1 Thessalonians 1:2-10 The Work of God in Others

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

Welcome to Recast Church and the Call to Open Hearts

Well, good morning. Good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off by welcoming all of you here to Recast Church. 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. But we are going to get started, so if you could find your seats, come on in and grab a chair. 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.

Some of us, you can recognize yourselves in some of these statements. Some of you have been around the church for a long time. You've already learned a lot about God over the years, 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.

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, and 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, and 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, and 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, 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, 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.

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, 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 he has for you.

Come expecting him to change you. Don't come expecting 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.

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.

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. 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. How many of you are glad that God is working on not just you, but is working on others around you as well? 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.

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. And he speaks that, and he writes that, and he records that for us here in the opening of this letter.

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. We, 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.

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.

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. But in scripture we see people in the early church emotionally engaged with one another, identifying and giving thankfulness for what 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, 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 even offer thanks for the things that God is doing there.

And so in our text a prayer of thankfulness turns into a reminder that we should be grateful and excited for what we see 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. But follow along in your Bible or on your device as we read First Thessalonians 1, verses 2 through 10.

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 God here in our midst this morning through his written word, what he desires for you and I to hear as we read together.

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 God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our 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 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 Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

For not only has the word of the 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 God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. 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.

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. 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.

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.

And 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, Jesus Christ, that we pray.

Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, and I just want to remind you all to get comfortable and to keep your 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, I think there's still some doughnuts 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.

The structure of our text this morning is pretty difficult to outline to our Western minds. 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 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 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 Greek language and a lot more to do with Paul, the apostle's 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 New Testament throughout his letters with subordinate clauses.

Oh, there's a rabbit trail on there. That's adorable. 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 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. Anybody? A few of us struggle with that. I know that I do at times, and there are times when 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... I get to do that, so you don't have to. So some of you are like, yay. You don't... Some of you like to...

Anybody like to diagram sentences here? 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, all right. 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 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. 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 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 Paul and his church planting team fled literally under cover of darkness in the middle of the night to flee for their lives. 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 a dodge in order to save his own skin. But what we have in Thessalonica is literally the church, the new, brand new believers. 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.

They're worshiping this other guy, Jesus, and now they're supposed to be worshiping the emperor, so they're being put on trial. And in the middle of the night, the church sends 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. 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.

But Paul later sends Timothy back into Thessalonica to check up on the church and see how they're doing. 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.

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.

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. Paul has heard from Timothy that the Thessalonian church is bearing fruit consistent with love, faith, and hope, 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. We're going to be talking about faith, love, and hope, and how that is that is shining through the Thessalonian church.

The second point, if you're taking notes, is verses 4 through 6. Paul is thankful for the clear evidence of conversion in them, that they have genuinely been chosen by God and they have been placed in firmly within the the realm of salvation that God has provided through Jesus Christ.

And in this section, he reminds the Thessalonians that it is their conversion that has produced spiritual growth. He starts off by saying, 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.

And lastly, in verses 7 through 10, Paul is grateful that the testimony of the church in Thessalonica has been spreading everywhere. 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. 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. 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. But likewise, he's thankful for their conversion that caused the testimony of Christ to spread throughout all the area around him.

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 Paul's gratitude and thankfulness for the work of God in their lives.

In this fledgling infant church, he says, 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.

So starting in verse 2, we see that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were consistently thankful to God for the work that was going on in Thessalonica. 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? 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. I am praying for you. Do any of you ever, do any of you ever get, yeah, so have you ever gotten a text in the middle of the week that somebody says, I'm praying for you?

There's nothing more encouraging to me than that. Then when somebody texts me and says, hey, I just prayed for you this morning. I want to let you know that. 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? Isn't that a great thought? And so in applying that, it's great if you're praying for one another. 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. But it really is powerful in a sense to like say specifically, I prayed for you.

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 go out throughout the week and pray.

And it's just be encouraging to get a text that, hey, I was just lifting you up before the Lord. And that's an exciting and encouraging thing to have that happen. 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.

That's a cool thing. But it isn't until verse three that we see the specific things that Paul and the gang were thankful for. In verse three, we really get down to our first point. The first point of our outline shows up in verse three of this first chapter.

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. 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. Paul was very specific about his thanks. And I would suggest to you that specific is good, right?

Generic and general comments and compliments are often perceived as flattery or filler. 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 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, right? And just having somebody say, thanks, sir. You're doing good. That can be encouraging.

But more specific is better. 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 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. You see, Paul specifically focuses on what he sees as godly motivations. And he has seen a transformation in the Thessalonians from motivated out of self-interest, motivated out of pleasing themselves, or for gain, or for almost dead religion and religiosity of worshiping the pagan gods.

And he's seen a transformation to motivation of love and hope and faith in their lives. 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 and steadfast and strong in their hope, even in the face of intense persecution.

And so these are three areas of commendation that move Paul to thankfulness. He said, I'm so grateful to hear that you're growing. 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.

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.

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? So you did works of work. Works of work are, they are, they're doing what they do without trust in God or His way of salvation.

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. The 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, His Son, the 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. 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.

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 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.

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. As a matter of fact, scripture says, we love because He first loved us.

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 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. 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.

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. That's the only thing. And even the good that we do is often very self-centered, and very self-oriented.

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.

Is that making sense? You're 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 Monday through Saturday, and serve one another out in our workplaces, in the places that God has us throughout the week.

We love because He first loved us. And lastly, in this first section, the Thessalonians have exhibited a steadfastness of hope. Maybe more exemplary than any of the churches that are mentioned in the New Testament, is the steadfastness of hope that the Thessalonians showed from the very beginning.

Their history, as I mentioned last week, is explained in Acts chapter 17. 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?

None of us, right? I mean, that's not a reality of the lives that we face, and that was the reality in Thessalonica. 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.

Some of them sacrificed their lives and became murderers within weeks of accepting 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.

And as we're going to see in a moment, they've even become an example to other churches throughout the area, 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.

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. 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.

He's not just focused on the 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. They're living out of 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.

They have caught a belief and a trust in the future that enables them to endure hardship in the present. 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?

I've talked with some of you, and some of you are in a place where your workplace is becoming a drudgery. 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.

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. So how does hope impact somebody who's in a scenario or a situation like that?

Well, as you're hoping your income, as you're hoping your job, as you're hoping your employer, or is there something more stable than that? I would suggest to you that absolutely, 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. How could you go and show up for a workplace where everybody else is driving down or angry or angsty with each other?

How can you show up into that situation and bring life and bring hope and bring joy? How could you be joyful in that? Because you have a Savior who loves you and died for you, and that come what may in this life, 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.

You have hope. Does anybody agree with me on that? There's hope beyond this, and so how can we be an influence for joy? 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.

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. 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. 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 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. 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.

It's one of the reasons we're still breathing His air. That's one of the reason we're still consuming His water and His food. It's one of the reasons He still has us here on planet earth is that we might convey that hope to others, that it goes beyond this life.

There's more out there. In verse 4, 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. I can relate to that, and I can understand how you might be moved in that. But the fact that God chose the Thessalonians, these Thessalonian Christians in this church that he's writing to, is meant to be an encouragement to us.

It's meant to be a positive thing, that to speak to the church and say, if you're in Christ, God chose you, 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.

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 Holy Spirit. It was not brought in word only.

It wasn't just empty words or just words that bounced off their eardrums, but it was brought with an authoritative power that the Spirit, Paul was eager to give the Spirit credit for. And notice carefully with me that Paul is contrasting two types of gospel presentations.

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. 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 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.

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.