1 Thessalonians 1:6-8 (Part B)

We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

We are hard pressed on every side yet not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 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 1 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. Chapter 1 of the book of 1 Thessalonians is where Pastor Rick will be teaching today on Cross Reference Radio. You would think they would resent that this man Paul had come preaching to Savior who doesn't save from the troubles in the neighborhood.

But wait a minute. Again, Paul came there saying, Look on my back. I bear on my body the marks of Christ because I saw Him.

I heard His voice. I'm not disobedient. Not only do I stand but sometimes I limp. But I limp in faith and hope. You know, you cannot have, no sane person can have joy without hope. That's for the insane. The insane can have hope, rather joy, with no hope.

They've convinced themselves outside of reality. The Christian says, My joy is beyond these things and it can't be touched. And so their remarkable response to hardship was not to punish God for letting them down.

As people do. I trusted you and you let this happen in my life. You took this away from me. You know the prophet Ezekiel was told by God? He said, God said to Ezekiel, I am going to take your wife from you this day and I don't want you to weep in front of the people.

And this was a wife that he loved. For a man to respond the way Ezekiel responded was to have had a view of the throne of God with him on it. Not just, Oh, there's the throne gold.

Look at that artwork. The throne is not the object of our attention. It is the one on the throne. And he doesn't have to be on the throne for him to be my king.

All he has to do is be my king. And so they redirected this newly found hardship. On top of all the problems in life that were already a part of life, because the unbeliever, it goes through the drudgery of this life, under the curse, the sweat of the brow also, because they're not believers doesn't mean they're outside the curse.

Quite the contrary. They redirected the spirit of resentment found in this hardship to a spirit of perseverance away from blaming God. They did not see their faith as a failure because they knew that what they had left behind, that was failure.

This is just the new way. But the effective way that would bring change, long lasting change to the next life. We call it faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. You want to please God and you don't believe? Forget about it.

It's not going to happen. Doubt was bested. Doubt was shut up by faith. Maybe we use the word faith too much.

Maybe in the sense that it doesn't hit its mark and with us, it doesn't move us anymore. Trust. Peter. Simon Peter. Lord, if that is you walking on the water, call to me to let me come walk on it with you. The Lord says, come on.

Wait a minute. How about, well Peter, let's talk about this. I'm going to make sure I hold you up.

If anything goes wrong, I'm going to be here. He doesn't do any of that, does he? He says, Simon, come. That's it. Nobody else would get out the boat.

Simon gets out. You look at these stories in the Bible as you go through life, and the Holy Spirit will allow things to put you in a place where you say, do you believe it? Will you receive it?

Will you do something with it? Or are you just self-centered? Well, Lord, I am self-centered. That's what sin has done to me. But by your Holy Spirit, the contest is on, and I will vanquish the enemy within. So trust in the midst of anything, not resentment, not confusion, though those things show their face, they don't win.

They don't prevail. And I want to read this from 2 Corinthians 4. This is when Paul was in Corinth talking about his experiences in other places for the ministry of Christ. It had not yet happened to Paul as he's writing to these Thessalonians. This was later on in his life. He would go through these things and write about them. He says, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. Some of you remember that story about the plane crash in the Andes many years ago, and the soccer players on the plane, some of them had taken to cannibalism.

I've used this illustration before. Of course, whenever you mention gory things, everybody wakes up. But here, some of them engaged in cannibalism. I'd like to think, I mean, I have a tough time with just many other meats, cheeses, some cheeses is like, I'm not eating that, let alone, you know, Nicholas or Lenny or whatever it is now. I'm not going to eat the guy.

So we kind of draw a line in the sand and say, I'm not passing this. Even if I die, I'm not doing that. In fact, there was another ship stranded off the coast of Mexico, somewhere out in the Pacific, and there were some that died because they would not subject themselves to eating the raw pigeons, or not pigeons, seagulls. If it were seagulls, if it were pigeons, they might have done it.

I'm kidding. But so they died. Well, my point is this. There are some things in life that you don't do, and one of them is forsaking Jesus because of the hardship in your life, no matter what it is. I've drawn a line here. I'm not going to eat seagulls raw, and I'm not going to eat people that I was just a passenger with, and I'm not going to forsake Christ.

That's it. I don't care what happens or what doesn't happen, I'm not going to forsake Christ. This is where the Thessalonians were. They had a good teacher.

They had the apostle Paul. And so he says, as he's writing to them, we'll get back to some of this. He says, with joy of the Holy Spirit. Again, a sane soul cannot have joy without hope. We are supposed to not suffer as others do who have no hope. We believe in something. We don't just nod our heads and, well, I agree with that. It makes sense to me.

It's beyond making sense. I've seen it. I've heard Jesus speak.

He's mine and I am His. And so this is how they met the opposition. This is how Paul lived his life. It's been done before.

There is precedence for this. Are you good with it? Is it who you are, who you have become? Again, verse 5, for our gospel did not come to you in word only. Well, then how did it come then?

It says also, it came with the word, in addition to the word, power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, you know what kind of men we were among you for you, for your sake. That's why he took a beating in Philippi. It was for somebody else. It wasn't for him. He was already saved. He was beaten because he was upholding the things of Christ. When there were things that were left unsaid that needed to be said, he said them.

Regardless of the consequences, he didn't do it just once. I'm not telling you. I would have said, this is getting old. I've had enough.

I don't want any more of this. That's not what Paul did. Neither did Peter. Peter was told, you know, you're going to die following me, Peter.

When you are old, they are going to take you, you're going to stretch out your hands, and you will be killed. I'm good with that. That's what he did. So when Jesus said to Peter, come, Peter did it all of his life. And so, affliction and joy, as we know, are not supposed to go together into the natural view of things, the view that has not seen Jesus. This is why when Agrippa and Herod were listening to Paul, they couldn't identify with him. They didn't want to. They were not about to give up their lifestyle, no matter how rich and wonderful and superlative the things that Paul was saying was, they just weren't going to take it. Some of you have met people like that. They admire the gospel message, but they're not giving up their lifestyle. Not for Jesus.

And some of them go further. They're not going to give you the satisfaction of converting them. You're going to have to shrug your shoulders.

What else can you do? Acts chapter 5, verse 41, So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And I'm telling you, I think shame is worse than physical pain.

I don't want either one. But to be shamed, to be publicly humiliated, to do the perp walk, you know, cuffed, walking out in front of all the cameras going, look at this guy, look at the shame. 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter, let me turn there. You campers that have just come back from camp, you should be very familiar with this. He begins, he says in verse, I'll start in verse 4, he says, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, personal, for you. This is what God has for you.

Who are kept by the power of God. You are kept by the power of God. You're not going anywhere through faith or salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

So you're sitting here saying, you know, I'm hearing all this stuff about perseverance and sticking it out with the Lord and being perplexed and confused and persecuted and struck down but not forsaken. But I'm afraid that I'm going to bolt. I'm afraid that I'm going to eat that passenger. Now granted, some passengers might put those kind of thoughts in your head.

But the point is, the point is Jesus says, I'm going to be right here with you. It ain't that easy. I don't make this easy for Satan. I think of the persecution, the physical, you know, that Nero began with the Christians.

And I say to myself, man, I could not deal with that. I mean, I couldn't be, you know, watch my children being fed to hungry lions, lions who were trained to eat human flesh. And if the beast master failed to train them that way, he got to be human flesh for the lions.

And so he was very careful to make sure the lions did their job. Well anyway, I think about that and I was thinking about this the other day and I felt the Lord say to me, martyrdom is a gift. And I prepare my people for these things.

There is no way you can prepare yourself in advance for this. If the time should come, you'll be ready. If the time doesn't come, you'll be grateful. And so when he says, kept by the power of God through faith or salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, that day is coming, it will be. When we are in heaven, finally, at that time, it will be. Yeah, man, this is it. This is the last time revealed, as said in the Scripture.

Peter's already there. He continues, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. Boy, you can write in between those lines. Various trials? Let me tell you about my various trials. He continues, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Paul said, I saw the light. Thessalonians said, I saw the light. You who are converted, you who belong to Christ, you say, I saw the light. God does that, and He keeps it. That makes us not only receivers of the faith, as they were, but it causes us to be transmitters, which we will get in verse 8.

Well, I'll just read it now. For from you, the word of the Lord has sounded forth. They received it, they transmitted it, like the Sea of Galilee. Water comes in, water goes out, there's life all around it. As opposed to the Dead Sea, where the water goes in, and that's the end of the story.

No life around the Dead Sea, nothing worth talking about. And so there is no difference between the Christ whom Paul preached and the Christianity that he practiced. They saw it, they followed him, they imitated him, and this has been happening ever since. Jesus Christ said, go into the world and make disciples. He did not say, go into the world and be a mentor. He said, go be a disciple, go make disciples. Process of living the Christian faith. In verse 7 he says, so that you became examples to all Macedonia and Achaia who believe.

Well, here the word translated examples is the same word, as I mentioned earlier, translated print in John chapter 20. John 20 verse 25, the other disciples therefore said to him, Thomas, we have seen the Lord. So he said to them, unless I see in his hands the print, the two posts, the example of the nails and put my finger into the print, the type of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. Well, Thomas became a believer, of course. His heart was broken when he saw Christ crucified. He thought that was the end of it. He thought it was let down, that he had wasted three years of his life in a hope that was so glorious that nothing would ever be the same for him ever again. And that was the case.

It just didn't work out the way he thought it was. And so this word again, so that you became types, that's what discipleship is. To who? To others. In Macedonia and Achaia. Macedonia was the northern part of Greece and Achaia was the southern part where Athens and Corinth were and Sparta. And to the north was Philippi, Berea, Thessalonica. And so Paul is saying to this church, you became the print of Christ.

He had earlier written to the Galatians and he said, For I bear on my body the marks of Christ. Let no one trouble me anymore. But they did trouble him.

They continued to trouble him. You know, the little foxes that spoil the vine, those little things that just, really, do you need to do that? You can't reach the grapes so you just kill the vine. Why don't you just go somewhere else, find a shrew or a mouse or something?

Why you got to mess with the vine? That's what sin does. That's what people who practice sin do.

They just ruin it for you. I told you about years in the earlier years of ministry, you'd have apparently a good day in the pulpit as a pastor. In other words, you covered your points. It doesn't mean it was received well or you did well. It just means you covered your points that you felt God gave to you. That's a good day for a pastor.

Whew, survived. And then you're home and you're just kind of relaxing, think I'll have some coffee. And the phone rings and someone has some petty little seed of discord to plant, troublemaker. And it's like, really, is that necessary? Did you have to?

How'd you get my number? Isn't life like that for all of us, though? You have a good day and somebody just has to ruin it. God says, look, the foxes are going to be there till I come back. Learn to deal with it.

It is one of the worst parts of ministry. A good day and someone sows that. Didn't they ever read Proverbs? God hates those who sow seeds of discord amongst brethren. You better just shut your mouth.

No, what I have to say is better than what God said. I don't know. Anyway, these Thessalonians appear to us to be too busy above all of this. Why do I say these things? Because they cannot be unsaid. That's why they do this in other churches.

They don't do it here. We have a room upstairs with a swinging light and a chair in the middle. We catch you sowing seeds of discord. We're not going to put you out of the church yet and take you up to that room. Jesus said this is not right. We'll get forgiveness after you get the beating.

Okay, I'm having too much fun with that one. Verse 8. We got more. We got so much more here.

I want to get to this. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone out so that we do not need to say anything. Man, that's a mouthful.

Here they are. This radio station transmitting, broadcasting God's word. He says the word of the Lord. In Colossians, Paul said the word of Christ. Logos Christos.

It's the same. He is Lord. He is equal with God. The Colossians chapter 3 verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Again, this does not mean walking around. Excuse me, excuse me. I want to admonish you. Could you come here please?

I'm the mentor. Just live the Christian life. If you live the Christian life, those who are doing wrong will be admonished in the body. It is a self-correcting feature of the church that is oftentimes neglected because no one wants to say what needs to be said. And has sounded forth. Again, the word there for sounded forth in the Greek is as though you were blowing a trumpet or a thunder to echo. It's nowhere else used in the New Testament you might want to know. And so you can see them in the market places sounding forth the word.

There they're going down to the market and they're getting some grapes because the foxes didn't get to those vines. And they're buying or whatever it is and someone says, well, you know, may Zeus be with you. Oh, I no longer burn incense to Zeus. I have found the only true God who loves me, who died for me, who has vanquished my sin and sins, past, present, future, and remains within my heart, Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, Son of God, who came not hunting for me, looking for me, searching for me, wanting me, wooing me. That's who I follow now. Keep your little Zeus. I've got Jesus. That caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, but it also caused a lot of converts because they have bold enough.

Any of you not bold where you need to be bold? Or they may have just said to them, no, now I worship Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior. That's the acronym in the Greek, the iktos.

For fish, it spells fish, but it's an acronym in the Greek. And the early church viewed themselves as fishers of men. That's why they were here on earth. They weren't into really, that was it. That was the main thing. All the other things were logistical.

They supported that. They were about saving souls. They had a burden for the lost. We have a burden for lost things oftentimes. Lost opportunities, lost possessions. What about the lost souls? It doesn't mean that you should go home and sell all your stuff.

You can just give it to me. It doesn't mean anything like that. It means that you're just going to line your life up with what God is doing because if all the Christians just gave all their stuff away, you know what the world would say? We don't want that kind of religion.

We wouldn't be able to preach. And thus to be led by the Holy Spirit. He says not only in Macedonia and Achaia, that's huge. Because what was happening in Thessalonica was spilling over to Athens and Corinth and Centria and beyond.

And this is where the message starts getting exciting. The Thessalonians sounded forth the word because that's what Paul did to them. We'll read about that in the second chapter in the first couple of verses. Verses 1 and 2, we'll get right to it, not right now. And it makes it clear that the events in Philippi, the beating in Philippi, strikingly clear, impacted the people to whom he preached.

But he says, but also in every place. That means their witness spread from the merchants in the market, to the soldiers, to the travelers, to pilgrims, to anybody and everybody in Thessalonica. Well, that would have been the end of it, perhaps, if Thessalonica were located in a place like Colosse, in the Lycus Valley, kind of a has-been city. But that was not the case of Thessalonica.

It still isn't the case of this city in ancient Greece to this day. 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.