WWUTT 488 How You Became An Example?

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When you came to Christ, you were immediately justified, but that was not immediately apparent to everyone around you, until over time you showed the genuineness of your faith when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Greetings again as we continue our study of 1

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Thessalonians, finishing up Chapter 1 today. And that puts us on pace to finish all of 1

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Thessalonians in five weeks, since there are only five chapters. No, really, we'll actually slow down quite a bit after we get through our introduction this week, since Chapter 2 is twice as long as Chapter 1.

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Starting again from verse 1, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the

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

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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

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Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

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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 need not say anything.

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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,

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Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So yesterday we finished up around verse 6, where Paul said, you became imitators of us and of the

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Lord, as Paul said to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 11, 1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

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And so therefore, by imitating the apostle Paul and the missionary brethren who were with him, you were imitating the

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Lord, since they imitated Christ. We have earthly examples that are given to us that we are to follow.

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And your elders, the pastor of your church, should be that kind of example for you.

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Whenever you go through the list of qualifications for a pastor, whether that's in Titus 1 or 1

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Timothy 3, what you are reading about is a mature Christian who is set forth as an example of maturity before the flock that he is appointed to shepherd.

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So he should be someone that you would want to aspire to be like.

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We read in Hebrews 13, verse 7, remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

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What kind of person have you seen them become because of the transforming power of the gospel in their lives as they are growing in maturity and knowledge in the word of God?

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So you should aspire to want to have that as well. That's what a pastor represents for you as he leads the flock, leads the body of Christ.

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Now those, especially in an internet culture who think that they do not need church, they can go to church on a computer and that's good enough.

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They are in a sense saying that they don't need any examples to follow. That's you know,

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I can, I can listen to these preachers online, John Piper and Votie Bachum and Steve Lawson and hey, that's good enough for me and I can imitate their way of life.

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Actually, you can't because you cannot see their way of life. I mean, these men are respected teachers and I know that I can trust them because they do have people in their lives, accountability who can attest to the faithfulness of those men.

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That's how we know their message can be trusted, but their lives are not being put before you to imitate.

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You don't know anything about their lives. You do not see how they interact with members of their own congregation.

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You do not see how they love their wives or love their children. These are things that you have to take the word of those who do, who are part of their lives, who see the gospel practice in their lives.

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You need to have that kind of example in your pastor in your church and I hope that he is someone who practices hospitality as the qualifications for a pastor say that he should be so that you can enter into his home and you can see the way that he loves his wife, loves his children, will serve you, maybe breaking bread at his table or sitting down and having a conversation, sharing tears and rejoicings together and praying together.

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These are the kinds of things that you should be experiencing with your pastor and a person who won't attend a church and will not fellowship with the believers is essentially saying that they do not need such examples, but this is a person who is too confident in the strength of their flesh.

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We all need these examples. I have examples of men that I follow because our church has plurality eldership.

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So me and the other elders, we hold one another accountable and I desire to be like those men and they desire to follow my example as well.

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And so we all need this because of our weakness in the flesh, our tendency to go our own way, our tendency to decide what we think is right and wrong, despite what we might believe the scriptures say, because you can twist the scriptures to mean what you want it to mean.

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Hey, I can get away with this behavior because this Bible verse says that I can't because of that weakness in our flesh.

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We need such accountability. We need examples to follow and we need the instruction of our leaders who teach us the word of God.

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So you became imitators of us, Paul says to the Thessalonians, therefore imitators of the

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Lord for you receive the word in much affliction and with the joy of the Holy Spirit.

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This is one of the reasons why we know, Paul says, that your faith is genuine because you came to believe this in the face of persecution.

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They saw Paul being persecuted for this, how he had to be snuck out of Thessalonica in the cover of night.

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And yet they believed anyway, knowing they would be persecuted, too. They're being persecuted at the time that they receive this letter.

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And yet they believe. And this is one of the evidences that Paul cites to know that their faith is genuine.

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Furthermore, that they rejoice in the Holy Spirit. Despite being persecuted, they don't complain about it.

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They rejoice in God that they share in the sufferings of Christ. So it's with joy in the

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Holy Spirit that they believe so that you became an example. OK, so now verse seven kind of carries over from verse six, because Paul says, you became imitators of us and of the

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Lord. You followed our example, Paul says, you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake.

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And then he gets to verse seven so that you became an example to all the believers and Macedonia and in Achaia.

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And like I mentioned yesterday is this letter was being read aloud to the Thessalonians. I truly believe there were tears being shared, tears of joy.

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Paul accepts us. He receives us. He acknowledges our faith. He is saying that we are among the elect.

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And yet now he's even saying we've become examples to others. There's so much we don't know.

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There's so much that we still need to learn. And yet we've become an example in the faith to other people in the region.

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This is crazy. All great news to the Thessalonians who rejoice greatly in the joy of the

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Lord. You became an example to all the believers around Macedonia and in Achaia.

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Now what are these two regions? Well, Macedonia is the region that Thessalonica was in.

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Achaia is the region that Paul is currently writing from. That's the island that's just south of Macedonia, slightly to the west and southwest of Athens.

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Paul is there at Corinth. This is during the 18 month period that he was planting the church there in Corinth that he heard a word from Timothy about the

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Thessalonians, but not just from Timothy, also word that had come to him from Macedonia, that particular peninsula that he had left to come south into Corinth.

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And he was even hearing about the Thessalonian church on the island that he was currently at in Corinth.

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Word had come all the way to him in Corinth about these Thessalonians who had left their idolatry, a huge center of idolatry there in Thessalonica, big port city.

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And they had left their idolatry and were worshiping the Lord Christ. The Jews hated them.

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The Greeks were persecuting them. And yet they continued to worship faithfully. And so Paul is saying, you've become a witness, not just in your area, but it's gone beyond that.

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The word has reached all the way down here in Achaia. So now even the Corinthians are hearing about it and they desire to follow the example of the

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Thessalonians in Sincreia, in Sparta. These people hearing the word of the

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Thessalonians, hearing the testimony and therefore wanting to imitate their faith just as they imitated the faith of Paul and his missionary brothers.

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So Paul goes on in verse eight for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia.

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This is the way that Paul so graciously would include some that he would write his letters to.

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He would include them in this work of faith that they were just as much a part of this missionary work as anybody who was working with him.

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He did the same thing for the Colossians when he wrote to the Colossians and had never even met the

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Colossians before. He had never been there. He didn't plant that church and yet he was writing to them and including them in this work of faith that was being done for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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To that church, he said, we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.

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That sounds familiar, doesn't it? It sounds like Paul's introduction to the Thessalonians. Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.

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How meaningful that would have been to the Colossians, though they had never met

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Paul, to hear that he's including them in this work of faith and also expresses in that letter a desire to come to them, that he might be able to share with them in rejoicing of the gospel that is being spread throughout all the world.

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Here talking to the Thessalonians, he says that the gospel is going forth by your witness.

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Verse 8, 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 need not say anything.

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You are bearing testimony about yourselves. We don't need to say anything about the

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Thessalonians. The word of you is preceding us. So when we go to a place and we would want to say, hey, imitate the faith of the

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Thessalonians, well, they already know what you're going through and the gospel that you believe. Verse 9, for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception that we had among you.

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So remember, Paul was not there long enough to see the things that he preached produce the fruit that gospel change produces.

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I would imagine that his message wasn't too unlike what he preached at the

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Areopagus in Athens a few verses later in Acts chapter 17. So chapter 17 is where we read about him visiting

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Thessalonica and then going from there to Athens. And he preached at what's also known as Mars Hill.

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Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious. For as I passed along the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown

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God. Would you proclaim as unknown this I proclaim to you as known?

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And then talked about the true and the living God in the face of these false gods, these idols that were formed by the art and the imagination of man.

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That was probably very similar to something that Paul said to the Thessalonians. He said that the times of ignorance got overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.

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And he has fixed a day on which he will judge all the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

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And once Paul said that at Athens, there were men who mocked him for it. Resurrection of the dead. What are you talking about?

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But then there were others that said, you know what? We're going to hear you more about this. As Paul said a similar message to the

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Thessalonians, he went to the Jews first and showed them that Christ is the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

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They rejected that message. So he went to the Gentiles and then probably preached to the

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Gentiles a message that was somewhat like what he preached at Athens. And so there were some of them that mocked, but then others that said, yeah, we want to listen more about this.

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And so as they're listening to Paul, explain to them the gospel and preach about Christ, there were men that nonetheless repented and were baptized.

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But whether or not that was genuine, Paul didn't get the chance to see that he wasn't there long enough.

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Note that when Paul goes through the list of assurances of knowing that these men are chosen by God and walking in the faith, one of the qualifications that he gives here is not you prayed a prayer to receive

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Christ in your heart. And that's how I know you're saved. Doesn't say that anywhere, because it was time that would affirm to him, to the missionaries that were with him, to Timothy, who would go back and give his report to other people in Thessalonica, in Macedonia and in Achaia.

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It was time that would affirm that what these men believe is genuine and true.

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They're growing in that faith. They give testament of that faith. They are believing these things in the face of affliction.

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They are receiving the gospel with great joy and producing the fruit of the spirit.

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It's all of this that affirmed for Paul that these are true men of the faith.

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These are brothers loved by God, chosen because the gospel came to them, not only in word, but also in power and in the

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Holy Spirit and with full conviction. They believed it. They turned from sin and idolatry.

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They're not walking in that anymore, but worshiping the true and living God, our

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's the confirmation of the genuineness of their faith, not because they prayed a prayer and not even because they were dunked in water, but because over time they showed that that confession they made when

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Paul was there was genuine and that there are others that are coming to the faith as well, showing a showing a production of fruit in the message that they are sharing in the witness that is going forth everywhere so that we need not say anything.

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Conclusion of verse eight. So now verse nine for they themselves, everyone who bears witness about the faith that you testify to, they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception that we had among you.

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So over time, it even shows that they continue to speak favorably of Paul and the message of the apostles.

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So another reason why Paul knows that what they had to say was well received by the

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Thessalonians and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true

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God. And that's the story of every Christian. Once an idol worshiper, now worshiping the true

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God. And you might think, well, I never worshiped idols. There weren't statues in my home that I bowed down to or prayed to or asked them to bless me.

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Unless you grew up in a Roman Catholic home, and then you did have such such statues that you prayed to.

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But anyway, it was John Calvin who said that the heart is an idol factory. We all worship idols, whatever you exalt in the place of God and desire that thing more than God.

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That's an idol. The apostle Paul says in Colossians three, five coveting is idolatry.

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So what you desire more than God, that's what you worship. And it's the Holy Spirit who comes into our hearts and ransacks that temple and all of the false gods that we have raised up cleanses our heart as Christ cleansed the temple of the of the money changers and the merchants.

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So the Holy Spirit cleanses the temple of our hearts and changes us into a person who worships the true

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God instead of the false idols that we had once raised. So this was literally for the

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Thessalonians. They had these statues that they worshiped and the false gods that they prayed to, which were made by the art and the imagination of man.

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But instead, they have turned to serve the living and true

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God, verse 10, and how that produces faith in their lives to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead,

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Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So once again, this is why I think that the message

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Paul preached in Thessalonica was similar to what he preached in Athens, because he punctuated that message by talking about Jesus Christ, whom

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God raised from the dead. And that's the assurance that he's given to all. So he concludes this introduction to the

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Thessalonians the same way. Jesus is the one who has been raised from the dead.

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So he is our hope. And he is also the one who delivers us from the wrath to come.

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Later on, when we get to chapter five, we will read that God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. So that's going to be the continuation of this teaching that he has set forth here in chapter one, giving a couple of statements related to the return of Christ in verse three, waiting for our blessed hope in our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verse 10, waiting for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead,

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Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. And we'll continue to see more about this end times teaching that Paul gives to the

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Thessalonians as we continue our study in chapter two next week. Let's pray.

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Our Lord God, we thank you so much for cleansing us of our idol worship and giving us a heart that desires you and worships you in such a way that is good and pleasing to you.

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And I pray that you would continue to convict our hearts that we not raise up an idol to any false thing, but our full desire is

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God. And we are fully satisfied in you needing nothing else in this world, but the salvation that Christ offers.

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Nothing in the world can take that from us. Nothing in the world can replace it or even compare to the wonderful treasures that we have in Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. As we receive this gospel message with full conviction, let it continue to convict us that we would turn from our sin and pursue the holiness and righteousness of Christ.

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God, give us a heart today that rejoices in you so that we may become an example to others of the change and transformation that has happened in our lives.

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We are not like the world, but we are wholly set apart in Christ Jesus and being shaped in the image of our

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God. We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

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Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.