this sermon was preached on sunday
evening january twelfth nineteen eighty six at the trinity baptist
church in montville now will you turn with me please to paul's
letter to the thessalonian church the book of first thessalonians
and follow as i read verses two through ten Thessalonians, chapter
1, verses 2 through 10. We give thanks to God always
for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering
without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience
of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ before our God and Father, knowing,
brethren beloved of God, your election, how that our gospel
came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the
Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, even as you know what manner
of men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake. and you became
imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much
affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an
example to all that believe in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you hath sounded forth
the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but
in every place your faith to God would has gone forth so that
we need not to speak anything, for they themselves report concerning
us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how you
turned unto God from idols to serve a living and true God,
and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the
dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. Now, obviously, if you have followed
the reading with any attention of mind, it is clear to you that
what we have in this paragraph is the record of Paul's prayer
of thanksgiving for the Thessalonian Christians, which flows into
the record of the powerful influence of the gospel upon them and the
mighty influence of the gospel through them. He begins very
specifically with the record of his thanks to God in verse
2, the specific things for which he gives thanks to God in verse
3, and then he seems to launch into something that breaks the
bounds of a mere transcript of his thanksgiving to God and describes
how the gospel came to them in power and the wonderful impact
it had upon them, so that they became certain things. They became imitators of the
Apostle and of the Lord. They became examples to all believers. And then in verse 8, he begins
to describe what the gospel did through them, so that that gospel
now sounded out through them into that whole area. And then
he concludes with that which was really the first in their
experience. What is last in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 1 was first in the experience of the Thessalonians. For you'll
notice that Paul is here recording the effect of his initial entrance
into their midst as a gospel preacher, verse 9. for they themselves
report concerning us what manner of entering in we have among
you and how you turn so that what we are given in verses 9b
and verse 10 is a description of the initial impact of the
gospel upon the Thessalonians producing a sound biblical conversion
which in turn produced all of the other fruits that are described
in verses 3 through 8. So we're going to concentrate
our attention tonight upon verses 9b and verse 10 under the general
heading of Paul's description of a sound biblical conversion. Paul's description of a sound
biblical conversion. And you may ask the question,
why should I, at the end of a Lord's Day in which I have already bent
my mind to think long and hard upon the doctrine of the Church,
upon the miracle of the feeding of the 4,000, and upon the matters
of fellowship and personal devotion, why should I be exercised to
give serious and careful attention to the subject of a sound biblical
conversion. Well, let me tell you at the
very outset that this matter is a matter of life or death. It is a matter, in terms of the
last phrase of verse 10, of being delivered from the coming wrath
of Almighty God. Paul asserts in the last phrase
that it is only those who have experienced what he and the Thessalonians
experienced of a sound conversion who are being delivered by Jesus
from the coming wrath. And here the wrath of God is
described as something that is already on its way. It is not
a mirage. It is not a tool in the hands
of preachers to get some work done having no real substance. In fact, the wrath of God is
a commodity that is already on its way. Paul uses a form of
the verb which pictures the wrath of God as already making its
approach upon men. And it is that very wrath which
is making its approach upon mankind that will burst upon the head
of every unconverted man or woman, boy or girl, when Jesus returns
from glory. And so in 2 Thessalonians chapter
1, He describes that very wrath when it comes in its final manifestation
in this language. 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 7, And
to you that are afflicted, rest with us at the revelation of
the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of His power in flaming
fire. rendering vengeance to them that
know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction,
from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might,
when He shall come to be glorified in His saints. When He comes
to be glorified in His saints, the wrath that is on its way
will have arrived. And when it arrives, dear people,
I find these words strike terror to my soul. It will come in this
context. Angels of His power, flaming
fire, vengeance, punishment, destruction. Who among us would
treat such concepts lightly? Who among us would dare to stand
before such horrible terminology and say, wrath coming? Who cares? May God have mercy upon anyone
who can contemplate the wrath of God even for a moment and
not tremble at the thought that that wrath, should it come to
me, will come in the form of vengeance and fire and destruction
that is everlasting. And God is not playing games
with us, dear people. And so I plead with you in the
time allotted tonight to bend your ears and all the energy
of heart and mind with the earnest prayer, O God, teach me what
is the essence of a sound biblical conversion. And if I am not one
who has experienced such a conversion, O God, have mercy upon me, even
as pastor preaches tonight, that by the operations of the Spirit
with the Word, I may know that great reality ere I pillow my
head this night. Well then, with that setting
of the context of the passage, something of the great issues
before us which I trust will secure a serious hearing, will
you notice in the text the two basic divisions? What constitutes
a sound biblical conversion? Well, Paul describes it in terms,
first of all, of the fundamental activity, and it is this. Verse
9b, how that you turned to God from idols. That's the main verb,
and the emphasis falls upon the fundamental activity. You turn to God from your idols. That's the fundamental activity
in true conversion. And then He gives us two attendant
activities or dispositions, notice them, you turn to God from idols
to serve a living and true God and to wait for His Son from
Heaven. For you Academy students, you
have the main verb in the turning followed by two infinitives,
the serving and the eager waiting for His Son out of the heavens. And that will constitute our
outline then, because that's what's in the text. First of
all, then, note with me the fundamental activity in true conversion. It is described as a turning
unto God from idols. They turned to something, and
they turned away from something. Now, if you'll notice carefully,
that to which they turn is none other than God Himself, and that
from which they turned away is described as their idols. Now, it's plain, is it not, on
the very surface of the text. If the fundamental activity in
true conversion is turning unto God, and away from idols, then
before conversion we are turned away from God and towards our
idols. Do you see that? You have got
to be converted from something. And Paul assumes that when the
gospel came to Thessalonica, and was preached to Jew and Gentile,
it found them all without distinction, with their backs turned away
from God and towards their idols. And the essence of their conversion
was a turning towards God from their idols. Now that which is
assumed in the text is made plain by the universal testimony of
Holy Scripture, namely, that by nature every single one of
us has turned away from the living God and has turned unto one form
of idolatry or another. Devotion to God, the fear of
God, love of God, delight in communion with God, these were
the commodities that constituted the native air of the Garden
of Eden before sin entered. God filled, as it were, every
nook and cranny of Adam and Eve's world, and He filled every nook
and cranny of their hearts' affection and devotion. They had eyes to
behold His glory in all that He had made, for it was all His
handiwork. They had no pantheistic notions
that all was God and God was all. No, they looked upon everything
in their external world as created by God. Their eyes beheld His
glory in that which He made. They saw His handiwork smothered
with His fingerprints. and they delighted in the God
whose fingerprints they were. But what was true as they looked
out at the external world was true in the cosmos, the world
of their own hearts. Adam had an affection for Eve,
and Eve an affection for Adam. Together they shared a love of
God's creation and His creatures, but in all of that, There was
no inordinate, idolatrous attachment to each other, to any of God's
gifts. Every nook and cranny of the
heart that belonged to God was filled with God to the last atom. To the last atom. Every nook
and cranny of that God-shaped, holy man was filled with God,
in the case of Adam and Eve. But now what happened? When sin
entered, Adam and Eve were the first to experience that which
is described by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 53 in verse 6. All
we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us
to his own way. And when they turned from God
as the supreme object of their love and devotion, and they set
their affection on this thing called knowledge, they would
have something at the expense of obedience to God and love
to God and supreme allegiance to God. The human heart cannot
exist in a vacuum. And when God was pushed out into
that vacuum, rushed, the things of God's world. And the heart
of Adam and Eve became idolatrous hearts from the moment sin entered
their experience. And the Scripture tells us that
this is universally true of man the sinner, that when he ceases
to worship the Creator, Romans 1, he always ends up worshiping
the creature. And so, instead of holding to
God's gifts and having the heart filled with unrivaled affection
and devotion and submission to God, man who turns away from
God invariably attaches his heart to his idols. In the language
of the prophet, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,
They have hewn out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold
no water. And sometimes that idolatry is
of the gross form, the kind that we look upon and say how stupid
and disgusting when we see people bending down to objects that
they've made with their own hands and calling those things their
gods or representative of the spirit who supposedly stands
behind and over and above their gods. But the Bible also indicates
that there is an idolatry of a much more subtle but nonetheless
real sort. In Colossians 3, 5, it calls
covetousness idolatry, the grasping after things that are not mine,
that I have no right to grasp after. And God says that covetousness
is idolatry. It's an attempt to fill up that
God-shaped hole with some new thing, some new and novel experience,
some new relationship, some new possession, some new thrill,
some new experience. That's the sadness of the history
of man. always seeking to fill up that
God-shaped hole with things that can never fill it. We have turned
away from God, and we have turned to our idols. Therefore, when
the Apostle gives that description of all mankind in their native
state in Romans 3, He describes us in this language, none righteous,
no, not one, none who understands, none who seeks after God. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. We do not natively live as those
who are in face-to-face, delightful communion with God. We have turned
away like sheeps We have cast off His fear. Our hearts have
become a veritable idol shelf, filled with the idols of people
and things and pleasures and ambitions and a thousand other
things. But now, in such a situation,
the apostolic gospel comes as it came at Thessalonica. Paul
says in verse 5, Our gospel came unto you. And when the gospel
preacher came, the gospel came with him. And when you read Acts
chapter 17, you'll find exactly what gospel came to Thessalonica. And I want us to turn there for
a moment, and I have a reason for this. What was Paul's gospel? A real apostle who could perform
real miracles, who did speak in real tongues. And yet when he came to Thessalonica,
what did he do? He didn't come with his miracle-working
campaign, his tongue-speaking campaign. What did he do? He
tells us. Luke tells us what he did. Acts
17, And when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia,
they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews.
And Paul, as his custom was, this was his ordinary evangelistic
pattern. went in unto them and for three
Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures. He went
in and opened the Scriptures. He engaged their minds to think
about the realities of the book of God. He didn't go in and try
to get them all loosened up with a bunch of jokes and then slip
in a little anemic gospel pill when they were all loosened up.
He didn't try to dazzle them by miracle-working campaigns. He didn't promise them all kinds
of exotic experiences. He went in, and He took the Word
of God, and He said, Think, man, and if you don't care to think
about the Word of God, then go to hell in your willful ignorance. That's right. If you're too lazy to think about
God's Word and what it says to you, it's right that you should
perish in your willful ignorance. So Paul came and he preached
the gospel. And in that gospel, what did
he do? He told the bad news of man's ruin. Then he gave the
good news of God's intervention in Jesus Christ. He opened and
alleged that it was necessary for Christ to suffer, to rise
from the dead. And this Jesus said, He that
I proclaim unto you is the Christ. And when the gospel came in power,
how is it described? Verse 4 of Acts 17, some of them
were persuaded. You see, when the gospel comes
with power, we know it, not because we have tingles up and down our
spine, not because we hear angels' voices and the flutter of angels'
wings, not because we speak in tongues, fall flat under the
power, It's because our minds that have been thinking about
the truths of Scripture and how they apply to us are persuaded,
and we give up our whole being to the truth concerning which
our minds have been persuaded out of the Bible. Now that's
how the gospel comes in power. And any other so-called power
of the gospel is a bunch of rubbish. That's how the gospel comes in
power. That's how it's described. He reasoned. They were persuaded. And yet, when he describes that
in 1 Thessalonians 1, he said, Our gospel came to you not in
word only, but in power. And how was that power manifested? By causing them to see in the
gospel message that that message was perfectly suited to their
desperate need. That it contained the truth about
sin, the truth about God, the truth about Christ, the truth
about the necessity of repentance and faith. And then the wonderful
thing happened. Under the power of that gospel,
they deliberately consciously, from the depths of their being,
turn to this God, the very God from whom they had turned. In
attachment to their idols, they now turn to this God away from
their idols. And Paul says that was the heart
of their conversion. And, my friend, that's the heart
of every true conversion that's ever occurred since then. And
why is that the heart of conversion? For this simple reason. The very
central purpose for which Christ died lies in the heart of what
happens in conversion. 1 Peter 3 and verse 18 is one
of the most vital texts in all of the Bible with reference to
the work of Jesus upon the cross. Why did Christ suffer? Peter
is going to tell us. 1 Peter 3.18, Christ suffered
for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order
that He might bring us to God. Jesus died the just for the unjust,
that He might effect in all for whom He died a sound biblical
conversion. Do you see that? That He might
bring us to God. That is why He had to bear the
wrath of God. That satisfying God's justice
Now God could welcome sinners without blinking at the demands
of his law, without hiding his eyes to the demands of his law. Christ died taking away all the
legal barriers that existed between man, the guilty sinner, and God,
the holy judge of the universe. And that's the gospel. Christ
has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us. But I say it reverently, the
forgiveness of sin is not an end in itself. It is a means
to the end of the restoration of face-to-face loving communion
between God the Creator and man the creature. It is the reversal,
you see, of the tragedy of sin. It is under God to begin again
to create in man the native climate of Eden, where fellowship with
God and unrivaled affection to God and communion with God and
the fear of God are the native air that man breathes. And though
it will not come to its perfect expression until the consummation,
Bless God, it begins really and powerfully here and now. And if it doesn't begin here
and now, it will never be consummated in the age to come. God doesn't
begin anything there. He completes what He begins now.
Now, that's the fundamental activity in true conversion, turning unto
God from our idols. Now, if that's so, I want you
to notice two or three things with me very carefully. Number
one, In true conversion, men turn to God Himself. They turn to God Himself. You see that? How that you turned
unto God. He doesn't say you turned unto
God's forgiveness, God's peace, God's pardon, God's offer of
mercy, God's gift of the Spirit, God's gift of this, that, or
the other, there is no turning to the benefits, but to the benefactor
and his benefits. Not a turning to the gifts, but
to the giver and his gifts. You say, that's playing with
words. No, it isn't, my friend. Listen.
I've met very few people who don't have a native desire to
have all the forgiveness God will give them. just so long
as they don't have to turn to God and give up the love and
the practice of sin. God says, no way. If you would
have my gifts, you must have me. And that's why one of the
gospel imperatives is repentance. And what's the heart of repentance?
Paul tells us in Acts 20, 21 and 26, 20. He said, I preach
repentance towards God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Acts 26, 20. He said, I preach wherever I
went throughout the whole Roman Empire that men should repent
and turn unto God. Now, what could be cleaner? This
whole notion that you can be saved by simply trusting Christ
as your personal Savior. Accept what He did on the cross
for sinners. Accept His finished work. That's
nonsense! That's reaching out for one of
His gifts. And the imperative of the gospel
is you must turn unto God. Yes? Turn unto Him in the only
way He can be approached by sinners. Through Jesus Christ. Through
His work. performed on behalf of sinners
in the faith and confidence that He died for sinners and rose
from the dead. Yes, yes, yes! But it is turning
unto God. And in true conversion, men always
turn to God Himself. And secondly, in true conversion,
they turn from anything which is contrary to God. You see that? You turn to God from your idols. Anything and everything in the
hearts of the Thessalonians that would have kept them in conversion
from giving to God that which He claimed, namely, supreme,
unrivaled religious affection, they turned away from it. They
turned away from it. An idol is any person or thing,
within or without you, that rivals God's claims over your heart. For some people, an idol is a
boyfriend, a girlfriend. For some, it's a car, it's a
house, it's a job. For some, it's sensual pleasure.
Their God is found in the indulgence of the appetites of food, of
sex, of illicit drugs. In other words, my friend, anything,
no matter how legitimate it may be in itself, if it keeps you
from wholehearted turning unto God, that thing is an idol. And
until you turn from it, you will never, never be converted. That was the problem of the rich
young ruler. Money that is not evil in itself
had become his God. He was yielding supreme allegiance
to it. And Jesus said, smash your idol. Then you can have eternal life.
He wouldn't smash his idol. And Jesus didn't run after him
and say, well, I'm sorry, young man, I made the standard a little
bit high, hoping to go for broke and get you to come all the way
at first. But I'll lower my standard. No,
the Bible says he loved him and he let him go. He loved him,
but he let him go. Now, I ask you with judgment
day honesty, knowing there is a wrath that is coming. And if
you say, well, Pastor Martin, why do you get so worked up?
My friends, I can't help it. God put me together in such a
way that when I played football, I didn't play with half my energy.
I played with all of it like a madman. And when God made heaven
and hell real, they demand more energy than a football ever asked
of me. Shall I render more to four pieces
of pigskin than I'll render to my God? My friend, I'm not play-acting. I believe wrath is coming. And that wrath will overtake
you unless you turn to God and turn from anything, anyone, any
relationship that hinders you from giving to God the total
allegiance of religious affection that He demands. Now, what is your God that keeps
you from Him? What is it? You better answer
honestly now, because God will force an answer out of you in
the day of judgment. God have mercy if you go to judgment
an idolater, especially an idolater who's heard the gospel. But then
I must hasten to spend just a few minutes expounding the attendant
activities or dispositions, and I don't know which to call them.
Whenever there is this fundamental activity of turning unto God
from idols, it will always be a turning with a disposition
of and a commitment to two things. Look at the text, 1 Thessalonians
1.10. You turned to serve the living
and the true God and to wait for His Son from heaven. First of all, he says, you turned
to serve the living God. A literal wooden translation
would be this. You turned to serve as slaves
God, the living and the true one. Now, you see the contrast? He said, when you turned unto
God, what was the disposition of heart with which you turned
to Him? He said, you turn with a disposition of giving yourself
up to loving service to this God who, unlike your idols that
were dead and lifeless, that could communicate no forgiveness,
that could not fill that God-shaped hole, Unlike those idols, whether
gross or inward, outwardly seen or inwardly hidden, He said,
you turn to serve the living God, the only true God. You turn to serve because having
turned, the moment you turned, you tasted that the Lord is good. That God-shaped hole was filled
for the first time. with the glory of your true humanity. You experience communion with
this God." And the heart ran out and said, Oh God, I will
be your willing bond slave. And the word used here is the
standard word for a slave. That man who was the property
of another, he had no name of his own, no will of his own,
no possessions of his own and usually no reputation of his
own. He mirrored the reputation of
his master as he was dependent upon the supply of his master
as he lived under the will and dictates of his master. And Paul
says in true conversion, the attendant upon any true turning
to God is this disposition of bond service to the living and
to the true God. Now, Romans chapter 6 is a whole
chapter that emphasizes this again and again. Now, let me
put it in as blunt terms as I know how. Whenever a sinner gets forgiveness,
God gets a slave. Just that simple. Whenever a
sinner gets forgiveness, God gets a slave. Not one who grits
his teeth and bends over and says, well, if the only way I'll
get to heaven is to obey God, I'll grit my teeth and do it.
Oh, no. God doesn't want any such service.
No, because the heart has been changed by grace. And all those
hard thoughts about God, and God being mean, and His will
being hard, and all those accusing lies of the devil have been repudiated. We have tasted and seen that
the Lord is good. And in the reflexive response
of that taste, we say, Here, Lord, I give myself to You, tis
all that I can do. Lord Jesus, I lay in willing
bands at Your feet. Oh, my Heavenly Father, what
will you have me to do? That's the first attendant disposition
of a sound biblical conversion, a disposition of willing submission
to God as a bond slave. And then, secondly, a disposition
of eager anticipation of the return of Christ Himself. See it in the text? You turned,
he says, not only to serve, but to eagerly await. It's a very
intensive verb, not simply to await, but eagerly to await his
son out of the heavens, whom he raised from the dead,
even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So the second
attendant activity or disposition of true conversion is this eager
anticipation of the return of Christ. Now, how does all that
fit into conversion? It's very simple. You see, the
only way we sinners can turn to God in the fundamental activity
of conversion is to turn to Him in the light of the revelation
He's made of Himself in the Gospel. Now who's the focal point of
the Gospel? The Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel
is the good news about Jesus in His person and work and what
He is and what He's done on behalf of sinners. And that sinners
can come to God through Him who is the way unto God, the only
way. And therefore, when there is
a turning unto God with the disposition to serve Him, there will always
be the attendant disposition that grows out of the attachment
of love to the person of Jesus Christ. No one ever turns to
God through Christ in repentance and faith, but what the same
heart in which there is implanted a principle of servitude to God
has implanted in it a principle of love to Christ. That's why
Peter can write, assuming it's true of all believers, 1 Peter
1.8, in whom having not seen, you love, in whom believing,
you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. He assumes
that every heart in which there was resident faith in Christ
was a heart that also had love to Christ. When you say, I don't
see the word love, it doesn't quite all come together yet.
All right, listen. When there is genuine love to
a person, what is the attitude of that loving heart when through
necessity you are separated from that person? When my wife was in the hospital
for this recent surgery, And I would anticipate going to see
her. What was the attitude of my heart?
It was eagerness to look upon her face. Why? Because that's just the way to
love acts. Now, do you see the connection? He said when there's
true conversion and there is this disposition of service to
God, there will always be, out of this attachment in love to
Christ, something of a passion to be with Christ. And that passion
is expressed in the language, eagerly waiting for His Son from
heaven. It is not the longing of escapism. It is the longing of a bride
who's been separated from her bridegroom. And the day of her
wedding is the day when she shall see him after a forced separation
of six months. And all that she does in her
eager, busy preparations throbs with her eager anticipation. It's not the anticipation of
escape. It is the anticipation of passion. And so it is when a sinner gets
converted. There is an attachment in love
to the person of Christ. And because there is an attachment
of love, there is the passion of longing to see Him face to
face. And though we love Him now, we
know the love we have to Him now At best is probably only
the tithe of a tithe of a tithe of the love that we will know.
When forever rid of the effects of indwelling sin in the pressure
of an unsympathetic world and the machinations of a subtle
devil, we shall at last be at home with Him in the new heavens
and the new earth wherein dwells righteousness and only righteousness. You see why Paul could say, as
he did in 1 Corinthians 16, 22, if anyone loved not our Lord
Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. You see why he could say it?
What he's saying is if anyone is so devoid of the sense of
his own sin, and gratitude for the mercy of God to sinners in
the Lord Jesus, that he is not fled to this God through his
Son, and in the saving sight of Christ has an attachment of
love to the person of Christ. Let such a creature be cursed
of God. He is not fit to encumber God's
earth. That is in the Bible. I did not
write it. You look at it. First Corinthians 16.22. You
mean failure to love Jesus is grounds to be cursed of God? Yes. Because failure to love
Jesus shows that you're giving supreme attachment to something
that put Jesus on the cross. You're giving attachment to an
idol, something that opened up the wounds of the incarnate God,
something perhaps innocent in itself, caused him to be plunged
into the darkness of hell until he cried, My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? That is why you do not love Christ.
It is because you love that idol, that person, that thing, that
sport, that relationship, that thrill, that sensuous indulgence,
whatever it is. And so the two attendant dispositions,
whenever there is true conversion, is the disposition of willing
bond service to God and an eager anticipation of the return of
Christ. Now, please listen. I've sought
to go after your consciences, but I know whenever a preacher
does that, the accuser of the brethren is present to do his
foul work. I am not saying that every moment
of every day, of every week, of every month, a truly converted
man will have an even and a growing dynamic consciousness of his
servitude to God and his eager awaiting of the Lord Jesus. I
am not saying that. I know simply by reading my own
heart as well as reading my Bible and seeking to succor and minister
to God's sheep over many years that the degree to which we love
our posture as bond slaves and the degree to which we eagerly
await the return of Jesus varies. There are times when through
backsliding of heart and desertions of God, and the oppression of
the devil, and maybe a severe physical ailment, that consciousness
of delightful servitude and the eagerness of anticipation may
well-nigh be undiscernible. I am fully conscious of that.
But if we are a child of God through the covenant that God
has made with His own beloved Son and with believers in Him,
God will certainly revive and quicken and stir into flame again
that posture of a willing bond slave and that posture of the
passion of love that eagerly awaits the coming of the Lord
Jesus. Oh, I ask you as you sit here
tonight concluding where the text concludes. Look at it. when
he wants to identify the Jesus he is talking about. Notice that
he identifies Him in terms of theological issues. Even Jesus,
what Jesus? The Jesus whom He raised from
the dead and who delivers us from the wrath to come. In other
words, Our eager anticipation is not for a Jesus who is a nebulous,
undefined, mystical, elevated religious guru. It is the Jesus
of biblical revelation, born in Bethlehem's manger, raised
in the carpenter's shop of Nazareth, baptized in Jordan, mighty miracles
throughout Judea and up in Galilee, hung upon an instrument of Roman
execution outside the city walls, buried in a borrowed tomb, raised
from the dead on the third day, and ascended back to the right
hand of God the Father Almighty. Paul says that is the Jesus whom
we wait for. The Jesus of biblical revelation. The Jesus of scriptural data. And he said the Jesus Whom we
can never forget is delivering us from the coming wrath. And they are two Presence. He
is delivering by His past and present and future activity. He is my Deliverer. As surely
as His death once for all delivered, His present intercession is continuing
to deliver. And His vindication of me at
the last day will be the final deliverance. Hallelujah. He delivers
from what? The wrath that's coming. The
wrath that's coming. And whom does He deliver? Only
those who've experienced a sound biblical conversion. That's all. That's all. Now, young man, young
woman, boy, girl, teenager, young adult, middle-aged man or woman,
gray-haired man or woman heading down the other side of the hill
of life, hear me, hear me. The wrath is coming. I close
where I began. The wrath is coming. It's coming. It's on its way. And the scripture
tells us in Revelation 6, when unconverted men see it about
to burst upon them, they'll cry for the rocks and the mountains.
Hide us from the face of Him that sits on the throne and from
the wrath of the Lamb. We would not embrace the mercy
of the Lamb extended to us so freely in the gospel. mediated
to us by men who loved us enough to tell us of our sin and our
misery, to tell us of the work of Christ and the love of Christ
and the power of Christ and the claims of Christ. We would have
none of it. My friend, you may choose to
have none of the gospel, but you'll have no choice about whether
you'll have the coming wrath. It's coming. It's coming. It's
coming and it's coming. And when it comes and finds you
unconverted, then you too will cry for the rocks and the mountains
to hide you from the face of an angry lamb. Oh, dear man or
woman, boy or girl, I plead with you. I entreat you with all the
passion of my heart. Don't go on unconverted. Take
seriously the Word of God, what it says about you as one who's
turned away from God, attached your heart to idols, And yet
in that idolatrous state, the God who could consume you has
in Jesus Christ shown His love to sinful men. And now He sends
the message of His saving mercy in the Gospel through His servants. And He says, Turn, turn, why
will you die? Cast away all your transgressions,
for why will you die? Why will you choose death? What
is that idol? It will be consumed by the angry
returning Son of God while He is yet in the posture of mercy,
in the posture of graciousness and tenderness. Oh, do as the
Thessalonians did. Turn to this God from your idols. Abandon your idols. And embrace
this God. Embrace Him in the only way He
can be embraced, in the revelation of His mercy in the Lord Jesus. Throw the weight of your sin-sick,
sin-bound, guilty soul upon Christ. And ask God, for Christ's sake,
to have mercy upon you. Throw yourself down at His feet
and say, O God, You made me to be Yours. And in Your service
I would find my true identity, the true meaning of life. Fill
up that God-shaped hole, O Lord, with Yourself. I've tried to
fill it with sensual pleasures and things and position and property
and a thousand other things, but, O God, its aching void haunts
me day and night. Fill it with Yourself. And, O
God, attach my heart in love to you, Son, so that as I actively
serve and my feet and my hands are here on earth serving you
as a bond slave, my affections will be in heaven from whence
I wait for the object of my love, the Lord Jesus. My friends, that's
what biblical conversion is all about. All this cheap raise your
hand, pray your little prayer, go your way and live your own
life. That's heresy. It'll probably take more people
to hell than are taken by the cults. My friend, there's no two layers
of Christian experience. You're either converted or you're
unconverted. You either turn to God from your idols or you've
turned from God and you're attached to your idols. There's no middle
ground. You say, well, isn't that? No, there's no middle ground.
And if you're still there attached
to your idols, the wrath is coming. It's tracking you down. It's
one day closer today. And there's only one way to get
out from underneath that wrath, and that's to be converted. Turn
to God, from your idols, through the Lord Jesus. Become His willing
bond slave. Become one who waits for His
Son out of the heavens, the Jesus of biblical revelation. I sought
to be plain, simple. I sought to deliver my soul.
May God grant that the Word will not be preached in vain. And
you who can sit here and say, by the grace of God, Lord, that's
what's happened to me. Well, my friend, you don't pat
yourself on the back because it happened to you because of
what we read in verses four and five of this chapter. You go
home and meditate upon it. It's because God loved you and
chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. And
in time, he brought the word to you, not in word only, but
in power and in the Holy Spirit. And what an obligation is upon
us. like these Thessalonians to sound abroad this word that
has come to us with power. We cannot make it effectual in
the hearts of others, but we can sound it forth, and we must
sound it forth, and then cry to God that he will make it powerful
and effectual to turning men from their idols to the living
and the true God. Let us pray. O God, our Heavenly Father, we
pray that the Holy Spirit will take the preached word and cause
it to come home with power, that power which persuades the mind,
persuades the will, subdues all pride of intellect, pride of
standing, and pride of reputation, and humbles young and old alike. bringing them to that great leveling
land of the cross, where clothed in the sense of shame and guilt,
sinners find the wonder of your grace and forgiveness. O God,
may we see ere that final day that you have heard and answered
our prayer and made this proclamation of your word effectual to the
salvation of sinners. Hear our cry, and to your name
be praise and honor and glory. Amen.