's a 30 -hour drive. It's a two -and -a -half -hour flight.

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It's New York City to Jacksonville, or roughly Worcester to Orlando. So how, no cell phones, no

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Facebook, no TV, how could they imitate these churches in Judea?

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Well, they both recognized and submitted to the preaching of the word of God. Just like the

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Thessalonians recognized the word and received it, the Judeans did the same. They sought to obey Jesus Christ even to the point of death.

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It's an incredible reminder for us that our hope and our purpose and our salvation is in something other than ourselves.

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When we see these two disparate churches resembling one another, if it were in ourselves,

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I was talking to Derek earlier and I talked about how blessed I was to have landed at BBC. I didn't know any better, right?

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I didn't know, but the Lord put me there and I grew in that church.

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If it were in ourselves, we would be swayed by any wind of doctrine. How could we make our own election sure?

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How could we do that? Now, we need to rest in the work of another who is greater than us and that other is

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Jesus Christ. And so, when these different church bodies look to and submit to the same

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Lord, their actions fall in lockstep with one another. This is the spiritual true north.

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I don't know if you know the idea of true north, but this is the spiritual true north. So, the first thing, the first way that they resemble one another, the way that the

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Thessalonians resemble the church in Judea is that they both have the same leadership. They both recognize and submit to the word of God.

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And the second one is the fellowship of believers. Now, if you've traveled at all and been to other churches who name the name of Christ and submit to him, you know what it's like when you go into a church and they're a

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Bible -believing and Christ -fearing church. And you kind of talk and like five minutes later, you kind of feel like you're among family.

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Just, it's weird how it, it's really weird how it happens. If you think about it, going anywhere else, you spend five minutes talking to someone and they're like, you're weird, why are you even talking to me, right?

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But for some reason, when we come together, knowing that we are a fellowship of believers, that kinship just grows immediately like that.

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Sometimes, sometimes you meet someone you don't really get along with them personally, right? But you know that you have a common salvation, right?

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And that remarkably smooths over a lot of things. We talk about the Lord together.

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These similarities driven by a common faith make separate churches look very similar, right?

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The gospel brings these churches together. Unlike the world, which drifts apart, the gospel unites and it bonds

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Christians together. Though the young New Testament church didn't have all of the epistles, we can look back over the corpus of the

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New Testament ourselves and we can see reminders of how our faith drives us together in love and in service and in support.

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Right, it's the living out of the gospel. Well, you can only kind of live out the gospel. I don't know, I'll take exception of my own wording on that one.

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But living under the gospel unites Christians in their love for each other and for Christ.

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Warren Wiersbe once wrote, here's one of the great values of the local church. We stand together in times of difficulty and encourage one another.

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It was when Elijah isolated himself from the other faithful Israelites that he became discouraged and wanted to quit.

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One reason Paul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica was to encourage the believers. A lonely saint is very vulnerable to the attacks of Satan.

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We need each other in the battles of life. Isn't that true? There's comfort in just coming together and just talking about affliction, talking about adversity, just loving on one another, praying for one another.

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Our contrast, in contrast, our society isolates, it insulates, it divides.

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Even within the formal church, I saw something in the news that the United Methodist Church is talking about a giant church split, right?

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Doctrine divides. Separation from biblical principles drives people away from the gospel itself.

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It's so maddening to see these things and frustrating and sad to see these church splits happen or these various things happening and you're looking and you're like, but just read the

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Bible. Why is this so hard? Submit to the truth. I mean, especially if you say you're a church, right?

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It's one thing to have an argument with their discussion or disagreement or whatever, however you wanna characterize it with someone who doesn't submit to the text, but someone who, it's so mind -boggling to me.

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So where are you? Do you push others away when they try to help you? Do you insulate yourself? Or do you welcome fellow believers with open arms?

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Would Paul describe you as one who imitates the Thessalonian church and submits to the word?

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These things that we see in verses 13 and 14 are not abstract concepts. The very same things that brought these churches together bring our churches together.

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Chapter one talked about the actions of the Thessalonian church and their ministry in Macedonia. The word of the

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Lord went forth from them to the entire surrounding region, despite their persecution.

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Paul sent Timothy to get a report because he was worried about them. He wanted to encourage them. And this report came back and talked about all of these things, that they preached the word of God in the face of persecution, showed their imitation of the godly model church that Paul saw in the

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Judean churches. So, recognition of the word of God.

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Submission to the word of God. And finally, let's look at the third one, sharing of the word of God.

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We see in verses 15 and 16, Paul talking about the Jews. He talks about unbelieving

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Jews and he talks about the opposite of the way we are to act. In describing the

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Jews in this way, Paul lists a series of three things that we are not to do as we preach

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Christ to the world. Verse 15, the Jews who killed both the

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Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the

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Gentiles that they might be saved. So as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them at last.

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That's dark, right? It's serious, what he's talking about here. And this idea that they would hinder these men from preaching to the

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Gentiles, it's crazy. So let's look at these three things.

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Number one, do not kill the Lord Jesus Christ and the prophets in your heart. Obviously we can't physically kill him.

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He is not physically incarnate in front of us now. He has already been crucified.

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This idea, this concept, this phrase killing the prophets was in the time of Paul, it was kind of a common way to refer generically to persecution in the

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Old Testament. We would see this idea, this presentation of the killing of the prophets, you have killed the prophets as rejecting the teaching of God.

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Do not reject the teaching of God. Paul uses this imagery a lot and he does it because the murder of Christ and the prophets really reflected a heart attitude towards the things of God.

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And in the context of Christ, these actions betrayed the hearts of the Jews as far from the

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Lord. It's not any different than it is today. Atheism is probably stronger today than it ever has been.

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I saw some kind of chart or something that was, there's all this 10 year stuff, this is what I looked like in 2009, this is what

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I looked like in 2019. I was afraid to even look at my pictures. But I saw a chart that was basically how people who

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I guess called themselves Christians or something like that, I don't remember, but how they would answer a series of questions.

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And the surveys were given out 10 years ago and they were given out today. And essentially what it showed was that the rejection of biblical principles was significantly more common and atheism was significantly more common than it was even 10 years ago.

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As the devil worms his way into even some of the most fundamental bastions of faith we have left, those who would run the race to the end are dwindling.

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It is so critical that unlike the Jews in this day and the world now, we do not hate

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Christ, but we love him and we love one another. The apostle who

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Jesus loved wrote this in 1 John, he said, for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, from the beginning, that we should love one another.

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We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.

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Do not be surprised brothers that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers.

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Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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Do not abide hate in your heart for your brother or for your Lord. There's no difference between the

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Gentiles that the Thessalonians preach to and us. Despite persecution, they loved their brothers as Christ loved them before they were lovable.

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The world does not love us, but that doesn't change anything. I'm probably gonna,

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I saw Wendy's on the way here, I'm probably gonna stop at Wendy's on the way out and have dinner. And I was thinking about this,

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I was like, well, someone's probably gonna ask me why I'm wearing a suit at Wendy's. And I'm gonna tell them, because I was blessed to be able to serve a church body.

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And they're gonna look at me and they're gonna be like, dude, it's Saturday night, what are you doing? All right? The world does not love us, does not love

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Christ, but it doesn't change anything. We must love and preach the gospel to our brothers and sisters in Christ as a reminder, an outside of Christ that they might be saved.

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Number one, do not hate Jesus. Do not kill the Lord Jesus and the prophets in your heart.

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Number two, do not drive out ministers of the gospel. The word of God is to be cherished.

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In your life as a Christian, you can make a choice. You can either seek out preaching of the word, or you can drive it out of your life and you can ignore it.

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And probably, it's a little bit less painful to just ignore it. It's hard to read and hear and understand where we're sinful.

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It's hard to be told that we need a redemption that is outside of ourselves. It's hard to do that.

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I don't remember who said it. They said that soft hearts love hard words.

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I mentioned earlier the vast resources at our disposal. Do you seek after them? Do you use them?

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Do you try to put yourself under the text? I made the joke about the Bible up there. Mostly, it's just really too high and it was kind of awkward.

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So that's why I'm down here. But do you put scripture above yourself? Do you seek after it?

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Do you do what the Thessalonians did and protect those who would preach the gospel to you? Or do you drive it out of your life as much as possible?

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You're here today. Good, I'm thankful that we are here today and able to look at this text.

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But what are you gonna do for the rest of the week? And that guy cuts you off on the way home.

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What are you gonna say? It's probably for my own personal sanctification that I drive my kids around a lot.

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But it's a good reminder because that is an easy place to sin when you're in your car alone. Will you open your arms to the resources available to you or will you build a wall around your heart and drive out any

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Christian influence? You may not be able to drive preachers out of this pulpit.

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But nobody knows what's in here except you and God. And so, number three, do not displease

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God and oppose mankind. Westminster Shorter Catechism, what is the chief end of man?

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Anybody? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. When we look at this passage, we begin to understand what not to do.

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We see a pattern in how Paul and his disciples were treated repeatedly, over and over again.

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If you read the book of Acts, he is kicked out of synagogues. He's kicked out of cities or both. And he's told not to return and not to preach the gospel.

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MacArthur wrote that the Jewish hostility was not so much a racial prejudice as it was a religious prejudice.

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They resented or even hated any religion but their own and especially the gospel of Jesus Christ, whom they rejected as a satanic counterfeit messiah.

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In our home group, we're working through the book of Mark. And just last night, we were talking about Mark chapter 12, where they ask

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Jesus this question. The scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus, the St. Hedron, ask Jesus this question while he's teaching in the temple.

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And they say, who gave you the authority to do this? Because Jesus isn't doing what the rabbinic tradition would say, which is to defer to,

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I don't know, the school of Hillel, to defer and say, well, this rabbi said this. So I'm gonna interpret that. He doesn't do that.

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He speaks with his own authority. And the reason why they were doing that was trying to publicly accuse him of blasphemy so that they could kill him because they rejected him as a satanic counterfeit messiah.

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But this rejection of the gospel is obviously in complete contrast to the desires of God.

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And so if you reject the gospel, you reject God and you deny what God wants.

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Scripture clearly tells us that Jesus Christ and his act and what he has done, the gospel, is the one way by which man can be saved.

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And without the gospel being preached, we see that God's desire cannot be fulfilled as it is from God.

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First Timothy 2 .4, God desires all people to be saved and comes to the knowledge of truth.

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Now, this isn't to say that man can frustrate the plans of God. We cannot. But it is the way that his message is to be shared.

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The way that he ordains it is that it is preached by men. We are called to preach the gospel of Christ to all people.

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We must submit ourselves to him and desire to serve him. And the best way we can do that is to love one another and preach the gospel to one another.

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And when Paul talks about the wrath, this wrath that has come upon them at last, he's not talking about the wrath of Paul.

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He's not talking about the wrath of Thessalonians. He's not talking about the wrath of the apostles. It's not the wrath of Timothy or of Silas.

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It's not the wrath of the churches in Judea that the Jews persecuted. It's not like they're getting their vengeance.

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No, it is the wrath of God. It is absolutely not for us to levy judgment and wrath on those who are unrepentant and refuse to submit to him.

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It is for God himself to do that. We are called to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to preach the word of God.

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Of course, we cannot perfectly please him as Christians, but that is why

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Christ came and lived the perfect life that we could not. That is why he died on the cross for the sins we could not afford to pay.

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And we know he was successful. Why? Because he rose from the dead. Just like Derek was talking about,

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Jesus had to come and be made incarnate as a man so that a man could die for the sins of man.

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But he was also the fullness of God so that he could die for the sins of men.

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This is the gospel to be preached. Even as we sit here, right, our minds wander. They do,

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I get it. Kids are making noise. They're generally fussing around. Patriots are on in two and a half hours.

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I understand. I get it. Even as I drive on Massachusetts Road, my mind wanders and I probably sin.

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Our hearts are so deceitfully wicked that we are prone to sin without even realizing it. That ever happen to you, by the way?

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You're doing something, whatever, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, this is not okay. I need to not do what

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I'm doing right now. Yeah, that is because we have a sin nature. And so God, the

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Father, sent his Son that we might be saved through his work. It is works -based salvation, but it is not our work.

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It is the work of Jesus Christ. And so we are called to submit to him, to repent of our sins, to turn away from our sins.

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Remind me after to tell you the story of teaching your children the meaning of the word repentant. It's kind of a fun one.

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Rejoice in the risen King who has conquered death on your behalf. Pastor once wrote this.

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He said, today, as in Paul's day, the choice between God's blessing and his cursing remains.

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Those who believe and obey the word and honor other believers by imitating their lives will persevere to eternal glory, but those who reject the word and hinder those who preach it will ultimately suffer eternal condemnation.

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Do you recognize the Bible as the word of God? Because it is.

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Do you willingly submit to the word of God? I hope so, because if you don't now, you will someday.

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Do you share the word of God? I hope so, because someone's life depends on it.

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Parents .com tells us to measure the growth of an unborn baby with some vegetables, but the word of God helps us to understand the growth of our faith in him.

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From mustard seeds to the kingdom of heaven, may we lean on him to save and sanctify us.

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Let's pray together. Father in heaven, you are so good to us, so wonderful to us that you would bring us together even on a

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Saturday night, Lord, to worship you, to praise you, to sing praises to your name. Even as we go from this place today, let's be reminded of these words, not my words,

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Father, but your words, that we are to recognize and submit to what you have taught to us through all of those men who have written words down and put them into your scriptures.

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Help us to recognize the scriptures as what they are, the word of God. In the name of your