2 Thessalonians 1:1-4 Growing in Faith

Welcome to Recast Church in Madelon, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.

You are listening to a message by Pastor Don Filsek from a series entitled WAR. If you would like more information about Recast Church, check us out at recastchurch .com,

or you can find us on Facebook. Here's Pastor Don. Hey, Pastor here.

If you'd be willing to fill out that connection card you received when you walked in and put it in the black box back there, if it's your first time filling one of those out, then please take a free coffee mug back there, our way of saying thanks.

And remember that you can put any of your own personal updated information on there. If you're not currently receiving the weekly email that we send out, please share your email address with us, and that way you'll start to receive that.

Now, again, you can unsubscribe yourself from that at any time. You're completely in control of that. But at the same time, that's the primary way that we communicate with people, is through email and sending that out each week.

And then any offerings you would choose to give, go in the black box back there. The offering envelope is provided for you.

You can either recycle that or use it, and that's available for you back there as well. Last week we looked at the definition of church from 1

Corinthians 12, and Paul showed us that a church is a body of people with a variety of different skills, talents, and abilities all organized together in unity by God, that it is his work that has brought us together, that it is his desire that we operate together like a body operates, with hands and feet and eyes and ears and all of that, and we all have a different role to play here.

And we ought not to look down on others for their role, and we ought not to elevate others for their role, but when it's all said and done, we ought to see each other as mutually necessary in this body, that we actually need each other, and others actually need us.

And so that's what we looked at last week, and defining what church is will hopefully help us all to understand our personal role as members, unified within the diversity of members that we have here.

And again, I encouraged you at the end of the service last week to consider your role in the church, and are you plugged in, and are you doing the things that God has gifted you and called you to?

And if you're not, then to come and speak with us, and I did have some great conversations with people last week as a result of that.

But now in the next three messages, I'm turning to thoughts about what does the individual member need to remain connected and functioning well within the body?

So if we take the definition from 1 Corinthians of a church being like a body, now what do the individual members need in order to be functioning well and in a wholesome way?

In other words, if I've decided that Recast is the place for me, then what should I be doing?

Is that a good question? Is that logical? Is that reasonable for us to ask? So another way of saying that is, what does maturity look like for us?

What does maturity look like? And hopefully the majority of you know that the leadership of Recast believes that maturity is defined by growing in faith, growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

Okay, good. Some of us are aware of that. And that's where we're heading.

By faith, we stay connected to God through his word. In community, we are accountable to others in relationship, the way that God designed us.

Did you know he designed us for relationship? How many of you knew that? Some of us, even if you raise your hand and you know that he designed us for relationship and he designed us for community, it still can be tough sometimes to really connect at the heart level with people.

How many of you would admit that it can be tough at times to connect with people at a heart level? Does it get messy at times?

Any of you that are married should have raised your hand, because you know that it can get messy at times. It can be difficult. I mean, you don't always see eye to eye, and yet God has brought us together.

How many of you know that the proximity to people increases the reality of frustration?

And there are times in your life where you'd like to go live on an island, right? Every one of you. It doesn't matter how extroverted you are.

There are times in your life when you've said, boy, it'd just be easier to go this alone, but that's not what

God has for us. He has for us community. He has for us unity and a diversity of people who are indeed going to rub us the wrong way at times.

And we're going to rub them the wrong way at times. But we are dedicated and committed to this because it is God who has brought us together. And so we continue to stay connected in community.

And then part of that community is also the aspect of service. We grow in service, and as we grow in service, we fulfill the role that God has given us in the body.

He's created some of us hands, some of us eyes, some of us ears, some of us see, some of us hear, some of us in a variety of different functions that we have here.

And so I'm going to take a message. Today, we're going to be talking about growing in faith. Next week, we're going to be talking about growing in community.

And the following week, we're going to talk about growing in service, and that's the direction we're heading. Today, we're going to turn to the introduction of a letter, one of the letters to the

Thessalonians, in order to see the amazing reality of growing in faith in a local church, that local church in Thessalonica, and the reality of their growing in faith is something that I think is a model and an example held up for us.

Paul commends the church in the Greek city of Thessalonica for growing abundantly in faith and increasing in their love for one another.

And I feel like a commendation is due to you at Recast as well. I really believe that our church has grown in faith.

I have seen an abundant growth in faith here in this community for people actually coming to the knowledge of Jesus Christ in faith, and then coming and getting established and rooted and growing up.

And then those of you who have come in at various stages that are continuing to grow and take on the word and believe it by faith.

But I believe there's also a challenge for us as well. Just that we are growing in faith doesn't presuppose that indefinitely, and so the challenge is to stay firm in the process, to continue to wrestle with God and wrestle with His word, continuing to grow in faith.

So I want to open our Bibles to 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 1 -4.

There's actually a misprint on the front of the bulletin. There isn't a chapter 4 even in 2

Thessalonians. It's 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 1 -4. So follow along as I read.

Does anybody have the page number, by the way? 849 for those of you still looking for it.

Let's follow along. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. To the church of the

Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.

Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, there is an awesome and glorious mystery in this process of growing in faith.

I think all of us have felt that at times. What steps do we need to increase our faith, to increase our trust in you?

Sometimes we just don't even know how to do that. The reality is there's this mysterious component of you growing our faith and then this aspect of us working hard to put ourselves in a position to grow in faith.

Father, it's obvious from this text that all glory goes to you when we grow in faith and simultaneously there's a call on our lives to continue, to persevere, to endure.

Father, I pray that you would allow that balance to be clear in this message and then even as we have an opportunity to worship you, to glorify you for the work that you have done in our midst, to glorify you for the work you have done in our hearts.

So I pray that as we sing these songs, we would do so in hearts, just move deeply with gratitude for all that you have done for us.

Father, that you would allow our worship to be pleasing to you because our hearts are engaged with you this morning.

I pray that you would minimize the distractions, all the different things that have gone on this week. You would allow us to shed all of that stress and all of those worries and come before your throne in worship of you.

You are awesome. You are great. You are holy. You are majestic. You are worthy and you are our Savior. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Thanks a lot for leading us in worship this morning to the band.

I encourage you to keep your Bibles open in front of you to 2 Thessalonians, the book of 2 Thessalonians 1, 1 through 4.

Again, I don't remember that page number. What was it? 849.

So if you lost your place there, you can turn over to 849. This is a shorter passage and it's kind of easy to take in the whole scope of the text at a glance.

You can probably read it several times while I'm talking here and really get the flow of it and really figure it out. And for that reason,

I want you to be able to have the text open in front of you to be able to see as we dig in what it is that God is saying through the

Apostle Paul that it's His word and not primarily me speaking here. But even as you keep open to 2

Thessalonians, stay there if you want. But I'm going to summarize the majority of Acts 16 and the first half of Acts 17 for us just briefly.

That is the place where we find in the text of Scripture the foundation, the planting of the church in Thessalonica.

The Thessalonian church is started there in Acts 16. We have a pretty detailed accounting of how this church got started, and that comes to bear in our understanding of how they grow in faith and how they grow in their love for one another as we're going to see in this text.

At the start of Acts 17, there is no church in the city of Thessalonica.

It's not that there's a Catholic church. It's not that there's only a Presbyterian church.

It's not that there's only a Methodist church or there's only a nondenominational church. There is no church in the city of Thessalonica at all.

There was no place to go to learn about Jesus Christ.

There was nobody there who could tell you that He died on the cross for your sins. Are you getting the depth of the darkness in this city regarding the

Christian faith? There was no testimony in the city of Thessalonica that Jesus Christ is

Lord. The public religious climate was full of religious Jews who were going about their duty attempting to keep the law and polytheistic

Gentiles who were worshiping a bunch of God, Zeus, Athena, all of that stuff.

And that's what was going on in Thessalonica. There was also the cult of emperor worship,

Thessalonica being under Roman rule at this time. So there would have been the cult of worshiping the emperor and all of that stuff.

Paul had received a call from God and was traveling around the area of modern -day Turkey. Not in Greece yet.

He's in modern -day Turkey. At the beginning of chapter 16, he's proclaiming Christ in synagogues. His first and foremost thing when he would come into an area was to go into the synagogue because that's where the

Jews were. The Jews were at that time looking for a Messiah. And he says,

Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus revealed Himself as the Christ. And so would that be a logical place for Paul to start? They're already looking for a

Messiah. I'm going to start here with these people. And so he would go to the synagogues. And one night while he was there in the area of modern -day

Turkey, he laid his head on his pillow. And that night, he had a dream.

And in that dream, a man from Macedonia appeared to him and called out, come over here, Macedonia being in Greece.

He's in Turkey. And he gets this dream. And I don't know if the guy had a sign on his forehead that said Macedonian.

I mean, how did he know this guy was Macedonian in the dream is unclear. But he took this as God's desire for him to go to Macedonia to share the truth.

Come over here and talk with us. So he does. Paul and his posse, they boarded a ship, made a trip to the

Macedonian city of Philippi, where we get the book Philippians. And while he was there, they met a woman named

Lydia. They proclaimed the good news that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He had that Christ had become the sacrifice for her sins.

And she believed and became the very first recorded convert to Christianity on the continent of Europe, the place where Christianity is going to have the greatest foothold for centuries from that point forward.

And interestingly, it was a woman. She was the very first convert. The pagan

Gentiles got all riled up. Paul shares the gospel with more. More come to faith in Philippi. The Gentiles get riled up, get angry.

And eventually Paul and his friend Silvanus. By the way, when you have the name Elizabeth, you can shorten that in a lot of different ways, right?

Elizabeth can be shortened to Bath or Eliza or all different kinds of things. The name Silvanus can be shortened in Greek to Silas.

And they would often call the guy Silvanus. They would call him Silas. So we're going to see him mentioned. We see him mentioned in Acts.

And then we also see him mentioned in Thessalonians. Same guy. One is his full formal name and one is a shortened name.

Paul and his friend Silas were thrown into prison and they were beaten. And then even the jailer gives his life to Jesus Christ while they're in prison.

Okay, that's the kind of evangelism that Paul and Silas had. Even the jailer comes to faith in Christ.

But Paul and Silas, in the end, are asked by the mayor of Philippi to leave. Cordially, could you get out of my city?

You're stirring everything up and causing problems. And so they leave. They depart Philippi. They head west, finding a little community called

Thessalonica. There was a Jewish house of worship there. And so Paul and his guys go there.

And for three weekends in a row, they go to the Jewish synagogues. And they proclaim Christ as the Messiah.

It's very clear what they communicated to people. Jesus is the chosen one. He is the

Messiah, the Christ. Some of the Jews and some of the Gentiles of Thessalonica, and it says a bunch of the leading women in the community, were persuaded and believed this truth about Jesus Christ.

Well, the Jews became all jealous in that city. They wanted everybody to come to the synagogue to hear them.

And now people were going over to Paul and starting to hear him and listening to him and giving him more attention than they were to the teachings of the

Jews. And so they stirred up a riot. They tried to find and attack Paul, but they couldn't find him.

I don't know if he was just at the outskirts of town or if he was just hanging out with his buddies and they couldn't find him or whatever, if he was just visiting somebody else's house at the time.

So they couldn't find Paul. So they went to the house of one of these brand -new converts, a guy named Jason.

And Jason was arrested. And in the process, he's being arrested. The other believers secretly escort

Paul and Silas out of town by night. And the implication in the text and Acts is that Jason is required to give them money in promise that Paul and Silas will never return to Thessalonica.

And so there's this money that's exchanged in order for him to both get out of jail and make this pledge. Three weeks.

How long did Paul have to plant this church? Three weeks.

At the high end. So three weekends he spoke in the synagogue, and he has run out of town.

When we read about the church in Thessalonica, it's important to understand how this church was planted.

Three weeks. Where was recast three weeks in? Right? I mean, the idea of a church planter planting a church and being ushered out of town in three weeks, that's tough to imagine.

Paul was swept into town, was there maybe three weeks, proclaimed the truth with boldness. These brand -new believers immediately encountered hostility from their neighbors and friends.

How many of you know that the mob that was stirred up in this little Greek town probably knew the people they were attacking?

You think so? These are your neighbors. This is your gated community turning against you.

These are the people that you rub shoulders with and that you wave to while they're mowing the lawn and stuff, and now they're at your door beating it down saying, give us

Paul. Are you getting what I'm saying here? Three weeks, and this kind of hostility has happened, and Paul and company were swept out of town.

Most scholars believe that the letter of 1 Thessalonians was written pretty quickly after Paul and Silas left. How many of you know that if you were leaving in that situation and as you were leaving town, you were looking back, hearing the mob scream, you might be a little concerned for the church that you just started?

Maybe a little bit? As you see the torches and the pitchforks as people are marching through town, it's kind of like, how are things going?

How are things going in Thessalonica? So he writes the letter of 1 Thessalonians pretty quickly as they're fleeing, and it's clear that Timothy, Timothy, the

New Testament character, was the courier for the letter. It wasn't Paul, it wasn't Silas. They had been pledged to not return, and so they send

Timothy with a letter to find out how things are going. Paul wanted to check on them. He wanted to give them encouragement, so the letter of 1

Thessalonians is an encouragement and a test to kind of send it out there, get

Timothy involved and say, how are things going here? How have you fared in my absence? And that makes our text this morning the very first time that we hear

Paul say anything once he's gotten any kind of confirmation of how things are going back there.

So that's why we're not looking at 1 Thessalonians, we're looking at 2 Thessalonians. He's now gotten a report from Timothy back on how things are going up there, and so now we see this text of gratitude and thankfulness and acknowledgement that this little fledgling church is growing in faith.

This little fledgling church is growing and increasing in their love for one another.

I know it's a lot of buildup, but it's a buildup because we see abundantly growing faith in the worst of environments, and I think it's helpful for us to understand the environment in which this faith is growing, the environment in which this small church, after just three weeks, are growing in their love for one another.

The letter in the start here, looking at verse 1, the letter is attributed to Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, or Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

Most scholars identify the writing style really consistent with Paul. We have enough of the writings of Paul to be able to tell word usage and phrases that he prefers and things like that, and so he's able to determine the writing,

I mean, we're able to determine the writing style pretty clearly, and it's pretty likely that Paul was the primary author, but he includes

Silas and Timothy. They're mentioned because this indeed, it does have their endorsement. Silas had a significant ministry in that community just alongside of Paul, and now

Timothy has had a ministry there because he took the letter to them, checked in on them to see how they're doing. Are you getting what

I'm saying? So that's why we have those three recorded as the ones who are sending this letter, and Timothy is the courier for the second letter as well.

But notice that what Paul left after only three weeks of work, in verse one, he refers to it as a church.

After just three weeks, it is now a church. This small gathering of believers was already organized in a community of caring individuals.

They were already solidifying the bonds of a body. They were already becoming a body together even after three weeks.

Is there something maybe about Paul's teaching that let them know they needed to be unified, that they needed to hang together, they needed to watch each other and have each other's back?

Is there something about his teaching that has guided them and directed them into that? They were already sewn together by the work of God, the

Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, as the text says. Paul doesn't waste words, and he sets out right from the beginning to remind them that the location of the church, the real spiritual location of the church, is in God and in Christ Jesus.

And he has no fear of using the name Jesus. He doesn't leave this as a generic greeting.

He specifically reminds them that Jesus is Lord and Jesus is Christ. Back in Acts 17, it's clear that the main point of Paul's gospel presentation when he was with the

Thessalonians was that Jesus is the promised one from the Old Testament. He is the Messiah.

He is the one God has chosen to take away our sins. And that was his message when he was with them.

And Paul offers to the church a traditional greeting, but spices it up with Christian flair here at the start.

Most Greeks during this time would greet one another with the word arene. So you're walking down the street, you'd say arene. They'd respond, arene, and on you go.

You know, you're pushing your grocery cart, arene, arene, which translated into English is peace.

So you're walking down the street, make eye contact with someone, peace, peace, that's it. That's the Greek greeting to one another at the time.

But Paul steps it up with karis kairene, grace and peace.

But not just karis kairene, but he says grace and peace from God our

Father. Now when a Greek person said to another Greek person peace, it was probably as empty in reality as our how's it going.

Now when you pass somebody and you say, hey, how's it going? Are you looking for an exposition of their day?

Or are you hoping that the answer is fine so that you can just kind of move about your business? I mean, in reality, when you say how's it going, what does that greeting mean in our culture?

It's a pretty innocuous thing that you're looking for. You know, would a Greek person feel the freedom to kick back and say to the greeting, peace?

Well, no, as a matter of fact, I have no peace. I got fired from my job yesterday, my dog died and my bunions are acting up.

You know, is that how you would respond to somebody who's just walking down the street, peace? No, no. I say this to suggest that most social conventions tend towards empty connection with people, towards trivial and almost we play the masquerade in our culture, and I think that's human culture around the globe.

There are those types of things where we aren't really asking the question that the words are asking, right?

Look at what Paul does though in verse two. He says, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Saying peace to someone in the end is wishful thinking.

Right, it's hopeful. It's like, I hope you're having peace. I mean, that's what we mean by it. Not much more than that.

But to say grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is to pack his greeting full of truth and reality.

Not just wishful thinking, but reality. Where is the source of peace?

Where is the source of grace? Paul wants his fledgling church to be reminded at every turn that the most important things come from the

Father and the Son. Where does grace come from? The Father and the

Son. Where does true peace come from? The Father and the Son. Now this doesn't mean, by the way, that you need to sign at the end of every letter, grace and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. But what I would suggest to you is that there are opportunities for you to place a hook in relationship with others.

Now the irony is that I think people in the world are actually interested in a religious person.

Now I hope that you're more than a religious person. But for you to actually say to someone, boy, they ask you, how's it going?

You're like, man, the Lord just blessed me. Something awesome this past week. For you to actually put those little hooks in there where they know that you're a person of faith.

You don't have to expound on the depth of depravity in the world and how we're all sinners.

But in those moments where, are you getting what I'm saying? Those moments where you can actually infuse a conversation with just a split second of letting them know you're a person of faith.

That when they have a difficult time, how many of you know that when people go through difficult times, even unbelievers, they sometimes are looking for a religious person to interact with.

Did you know that? And I would love for it to be one of you guys. I would love for that to be.

Now some of you are kind of going, well, Don, that is so far out of my personality. That is so far out of my comfort zone.

I'm not that kind of wheel and deal and kind of like, oh, the Lord is good, amen. Hmm, it's all good. I never met somebody like that, by the way.

I've met some people, maybe I've mentioned this before, but I worked at a distributing company for lawnmower parts when we were first married and I was working two or three jobs.

There was a UPS guy who would come in all the time. And this guy from UPS, yeah, shout out. There was a

UPS guy who would come in and every other thing was, hallelujah, praise the Lord. He was just like, everything was just so upbeat.

And it was like contagious. I was like, I want to be more like that. But I'm going to know that your personality is maybe different than that.

But I would suggest to you that don't use your personality as an excuse. In other words, if you say to me, I'm shy, well, there is an element of that shyness that is not

God oriented. And there is an element if you're a really outgoing extroverted person, there's an element of that that's broken too.

And it's a matter of actually recognizing what does God want me to do from situation to situation? How does he want me to testify?

And how has he created me to testify? And there are no excuses. I'm too shy is not an excuse for not sharing your faith and providing those hooks to people around you.

But also, I'm bold doesn't give you the right to run roughshod over all of your coworkers either.

You get what I'm saying about that balance? So Paul is direct, he's writing to a church and he's very, very upfront about his faith and where does his trust rest?

Where is true hope? Where is true peace? Where is true grace from the father and the son? And he wants them to know that right off the bat.

But now we come to the main point in verse three. Paul identifies that there is something he should be constantly engaged in.

There is something he ought to be always doing now that he's got this report from Timothy. Timothy's come back, it's been a positive report.

And now he says, there is something I ought to always be doing. He ought to be always giving thanks to God for the

Thessalonians. He said, I should always in every breath and every thought I should be giving thanks for you.

Wow, what's going on there? Giving thanks to God, he says, is the right thing for me to be doing.

It's correct. It's almost like it is a right obligation for me to constantly be giving thanks to God for you.

That's what he's saying. And the word because in the middle of verse three shows why

Paul's heart has been moved so much to gratitude. And this is the point. Because their faith is growing abundantly and their love is increasing for one another.

Paul looks at this fledgling church plant and he sees that they are growing in faith and growing in love. There's a vertical aspect to this, growing in faith in relationship to God.

By the way, faith is defined in relationship to what cannot be seen. When you think of faith, you need to begin to think of taking that which is unseen over that which is seen.

It will always pertain to our relationship with God. Faith as we use it should always pertain to our relationship with God.

Now faith is always exercised in the real world. So make sure that you're hearing me clearly when I say that faith pertains to things unseen.

It doesn't mean that faith itself is invisible. Faith is about that which is invisible, but faith itself is not invisible.

So let me give you some illustrations, scriptural illustrations, biblical illustrations, the way that God illustrates faith.

So faith for Abraham had an external manifestation that looked like wandering around this earth without a settled home.

Why? Because his heart had faith and he believed that God had a more permanent home in store for him.

The book of Hebrews tells us. Faith looks like David seeing past, standing there in the shadow of that massive muscle -bound giant and looking through him to the mighty power of an invisible

God who was not visibly standing there with him to defeat this giant. You see how the interplay of invisible, invisible.

What was visible to David? What did he see with his eyes? What did he perceive with his ears? What did his senses take in in that moment?

I guarantee that our knees would be knocking if we saw what he took in with his eyes and yet he stood there with confidence.

Why? Because what was invisible was more powerful to him than what his senses could take in.

Getting what I'm saying? That is an illustration of faith. How about faith looks like Peter.

Peter who knew water. Have you ever thought about what Peter knew about water? Peter lived his life on the water.

Peter was a fisherman. How many of you think that fishermen have some knowledge of water?

How many of you think that at some time Peter had watched something sink in the water? And his

Lord is standing on the water. This is different.

And his Lord says, step out of your boat and come to me. Whoa. What did

Peter know about water? Well, when you step in you get wet. You're going in, right?

What would ever move him to take that first step out of the boat? But to perceive that which is unseen, that which is invisible, that which makes no sense logically but I'm here and my

Lord is calling me and I'm going to step out of this boat right now. And he does. We were so critical of Peter.

What about the 11 who sat there in the boat? It's critical because his faith wavers.

He walked on water, man. That is so awesome. But by faith, faith will always be in some way taking what is invisible over what is visible.

That's what it is. Now, it takes all different kinds of forms in our lives. So it will be accepting the truth of Scripture over what seems immediately real.

Sometimes it's taking those invisible concepts that seem to fly against our social norms and taking the word over the world.

Are you getting what I'm saying in that? So let me illustrate that for us and put some flesh on that. In the immediate realm, sex before marriage is pretty normal.

Do you agree with me on that? In the way that our world works, in the way that our culture works, would you say sex before marriage is pretty normative?

It is. Why wait if you love each other? But the word of God says, wait.

Do you see how faith, taking the trust in the invisible versus the immediate is required in that step?

To exercise faith in regard to our sexuality is necessary. And the question is, which will we choose?

Faith drives us to take that which does not make physical sense. The word of God tells us to let no unwholesome speech come out of our mouths, but only what helps build up others.

Anybody think that's one of the toughest passages in the entirety of Scripture to apply? Only speak what is beneficial to helping others.

I don't know that a day goes by that I don't drop the ball on that in some way, shape, or form. And faith is taking the immediate gratification is taking that over the immediate gratification of fitting in with the guys at work.

I know it's a struggle for some. Me and Kyle, you know, dealing with the guys at work, we gotta watch our language, man.

But no, I know that that's a struggle. And it's a matter of faith. Taking this as what is important, taking this as what is valuable, or what does it mean to work third shift and be around some gruff and tough and just kind of like, well,

I'm just fitting in. I'm just trying to speak their language. I'm trying to get, well, building up, encouraging.

Scripture says do not be drunk with wine. Scripture says do not lie. Scripture says do not gossip. Scripture says do not, do not sin in your anger.

Like spiking a basketball and getting a technical foul yesterday in basketball. I'm ashamed of that.

And it's something I let the team down. Your pastor did that yesterday. And I don't like it.

And I see these things in me and I go, there's an aspect of faith involved in this. There's an aspect of seeing what really matters most and seeing the things that don't matter that much.

In basketball, take it or leave it, right? Losing temper or whatever it might be.

And so this is not me standing up here telling you guys what to do. This is the word of God overseeing us and telling us what to do.

And it is faith taking the invisible, the invisible aspects, the things that sometimes, are you trying with me?

Sometimes these things that we see in here, we don't like them because they cramp our style.

They go against our culture. And how many of you know that it would just be more comfortable to just kind of have a Christianity that goes with the flow?

You're getting what I'm saying on that? And yet, a lot of the things in here run counter -cultural.

How are we gonna take that over the other things? Scripture says, do not lie, do not gossip, do not commit adultery, do not be a glutton, and on and on.

And faith says, I will take God's way over the easy way. So the church in Thessalonica was growing abundantly in that kind of faith that takes the unseen over the seen.

Why? Well, we're told pretty directly in what way they were taking the unseen over the seen.

How many of you know persecution is gonna put you to it? You are gonna face immediately a decision when persecution.

The machete is sharp and you're holding it and I don't see God right here right now, okay? Are you getting what

I'm saying? I mean, it's like persecution and like, I mean, that's an immediate faith decision when persecution is going on.

Within weeks of the establishment of the Christian community in Thessalonica, they were attacked by a mob.

The church planner was torn away from them. And there they stand as a model of faith and love down through the centuries, all the way here to you and me today.

A model and example. How can this be? How can they be held up as a model of faith and love?

They didn't have an Awana program. They didn't even have a youth group. They didn't have a

Sunday school. They didn't have a Christian radio station. They didn't have a family

Christian stores to go to and buy anything. They didn't have CBD or Amazon where they could get all kinds of Christian resources by a click.

How could they be the model? They had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They had the

Old Testament scriptures and they had each other. Those were their resources.

That's what was available to them. Paul also finds out from Timothy that the church is growing in community as well.

They are increasing in their love, each one for one another. The Greek is abundantly clear that every single individual was loving everybody at the same time.

Okay, so he goes over the top to say, to the person is kind of a good translation of that. To a person you are loving and caring for one another and holding each other up.

Growing in faith towards God and growing in love towards others. The horizontal part, loving others.

The vertical part, expressing faith and trust in Him. And Paul identifies that this church plant is doing so well that they are held up as an example to other churches.

Paul boasts, the word in Greek, translated into English, boasts.

Paul boasts to other churches about their faith, about the faith and love of the Thessalonians.

Now let me clarify the word boast here. That seemed like, why is he bragging? Is Paul a tool going around bragging about his awesome church plants?

Man, you should see what I do, man. It only took me three weeks and I could plant churches, man. Boom, boom, boom. At this rate,

I'm gonna get more than a dozen a year. This could be awesome. Is that what he's doing?

Remember who he's offering thanks to. Who is he offering thanks to? Who is he crediting for the growth of this church?

Paul acknowledges that it's God who is the one who deserves the thanks for the church growing in faith and love.

It's on his shoulders. Paul doesn't say, hey, Thessalonian church, thanks for growing in faith and love.

Good job, you've got it. He doesn't say, hey, Thessalonian church, you should be thanking me for your growing in faith and love.

He says, we ought to always give thanks to God.

We ought to always give thanks to God. When you experience growth in faith, you should thank

God. When you see growth in faith in your children, you should thank

God. When you see growth in faith in those around you, those involved in your ministry, you should thank

God. I believe that in this vein, Paul's boasting is in the amazing glory of God.

That's where he's boasting. That's the location of his boast is, look at what God did. I really believe that Paul was surprised and amazed that this church, after only three weeks of instruction, is withstanding the storms of persecution.

And not just withstanding the storms of persecution, but is advancing in their faith and love. I think he's surprised.

I think when he encountered other churches, his boasting sounded something like this. Hey, you're not going to believe this.

Have you heard what's going on up in Thessalonica? Have you heard this? I was with them for only three weeks.

I got ran out of town. I had nothing to do with this. And they now have a thriving church going there.

They're standing in the face of persecution. They are growing abundantly in their faith. And Paul praised

God. He was grateful to him. In the middle of verse four,

Paul identifies that their steadfastness and faith were worthy of commendation. They were enduring persecution and affliction.

One of the evidences of their faith is indeed their endurance. Evidence of faith, one evidence of faith is the ability to remain with Christ even in the midst of adversity.

It's one of the strongest evidences of our faith. When you go through difficult times and you cling to God in that time, that ought to be a huge evidence to you that the spirit of God is holding you, that he is alive in you.

Nothing tests the reality of faith quite like difficult times. I think many of us have been there. Multiple times in scripture, it is made clear that those who are truly in the faith will persevere till the end.

It might be worth a further conversation if you struggle with that. But that's pretty abundantly clear throughout many passages.

So we have here in Thessalonica a model church. They are held up as an example to others of what growing abundantly in faith looks like.

I would not suggest to you that we try to replicate their cultural situation. We try to be like Thessalonica in order to grow in faith.

Should we go stir up some persecution? Maybe we could get people really angry at us and we could gather a mob and get people to come in, and then we would grow in faith.

Then we'd grow in our faith and love. I always think it's a bit ironic when churches find out what works in other areas and then try to replicate it.

Trying to find out what's working in Chicago right now, what's working in L .A., what's working in New York City, and then we proceed to try to copy that model in Podunkville.

There's something about the city of New York that's a little different than Matawan. Anybody on par with that?

So trying to replicate what's going on, what works at Matt Chandler's church in Texas, or trying to replicate what works out in Bethlehem in Minnesota, or what's working for Redeemer in New York City, would be a little silly for us here in Matawan.

Would you agree with me? If I wanted to be the hip church planner and follow the culture, I would have no hair right now.

I would have shaved my head a long time ago, because that's what's hip. That's what's cool for church planners to do. You're supposed to shave your head within the first year.

Oh, huge beard, I'm working that. I'm trying to work on that. But the shaved head,

I'm not going there. I'm going to rock this hairdo until it leaves me. And it probably will.

They say you're supposed to look at your mom's dad. It's going to happen here soon. I would not suggest that our context needs to look like Thessalonica for us to be a church that grows in faith.

But we would do well to consider what we need to do in our context to grow in faith and love.

A major difference between us and the Thessalonians is a completed New Testament that is now available to study.

We have been entrusted with being born in an era where the word of God is available to us. And I cannot overstate what a privilege you have to have this in your hands.

To have access to the word of God, it is an intense privilege. This is not a method of torture.

I don't want to beat you over the head with this and say, oh, you should feel horrible if you're not doing your daily

Bible reading. Let me tell you, Christian, this is a delight. It might take some time for you to get to that place, but I am convinced that as the spirit of God is alive in you, that this will become food for your soul.

That this will become the fuel that drives the engine of your life. That this is the place where faith comes in over the immediate things of the world.

And that only in as much as we know this will we be able to overcome the things that are immediately in front of us and be able to take

God's way over the world's way. I'm convinced that growing in faith is in direct proportion to our connection with God's word.

I'm not suggesting to you that the Bible is a magical book that makes us super spiritual, you know, use it as your pillow and it'll rub off on you, or some magical incantations, or boy, if you just take one word as your mantra and meditate on that over the day, you're gonna just be rooted and solid.

That's not the point. But I am suggesting to you that faith comes by hearing.

I'm not suggesting this, I'm telling you this. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

We cannot move past the falsehood of this world without the truth of God's word.

Now, this is a message about growing in faith. Can you have faith without digging into this?

Yeah, you can start a relationship with God with some semblance of understanding, but your growth forward, your ability to take on more faith in 2014 than you had in 2013, and on and on in each year subsequent to this, is proportional to your intake and connection with God through the way that He has shown us

Himself in His word. You getting what I'm saying? Maybe not?

Some of you? Raise your hand if you're understanding what I'm trying to get at here. Awesome. So steps to growing in faith are honestly,

I would suggest to you, less in our hands than we might originally think. So for me to give you three steps to growing in your faith,

I'm not even saying that the word is, that boy, you know, your first step needs to be just to go home and read the

Bible every day for the year, then that's going to be the solution. Then you're just going to grow.

I am suggesting to you that you need that. And that you're going to be inhibited in your growth if you are not in the word consistently.

My goal as a pastor is to provide an opportunity for you to hear from the word and grow in faith by the work of the

Holy Spirit in your life. Faith is not something

I have the power to create in you. I cannot create faith in you. It is something

I can point to. It is something I can encourage you toward. But I cannot create it.

Only the Spirit of God can do that. So the role of the church is to provide an atmosphere conducive to growing in faith.

And that means copious doses of God's word in this time that we live in. We only grow in faith by encountering the invisible and eternal and take it as valuable above the temporary and tangible things.

But the role of each individual in growing in faith is taking seriously the concept of prayer and scripture reading.

We need to be in communication with the invisible. Talking through our day with him.

Not just, I'm not talking about, you know, an hour in the morning and an hour at night. I'm just talking about communicating with God in your day.

Talking with the invisible and then taking seriously the word of God.

Interaction with God is indeed the primary call to growing in faith this morning. The Thessalonian church grew in faith despite the hardships they endured.

It's obvious that Paul had left at least a culture of connection to God by faith and a culture of love for others even in his short stint with them.

It's obvious that that was a primary teaching early on that you ought to be together. You ought to love one another.

You ought to be growing in faith. But just like a farmer who plants the field, who lays down fertilizer and waters the field, he recognizes that it is

God who gives the growth. In the end, it's up to him. I've seen growth in faith here at Recast Church.

It's been a delight to see that. I ought to give thanks to God always because you have grown abundantly in faith and you have increased in your love for one another.

And it's been a pleasure to see. It's been a joy. But just because you have grown well, please know that you have not arrived.

You know that. Even after this commendation to the Thessalonians, Paul goes on to correct errors and encourage them to dig deeper, continue study, continue growing.

The process of maturity here at Recast does not look like an arrival for anyone. None of us have an arrival except for the day that we go to be with our

Lord and Savior. That's the arrival. Everything up to this, everything before that is process.

Everything before that is a continued process of growing. And regardless of how long you have been in a relationship with Jesus Christ, raise your hand if you know you've got room to grow.

You got room to grow in your faith. Amen. That is an awesome admission. That's half the battle right there is saying,

I need continued growth. I need it.

I need to continue to grow in faith. I need to continue to grow in community. I need to continue to grow in service towards others.

The definition of a healthy church is one that is always growing deeper in faith, deeper in community, and deeper in service to one another.

The seeds of faith for each person here started with an understanding of the good news. The good news that Jesus died for us.

That's the foundation of our faith. While we were lost in darkness without understanding or hope,

Jesus broke in and we believed by faith, taking that which we couldn't see with our eyes as true and trusting that.

I wasn't there the day Jesus was crucified. I did not see it with my eyes. I didn't hear it with my ears.

I did not take in the sights and smells, but I believe it's true by faith.

And that was the point where we truly began to grow in our faith. If you've taken that step in your faith journey of admitting your sin to God and asking him to forgive you based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then please join together in communion this morning.

It takes faith to believe that the death of a Jewish carpenter 2 ,000 years ago has anything to do with us here today.

And yet I testify that his death has had a more radical impact on my life than any other event in all of world history.

Let's take communion together this morning as an act of faith in remembrance of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And let's go out from this place with a radical commitment to continue to grow in faith that we would take the invisible

God over the things of this world. Let's pray. Father, I preach on it, and yet faith remains mysterious and difficult in the sense of this interplay of invisible and rational and this idea of a leap off of a bridge.

But you've given us so many evidences of you. You have shown yourself in so many ways in our lives. But Father, in the end, it still comes down to faith.

And so, Father, I pray that you would increase our faith in 2014, that you would increase our acceptance of your role in our lives, that you would increase our understanding of what it is that you desire of us on a day -to -day basis.

Father, that we would feel your love and experience your closeness to us. Even as we go out from this place this week,

Father, that we would be, in your word, engaged with you as you have shown yourself to us that we might act and work and live and do in a way that reflects how you've created us, what you desire of us.

Father, our only hope is connection with you. And our only hope for growing in faith is by the hearing of your word.

So, Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts even today as we've heard your word. We've seen an example of the

Thessalonian church, Father, a group of people who, in the midst of intense adversity, intense persecution from their friends and neighbors, stood firm in their faith and their love for one another, even with just such a short connection with you.

We see the power of your Spirit and His ability to hold us fast and hold us firm and grow us abundantly.