1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 (Part A)

Christianity, among some of the things that causes it to be so true and fierce is, well, its decency is unmatched.

All religions have some idea of decency, but at some point they drop off and they begin to allow perversity. Science, Christianity, which is found in the scriptures, and when we speak of Christianity, of course, we're talking about the Old Testament and the New Testament, archaeology, wisdom, truth, logic. 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. Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through the book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. Let's turn in our Bibles to Paul's first letter to the church at Thessalonica. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, we resume at verse 9.

I want to start off by introducing this section that I hope has something to do with what Paul is saying. Anything that contradicts the gospel for the Christian is a lie. That's what we believe. That's what makes us Christians.

That also is what causes us a lot of grief in the world. Those who are our critics and detractors resent that we would be so sure and so absolute in our faith, though they seem not to mind when other religions behave that way. We Christians believe that if it contradicts what the scripture says, it is a lie. If it goes against the gospels, it is a lie.

Backing this statement up is not a truth, though it is a truth, God himself, but in the eyes of men, it is not a truth or a statement. It is a network of truths and facts as no other religion on earth has. Other religions simply insist upon their beliefs, but they really cannot take you to the well and show you where the water is, the source of their positions. They can be very mystical and very charismatic, and yet they have nothing to back it up. Christianity, among some of the things that causes it to be so true and fierce is, well, its decency is unmatched. All religions have some idea of decency, but at some point, they drop off and they begin to allow perversity.

Science, Christianity, what is found in the scriptures, and when we speak of Christianity, of course, we're talking about the Old Testament and the New Testament, archaeology, wisdom, truth, logic, biographies in the scripture, the prophecies, the spiritual validations that come not only through the prophecies but in the lives of those who belong to the faith, the miracles, that is. But many are just not interested in any of these things, don't hang around long enough to find out that these things are so, come into it with an attitude that I'm not going to convert no matter what they throw at me. I've decided I do not like Christianity, want no parts of it, and to those we knock the doves off our shoes and then we move on with the realization that that's not everyone. Christianity has been infiltrated by impostors and saboteurs and devils from the very beginning. Jesus said to his disciples, I've chosen you, it is not one of you a devil.

And that was Judas Iscariot. There have been many such, and so why would anyone be surprised to find frauds in the faith? As though if you find a fraud in Christianity, therefore the faith is not so.

Ha, that's my out. You see, this guy lied to me and he said he's a Christian and he does this, so the whole faith is wrong. Well, that's a convenient tactic of the devil, and the host of such a tactic feels good about themselves. They feel like, God, there I can justifiably reject Christianity and go ahead and embrace some other, or some other system, some lying system in its place. But faith itself, its proclamations, the revelations, the prognostications of the scriptures are untouchable. If anyone wants to sit down and seriously consider them, they cannot be refuted. And you know, today the internet is loaded with all sorts of arguments and proofs, historical archaeological or just all over the board, scientific, about Christianity.

And people just are not interested. There's so much that even Christians say, you know, I've had about enough. I don't need to talk about any more dinosaurs.

I'm good. My point is that the information, the arguments, the facts, they are there, and it is not a solitary truth that makes it so. There are these collections of evidences that no one else possesses, and we're very good with all this. I want to read from Peter's second letter. Now, whenever I talk about 1 and 2 Peter, I always try to mention the distinctions between the two. One of the keys to having a powerful Christian witness to preaching the gospel is understanding the scripture. And one of the keys to understanding the scripture is to at least have an overview or working knowledge that is an overview of each book of the Bible.

You may not know all the details to it, but you have a basic understanding of each one. And so I always take the time to say, well, 1 Peter, Peter wrote to Christians who were being persecuted for their faith. And so when you read the first letter, you get an understanding. Okay, he's talking to Christians that are really getting it pretty hard right now, and he's encouraging them. Well, when he writes the second letter that we call 2 Peter, he did not entitle it 2 Peter.

We call it 2 Peter. It's the second letter of his that we have. And in this letter, he's writing about the false teachers that have crept into the church, into Christianity, and are doing great damage. And while he's writing to these Christians about these false teachings, he says, as one being there with Christ, he says, For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. I was there. That's what he is saying. I didn't make this up. I did not go into some cave and come out with a, I was there.

I saw these things. And then he continues, For he, Jesus Christ, received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now Peter's talking about that day on the Mount of Transfiguration that he experienced there with Christ and two of the other disciples. And then he says in verse 18 of 2 Peter chapter 1, And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

Some of you have been converted, hopefully all of you, but maybe there are some that have not. You know the voice of the Lord. He has spoken to you at some point in your life. That is what has made your conversion sure. It may not have been something that you heard out loud, but you knew it was God speaking to you.

And you can make the same claim. We heard this voice which came from heaven. And then he continues in verse 19, So we have the prophetic word confirmed. See, this is what the prophets were talking about.

We lived through it. We saw it fulfilled. And then he says, Which you do well to heed.

We're still saying that. We have the scripture, the prophetic word, which you do well to heed. And then he says, As a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation.

There's no Christian that has the insight on God's word. I got it. Those guys don't know it. I know it.

I'm the only one. Tigger's mentality. And then he continues for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. That is Christianity in a nutshell. It is prophetic.

It is profound. It has much more to it than just someone standing up and saying, I'm a sinner. Jesus forgives me. I love Jesus.

And that's now you need to receive it. That is not Christianity in its entirety. And so this is where Paul was as he's moving through Europe now, as he's taking these beatings and being persecuted, being laughed at. That is a pretty heavy persecution. By the time, well, he's writing this letter from Corinth.

But before he got to Corinth, after he left this church in Thessalonica, he stops off at Athens in Greece. And he preaches to them, and they laugh at him. They mock him.

He moves on. And I mentioned that to say we identify with that. We identify with all the scripture, with all of when I mentioned the biographies that are in the scripture.

We identify with these people. To some degree, we enter into their experiences. And this alone is a validation of it coming from God because nothing else has the force that belongs to the lessons coming from the lives of the people in scripture as does the scripture. And so in verse 9 of chapter 1 in 1 Thessalonians, Paul continuing, says, for they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Now, what we had talked about last session is that Thessalonica was in the middle of this trade route that reached the world.

It was a hub. And from Thessalonica, people would receive the gospel, would be exposed to this little church and get on their boats or walk on their roads and go to wherever they were going throughout the Roman Empire. And they would say, I was in Thessalonica and I heard this thing about this Jesus Christ who forgives sins, who was crucified in my place. Instead of me being judged by God, he took the judgment for me. They killed him.

Then he got up after three days. And one of the proofs of this is there are these men that saw this, that witnessed this and they're taking beatings for it. I would not have believed it unless I saw that part of it because nobody would take a beating like that for a lie. If Jesus lied to them, they wouldn't take the, they would be so upset with him, so disillusioned, even us today. And God doesn't do something the way you thought he should do it.

You have to fight resentment towards God. You can't believe it. Why did you let this happen? How could you?

I thought you were God and sovereign and you loved me. Imagine those guys. That's what Thomas was going through. I don't care. Unless I put my fingers in his wounds, I'm not believing it anymore.

I've been through this three and a half years of my life. And then he gets killed. He didn't know what to do with that. So he kind of hovered around the disciples. What else could he do? This was his life now and he did not even know it.

He had nowhere else to go. He was the missing man when Jesus showed up. A week later, Jesus shows up again and Thomas is there. My Lord and my God.

This is a game changer. And so as this message was traveling throughout the world from Thessalonica, some of the Christians in other parts of the world were beginning to say, boy, this church in Thessalonica, every time I turn around, somebody's mentioning their preaching. And that's what he meant. It says here in verse nine, for they themselves declare, he's talking about the churches, Achaia and Macedonia, other places and Greece. They've been talking about you.

Good things. This testimony, how you turn to God from idols. Now this is big and this is probably why we're not going to get out of, we'll finish the first chapter this morning and not get to the second chapter. Because how do you come to a verse like this, how you turn from idols to God and then move on to the next verse without stopping here for a while?

It would be like driving past the Grand Canyon, which is better than driving into the Grand Canyon. But anyway, the triumphs of the Gospel at Thessalonica were mostly among the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. That's why when Paul gets chased out of Thessalonica, he goes on to Berea and we have that verse in Acts chapter, I believe it's 19, he says they were these, 17 actually, these were more noble minded than those who were in Thessalonica in that they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. He's talking about the Jews, not the Gentile Christians. He's not talking about the Jewish Christians.

He's talking about the Jews in the synagogues. That's where Paul would begin preaching. He'd go into a city or a town and he'd enter into the synagogue and he would start preaching Christ, the Messiah has come. They crucified him just like Isaiah said they would.

Then he rose again just like Isaiah said he would. And some of them would believe and some of them would not. In Thessalonica he said, fine, okay, I'm going to go to the Gentiles. So he goes to the Gentile. And the thing is about this turning to God away from idols, they weren't reforming their religion, they threw it away.

They embraced the truth. You cannot turn to God without turning from something else. It's called repentance, which leads to salvation. Repentance is not just sorrow, it's not like the world's sorrow, it just grieves its weakness. Repentance makes a move. It says, okay, I am weak.

I admit that, I'm wrong, it's me. Now what do you want me to do with this, Lord? Who are you, Lord? Paul said when he was converted, what do you want me to do? And so one of the great lessons, talk about overviews of the Bible, the book of Nehemiah, the great overview is that as a Christian you are supposed to fight and build at the same time. If you just build, if you say, well I'm not perfect, I make mistakes, I fail, I lose my temper, my language, whatever it is, I lose it.

And Christ says, well, you need to keep fighting. And then you say, okay, I can do that. And then I want you to serve. No, I can't do that. Well then, how can you build?

I need you to do them both at the same time. But this line about, ooh, I'm weak, I can't serve, well then by that logic nobody serves. Now there are extremes where you shouldn't be serving. You're going through some heavy sin or some trouble and you need to sit out of ministry until God builds you back up again. You know, sometimes Christians stumble in sin and they resent that God let them do that so they fall away from the faith.

The choice is up to the individual. We were just seeing. I've decided to follow Jesus. If no one else follows you, I'm following you. I'm not going anywhere.

Where else am I going to go? This is, I came to you because it's true, not because it was convenient, which is a story in Thessalonica. They stayed with Christ after their conversion from idols because it was true even though they began to be persecuted.

And so it was for the churches whom Peter was writing also in the northern regions of what is modern day Turkey and Pontus and places like that. So one thing that you must learn if you are a new convert to Christ, God never espouses peace with a lie. God never espouses peace with a lie. He doesn't say, oh that's just a lie. To God a lie is a viper that will do you great harm.

It is a lion that will devour you. Matthew's Gospel chapter 10 verse 34, Jesus speaking, he says, do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. I came to fight. I came to fight against the lies that Satan tells that leads people to hell. Well how are you going to do this Jesus? You're not here right now swinging a sword.

I don't have to be. I got my church. I have assemblies of them, battalions of them, regiments. They swing the sword of truth. So repentance is a change of mind that leads to action. It's the change that always expresses itself in a changed attitude. That's repentance. My attitude has changed. So when you find Christians just serving because everybody else is, they don't want people to think badly about them, that's less than ideal. We serve because our attitude towards Christ has changed and what he says, we know it means something and it's to his glory, yes, but his glory involves helping others. And so the change of attitude produces change of conduct and ultimately repentance causes the individual to deliberately turn back from everything that is out of harmony with the will of God. That's the goal. If you go to your grave attempting this, you are saved.

It's when you said, I've about had enough of this fight, that everything gets bad. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, 2 Corinthians 12, Paul writing. Remember, he did not get to Corinth until long after he had been in Thessalonica. Well, he doesn't write the Corinthian letter until long after his visit to the Colossians.

This is years later. He writes, for I fear lest when I come, I shall not find you such as I wish and that I shall be found by you such as you do not wish, lest there be contentions and jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, backbiting, whisperings, conceits, tumult, lest when I come again, my God will humble me among you and I shall mourn for many who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness, fornication and lewdness which they have practiced. And so what we're finding out is Paul was standing up for truth in the face of those who were committing sin. He was not backing down from them. Listen, if you have a pastor that's afraid of the people in the pews, any of them, get a new pastor.

He's no use to you. He's got to be focused on what God has told him, even though he's imperfect. Of course, I'm the exception to that. I'm glad you laugh. And if you didn't laugh, you're probably leaving. That's it.

I had it. He thinks he's perfect. Well, if you're dumb enough to believe that, well, Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 35, to you it was shown that you might know that the Lord himself is God.

There is none other besides him. This is how we live, behave ourselves. We've repented. We've turned from the world. We've turned to God.

This is what they've done. They threw their idols out and they came to the Lord. And as we go through the Thessalonian letter, we will be referencing the Old Testament to show you that there were many who were saying, I'm a Jew.

I'm circumcised. I follow the Sabbaths and I keep to all the rituals and all the little gods that I also like on the side. And the Christian says, that is anathema. And so may we be careful of our alliances, especially the cyber alliances, which is more, it's just becoming increasingly clear that it is as real as the real world, the reality around us. Again, you go to a Christian site and you see that they've liked something that is foul and you say, what are you doing? How could you, how could you even put that on your, your Facebook page, your Twitter page?

Why would you have any association with this? There are better quotes. There are better people, better heroes, better sources out there than, than this Malachi chapter one. Now here, Malachi, Malachi wrote this little prophecy after the Jews had come out of captivity because of their idolatry. God sent them, they sent the whole nation to prison in Babylon and 70 years later he brings them back out and they rebuilt the walls. They rebuilt the temple.

The splendor and the glory of it was not what it once was, but it was better than nothing. And that's about the time that Malachi writes his prophecies. And this is what Malachi has to say to these Jews who should know better. And this is what God through the Holy Spirit is saying to Christians who should know better. Son honors his father and a servant, his master. If then I am the father, God speaking through the prophet, where is my honor? And if I am master, where is my reverence? Says Jehovah of host to you priests who despise my name.

Yet you say, and what way have we despised your name? So God is saying, oh, come on, give me a break. You're playing these games with me. I'm God. Do you think I don't know this? I'm the creator.

Look around you. How dumb can you be? You got the robe and you got the hat and you're using my name and then you lie to my face.

You mock me and you think I'm too dumb to figure this out. It's amazing how a human being can, can fall off a horse and be just about as smart as a donkey's foot with spiritual things. He says, he says these things to a people that were supposed to be devoted to him, not to idols too.

This is one of the problems. The Christian who recognizes that my flesh is devoted to pleasure and sin and everything that is, I am to renounce and I will fight this. The unbeliever says, well, I might fight it too, but not for the same reasons as you do. I'm not fighting it because I love Jesus.

I'm fighting it because I want control back in my life. 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.