1 Thessalonians 1:1 The Anatomy of a Church

The podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Pilseck takes us through his series, Hope Rising, from the Book of First Thessalonians. Let's listen in.

The Church Is Not a Self-Improvement Project

This is a project for self-improvement. The church is God's idea. He loves the gathering of His people. He delights in what we're doing here this morning. He dwells in the midst of us as we gather together, and there's something that we can only obtain in the gathering of His people if we don't get on our own listening to podcasts.

You could be at home listening to a sermon online, take a little cup of juice and a cracker, remember His death for you, and you could do everything alone, and you'd be missing something that God desires for you.

You wouldn't quite be doing what He wants for you. And in our text this morning, we're going to see in this simple and brief passage some surprising teaching regarding the church. And recast, we value community.

It's one of our core values. And we recognize that we all need one another to help us together walk through the world. And I think I've experienced this, and I'm sure many of you have as well, that we can tend to balk at the idea of asking for help.

How many of you would admit that at times it's been hard for you to ask for help? I think that's the reality for many of us. We value in our culture self-sufficiency and independence governing.

Part of what it means to be an American in one sense is like this radical self-sufficiency, independence is a value to all of us. We like the idea of others needing us or others coming to us for help, but we certainly don't value the idea of being needy.

But within the church, we are needy. We need one another. We need the salvation that only God can provide, and we need relationships with others for accountability because we all deep down know our heart's tendency to go astray.

And so our text this morning is going to hit on the way that God uses the concept of team within the church to accomplish his goals. This morning we're going to be doing something very different from what we're used to here.

At Recast.

I'm going to be preaching from just one verse, the introductory verse of 1 Thessalonians. It's a short verse that packs a punch when we actually dig into the history and understand the context of even just this one short verse.

1 Thessalonians was one of the first letters that was written by the Apostle Paul, and only Galatians is believed to have been written earlier. And so it's from the early life of Paul, his early ministry, that we're going to be reading and studying over the next several weeks as we march through the book of 1 Thessalonians, his letter to that church.

And here in his introduction to this book, we find the anatomy of the church. This is going to be kind of the structure of the morning. And the first thing that we find is the structure of the church is team.

The second thing we're going to be looking at is the focus of the church is the Father and the Son, God himself, and the blessings of the church. The third thing are grace and peace. So let's open our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians and take just a minute and read this passage that is the shortest text I have ever preached.

So we'll see how long it takes us to get through this. But if you don't have a Bible on your lap or a means to navigate to the Bible, a device or whatever, if you do me a favor and raise your hand, Mike's got some Bibles open already.

To that passage.

And so he'll bring you one if you would do me a favor and raise your hand if you don't.

Have it.

But we want everybody to be able to see, again, even though it's a short text, it's still God's Word. It's what he desires for us to hear and study together this morning. So 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 1.

Take just a second for us to read it together. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for this morning that you've given to us. I am delighted that you have gathered us together, that you brought us each as individuals into the gathering that makes up church.

We are indeed individuals. We are indeed woke up on our own this morning and got ourselves ready. And something awesome happens when we come together. You promise that you dwell together with your people as they gather together.

And we are indeed your body following after our head who is Jesus Christ. And, Father, as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you and worship you, Lord, I pray that you would be honored and glorified in this gathering, that it would be more than an exercise of just our vocal cords, but, Father, it would be an exercise of our hearts worshiping you.

And then as these kids are going to come here in just a moment and share some of your names and go through the things that they've been learning in Recast Kids, Father, we just thank you for those workers and all of the people who are pouring time and energy into our children.

And we just look forward to them blessing us and returning some of that blessing with learning, Father. I pray that we'd be attentive, that it wouldn't just be a cute thing, but it would be a powerful thing in recognizing and remembering who you are and how you've revealed yourself in Scripture.

We pray all of this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thanks a lot to the band for leading us. Again, just thank you for taking the time to drive down here and sacrifice your time to come and lead us in worship. So, I'm really grateful for the time that they spent with us.

Remember to make yourself comfortable. If you need more coffee, juice, or donuts, while supplies last there, take advantage of that. But I say that really not just because donuts give me comfort, but it's really more than anything to try to keep your focus on God's Word and you know what it takes.

If that means getting up and stretching out in the back, if that seat becomes uncomfortable, be sure to do that. And again, restrooms are out the door, down here. Men's upstairs, women's downstairs. If you need those, those are there.

And also keep your Bibles open. I know it's a short passage, but I want you to be able to see it. And 1 Thessalonians 1 .1, have your Bibles open there on your lap so that you can look down and just see the references there as we walk through.

I want to set our stage for the understanding of the book of 1 Thessalonians by telling you a story to start with. There once was a man who was falsely accused and went to prison. Now, how many of you already, right from the get-go, that doesn't sound like fun, right?

Like, this does not sound like a good story. He was falsely accused and was sent to prison. And while in prison, he had some amazing opportunities to share his faith with others and even saw some come to faith in Christ.

He saw fruit from his life while he was in prison, which is an amazing thing. And when it was discovered that he had been falsely accused, he was released and set free. Okay, all of a sudden the story takes a turn, starting to sound better, right?

Although, spending any amount of time falsely in jail doesn't sound great. But this man had a sense of God's calling on his life. He went into prison as a believer and came out of prison as a believer.

And so it was his life's goal to spread the gospel wherever he was. And again, he was faithful while he was there and he's let go. And so he moved on from that place where he was imprisoned to another town where he began to develop relationships and share his faith with others.

And had many opportunities to gather together with other religious gatherings and had opportunities to explain the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And through the amazing power and conviction of the Spirit, many in his new community were saved and a small church began as a result of his work.

But religious leaders in that town got pretty upset about a new church coming into town and kind of getting on their territory and bringing other people to faith in Christ and moving in on what they thought was their ministry area.

And so they began a smear campaign of this man, this church planter, and even turned to violence to try to remove the church planter. They attacked some of the new converts and took one particular man named Jason and some of his friends and dragged them to the authorities falsely accusing them.

The authorities were confused about how they should respond, but the church was not confused and said this church planter's life is in jeopardy and his team and the church planter were sent away by the church in the night in order to protect them from the angry mobs.

Now you might already make some connections to this story. You might know the rest of the story, but does that sound like a healthy start to a church plant to you? Does that sound like a church that you're going to bet is in existence, you know, ten years from the date of these activities?

The very beginning of the church is to face persecution. Right from the beginning. New believers and they are immediately confronted with angry mobs and crowds. Well, the church planter in this situation, as you might have guessed, is the apostle Paul and the city that rioted and had him fleeing for his life in the night was the city of Thessalonica, the city to whom this letter is written.

And from every indication, that story, by the way, comes from the book of Acts, Acts chapter 17. It's clearly spelled out how Paul started this church and really how God started this church through Paul and it's pretty intense.

It's an amazing story and I'd encourage you at any time, I'm going to be telling some of the stories that I'm sharing are coming from Acts 15 through Acts 17, so I would encourage you to read that at some time.

Maybe even this week you could browse over that or in your preparation as you're thinking about us walking through the book of 1 Thessalonians. That's a good text to go to to find the start of this church and figure out how is all of this going to roll.

But Paul was not with this church for very long. He was there for weeks, not months, not years. He was there for just mere weeks is what most historians believe. And if we had seen the way that the church started with our own eyes, if we had been present, we might have placed bets against them lasting for very long.

We might have literally said, man, there's no way this fledgling church plant is going to succeed. There's no way that their doors are going to remain open. They are going to fold pretty quickly under the intense pressure.

You see, we're told in Acts 17 that many Greeks, some Jews, and a good number of leading women in the community came to faith in Christ. They started off with fairly good numbers right away. People, especially from a Greek background, were giving their lives to Christ.

It says devout Greeks, which means, well, what were they devout to? The idea of being a devout Greek in those times was devout to the gods. They were worshiping the Greek pantheon of gods, but they had a religiosity about them, and they had come to faith in Christ and forsaken those other gods.

But although the numbers are strong, the persecution from the Jews was swift, violent, and relentless. Physically violent, dragging men out of their homes into the city square to be judged. Physically.

And so you can imagine, like, I mean, plan a church in Matawan, and you get started, and your core team is meeting in a storefront, and people break in and start dragging you out by the hair. That doesn't sound like a good start to a church.

And so that sets the stage for this verse that we read in 1 Thessalonians 1. This letter is the first direct correspondence that Paul has had with the church since he fled in the darkness of night. This is the first direct correspondence.

I say direct because he's indirectly communicated to them. He is writing from Corinth, likely within the same year that he started the church, which is, again, a Greek town just a couple days' trip south of Thessalonica.

But he has already sent Timothy back there to check up on the church. And after Timothy comes back to Paul with a report of how the church is doing there, that's when he writes this letter. So he has some understanding of what's been going on since he left and had to flee for his life.

The Church Is a Team

So with that history of the rocky start of this church in our minds, let's check out the way that Paul addresses what really is a baby church. It's an infant church. And how does he address them? Well, first we're going to look at Paul begins by identifying a team of authorship in this introduction.

And this is where we're going to camp for a moment and consider our first point. The structure of the church is team. Now, I say this not to imply that Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy comprise a church, but when we understand these three names, when we look at a little bit of the history and we understand the story about how these three names come together, how did Paul, Silas, or Silvanus, and Timothy end up together in the heading of a letter?

How did they end up writing a letter together to the church in Thessalonica? And that's going to inform, I believe, all of us regarding our roles with others in the church, where God has placed us even here today at Rechash Church in 2017.

The way that these three men are related, the way that they met, the way that they're introduced together in through the book of Acts that we see has impact on us and the way that we should live. To really dig into the meat of this teamwork, we should first consider Paul's calling by Jesus.

We should understand who Paul is. He was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, and so he has embarked on a second missionary trip through Turkey and on into Greece when we get into the middle of the book of Acts, Acts chapter 15 through 17.

But just like so many of us, Paul could have been concerned for his personal calling. Jesus met with Paul. Remember that? On the road to Damascus, he was persecuting the church. He was against them. He had a letter in his hand to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial and arrest, and some of them even for murder by the Romans.

And so he's on his way, and Jesus appears to him. Now, he could have just said, Jesus gave me this calling. Jesus himself said, I've called you to be an apostle to the Gentiles. And so he could have just gone, okay, I'll go do that then.

I will go do that. It's my calling. It's on my shoulders. That's the way that a lot of us respond if we're honest to the idea or the concept of God's calling on our lives is our personal calling. And many of us think it's just up to me alone to accomplish A, B, or C.

Like, do you ever feel that way in your workplace? Do you feel that in your life? Do you sometimes let that idea creep in that God has called me to this, so I've just, oh, it's my way? And sometimes we've got a murder complex, or sometimes we're looking for pity from others, or, oh man, this is just my cross to bear.

And the fact of the matter is, God calls us into community. He calls us into relationship with one another, and he has created us to need one another. And he's given us the church as a team for that end.

To be here for one another, to be together, to ask for help, and to offer help to one another. The hand can do things that the eye can't do, and the eye can do things that the hand can't do. And all the illustration of being the body of Christ is all factoring into this idea of the church as team.

This is where God has placed us. Paul could have been concerned for his personal calling. And if Paul had that attitude, we certainly wouldn't have this letter written from three. We'd have a letter written from one.

It'd be Paul. But he shares the names at the start of this. Paul was a team player. And he worked with others in the calling that God had placed, certainly on him. He had some responsibility, but he brought others along in that process.

And God used others in his life to help him along the journey of his calling. Now some have criticized Paul for being a rogue or a maverick. Have you ever heard that about Paul? That he just seems like he was just a firebrand of a character, and just raw, raw.

And I think in many ways, Paul was quite confident. You can see that in some of the ways he interacts with others. And he was confident. I believe he was thoroughly capable of working on his own. I think he had that kind of drive and that kind of personality that would have been fine to go off on his own and do his own thing.

And fulfill the calling of God that God had placed on him. And I think some of us can relate to that. Some of you are a type A personality. It's harder to get things done with help. Can you relate to that?

Do you know what I'm talking about? Then you're like that, right? It's something that we've got to wrestle with. I could train somebody to do it and take two days, or I could just get it done and take me two hours, right?

A lot of times that's our attitude. And I think Paul was confident and capable. But he chose. He chose to do ministry in community just like Jesus. Could Jesus have done it all alone? Did Jesus need those 12 disciples?

Did he need them there? Really think about that for a minute. Did Jesus need anybody helping him in ministry? Not at all. So what's he doing there? Why is he calling 12? As a model for you and me. He didn't need it for himself.

We needed it. We needed to see the model and the example of gathering others and being together and doing things together and working together. We need that. And I think Paul did this out of, not because he just necessarily had to have others around him.

I think he did it because he was following his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and his model and his pattern. And before you think it was all easy for Paul, let's consider the first name shared in this letter.

This is where we kind of get down to a little of the history of the story. Silvanus has a shortened form, just like we will often call Michael's Mike or we call Rebecca's Becky sometimes. Silvanus and Silas are two names that are interchangeable.

Silas is the shortened form of Silvanus, and we see them interchangeable throughout the book of Acts. Same dude, different names one time. One is more formal, the other one is shorter. But the circumstances in which Silas began to minister with Paul was not a high point in Paul's ministry.

Matter of fact, I would suggest to you it was one of the lowest points recorded for us in the ministry of Paul. Now, he had some low points before he had come to faith in Christ, but I think it was one of the lowest points of his life.

Paul had taken a missionary journey. You need to know we're on the second missionary journey, but he had taken a previous one before he ever came to Thessalonica. He had not been there before. And so on this first missionary journey, he took this journey with a great spiritual friend named Barnabas.

You heard the name Barnabas before? It means son of encouragement. Barnabas was, I mean Barney was an encourager. Like he was the kind of guy that you wanted to hang around with. He was building others up everywhere around him.

He always had positive, how many of you like to be around positive people? It depends on how you're feeling, be honest. Some of you like to be around negative people when you're feeling bad, because they'll sit there right there and complain with you or whatever.

But Barnabas, Barney, was a kind optimist. Okay, that's just kind of the nature we get from the way that he was titled. And he was given this name by the churches, the son of encouragement. He was one of the first people to ever recognize that Paul was truly converting.

Now think about this, a guy's going around, killing Christians and arresting them, and then he claims to have met Jesus and says, I want to come speak at your church next week. You're like, yeah, probably.

You're going to want some validation that this guy's legit, right? How many of you are like, smells like a trap, right? Do you know what I'm talking about? And so Barnabas was one of the first believers to reach out to Paul with encouragement and actually confirm, this guy's legit.

He's really had a genuine conversion experience. He's on fire for Jesus.

Yeah, let him come in and speak.

Let him come into your community and share the gospel because this guy is awesome and he really has changed. So that's the nature of the relationship. Paul has just given his life to Christ, and Barnabas is the first one to say, I believe you, bro.

Come here, give me a hug. Welcome to the family. This is the relationship of Paul and Barnabas. And then they get a chance to travel through the known world on adventures, sharing the gospel, going city to city, planting churches, getting beaten together.

It's just awesome. Paul and Barnabas, right? I think that really, literally, I can't overstate this. I think that in this era of this first missionary trip, when the churches talked about Paul, they talked about Barnabas.

When they talked about Barnabas, they talked about Paul. This was a team who went out on a missions journey together. They were tight. And so that makes it all the more crazy when things turn ugly between the two of them.

Some of you can relate to this. Some of you have had this experience where you've been tight with somebody only to be betrayed or only to have bad blood begin to form between you and things get tough and difficult and sometimes really confusing.

How many of you can relate to the confusion that can happen in friendships and relationships where you thought it was good and then it's not good anymore? So I think many of us have experienced that as a human feeling.

And I think Scripture records this for us, for our edification, for our understanding that these guys were people just like you or me. I mean, Paul was not to be worshipped. Barnabas was not to be worshipped.

They had their flaws and their faults. And you look at Acts 15 at the start and that's when this team breaks up there in verse 15. And you have to understand a little bit about missionary, that first missionary journey to really recognize what's going on.

Well, years before on that first missionary trip, they had taken along a young guy named John Mark, often called just Mark. He is the author of our gospel Mark. But they had taken him along with them.

He happened to be Barnabas' cousin. And he proved to be timid and eventually unhelpful and almost kind of like a weight on that missionary trip. He even deserted them halfway through the missions trip and couldn't handle the pressure.

It says pretty directly earlier in the book of Acts that on that first missionary trip, he deserted them. It's a pretty hostile, derogatory word. John Mark couldn't stand the pressure and left them in their moment of need.

And he went home to mommy and daddy. Okay, so he just couldn't handle it. So when Barnabas suggested giving his cousin John Mark another opportunity,.

They're making preparations.

They're probably gathering food and getting a team together to launch out on a second trip. And Barnabas says to Paul, hey, let's give him another shot. And Paul's like, that's just because he's your cousin.

I don't know if he really said that or not. But I mean, the interaction, we don't see a lot of clarity. But what we do see is a difference enough to break up this unbreakable team. And they don't see eye to eye on this.

And Barnabas says, no, we're taking my cousin. I'm not talking about this. We're taking him. And Paul says, we are not under any circumstance taking your cousin. He deserted us. He left us in our moment of need.

He is not mature enough. Whatever. However that conversation looks. And they went at it. The picture is not a pretty picture of Paul and Barnabas there. And Paul didn't want to take Mark along, and Barnabas did.

This conflict led to Paul and Barnabas parting ways. And Barnabas went off with Mark on his own. Different mission trip. And Paul took Silas along with him. Silvanus. I don't want to overstate the emotional level of this situation.

But I do believe that this was intense and difficult for both Paul and Barnabas. It is one more way the Bible shows that these people are real. And that there's real messes in human relationship. Even within the church.

But when Barnabas parted ways with Paul, and Barnabas chose Mark instead of Paul. I imagine that Paul could have easily thrown his hands up and said, fine. This is my calling. I'll go it alone. I'll do this on my own.

Right?

Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Probably not you, but someone could be stubborn enough to do that. Somebody out there, I'm sure you know someone who's stubborn enough to just go, Oh, fine then. And it really would hurt themselves to go along.

But you know, oh, well, yeah, I don't need anybody. Yeah, of course I don't need people like Barnabas or anybody around me. I got this. But the name Silvanus here in the text at the start of this early letter of Paul is a very important reminder to all of us of Paul's understanding that he was not called to isolation.

He needed others. But before we are led to think that Paul just needed others to serve him, sure, he needed Silas to come along so that he could help him or whatever. The other name in the list serves as a balance.

Partway through the second missionary journey, Paul and Silas are traveling throughout Asia Minor, what is modern-day Turkey, and Paul and Silas come to a town called Lystra. And there they met a young man named Timothy, our third name in our text.

And Timothy was commended to them as a youth with a lot of potential by this small fledgling church in Lystra. And Paul brought him along on this missionary journey and invited him to be a part of the team.

But even more importantly, Paul brought him along on a journey of life and faith together that culminates all the way in the very last precious words penned by Paul are written to this protege, Timothy.

2 Timothy is the last book he will write. And pouring out his heart to a future leader of the church. A beautiful thing of a life lived together, Paul bringing along a Timothy and sharing life and sharing ministry and doing life and doing ministry together.

Paul clearly mentored Timothy and invested deeply in the life of that young man. Now in just these three names at the start of Thessalonians, there is a rich history of relationships in ministry.

I hope you see that.

And I believe those point us toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be God's family. We are a team together. He wants us to be committed to relationships together despite the messiness, despite the failures, despite the mistakes that are made and the conflicting preferences.

We need each other. We cannot give up on doing life together in community. The structure of the church is team. The model for church is not program, it is not worship service, it is not praise event on Sunday morning, but a team that God is forming to minister to the needs of a community.

He has planted us here in Matawan and in your neighborhoods. I know that not everybody here lives in Matawan, but whatever community you live in, He has put you there and planted you together in community for the cause of Christ.

Paul modeled this by mentoring others and bringing along peers in ministry as well. The second part of this introduction highlights the focus of the church. The focus of the church is God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The phrasing that Paul uses here is beginning to identify the geographical location in Thessalonica, in the town, so you could find them on Google Maps. He's like, okay, here's where the church meets.

This is their place. If you're looking for the church, it's right there. It's in Thessalonica. But he also gives their spiritual address, so you can find their spiritual location. The Thessalonian church is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's their location.

That's where they live and move and breathe. That's where their existence is founded, in the Father and in His Son. The practical ramifications of that spiritual address, that spiritual location, are enough to take up the rest of our time.

We could spend a lot of time talking about what it means to be in God and in Christ, but I'm going to try to summarize the significance of this statement. The spiritual location implies the following four things.

If you're taking notes, there's going to be four of them. The first is that the church is defined by their relationship to God the Father and Jesus Christ. That defines us as a church. That defined the church in Thessalonica.

The church is not defined by a building. I hope you know that. Going into this construction and getting to the place where we're hoping to be in there, near the beginning of August, that doesn't define us.

I hope you see that. I think that God has been gracious to give us a history of wandering storefront to here, and everything being set up and teared down. Kind of like our tabernacle experience, if you will.

A season of time spent moving and transient and in place to place to place, in the heat of the summer and in the cold of the winter, enduring the hard chairs and going through a little bit of the tough times.

I think we recognize that the church is not defined by a building. And I hope that that's kind of in you now. I hope that it's not like, oh, now we're going to become a church. Once August hits and we're in a building, then we'll really have arrived.

Well, I think you're going to find it's not everything you ever dreamed a building could be. It's going to be pretty simple. It's going to be great, and it's going to be ours for the glory of God and something that we can use.

It's a tool at the end of the day. But the church is not defined by a building. It is not defined by a pastor. If I die, this church will go on, and God will raise up another leader, and you guys will do just fine.

Maybe even better. I don't know. But it's not defined by a preaching style. There's all different kinds of styles of preaching. It's not what defines the church. It is not defined by a demographic. You know, a younger church, an older church, a hipster church, a traditional church.

Those are not the things that should define the church. It is not even defined by a worship style or even ultimately by its geographical location. The church of God is defined by this. It is in God the Father, in the Son.

That is what defines the church. A second observation is that being in God and being in Christ are held on an equal plane here. Early in the development of the church, Paul was placing Jesus on the same plane as the Father.

That's a radical thing early in the history of the church. This shows that the deity of Christ was believed from the beginning. It was not some later invention of the church. And Jesus called himself the way to the Father.

So I think it's fair for me to say that the way we can be found in the Father is only by our lives being wrapped up in His Son. The church is those who have been reconciled to the Father through the sacrifice of the Son.

So we can say in one way, we are in the Father through the grace of being placed in His Son. The third thing, this concept of being in the Father and the Son, gives really all of us, the church, the direction for our focus.

We are those surrounded on all sides by Father and Son. He is above us, He is beside us, He is around us, He is in us, and we are in Him. So many things can distract us from the church. And us as members of the church from the central focus, we can have a lot of things that pull us away from that central point.

I think if we're all honest, we have a nasty habit of making things more complicated than they need to be. Do you ever notice that in your life? Do you have a tendency to make things more complex? What is the focus of the church?

Focus on the Father and on the Son. Lastly, if our spiritual address is in the Father and the Son, then they should take the central place of our gathering together. We are not singing to showcase our pipes.

We are not giving in order to get credit for our generosity. We are not even as concerned for what we get out of the service. I think many of us maybe have been guilty of thinking in terms of that, like it's just what we can get out of it.

I've had a lot of people say, I've transferred from this church to this church because I wasn't getting anything out of it. And I recognize that there's some good reasons to leave a church and sometimes not getting anything out of it.

If what you mean by that is they're theologically in error, there's false teaching that's going on, that's one thing. But just not getting something out of it, I don't even know what you mean by that.