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The Apostle Paul devoted immense time and energy to establishing and encouraging Christians in the churches that formed as a result of his missionary activity. His first letter to the Thessalonians provides a first-hand example of Paul’s follow-up teaching for new converts. Chapter one of the letter shows us the content of the message that he preached and its results. Here we have a perfect template for our message in a post-Christian world – does our gospel presentation match his?
Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace to you and peace.
2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 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. 6 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, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 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. 9 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, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
This transcript has been automatically generated
1 Thessalonians chapter 1, starting at verse 1.
Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace. 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 labour of love 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 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 need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning 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. The last 3 weeks I’ve been away and attending a church in the West Country in a very, very different setting to that of St Helen’s. It’s been a great joy. But in week 1, in the notices, Ephraim Trududdick II, a South Devon bull, winner of the best beast in the show, was congratulated in the notices.
In week 2, we were asked to turn to our neighbour, and my neighbour asked if I was attending the Cornish Wrestling All England Championship that afternoon. And on week 3, there were baskets of cauliflower at the door to greet us. With Tesco’s harvesting only a maximum of 40% of the vegetables they grow, locals were in abundance. So let me say it’s something of a relief to be back in the safety of concrete, glass, and steel. But the senior pastor there at this church was concluding a series in 1 Thessalonians, this little letter, and it was most helpful because I had determined to make 1 Thessalonians my own personal study over the summer period.
So for 3 weeks I have had the joy of being immersed in this earliest of all New Testament letters. And my aim is that we study it later in the year, not in September but later on in the year, And also we are going to be using it substantially as our new staff arrive for staff training. Now from first impression, you might get the idea from reading Acts chapter 17, as we had in our first reading, that Paul, Silas and Timothy were in Thessalonica only for the inside of 3 weeks. I think that is highly unlikely. Yes, they were in the synagogue for 3 Sabbaths, But not necessarily in the city just for 15 days.
Luke doesn’t tell us how long it is before they were evicted, thrown out, as Jason was taken before the magistrates. Indeed, in chapter 3 of this letter, in chapter 2, Paul talks about how beloved the Thessalonians were to him, how they were very dear to him, how he was affectionately desirous of them. What, in just 15 days? Possibly. But then he tells us in the letter that he had to work night and day so that he could be fed for his time in the missionary endeavour in Thessalonica.
What, just when he was there for 15 days? And that the Christians in Philippi, 95 miles away, sent help to him on 2 separate occasions, travelling 95 miles there and back, there and back, gathering help for the Apostle Paul. Highly unlikely that he was there for just 15 days. What seems to have happened is that Paul, with Timothy and Silas, having been chucked out of the Jewish synagogue, then conducted an extensive mission amongst non-Jewish idolaters, worshippers of other religions. And Paul’s normal practice on leaving a city was to return very shortly afterwards in order to encourage and strengthen the believers, especially given that persecution always followed conversion in the New Testament.
In the Acts, we find it time and time again. And so, this letter is full of Paul’s language of wanting to strengthen the believers in Thessalonica, these new disciples, to encourage them. And the language of strengthen is— comes from the word of putting down roots. He wants to root them properly in Christian discipleship and Christian service. Now, this means that in this letter, which is the earliest of the New Testament letters, what we have is a document charting Paul’s syllabus for new believers.
The kind of material that Haruki should be taught in Sunday school as he grows up, so that he’s firmly rooted in the Christian gospel. And not simply for any old Christian believer, but particularly for believers coming from a non-Jewish background, without all the Old Testament background and so forth. Back in the 1980s, we used to have a little course called Just for Starters. As people turned to follow the Lord Jesus, what does it look like to live as a Christian, just for starters? My suggestion is that 1 Thessalonians is a letter, given that Paul wasn’t able to return to Thessalonica and had to write instead, that, if you like, is the New Testament’s just for starters.
What does it look like for us? As we turn to follow the Lord Jesus. Well, we haven’t got anything like enough time to cover all 10 of the verses we had read in our opening reading. We are just going to drill down into 2 of them, verses 9 and 10. They are fascinating because they tell us about the message that Paul preached when he was amongst the non-Jewish idolaters in Thessalonica.
Not only has the word, take it from verse 8, of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith has gone forth everywhere, so that we don’t need to say anything. For people report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how, and here is the sentence we are going to look at, 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. I don’t think you will find anywhere in the New Testament a clearer description of the message of Christians to unbelievers from non-Jewish backgrounds, as it was preached, if you like, in the raw by the Apostle. You turned, you served, you waited.
Let’s take each of those in order. They turned to the living and true God in faith. They served the living and true God in love. They waited for Jesus Christ, who will return from heaven, in confident expectation. Let’s then hold up the plumb line, if you like, of the Thessalonians’ response and of what, self-evidently, was Paul’s message, and ask ourselves at this bank holiday weekend, what about our message?
What about our response? They turned. The language to turn is very strong indeed. It’s used repeatedly in the book of Acts to speak of Christian conversion. Peter urges the Jews in Jerusalem to turn so that their sins can be blotted out.
Repent and turn again so that your sin is blotted out.
Unbelieving non-Jews are described as turning from vain idols.
And we find people described as becoming Christians, turning from darkness, blind and unclear about God, to light. You turned. So, you can see that the Thessalonians made a decisive decision. They were engaged in a radical change of allegiance, a fundamental turning of the human will to God, owning this God as my God, the only true God, not only accepting his existence, but trusting him as the source of life and living in love and obedience. And they turned from and they turned to.
Do you see it there? You turned to God from idols. They were going in one direction, with a set of assumptions and desires, joys and delights, beliefs and understandings, and they turned to a different direction. You turned to God from idols.
Now, in the book of Acts, Paul describes idols as vain things.
Again, in Acts 17, idols are described as being served by human hands, needy deities. In 1 Corinthians, Paul describes idols as having no real existence, the inventions of humanity.
And when you think about it, it has to be the case, if we reject that there is one true Creator God who made the heavens and the earth, who stands outside of His creation, sustaining it and ordering it according to His sovereign will. If we reject that reality, then all we are left with is the philosophies and the theories of man, our own inventions, vain things, our ideas.
And inevitably, as we invent, if you like, one port in which to find safe harbour and we find it’s inadequate, then, then we have to invent another port in which to find self— safe harbour. And, and then we have to invent another port in which to find safe harbour. Once you reject the idea of one Creator God sovereign over all of his creation, outside and beyond you are left with a myriad, multiple idolatries and theories and philosophies and inventions of humanity, vain things that have no real existence. Now, some of you may have been to Thessaloniki. They play in the Europa League, and you may have followed your football team to Thessaloniki.
And I am told that on a very clear day, from across the port, you can see Mount Olympus itself. And at Mount Olympus in the first century, all the vast pantheon of man-made idolatry assembled: the god of war, the god of wealth, the god of wine, the god of work, the god of concord, the god of the underworld, all assembled there. In fact, when Paul writes to— speaks in Athens, he even finds a temple to an unknown god. Oh, just in case I haven’t covered all the bases, I better also worship at the temple of the unknown god. Vain idols.
Once you reject the one true living God, all we are left with is human philosophy and invention. And clearly, the Apostle Paul comes to Thessalonica and points out this self-evident truth, that worshipping myth and man-made invention is pure folly and leads to insecurity. Uncertainty, a god of well-being, a god of meaningfulness, a god of health and fitness, a god of success and financial stability, progressive humanism, secularist materialism, self-absorbed and rampant individualism. One god after another god after another god. And Paul arrives in Thessaloniki.
He speaks first in the the synagogue for 3 Sabbaths. He is evicted and then he goes to the idolatrous pagan world and he starts pointing out the sheer folly, the slavery of worshipping vain idols. And the people of Thessalonica turn, it seems in considerable numbers, to worship the true and living God.
The next-door neighbour here has now moved out and moved on, but one of the businesses, Hiscox, a major insurance business, the founding CEO and chairman of Hiscox, Robert Hiscox, was an ardent advocate of the Eastern ideology of feng shui. The idea that the energies inherent within inanimate objects all around us impact our well-being and the prosperity of the business. And this is what Robert Hiscox set his whole furniture up around. They, they actually had a water feature outside the office pointing in the direction of the graveyard nearby in in order to ward off evil spirits from St. Helen’s and the dead in our graveyard. But I went to lunch with Robert once.
He very kindly invited me to lunch. We’re next-door neighbours, and there were just 6 of us, me and him sitting opposite at lunch, and on his left, his chief operations officer, on his right, chief financial officer, and then on my right, the head of HR, and then there were some other big, big fish there as well. And his first question over lunch was this, what do you make of our spiritual philosophy, feng shui, here in Hiscox? Now, I wish— you know how it is, you know, you always sort of mumble, mutter something, and then eventually come up with what you should say. I wish I’d said this more clearly, but I attempted something like this over this lunch.
Once a person stops believing in the God of the Bible, the one true God who made the heavens and the earth and everything in it, then they will believe literally anything. And with the rejection of God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should expect to find in the city a growing superstition and idolatry. Now, I didn’t say it nearly as clearly as that. I wish I had. But that’s the message, isn’t it?
You turned from idols to serve the one true living God. They turned, they served. Turning from idols is not a turning from slavery to inhumane taskmasters of idolatry to rank independence. You turned from idols to serve the living and true God. It’s a beautiful description of God, isn’t it?
That he’s true, that he’s alive, that you turn from serving inanimate objects and human ideologies and philosophies to serve the one who is living and who is true. So, these new believers were saved for service, they were purchased for a purpose, They were redeemed, ransomed, and rescued to serve the true and living God. And we are given a picture of their service in verses 6 through 8. Just look, glance back. I mean, the whole letter speaks of it, but, you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and you became an example So much so that the word of the Lord sounded forth and has gone forth everywhere across Macedonia and Achaia.
Their service was painful. I mean, that is interesting, isn’t it? In much affliction. As a person turns from idolatrous culture, friends, family, relatives, and acquaintances inevitably find that uncomfortable. And in Thessalonica, why, the mob had been turned on Jason and his household.
And some of us will have had that experience. As we turn to serve the true and the living God, inevitably we turn our back on the idolatrous ideas of our ancestors and so forth, and we turn to serve the true and living God. And it inevitably affliction follows. We find that across the New Testament.
But also joyful, because now at last I’m serving the living and true God. I’m not serving a desperately needy deity who I keep having to feed and feed and feed and feed and who is never satisfied. No, I’m serving the one who doesn’t actually need my support. He gives, he doesn’t take. He serves me, even as I turn to follow him.
He isn’t like some wretched, insecure, and needy parent clinging on to their child, desperately trying to get something out of it.
And then it’s undisguisable. If you look at verse 8, it sounded forth, it went forth everywhere. The word sound forth is the word of a trumpet or a gong or waves crashing on the beach. And it seems that the radical change in the life of the Thessalonians just could not be kept quiet. Thessalonica was on a major Roman road.
It was a significant trading port. It was a leading city in Macedonia, a free city described as a second Rome.
And as the Thessalonians began to serve the living true God, new values, new standards, new loves, new lifestyle, new commitments, new concern. You can read about it in the letter. We will be looking at it later in the year. New sexual ethics.
A new readiness to be responsible members of society.
Living in the light. Not living in the dark, sober-mindedness, spiritual communities, churches formed.
And so, as the gospel took hold, lives were turned around. We had the senior pastor and his wife of the church we attended to lunch. And she has taken up place to work in the school on the local estate. Which is an extraordinarily deprived estate in the West Country. And there on that estate, the so-called ethic, that is the morality, of progressive humanism, the idolatry of progressive humanism, has taken hold big time.
The sexual ethic of free love, expounded in the 1960s and ’70s by the leaders of our cultures, the watchword of progressivism, has had 3 generations to develop.
She told us over lunch that children on the estates live in homes where their mothers have children from so many different fathers that frequently the children don’t know who their father is or who the father of somebody else is.
Across the whole estate then, there are numerous children who don’t know who their parents are. And the social workers coming into the school therefore have to have incest training. Because following the sexual revolution of the ’60s, not knowing whether somebody is actually a cousin of yours has a radical implication when you then start having children for yourself. And within the school, she said, mental health issues as a result of incest on the estate are in abundance.
So, you see, the idolatry of free love has unleashed on our nation the reality of feral life. And there it is, right in front of you. What will it look like when the Christian gospel takes hold on that estate? Won’t it be wonderful? As people turn from idolatry, the idolatry of the thought leaders of the ’60s and ’70s in Britain turn from idolatry to serve the true and living God.
You won’t be able to keep quiet about it. It will spread from Bodmin to Padstow, and from Padstow, I don’t know, to Penzance, and from Penzance up even to London perhaps, to the benefit and good of humanity. Order restored, social stability, self-restraint, spiritual revival. Now, this is a fantastic letter for us, isn’t it? It’s going to be a wonderful letter for us as we think about seeing the Christian gospel established in our school Christian unions, in our companies, amongst little groups of Christians no bigger than the size of the average church in Thessalonica in the first century, in our neighbourhoods wherever we live.
As we see the glorious beauty of serving the one true living God take hold. What a wonderful picture. They turned, they served. And very, very quickly, we are essentially out of time now, they waited in confident hope. Just look at the end there, verse 10, to wait for his Son from heaven, whom God raised from the dead, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
Now, what then was the substance of Paul’s preaching in the first century? Perhaps more clearly than anywhere else, we see it here in 1 Thessalonians. There’s only one true God, idols are nothing, turn to him. There’s only one true God, Lord of heaven and earth, serve him. There’s only one Son, Jesus Christ, he alone has been raised from the dead, He alone will return, and He alone can deliver us from God’s coming judgement.
Now, that God should come in judgement should not surprise us one little bit. We expect Judgement Day. The accountant expects the audit. The student expects the exam. To have no end goal is to be wandering aimlessly through life.
That God should judge, having created us in the first place, is entirely right. That God should be angry, well, He should be surely, if you look at your newspapers, should He not? And of course, God has wrath stored up for those who refuse to recognise Him. Of course, He has wrath stored up for those who reject Jesus Christ, His only Son. Of course, God has wrath stored up for those who will not acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, having been presented with the truth of God’s love for us.
There is no sense that God feels angry like a human person, fits of temper and rage, but there is a right day of judgement and a just reaction to the wickedness of humanity And a response of God to those who reject him and will not have him rule their lives.
And so, clearly, Paul taught the Thessalonians that amongst the threats we face, the greatest of all is the coming judgement of God. The only one who can save us from it is the Lord Jesus Christ, because he alone has lived the perfect life. He alone died on the cross to deal with our sin. He alone has been raised from the dead, and He alone is coming again to deliver His people from the coming judgement. Many threats we might think we face— global warming, medical pandemic, Political and international unrest.
One threat of absolute global and eternal significance, the judgement of the living God.
Well, this is the message that formed the church. How confrontational Paul’s preaching was. Modern leaders of mainline denominations seem to tiptoe around the godless idolatries of our age. Paul would have none of that. He pointed out the folly of idolatry.
How theological Paul’s preaching was, entirely focused on God and Jesus, and on the beauty and sufficiency of the work of Christ. And then how focused on the end Paul’s preaching was. There is a day of judgement. It is coming towards us like a freight train. There’s only one way of escape, to turn to serve the Lord Jesus Christ who will return.
Well, I’m going to lead us in prayer as we close. Let’s pray together.
Creator God, Sovereign Sustainer of all that is seen and unseen, living Lord Jesus enthroned.
We pray that you would grant us such confidence in this glorious message that we would be filled by your Holy Spirit with an equivalent courage and conviction. We ask that in your kindness this truth, this reality of this universe in which we live might spread and sound forth from this building, from our lives, into our schools and our homes and our neighbourhoods, for the honour and glory of your name. Amen.
