1 Thessalonians 1 - Always Giving Thanks!

There are 6 powerful reasons  Paul thanks God for when praying for the Thessalonians that showcase his affection for them and their love for God.
                             
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Transcript

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Sally explained, it was absolutely awful. I was walking to the restaurant and was nearly there when there was this horrible accident. A large truck hit a pedestrian who was jaywalking. The man was thrown several feet in the air, landing all crumpled up on a curb close to me. I looked down at him. It was obvious that his leg was broken because it was sticking out the wrong way. He had cuts and scrapes on his legs and on his arms. His elbows were a mess. There was a large gash on his cheek and blood was flowing everywhere. Some of it even splashed on me. All I can say is, thank God that I took that course, that first aid course here at work. All that training came back to me in a flash. Boss said, So what did you do? Sally replied, Well, I just did what that training taught me. I sat down, put my head between my knees, and to keep from fainting. Thank God for her first aid class. That would be me, probably. You know, Paul, as he began this letter to the Christians in Thessalonica, he starts out after a salutation, which is writing who's writing and to whom, and his greeting. He then writes, We give thanks to God always for all of you. We give thanks always. Today I want to look at this first chapter and see at least six things that Paul, Savannah, and Timothy were thankful about the Christians in Thessalonica, but first let's begin with prayer. Lord, I do thank you for your love. And I thank you for the Bible, and I thank you for a written word. Not just something I hear somebody speak, because then I will sometimes go home and forget some of this stuff. But I can read the Bible and I can read it over and over and I can get new things. And thank you, Lord, for your Holy Spirit. It works in our hearts to hear. Help us, Lord, to follow through and be thankful to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Let me begin by reading this first chapter of 1 Thessalonians. Paul and Sylvanus 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, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in our mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing beloved, brethren brethren, beloved by God, his choice of you. For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction, just as you know, what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaea. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaea, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves report about us what kind of reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. Just ten verses in this first chapter, but I can't help but see at least six major reasons why Paul was giving thanks. First one there is found in verses two and three. We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly, bearing in mind your work of faith. Paul gave thanks for their work of faith. That is not an oxymoron. I know I've come across people who claim that's an oxymoron because it has work and it has faith, and the two of them, according to them, have nothing to do with that with each other. And yet when it comes to Christianity, it's all about both. It's not just faith. It is not just works. It's about both of them working together. Faith and works go hand in hand. You can't have faith without works, according to Scripture. James put it as plainly as you can have it. James 2, 17, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. Faith requires us to act upon what we believe. We must put what we believe into action, otherwise, it really isn't faith. And I've had hundreds of people tell me that they believe in God and yet they do not live like they know who God is. They don't even live like they believe in God. They say it, but they don't. Let me put it this way: if you truly believe that God exists and God has revealed himself in his word, and God is not a liar, for the word of God says God cannot lie, and that God has an eternal reward in heaven for those who come to him through Jesus and keep his commandments, but an eternal punishment in a lake of fire, where those who refuse to do his will will be in an eternal agony, and one of God's commands is to forgive. How could you possibly believe and yet not forgive? That's a hard one. But I know an awful lot of people who claim to believe in the Lord Jesus and even willing to pray the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, or forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And yet they will hold grudges. They refuse to forgive others. And if they truly believe that such a grudge holding was going to send them to an eternal lake of fire, I believe they'd forgive. Or at least they'd work extremely hard at forgiving. Faith would move you to action. It requires us to act. We can't just say we believe and then do absolutely nothing about it. We have to act upon it. And when Peter preached on the first day of the church in Acts chapter 2, and the crowds expressed their belief in Jesus, and they asked, What shall we do? Peter told them to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins and receive to get the Holy Spirit. And then Luke records for us, Acts chapter 2, verse 41, so then those who had received his word, in other words, you believed it, they were baptized. And on that day they were added about 3,000 souls. Well, why? Because if they believed, if they had faith, that faith moved them to act upon it. They acted upon that belief, they were baptized, and faith requires action, and that's why Paul begins thanking the Christians in Thessalonica for their work of faith, their initial aspect of it. Paul then moves on to the second reason why he gives thanks for them always. Paul gave thanks for their labor of love. In my mind, work and labor are pretty much the same thing. But Paul used a different word for work, a Greek word ergon, meaning work. It's the type of work that is like your business, it's your employment, it's what you are supposed to do and act upon, your responsibility of action. And then when he gets down to labor of love, he uses a different Greek word, kopos. Kapos. Which refers to the aspect, let me get this completely straight here, hard and intense, beating on the breast, laboring and toiling that would bring you to a weariness and sorrow almost beyond what you can endure. One thing you're doing, you work, you go to work in Burger King. Do you really work there so hard that you're just about ready to die? Not normally, huh? But this is this labor of love. It's to the point where it's almost impossible. It is happening not to earn salvation, but because they are so grateful for Jesus and for what Jesus has done that they're giving up every part of themselves. And Paul is letting us know that the Christians in Thessalonica were working extremely hard in loving. You could say that love motivates hard work. Faith can easily bring us to taking the first steps of obedience to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. But love then is what motivates us to take the harder steps of actually changing our lives. Getting them right with God, stopping the sinful things that we have done and starting to do the correct things. Love is what motivates the hard work of laboring for other people and doing whatever you can for other people. And whenever I think about the love motivation, motivating a hard work and labors of love, I think about mothers. I think about my own mother, but even closer to home, I think about my own wife. What motivated these women to take care of sick children? To get up in the middle of the night and feed a baby? What motivates them to do the laundry or fix meals for the family and for other people? Love. Love for other people. For their children, for their family, for others. It isn't because they love all the interruptions in their life. Oh, yeah, I love getting up at midnight and 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and keep taking care of this baby. Oh no, that is not it. It's because they love the people and they're willing to do that. And they're willing to have their life and the lack of sleep and do all those chores because they love the people they're serving. And the Thessalonica Christians love God and therefore they were laboring in love to love one another and to build up the body of Christ, even if that meant sometimes it was toiling and sometimes it was hard to do. And there were certain people that were very difficult to love and yet they put a lot of labor into their love. And the Christians of the first century truly understood this because the scripture tells us some of them were actually selling their properties and giving the money to take care of other people. Love lets us do what no one could ever pay us to do. One of my favorite missionary stories, and I've shared it several times, it's about a group of Americans who went to a small medical clinic in Africa. And while they were there, they saw a woman who was there removing the filthy, stinking bandages from the leper's foot and removing the dead, stinking, rotting flesh, carefully cleaning, sanitizing the feet before wrapping them up in fresh bandages on the feet of that leper. The smell was absolutely horrible. And the Americans who were touring this facility, they were gagging. Some of them were just about ready to vomit. One of them finally got the words out between gags. You could never get me to do that, even if you paid me a million dollars. And the woman who was changing the bandages didn't even turn around. And just said, for a million dollars, I wouldn't do it either. I only do it because I love these people. That's love. You know why do we push ourselves out of a comfort zone to love people and do things for the Lord? You know, back in March we had a work day here at the church. A lot of people came and did a lot of chores. Some of the chores were messy and dirty. Some of them were cleaner chores. Why do you suppose people came and did those? Whether it's a messy one or the cleaner one. Do you suppose those people had absolutely nothing to do with their lives and just, well, I guess we don't have anything else to do? They love the church, they love the people, they love God. You know, we have people come every week who give of themselves, they get the bulletins ready, they type up prayer concerns, they record the giving, they clean the church building, they sweep, mop, vacuum, dust, they refill water bottles so that we have water in our drinking uh dispensers. They clean the toilets, they clean everything. Why do they do it? Because they love the Lord and they love you. They labor for the Lord because of their love for God and they love each one of us, and that's why they do it. They're not trying to earn their salvation. They simply love. And we have people who give up their time to help others in the church. They'll go visit them, they'll go to their houses, they'll take care of different things. Why? Because of labors of love. Each and every one of us should be finding ways that we can do something for the kingdom of God and labor in our love. And Paul was giving thanks for the Christians in Thessalonica because of their labors of love. He gave them thanks because of their work of faith. Labor of love, 30 says, Paul gave thanks for their steadfastness of hope. Some versions say their perseverance or their patient continuance. And what Paul is expressing here is that Paul was pleased that some of the Christians in Thessalonica had not let their Christianity become a passing phase of their life, but they have continued on staying faithful even after Paul left to go preach in other cities. And they were willing to hold fast to their hope that is found in the Word of God, even in the midst of trials and tribulations. Hope lets us hold on through all things. Life is not always easy, especially if you become a Christian. In fact, a few weeks ago, I had one of our church members tell me that after he became a Christian, which has been relatively recent, Satan has been attacking him more and more and more. And I have seen this happen in the lives of a lot of people who become a Christian. Once they become a Christian, a lot of bad things happen in their life and they seem to struggle to be faithful. I still remember one man in my first ministry. I'd befriended him. He was actually one of my wife's classmates from school. I had befriended the man. We started doing an awful lot of things together, but he wasn't ever going to church. And I said, Say, why don't you come to church? He said, Why not? I never have anything to do on Sunday. So he started coming to church. And he came several weeks, and all of a sudden his Sunday mornings got busy. Family would come over. People would come over. Things would happen. His vehicle would break down. The only time he could work on it was Sunday morning. And suddenly it was almost impossible for him to get there. He was trying to make way to get to church. Then Satan attacked his family, and one of his children came down with cancer. Eventually died from that cancer. Satan won in that situation. He had not become grounded and rooted in Christ Jesus with a hope of eternal life in heaven, and he just kind of gave up because things got too hard. And I've been a witness to many people who became Christians and immediately afterward their life became difficult. In fact, in the first century, if you read about it, Christians had their life hard. According to historians, the governing officials could actually confiscate the property of Christians because they were worshiping an illegal religion. They could lose their homes, they could lose their jobs, they could lose their belongings. Life could become very hard. And sometimes Christians were arrested and beaten and even put to death because they were a Christian. It would have been very easy for the Christians in Thessalonica to have gone back to their former way of life after Paul, who had led them in Christ, after he left. But instead, the hope of eternal life had kept them steadfast. And they were holding on in the midst of whatever fake troubles they faced. That's what hope is supposed to do to us. Hope is what's supposed to give us a sheer dogged endurance. Oh boy, I'm on the wrong side here. Here, there we go. Probably had the wrong slide up there before. Sorry about that. You know, there's a motivation poster. I don't know how many of you ever see motivation posters, but there's one where they got this very large bird. It looks like a stork. Karen's nodding her head. She's probably seen it. And there's a frog. The stork has most of the frog in its mouth, but the frog's got his hands gripped around the neck of that stork, and he's got that neck just squeezed off. And the poster reads, never give up. That frog has a lot of motivation to never give up. And I like that poster. And we have a motivation to never give up our faith. The hope of heaven, the fear of the lake of fire should help us stay strong and faithful to the Lord. And the Christians in Thessalonica, even in the face of horrible death-threatening persecution, they remain steadfast in their hope of eternal life in Christ Jesus. Do we remain steadfast every day? You know, most of us don't go through that much problems. But sometimes even the littlest thing can set us off. And we go back to ourselves before we knew Christ. And words come out of our mouths that should not come out of our mouths, and anger and other issues. And God is saying, No, I want you to be steadfast. Keep on holding on to your faith. Paul was very thankful that the Christians in Thessalonica had this steadfastness of their hope. They had a work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope. Verse 4, Paul gave thanks for their election. Or very simply put, Paul gave thanks because God had chosen them. Although this subject matter causes a lot of controversy, I believe the most of the controversy is cleared up when you have a passage like Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 3, where it tells us how that we were chosen before the foundation of the world to be adopted as sons of God through Jesus Christ by the redeeming power of his blood, according to the richness of God's great grace which he has lavished upon us. Yeah, that's a good one, huh? God chose before the world was ever created that our salvation, our being adopted into the family of God, was going to come about through the death of Jesus on a cross and by God's grace and by the blood of Jesus long before there was any race. Long before people were built. Any race, therefore, can have salvation. Jew or gentle, gentile alike, we can all come in there because we have been chosen through Jesus. And then Paul gave the proof of God's choosing of them. The proof was that whether they were Jew or Gentile, God's work by the grace of God had come to them and they have become Christians. Therefore, God has chosen you. If you become a Christian, God has chosen you. And the word of God didn't just come to them in words, but the Holy Spirit empowered them through the Word of God to change their lives. And the Holy Spirit will let the Word of God give them full love and full conviction so they would act upon their faith. That would have served them to be motivated by love and stay faithful to God because of the hope of eternity. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I get totally excited that God didn't limit his choosing just to the Jewish nation. Or just to those who can prove they came from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Because if that had been the basis for his election and choosing, there's not many of us here who could actually be saved. There's very few of us, if any of us, who can actually trace our ancestral all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Praise the Lord. God's choosing wasn't that way. It's the blood of Jesus. We can come to him by the blood of Jesus. And Paul was truly kingdom-minded, united with the mind of Christ, to realize that God desires all men to be saved, no matter what race, no matter what nationality, no matter who they were. And I hope we have the same attitude, do we? Are we thankful for any and every person that God has chosen to be saved? Are we thankful for them, whether they're rich or poor, whether they're young or old, whether who no matter who they are? Are we trying to reach all people or just certain people? I still remember being in a church and one of the people who was a treasure came up to me and simply said, Now you be extra nice to those people. They're very rich and give a lot of money to the church. And I said, Don't you ever say that stuff to me again. I don't want to know. I want to treat the person who can't give anything and the person who gives billions of dollars the same because Christ loves them. That's what we need to do. And we can give thanks for God's election because it's not based upon whether the person's rich or poor. It's not based on anything like that. It's based on Jesus Christ. And Paul gave thanks for their election, and Paul gave thanks for their exemplary lifestyle. Verses 6 through 10 really hit on this. When they heard the gospel story, they didn't just want it for salvation, they actually changed their lives. They became examples for those in Macedonia and Achaia, and they have become examples to all believers. And I get to embarrass Jared again. You know, I've been very thankful for Jared as our assistant minister or our associate minister. I am so thankful for him, and that he's going to be the preaching minister here very soon. He has a servant heart. There we go. He has a servant heart, and I really appreciate that. Because we've had some people who didn't have that servant heart, and he is an example to the believers. He doesn't boast about the great things he does. He pays me to tell them, but no, no, he does that. He does a lot of things behind the scenes that nobody ever sees. Like putting our sermons up on the internet, like making the intro videos for our sermon series, like making these posters, helping with the maintenance of the church building, giving up the closed spots so that he parks way out there in the parking lot. You know, he he helps take care of things. He helps with the potlucks, the setting up, the serving, the taking down, the cleaning up. He's a servant, and that's the way we should be. He's an example for all believers, not just for the youth to look up to, but I believe for all of us, even as older people can look to him for an example of what it means to be a servant and let other people be first. And the Christians at that Thessalonica, even though they were young in Christ, they had actually learned to become examples of believers. And Paul, who wrote this, is the one same Paul who wrote 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. He talked to Timothy and said, Make sure no one looks down on your youthfulness, but rather set yourself as an example of believers in your speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity. Prove yourself to be a Christian. Prove yourself. Are we doing that? Are we making sure that our speech is pure? Have we removed cussing and lying? Do we always keep our word? Have we become an example for other Christians? That we would not be ashamed to have them follow in our example and use the same words we use? Are we behaving properly above reproach in our speech, our conduct? Are we making sure that we are demonstrating love to all people? Are we true to the word of God always? Are we living pure lives, especially sexually? And we're going to have a sermon on that not too long in the future because that's what he's really going to hit in one of these chapters. And Paul gave thanks because of his exit their exemplary lifestyle, that they became examples for all believers, true to God in all things. In fact, their example had become well known. You know, you read about this and they became examples to all those in Macedonia and Achaia. Well, that's really cool. But where are those places? How far away they were they from Thessalonica? I mean, I tried to put it in relationship to here. Basically, it's be like we live so Christian and so loving here in Bullhead City that it has become all well known throughout Mojave County and Clark County. But not just there. We got to keep on going. Roughly 300 miles out. Do you realize that would take like in St. George? That would take in LA. That would take in down there in Phoenix. Are we well known in all those areas for our Christian living here at Valley Christian? You know, I have actually known some people that when we were getting ready to do t-shirts, or we used to have front license plates for people on their cars that said something about Valley Christian Church. And I had people say, No, I don't want to put that on my car. I said, Well, why not? Well, I don't always drive right. At least they were honest, and they didn't want to bring a slur to the name of Christ. But it's still kind of a shame. We need to live better. And Paul writes about the Christians in the town of Thessalonica for their faith, their love, their hope, their lives being talked about everywhere, becoming so well known, their faith and the lifestyle become out throughout their entire region and into Macedonia and into the next country south, down to Achaea. And those are places that Paul, he says, I no longer need to preach the gospel in those areas because your testimony is already reached out there. Has ours. Have we been sharing the word of God so much that people in other lands, even 300 miles away, know about our faith and lives? Are we spreading the word of God beyond just our valley here? You know, I'm very thankful that Jared actually came in just as COVID was starting. One of the first things he got involved in doing was posting our stuff online. And now our sermons, our message of the Word of God is going not just to Bullhead City, but all sorts of other places, even around the world. But we need to do far more than just broadcast it on the web. We actually need to live it so much that people hear about it. That people realize we are a lot more like Jesus and a lot less like me. Could write a song about that, couldn't we? Yeah. No wonder Paul gave thanks for their exemplary lifestyle. And Paul gave thanks for their work of love, their labor of work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope, their election, exemplary lifestyle. And finally, here, Paul gave thanks for their turning around. The report had come to Paul about the Christians in Thessalonica that they had turned from their idols. They no longer wanted to keep on doing the sinful things they used to do before they heard about Jesus Christ. They realized that even though Jesus Christ died on a cross for their sins, they weren't given free reign to keep on sinning and worshiping idols. They realized that since Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life, and no one comes to Father except through him, then they don't need to mix it with other gods. They don't need to mix with the gods they had before. They don't need to try and mix a religion, their old religion and Christianity. Take the best of both and come up with your own idea. No, that is not the way it is. They realize there's only one choice, and it's either Jesus Christ is right and all the other things are wrong, or if some of the other things are right, then Jesus Christ is wrong, and they realize Jesus is right. There is no need for us to mix religions. There is no need to mix Christianity and worldly teachings like humanism, or might makes right, or if it feels good, do it, or subjective beliefs, or even theories of people like on evolution and other stuff. These people turned away from every belief that they had before. Have we? Have we left the stuff we had before? Or are we still holding on to some of those false doctrines while we try to serve Jesus? Have we now held on to the belief that Jesus is right and therefore all those other theories and other ideas need to be abandoned? Or are we trying to cling to both? We have to turn from our sinful ways, from our idols, and then he says, they turned to God, the living God. They knew it wasn't just enough to stop worshiping those evil idols, those worshipping of idols, the evil things. They had to turn to God and do all the things that God taught. They turned to God to serve Him. They turned to God to wait for His Son from heaven. They turned to God to wait for Jesus to come and rescue them from the wrath of God, which is to be poured out on all those who do not know God and who do not obey God? Have we turned from our sinful practices? Have we stopped our sins that we were doing before we knew Jesus so we could turn to God and serve Him by keeping what He commands us to do? Or are there still some sinful things in the back doors that we've never let go? Have we made our lives into examples of Jesus for all people to see? Are we giving reasons that other people can always give thanks for us? Lord, I thank you for this passage and I ask, Lord, that you help us to examine ourselves. Not the person sitting on the other end of the chairs, not the person sitting in front of us or behind us. Examine ourselves. Have we surrendered completely to you? Are we living an example of Christ to all people around us? Lord, let us surrender everything to you. Let us follow you. Let us be your servants. In Jesus' name. Amen.