1 Thessalonians 1:4-5 (Part A)

If I want to be foolish enough to reject Him, then I can. Because God treats me like a man. He expects me to behave like a man. He expects that when I say something, I mean it. Satan is doing all that he can in our society, incidentally, to cause men to not be men, to be something else.

That doesn't mean they're automatically women. 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 First 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 in the Book of First Thessalonians, chapter 1, for today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Let's open our Bibles to the First Thessalonian letter, chapter 1.

We will resume at verse 4. Not by accident that the Bible uses the metaphor of sheep for God's people. Sheep, real sheep, have no chance of survival against wolves and predators. They have no defense system. They can't even handle the elements by themselves.

Find food and water and shelter. Harm will come to them without the shepherd. It is also interesting that when the wolves are coming close to where the sheep are, that the wolves pick up the scent of the shepherd. It causes them to halt in their tracks sometimes, hunker down, and make a decision whether it's worth it or not to go after the sheep. Incidentally, sheep refute evolution of the species, that erroneous idea that has made its way through what is truly science and has infiltrated it and become fake science.

There would be no way for sheep to evolve without a shepherd. And so it's just another presentation of God concerning His truth that's just so simple. This flock in Thessalonica was, as we have been considering, only a few months old when Paul was forced to leave them and escape for his life. Knowing that they needed a shepherd, Paul took to writing these two letters to shepherd them through the Word of God until God would raise up for Himself pastors within the flock at Thessalonica, which He did do. I want to read from the book of Acts, chapter 20, verse 28. Some of you may remember this is when Paul was going towards Jerusalem before he would be arrested in Jerusalem and then taken to Rome. But he is on his way and he stops off at Miletus and he does not want to go into the city of Ephesus because he knows that because of his relationships with the church there and the people that he'd get bogged down he wouldn't be able to make his deadline to Jerusalem. So he invites the church leaders to come to him at Miletus and they do. And there's that beautiful speech that he gives to them in the 20th chapter of the book of Acts, but he says here in verse 28, therefore take heed to yourselves, remember he's speaking to the pastors, and to the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

Our word pastor comes from the Latin, which means shepherd, and Paul is shepherding this flock through this letter and we now pick it up in verse 4 where he continues to say to them things that they're going to need, he says, knowing beloved brethren your election by God. Now it's very disappointing for me to have to take time on this verse. It's a very simple verse. It's really not complicated, but it has been made complicated throughout Christian circles by men who, in my opinion, just like to write a lot of things about things that don't need a lot of writing. Their meaning is right there, it's for everyone to enjoy, but they have muddied the waters.

So I'm going to take a little time to address this. The Greek word here for elect is chosen. That's what an election is. And so they are chosen by God. Well, everyone who is saved is chosen by God and everyone who is not saved is not chosen by God. He himself, as the shepherd, will separate the sheep from the goats. In that part of the world, the shepherds keep, that part of the world being Israel, the shepherds keep the sheep and the goat together and then when it's time to go feed them, take them out into pastures, they separate them because their eating habits are different, their manners are different. Goats will, you know, stand up on their hind legs and eat from a tree, but sheep, they're not as able to do these things.

So the shepherd separates them and it is this metaphor, again, that Jesus used to describe what goes on with our good shepherd God. Any, in fact, a mark of intelligence is to make intelligent choices versus merely instinctive choices. Animals make choices out of instinct. We think about it a little bit, ideally speaking. In fact, companies know that many of us will make instinctive choices and that's why they have what's called the impulsive rack at the checkout counter.

You have no need for a battery or a flashlight this big, but there it is and it can be yours for only $1.99 and so impulsively you buy it and it sits at home in the drawer and where the lights are off and nobody's there to turn it on. So any choice amongst intelligent beings is based on information. It is based on thought and conditions and terms, especially the critical ones. It is processed through the brain and the heart and the will and whoever responds to God's invitation, that person is a whosoever and the one who does not respond, who rejects, that person is the whosoever rejects.

It's not complicated. So what this verse is not telling us that God impulsively chooses by whim or some unknown law who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. No, he has made it clear. It is the mystery of salvation which is not a mystery any longer because the New Testament has explained it to us. We know how God makes this choice. He makes this choice by giving the invitation to someone to be saved from the judgment because of their sins through the blood of Jesus Christ and when we say yes Lord, we accept these terms and we follow through on it. We are elected. We are chosen to heaven.

Now, not only the whomsoever wills that come to Christ, but the whosoever remains. I don't know why that is such a difficult concept. I do know why it's a difficult concept for Christians.

I just don't know why they let it be a difficult concept. If I want to, say if you were a pastor of a mega church, you know 2,000 people a Sunday would attend that church. I could thin that flock out in one Sunday to about a couple of hundred people real quick and I would just go at the sacred cows of American Christianity. Sacred cows make just as good a steak as any other.

Why not? It's annoying that people have these things. If you live in a country where you're starving and you can't touch the meat because of some superstition, you get pretty frustrated. I get pretty frustrated with Christians who will toss away a good church for a bad church simply because they want to cling to a sacred cow. And this whole idea of once saved, always saved is one of our sacred cows. First off, if your opinion is, well, let me put it this way. If I am right when I say, listen, you're saved because you want to be saved.

You've accepted the invitation and you are free to go if you want to. If you say, well, I don't agree with that, fine, there's no harm done in my view. I'm not hurting anyone except maybe making the nervous Nellies more uncomfortable. But if I say, listen, if you abide in Christ as He says in John 15, you're fine. But if you reject Him, you're not fine even if you have rejected Him. Well, the person who disagrees with that and rejects Christ is in jeopardy. If they say, well, I'm safe, I can do whatever I want.

Once I'm saved, I'm always saved. I have a big problem with that. A problem with that because the Bible doesn't teach it. And one of the lines that they always throw up at us is, well, or me, maybe not you, because you may say, you know, I don't agree with you. That's fine.

Not a dividing point unless you want to make it a dividing point. But for me personally as a Christian man, not as a pastor, as a Christian man, I don't see this taught in Scripture. I do not see that when we come to Christ, we lose our free will. God has given us a free will.

He's not made us puppets. And so when we exercise our free will, we are living in the image of God. That's what makes us different from the animal kingdom, the rest of the animal kingdom, is that we think things through or are supposed to. And we make an intelligent choice, a decision.

We have a will. It is our will that governs, not our instincts. And when the human beings break with this, then they often become animals. Animalistic, I should say, when a human being is just led by their passions.

This describes addictions. This describes so many abuses that humans find themselves engaging in when they let their instincts, their whims, their emotions govern their lives. And the higher part of their being, the higher side of their manhood or their womanhood gets put out of the picture. And this is against the idea of what the Holy Spirit teaches. We are guided by God, not through what we think is right, but what He says is right.

Now I know I make you very uncomfortable, some of you, when I talk about this once saved, always saved. So let me put it this way. You are elected if you say, let me stay. You are rejected if you say, let me leave. Listen, this is a tactic of Islam. It is a tactic of the mob to say, once you're in, you can't get out. You have no free will.

You're not able to undo your choice. It's not how God created us. Why are so many Christians disturbed by this? Why is it they don't want to know that they have any responsibility in Christ?

That's it right there. They want to know, I'm saved. I've made such a mess of things in my life. If I'm left to stay saved on my own strength, then I'm going to mess it up, so I don't want to believe that. Well, you're not left alone. God says, I will fight fiercely for those who come to me. But there's one thing I will not do. For anyone who comes to me, I will not force them to love me. I will not force them to stay with me.

So if a person says, well, I don't like that, that's the voice of fear. I've been a Christian for many years, and I've always believed that it's my choice to stay with Christ. He helps me do that. I am kept by Him. If I want to be foolish enough to reject Him, then I can, because God treats me like a man. He expects me to behave like a man.

He expects that when I say something, I mean it. Satan is doing all that he can in our society, incidentally, to cause men to not be men, to be something else. That doesn't mean they're automatically women. That's bad by itself to be a man and then be a woman or to be a woman and then be a man. But there's something more sinister is now taking place. They're not either men nor women.

They're sort of, eh. I was talking to a neighbor of mine, an unbelieving neighbor who I'm still working on. He doesn't know it.

He might. But anyway, he was saying, you know, I was at the mall the other day, and while my wife was out putting us in debt, I was, no, he didn't say that, but he said, my wife was out shopping. Now, if you're part of Women's Lib, you don't like any talk like that, that's your problem. I'm not part of Women's Lib. But if you are, I don't have those hangups and you're good with it.

Anyway, can't even enjoy a joke anymore. Anyway, while his wife was shopping, he said, you know, I was watching the men. This is an unbeliever talking. I was watching these young men in their 20s, and they were with some girls their age, too, and they did not even look like men. They didn't look like women. They weren't carrying themselves like women, but they did not look like men either.

They didn't look like young men. Their identity is lost. They don't know who they are.

Satan's doing this on purpose. There's no shepherd to remind the flock what God has said about his word. If we have an identity problem as Christians, the system breaks down. We're supposed to know who we are and where we're going, what has been done for us, and who has done it. That is called blessed assurance. We are to go out in strength. We have many women that have ambition but no virtue.

Why? Because the world is dictating how you think. They're doing it through the entertainment world and the news media, anywhere they can, around the water cooler.

You notice that the goats will chew on anything. They'll believe anything that's thrown their way. We're supposed to be different. When you go to a church, you say, I like that church.

You are supposed to say why you like it, not just, well, I felt good. It's sad to see someone bring a friend to church and a person gets ministered to. Then the friend leaves that church and the one that they brought leaves too but doesn't even know why they left. Well, my friend left. That's pathetic.

Shouldn't it be that way? Well, it should be, well, you know, I'm staying and here's why I'm staying or I'm going and here's why I'm going. Leaving is the word. Peter writes, he says, elect, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace be multiplied for the obedience.

I mentioned this when we were talking about our pastoral ministry here. If you uphold the word of God as a pastor or as a Christian, you risk being labeled legalistic, narrow-minded, self-righteous, harsh and meanie pants. Meanie pants Christians, how dare you obey Jesus and expect me to do the same.

Now, if you don't uphold the faith, then you are labeled a hypocrite, a weakling, an apostate and rightfully so. We're supposed to have conviction. We're supposed to live as though we have a Lord and Master. We know what he wants and we know where he is going because we're following him. Thus, we say the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Why? Because he's taking care of me. And when it says, and he leads me through the valley of the shadow of death. For the sheep, anywhere without the shepherd is the valley of death automatically by default. There's even footage of a sheep leaving a flock taken in Israel. And as he leaves the flock, the shepherd doesn't know he's gone. As you can see the shepherd with the sheep leading them in the opposite direction and as the sheep is leaving, he looks back at the flock and then he continues to leave, heads out toward the wilderness. When Jesus said, are you two going to leave?

He gave him a choice. You're free to go. If you want to go, have at it. I love that the Lord has it this way. It makes me stronger. It makes me say, no Lord, where else am I going to go? I'm staying right here with you, thick or thin. Things I don't like, I don't want them. That's not enough to chase me from you. And so again, we cannot say that God has endowed us with free will and then say we can't exercise it.

You can exercise it to the end and then this is strength. And I think one of the reasons why we have such a weak church, oh, and the church in America is getting weaker and weaker day by day because more of the world is in the church and less of the churches in the world. They're calling the shots. And to see how Christians, how quickly they crumble over the silliest things that they don't know anything. You know, some Christians have less material than what you need to bait a fish hook to make a decision about what they believe in because they're just following other things.

They're following the crowd. They're not listening to the word themselves. They're not proving these things.

They're not digging into them. Now, this idea of predestination that comes up in the scriptures, we are predestined in Christ. When did the word predestination become synonymous with the word forced?

It's not. We're not forced to hell or forced to heaven. If you choose to follow Christ, that path leads you to salvation eternal. If you choose no longer to follow him, that path is predestined for doom.

You see, it's very simple. Sovereignty. Sovereignty is God being unmatched, totally in control, at the mercy of no one. It has come to mean tyrant.

He's tyrannical. His will be done on his believers whether they want it or not. It's not scriptural. It's not found in scripture. Now, he does influence us. Jonah, the disgorged prophet. God never forced Jonah to go to Nineveh, but he did influence him, strongly, I might add. What do I got to do? Have a fish gobble you up?

What do you have to, you know, puke you out on a beach? What has to happen to get me to listen to you, to get you to listen to me is part of it. And so all who believe in Jesus are predestined to be saved, elected to salvation by faith. That is the gospel. That is the good news that you have a chance.

What are you going to do with it? Now, if you tell people, listen, God's already decided who's getting saved, then why does he need me to evangelize? You would think this would be so simple. I've said more than I, and I have so much more I could say to refute these silly things, but it's like blowing against the wind. So many Christians have stampeded into this line of thinking that they don't even want to change or give it a chance to say, hey, wait a minute. Free will.

It's a special thing from the Lord. It's not the same thing when you're struggling with certain sins. You see, temptations and seductions, they go outside of free will. That's why Paul says, I do that which I will not do. That is a sinful nature, and you will not lose your salvation over that. There is no sin that can take your salvation from you except if you decide you no longer want it. This is scriptural, and it is an experience. There are many people who have been used in the Gospel, have fallen away from the faith, and who walked no more, and I just find it heartbreaking. People will come to a church where the Word of God is preached, where the people in the congregation will love them, will minister to them because they love the Lord and they can endure, they can stand the Word of God, and they'll come to a church like that, and then over such a silly thing as this, they'll leave and they'll go to a church where the Word of God is not upheld, where the people are not loving and kind, they're tolerable perhaps. And so what is a man like me supposed to do when I know these things are going on and we come to such a verse as this? I'm going to take my shots at it, that's what I'm going to do, unless the Lord tells me not to. Free will is taught, it is declared, it is illustrated in Scripture, Leviticus 19.15, if you offer a sacrifice of a peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it of your own free will. It's not a separate, there's not two categories of free will, one for doing what you want to do, and another one you don't have when it comes to walking with Jesus Christ.

No, it's across the board. Luke's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 42, Jesus speaking about Mary who chose to sit at His feet and receive the Word, He said one thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her. You catch that last part? Nobody's taking this from her. Now if she wants to throw it out the window, fine, but now I'm not taking it from her and I'm not going to let anybody else take it from her. I've never felt my salvation was in jeopardy. I've had moments of doubt, but I've never had, gee, I wonder if I'm going to be lost now. Jesus died for me. There is now therefore no condemnation on me. No one's going to snatch me out of His hand, but He will not make me a hostage either. He will not do to me what Islam does. He will not say, once you're in, you can't get out. I don't care about your free will.

God does not treat me that way. 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.