Well, he says patience, the patience of hope, waiting for the Son of Heaven. You see, the Thessalonians were excited at the idea that Jesus is coming back. They missed His first coming physically. They weren't there in Jerusalem to see Him or the Galilean region.
They missed it. And the thought of seeing Him just caused all sorts of excitement, sometimes a little bit too much. That's why He's going to deal with that in the second letter when He starts to kind of stabilize them, stabilizes them there. Today on Cross-Reference Radio, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. For you all, making mention of you in our prayers. Again, knowing the difficulty that they were going through, but also understanding how difficult it is to win a convert, to be used by God to win a convert. How difficult.
And then, then how difficult it is to disciple them. You know, maybe you've been used by God on a long-distance relationship in some way to lead someone to Christ. And, you know, then you check in on them and you call and say, how you doing?
I'm doing fine. Well, what are you doing with the Lord? Well, I'm going to this church. You go, what?
Oh, man. But I like it over there. I feel the earth move. And, and it's like, good night. How about truth? How about truth? Never mind this emotional razzle dazzle.
And the sky's falling, which would be frightening. But that's what you get. And that's discipleship. I didn't, you know, I didn't lead you to the truth so you can go follow these loony tunes around.
Just because they use Jesus' name doesn't mean they use His word. And if they're not doing the two together, we have a great big problem. And it's hard to wrench them free. But, but they, but I like it over there. Mr., you need a deeper voice.
Well, anyway. And so when he says we give thanks to God always for you all, he's saying, I understand how difficult this is. I understand how quickly you can drift right into dangerous water.
Serpent infested, infested waters. He says, making mention of you in our prayers. He's burdened with the needs of the people. How can you not if you're a Christian? How can you not be burdened with the needs of the people? That's what a relief ministry is. There's a burden.
I can't just sit here. Of course, it's, you know, every need's not a calling. That would, that would bump out the Holy Spirit. We're under the authority of God. But we're all stirred to pray. There's a calling there. There's always a calling to pray.
There's always a calling to do what God leads us to do. And He always leads us to do that which is right if we let Him. And so how could He forget them?
He could not. He's going to say that as we move now to verse 3. He says, 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. All over this introduction, we're just up to the third chapter, and how many times has He brought up Jesus Christ and God the Father?
And I love that He has done, that He does this. This is out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. We communicate. He says, remembering without ceasing.
There was no interruption. He was always mindful of them. He had not long been gone from there, but He still was always mindful of them. And not only this, He was mindful of those in Philippi, in Galatia, wherever He had preached the gospel, He was mindful of them all the time. But He introduces here a famous word to us who believe, faith, hope, and love. And He writes that from Corinth later, but the Thessalonian letter comes first. He wrote the Thessalonian letter before He wrote the letters to the Corinthians.
Another theme that Paul was big on was the just living by faith. He picked up that from Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4. Behold the proud, wrote the prophet. The proud are those who are full of themselves.
They're puffed up with them. And he says, his soul is not upright in him. You would think it's the other way. He's proud. He must have accomplished something. Look how he struts around like a little rooster. He must be a big dog, or get a little rooster big dog.
Anyway, you really got to be smart to catch that. Anyway, back to the scripture from the prophet Habakkuk. Behold the proud, his soul's not right. It's not right in him, not upright with God. Then he says, but the just shall live by faith.
The just don't need this placard over their head. Look at me. Look what I've accomplished. You know, I'm this and I'm that. The just simply serve the Lord. And we find Paul mentioned the just living by faith in the Roman letter, in the Galatian, and in the Hebrew letter. But now we find him talking about another theme that is just as powerful, as I said, faith, hope, and love.
And he has quite a bit to say about it. In the fifth chapter of this first letter, Paul will say, let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. And we'll, of course, open that up when we get to the fifth chapter towards the end of the year, but there it is. And then later he will write from in that chapter on love, and we're going to talk about love in a minute.
Oh, no. Love is a nice thing to talk about. It's just a very, very difficult thing to execute. Agape love, not phileo. Phileo love, you do what you like.
I mean, it feels good and it's right. That's phileo. Eros, you know, comes naturally, a romantic type of love. All of them can be twisted. Stroge, the love for the family. But the agape love, the spiritual love that was communicated to us in unmatched brilliance in the life of Christ is what we're called to do. And that is the most difficult. And why is it most difficult?
Because it's the love we're supposed to show to those who aren't very loving, also. People you just don't like. And there are a lot of them on earth. I mean, I probably have got more than you because that's how I am. But chapter 13, when Paul is talking, and that just means my work's more cut off for me.
I'm a harder worker. And I'm glad you're laughing. And if you're visiting here, I like to, listen, laughter is a medicine and mindful of that. It's also dangerous from the pulpit.
Sometimes I think it might get away, but I hope not. But I don't mind when the congregation can laugh because some of us need it. We've got tough things going on when we leave here. There's not many things that are funny. You come to the house of God and we can be increasingly serious, and at the same time there can be some levity.
And so laughter does the heart good like medicine. But in the 13th chapter of Corinthians, he says, and now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. Well, I wish he had said hope.
That's an easy one. You can always hope. Hope I get the love. How about that? But he says the love. That's it.
If you get that one, you've got all the rest. You will spend your entire Christian life trying to perfect this, or you will just spend your Christian life wasted. We are supposed to advertise God's love, yes, through the word and through deeds, through what we are ourselves. But love is always work. Gagape love always is a labor. Even when it comes easy, it might not come back so quickly.
That makes it work yet again. We cannot serve without faith. The Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God. And the faith, the Christian faith, again, block out the world's definition.
Never let them near your dictionary. Your words are given to you from God, the word of God. And our definition of faith is trusting God because of the revelation of God, not just because it seemed like a good idea to do at the time. We have a reason for the hope that is in us. And it inspires hope, looking for God to work. But hope, hoping in God, is not a demand. You know, we can knock on heaven's door, but we're never allowed to kick it down.
We're never allowed to try to come in through the window. The thief does that. We knock on the door as Jesus taught us in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, if possible, take this cup. He could have taken it away himself because he's equal with the Father. I can call 12 legions right now.
In fact, I can sneeze and blow you all away. But he did not do that. And so hope, hope is just that. It leaves an opening for whatever God wants to do. There would be no martyrs.
No one would suffer and die for the faith if God just did whatever we begged him to do. And so, love Jesus. Love the Word of God. Love each other and love the lost.
Ew, the lost. I only like them when someone sees me saving them. Now, I'm talking about the loss that all of them, some of them are more pleasant than others, granted, but we are on patrol.
We're ready for whatever pops up as Christians. That's the goal. You know, you patrol around. I've had a lot of snakes at my house this year. I've shot quite a few of them. Sometime I go patrolling and I take extra ammo because I might have a neighbor who's a snake lover. No, kidding.
Dance, partner. Anyway, but I'm ready when I go patrolling for one of them to stick up their venomous head so I can separate it. But on the right side, love patrols too, but not looking to lop someone's head off. It looks to win them to Christ. It's always mindful that Christ may bring someone their way. And so, we love the Lord Jesus.
That's easy. I've met many Christians that say, I love the Lord Jesus. And usually, not usually, but many times, that's all they've got. But what about His Word?
Hmm? Well, we have to love what He says. That's what makes Him Master and Lord. Loving each other. Okay, there are people that I don't go to church because church isn't there. Well, I'm a Christian, though.
Well, maybe you don't love each other. And then the burden for the lost. If you're not burdened for lost souls, you're either, I don't want to just limit it to that, but you're probably more burdened with yourself, that's why. When your eyes are just on your problems and your sorrows, that's all you can think about.
Why should you be thinking about anybody else? And so, be careful. May we all guard against these things. And you say, but this is, you know, pastor, that's nice on a sunny day. I know, but Jesus calls it to be the way every day for all of us. So, the work of faith consisted for these Thessalonians, as we'll get to later, in turning from idols to the living God. As we said last week, it was more than just a reformation. It was a realization. It was a realization that man cannot make God.
That God made man. And that sin has entered in and man is not what God made him to be. And God did not just abandon him. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord didn't say, well, abandon ship. Abandon ship is done with.
Let it sink. They went right into, because it was foreordained from the foundations of the earth, they went right into the next phase that was already waiting lost sinners. Block them from the tree of life until another tree comes. The tree of the cross. In heaven, which we'll get to in the 22nd chapter of Revelation, there's the tree of life in heaven.
Not just one of them either. And we all can partake of its fruit and its seasons. In every season, there's a fruit. Well, he says, patience. The patience of hope.
Waiting for the Son of Heaven. You see, the Thessalonians were excited at the idea that Jesus is coming back. They missed his first coming, physically.
They weren't there in Jerusalem to see him or the Galilean region. They missed it. And the thought of seeing him just caused all sorts of excitement.
Sometimes a little bit too much. And that's why he's going to deal with that in the second letter when he starts to stabilize them, stabilizes them there. God has so designed his word that every Christian is to be excited with the thought of the sudden return of Jesus Christ. There is not one prophetic item that must be fulfilled for him to come for his church. He can come at any time. And when he says in Revelation 22, behold, I come quickly, the Greek really is suddenly. Not according to time, but when you just boom, he's there. When that moment is, there's nothing that will stop it.
And so throughout this letter, these great facts have to be recognized because without recognition they cannot be illustrated and applied and without that they cannot be fruit. And so the work of faith is how we come to Christ. By grace you have been saved through faith. That opens the door. Christ did it, but to receive it we have to trust him.
We enter into this relationship. The labor of love is the activity of that belief. Okay, then what happened? You got saved, then what happened? Have you ever heard people say about some other people, you know, you got religion. I liked him better before he got religion.
Because oftentimes they become legalistic, self-righteous, judgmental. That's not a labor of love, love of themselves maybe. Patience of hope, strength of understanding that God can do the unexpected.
God can, he's right here. He's never apart from us. And so every part of work is love. Love is an exotic. It is not indigenous to our nature. You know, an indigenous tree, an oak tree is indigenous to various oaks. A white oak is indigenous to Virginia. They grow here.
But a palm tree is not. You'd have to bring it here. And if you brought it here you'd have to take care of it to have it survive.
Because the surrounding elements are not friendly with it. Well that's what agape love is. It's an exotic. It has to be brought into the human experience. And once it's brought in it has to be nurtured and protected, treated like an exotic. If you just let it grow it's going to die.
You have to fertilize it and give it care. And we do that through our devotion time, our prayer, our service and activity. You know, have you ever been on the schedule to serve in the church and you've got a mood on and you don't feel like serving that day, but you must?
That's giving it care. Duty is part of victory. And those who have no sense of duty really cannot be counted on.
They cannot be trusted to fulfill the demands that life's going to throw our way as Christians. If you don't believe that love is an exotic, read the 13th chapter of Corinthians and tell me if you do it or not. Love never fails. That one alone challenges us.
Christ delights in our love of His love and He delights in our perseverance to demonstrate it. And so I want to read a verse from 1 John, John's first letter, because is it not hard to love fools? Anybody here, I just love fools.
I'd love to stay away from them. And yet, how does the fool have any chance of being anything other than a fool if someone does not bring to him the wisdom of Christ? Okay, I agree with that. Well, who's going to bring it? I elect you. I thought that was kind of funny at the moment.
It was in my head, but once I did it, it felt pretty stupid. 1 John 5, verse 3, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
Oh yeah, they are. To who? My flesh. My sinful nature. It's a drag. The Lord says, you know what, if you look at a woman for lust, you've already committed to sin.
Huh? That's not fair. Oh, it is very fair. Because it's what's inside of you that causes you to be dirty. And if it's not dealt with in Christ, if the blood of Jesus Christ does not intercept the consequences of that, then you're a lost sinner beyond hope. And so when John says, His commandments are not burdensome, they're not burdensome to the Spirit, to me who was born again, everything I hear in God's Word.
That's right. Amen. Don't covet. Don't fornicate.
Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't kill. Don't have false gods. Don't trample upon the things of God.
I agree with all of this. And he says, And patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Are you patient with God's methods? Are you patient with His timing? He says, I'm going to come back. Well, He hasn't come back yet.
But are you still good with it? Is the promise still fine with you? 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 13. And now abide. Faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. And so with these three, we see parallels in God's creation.
And I believe that there are parallels to God's Word in God's creation because He is the author of both. For example, time. There's time past, present, and future. We accept that. In space, we accept that there is height, width, and depth. We understand that. With matter, we understand that there's a solid, liquid, and gas. Okay?
We're all good with that. But as Christians, we have to equally say there is faith, there is hope, there is love, and I must have those three, just like the universe must have the things that I just mentioned. They go together. And so Paul takes this idea of faith, hope, and love and he says, this is not abstract. This is concrete.
This is real. This is not some, you know, poem that just you recite it and you feel good and that's the end of it. It's the beginning of it once you come into the knowledge of this. In verse 9, he's going to speak of their work of faith, how they turned to God. He's also going to speak of their labor of love. To serve the Lord, he says. That's love. You serve Jesus Christ out of love. That's it.
Anything less than that is wrong. Now within that love, there is responsibility and duty and joy and all the other things, but love is what causes us to serve. And if you're in ministry, you have to get this checked often because there are going to be things to strip this away from you. Just like you spend it. You burn it up.
Use it like fuel in a car. Patience of hope. In verse 10, we'll find them waiting on the Lord. And so faith is a work of the will.
That's who I am. My soul. I do not believe we become Christians and we lose our free will.
In any sense. You can stay, you can go. We are in God's image. We have a will. And animals, they work almost solely off of instinct.
The human being has a will, has instinct too. James chapter 2. Someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works.
It's got to come to life. Something has got to breathe life into action and that is the Holy Spirit. John's gospel, chapter 6. Then they said to him, what shall we do that we may work the works of God? And Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent. And that sense, that is the only sense, faith is a work. It is an action of me. It's a response to God. By grace, I am saved. God makes the invitation. Through faith, does that mean, does it mean anything? It means nothing without saying yes, Lord, I accept it. Luke's gospel, chapter 5. And he said to Simon, launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.
But Simon answered and said to him, master, we have toiled all night and caught Paducas. Nevertheless, well, that's nothing. Nevertheless, at your word, I will let down the net. See, that's the lordship of Christ. All right, master, you know, I don't see it. But you're the boss. You're more than the boss.
You are the master and I'll do what you say. That is faith in action. And he says, finally, in verse 3, in the sight of our God and Father, everything believers do is with this knowledge, the nearness of God. Everything we do as a born again Christian is with this knowledge, the nearness of God. God is here.
We speak about the coming of Christ. We speak about him coming into view, not arriving. He's always here. The universe is his. There's no place in the universe that he's shut out from.
That's not pantheism. God is not the wood of the pulpit here. But he is here.
And there's no way to escape him. The believer loves this. The unbeliever does not. Well, I want to close with this verse and we'll start off next week because knowing, in verse 4, which says knowing, beloved brethren, your election, we probably need to spend a little time on election.
It's not like a public election casting ballots, but there is a choice involved. I close with this verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6. For us, there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live.
The nearness of God, inescapable for the true believer. 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.
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