1 Thessalonians: The Beginning of a Testimony: Background & Analysis of a Book — Bruce Rodgers

The Beginning of a Testimony in Thessalonica

It's really nice to be here, and as has been mentioned, we're going to be doing a series of studies in the Epistle of First Thessalonians, and so I'm going to start reading somewhere else. My theme in this message is really the beginning of a testimony, and it is always a thrilling thing to be involved or to hear about, to have some acquaintance of the beginning of a work of God in an area, and so we're going to be looking at a little bit of that beginnings of the work in Thessalonica.

So we're going to read first of all in Acts chapter 17, Acts chapter 17 starting at verse 1. It says, Now when they, now that would be Paul and Silas and Timothy, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews.

And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ.

And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas, and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. But the Jews which believed not moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, saying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also, whom Jason hath received, and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.

And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things, and when they had taken security of Jason and of the others, they let them go. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea.

The Gospel's Arrival and the Thessalonian Church

Let's go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. Starting at verse 1. Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father, knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance, as you know, what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And ye became followers of us and of the Lord, and so on.

Chapter 2, verse 1. For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you that it was not in vain, but even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as you know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention or much conflict.

Now I am going to try to give you just a little bit of the background and introduction to the work that began in Thessalonica, and at the same time a little bit of an introduction to the epistle to 1 Thessalonians.

So we'll see how that goes. Sometimes when you try to do too many things at once, it doesn't always work. First of all, just a little bit of a sketch of the background of the city itself. The city was founded in about 315 BC by a general in Alexander the Great's army named Cassander, and he named this city after his wife, who happened to be Alexander's half-sister.

So it started out as a city associated with the Greek Empire, being in the area of Macedonia. The Romans conquered the area in about 168 BC, in that time frame, and Thessalonica became a Roman city, a Roman colony, became a free city, which was an evidence of their loyalty to the Roman Empire.

That comes out in the details of the story when the Gospel came in there. It was actually the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, and it's located just at the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea.

It's a seaport, and it's also on a critical road, military road, of the Roman Empire going east from Rome to the eastern part of the empire. So it was a very significant city, and it flourished in its commerce and so on, and unfortunately it carried the same reputation as Corinth, as a seaport.

It was licentious, a wicked, very wicked city. And then one day, some men came into town, and they started preaching a new message, and a work of God began. If there's one emphasis I would like to be able to convey to you, it is this, that it is God.

It is God who works. God who works to begin a witness in a certain community to the name of his Son. It's very valuable, very precious to us to understand that in our appreciation of assembly, witness and testimony.

Paul’s Use of the Synagogue and Common Ground

Now I'm going to make a few comments about how the Gospel came, and we're going to be looking at these verses in Acts chapter 17 as we do this. You'll notice that Paul went first to the synagogue. Now, I don't know if you would think of using any particular strategy when you would try to see a work of God done in a community.

And I will make this comment that I don't think Paul thought of the synagogue as a good place to raid. You know, there are those, and I have seen this in the work of the Gospel, where certain preachers, and I'm not talking about preachers from among us, certain religious workers who will come into a community, and the first thing they will do is they will go around to all the churches.

And they will try to start working with people, trying to drag people out of those churches. And they will try to basically vacuum a number of, you know, converts out from the existing evangelical churches especially.

And I've seen that happen. I don't have a lot of respect for that kind of behavior. However, why did Paul go to the synagogue? Up to that point, the Jewish synagogue was the focal point, you might say, of the witness of God of light to the Gentiles.

The Jewish people, yes, they had failed, and yet this was where the God of revelation, the God who communicated, the God who showed light to the nations, His light was being maintained to some extent there.

And because of the connection, because of its closeness to the revelation of God, Paul went there first. And really, the point I'm getting at is simply this. Whenever we go and try to communicate the gospel, whenever we seek to see the work of God progress, we need to look for points of connection, where there's common ground, where there is something that we can link with of a knowledge of God.

And I'm just going to make a few comments through this message to my own experience and the work, especially up in Northern Ontario and Kapuskasing. When Murray Pratt and I, and there's an older preacher who was with us initially named Ken Moore, when we went to that community, it was largely a French Catholic community.

And that was in 1979. And there had been, if you are old enough to know these details, that the revolution had already happened in our culture, away from the old standards, away from everybody going to church and everybody believing in God and so on.

There had been a real revolution. Things were really deteriorating. One of the things that I appreciated when we went to Kap was that there was a lot of was that there was this residual appreciation of God.

These were people who still had some reverence for the Word of God. They didn't know very much about it. They were told not to read the Bible themselves, but they believed it was the Word of God. And I remember in those first Gospel Tent meetings, we brought Bibles and the Christians who helped us in the effort.

Somebody would come in. We would make sure they had a Bible. Somebody would sit with them and help them find the passage, find the verses. That instilled in them a confidence that we wanted them to know the truth, that we weren't interested in just trying to deceive them.

We wanted them to know what the Word of God said. And so as Paul does this, he goes to the synagogue and he opens the Scriptures because there was a common recognition. This is the Word of God. Now, what was his basis?

It says he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures. Now, I believe with all my heart that we need to use our intelligence. As they say, you shouldn't have to leave your brains at the door when you walk into a church.

But we are to reason out from the revelation of God. It is to be the foundation of our reasoning, of our appeal. And so it says he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead.

Now, today we have a problem because this foundation of appeal to people is being destroyed. It doesn't impress very many people today to say the Bible says. And so in a sense, we have to reestablish and seek to reestablish a credibility, a reason to have confidence that this matters, that the Bible says this.

And so we have a lot of challenges today in seeking to see the work of God progress. But Paul used what was already there in a sense in their realm of knowledge and acknowledgement. And he establishes this fact.

They acknowledged that there was a coming Messiah. They didn't understand clearly all the aspects that were involved. And so Paul, first of all, takes this truth that they knew and he builds on it and he establishes that this Messiah, according to the Old Testament prophecies, he was going to have to suffer and die and be raised again.

Now, could I just ask you a little quiz? Could you do that? Could you help somebody understand that the Old Testament clearly lays out a program of God that has the coming of a Messiah into the world to be a savior of the world and that he was going to be put to death?

He was going to die for the sins of the world. He was going to be raised from the dead. Now, I hope that's not a hard quiz for you to answer. But I think we have the problem that we have gotten so, so used to this reality that we forget how much of an impact there is in it.

And we need to reestablish this in our own minds. And then his climax or the punchline really is that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is the Christ. So he makes a connection between the man Jesus and the prophetic Messiah.

Some of them believed and a lot didn't. And it wasn't too long before there began to be a very strong reaction in the community raised by the Jews who did not believe. Now, there's a couple of things I want to make a comment on about this.

The Gentile Audience and the Length of Paul’s Ministry

It mentions here three Sabbath days. Now, I have heard and read many commentators suggest that Paul's time in Thessalonica was just three weeks. I have some difficulty with that. There are certain things, I'm just going to point them out quickly to you.

If you look at the record in Acts 17, you would get the impression that it was primarily those who were associated with the synagogue, the Jewish people and then the devout Greeks. And let me just comment about them first of all.

It says of the devout Greeks, a great multitude and of the chief women, not a few. Why would they be called devout Greeks? I would suggest that is because they attended the synagogue as seekers of God, of the living God.

They were fed up with what they knew in the pagan empty idolatry. They were seekers of God. But yet when you come to 1 Thessalonians at the end of the first chapter, it says, you turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God.

You get the impression from Thessalonians that these were primarily Gentile people who were pagan idolaters. And so there's two aspects to the work that we get from these two things. So I want to just see, first of all, that Paul appealed to the Jewish audience by one method.

And I'm going to suggest to you that he appealed to the Gentile pagan idolaters on another basis, which I believe we will see in Acts 17 as well at the end of the chapter. And so how long was he there?

I don't know. It was a brief time. But I would suggest that because of these aspects of the work and the fact that when he was there, and 1 Thessalonians 2 brings emphasis to this, that they did not expect any help or support provision from these people that he preached to, nor the new converts.

They labored night and day. And then you get this little detail in Philippians 4, about verse 16, I believe, where Paul refers to the Philippian assembly, which was a new assembly, had sent fellowship to him twice while they were in Thessalonica.

So I'm just suggesting from some of these details that it was a more extended time just than that initial three weeks. And now the other thing that I wanted to comment on was in verse 7, where it says, These all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.

Now this is from the mouth of his enemies, his detractors. But this again identifies a key element of the gospel emphasis that they preached. This risen Christ is not just waiting for us in heaven. He is the king.

He is the coming sovereign. And you also get this glimpse from chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians, that he preached very clearly the grand scope of prophecy that includes the coming of the day of the Lord, of the judgment of God upon this world, and the establishing of the kingdom of God in this world.

And so it's important, I believe, for us, it's possible for us, because of where we are in the program of God, and we tend to focus the gospel just on the issue of salvation, the issue of being ready for heaven, and so on, and maybe we neglect some of the bigger framework in which to see this gospel message.

Of not only the prophetic scriptures laying the foundation for the coming of Christ into the world, but also where the future ties into it. We need to connect the past, the present, and the future. That's what I'm getting at.

Because I have the impression today that in the minds of many people, Christ is virtually irrelevant. He was 2 ,000 years ago. What does that have to do with me today? Well, he rose from the dead, and the prophecies of the scripture indicate that the same one who came and fulfilled so many of those prophecies, that he's coming back to take over the world.

He is going to rule this world. Well, suddenly there is a relevance, a very important relevance of this man, Jesus Christ. Now, again, as I mentioned, in the initial emphasis that we see from chapter 17, you would say, well, this was primarily Jewish or those who had this knowledge of God, and so he's working from the scriptures.

Paul’s Message to the Gentiles and God as Creator

But then, how did he preach to the Gentiles? We're not told, either in the record in Acts 17 or in the epistle, but we do have a sample of it in his preaching in Athens. And I'm just going to remind you of it.

We're not going to go down through all these verses. How did he start? He didn't reason out of the scriptures. He started with the reality of God who made the worlds. And more and more, this is where we need to start.

We need to lay the foundation of the relevance of God. Our connection to God is the God who made the worlds. It's no wonder that Satan has worked so hard and so successfully to destroy that foundation.

Because I see this more and more today when I read the news articles and see all the blog comments down below. As soon as anybody mentions God, you're fair game for contempt. That you imagine that there's a God that we have to deal with.

And so, this is a challenge today. This needs to be established. How can we do it? One of the things, again, that we need to appeal to is what is common knowledge? And that is this simple reality that design is everywhere.

It's everywhere. It's in everything. It's inescapable. And this stamp of intentional design is a very important starting point to begin to reason with people. And again, you find exactly the same thing.

Paul didn't just bark off and make these declarations. He has a logical progression of reasoning. God who made the worlds. Seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth. From the fact that he is the creator flows the fact that he is sovereign over.

And that there is a connection between God and us. And so, his message in Athens flows from that way. And so, again, it is a challenge today. But I believe the evidence is all around us. The reality that nothing develops from nothing into something sophisticated.

Something that is complex and so on. And so, there's a very necessary foundation to lay. Now, I want to take you into 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 now. Because the gospel message and the impact of truth is not only the validity of the scriptures and the tremendous foundation of God as the creator and the evidence of creation that surrounds us.

The Power of the Gospel and the Witness of the Spirit

It is also in the impact of the conviction of moral truth. And of the witness by means of the spirit. I'm just particularly looking at verse 5 where he says, Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance.

As you know, what manner of men we wear among you for your sake. We live in a very cynical age, don't we? Whether it's in the political realm. Doesn't matter where it is. We expect corruption. It's not shocking to find out that this leader or that leader is guilty of some kind of corruption.

Morally, financially, whatever it may be. And so, there is the impact of truth. And first of all, I just want to think with you about the fact. When we preach the gospel, and I know I've at times struggled with this just as you do.

Why should anybody believe me? Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do miracles? That we could perform some signs that would be a confirmation. This is God's truth. Well, the Lord did provide it at the beginning of the work, didn't he?

And I don't know whether that happened in Thessalonica. There doesn't seem to be any record or hint. There is definitely in Corinth. In Corinth, there's a lot of reference to miraculous gifts, signs of an apostle, and so on.

So, there were these very dramatic evidences that this is a work of God. The only reference that could refer to that is in verse 5 here where it says, in power, in power. It could refer to demonstrations of supernatural power.

But I'm not sure about that. And so, I'm going to suggest that it could be just as it was with John the Baptist. Do you know why John the Baptist had such an impact? You know, I find it very significant in John chapter 10.

There's this one little comment made. He did no miracle. John was not given, he was not granted to be able to confirm that his message was from God by miracles. He didn't have it. And yet, he moved the nation.

There was an impact. It was in the inherent power of the truth being proclaimed. In the power of the Spirit of God. We need to remember this. You weren't back in those days. You have never been a witness.

You've never seen the Lord Jesus. You hold all of these truths in conviction in your own soul. How did it ever come to be that powerful to you? That you were willing to base your life upon it? And base your hope for forever on these things that we have never had personal acquaintance with?

Maybe it was the person that spoke to you. The people that spoke to you. There was something about them that carried a moral persuasion because of what they were. As you know what manner of men we became aware among you for your sake.

And so there is the personal element. Now, this is even more important. I'm emphasizing the beginning of a testimony in an area. But what about the maintaining and the perpetuating of a testimony in an area?

This becomes all the more important. Yes, we would love to have the confirming evidences that God is with us by being able to perform healings. Being able to do things that would show, yes, this is from God.

God hasn't done that. But he has left us with his personal presence and the power of the effect of the gospel in our lives. What it does within us and in and through us. And so that is one very important element.

Another thing I'm just going to comment on is that even though I was never there at Calvary, the spirit of God, and I trust that when we take the word of God and we seek to communicate the gospel to people, whether publicly or privately, that we do it in the fellowship of the spirit of God.

I remember somebody making this comment, and I think they were just in worship at the breaking of bread, but it struck me. I had never really thought through this before. And this brother was in his worship appreciating the reality of what we believe about Christ.

And he says, we weren't there, but the spirit of God was there. And the spirit of God, who was a witness of the life of Christ, a witness of the death of Christ, a witness of the resurrection of Christ.

When we preach the gospel, in the power of the spirit of God, there is a certainty, there is an assurance that is conveyed through the preaching. And I'll just make one comment again about the work in Kapiskasing.

I remember this dear lady who was coming out to some of the tent meetings, and she did profess to be saved from another group, but she made this comment. She said, I love the way you men preach with such authority.

I'd never thought about how we were preaching. And the simple reality is, it's because we were absolutely convinced that what we are handling is the word of God. It is the truth of God. And that conviction brings an assurance within our own spirits.

And so we can speak confidently with authority as we handle the word of God. And so I would suggest all of these elements were involved, that I have mentioned, in bringing the gospel into Thessalonica.

People that they didn't know, that they'd never seen before, come into their midst and start proclaiming this testimony, and people embrace it and become those who follow. Now, let me give you one little thing from the beginning of the chapter here.

The Church That Is in God

I should give you a little bit of an outline of the epistle, but let me just give you in verse one, what is a very, a unique expression in the introductions of these letters. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God, in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He repeats this greeting in 2 Thessalonians chapter one as well. This is unique to the letters to Thessalonica. Why would he use this language? The church of the Thessalonians, which is in God. I think it's very, very appropriate to the circumstances in which this very young assembly finds itself.

Those who brought the gospel to them are chased out of town. Well, do things just settle down to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, day-to-day normal life after that? It doesn't seem like it did for them.

This baptism of fire, if you want to call it, they came into Christianity in tremendous conflict. They believed the gospel, but it brought immediate conflict with those who were around them. Now, some of you may have been saved out of the world, as we say, and maybe you experienced that, and certainly some of those in Kaposkasing experienced that, where their families cut them off, where there was rejection, where suddenly there's nothing very secure where they are.

It's obvious that there was persecution. He mentions much tribulation. Second Thessalonians emphasizes even more strongly tremendous persecution was assailing them. Wouldn't they start questioning what they had?

Wouldn't they start questioning, we'd better be sure this is real? So how beautiful it is to have this assurance, the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God. What absolute security in God. So what does that mean?

Well, we are used to thinking of this in an individual way. I am in Christ. That relationship is eternal. It is unassailable. I am saved. I am in Christ, and I have all the blessings that are involved of being in Christ.

We also see it clearly in relation to the church, which is his body, and we see these great truths of in Christ. What about a local assembly? Now, I'm not going to try to stretch this beyond what is appropriate, but this is where I want to bring this emphasis and leave this emphasis with you this morning.

Every local assembly has a divine origin. It is God who establishes a local testimony of witness to the name of Christ and for the perpetuation of the gospel. And it is God who upholds the assembly. And so I'm going to suggest this to you.

The assembly is more than just the sum total of the individuals in it. The local assembly as a collective entity has a relationship to God. It is of God by origin. It is in God. It is in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Assembly’s Divine Origin and Accountability

And I think you see a glimpse of that in Revelation 2 and 3, where the Lord Jesus, as he is walking in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, he addresses each one of them individually. Each one of them has an individual collective entity, but a unique relationship to himself.

And there are angels sent to those assemblies. Each has a status in heaven. And so I want to encourage you with this. There was an expression I used to hear. I don't know if you use it down here or not.

This is God's assembly. At times, I didn't really like the expression because it almost seemed to smack of pride. And it was sometimes used to sort of say, you know, we are the people rather than all the other churches around us and so on.

I do not use it or think of it in that context. I would like to think of it as a true statement that expresses this belongs to God. So this should bring to us a sense of stewardship, a sense of sober accountability, responsibility, and at the same time, encouragement.

This is not my work. This is God's work. And the preachers, the messengers who came, yeah, they could chase them out. They could get rid of them. They could even kill them if they had the opportunity.

But God's work would still continue because it's in God. Now, let me just suggest to you in thinking about just the basic structure of the epistle that we have here, that verse three possibly gives to us the structure.

I'm sure you've heard this, that most epistles have a key verse. And often there's more than one key verse, but there's a verse that kind of captures what that letter is about. And I remember one quaint saying that the key usually, the key is usually hanging by the door.

So it's often, very often in the first few verses of an epistle, you will have a verse that when you start to look at the epistle and get into it, you'll see that this verse really gives us kind of the development of the passage.

Faith, Love, and Hope as the Epistle’s Structure

So I'm going to suggest that verse three really does this. Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father.

Now you could look at this again as past, present and future. Work of faith, our spiritual journey, our spiritual pilgrimage and so on begins with that moment of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that isn't the sum and substance of your faith that you got saved in such and such a time.

That's just the beginning of a journey of faith, of a walk with God into eternity. And so he says your work of faith. Yes, it began in that initial contact with the gospel, which you embraced. And then it begins to produce effects.

The work, the emphasis of work here is not just the effort, but the accomplishment. What it does, what it produces. And so the faith that became part of their experience began to produce effects in them.

And they began to live out their lives in this faith. And that becomes, I would suggest, the main emphasis from chapter one right through to chapter three about verse 11. You could say is taken up with the work of faith.

And then the labor of love from verse 12 of chapter three through to verse 12 of chapter four. And then the patience of hope is taken up, particularly from chapter four and verse 13 through to the end of chapter five and about verse 11.

And then what follows after those verses in chapter five is really exhortations that are based upon these great truths. And so here are the foundational elements of our spiritual life. Faith, love, and hope.

First Corinthians 13 emphasizes this as well. And so as these believers in the midst of a lot of conflict, of opposition from those around them, there begins a work that is derived out of their faith in Christ, their faith in God.

And there begins to be a life of fruitfulness, of work. And the character of that life is love. More and more, I appreciate the reality that everything that we are expected to be as Christians flows out of this divine love that has been poured into us and that is to be the foundation and the fountain of our own life.

So the word labor of love emphasizes the toil, the effort. And I think if we find ourselves struggling to keep going, losing heart is because we've lost sight of the reason why we are to do it. It is arising out of this love that is the essence of our spiritual life.

And that love will go beyond just the call of duty. It is love that will extend itself in care to other people, will extend itself in perpetuating the gospel because we love the people. And so there's a work of faith that initiates and then that produces fruitfulness, a labor, a toil, exhausting toil arising out of love that continues to propel and to produce and develop the Christian life.

And we're going to be getting into that in one of the later messages, I guess later this afternoon, Lord willing, on the issue of our love and so on, love and holiness. But it's very obvious at the same time that there's an overriding emphasis of the epistle and that is on our hope.

This will be taken up as well. The theme of the Lord's coming. How much does the Lord's coming affect you today? How much of the Lord's coming is a motivator, an incentive, something that pulls you towards the great future that is yours.

This is what Paul was sensing was being threatened because of their persecution, because of what they were experiencing. They needed to be reinforced. They needed to be encouraged to look ahead, to hold onto the hope that was there before them.

Chapter-by-Chapter Outline of First Thessalonians

And so let me just give you then the basic outline of each chapter. And I'm just going to give you a heading for each chapter. In chapter one, I call this the proofs of God's work. And that's part of what I've been emphasizing to you, the evidence that this is a work of God that has begun in them.

And I'm just going to look at verse nine, just read it to you. For they themselves show of us or concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

So chapter one is taken up with the proofs of the reality of this being a divine work, a work of God. Then in chapter two, it's largely taken up with clearing himself from slander. At least I would suggest that he talks about his motives, he talks about his principles, his purity, his behavior, and so on.

And so it's the principles of God's workers that is being emphasized in chapter two. And the verse that I would take as a key there is verse 10. Ye are witnesses and God also, how wholly and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.

So a vindication of the principles of God's workers. Chapter three seems to center around their faith. Paul's concern that their faith could falter and that the work could collapse and they could be destroyed as a testimony.

And so it's the progress of faith. And then kind of tied into that becomes the word love becomes associated with it as well. And so it's the progress of faith and love despite their affliction. And I'm just gonna read you verse 10.

He says, night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith. And then in verse 13, he mentions concerning their love. Verse 12 and 13, the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and so on.

To the end, he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God and so on. So the progress of their faith and of love despite the affliction that they are experiencing. When you come into chapter four, the themes in chapter four are holiness, love and hope.

A very strong emphasis in the beginning of chapter four on, and I'm linking love with this, the protection of love's holiness. Remember, these people came from a very corrupted society, just like we are surrounded by a very corrupted society.

And there is this great danger that we will become acclimatized. Even those of us who were saved as young children, raised in Christian homes, the barriers and the boundaries against wickedness are getting pushed in.

We are being exposed more and more to the influence of immorality. And so the protection, chapter four, the protection of love's holiness and the promise of our hope. Chapter five, I have put this as protected from his wrath.