The Living Church

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And I am glad to be starting 1 Thessalonians. I wonder how many who are here this morning could stand up on their chair and give us a quick summary of 1 Thessalonians in a minute or two. I wonder how many of us are familiar with the letter at all. Well, Leon Morris says in his commentary that the epistles are too little studied. And he says, no other writing of the great apostle provides a greater insight into his missionary methods and message.

And so I want to say to you at the start, please read ahead. You’ll know that we’re progressing through 1 Thessalonians for a few weeks. Please read ahead. And then please pray ahead. Can I ask you to pray for speakers and listeners Sunday by Sunday?

I’m sure many of you do, but can I ask you again? The worst thing that you can do is to come passively on a Sunday morning. Come actively. You see, if we fall into the rut of the ice skating spectators— you know the ice skating spectators? Ice skating spectators are people who watch somebody perform and skate around and then hold up cards: 7.2, 6.4, 8.1.

Now that’s a terrible rut. And it’s quite possible to go on a Sunday to a service, morning or evening, and watch the speaker attempt to skate around the passage and then hold up cards at the end. Now that is a terrible thing. Don’t come passively, come actively. Jesus, you’ll remember, turned the tables on his listeners in the parable of the soils.

And he said, you know, the outcome of what I’m saying to you is up to you.

And then Paul lifted the lid on false preaching when he said in 2 Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word. So we are both responsible. So please let us both pray and both be active. Let’s pray together now.

Our Father, as we meet in your presence, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for our fellowship. We thank you for the ministries that we have received this morning. And now, as we turn to your Word, we are praying to you, the God of all blessing, that you will speak to us, teach us, challenge us, encourage us. Whatever our need, minister.

For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

I want to begin with a little background information to the Thessalonians, relevant and helpful background information. And I might ask if you would take up your Bible and turn to Acts chapter 15, Acts chapter 15, verse 36.

This is the beginning of the second so-called missionary journey. Paul went on 3 missionary journeys. This is the second. After some days Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brethren in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are. Now the first journey that Paul went on was a local one.

He went to Cyprus, he went to Syria, and he went to the south of Galatia, what is now southern Turkey. But this second missionary journey was a very significant one because it was this journey that moved out to the west. And if you move ahead to chapter 16, verse 6, we read, they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia. That is modern Turkey. And then verse 6, very interestingly, they are forbidden to go to Asia in the west.

And verse 7, they are prevented from going into Bithynia in the north, so instead of going west or north, they go northwest to the tip. And they come to the place called Troas. And you read there, the next verse, that it is in Troas that Paul receives a vision in the night. Verse 8, verse 9: A man of Macedonia was standing, beseeching him and saying, come over. To Macedonia and help us.

And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. And so a very small step, he crossed over the little gulf between Troas and Macedonia. It seems a very insignificant step as we read the pages of the book of Acts, but actually that was the step where he first crossed water to go west. And it was that missionary journey which went on to go throughout Greece And then Paul was to move further and finally come to Rome. And then the spread of the gospel was to move even further west into Europe and finally Bishopsgate itself.

So a significant shift as Paul moved west in this second missionary journey. Now the first thing he did in Greece was to go to Philippi. And after Philippi he went on to Thessalonica. And Thessalonica was the largest city in Macedonia. And it had a very fine harbour, a very fine harbour, and strategically a very important city.

And for those of you who can picture it, the Gulf of the Aegean Sea goes into the curve of Macedonia and there is a part of Macedonia that juts out sort of like a rubber glove with 3 fingers, if you can picture that particular point. And it’s just there in Macedonia, 2 chief cities, Philippi and Thessalonica. Now naturally Thessalonica, being in Greece, was basically Greek, but there were a lot of Romans and there were also many Jews. And the Jews had a synagogue, which meant that it was a fairly established Jewish centre. Philippi, for example, had no synagogue.

And so when Paul eventually got to Thessalonica, that’s exactly where he went, straight for the synagogue. Now I want to say in passing, don’t be fooled by people who give you the impression that Paul was foolish or mistaken to go into the synagogues. There are some people who say, well, Paul was told to preach to the Gentiles, but he kept foolishly going into the synagogues and had to learn the lesson the hard way by being thrown out again and again. Now that’s a great mistake. It’s a priori unlikely that Paul would, being so Spirit-led, make the mistake of going into the synagogues.

But then secondly, And more importantly, he went into the synagogues for a very specific series of reasons. One is that it was the synagogues who held the Jews and the Jews had the Scriptures. And that is why in the reading that Paul read to us, he went into the synagogues and he began by proving from the Scriptures that the Christ must suffer and die. And then again we can go on and say that it was in the synagogues there were many loosely attached Gentiles. There were Greeks, for example.

Who were fed up with all the polytheism of their culture and were attracted to the monotheism of the Jews and also to the morality of the Jews. And it was in the church at Thessalonica that Paul spoke, and we read in Acts chapter 17 that some Jews were converted, some Greeks were converted, and some leading women were converted. Now whenever Paul was preaching and missioning, He went for these centres. He was very strategic, or we might say the Holy Spirit was perfectly strategic. Paul went to the centre of Roman administration, the centre of Greek civilization, the centre of Jewish influence.

In other words, he maximised the conditions for the spread of the gospel. And it’s very important to see that. He went right for the heart.

Well, the Jews, we read in Acts 17, opposed Paul and soon he had to leave and there were perhaps just a few weeks preaching. And he went down to Berea and the Jews from Thessalonica were so hostile they even followed him to Berea and they persecuted him there. And so he had to leave Berea. And it was then he went on to Corinth. So it may well be that after being in Philippi and being hostilely kicked out and then going to Thessalonica and being thrown out and then Berea and being thrown out and he moved down to Corinth.

We read in Corinth that he came in in weakness and in much fear and trembling, and that may account for a large part of it. Now leaving that church in Thessalonica very quickly meant that Paul didn’t know really how they were getting on, and like all good pastors, he longed to know how they were getting on. And so we read that he sent Timothy to find out, and he himself waited. And Timothy came back with such encouragement from that little church that Paul’s heart was gladdened and he penned off a letter. And then he called Timothy over and he put his arm around him and he said, how would you like to take this letter back with you?

Actually, we don’t really know how the letter got to the Thessalonians, but after Timothy had come back with the report, then Paul sent off his letter. Now if you read through 1 Thessalonians, there is a note of gladness and joy throughout the letter. It’s a letter of happiness, confidence, and we can piece some of the ideas and the problems behind the church by looking through the letter itself. First of all, it’s very obvious reading 1 Thessalonians that Paul has some things to teach them. He teaches them, for example, about the second coming.

It’s apparent that some of the Thessalonians thought that Jesus’ second coming was so imminent that they could all pull out of their jobs. So Paul had to teach them that they were to be busy and diligent and not lazy. And then secondly, we see that he was urging them to be holy and he warns them against immorality. And then thirdly, we can see in this letter that he assures them of his own love for them. You see, once Paul left, it was no doubt the Jews who came in and said to the new Christians at Thessalonica, You know, Paul left in a hurry because he wasn’t really interested in you at all.

He just came and went. He’s like any merchant who comes in and gets what he can and leaves as quickly as he can. And therefore Paul wrote and defended his character because in defending his character he was defending the gospel and the kingdom. It was a common technique to slander speakers. As it has always been, and thereby slander the message.

Now with that little bit of background, we come to the letter, and you may like to now look up 1 Thessalonians 1:1-4. This is how it begins: Paul, Silvanus— Silvanus and Silas are the same person— and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. Now what is immediately striking about that introduction is this little phrase, to the church of the Thessalonians in God. And he goes on to say, God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Compare, for example, the beginning of Corinthians.

He says, to the church of God at Corinth.

Or Philippians, to the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi. Here he says, to the church of the Thessalonians in God. Now that is a deliberate move and it’s a true word. You see, Paul has probably felt some insecurity for this church. He’s had to leave them in a hurry.

He wasn’t there long enough to strengthen them. He left them in a difficult environment and there were false teachers everywhere and they were a minority group. And no doubt they, being a minority group, felt insecure themselves. They had no mature leadership. There was opposition from outside, there was opposition from inside.

There were angry Jews who were sufficiently hostile to chase Paul right down to Berea. And then Paul gets the news from Timothy that the church is surviving and more than surviving, it is actually flourishing. You see, against all human odds, the church is growing, witnessing, and Paul is encouraged. And when he gets that news from Timothy, it may well be that he suddenly remembers that he is just a messenger and that he is just an instrument. And he remembers that when he preached the gospel and he proved that the Christ must suffer and rise, that many of those who heard believed and became brand new people and like branches that were dead were joined to God and the very life of God flowed through them.

And he remembers that the church therefore belongs to God. Now this is a very important thing. The church belongs to God. First and foremost, a church is in God. St. Helen’s Bishopsgate is first in God and second in Bishopsgate.

And you see, there are these 2 homes in the New Testament and it is essential to put them together. If a church forgets that it is in God, it will soon forget its security. It will think to itself, well, we’re dependent on this person or this person or this person. And if a church forgets that it’s in the world, it will soon forget its responsibility and will say, well, we’re just here to be here. So the two have got to go together.

I remember hearing Michael Bourne say that he was very frustrated when he arrived at All Souls, Langham Place, to be rung up again and again and the person on the phone said, is that John Stott’s church? To which he would say, no, this is the church of Jesus Christ. Now as a personal comment, it’s justifiable. But as a spiritual comment, it’s not. If a church is not in God, it’s not a church.

It’s only a gathering. First and foremost, to churches in God. That is why we can take great encouragement from this phrase. It is a very pregnant comment. We were hearing last weekend from our Read, Mark, Learn weekend that there are some gatherings of Christians in the world which are quite extraordinarily weak to the human eye.

For example, in Chad we were told there is one woman known to be a Christian. In Turkey, 100 known Christians in 43 million Turks. Now unless that church is in God, humanly speaking and truthfully speaking, it has no hope.

Well, Paul says to these Thessalonians, these Christian Thessalonians, first and foremost you are the church in God, in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now it is a great relief, isn’t it, and a privilege for them to realise and for us to realise that God is the source of our life and He’s the one who sustains our life. And break the branches from the vine and there’s nothing. Bring all the dynamism into the church you like, all the music, all the instruments, all the personalities, and you’ve got nothing unless God is there first. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12 of his anxiety for the churches.

It’s a very heavy word which means his stress, his concern for the churches. But his stress for the churches was always a good stress. He never felt that he himself was the source of their life. But he did see himself as the servant of the churches. Now there isn’t any Christian who has any pastoral responsibility who doesn’t feel some measure of concern for those who are in their care.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a parent with children or whether you’re a Sunday school teacher with children or whether you’ve got a Bible group or whether you’ve got a Read, Mark, Learn group or whether you’re just a member of a congregation looking at other fellow members. Anybody who’s got any pastoral heart is going to feel stress for other members when they’re not present or when they’re not well or when they’re not strong in the faith. And the positive aspect of this concern is that we will be like shepherds. This concern will prime us up to care, to pray, to give, to make sacrifices. Now the negative aspect of this concern takes its toll on us.

It takes its toll in despair, anxiety, and then even sickness. Now it’s very important to remember the church is God’s. And Paul goes on in verse 1 to say that God is the source of grace and peace. In a sense, grace and peace are what form the church and what sustain the church. It is grace that means we have come to be, and it is peace which means we have come into relationship with God and one another.

So this is how Paul begins his letter. He states the security of the church in God. He states his desire for the church: grace and peace. And in one sense, this is what Christian living and ministry is all about— declaring God’s grace and peace. That’s what Christian ministry is about.

But of course, at any level, that ministry can be very discouraging. And there are many clergy, more and more in fact, who leave the ministry through discouragement. And there are many who stay in the church and instead of going on preaching the gospel of grace and peace, they get diverted and they become businessmen or churchmen or social workers. Now Paul had this balance. The church is secure and God is the source of grace and peace.

That’s the first thing, the security of the church. Second thing, the signs of God’s church. Look at verses 2 to 4. He says, we give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you.

Now you see the familiar threesome in verse 3, what are traditionally called the cardinal Christian graces: faith, hope and love. And this is what Paul gives thanks for in his prayers. And notice incidentally, verse 2, the scope of his prayers. First of all, he gives always thankfully. I was glad this morning that Stephen led us in the thanksgiving.

We haven’t had it for a while and we ought to have it more often. We ought to begin with thanks and have more thanks. And then secondly, notice he prays for all the members of the church and gives thanks for them. And thirdly, he prays all through the day, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. Now thanks is a sure sign of understanding grace.

You can’t give thanks unless you understand grace. And the more you understand God’s grace, the more you give thanks. And therefore thankfulness is a great antidote to despair and to depression. Because it’s thankfulness which reminds us who is the security, who is the source of our lives. And it’s thankfulness that gives God the honour that He is worthy of.

Now these 3 aspects of Paul’s prayer, were marks of his prayer all the time. He was deeply conscious of God’s grace. He was always thankful. He loved the church. He didn’t just criticise it.

And he never signed off in his praying. That is, he never hung up.

If I might use a poor analogy, the phone was always off the hook. He was always there contacting and praying. A little bit like Nehemiah. Nehemiah, you’ll remember, was a man very busy, great responsibility, and yet somehow he had the ability to be always firing prayers, interceding.

Richard Buehs makes a little comment in his book called Talking About Prayer. He says, we must have heard it said of someone, he’s always coughing. Can it not be said similarly of a Christian? He is always praying. Little and often— this is surely what is meant.

Granted, a set time and place for prayer is a desirable thing, but let that not blind us to the countless opportunities in a day when incidents, problems, and even idle thoughts can be elevated to the level of prayer. The name of an old friend flits into mind during the lunch break. Need that name drop back again into the memory’s filing system without being lifted? Even wordlessly to God. A relation of mine told me of the habit he’s developed of focusing his thoughts upon God every time he passes through the entrance of his place of work.

There are many occasions when a Christian can do this. There are also times when he may not. Archbishop William Temple warned, the bus driver wending his way in a double-decker down Oxford Street ought not to be thinking about God. Well, I’m not sure.

Those are the 3 cardinal graces that he goes on to speak of: faith, hope, and love. Now they are the indispensable marks of authentic Christian living, and to have these 3 in abundance is very rare. Most of us are very hot on one of them. We’re very orthodox in our faith, or we’re very energetic in our love, or we’re very sensational in our hope. But we need to have the 3 together.

Faith is our trustful commitment to Jesus Christ. Love is our active commitment to Jesus Christ. Hope, our expectant confidence in Jesus Christ. And all of them have got to do with the Scriptures because faith rests on the facts of God. Love is based on the example of Christ.

Hope is built on the promises of Christ. And can I say also in passing that hope is not optimism. Optimism is hoping for the best without any grounds for it. Christian hope has solid ground, the Word of God. Now we ought to examine ourselves as Christians regularly to see whether these 3 cardinal virtues, hope, faith and love are present.

The New Testament says much about all of them and they ought to all be there in some abundance. And actually our Christian lives degenerate where one of them is absent. For example, look what happens to faith when there is no love. Well, it loses its integrity. We meet people every now and again who are very, very wise but cold.

And faith loses its direction without hope. In the same way, love loses its meaning without faith. Love without faith becomes just sloppy and sentimental and emotional. The 3 have got to go together, and when the 3 are there together— faith, hope, and love— then there is a transformation of the personality. Now notice also, most importantly in verse 3, that all 3— faith, hope, and love— are productive.

This is how the New International Version puts it: produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope. Now the reason that Paul gave thanks for these Thessalonian Christians is that when Timothy went back he saw something. And what he saw was active and energetic. You see, Paul wasn’t impressed by their orthodoxy. And he wasn’t impressed by their attendance.

And he wasn’t impressed by their intelligence. And he wasn’t impressed even by their talk. But it was their active Christian living that caused him to give thanks. Now I know as evangelicals we reject any idea that works bring faith, that our works can impress God, that our effort can make us right with God. All of that is a heresy.

But notice what Paul says. Far from being a salvation-by-works man, he says it’s your works which prove your salvation. Look around any congregation and you’ll see that those who are working because they’re saved, they’re labouring because they’re saved, they’re enduring because they’re saved. And he goes on in verse 4 to say that I’m so confident I can actually say that God has chosen you. Look at Paul’s use of election.

You see, election is based on the performance. That is, his confidence about election is based on their lifestyle. God chooses. The choosing brings new life. The new life brings new lifestyle.

The new lifestyle is evidence of the choosing. And that’s what Paul says. Now I myself think that as a Christian, one of the great joys of the Christian life is seeing transformed characters. It is one of our great privileges as Christians to see other Christians grow in grace, labour in love, endure in hope, and work in faith. And it is a great privilege to see Christian characters changed and become more godly.

And we ourselves ought to be testing, checking ourselves to see whether our faith works. To see whether our love labours, to see whether our hope endures. That’s why there’s something very ugly about faith that doesn’t work. And there’s something very repulsive about love that doesn’t labour and hope that doesn’t persevere. And when we meet Christians who are lazy and careless, then they’re a great concern to us and they’re certainly a great concern to pastors.

You see, when the faith from God is real, it shows itself in effort. When the love from God is real, it shows itself in labour. When the hope from God is real, it shows itself in perseverance.

And when it’s not, it doesn’t. Now there are some Christians who seem to know nothing of effort. The work they do for the kingdom comes well after business, well after personal pleasure, well after social activities. And then they know nothing of the labour of love. They know nothing of sacrifice.

They don’t care for people. They just don’t care for people. They know nothing of sacrifice. Their offertory in the plate is a token pound.

They’re not at the prayer meeting where the work is being done, where the slog is taking place. And then there are Christians who have no hope. They have fixed their hearts on comfort and ease and they have lost all hope. Now these Thessalonians were marked by the 3 of them and the 3 of them were visible. And Paul gave thanks every time he thought about them.

So there are 2 things there. One is of great comfort, the security of God’s church. It belongs to God. He collected it. He keeps it.

And therefore we don’t have to panic.

Second, a word of great challenge. The church of God that has real life is living and visibly living. And therefore we oughtn’t to be surprised when we find that Christian life is hard going. You see, this is the surprise of this verse, isn’t it? That Christians say to themselves, real faith will be marked by ease.

Means suddenly things will go blissfully. Paul says real faith will be seen in sweat. Then we say love will show itself in happiness. Paul says love will show itself in labour, and the word means getting tired. Then we say hope means restful confidence.

Paul says it means endurance through trial. The Christian life is going to be hard when it’s real, but it will also be secure.

I had a note from a girl just in my tray just now. She says, you are quite right about church attendance reflecting one’s spiritual state. Action is called for. Inertia seems to take me over. I do, however, intend to do something about it.

Now there is a sense in which our outward life is a very, very good reflection of our inward state. And if you’ve got any pastoral sensitivity, you won’t have to be with some people very long before you see the fruit of their lives reflecting the state of their hearts. Therefore, we ought to examine ourselves today. Are we anxious? The church belongs to God.

Are we lazy? We are to be living it out. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we thank you that when you call a people to yourself, you not only give life but sustain it. And we ask that the life that you give will have a transforming effect on our minds, hearts, bodies. And we pray that we individually and corporately will be marked by labour, by work, and by endurance, that all who see may give you thanks. And this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.