The Work of God in Others

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Don Filcek; 1 Thess 1:2-10 The Work of God in Others

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series,
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Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.
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Good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off by welcoming all of you here to Recast Church.
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It's great to hear the conversations that are going on. That just means that you're connecting with one another, and that's a good thing.
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But we are going to get started, so if you could find your seats, come on in and grab a chair.
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We are the gathering of God's people here in this location, and that's a beautiful thing. We're all on a spiritual journey, and I'm so glad that God is drawing people from all kinds of backgrounds into his family to really walk together with him and walk together with each other in this church and here in this community.
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Some of us, you can recognize yourselves in some of these statements. Some of you have been around the church for a while.
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You were raised in the church maybe, and you've already learned a lot about God over the years.
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But others of you are just getting started in your curiosity about spiritual things, and I love it that both groups are welcome here at Recast Church.
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Some of you have a solid faith that is really stable and sustains you and holds you and keeps you walking in the right direction, while others of you are wracked with doubts and discouragement in your life right now.
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Both groups are welcome here at Recast Church. Some of you are here, and you're kind of recovering but coming out of a struggle with legalism, and you were raised with a lot of rules.
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You maybe even still struggle with a strong tendency to judge others and their behavior of the choice of movies that they watch or the way that they live their lives.
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Maybe you struggle with your tendency to inflate your own spirituality and try to look really good for others around you, and then others of you are wallowing with sin and struggling to just keep your head above water.
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And I want to just say both groups are welcome here at Recast Church. We want to be a gathering where God can meet you right where you are at and can speak into your heart and in your life the truth of His Word.
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And the only caveat I would add to this equation about all that are welcome here is just one simple hope and prayer on my part as a pastor.
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I pray for this gathering every Sunday morning. I spend at least an hour just walking and praying and just praying for those who are going to be in attendance here this morning.
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And a big prayer, a big part of that prayer time is that regardless of what's going on in your life and where you're at in your journey with God, my prayer is that you would come to this gathering with an openness to Him, that you would come with an open heart to hear what
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He has for you. Come expecting Him to change you. Don't come expecting
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Monday to be the same as Saturday, but come to Sunday expecting a transformed life and for Him to interact with you in a way that provides conviction or encouragement and meets you right where you are at.
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Come willing to listen to God through the teaching of His Word. Come with a heart humble enough, but this is a tough one for many of us, but come with a heart humble enough to admit that you might have some things wrong.
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You might have some things that God needs to correct or change in you. And let me encourage you to come with a heart ready to hear what is true from God's Word about life, about you, and about Him.
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So this morning we're going to be continuing on in 1 Thessalonians and our text this morning. In this text we're going to see that God is at work with others around us.
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How many of you are glad that God is working on not just you but is working on others around you as well?
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That's a benefit to you, a blessing to your family, a blessing to our society and our culture that God is indeed working with others.
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And for the Apostle Paul, he was deeply moved to gratitude to God that He, God was at work in the lives of others around him.
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And he speaks that and he writes that and he records that for us here in the opening of this letter.
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And once again we see the theme of a section of Scripture pointing to the community oriented nature of the church that we are designed to be together.
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I mentioned this many times and I mentioned it I think even just last week that we often gravitate in our minds as Americans toward individualism and independence, the idea and the notion that we don't need others.
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And often within the church that takes the form of just showing up on a Sunday morning and then scooting really quick afterwards and kind of taking this in as a show or a performance or you know just kind of an event to participate in or rather just attend but not even participate in.
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And many of that, for many of us that manifests itself in showing up at the last minute and leaving right away and not developing those relationships with one another.
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But in Scripture we see people in the early church emotionally engaged with one another, identifying and giving thankfulness for what
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God is doing in each other's lives. And how many of you know that in order for me to give thanks for what God is doing in your life,
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I need to interact with you at the level of your life. I need to know what's going on. I need to have conversations and understand who you are and what's going on for me to even offer thanks for the things that God is doing there.
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And so in our text a prayer of thankfulness turns into a reminder that we should be grateful and excited for what we see
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God doing in others around us. So if you're not already there I'd encourage you to open your Bibles to first Thessalonians 1.
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We're going to be reading verses 2 through 10. Navigate in your app or whatever. You'll see people with their phones out or with different devices so that they can navigate over to first Thessalonians 1, 2 through 10.
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If you don't have a Bible on your lap, Mike's got some here and the only way he's going to know to give you one of those is for you to raise your hand.
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And so we're not trying to call you out but if you need a copy of God's word we want everybody to be able to see that what we're reading comes from there.
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So just raise your hand up and Mike will bring you one. And he's got them already open there so that's helpful as well.
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But follow along in your Bible or on your devices. We read first Thessalonians 1 verses 2 through 10.
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And again I want to remind you Recast that this is God's word to us. This is an amazing and glorious thing that we have the opportunity to hear from the almighty
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God here in our midst this morning through his written word. What he desires for you and I to hear as we read together.
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So first Thessalonians 1, 2 through 10 says this. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our
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God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our
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Lord Jesus Christ. For we know brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the
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Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake and you became imitators of us and of the
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Lord for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit.
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So that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the
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Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we do not need to say anything for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true
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God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.
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I thank you that we can celebrate that now in singing songs together and Father that you have indeed gathered us together as your people.
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Father that you are working in each other's lives in a way that is glorious and is beautiful and is very specific to each one of us.
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Father it's very easy for us to draw out patterns and begin to make rules for each other and just think in terms of what you have done for us and expecting you to do the same for others or we look out of ourselves and see you working in another person's life in a specific way and sometimes we can be covetous of that or jealous of it.
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Father I pray that you would work in our hearts through this text and through the chance that we have in the gathering together of your people to move beyond ourselves to not just think in terms of what we have to gain from this service this morning but to think in terms of what you're doing in a bigger picture in this community for your honor and glory.
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Father I thank you that just in a moment we're going to do something that makes an image of that for us. Our voices are going to join together not just one voice, not just my voice, not just an individual's voice but all of us together singing songs to you that our voices would rise up to you as the gathering of your people and together we would praise your awesome and glorious name and it's in the name of your son
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Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. You can go ahead and be seated and I just want to remind you all to get comfortable and to keep your
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Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians 1 verses 2 through 10 in case you lost your spot you'll want to be able to reference that during the message so you've got that open in front of you and then remember if at any time you need to get more coffee or juice
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I think there's still some donuts over here. Just whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's word. Again I say this often but if you need to get up and stretch out in the back you're not going to distract me and the point is to as much as possible keep your attention on God's word as we talk through this over the next half an hour or so.
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The structure of our text this morning is pretty difficult to outline to our western minds.
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Part of the reason that it's so difficult is that these nine verses we're looking at nine verses here we read them earlier they really only they comprise all of those words are only two sentences in the
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Greek language. These run -ons the fact that we see a lot of run -on sentences throughout the letters of Paul some of you might wonder and some of you are more curious and some of you don't really care but you might wonder if it has to do with the
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Greek language like does the Greek language just have a lot more run -on sentences but actually has a lot less to do with the
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Greek language and a lot more to do with Paul the Apostles personality. So it has more to do with him he was a man who liked rabbit trails in that sense he was probably like the average preacher and when he was writing about one thing it made him think about another thing so he wrote a subordinate clause about that thing and then something in that clause made him think about something else so then he wrote about that and you'll see eventually he kind of just keeps spiraling into other topics and other things as he's writing and as he's talking and so he fills up a lot of pages in the
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New Testament throughout his letters with subordinate clauses. Oh there's a rabbit trail on there that's adorable.
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But I share that mini grammar lesson with you to explain why it may not always be easy for us to understand the main point of what
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Paul is writing. Any of you ever been there? You struggle with that a little bit like you're reading in the New Testament? Nobody wants to raise their hand?
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Anybody? A few of us struggle with that. I know that I do at times and there are times when
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I sit down to read this on Monday morning and I'm getting ready for the next Sunday sermon and I'm like where is this going and it takes me some time to analyze and to draw out the sentence diagrams and all of that stuff that you guys,
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I get to do that so you don't have to. So some of you are like yay. Some of you like to, anybody like to diagram sentences here?
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A few of you. Okay so you're like yeah I want to do that too. Good. And then the rest of us are like yeah alright.
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As we talked about last week though it's valuable to remember that we understand where all of this is going and the fact of the matter is you're not alone if you're sometimes confused about what
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Paul is going on about. A lot of people are that way and so I just want to let you know you're in good company.
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But we talked last week, we need to remember the historical context, not just the literary context, not just what's going on in the pages of scripture but also what the setting was for the church in Thessalonica or the letter to the
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Thessalonians. The church was, remember, planted by Paul. He was only with them for a few weeks and then the church was physically attacked by Jews in the community who didn't like the idea of a new religion coming into town and were upset and then
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Paul and his church planning team fled literally under cover of darkness in the middle of the night to flee for their lives.
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Now Paul was not one to run from problems. Do you see that in the New Testament? He wasn't eager and quick to get out of Dodge in order to save his own skin.
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But what we have in Thessalonica is literally the church, the new, brand new believers.
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These people had given their lives to Christ within weeks of the events that transpire and the riot that occurs and some of them are being dragged to the town center to actually be tried for treason against the emperor.
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They're worshipping this other guy, Jesus, and now they're supposed to be worshipping the emperor so they're being put on trial and in the middle of the night the church sends
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Paul away. They say, you're going to die. These people, we know this community, they're going to kill you if you stay here.
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You need to go. And so Paul is kind of run out of town so to speak but the church is instrumental in that in saying we want to save your life.
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But Paul later sends Timothy back into Thessalonica to check up on the church and see how they're doing.
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And now we are reading a letter responding Paul's response to the things that Timothy has come back to him with a report from Thessalonica.
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So that's the nature of the letter that we're reading here in 1 Thessalonians is a report from Timothy has come back to Paul about how that church is doing that only had a few weeks together with Paul before he was run out of town.
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So let me give you the brief flow of our text, what we're looking at this morning. First in verses 2 through 3, Paul is grateful for the report from Timothy of their fruitful labor with hope.
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Paul has heard from Timothy that the Thessalonian church is bearing fruit consistent with love, faith, and hope.
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Or faith, hope, and love as we like to put it in that order. Those are really the three chief characteristics of Christian growth and that's going to be the first point as we're going to kind of be doing this outline.
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We're going to be talking about faith, love, and hope and how that is shining through the Thessalonian church.
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The second point if you're taking notes is verses 4 through 6. Paul is thankful for the clear evidence of conversion in them.
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That they have genuinely been chosen by God and they have been placed in firmly within the realm of salvation that God has provided through Jesus Christ.
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And in this section here he reminds the Thessalonians that it is their conversion that has produced spiritual growth. He starts off by saying
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I'm glad to see that you're growing, oh but don't forget the reason you're growing is because you're in Christ, because you've been changed.
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And lastly in verses 7 through 10, Paul is grateful that the testimony of the church in Thessalonica has been spreading everywhere.
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They have become a model to other Christians and to other churches. And this little church that started in the pressure cooker of intense persecution has been held up as a model of suffering with joy.
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And so in a sense the second point is the main point of this text this morning. They have been chosen by God and because of their powerful conversion they have great works and they have a great testimony.
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So the logical flow in the text might be a bit lost on us so let me try to summarize this in this way. Paul is thankful for their good works that spring up because of their conversion.
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But likewise he's thankful for their conversion that caused the testimony of Christ to spread throughout all the area around him.
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So their conversion is the foundation of both their good works and their good testimony. It sits in the middle. And underlying all of this by the way is ultimately
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Paul's gratitude and thankfulness for the work of God in their lives. In this fledgling infant church he says
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I see really amazing things. I'm hearing this report from Timothy and things are going well. And all of these things are going to have applications into our lives where we live here today.
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So starting in verse two we see that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were consistently thankful to God for the work that was going on in Thessalonica.
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When they prayed they remembered before God the great things that he was doing for them. So a fundamental question that I want to ask all of you is how do you feel when someone tells you that they're praying for you?
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Is that encouraging to you? Do you like that? It's a pretty good feeling and that's what Paul starts off with here to encourage the church.
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I am praying for you. Do any of you ever get, yeah, so have you ever gotten a text in the middle of the week that somebody says
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I'm praying for you? There's nothing more encouraging to me than that. Than when somebody texts me and says hey I just prayed for you this morning and I want to let you know that.
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Even better when they tell me specifically what they're praying for me but just to even know that somebody was thinking of you. Isn't that a good feeling?
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Isn't that a great thought? So in applying that it's great if you're praying for one another.
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That's fabulous. But even better if you let people know and not in a prideful way like oh yeah I'm praying for everybody and so you just send out a mass text or something like that.
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But it really is powerful in a sense to like say specifically I prayed for you.
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I lifted you up this morning. You know you have, a lot of you are connected in community groups and in our community group this past week we took prayer requests for one another and so then everybody was assigned somebody and you go out throughout the week and pray and it's just be encouraging to get a text that hey
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I was just lifting you up before the Lord and that's an exciting and encouraging thing to have that happen.
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I imagine this was a super encouraging word for the church in Thessalonica to hear that Paul, Silas and Timothy were praying for them and even thankful for them.
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That's a cool thing. But it isn't until verse 3 that we see the specific things that Paul and the gang were thankful for.
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In verse 3 we really get down to our first point, the first point of our outline shows up in verse 3 of this first chapter.
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We should be grateful when we see fruit in the lives of other believers. We should be grateful when we see fruit, that God is growing them in character.
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Obviously not fruit like oranges and bananas and things like that but fruit as in the harvest, the byproduct of God's spirit living within a person and changing and transforming behavior in a positive way.
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Paul was very specific about his thanks and I would suggest to you that specific is good. Generic and general comments and compliments are often perceived as flattery or filler.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Your boss stops by and says good job and that's it. Good job for what? Why? What did
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I do? I mean I want to keep doing more of that, I ought to do more of that right? But a general is okay and just having somebody say thanks sir, you're doing good, that can be encouraging but more specific is better.
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So the phrase you did a good job is different than what Paul says here, I can tell that you're working out your faith he says to the
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Thessalonians. You are laboring to love others and I see that in you, encouragement. And you are unwavering in your hope in Christ and I see that steadfastness of hope.
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You see Paul specifically focuses on what he sees as godly motivations and he has seen a transformation in the
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Thessalonians from motivated out of self -interest, motivated out of pleasing themselves or for gain or for almost dead religion and religiosity of worshipping the pagan gods and he's seen a transformation to motivation of love and hope and faith in their lives.
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He's observed this through Timothy and Timothy has come back and given a good report. These guys are growing, they're growing and they're showing love and they're growing in their faith and they are operating in steadfast and strong in their hope even in the face of intense persecution.
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And so these are three areas of commendation that move Paul to thankfulness, he says I'm so grateful to hear that you're growing,
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I'm so grateful to hear that you're growing in faith and hope and love. And the phrase work of faith, each one of these things is a bit interesting, the phrase work of faith is interesting because in reality some of us, maybe you personally know what it's like to do a work of work.
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Now this is called a work of faith but many of us were raised and whether you were taught it explicitly or whether you caught it implicitly, if you were raised in a more fundamental church like I was, you may have grown to a place in your life where you did a lot of works of work.
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Not works based on trust in what Christ has done for you but work to try to obtain salvation or to try to just do good so that others could see your works, right?
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So you did works of work. Works of work are, they're doing what they do without trust in God or His way of salvation.
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Instead, the people in Thessalonica are working to try, are not working to try to save themselves but are recognizing that God has made a way for them.
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A work of faith can only be done by someone who has come to trust, has placed their faith in God's way of salvation by faith in His Son, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only way you can do a work of faith is through the avenue that He's provided for us, putting trust in Him for salvation.
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Any good act that flows out of faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on the cross is categorized as a work of faith.
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And He commends them for that. He says, you're doing that. You've put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and now you're working out of that place of salvation and recognition of what
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He's done for you. Second, Paul identifies that the Thessalonians have been laboring out of love. Whether it is love for God or love for others or some mix of the two, which is most likely, love is to be a chief motivation for the good that you and I do in our lives.
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And the reality that we all must consider is that we cannot act out of a pure motive of love for others without first receiving the love of God in Christ Jesus.
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As a matter of fact, scripture says we love because He first loved us.
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The only way that we can genuinely be moved to a lack of self -interest and towards an other oriented service is through a recognition of what
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Christ has done for us on the cross, a recognition of the great forgiveness that we've received. And it's from that launching place of a recognition of forgiveness and a love that has been granted that we can then be empowered.
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Because the fact of the matter is, if you're lost in your sin and you're stuck there, you are always concerned about your own salvation.
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And if you're not at a place of faith and trust and recognizing that He has loved you, the only thing you can ever do is try to serve yourself.
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That's the only thing. And even the good that we do is often very self -centered and very self -oriented.
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But it's when we're free, when we've been set free from the obligation and the hamster wheel of trying to do good works to save ourselves, but when we realize it's been given to us as a free gift, then that is a firm foundation from which we can jump off of and serve others.
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Is that making sense? You getting that? And it's in that faith in Christ and that love that's been given to us that we have the power to go out
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Monday through Saturday and serve one another out in our workplaces and the places that God has us throughout the week.
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We love because He first loved us. And lastly, in this first section, the Thessalonians have exhibited a steadfastness of hope.
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Maybe more exemplary than any of the churches that are mentioned in the New Testament is the steadfastness of hope that the
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Thessalonians showed from the very beginning. Their history, as I mentioned last week, is explained in Acts chapter 17.
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And we know that they endured suffering and persecution from the very start of the church. How many of you, the very first thing you experienced is you gave your life to Christ and somebody beat you for it?
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None of us, right? I mean, that's not a reality of the lives that we face, and that was the reality in Thessalonica.
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These guys were physically beaten because they had given their lives to Christ. They were taken to court right away because they had given their lives to Christ.
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Some of them sacrificed their lives and became martyrs within weeks of accepting
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Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Steadfastness of hope, an amazing sense of joy in the midst of suffering and persecution from the very beginning.
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And as we're going to see in a moment, they've even become an example to other churches throughout the area,
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Achaia, Macedonia, and all the places that Paul was traveling. He was hearing about this church as an example of how to suffer with joy.
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This church caught hope early, and it spread, and it produced in them a steadfastness that gave them the power to overcome suffering and stay committed in the harshest of church starts.
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In this first section, Paul is giving thanks for the fruit he has heard about in the Thessalonian church, but he is most impressed with the motivations behind their actions.
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He's not just focused on the doing, oh you do good things, but on the heart that the report is giving about what transformation is going on in their heart towards faith and love and hope.
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They're living out a faith, a faith that works. They are laboring for others and each other, and it's a labor that is fueled by and motivated by love, and they have remained steadfast and unwavering, and that is because of the hope that they have in Jesus Christ.
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They have caught a belief and a trust in the future that enables them to endure hardship in the present.
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That's an interesting thought, isn't it? How does hope impact your day? How does hope impact the way that you endure things at your workplace?
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I've talked with some of you, and some of you are in a place where your workplace is becoming a drudgery.
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It's difficult, it's hard, there's harshness coming down from management, there's an atmosphere of people being let go and frustrations that are going on, and it's not fun like it used to be.
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It's not, you're not even free to necessarily do the work because there's inter -office politics, and there's all kinds of things that are going on there.
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So how does hope impact somebody who's in a scenario or a situation like that? Well, is your hope in your income?
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Is your hope in your job? Is your hope in your employer? Or is there something more stable than that? And I would suggest to you that absolutely,
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I think you know where that's going. You understand that there's got to be a more bedrock thing that you're putting your trust and your faith in, something that's going to enable you to go into that situation.
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How could you go and show up for a workplace where everybody else is driving down or angry or angsty with each other?
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How can you show up into that situation and bring life and bring hope and bring joy? How could you be joyful in that?
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Because you have a Savior who loves you and died for you, and that come what may in this life,
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He's going to take you home to be with Him for eternity after this is all done, and that business continues to go on or that business folds or whatever.
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You have hope. Is there anybody, anybody agree with me on that? There's hope beyond this, and so how can we be an influence for joy?
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And the Thessalonians were doing that. They had this steadfast hope that was impacting the way that they lived their lives because they saw an eternity that was beyond the scope of the frustrations that we have here in this life.
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Some of them petty, some of them not so petty. Some of us have real cause for frustration in our lives, and some of you are suffering here, and I know that.
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I don't mean to minimize that, what I mean to do is elevate the glory that is awaiting you. It's not by diminishing the problems and saying they're not real problems.
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It's actually some of them are really substantial problems, and as Michael Whitmer preached when I was gone, some of you were here for that, where he talked in terms of not minimizing death and acting like death is no big deal, but death is a great and serious enemy, and all that does is enhance the glory of our
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Savior who conquered it. That's what we're doing when we're grabbing a hold of hope is we're saying, yeah, these problems are real, and the suffering is real, and Christ is better.
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The resurrection is better. The hope that we have for eternity is better, and that's one of our challenges in this life is to show the world that.
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It's one of the reasons we're still breathing His air. That's one of the reasons we're still consuming His water and His food. It's one of the reasons
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He still has us here on planet earth is that we might convey that hope to others, that it goes beyond this life.
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There's more out there. In verse 4,
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Paul transitions, and I believe in part because he doesn't want to leave things at the level of hard work, of just kind of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and trying to make others see joy in you, or trying to make things work for you.
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At the end of the day, the Christian life is not fundamentally about hard work and working out your faith and doing works and doing work, work, work, but Paul is glad that they work hard out of faith, love, and hope, but he wants to get down to the root of where that work comes from, and in verse 4, he wants the church to hear his confidence that God has chosen them.
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He addressed them as brothers who are loved by God, and he observes that God has chosen them, and he is confident of this, and in verses 4 through 6, we find that Paul is thankful for the conversion of others, and we also should be grateful when we see others come to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Now, the connection between verses 4 and 5 help us to understand, that connection helps us to understand a bit of the mystery found in the explicit statement in verse 4 that God chose them.
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How does Paul know that? How does Paul know that they were chosen? And some of you have a mind that is quite opposed to the idea of God's sovereign will, and so your heart wants to reject the notion that God chooses some primarily because your mind is going to shoot over to, when we say he chose some, your mind shoots to the ones he didn't choose, and I understand that aversion.
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I can relate to that, and I can understand how you might be moved in that, but the fact that God chose the
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Thessalonians, these Thessalonian Christians in this church that he's writing to, is meant to be an encouragement to us.
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It's meant to be a positive thing, that to speak to the church and say, if you're in Christ, God chose you.
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That's a beautiful thing, and that's a glorious thing, but I want you to see carefully where Paul takes us in verse 5.
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The reason he knows the Thessalonian church was chosen, and he says because at the start of verse 5, is because the gospel came to them with powerful conviction, and the power of the
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Holy Spirit. It was not brought in word only, it wasn't just empty words, or just just words that bounced off their eardrums, but it was brought with an authoritative power that the
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Spirit, Paul was eager to give the Spirit credit for, and notice carefully with me that Paul is contrasting two types of gospel presentations.
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Some of you in this room have had the opportunity to share the gospel with people, and if you've done that several times, you've noticed different responses.
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How many of you have ever noticed that different people respond to the gospel in different ways? You've had some people that, hopefully some of you in the room have had the privilege of leading somebody else to faith in Christ, and then there have been times where you've shared the gospel and it's like, sometimes it puts up a wall, sometimes it puts up a barrier, sometimes people literally reject it on sight, right, just offhand.
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No, I don't believe that, whatever. There's all different kinds of responses that are there, but there's two different ways that people respond in general, and one is a gospel presentation that comes with words only.
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I think Paul had experienced this. You go, the apostle Paul, really? He shared the gospel with people who wouldn't have it, who wouldn't hear it?
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I mean, what kind of apostle was he? He's just faithful to share the word. The response of others is not up to you.
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It's not how much you studied, it's not how much you memorized, it's not how much effort you put in, it's not, oh, you should have got a better night's sleep last night, and then they would have gave their life to Christ, or you should have said it this way, or you should have quoted that verse, or you should have done this, or you should have argued a little bit more in there, or made your point over here.
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It's not all of that. There is a gospel presentation that ends up just being your words.
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It doesn't get in there hard, it's not in there, and that's not up to you. But there's another gospel presentation, and again,
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I hope you're privileged at some point in your life to have one of these, where the Holy Spirit shows up, and there is deep conviction.
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You see that in verse 5, but there's other responses that go along with that deep conviction.
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You bring the message, and you still only speak words. That's all you've got to bring. You bring the same words in both situations, but with one, it penetrates the person's heart with deep conviction.
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They say, oh, I'm a sinner, and I need this message. And then from verse 6, we see three other things that come with that, that show the chosenness of the individual receiving it, and that is that they receive it.
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There's reception. It says they receive that word, and then their life is changed to hunger and desire to imitate
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Christ, and imitate the person who's brought this message, and then the icing on the cake, joy.
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You see the joy in the person when they finally realize that their sins are forgiven, and they're set free. There's great joy, and you see those in verses 5 and 6, deep conviction, the reception of the word, life change, and joy.
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How do you know? How can you tell that someone is chosen by God? We are never in scripture commanded to look out at our world and go to assess other people's chosenness.
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If you do that, you just won't take the gospel to people. You'll just be like, I mean, how are you going to tell? Are they chosen or not? I don't want to waste my verb.
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I don't want to waste my words. I don't want to. No, we're told to just go out and like a farmer, just throwing seed out in the field, and whatever grows grows, and some of it will be hard and gnarled, and it won't be receptive, and it'll be like just throwing seed, but it's just seed.
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It never gets down and never grows, but other seed will plant and grow roots and produce more fruit.
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How can you tell that someone's chosen by God? They're convicted by the words of the gospel. They receive those words as truth.
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Their lives are transformed, and they respond with joy. Notice that Paul is speaking to a church after the fact.
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It's very easy to tell when somebody, that somebody was chosen. You know how you can tell? Because they accepted Jesus Christ as their
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Lord and Savior. That's how you know they were chosen. That's the way you can tell. They received it. Their life has been transformed.
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They've been changed, and they had deep conviction. Paul doesn't credit himself, by the way, with their conversion.
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He doesn't speak about his crafty oratory skills or all the time that he spent studying religion.
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He doesn't speak about his ability to argue them into the kingdom.
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Paul explains that the difference between a productive gospel conversation and an unproductive gospel conversation is the movement of the
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Holy Spirit. That's the difference. Let me tell you that in practical ways, this is so freeing to all of us.
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I hope it's freeing to you. It's very freeing to me as a minister. It's not up to us to save people.
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Praise God, it's not up to us. I tell you what, if it's up to us, we shouldn't sleep. That's all we should do.
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I mean, we should just burn out and flame out for Jesus, right? Like at the end of the day, don't sleep. Don't do anything.
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Just go out and share the gospel with everybody all the time, but it is not up to you and me. God has certainly placed limitations on us anyways, but it is, hear me carefully, it is up to us to share the words.
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It is up to us to spread the seed and to pray that the Spirit shows up with conviction. But lastly, on this point of their conversion, so it is up to us to share it, but the results are up to God.
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It's his. And there's one other point on this thought in these verses about their conversion that I want to suggest, and it's a little bit less comfortable truth nestled between verses five and six that does highlight for us an application that we ought to consider.
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Notice at the end of verse five where Paul identifies that the Thessalonians quote, know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, end quote.
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Paul cannot save anyone, but what he does recognize is that the character of the one leading someone else to Christ will prove to be exemplary in their lives.
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The Thessalonians imitated those who led them to faith in Christ. This is a principle
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I have heard it said in many ways, but maybe the most helpful that I've found is that what you are saved with is what you are saved to.
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What you're saved with is what you're saved to. So let me put some flesh on that. If you're saved by a church circus, you're going to gravitate towards church as circus.
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If you were led to Christ by a legalist, you will likely emulate legalism.
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In the really extreme case of the Thessalonians here in our text, they were led to faith in Christ by a team that suffered joyfully for Jesus, and they in turn received the word in much affliction and with joy in the
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Holy Spirit. They saw that model for them, and they followed that model and that example. What I'm saying is that you cannot save others, but if you have the privilege of leading someone else to faith in Christ, they will likely imitate what they see in your life.
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So many of us stop there and go, okay well Don you just gave me a license to not share the gospel with anybody. You look at that and that's your way out, that's your excuse, that's your, oh well
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I got to get my life in order before I go out and lead somebody else to faith in Christ.
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And let me say we're not, it's not about driving for perfection, it's not about you having all everything in order, it's about you being authentic and real with people and sharing your struggles and telling them what
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Christ has done for you. We're going to get there here in just a moment to talk about testimony. But there is the other side of that.
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Instead of saying, oh maybe I shouldn't share my faith, maybe the right direction for this is to ask yourself, what would
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I not want people to imitate in my life? What needs to be cut out that is maybe not even sin, maybe it's just not helpful.
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I mean I can't point to whatever your TV watching habits are and go, well that's sin, that's sin, that's sin.
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I don't come up with a list, I'm grateful I don't have to publish some kind of list that tells you what to watch and what not to watch.
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I mean, that'd be terrible. But what I am suggesting is there may be some things that you're letting into your heart and into your mind that when you really ask this question, if I were to lead somebody else to Christ this week and they were to go and just follow me throughout the week and do what
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I do, what would need to be cut out? And that's a reasonable question, it's a reasonable thing. And the reason
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I would suggest that that's a very important question for us to ask is that our primary reason for being here is to testify of the goodness and glory of our
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Lord and Savior. And then the implication from verses five and six is that they will follow your example, they will imitate you.
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Paul was grateful for the conversion of others and we should be also. And the last point, the third point,
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Paul was grateful for the testimony of others. He was glad to hear that the word of the Lord was spreading out like a bell ringing or like a clap of thunder is the word that's used in Greek for the spreading out of the word and the message that was coming out from the
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Thessalonians. They became an example in the districts of Greece, Macedonia and Achaia that were around Thessalonica.
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But the word of the Lord sounded forth everywhere so that Paul was having people come up to him. Imagine this, the apostle
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Paul down south in Greece near Corinth when he's writing this and people are coming up to him and saying, hey did you hear about this little church?
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There's this little church up in this little town up north called Thessalonica and they received the gospel in the midst of persecution and they're still continuing to grow.
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And Paul's catching this report as he travels around about this church. I wonder if he was,
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I wonder if he was quick to say yeah, if he just smiled to himself or he's like yeah I planted that church, I know what you're talking about.
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But the word was spreading and the report was growing and at the end of verse eight Paul says that the information he was hearing on the street about the power of the gospel among the
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Thessalonians was so clear and so accurate that he said being an insider,
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I didn't even have to add anything to it. I mean in this world of fake news, the news was spreading accurately here in this situation.
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Greece wasn't struggling with fake news at this time. It was like it was accurate enough that Paul who was literally the church planner said
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I didn't have anything else to add. I mean the word, the word was spreading so clearly and concisely and the gospel was being spread so amazingly through the testimony of this little church that he says yeah,
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I didn't have anything to add. It was just very, very clear. The reporters who are sharing this information are sharing the gospel in detail and the details are beautiful when we consider in verse nine what is shared about the details of their conversion, what's being spread when you remember that Greece is the center of pagan worship of the
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Greek gods and idols during this time. So there was many of the people in Thessalonica were devout
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Greeks it says, which means simply that they were worshiping devoutly.
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They were literally making sacrifices to idols throughout their city and worshiping the pantheon of Greek gods.
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In verse nine the reports are spreading around that the apostle was received with conviction and with life change in the midst of persecution and that the devout
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Greeks who worshipped idols were turning. Another way of saying that we're turning is repenting to the living and true
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God from the false gods of idols. They were not adding
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God to Zeus, Apollos, Athena, and the gang. They were not adding them, but they were adding
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Jesus to those group, that group, but they were rejecting the false gods they worshiped in exchange for the true and living
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God. I had a powerful experience when I worked with international students at Western Michigan University. I think
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I said this, it was a few years ago that I used this illustration. Some of you maybe remember it, but I embarked on a routine
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Bible study several years ago when I was working at Western with international students with an apartment full of Hindus at the start of every semester.
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We had the privilege of being able to go into the new international student orientation at Western. The organization that I was working with was
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International Students Incorporated. We had a really good in with the office of international student services there and so they would let us literally come in and offer sign -up sheets for people to engage in Bible studies and that was through an official capacity through Western Michigan University.
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We had a very, very beneficial positive relationship. We served them a lot and so they really liked us being there and so we just put out sheets and as long as they weren't forced to, they had, you know, it was their will, their desire to sign up.
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So we would, at the start of every semester, we would have a list, a handful of apartments and we'd literally go to their apartments and study the
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Bible with them and we had kind of an evangelistic study and then some things to take them a little bit deeper if they would continue on.
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And so one particular apartment full of Hindu students that wanted to study the Bible together, so I went over there and we had studied for a few weeks and as was kind of the routine, eventually some of them fell off and some, but the ones that were more serious would kind of hang in there and stay and as the study went on for this particular group, everybody fell away eventually except for one who carried on through the semester.
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He continued to study with me as he went through his master's degree in engineering and that was when the new campus was all new and so he took me over there and gave me a tour of the, and he was a graduate assistant in one of the research places there and stuff.
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Pretty cool stuff and we developed a really good friendship and really enjoyed being together and we walked through the gospel of Matthew together and after several months of talking with him,
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I was finally able to pronounce his name correctly and this is his name, Jai Shankar Siddhagangkappa, so try that one on for size.
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We just called him Jai, which was a little bit easier, but we studied together, we went through the gospel of Matthew together,
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I invited him to church, he went to church with me several times and came over for lunch and would hang out with our family and one
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Sunday was different. He came over after church and he said to me, I'm ready and I was like, ready?
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Like, what are we doing? And he said, I want to give my life to Christ and I was like, whoa, awesome. So we went down to my basement, sat on the sofa and talked and he said, yeah,
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I want to pray and I want to receive Jesus Christ as my savior. So what I would usually do in a moment like this and I've really shied away from it since then, is
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I used to offer kind of a formula prayer any of you know the formula prayer, the lead somebody through faith in Christ, like Billy Graham would lead, you know, and Jesus, you know,
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I believe that you died on the cross for my sins and repeat after me kind of prayers, you guys know what I'm talking about? So that's the way
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I would always roll back in the day, but for some reason that just didn't feel right that day, so I just decided to let him pray on his own because I was kind of nervous.
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I mean, some of you who know a little bit more about Hindus, you know that they worship thousands of different gods and I was just ready for him to add
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Jesus. He's just going to take Jesus as one of his gods. I literally had worked enough with enough
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Hindus to actually see, and this is real, they have many
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Hindus at their apartment at Western will have a little table as they walk out the door and there's little statues, some of them are just almost look like,
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I don't mean this to be facetious at all, it's just like this, it's like a trading card with a picture of their god on it and they'll have a little bowl with rice in it or a little bowl with milk in it that they've offered to this god.
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Like it's that, like as you think about what is idolatry like, that's it, like it really works that way and I had seen bowls with a crucifix along with Hanuman and Vishnu and Shiva and all of these other gods and they've literally taken
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Jesus and there's a crucifix there with a little bowl of rice offered to the god Jesus just in case.
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So I was ready for him to do that and I was kind of a little bit nervous and I just kind of thought, well how's this all going to go?
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So he began and as he prayed, he prayed one of the most beautiful prayers I've ever heard in my life. He started,
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Lord Jesus, I accept you as my savior to cover my sins. So far so good, saying what
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I would have said, I was excited so far and then he broke free from anything that I could have ever prayed for him and he said,
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I reject Vishnu, I reject Shiva, I reject Hanuman and he went through a list of seven or eight other gods that he had a little table set up at his apartment and and gave his life to Christ and he didn't just accept
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Jesus but he rejected the idols in his life. He rejected the things that held him in bondage.
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A beautiful thing and that's what Paul is saying that the Thessalonian church had done. They had done that, they had not just added
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Jesus to their gods but had rejected all those other things that they had been worshiping in their lives and for us it might not, it might not have, it might not be as easy to name but the fact of the matter is that I think some of you in this room here who are not in with Christ yet, you have things that are holding you in bondage that you need to reject and come to faith in Christ.
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You need to give those things up and reject them even verbally and say I reject my love for control,
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I reject my love for money, I reject trying to make it happen on my own and I accept you
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Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I'm giving up on myself, I'm giving up on my way, I'm giving up on all those other false things and I'm accepting you.
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The testimony of the Thessalonians was a powerful testimony of radically transformed lives and so let's wrap things up here by just quickly thinking about these three movements in the text and how they apply to you.
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First question, are you living out of faith, hope, and love? Has your conversion had a transforming reality in your life?
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This is not the same as asking you if you're perfect but this is a, this is to ask a question about the motivations in your heart.
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The life of a believer is one of working out our faith, laboring in the love of God and the love for others and steadfastly hoping for a healing that is to come.
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The second movement that we need to think about is have you received a conversion with conviction and power? Chosen by God means that you received the good news that Jesus died for you with conviction, you recognize that he died because you are a sinner.
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And then have you, has your life been changed after after receiving that conviction that Jesus died for you and do you have joy?
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And with that in mind you can answer the question, have you been chosen by God? Have you received the word with conviction and have you received it with joy?
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This morning I'm preaching in word and these might prove to just be words but for you in your seats maybe the spirit would bring to you the power of conviction where you sit.
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Do you recognize that you are a sinner? Do you realize that Jesus died for you and that you can have faith, hope and love?
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If you're not currently a follower of Jesus Christ by faith and God is convicting you this morning, please come and talk with me after the service.
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And lastly if you're in with Jesus Christ let me encourage you to share your testimony with others.
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Tell others what Jesus has done for you. Let the glorious salvation you have received at the cross ring out from you like a thunderclap or like the ringing of a church bell.
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I'm thankful for what Jesus has done here at Recast and I give thanks always for you, constantly mentioning you in my prayers.
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This morning I'd encourage you to come to communion to remember the blood of Jesus by taking a cup of juice that reminds us of his blood shed for us and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken to deliver us from the wrath that is to come.
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If you've asked Jesus Christ to save you then you're welcome to come to the table in humility, joy and thankfulness remembering his great sacrifice for all of us in Jesus.
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Let's pray. Father I thank you so much for your grace.
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I thank you that you have loved us and father that you are calling out for us a people.
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You are creating us to be a people for your glory and for your honor. Father I pray that if there's anybody here in this room who doesn't recognize what
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Jesus Christ has done for them or really hasn't received that conviction father that by the power of your spirit that that really only you can provide that you would convict where conviction is needed.
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But father that you would encourage us to be a testimony and to share with others what you are doing here and what you have done in us and for us father that we would we would gladly convey the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
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Not just boasting about our good works or even living out good works and hoping that people get the get the picture but father we would boldly share with words the reality that you love.
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You love people around us. You love our neighbors. You love our co -workers. Father you have loved us and I pray that we would remember that here at the start of our week by taking the cracker and taking the cup of juice to remember the great and awesome and terrible and loving sacrifice that was made for us there by Jesus Christ and it's in his name that I pray.