Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with number 69 in the hardback temple, 69. Let's all stand together. Safely through another week,
God has brought us on our way. Let us now a blessing seek, waiting
in His courts today. Day of Aum, Aum in the past,
emblem of eternal rest. Day of Aum, Aum in the past,
emblem of eternal rest. For pardoning grace On a dear
Redeemer's day To Thy reconciled place Take away our sin and shame
From our worldly cares set free May we rest this day in Thee May we rest this day in thee. Here we come, thy name to praise. Let us feel thy presence, dear. May thy glory meet our eyes,
While we in thy house appear. Here afford us, Lord, a taste
of our everlasting feast. Here afford us, Lord, a taste
of our everlasting feast. The gospel's joyful sound Conquers
sinners, comforts saints May the fruits of grace abound Breathe
relief for all complaints Thus may all our Lord stay true Till
we join the Church of God Please be seated. Good morning. If those words were not corrected
in your hymnal, feel free to open your hymnals back up to
69 and change that word Sabbath to Lord's Day. We know in light
of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he accomplished
that he himself is our Sabbath. He is our rest. And we're We're
not bound to those old Sabbatarian laws and regulations of the old
covenant. We come together on the Lord's
Day to worship Him and to glory in His resurrection and to rest
in Him as our hope. We're going to be in First Thessalonians
this morning, if you'd like to turn with me there in your Bibles. And before we begin, I'd like
for us to go before the Lord and ask his blessings on our
time together. Our Heavenly Father, in your merciful providence,
You have brought us from our homes and gathered us together
in this place. Lord, you've promised that when
your children come together, that you will meet with them.
Lord, we rest our hope in the faithfulness of you and your
promises Lord, we ask that you would be pleased this hour to
open the windows of heaven. We pray that you would open your
word, open the eyes of our understanding, open our hearts, open, Lord,
what no man can shut and reveal to us the glory of thy dear son
and give us grace to find our rest and all the hope of our
salvation in him. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for your Holy Spirit. Thank you for the two great wings
of the eagle that you have given to your church, who has fled
into the wilderness to find the place that you prepared for her. Lord, we pray for those in our
fellowship that you have afflicted with troubles and trials and
ask Lord that they would find your grace to be sufficient for
them in all their needs. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. We spent several months in the
book of Colossians and what a blessing that was. And now we're, if the
Lord's pleased, going to begin a study this first hour in the
book of 1 Thessalonians. And I would encourage you to
just take a few minutes sometime today or soon and read these
two epistles, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. They're very brief and you'll
be encouraged to read them. These believers were going through
great trials and troubles and persecutions and both of these
epistles are words of comfort. They tell us that this would
have been the Apostle Paul's very first epistle that he wrote
to the churches. And so this would have been on
his second missionary journey. I've titled this message, The
Church. We'll read just verse one of
1 Thessalonians. Paul and Silvanus, which is another
word for Silas, and Timotheus, Timothy, unto the church, the
church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and
in the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be unto you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to introduce
this message on the church by quoting a very familiar passage
of scripture, Romans chapter 8, verse 28. And that verse tells us, for
you know, you know that all things work together for good for them
that love God and those that are the called according to his
purpose. And the child of God finds great
comfort in that when it comes to the circumstances of their
own life. things that they can't understand,
things they can't explain, trials that are a burden. We know that
our God is sovereignly ordaining and working together all things
for our good and for our salvation, for the good of those who love
him, for the good of those who are the called according to his
purpose. But I want you to think with
me for a moment beyond your own personal circumstances and understand
that verse of scripture in light of all of history. You think about the word history
from the very beginning of time to the end of time. History is
his story. And we know that all things,
things in your life and things that aren't necessarily directly
affecting you as you understand them, things in the past and
things in the future, all things, he is working together for good
for them that love him and for those that are the called according
to his purpose. Now, who are they that love him?
The church. They are the called out ones. And that's what the word church
means. The church means called out to an assemble, to assemble
together. And that's who we are. And so what I want you to understand
at the very beginning here is that our God is working all things
together. for the good of his church. The reason for everything, the
reason for everything is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Everything that God did prior to the cross and everything that
has happened since the cross. And we know that he hath done
all things well. that the armies of heaven and
the inhabitants of the earth, things in heaven and all things
upon the earth, he is working as a result of the cross. And
the purpose of the cross is the salvation of God's elect. Now
here's the point, here's the point, child of God, part of the body of Christ, the
bride of Christ, everything that God is doing and everything that
is being done, God's doing it, is for the purpose of His church. I believe that. When the very last one of God's
elect are called out of darkness into his marvelous light. This
world will have no more reason to exist. It will come to its
end instantly. The only purpose that this world
serves is the salvation of God's people. So when the Lord talks about
his church, there's really nothing else. It's the reason for everything. The reason for everything. Now,
if you'll turn with me to Acts chapter 17, we'll see how the
Lord, in His ordained purpose, in His ordained purpose, and
I would remind you again that the word plan is nowhere to be
found in the Word of God. Men talk about God's plan for
this and God's plan for that as if he, you know, has a plan
A and a plan B and they talk about man's perfect will versus
God's perfect will versus God's permissive will. None of that's
true. None of that's true. Our God
is a God of purpose. Again, let me remind you of Romans
8, 28. For you know, you know this,
all things work together for good for them that love God and
those that are the called according to his purpose. So our God is a God of purpose. Everything he's doing in your
life and everything he's done in the history of this world
is for the purpose of glorifying Christ. It's for the purpose
of the salvation of his people. And that's the only purpose it
serves. And there's no such thing as God's permissive will. I read
an article recently where somebody wrote something about God's permissive
will. There's no such thing. There's the secret will of God.
Scripture says the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but
those things that have been revealed belong to us and to our children.
There's much that God's doing that we don't understand, but
we know for what purpose it serves. And then there are those things
that have been revealed in God's word that that we bow to. But this idea that God has a
plan or that God has a permissive will is is contrary to the nature
of our God. Our God is a God of purpose and
everything he's doing he is doing on purpose and for a purpose.
And so the apostle Paul. in chapter 16 of Acts, is on
his second missionary journey, and he's in what we know as modern
day Turkey, Asia Minor, and he's asking the Lord if he should
go further into Asia. And the scripture says that he
was forbid by the Holy Spirit to go east. And in that same
vision, the scripture says that a man of Macedonia appeared unto
him and pleaded with him to come to Macedonia and to help them.
And so the Apostle Paul understood that as God's purpose. He was
trying to discern the purpose of God and asked the Lord what
he should do and the Lord showed him. I have a people that I've
elected in the covenant of grace that are over here in Macedonia.
And they're the ones that you're gonna take the gospel to. And
so what a great hope. Our Lord knows where every one
of his sheep are. And he's not gonna lose a single
one of them. He's going to get the gospel
to them or he's going to get them to the gospel one way or
the other. And the Holy Spirit will forbid the gospel in going one way and direct
it in another way. For what purpose? The salvation
of God's people. That's it. And so Paul understands this
vision in chapter 16 that the Lord's given him and so he goes
to Macedonia and the first city that he goes to is the city of
Philippi. And Philippi is where Lydia was,
and Philippi is where the Philippian jailer was, and there was a great
saving of God's people in Philippi. The book to the Philippians was
written to the church in Philippi. And a riot breaks out in Philippi,
and they run the Apostle Paul out of town. And when he leaves
Philippi, he goes to Thessalonica. which is also in Macedonia, and
chapter 17 of Acts. And when they had passed through
Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, Where was
a synagogue of the Jews? Now, as Paul's habit was, the
Lord told him, you go from the Jews to the Gentiles, that the
gospel was to go first to the Jews. And so the Apostle Paul,
when he went somewhere, if there was a synagogue or an assembly
of Jews, he preached the gospel first to them. They had the scriptures. They were the ones that were
to hear this message first. And so he goes into the synagogue,
opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and
risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach
unto you is the Christ. That was what the Jews didn't
believe. They had the scriptures. They
didn't have Christ. They did not believe that Jesus
of Nazareth was the promised Messiah, that he was the Savior
of Israel, that he had actually accomplished the salvation of
God's people. And so Paul takes the scriptures
and all the scriptures he had was, as I already mentioned,
the book of Thessalonians, first letter that he wrote. So there's
nothing yet written in terms of the epistles. The gospels
have not been written. All he had was the Old Testament.
And so he alleges from the scriptures, from the Old Testament, that
Jesus is the Christ. That's what we do every time
we come together. We allege And we prove from the scriptures
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He is the successful sovereign
savior of sinners. He is the reason for everything.
And by God's grace, we seek to lift him up. God's people will
be saved. And some of them believed, this
is always the response to the gospel, some of them believed
and consorted with Paul and Silas and of the devout Greeks of great
multitude and of the chief women, not a few. And so not just the
Jews believed but some of the Greeks. This would have been
a city mixed of Jews and Gentiles and the Lord has a people among
both groups and so They hear the gospel and by God's grace
they're brought to believe what's being said about Christ. But the Jews which believe not, believing not is always an act
of defiance. It's always a willing act of
unbelief. To believe not is to make a decision
not to believe. On the other hand, to believe
is a passive act. It's a work done to you. And
so the ones who believe the gospel have had the spirit of God making
them willing in the day of his power, opening the eyes of their
understanding and giving to them faith. To believe not the gospel
is a decision to not believe God. Consequently, men who believe
not bear the full responsibility of their unbelief, and they will
stand without excuse before God. And they who believe will know
that the faith that they have was given to them of God, that
a man can receive nothing except to be given to him from heaven,
that this faith is a gift of God and that he gets all the
praise and all the glory. It was a work of grace done to
them. Some of them believed and consorted
with Paul and Silas of the devout Jews and a great multitude of
the chief women, not a few. But the Jews which believed not
were moved with envy. And here's the reason why men
won't believe the gospel. They will not have their glory
taken from them. They'll not be brought to bow
and to submit. They'll raise their fist to heaven
and say, we'll not have that man to reign over us. They're envious of the fact that
the Lord Jesus Christ gets all the credit and all the glory
and all the praise for their salvation and they have no contribution
whatsoever to make. Men Men by nature envy God and they
will not. They were moved with envy. And
so they took unto them certain lewd fellows of a baser sort
and gathered a company and set all the city upon an uproar.
and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out
to the people. And when they found them not,
they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city,
crying, these that have turned the world upside down are come
hither also." Now, clearly, these were some of the Jews that had
stirred up trouble in Philippi. They followed Paul. And they're
now accusing the apostle Paul of turning the world upside down. Oh, my ways are not your ways,
neither are my thoughts your thoughts. As the heavens are
higher above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts.
God's ways are just contrary to ours. It's not that we have
to have our understanding tweaked in order to know God. We have
to have a complete change of mind, a complete change of heart,
a complete change of direction. Everything that we believe about
God and about salvation is wrong by nature. Everything we believe. And so what we call upside down,
God's saying is right side up. They're accusing the Apostle
Paul of turning the world upside down. The truth is the world
was already upside down. The gospel is the only thing
that turns the world right side up. This is an upside down world
we live in. Everything's backwards. Everything's contrary to the
truth. Everything's wrong. It's only the gospel that makes
sense of anything and it makes sense of everything. It causes
us to see that God has one purpose. He has one purpose, the salvation
of his people. It's the reason why the world
exists. And he saves his people by glorifying
his son. The cross is what it is. Well,
it's the reason for everything. But here's the natural thinking
of man. Those who stand in rebellion
against God, those who envy the glory that God gets in salvation,
those who will not bow, those who will not believe, those who
have decided they're gonna have it their way, which we all would. lest God made us to differ. Who made you to differ? That's
a good question. What do you have that you did
not receive? You didn't earn it. You didn't
decide to have it. It was given to you as a free
gift. So when we speak of the rebellion of the natural man,
we know that but for the grace of God, there go I. So, accusing the Apostle Paul
of turning the world upside down, and when Jason, verse 7, hath,
whom Jason hath received, Jason had received the Apostle Paul
into his home, and so Jason was a local and they were going to
attack him first, and these do all contrary to the decrees of
Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. The same accusation the Jews
made about Christ. Same reason why Pilate asked
the Lord, are you the king of the Jews? That's the accusation
they're making against you, that you are threatening the authority
of Caesar. and that you're trying to rob
from Caesar his kingdom. And what did our Lord say? My
kingdom's not of this world. If my kingdom was of this world,
my disciples would fight. But for this cause was I born. And for this purpose came I into
the world, that I might bear witness unto the truth, and they
that are of the truth hear my voice and they follow me." That's
what it's all about, the truth. Nothing else matters. And what
did Pilate say in response to that? You know, relativism is not a
new thing. You hear men today say, well,
what's true for you may not be true for me and, you know, I
see it this way and you see it that way and everybody's got
an opinion and we got, you know, thousands of religious groups
and organizations around the world and everybody's got a little
bit of truth. And it's all relative to whatever
you think truth is. That's the way the world thinks
about truth. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
said to Pilate, for this cause came I into the world to bear
witness unto the truth, and they that are of the truth hear my
voice and they follow me. He was speaking of himself as
the truth. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No
man can come to the Father but by me. And what did Pilate say? He said exactly the same thing
men say today. Truth? Truth? Is that what this whole uproar
is about? Don't you know that there's no
such thing as an absolute truth? Don't you know that everything
is relative? This is about truth? Yes, it's about truth. It is
about truth. Christ is that truth and outside
of him there is no truth. They're accusing Paul and Jason. They knew that the way to get
the governing authorities on their side and get rid of Paul
was to accuse him of challenging the authority of Rome. And verse eight, and they troubled
the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these
things. And when they had taken security, that word means bail,
they had already been put in prison. Now the believers are
going to get together and pay their bail to get them out. And
when they had taken security of Jason and of the others, they
let them go. And the brethren immediately
sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming thither
went into the synagogue of the Jews." He goes from Philippi
to Thessalonica to Berea. What's he doing? Preaching the
gospel. God had said to him, go to Macedonia. I have a people over there. They
need your help. They need to hear the truth.
And they will hear it. But in hearing it, there's going
to be some persecution. Now, the Apostle Paul was in
Thessalonica three Sabbath days, three weeks. Three weeks, that
was it. And he preached the gospel faithfully
those three weeks, and God raised up a church. And then he goes
to Berea and ends up in Athens, and when he's in Athens, he writes
the letter back and sends Timothy back to encourage them. Now, if you go back with me to
our text in 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul and Silas and Timothy, unto
the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and
in the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be unto you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ exists in two places. It exists in two places. I'm
not talking about existing in two physical locations here on
earth. I'm talking about the fact that there is a church in
heaven and that there are local assemblies on the earth. When
the Bible speaks of the church, it's speaking of both. That eternal church, that invisible
church, that church where the names of all those whom God chose
in the covenant of grace are written in the Lamb's book of
life. That is the church. Turn with
me to Hebrews chapter 12. Let me show you a verse of scripture
here. In Hebrews chapter 12, look at verse 22. But you are come not to Mount
Sinai, not to the law, but to Mount Zion and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. and to an innumerable
company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn."
Now the Lord Jesus Christ is the firstborn among many brethren
and by that is a reference to his resurrection. So he is the
firstborn and we have the hope of our salvation in his conquering
of death. So we've come to the general
assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven and
to God the judge of all and to the spirits of just men made
perfect. So all the people of God have
always been in Christ and they've always been in heavenly places.
Child of God, when you close your eyes in death, And God sends
his angels to take you into glory. You're not going to open your
eyes in heaven and be comparing what you're seeing to what you
just came out of. No, you will have no memory whatsoever
of this life. You will come to the realization
that you've always been there. Time will be no more. This idea that people in heaven
die and they look back on the earth. Heaven would not be heaven
if we had any memory whatsoever or any thoughts in heaven of
this life. We've always been there and we
are there now in heavenly places in Christ Jesus right now. If anything is a figment of our
imagination, it is this life. If anything is less than completely
real and true, it is our existence in this world. You see, the real
existence we have is eternal. The eternal church, the heavenly
Jerusalem. So when God speaks of his church,
he's talking about all of those whom the father chose in Christ
before the foundation of the world. Not a single person can
be added to that church. When David said in those last
words, you remember he said, although my house be not so with
God. Yet he has made with me an everlasting
covenant. He's looking back to that eternal
covenant of grace as the hope of his salvation, that promise
that God made to save a people, not his promises to God, but
God's promise to him. There's our hope. Yet he has
made with me an everlasting covenant. And that covenant is ordered
in all things. And sure, everything necessary
to fulfill that covenant was ordered in what the Lord Jesus
Christ did when he died on Calvary's cross, when he put away our sins
and his ascension back into glory. The word of God did not return
to him void. He took with him the names of
those for whom he lived and died. And he's seated at the right
hand of God, and he ever lives to make intercession for us.
This is where the church is. And what is the last thing that
David says in that confession, although he make it not to grow? You know, in the world, in the
religious world, church growth is a great big thing. You know,
how to plant churches, how to grow churches. The church of
the Lord Jesus Christ has never grown by one member. And it's
never been depleted by one member. The Lord said he'll not lose
one of his sheep. This is the eternal church. This
is the church that is sure and steadfast, the secure church
of God in heaven. So when we speak of the church,
we're talking about that church. And then we're also talking about
the local assemblies. which are much different from
the eternal church. The local assemblies are visible.
Local assemblies are temporal. You go to any of these cities
that we've been talking about this morning in the Middle East
right now, and you won't find a gospel church. Those churches
didn't last long. God raises up a church, and he'll
bless that church for a period of time, and then he'll withdraw
his hand from that church. That's our greatest fear, isn't
it? Lord, don't remove your presence from us. What will we do if we don't have
a place to meet, if we don't have a place to hear, a place
to worship? And all the churches in the New
Testament were particular locations. The church which is at Thessalonica,
the church which was at Philippi, the church which was at Rome,
the church which was at Corinth. And so the reference there is
to a visible temporal church. And the Lord tells us that these
visible temporal churches are made up of wheat and tares. There are believers and unbelievers,
unlike the church in heaven. which is only made up of God's
elect. The temporal, visible churches
here on the earth are made up of believers and unbelievers. Sometimes it's very difficult
to know the difference, isn't it? Even for ourselves, it's
hard. Lord, don't let me be a tear
on the wheat. We're not to go around tearing
up the, pulling up the tears. We'll damage the wheat if we
do that. They grow up together. In the day of harvest, the Lord
will separate the wheat from the tares. And even among the wheat, unlike
the church in heaven, the temporal church is made up of sinners. Those who are saved, those who
believe the gospel, those who rest their hope in Christ are
also bearing in their bodies a sinful nature that affects
their lives and the lives of others. And so the temporal church,
unlike the eternal church, is very fragile. And that's the
reason why the Lord says that we're to pray for one another
and encourage one another and not forsake the assembling of
ourselves together as the manner of some is and, and, and, and
pray for one another and, and seek the peace of God among yourselves
and the unity of the brethren. This is all, these are all encouragements
given to the local assembly. These things are not necessary.
in the heavenly Jerusalem, in the eternal church, in the invisible
church, the Lord Jesus Christ will be the whole focus of our
attention and our glory and our praise and he himself and sin
will be no more and time will be no more and we get just a
little taste of that here. But the local assembly is a precious
thing and it's a It's a fragile thing and is to be treated carefully
and gently and we're admonished to seek her peace and to forgive
one another and to love one another. Now, we saw just briefly from
the passage we read in Acts chapter 17 that Jason and the other believers
were persecuted as a result of their believing the gospel. And if you read the letters to
the church at Thessalonica, you'll see that much of Paul's encouragement
is in light of the persecutions that they are suffering over
the gospel. And how oftentimes we've been
thankful that we live in a country where We can meet openly and
freely. We had the freedom of speech.
We had the freedom of worship. We're thankful that our founding
fathers saw the need to make this the first of all the amendments
in our Constitution. And yet, something became very
clear to me in spending a week with our brother from India last
week, Gilbert Dawson. And I shared with you a little
bit of some of what they suffer as a result of the gospel in
India. And I felt some jealousy. I felt some envy that we don't,
We don't have to suffer that. And the sweetness of their faith and their trust and their
hope. Gilbert sent me two of the brethren,
picked him up at the airport when he got home Thursday, this
past Thursday, and he said, I thought they were gonna crush me. They
hugged me so tight and for so long, I thought they were gonna
crush me. He was gone for a month, and he was their pastor, and
he came home, and they embraced him so. I thought, you know, historically,
Persecution's been good for the church. What if we've had to
meet secretly? What if we had to meet secretly
in fear of being imprisoned or being put to death? I wonder how many of us would
be there, would risk that. On one hand, we are thankful
for the freedoms that we have, but I'm not so sure that it's
that much of a blessing. I think that persecution is a
blessing. It certainly has been historically
in the church. I mean, the church thrived the
first three centuries and then when the Roman Emperor Constantine
made it an acceptable religion in the Roman government and then
after him the Roman government made it the state religion, what
happened to the gospel? What happened to the gospel when
all of a sudden the persecutions no longer, you see when the original
believers in Jerusalem were persecuted the scripture says they scattered
And as they scattered, it was like putting out a fire. Everywhere
those believers went, they took a spark of the gospel with them
and a new fire lit. We've become so... I mean, worship
is so convenient for us. It's so easy. And... Oh, the... The sweetness that
these believers experienced in the trial of their faith in
the opposition of the world against the church was a blessing to
them. Let me close by just making some
brief comments about the last part of this verse one. The Church of the Thessalonians,
which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only is being in
God the Father and being in Christ, not only is there no more secure
place to be, being found in God the Father and being found in
Christ is the only secure place to be. It is the only secure
place to be. There's no security outside of
this. What the Lord is telling us is
that the church is in the hand of God the Father, in the hand
of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the hand of God the Father. No
way, no way the church is getting out of that hand. It's the hand
of God. Listen to what the Lord Jesus
said in John chapter 10. He said, I give unto them eternal
life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My father which gave them to
me is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out
of my father's hand and I and my father are one. And here's
the hope that we have. Believer, part of the body of Christ, part
of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the called out ones,
the bride of Christ, you can't separate yourself from
God. And no amount of persecution
and no amount of trials or troubles, nothing the world can do will
separate you. from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus. God saves his church. They are
given eternal life and they shall never perish, never perish. Let's take a break.