1 Thessalonians 2:5-7 (Part A)

People do it with God all the time. They say things about Him that aren't true, and He comes, like, where did you get this? Well, I just made it up.

I just felt this was the way it should be. God says, I got a big issue with that. That's called idolatry. It is the first sin. It is the most hated sin because it is so single-handedly this sin damned you to hell, if not checked.

So this world, it wobbles because it is famished. It's famished for God's word. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of 1st Thessalonians.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick for his continuing teaching through the Book of 1st Thessalonians Chapter 2 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Let's open our Bibles to 1st Thessalonians Chapter 2. Now, I'll not get beyond verse 12 this morning because verse 13 must not be rushed. Its merits are particular and they must have special care, and so I'm almost wishing we would hurry up and get to next week so we could get to verse 13. But first things first, I want to review before we start in verse 5, verses 1 through 4, Paul writing to this church of converts, new converts, loving the Lord. They were persecuted for loving the Lord, and he says in the first verse, For you yourselves know, brethren, that our coming to you was not in vain. But even after we had suffered before we were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. For our exhortation did not come from error or uncleanness, nor was it in deceit. But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who test our hearts. How powerful is that?

Not as pleasing men. And that is something that every person, you know Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 5, before you go walking into the house of God, you better check yourself. You're coming into his house and you're coming into the presence of the God of the universe. Genesis 1, 1, In the beginning God created and we hold these truths to be self evident, that in the beginning God created everything from nothing, and he did it in phases and he enjoyed it. And at the end he said, Yeah, that's it.

Well, the Bible says he did all things good, but we know what he meant. And so here Paul says we have been approved by God. We've given you the gospel in conflict. We took a beating in Philippi. Now we're here in Thessalonica. We were chased out for our lives. We went on to Berea. They chased us from there for our lives.

He landed in Corinth and there he had more troubles. All because he stuck to what God said in the face of a culture who hated what God said and loved what they were doing and had nothing to show for it except buildings, history books, law books without end. But God's word, how wonderful, how special it is. And so verse five is where we resume. He says, For neither at any time did we use flattering words as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness.

God is witness. And so this for neither at any time did we use flattering words. Paul did not say to the people what they wanted to hear in order to gain a following. He was not trying to build a church or a cult or group. He was coming to share a message. And so he says to them, I did not come to you and say what nice fellows you are, what outstanding people you are. You don't need the gospel. You're doing fine without Jesus Christ.

Continue to serve your man-made gods. And I'll just leave it alone. It's not what happened. He did not compliment their character. He destroyed it.

He went right at it. Told them the things that nobody else was going to tell them except God. You know, your parents are like that, are they not? It's why we get a little tired of them sometimes.

You get to be an adult, you think you're free and mom and dad comes along and say, you're going to wear that or I don't believe you said that or they make some comment that's right. We don't want to hear it. God is like that or should I say the parents in that regard are like God. So Paul told them the truth. Would we admire him if he lied to them?

We would not. He said that they were not only sinners but they were lost. They were doomed. They were going to a very real hell. Now if you do not believe in a real hell, how can you believe in a real salvation? What's the point of it all? If there's no God, if his word is not true, let's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. It's all a big joke.

But it is not. So they were bound for hell according to Paul. This, again, he comes up to Philippi. They've heard about him taking a beating for preaching these things and he starts telling them your gods are wrong from childhood.

I don't care what your parents believe. They're wrong and here's the proof. That's exactly what he did. He gave them the proof. They needed a savior and they needed one desperately and they knew it. That's why they were converted.

To say to someone their religion is not right, it's a failure, you usually go beyond the individual that you're speaking to and you're messing now with his parents, his mom and dad, his grandparents, his heritage, his identity, and either they're going to respond to the truth or they're going to try to tear you apart in one way or another. And so he said, I did not come to flatter you. I came to deliver a message from God. And this is the way it is for all Christians who are disciples of Jesus Christ, not just pastors. They needed Christ. They needed his glorious salvation just as much then as people do to this day. And so no flattery was in his words. It was nothing that he said that flattered them, but everything that he said was on their behalf, for their benefit. This was the truth and the truth will set you free. And the fact that they received it and that this letter has survived these 2,000 years says something all by itself. He continues in this verse, he says, as you know. I like that very much. Again, you hold these truths to be self-evident. You've seen this. You are a witness and a participant.

You were there when I came to Thessalonica and preached it like it is. This man Paul lived too morally sound for them to attack him with an immoral or an immoral attack. They could not charge him with, yeah, well he's a drunk. He's a liar. He's a womanizer.

He neglects his family. There's nothing they could say. First Peter writing about the same thing, you know, Peter said, have a defense for everyone who asks you, reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and respect. Meekness is strength held back.

Like I could really let you have it, but I'm not trying to destroy you. And then he says, Peter, in that same verse of 1 Peter 3, having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. They got nothing. They want you to be wrong. They want you to be this and that so they don't have to repent.

They do not have to be confronted in their own conscience by the sin that they engage in. Paul was too theologically balanced to be ignored. In other words, when he spoke things, they were reasonable. They were rational.

They made perfect sense. In fact, when he challenged other religions, his challenges made sense. People began to say, you know, you got a good point there.

Why are we bowing down to this figurine? Again, we talked about the gods of the Greeks and the Romans. They were sinners.

They carried on like human beings with extra power to hate each other, their jealousy, their backbiting, their infighting, their pettiness. And these are the gods he destroyed. And then he was too anointed to be denied. You just couldn't deny them, man.

The power that belonged not only to his preaching but to his life. Now, as we look at the world and its heroes, we look at the entertainment industry, we look at the universities. Again, not a slight on education. I think all sensible people believe in education. What we do not believe in is indoctrination.

I think sensible people are this way. In the church, the church is not seeking to indoctrinate anyone. We present the truth. We preach the gospel as we understand it.

You take it or you leave it and that's the end of it. But the world, the world is that system or that collection of human beings who have rejected Jesus Christ. The world wobbles before him. It is spiritually gaunt and ugly. I think of those hideous cows that Pharaoh spoke about.

Such ugliness I've not seen in Egypt. This is man, morally. Now, before or next to himself, he may disagree and be right. He may say, hey, I'm not as bad as so and so.

You're right. But before God, morally, you're puny. Morally, you are gaunt and ugly because you are a sinner and he is not. And the distinction is stark.

The contrast is inescapable. There's no way to bridge the gap unless God does it. You can't do it. You cannot earn favor with God on your own.

You cannot do it your way. I've said this often. If someone began saying things about you that were not true, whether they were good or bad, you would hopefully have protests with that.

Don't say those things about me. But people do it with God all the time. They say things about him that are true and he comes, where did you get this? Well, I just made it up.

I just felt this was the way it should be. God says, I got a big issue with that. That's called idolatry. It is the first sin. It is the most hated sin because it is single-handedly this sin damned you to hell if not checked.

And so this world it wobbles because it is famished. It's famished for God's word. Amos the prophet talked about this very thing to the people who were supposed to uphold righteousness. Do you know what happened to Judaism? Outside of the Old Testament account, outside of the idolatry that crept in, God cured them of their idolatry. He sent them to Babylon for 70 years, but then they picked up all sorts of skills there. Some came back, others dispersed throughout the Gentile world. And there gave rise to rabbinical Judaism, the Talmud.

The Talmud are the writings, the traditions of the Jews that replaced the Torah. They replaced God's word in the name of God. So that when Messiah come, the great scholar Gamaliel could not recognize that this was indeed the Messiah.

Their hatred for the Gentiles was so deep that anything short of wiping out Rome and her empire and authority, anything short of that was unacceptable. They had made up their minds that this was going to be how it should be. God was to dance to their tune. They'd never come out and say to you, God is going to dance to our tune. But that's what they were doing. And that's what people do to this day. Well, I thank God.

Yeah, shut up. How about you lining up with what He has said, thus says the Lord? Well, the Bible's written by men.

Where did you get that from? What are you saying? You're dictating terms to God, are you? You're saying that God cannot write through men because you don't like it, because you don't want it, because you must conform. And that's the very thing you don't want to do. It is the mark of a sinner rebellion.

We all have it, but we all aren't satisfied with this. Many of us come to Christ. And so when Paul says to them, you know it. You saw this.

You lived it. We Christians, we're not saying, I hope, we're not saying that we're super moralist. We're not saying we always get it right. We can always live up to the things we preach. But that we fail doesn't mean the things we preach are failures. That's why we need a Savior.

That's why He died for us. Do the math. Connect the dots.

Figure it out. But we are super right. By that I mean there's no second place.

There's no almost rights in this category. Now God is merciful. He is totally capable of doing what He does.

God is God. Not applying for the job. He's got it. No one's taking it. There are a lot of people in this world right now.

I'll name them for you. I'm kidding. That would be here a long time.

You think chronicles is bad. Anyway, one of you might say, well, He did it. I don't believe it. How would you prove it? Anyway, let's get back to the message. There are a lot of people in this world, and I mean billions.

You can't even get your head around it. How is God going to judge them all? And they're dying all the time.

It's like, and then new ones are coming in. And God is at total control. He's like, I'm good.

He's sitting back. I've got it. I've got this under control. But we like to assign our weaknesses and our impossibilities to God. That's a mistake. God is not us. We're not a little bit like Him.

We're in His image to some degree, even though that image has been destroyed by the fall of man, original sin. But He is so far greater than us. He is so capable of the judgment He will administer.

There will not be a created anything anywhere that will be able to charge us the anything anywhere that will be able to charge Him with unfairness or not being right. Every knee shall bow. Every tongue shall confess. Who can pull that off but God? And so when He comes along and He says, this is My word.

I have given it to man. He backs it up for all those who are willing to intellectual, with intellectual honesty, examine it. He'll let them do it. And He'll meet them there. And so He says to His believers, payday is coming.

Two paydays. One for the righteous, one for the unrighteous. The righteous are those who submit, who have tapped out. When I put them in that arm lock, they tapped. The unrighteous are boneheaded. I could break their arm. I'm not going to do it.

Break the other one. You hear it in their speech. Look, we'll get into this next session, next time we're in Thessalonians. We'll talk about France and what happened right before the reign of terror, the French Revolution, what Voltaire and his cronies were doing and how they paid for it dearly. The grotesqueness of human nature while they were enjoying the Renaissance. They weren't telling you about how many dead babies they were fishing out of the sewers daily in the interest of this newfound light that they had.

But I'll get back to that. But here comes the payday for the righteous. Revelation 22 verse 12. Behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me to give to everyone according to His work. Now that's to the righteous primarily because this is for the unrighteous. Proverbs 10 16, the labor of the righteous leads to life, the wages of the wicked to sin.

Now Paul finishes this up with a commentary. He says in Romans 6 23, for the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. God is very capable of all that He has started out to do. And you have to come to Him come to these realizations through faith. But faith again is not born of irrational. It is born of reason. God says come let us reason. Your skins are red as scarlet.

I can make them white as snow. I'll do that for you if you come. You don't come and get it. You will not have it.

I will not beg you, but I will die for you. The world mocks Him and the Christians we are left to sort it out and to persevere in the midst of it. We forget sometimes the patience of God with us and we show impatience with others. It's very easy to do because we still have a sinful nature.

It doesn't mean we excuse it. So He says to them, He says nor a cloak of covetous here in verse 5. I didn't have this cape over me and trying to rip you off selling you magic prayer cloths and sow a seed in faith brother. You know that's what they say give this church a hundred dollars and God's going to bless you with a thousand.

Somebody ought to wash that person's face mouth out with the scripture. That's a lie and then the people in the people because they're greedy. They want to be rich. They don't want to be rich in the spirit, rich in faith. They want to line their pockets and if we all live like that, what kind of society would we have?

We'd have neighbors like Solomon had to deal with. You know the one that slept on the child and claimed the other one or the other two, you know we ate the one and we were going to eat the other one the next day. What kind of people are these? You think because we live in a fairly civil society that the rest of the world is in lockstep with us and it's not. There's some dark places in this country all over the place.

The things that are happening in back alleys are unspeakable. We cover our eyes not see them. And so he's not coming to them trying to sell them a relic or Linus pockets or under the guise of religion. Since the beginning, there have been those false prophets that have come to try to line their pockets at the expense of others in the name of God. But there also has been from the beginning those who have not, those who were straight, those who told it like it was and lived and died for it. This apostle Paul himself admitted that he broke one-tenth of the law and that one-tenth damned him and it was covetous, a sin of the heart, something on the inside.

No, he did not sleep with his neighbor's wife. No, he did not lie or make a practice thereof and have idols to bow down to, but he did covet. He wanted what others had and he wanted it in a way that God had said, this is out of bounds and if you step over that, you are trespassing. You're standing where you do not belong before me and that is a sin.

And if you got away with it and I allowed you into heaven, we'd have hell and heaven in five minutes. It has to be dealt with now in this lifetime, one lifetime you get, not one day, one lifetime. And someone protege, well, what about, what about what? We already have established God is able to deal with everything. A child born with a severe handicap, for example, mentally, physically, God's going to deal with that. I don't know how and what he's going to do. I don't know why he's allowed this or that in detail.

Overall, I do, but not in detail, but I'm good with it because I know him and I know he'll fix this flat tire and it will be good. And when we get to heaven, I like that when a role is called calls out your name, Rick, here, sir. When that moment comes, it won't be God does all things good, it will be awe, silence in heaven, nothing you could say. I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe my wife's here.

I saw the shot and I took it. But anyway, Romans chapter 7, he says, what shall I say then? And in Romans 7, he's talking about the weakness of the flesh. And in the Romans 8, he gives us the cure for it. He doesn't say, what shall save me? He says, who shall save me? Well, it's Christ Jesus, but he says in Romans 7, what shall we say then? Is the law sin?

Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. The law is that test. It's the microscope. It points it out. That's what the law of God is.

This is perfection. This is what I demand from you. And if you get it wrong, you're going to have to learn from you. And if you get it wrong, you've separated yourself from me.

Well, we all get it wrong. God says, well, the only way to fix that is through a savior, Christ Jesus the Lord, by taking your punishment and then making opportunity to fill you with my spirit. So we say, quoting Alan Redpath, conversion of a soul, the conversion of a soul, when he taps out, that is a miracle of the moment. It's a miracle because most don't do it.

And it's a god-done thing. And then he goes on to say, Redpath does, the manufacturing of a saint is a task of a lifetime. It takes a whole lifetime to develop sainthood, discipleship. Now, sainthood is not defined by a religious group.

We'll vote on it, see if you get in. How arrogant. A saint in the scripture is defined as anyone who has separated themselves from the world system and have come under the system or the kingdom of heaven in Jesus Christ. Separated is the definition of the word saint. You may not have learned that all your life.

You've been, maybe you're, I don't know, 140 years old and you're walking around thinking this from the time you were two and you come here and you hear me say it and you don't like it. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of 1 Thessalonians. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app as well. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of 1 Thessalonians right here on Cross Reference Radio.