1 Thessalonians 1:6-8 (Part C)

God's Word had been exclusive to the Hebrew people for 2,000 years. If you were going to hear from the God of the Jew, you had to hear it from a Jew. If you had anything to say, if God had anything to say to mankind, it was to the Hebrew people through the Hebrew prophets.

Few exceptions here and there, but they were the custodians and proprietors of the oracles of God. 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. And now here's Pastor Rick in the book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 with today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. 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. Didn't I 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 and 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. 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, oh 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, so and so. 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, these Thessalonians appear to us to be too busy and 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 eight, now, because 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 three, 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 to 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. No, 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, 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 one and two.

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. Now, I've been reminding you that running across this area of the world, right across, right through Thessalonica, was the Ignatian Way, the Via Ignatia, 696 miles of Roman road. That is not a little detail of the story. It's not just a geographical.

It's huge. It has everything to do with the word going, as Paul says, also in every place. The movement of the Gospel went from Thessalonica through the world.

We'll have to talk about this a little bit, so just bear with me. I mentioned, as I said already, it was a major trade route. It touched three seas and was linked up with one of the greatest roads of the Roman Empire. So there to the west was the Adriatic Sea and its port, and you could go down to the Adriatic Sea and you could get a ship going many places, but just 50 miles across the Adriatic Strait there, you'd end up in the port of Brindisi in Italy. That is the starting point to the Appian Way.

The Appian Way went straight to Rome. I've been to Brindisi. Right now it's just like an industrial town, at least where we docked all the time. I've been there a few times. You know, here's a message to you younger Christians. Know Jesus now. Don't wait till you look back and say, boy, if I were only a Christian then, I think about the places I've been in the world and that part of the world as an unbeliever, as a rank unbeliever, and I missed out. As I looked at the sea, as I was in Greece and Turkey and these other places, I didn't say, well, you know, Paul was over here, sent by Jesus Christ with the message that nobody else has got, changed the whole world. We date our checks now by Jesus Christ. Caesar is gone.

He's reduced to a salad dressing. So traveling to the south, to the south, well, the south was right there in Thessalonica. That was their port, was the Aegean Sea. But before we get to the Aegean Sea, we go further to the east, to the Bosphorus Strait. There at the Black Sea, the road ended at that point, the Ignatian Way that traveled from, you could go for, walk from Rome through the Appian Way, catch a boat from Brindisi across to the port of Adriatic and then walk the Ignatian Way through Thessalonica onto the Black Sea and then parts unknown. There, the Caucasian is where, the Caucasus Mountains and all that they, you know, today they're Afghanistan and that a stand and here's a stand and everywhere's a stand, but the hordes of people that were over in that part of the world onto Russia and many other parts. But you should be getting an idea of that this Thessalonica was a hub that reached the world, but to the south was the Aegean Sea and you could just get on a boat and you can sail right on over to Ephesus, one of the large cities, one of the seven wonders of the world.

You could go to Sardis from there and at Sardis there was a road that went from Sardis 1,500 miles past Baghdad. There was a mail route going through there also, which inspired the motto today of the post office, you know, neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor gloom of light, night shall keep these appointed couriers from their rounds, which is not true anymore. I mean one is like an inch, no mail? I got to have my junk mail. It makes me feel better about myself. But anyway, I feel superior to the people who sent it.

Yes, I'm still great. Look at this mail. Anyway, so from the Aegean Sea you would touch Athens and Corinth and Sparta and Turkey and Syria and Israel and Egypt and beyond. When he says the word sounded forth from you, they were telling the gospel and people were taking it to all parts of the world. Now it may not have been in its polished form, but by the time more polished Christians arrived, they were ready.

That's naval gunfire. They were prepping the beach. They were getting it ready for others to come along.

One man plants another water. God causes the increase. You do not know what your role is. Just do what you're told and let God do the rest. And so when we think of it this way, millions of people exposed because of this Thessalonian church, or at least potentially so. And when we look at the genius of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John is not one of the synoptic gospels in that it's not telling, just doesn't synchronize with the other three and tell the story of Christ's birth and life and crucifixion and resurrection as the other three stick to that. John, when he writes his gospel, he's saying, listen, I want to tell you this Jesus Christ is God Almighty.

So he had a different mission. But the synoptic, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew, we know, wrote his gospel with Jewish people in mind. He presents Christ as the king. He points to the prophets.

It's the style that he writes with was fit for the Jews. Now remember, we talked about this in Colossians and probably earlier letters. God's word had been exclusive to the Hebrew people for 2,000 years. If you were going to hear from the God of the Jew, you had to hear it from a Jew.

He had anything to say. If God had anything to say to mankind, it was to the Hebrew people through the Hebrew prophets. Few exceptions here and there, but they were the custodians and proprietors of the oracles of God. The law of Moses, though, the law of Moses was not given in Jerusalem. The law of Moses was given in the Arabian desert. That was sort of an indicator that God was saying, listen, this is beyond just a particular people. So when Matthew wrote his gospel, he had the Jew in mind, but what we have is a New Testament because of the Hebrew prophets.

So God had put in place his word and preserved it through them. Well, why? Why if he's just going to pour it into the Dead Sea?

Well, he's not. He's going to spread it through the world. And then comes Mark, who probably wrote before Matthew. And Mark, in his writing, he had the Romans in mind. And he knew that the Roman people were people of action.

They were builders and they were soldiers. And when Mark writes, he gets right to the point. And immediately, boom, and immediately, boom, and he writes this way because it appeals to their style, their way of thinking. The Roman Empire was given to them the gospel through a man such as Mark. And so Luke, who writes through a Greek thinking mind, you know, Roman might read Luke and ask too many words, too many parables, I need action.

So, you know, Mark would be right down his alley. And God, who had the Roman Empire in place, who had Roman peace in place, a little defective, this Roman peace throughout the world of the Western civilization allowed the apostles to travel from city to city on the Roman seas from the Adriatic, the Aegean, or any other port that they would leave from on these Roman roads that had been engineered and guarded by Roman soldiers. And so what you see is the gospel being facilitated. So I could get on the Aenasian Way that was built by Romans, guarded by Romans, and I could walk to the Bosphorus Strait at a seaport there that Rome controlled to get her grain or whatever goods and things she was moving through her civilization, her commerce.

I could use these vehicles to bring the gospel. And the roads were extensive, the seas were vast, the law stabilized and was a great benefit to being able to be free enough to preach. Paul at one point said, I am a Roman citizen, why are you beating me?

And they got very nervous. And so my point is, you see God preparing and preserving the word through the Jew. You see God preparing the roads and the seaways for the traffic of the word and then Luke who wrote to the Greek mind. Because after Pentecost, when God had something to say to his people, he said it in the Greek language. He said it to Gentiles through the Jews. But the Gentiles in Thessalonica are the ones now broadcasting it and they weren't Jews.

Most of them were not, there were some, but the majority of them were Gentiles. And now they're broadcasting the Hebrew preserved scriptures as well as the newly birthed Gentile scriptures to all the world through the resources given by Rome in a language that all the world can understand enough. It's like Pig Latin. It's, you know, English, but everybody can communicate it. You can have a German engineer at a mine, a gold mine in Africa somewhere and he can speak to the people working in the mine who speak some African language in Pig Latin enough to get the work done. And so God in masterful stroke was preparing the planet for the broadcast of God's word.

What are we doing today? Well, a lot of the church is doing very good. A lot of it is not.

That's really irrelevant if I can say, well, I'm part of the one that is. And while they all think that, just can you back it up through scripture? And so this wonderful moment in scripture is quite powerful and I'm going to close with this. He says your faith toward God has gone out here in verse eight so that we do not need to say anything.

No promotional advertisement was necessary. It was as though God said to Paul, I'm going to make those beatings you've been taking count. I am not going to waste the stripes on your back and the lumps on your head. I am going to bring converts from the ministry that you have. I want to close with this section from Romans chapter 10 beginning in verse 13. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then, faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. That's what was happening in Thessalonica. That's what was happening on those seas and those waterways.

But I want to end with this. Today, in America, our message is more corrective than fresh. Fresh in the sense of, have you heard of Jesus Christ? That's not our message here in America.

Everybody has heard of him. They just don't know what it means most of the time. And so we have to correct that by presenting the right view of Christ. And I can say in my own life as a Christian, in those days when I preached at the job sites, that's what it was, correcting. You're not a Christian? Why not? Lord, let me tell you why you're not.

Let me see if I get this right. You've been betrayed by a Christian. You've watched some Christian say they were a Christian and live like a devil.

You've gotten things from churches that care nothing about God's word, but they use his name and you think that's Christianity. The question you have to resolve for yourself is, are you going to be dumb enough to believe one side of the story? This is a constant in life. Whether you are a pastor, a parent, a citizen, a person, and whoever you are, there's two sides to every story.

And it is good to hear them both out to some extent. We'll get to that when we get to Proverbs. This way we get it from the Scriptures.

But some of you don't need it from the Scriptures. You know there's two sides to every story. That's why gossip is so damaging. Did you hear this?

There they go. Sowing seeds of discord. God says whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, any good report, meditate on those things. Thanks for tuning into 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.