A Model Church - 2

Well, we return once again to 1 Thessalonians after an introductory message last Lord's Day to get us started in our new study through this shorter epistle of the Apostle Paul. Today we're going to take an overview of chapter 1, and I plan by God's grace to return to chapter 1 in future sermons and take up a few more details that we will not have time for today as we review the entire chapter. It is noticeable that Paul's epistle begins in an ordinary manner, and by that I mean ordinary according to the customs of his day, for he followed the customs of his day and how letters were written, the form which was followed.

And yet it takes a very sharp turn very quickly into the epistle so that it's clearly no longer following the customs of his pagan culture, but rather has been employed for a different purpose, and it has gone in an entirely different direction. But we learn in chapter 1 that the faith of the Thessalonian church is exemplary and encouraging and praiseworthy, and what Paul reveals about them and to them since he's writing to them is instructive to them and also by the Spirit of God's design instructive for us today. We will look, first of all, at a customary salutation, verse 1. Secondly, a customized giving of thanks, verses 2 and 3.

And third, an assurance of divine election, verses 4 through 10. A customary salutation following the first century epistolary format. Paul writes, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians and God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It was customary in writing letters in that day to first of all identify the author, secondly the recipients, and third to give a short word of greeting, sort of a formal expectation which was followed in all letters in that day and Paul follows those conventions very carefully. So first of all the author, and he identifies the author actually by the use of three names, which is unusual, for he does not identify simply himself, Paul, as the author, but says Paul, Silvanus and Timothy. But we recognize that Paul is the author in the way that we use that term, but he also included Silvanus, or known to us as Silas, and Timothy because they were part of his missionary team, they were close partners in the gospel, they were with him in the city of Corinth as he's writing this epistle.

They were well known to the members of the church of the Thessalonians. They concurred with what Paul wrote, no doubt read over what Paul wrote, and said amen, we agree with that, we believe that too, and so Paul includes all of them in this opening identification of the author, but starts of course with himself as the primary author and the only inspired author, the one through whom the Holy Spirit is writing his word, identifying himself as he customarily does by the name Paul. That's his Greek name. We all know that his Hebrew name was Saul. Probably, and we don't know where Paul came from exactly, we know when it shows up, but we don't know where it came from, but probably his parents gave him both names because he was born in Tarsus, out in the dispersion, out among the Gentile nations, and so he was given a Jewish name to indicate his Jewish parentage, his Jewish commitment, his Jewish heritage, his identification with the people of God, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, but also was no doubt given a Greek name so that he would relate to the community in which he lived, and he was known by his Hebrew name Saul up until the time when he was out on his first missionary journey, and you can trace this in the book of Acts, and as he was traveling on that first journey, there comes a time when Dr. Luke, who was the human author of the book of Acts, simply drops the name Saul and picks up the name Paul, and for thereafter, he's known as Paul.

No explanation is given. Several possible reasons are speculated, but there really is no reason given, except it seems sensible to me that because he was the apostle to the Gentiles, he's now going to spend his life among the Gentiles. It makes sense to start calling him by his Gentile name Paul instead of his Hebrew name Saul. Paul and then there's Silvanus. Silvanus is known to us as Silas. It's interesting that Paul always calls him Silvanus, but Luke always calls him Silas, and so in the book of Acts, written by Luke, he's known as Silas, but when he's referred to in the Epistles penned by Paul, he's known as Silvanus, his longer name. It's like the difference between William and Bill, and Silvanus was his more formal name and Silas was his shorter name, and he became Paul's ministry partner at the second missionary journey. The first one, it was Paul and Barnabas, and you know what happened there, the little falling out between them that's described for us in the book of Acts.

I call it a little falling out. I'm sure at the time it seemed like a major falling out, but over time, it was rectified, and by the end of Paul's life, we can see evidence that they had been reconciled and that they were no longer at odds with one another, but for a while there, there was a sharp disagreement between them as to whether John Mark qualified for missionary service. Should he go on the second journey or should he not? Barnabas said he ought to go. He's ready. He's repentant. He's learned his lesson.

He can be useful. Paul said he wasn't faithful. He hasn't had time to prove himself. He's not qualified.

I won't take him. And so Barnabas took John Mark and went one way, and Paul chose Silas and went another way. And now, in this mysterious way that God works, there are now two missionary teams out of the Gentile world, whereas before there was only one, and they are both being led by qualified men of God. But Silvanus is with Paul, and then Timothy, who's a young convert who apparently came to Christ on Paul's first missionary journey, or sometime subsequent to that, Paul finds him in Galatia on his second journey as he's revisiting the churches, and we read about this in Acts chapter 6. He came to Lystra and Derbe and Niconium, and he found this young man Timothy who was saved and serving the Lord and had a good reputation with the churches there, and Paul took him along, and now he becomes a part of Paul's missionary team, and so Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.

That's the author. How about the recipients? Paul identifies the recipients as the church of the Thessalonians. This is the common word for church in the New Testament, the Greek word ekklesia, and it is a common word in the Greek language and in Greek culture and in the Roman world of that day. It certainly is not an exclusive term that is only used by Christians to identify Christian assemblies. The word ekklesia means an assembly of called out ones.

That's what it means in secular Greek, and you can find it used a couple of times in the New Testament in that secular sense, as when, for example, a delegation of citizens is called out to business, called out to the town hall to hear a matter and to make a decision. It's an assembly, an assembly of the citizens, the voting citizens of the city of Ephesus in this particular case. And so this term, assembly of called out ones, has both the idea of people who are gathered together, but the idea that they were called to do so.

They were qualified to do so. It would be people who are authorized, an assembly of city councilmen, an assembly of legislators, an assembly of citizens who need to vote on a matter, as I've already mentioned. It is people who are called to this task of coming together for a particular purpose, and it's a term that wonderfully suits the burgeoning church that is now being established, the churches that are being established in the Roman world. And so Paul addresses this epistle to the ekklesia of the Thessalonians. The assembly of called out ones located in the city of Thessalonica. But to make sure that we don't confuse this with a pagan assembly, like the one referred to in the city of Ephesus in the book of Acts, or a Jewish assembly like those that assembled in the synagogues where Paul always started his ministry, Paul adds something to this designation. He calls them the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. An assembly of called out ones in Thessalonica, but in God the Father. Well, that eliminates all of the pagan assemblies. They didn't worship God as Father. They didn't worship the Christian God, whom we know as Father. So that eliminates any possibility of confusing them with a pagan assembly, and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that cancels out the Jewish assemblies, the Jews who wouldn't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who didn't accept Him as their Messiah, the ones who continued to worship apart from Jesus Christ, and still looking for the coming of their Messiah, because they had rejected Jesus in that capacity.

So Paul does a nice job, very neatly, very succinctly, but nevertheless very precisely. This is the kind of assembly I'm talking about, the assembly of Thessalonians, that is not a pagan assembly, is not a Jewish assembly, it's a unique assembly, it is a Christian assembly. I'm writing this epistle to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the author, that's the recipients, what is the greeting? There would always be a greeting similar to this in a secular letter that was written in that day. Paul writes grace and peace, grace to you and peace, and that's a very similar type of greeting that you might find in a letter written by anybody in that day. Grace, the Greek word kyrane, had the meaning of rejoice, or greeting, it was used more as a term of greeting, taking up the word that means rejoice, that's just what they used instead of saying hello like we do, they said rejoice, but it meant hello, it meant greetings. And so Paul picks that up and he says grace to you, kyrane, and peace, and that's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew shalom, and again that has sort of a general meaning among Jews in that day. When they said shalom as a way of saying hello, and also they used it for goodbye, it had the idea of favor, prosperity, well-being, be with you, understood that of course God must bring the favor and the prosperity and the well-being, but just I wish you well, greetings, and may you have favor, may you have prosperity, may you have well-being, and Paul combines together both what would be a common Gentile greeting and a common Jewish greeting, but he Christianizes them, he infuses them with Christian content, he's not talking about just general grace, he's talking about God's unmerited favor, that's cause for rejoicing, that's the real source of blessing, rejoice because of God's favor upon you, grace and then peace, and again infusing that with Christian meaning, spiritual favor, spiritual prosperity, spiritual well-being, be yours, grace and peace to you. A customary salutation, but now a customized giving of thanks, and we've already seen how Paul has customized even the normal salutation quite a bit, but even more so he does this customary giving of thanks.

In verses 2 and 3, we give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God, in the sight of our God and Father. Again, a Roman writing an epistle, anyone in that Roman world writing a letter would follow the same format, identify the author first, that sure makes a lot of sense. When you get a letter and you don't know who it's from, what's the first thing you do? You turn it over and see who wrote it.

You go to the end, you go to the bottom. If you don't know who it's coming from, you can't even read it with full comprehension. If you ever had an anonymous letter, I'm sure you have at some time or another, and you're reading it, it's really hard to know exactly how to understand this or take this. You don't know who it came from, and who it comes from has an awful lot of color into what you are reading.

You really need to know who it's from, so it makes a whole lot more sense to just do that right up front. It's Paul, the author, to the Church of the Thessalonians, greetings, but also this thanksgiving. Customarily, in secular letters of that day, there would be a short giving of thanks. It was a customary thing. It was just a perfunctory thing. It really wasn't very deep in its meaning, but it was just expected. Giving of thanks, if anyone was mentioned to whom the thanks were given, it would be to pagan deities, usually not specific, not, I give thanks to Zeus, or I give thanks to Mercury, or something like that. It wouldn't normally be that specific. It might be, I give thanks to the gods.

And then on with the rest of the letter. Just expected, throw it in, everybody did it. Cultural religion, just part of who we are and what we do. It's being polite in our society to give thanks to the gods. But Paul customized this thanksgiving with Christian content, and he had a whole lot more to say about to whom he's giving thanks and why he's giving thanks than the Gentiles, than the Romans of his day would have done. He directs this thanks to the Christian God.

We give thanks to God. And of course, since he's already mentioned God in the previous verse, he doesn't have to spell out again which God he means. He's already told us the God who is the Father, the Father above, the Father of his people, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God who is known by those who worship him as Father.

That would not be true, as far as I know, of any of the pagan deities. I don't know a single one of them that were called Father, or for whom there was a recognized father-child relationship between the God and those who worship the gods. So just by saying, God our Father, you are identifying a particular God, the God of the Bible, the Christian God. And so Paul makes it clear he's directing thanks to the Christian God and communicating this thanks in prayer. Making mention of you, he says, in our prayers. We give thanks to God, verse 3, always for you all. Making mention of you in our prayers. And of course, that's the way you communicate to God.

That's the way you give him your thanks. But he spells it out here, making mention of you in our prayers. And that seems to indicate that Paul and his missionary team had regular times of prayer and that they included the Thessalonians in these regular times of prayer. We give thanks, making mention of you in our prayers. Team prayer meetings. No doubt every day the missionary team had a time when they came together and had a season of prayer. And they did that regularly.

We know that. Making mention of you in our prayers always. In verse 2, without ceasing. In verse 3, sounds like a regular pattern.

Sounds like something they did customarily, probably every day. It sounds like they followed a customary pattern in their praying that whether they actually had a list or not, there must have been something that kept them on track so that Paul could say, we make mention of you, Thessalonians, in our prayers. And no doubt he could have said the same thing to the church at Philippi, we make mention of you in our prayers. And to the church at Berea, we make mention of you in our prayers. And to the church of Corinth, we make mention of you in our prayers. And to the churches in Galatia, Lystra, Derbe, Iconium, Antioch, we make mention of you in our prayers.

And probably a whole lot more too. There had to be some system. There had to be some intentionality. It's clear that Paul didn't believe in just, what should I say, sort of spontaneous prayer on the fly of whatever happened to pop into his mind at the moment. But he had some kind of regular system to cause him to pray for who needed to be prayed for and to make sure he didn't forget he had a prayer list. Years ago, we had a member of our church who has now long been with the Lord. And he was quite a prayer warrior.

I miss that man. There's a number of former members that I miss because they were prayer warriors and we don't have their prayers with us any longer. I hope God has raised up others to be prayer warriors to take their place. But this particular man confided in me one day how it was that he prayed. He had a different prayer list for every day of the week.

And I don't remember the exact details, but it was something like this. On Monday, I pray for the missionaries. On Tuesday, I pray for all the members of the church. And maybe he divided that up.

Maybe A through L on Tuesday and M through Z on Wednesday or something like that. But I mean, he was serious about this. He went through and prayed for every member of the church on a regular basis. And then on Thursday, I do something else. I'm not sure what he prayed for on Thursday.

Maybe his own family and lost loved ones and who knows. But he had something specific on his list that he prayed for every day of the week. And he repeated that every week in a regular fashion. Now, that's his way of doing it. The Bible doesn't tell us how to do it.

The Bible doesn't instruct us to do it that way. But I said that before you just to give you an idea of what I think I see developing here in Paul's mention of his prayers. There's something regular.

There's something intentional. There's something organized about the prayers of Paul and his missionary team. And so he directed the prayers to the Christian God. He communicated with that God in prayer.

And he prayed primarily about the evidences of spiritual life. That's what he was giving thanks for more than anything else. We give thanks to God always for you all making mention of you and our prayers for what?

Verse three, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father. What are we most inclined to give thanks for in prayer? I hope that this is a big part of it, that what we're most grateful for is evidences of grace at work, evidences of spiritual life, evidences of advancements in the kingdom of Christ, evidences of the gospel going forth, evidences that relate to eternity. Of course, we should give thanks for all of the blessings of life. And so we thank God for our food every time we eat, I'm sure, and other times as well. We thank God for the other provisions of life.

We thank God for His protection, for the health that He's given us. These things are not incidental. They are important.

They're part of our lives. They ought to render thanks to God. We ought to render thanks to God for those.

But Paul doesn't mention any of that here. What he is most thankful for all has to do with the evidences of the work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of these people. Three manifestations of grace, your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope. This trio of Christian virtues that shows up in the New Testament a number of times. Most of us are familiar with the closing verse of 1 Corinthians 13, that great love chapter.

And when we get to the end of it, it says what? Now abideth these three, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. Why is love greater than faith and hope?

I think probably because it's the one that abides. Faith we must exercise now, but we won't need that when we get to heaven. We'll no longer live by faith, we'll live by sight. Hope has to do primarily with getting to heaven and realizing the ultimate hope that God has set before us in the culmination of salvation. And so when we get to heaven, we're not going to still be cultivating and entertaining hope. Our hope will all be realized. But when we get to heaven, love isn't finished.

Love is just beginning. We're going to grow and develop and experience greater and greater love for God and for others all throughout eternity. It's the one that abides. So there are these three, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. Well, here Paul puts them in a different order. He puts it faith, love, and hope, a trio of Christian virtues. And all of these are evidences of genuine faith. He says, I thank God for your faith that produces good works. Faith that produces good works. Your work of faith. It's not, as you all know, that faith saves us. But, as James makes very clear, a faith that doesn't have works is not a living faith, it's not a genuine faith, it's a dead faith. Living faith always produces good works. And Paul saw that, and he saw that in the Thessalonians, and so he thanked the Lord for a faith that produces good works. He thanked the Lord for a love that motivates good deeds. Again, as James tells us, James is very helpful about these things. James tells us, if our love is only words, it's worthless. We see our Christian brother who's hungry and cold and in need, and we say, God bless you, may God beat your need. We don't do anything to help him, even when we're able to do so.

What is that? Hypocrisy. That's not love. That's empty words.

That's worthless. But real love acts according to the needs. And Paul said, I see that. And the saints at Thessalonica, love that motivates good deeds. And he says, I see a hope that produces endurance. Patience of love in our Lord Jesus Christ, or patience of hope, rather. Patience of hope, or endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father.

And this seems to be in response to the persecutions which they were facing. And he says, it's your Christian hope that energizes you to keep on, to persevere, to endure, knowing that you've got something so much better coming that all of these trials and difficulties will seem like nothing when your hope is fully realized when you're with the Lord in heaven. It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. And there's the hope that produces endurance.

And so Paul is giving thanks for the evidences of living faith. But now we come to the last, larger section of chapter 1, an assurance of divine election in verses 4 through 10. Knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God.

What can we say about election? Well, we can say, first of all, that this is something that is known. That is, specifically, you can know whether or not you are elect.

You can know with pretty good certainty about others, whether or not they are elect. You say, well, I didn't think you could know that. Well, Paul did. Well, how did he know that? He was an apostle. Did he get that by divine revelation? Did God send Gabriel down to him one day and say, now, Paul, I want you to know that these people here in the church of Thessalonica are the elect of God. And Paul said, oh, I'm sure glad to know that. I wouldn't have known that any other way.

No, no, no, no. That's not what Paul says. He indicates something entirely different. He tells us that this is something that he knew, but it has to do with the evidences that were in their lives. They were recipients of the new birth. That's why he calls them brethren. They were objects of God's love.

That's why he calls them beloved. And they were included in God's choice. That's why he says your election by God, or as another Bible translation puts it, God's choice of you, knowing, beloved brethren, God's choice of you. Not your choice of God. Paul didn't say knowing, brethren, your choice of God or your choice of Jesus Christ or knowing your decision for Jesus Christ. Now, he could have said those things.

All of that would have been true. But the way Paul puts it and what he's teaching us here is that all of those things flow as a result of divine election. Divine election produces a choice for Christ, a decision for Christ.

It produces faith in our hearts toward Christ. But it's not our choice, our decision, our faith that makes us elect. It is God's choice of you, God's election that brings forth the decision, the faith, whatever you want to call it, of our hearts in the Lord Jesus Christ. God's choice of you.

I know that, said Paul. He doesn't say God's ratification of your choice. That's the way some people view it. Well, God looked down through the corridors of time and he saw ahead of time, because he knows everything, he saw ahead of time who would believe given the opportunity. So God said, I know that person will believe, therefore I choose him. So, in other words, this isn't God's choice.

This is God's ratification of your choice. Is that what the Bible says? Is that what it teaches?

No. It doesn't teach the doctrine of divine ratification. It teaches the doctrine of divine election, God choosing, God's choice of you. It is not, as some people terribly mangle it, that God casts one vote, the devil casts another vote, you cast the deciding vote.

Have you heard that one? That's what it means, election, it's a vote. God casts a vote for you, the devil casts a vote against you, and you cast the deciding vote. That's what the doctrine of election is all about. Well, if that's what it was, which it obviously isn't, then talking about the Thessalonians and knowing God's choice of them is absolutely meaningless, because in that misconstruction of things, God cast the same choice, God made the same choice for everybody in Thessalonica, everybody in all the world. All of them have had God vote for them, and all of them have had the devil vote against them, and now it all hangs on what you do with your choice, but that's not what the Bible teaches. That's a terrible mischaracterization of what the Bible teaches about the doctrine of election. No, this divine election is something that is manifested, and throughout the remainder of the chapter, Paul lists at least six evidences of how he knows that they are the elective God. Knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God, verse 5, for, because, for this reason, and now for the rest of the chapter, he starts listing reasons how he knows that they are in fact the elective God.

What are they? Number one, gospel reception, verse 5. Number two, changed lives, verse 6. Number three, they were examples to others, verse 7. Number four, they had an effective testimony, verse 8. Number five, they had rejected false religion, verse 9. And number six, they had a second coming expectation, verse 10. Six evidences of their election.

You probably could pull a few more out of there as well, but we'll look at these six. First of all, reception, gospel reception, verse 5. Knowing, beloved, your election of God, for, here's how I know, our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake.

The first and most important evidence of election is faith. The gospel came to you not in word only, that is, it didn't come in my proclamation without your response. Obviously, everybody Paul preached to didn't respond. In some places, he preached and hardly anybody responded. But at Thessalonica, he preached and not everybody responded. In fact, we read in Acts about some who did not believe and even persecuted him. But there were some who believed, and he's writing to those who believed. And he said, this is how I know your election of God. When I preached the gospel to all who I had opportunity to preach it to, I preached it in the synagogue, I preached it in general, I preached it to whosoever will. But he said, there were some who believed.

You Thessalonians believed in a way the others did not. You received that gospel in power and in the Holy Spirit. It came to you with special power. It came to you with the work of the Holy Spirit. It brought conviction to your hearts. It brought faith to your soul. And that's how I know you are the elect of God, because the gospel came to you in an effectual way that it did not come to others. In some cases, those who were sitting on the seat right beside you while I was preaching, and it came to you in power, and it didn't come to them. To them, it was just so many words, in word only. And to you, it came with convicting power. Gospel reception, number one.

Number two, changed lives. And, here's another reason I know, and you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction. That's why I linked their hope in the Lord Jesus Christ with perseverance and affliction.

You received the word in much affliction with joy in the Holy Spirit. When they embraced Christ, there was a cost attached. They weren't just chewing their bubble gum and walking down the aisle to make a little decision for Jesus.

It didn't cost them anything. In fact, it was expected of them, and everybody there applauded and patted them on the back, and said, now it's wonderful that you're going to heaven. When they identified themselves with Jesus Christ, they knew that they were getting a target painted on their back, and that the Jews, the unbelieving Jews in Thessalonica, and the hostile Gentiles in Thessalonica were going to make life very, very, very difficult for them if they dared to identify themselves as Christians, if they dared to say, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, if they dared to be baptized as a public testimony of their faith in Christ.

But they did it. And they became followers of Paul and of the others, and then became followers of Christ. Isn't that really how it works, particularly among new converts who didn't grow up in a Christian home or don't have a Christian background? When they first trust Christ, and they've got this new life, they say, now, how does a Christian act? And they look around and look at other Christians. They looked at Paul, they looked at Silas, they looked at Timothy, and they watched them, and they observed them, and they followed them, and they let them be their examples of what Christians are supposed to be like.

And that's the way you get started. Let's be sure, because people are watching us, let's be sure that we're giving a good example to those who are watching us in this way. But then as they grow in grace, they get beyond watching men, and they start focusing more upon Christ. They became followers of Christ, and that's the goal of Christian maturity. First to become followers of us, and then of the Lord. Changed lives.

What else? Example to others, verse 7. And so you became examples to all the Macedonian Achaea who believe. Like Paul, Silas, and Timothy had been initially examples to them, so now, as they grew in grace, they became examples to others. And Paul said, that gives me a pretty good clue that you are the elect of God, knowing your election of God, beloved brethren.

What else? Effective testimony, verse 8. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonian Achaea, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything. Their testimony has spread wider even than the whole land of Greece, the whole peninsula of Greece, which would be Macedonia and Achaea. Word, I take it, had reached the church in Rome that God had done a powerful work of grace in Thessalonica. Word had reached the church in Jerusalem. Word had reached the church in Antioch, Syria. Word had reached the churches of Galatia. Word had reached other places that a great work of God's powerful grace had taken place in Thessalonica, and they were proclaiming the gospel in this way throughout the world. There is this effective testimony. Number 5, there is rejection of false religion, verse 9. For they themselves declare, the people that your testimony has come to, they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you.

They can testify of the effectiveness of our preaching to you. And how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Their faith resulted in rejection of their former false religion as they embraced the one living and true God. Sometimes we hear reports of people, maybe particularly on mission fields, where, and I've heard this kind of report before, now these people are believing in Jesus, but they're still worshiping their traditional gods, and we want to see them grow out of that. I would suggest to you that that's not people who believed in Jesus. They may have liked the message of salvation in Christ and thought that was beautiful and charming, but this hasn't been a real new birth experience in their soul, because when somebody comes to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, comes to believe in Jesus as the only hope for salvation, as the only Savior for sin, then they immediately recognize the falsity of all other religion.

All that they used to put their hopes on, they realize is false, it's wrong, it's gone. I can't believe that anymore, because now I've come to believe that salvation is in Christ and Him alone. You can't really put faith in Jesus if you are also putting faith in something else. If your faith isn't in Jesus and Him alone, then it's not really saving faith in Jesus Christ, is it?

What are you doing, hedging your bets? I keep offering sacrifices to my traditional gods, hoping that they'll continue to help me, and I also tip my hat to Jesus Christ, I've added one more God to my God family. Well, not these folks, not the Thessalonians. Paul said when you received the gospel, you turned from your former gods, you turned from your idols, you turned from your traditional religion, you turned from the religion of your family and community. That's what brought on a lot of the suffering and persecution, but they had to do it, they knew they had to do it. And Paul said, now I know, you are indeed the elect of God, if you had kept going to those pagan temples and offering sacrifices to those false gods, I'd know good and well that a work of grace has not yet been done in your soul, there's still work to do, I'd keep praying for your salvation, that you would really come to see the truth of salvation in Christ alone, but look, here's evidence that you've seen that.

You have renounced your former religion, you've turned from it. And finally, they're looking for Christ to come, they're looking for the second coming, to wait for His Son from heaven, verse 10, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Every chapter in 1 Thessalonians ends with a reference to the second coming, and here it is, another evidence of salvation, another evidence of their election. Elect people are looking for the return of Jesus Christ. That's how I know your election of God.

Well, let me talk a little bit more by way of application about this challenging doctrine of election, and it is challenging, but I assure you that it is taught in Scripture all throughout Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, it's amazing how often it is taught. Many of you, when you first finally came to see it for the first time, you started seeing it everywhere. How did I miss it before? It's almost like you got the other half of your Bible, the half you thought you had but somehow weren't getting, and now suddenly there it is, and it's everywhere. I mean, Old Testament, New Testament, it's everywhere. What did God say to Moses about who he was? He said, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.

When I do my will, I harden. Is that in the Bible? It is. It's taught all throughout Scripture. The doctrine of election is God's sovereign choice of His people. It is His choice. It has nothing to do with our choice. It's His choice.

He's not ratifying what we did or would do. It's His choice. It's sovereign choice of His people, apart from human merit or foreseen faith. The reasons for His choice are unknown to us. He did not reveal them. They're hidden in the counsels of God. He doesn't choose to tell us how He decided to make His choices.

He just tells us He did. This doctrine of election is openly declared by Christ and His apostles, to both saints and sinners. It's not a secret. It's not a family secret, as some have told me. It is openly declared.

Christ declared it to sinners. You don't come to me. You don't believe in me because you're not of my sheep.

That's why. My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. The reason you're not believing, the reason you're not coming, is because you're not in that category.

You're not one of my sheep. Boy, that's pretty plain. Christ isn't holding back. He's telling the truth. Evidently, this is part of the gospel. Evidently, Paul considered it part of the gospel. Evidently, when Paul made reference to it here, he didn't apologize for it and say, Now, I know this is going to be real difficult for you, but I need to mention it anyway. It clearly is something that he had talked to them before. He just mentions it in passing.

He goes right on. Knowing, beloved brethren, your election of God. The challenging doctrine of election does not contradict the responsibility of men to believe in Christ. Nor their guilt for refusing to believe in Christ. That's the problem.

You've got these two strands. You've got divine sovereignty and you've got human responsibility. It's very difficult for us to get these two things together in our minds. But the doctrine of election does not contradict the responsibility of men to believe in Christ. The doctrine of election does not absolve Christians of the responsibility of proclaiming the gospel to the world. Though difficult to reconcile and impossible to fully understand, nevertheless, it is in God's word and it must be accepted by faith. If you refuse to believe anything and everything in the Bible that you could not fully understand, then you would refuse the doctrine of the Trinity because you don't fully understand that. You would reject the doctrine of the, are you ready for this big word? The hypostatic union of Christ.

The combination of His divine nature and His human nature combined into one person in the way that we can't fully understand. If you didn't have to fully understand it to believe it, you'd reject that doctrine. If you only believe what you fully understand, then you'll really have trouble with the Bible account of creation, how God brought this world into being. You'll have questions and doubts about that because you can't understand that. In fact, you probably, like many others, question the miracles of Christ and other miracles in the Bible because you can't understand that.

In fact, if I wanted to, I could make a pretty good list of things that you would have to reject if the standard is I've got to be able to understand this before I can believe it. No, you don't. You must believe what God declares.

You must. That's what faith is, believing the revelation of God, whether you understand it or not. There is something about this particular doctrine that is particularly difficult for many.

Even those who will gladly accept the Trinity by faith, though they don't understand it, and all the other things I mentioned, they'll accept all those other things by faith as the Bible declares them. There's something about this one that seems harder for some people, and I think it's wrapped up in our human pride. This is a tough one on human pride.

Whoa, is it tough. It really takes everything out of our hands. It puts it all in the hands of a sovereign God.

But that's the way it's supposed to be. We don't get even this little smidgen of glory for salvation. We can't even take credit for believing.

Our faith came to us by the work of God within us, not by anything that we came up with on our own. It just leaves us humbled in the dust. Who am I? How can it be? How can it be that God should love a soul like me? How can it be?

It leaves us in the dust. There's something about man's pride that makes this one particularly difficult, and there's something challenging about what this tells us about God that is difficult, particularly if for a long time we've had lower views of God and erroneous views of God, and we recognize if this is true, then God is not exactly the way I thought He was. My concept of God is wrong.

It's defective. That's pretty hard to swallow, particularly if you've been a Christian for a while, that the God I've been believing in is actually not quite the God of the Bible. I'm not saying that you weren't saved before.

I don't draw that conclusion at all. I'm saying you won't really understand God as He has revealed Himself to us until you say, I yield, I surrender, I accept, I believe. I don't understand. It's a test of faith. It's a test of submission. It's a test of teachableness. Are you teachable?

Can you be taught things from Scripture that you didn't know before? It's a test of obedience, and it is vitally important to your understanding of God, your proper understanding of salvation, your ability to grow in grace and knowledge, because if you don't, this is going to be an obstacle. It's going to kind of be a barrier across your path.

You can't get past this. It's going to be an obstacle to your full spiritual health. It's going to be an obstacle to your ability to bring the full honor and glory to Christ with your life that otherwise you would bring. So you just need to say, like a little child, Lord, I believe. Like that man in the Bible, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. But I believe it because you said it. That's all it takes. Jesus loves me.

This I know. Why? For the Bible tells me so. God has chosen me amazing, amazing, but I see evidences of it in my life. I've come to faith. I've come to want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. God has chosen me. This I know.

Why? For the Bible tells me so. That's all that is needed. Shall we pray? Father, indeed, long before creation, you have chosen us in love. And though we do not fully understand this doctrine and never will until we get to heaven, and maybe not even fully then, we believe it because you said it. And we come as humble children before a mighty sovereign God to accept and believe what you have revealed. Help us, O Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.