Good morning. We're going to
sing the Grace Hymnal No. 2, and we're going to sing it
a cappella. Sing it prayerfully unto the
Lord. Lord, we come before thee now. If you could please stand.
No. 2 in your Grace Hymnal. Lord, we come before thee now. At thy feet we humbly bow. O do not our suit disdain, Shall
we seek thee, Lord, in vain? Lord, on thee our souls depend,
In compassion now descend. Fill our hearts with Thy rich
grace. Tune our lips to sing Thy praise. in thy own appointed way. Now we seek thee here, we stay. Lord, we know now how to go. Till a blessing Thou bestow. Send a message from Thy Word,
That my joy and peace afford. Let Thy Spirit now impart Christ's
salvation to each heart. May we be seated. Let's pray together. Our blessed Heavenly Father,
that is the prayer that you've put on our hearts this morning,
that Christ's salvation would be imparted to every heart, that
you would be pleased to reveal to us his glory and give us hope
in his accomplished work of redemption. We thank you for bringing us
here to this place. We thank you for the promise
of your presence. We thank you for the power of
your word. And oh, how we pray that you would teach us, Lord,
and reveal to us the glory of your gospel. For we ask it in
Christ's name. Amen. Good morning. We're going to continue our study
in 1 Thessalonians, if you would like to turn with me there in
your Bibles, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. We spent most of the
time last Sunday looking at how this church was established in
Acts chapter 17 when Paul went to Thessalonica and the immediate
persecution that came against the believers as a result of
the gospel. I want us to go back this morning
and look at these same verses that we looked at last week,
the first five verses of chapter one, but rather than focusing
our attention on the persecution that came as a result of the
gospel, I want us to focus our attention on the gospel. There's
two things that make me want to preach more than anything
else, and that's listening to good preaching, and listening
to bad preaching uh... both of those have the same effect
on me uh... the good preaching once made
it makes me want to preach and bad preaching i think makes me
want to preach more uh... i listened to a message this
past week uh... called the gospel of grace and
uh... other than mentioning the word
gospel and mentioning the word grace numerous times in the message
uh... there was no gospel in it and
uh... and there was no grace uh... the sovereignty of god was mentioned
but Election was never mentioned. Particular redemption was never
mentioned. Irresistible grace was never
mentioned. All the essential elements of
the gospel were not proclaimed in this message. And this poor
man believes himself to be a gospel preacher, but he didn't preach
the gospel. And so I want us to go back to these verses of
scripture. And if you'll notice in verse
5, for our gospel, our gospel came not unto you in word only. In other words, we did preach
the gospel. We did not shun to hide any of
it from you. Robert read from Acts chapter
20 this morning in the study about where Paul met with the
elders in Ephesus. And he says to them, I kept nothing
back from you. I shunned I taught you the whole
gospel, the whole counsel of God. And Paul said, when I brought
the gospel, I didn't keep any of it back. But it came not only
in word, but it came in power in the Holy Ghost. And he blessed
these words to the hearts of his people and revealed to them
the glory of Christ. So, I want us to to look at these passages of
Scriptures. And I hope that the Spirit of
God, I hope first of all the Lord will enable me to not shun
from the gospel, to preach the whole counsel of God. And then
that the Holy Spirit will be pleased to bless these words
to our hearts and reveal to us the glory of Christ. So Paul
and Silas and Timothy, on to the church. The church. Do you remember what the word
church means, literally? It is the word ecclesia in the
Greek language, same translation that we have in Spanish. Ecclesia,
which is church, literally translated it means the called out ones. He's not talking about the outward
call. God commands all men everywhere
to repent. He's talking about the effectual
inward call. And it's not until the Spirit
of God calls you out of darkness into his marvelous light That's
a work of grace. It's not by our will. It's not by our works. It's by
the effectual call of the Spirit of God. This is the attending
of the Spirit of God. There's no hearing the gospel,
regardless of how Well, it's preached. There's no hearing
of the gospel apart from the call of grace, the ministry of
the Holy Spirit. I know we oftentimes go back
to that valley of dry bones in the book of Ezekiel, but there
it is again, isn't it? When the prophet of God was commanded
to preach to the dry bones the gospel. And yet, there was yet
no life in them, is what the scripture says. When did life
come? When he preached to the wind, when the Spirit of God
came and blessed the gospel and called them out. And so if we're
gonna be part of the church, we are dependent upon the effectual
call. If the Lord, and when he calls,
Remember when he said to Matthew, Matthew follow me. And immediately
got up from his table and followed the Lord. Always the case, my
sheep hear my voice. When I call them, they come.
The Lord's not wasting his breath calling men that don't come. So to be a part of the church,
the church are the called out ones. There's the gospel. There's
the gospel. We're dead in our trespasses
and sins. Dead man can't hear. A dead man
can't see. A dead man can't believe. God
has to call him out of that darkened dead condition and breathe life
into his heart in order for him to believe. Now, faith is not
the cause of our salvation. The effectual call is the cause
of our salvation. It's called regeneration. It's
the work of the Spirit of God breathing life into our dead
hearts, taking out the heart of stone and putting in a heart
of flesh. Faith is the result of that. Faith is the evidence of life.
Bree's going to be having a baby any day now. And that baby's
alive. And the first breath that that
little boy's going to take will give evidence of his life. So, breathing gives evidence
of life. And so faith is the believer's
breathing. And it gives evidence of the
life that God gives when he effectually calls you out. So the church,
the church, the called out ones, the ones who have experienced
the work of grace in their hearts, causing them to come out from
among them and be separate. You can't have the gospel without
the church. You can't have the gospel without
the call. You can't have the church without the call, the
effectual call, all right? And the gospel of free will destroys
the church. It destroys the gospel. It destroys
the whole truth of the call, the call of God. you know that the religious world
would have us to think that that God's offering salvation to everyone
and that that you have to accept the call you have to receive
the message in order to in order to be a part of the church and
that's just not true these are the called out ones God calls
you out you come out you just come out Which is in God. In God. This church has been
in God from the beginning. Where in God? In His heart. In
His heart. I've loved you with an everlasting
love. Here's election. You know, this
message I listened to this week. The Gospel of Grace. Never mentioned. Mentioned the sovereignty of
God many times, but never declared the truth of election. There's no salvation without
election. If God doesn't choose us and have us in His heart before
we have Him in our heart, then there's no gospel. The good news
is that we are in God. Always have been. I've loved
you with an everlasting love. Never been a time. In time or
in eternity. We worship a God who never changes. We can't get our understanding
around this. We cannot conceive of how it
is that there was never a time, and we can't even use the word
time in describing eternity, can we? But there's never been
in eternity a time when God didn't love us. We weren't in God. And, look, and in the Lord Jesus
Christ. The only way we could be in the
heart of God is to be in Christ. God's elected, chosen people
have always been viewed by God in Christ. This is the only way
He could love us. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. He
can only have fellowship with that which is perfect, that which
is holy. He loves righteousness and he
hates iniquity. So how is he going to love us?
Only by having us in Christ even before Adam sinned. And certainly
before you sinned, before I sinned. We were the church, the called
out ones were in God and in Christ. Grace. Grace. Demerited favor. Free. It's not earned, not by works
of righteousness which you have done. It's free. It's all of
God. It's a work of sovereign grace. Regeneration is by grace. Redemption
is by grace. Election is by grace. Sanctification
is by grace. Glorification is by grace. It's all of grace. And if it
is of grace, it can no longer be of works. Otherwise, grace
is not grace. You can't mix grace and works. You know, this preacher I listen to would
call himself a five-point Calvinist. And he didn't preach the gospel. And he brought works in on the
back end. He kept talking about grace and
the sovereignty of God without defining it, and then concluded
everything with, is the gospel changing your life? Is the gospel changing your life?
And by that, he was encouraging people to evaluate their behavior
to see whether or not they believe the gospel. The gospel will change your life.
It will. It'll change the things you love
to the things God loves. It'll change the things you hate
to the things God hates. It'll cause you to stop doing
some things that you may have done before. And it'll cause
you to do some things that you never did before. The gospel
will do that. But as soon as you start looking
at those changes in your life as the evidence of your salvation,
You've got your eyes off of Christ and you're measuring your salvation
by, by, by, well, everybody, if you look to Christ, you're
not looking at those changes. Matter of fact, the more you
see of him, the more you're going to see of your own sin. And you're
not going to have any comfort. In the fact that you're not doing
things you used to do, or you're doing things you didn't used
to do, or your outward behaviors change, you're not going to find
your comfort there. Because when you look at yourself,
all you're going to see is your sin. That's all you're going
to see. And you're going to see more
and more of your need for Christ. This is grace. It's all of grace. It's not of works. And peace,
look at grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ made peace
with God when he shed his precious blood on Calvary's cross. For
all of God's elect, all that God chose in the covenant
of grace, were redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and he made
peace with God. When he ascended back into glory,
he took with him the names of those for whom he lived and died,
and he is interceding on behalf of his church. Now in our regeneration,
we discover the peace that's already been. You don't make
your peace with God. by believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ. You experience the peace that the Lord Jesus Christ has
already made with God when God gives you grace to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. And now you have peace. You always
have peace with God. You see, you can't do anything
to add to that. You can't do anything to take
anything away from that. All you can do is enjoy what
the Lord Jesus Christ has already done. He is the Prince of Peace. We have peace with God through
the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse two, we give thanks
to God always for you. Why would we give thanks to God? If salvation was a matter of
free will, then God needs to be thanking us for letting us
let him have his way in our lives. If salvation was a matter of
good works that we somehow discipline ourselves into, then there's
no need to thank God. He needs to be thanking us. We
thank God because all of salvation comes from Him. All of it. Every single bit of it. From
the first to the last and everything in between. We're bound to give
thanks always to God for you, our brethren. For your election
and your salvation, your redemption, your sanctification, it's all
of God. We're thanking him. We give thanks to God always
for you, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without
ceasing your work of faith again. Faith is a gift of God. It's not your work. It's His
work in you. And faith is the evidence of
salvation, not the cause of it. We're saved by free grace. We're saved through regeneration.
We're saved by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
faith is what gives evidence to that. That's what Hebrews
says. Faith is the evidence of things
hoped for. So, men want to make their faith
the contribution that they make to secure their salvation. And it's not true. And it's a denial of grace, it's
the denial of the gospel. Labor of love. Again, you start looking at your
love for God, If you're a child of God, you're
going to be very disappointed. in your love for Him. We do love
Him, but it's His love for us. It's the love of Christ that
constraineth us. Herein is love, not that we love
God. That's not the measure of love,
but that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for
our sins. So there's the measure of love. And when we're looking at the
love of Christ toward us, then it's just natural to love him,
to love his people, to love his gospel, to love his church, and
that's what motivates us to labor. Patience of hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ. Patience of hope. A believer never ever stops having
hope. It's Christ that works in you,
causing you to will and to do of His good pleasure. What do
we will? We will to see Him as He is and
be made like Him. We will to worship Him without
sin. What's that going to be like?
I can't imagine. I just really can't imagine.
what it's going to be like to stand in the presence of God
and to worship Him in the fullness of His glory. We just look through
a glass dimly now, don't we? We strain to catch glimpses of
His glory and in that moment the patience of hope, the hope
of knowing that one day, one day we're going to worship Him
in the fullness of His glory. And we're just patiently waiting
for that day, aren't we? Longing for that experience. And it's, it's, it's he that
works in us. We just, we never lose patience.
Never. And we might lose patience in
temporal things. But the child of God never loses
patience in hoping for the Lord Jesus Christ. And all this is going to happen
in the sight of God and our Father. He's going to be looking down
on all of it. And we'll be in His presence. What a glorious
hope we have. Knowing, brethren, we know this. We know that we're
We're birthed from the same womb. That's what brethren means here.
And we have the same experience. We believe the same thing. We
really do. We believe that salvation is
of the Lord. And that every part of it He has done. That we're
completely dependent upon His grace. And every child of God
believes that. So we're beloved. beloved of
God, and we know this, that our election is of God. We didn't choose Him. We didn't
just wake up one day and decide, you know, I think I'm going to
believe God. I'm going to start following
the Lord. No, that didn't happen. Paul talked about his conversion
as a pattern for every believer. How was the Apostle Paul converted? He was converted as a blasphemer.
He was converted as an injurious man. He was doing injury to the
things of God and to the glory of God. And what happened? On his hellbound pursuit, God
knocked him off his horse, didn't he? Knocked him off his high
horse, put his face in the dirt, shined the light of the gospel
from heaven and spoke to his heart. And that's the pattern
for every child of God. He humbles the proud. And He speaks from heaven, opening
the very windows of heaven, and speaks effectually to their hearts,
calling them out and bringing them to Himself. It's all done as a result of
election. There's no preaching the gospel
without election. You know, I hear preachers who
say they believe in election say stuff like this, well Christ
died for everyone that will believe. That's true. But why say it like
that? Why did this preacher that I
listened to this week never mention election? I'll tell you exactly
why. He lost his job. He lost his
job. And if he didn't lose his job,
he had lost at least two-thirds of his congregation. That's the offense of the gospel. And to be able to say, well,
you know, Christ died for everyone that will believe, that's a true
statement, but it avoids the truth. It leaves those who believe
in free will the opportunity to hold on to their decision,
doesn't it? Why not just make it clear? The
Lord Jesus Christ came into this world and laid down His life
for His sheep whom God chose in the covenant of grace before
time ever began. The elect of God. He didn't waste
a drop of His blood for anybody else. He doesn't love everybody.
He didn't die for everybody. He came to satisfy the demands
of God's righteousness and God's justice for His elect. For the chosen of God. Why not
just say it like that? That's offensive. to those who
still playing with free will and those who are still playing
with believing that somehow their works either give them hope in
salvation or give them assurance of salvation for our gospel our gospel Now Paul makes it clear in Galatians
chapter 1, turn with me there, turn with me to Galatians chapter
1. Verse 6, I marvel that you are
so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of
Christ unto another gospel. lots of gospels out there, lots
of Jesus's out there, lots of spirits out there. How do I know
that my gospel is the gospel? How do I know that my gospel
is God's gospel? Verse 7, which is not another. But there be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. They would pervert
the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from
heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have
preached unto you, let him be accursed. Any other gospel is gonna send
your soul to hell. That's what the Lord's saying.
It will curse you before God. There's only one gospel. And as we said before, so I say
now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than
what you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade
men or God? Do I now speak to please men?
A lot of preachers. pretending to preach the gospel
but they're preaching in a way to please me on not gone and
uh... all set up you know i just not
here please me here too to please god and to save god's elect that's
what he he he uh... Well, let's go back to our text. So there's another gospel. What is this gospel? Well, the first mention of the
word gospel in the New Testament is found in Matthew 4, verse
23. And Jesus went about all Galilee,
teaching in their synagogue and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. the gospel of the kingdom that's
the first mention of the gospel in the New Testament now where
there's a kingdom there's a king and we don't know much about
kings in our in our governmental system but kings have sovereign
authority particularly when that king is God They're not asking for their
subjects' approval. They're not asking for their
subjects' opinions. They're not dependent on anything
from their subjects. A king writes a decree. And that decree is, you remember
when the decree was written by the king of the Medes and the Persians and
nothing could change it? And the decree was for the Israelites
to be killed and they couldn't, the king couldn't even change
his decree. So, you know, this is the gospel
of the kingdom. He's a sovereign king. He's got
the sovereign right to choose according to his will and purpose
who he's going to place his love on. Who he's going to choose
for salvation. Who he's going to redeem. He's
the king. This is the gospel of the kingdom. We're just subjects to the king.
And all we can do is bow, and all we want to do is bow, and
worship the King. So, now the other thing that
we see about the gospel is that the gospel is to be preached.
It's not to be debated. It's to be declared. Paul said that Christ came preaching
the gospel. Paul said, I preach the gospel.
He said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe. Without
the gospel, there's no salvation. And so we just, we declare it,
we preach it from the word of God with authority. with conviction. And we're able to say without
compromise, thus saith the Lord. This is the gospel. And there
is no another. And it's not up for debate. It's the gospel of the kingdom. Paul asked the church at one
point, he said, he said, Oh, pray that I might open my mouth
boldly and make known the mystery of the gospel. The gospel is
a mystery to the natural man. Pray that the Lord will give
me that boldness to open my mouth and declare it with boldness. Who is the gospel for? The first time the Lord Jesus
Christ declares himself publicly to be the Messiah was when he
went to Nazareth and took the scroll and opened it to Isaiah
chapter 61 and he said that God had sent him to preach the gospel
to the poor. Now that word poor, you can look
it up, it means beggar. It doesn't mean, well, you know,
I'm kind of on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. No, it means abject poverty. It means you don't have two pennies
to rub together. It means you've got nothing. now you've never been poor physically
I've never been poor physically not like that subject to nothing
I mean you're naked you don't have clothes you don't have money
you don't have food you don't have housing you've got nothing
nothing the Lord Jesus Christ came to
preach the gospel to the poor now though we've never been like
that physically If God calls you out, that's what He makes
you to be spiritually, doesn't He? I don't have any clothing. I don't have any way to hide
my nakedness. I don't have anything to offer
God to purchase from Him my salvation or to persuade Him to have mercy
upon me. I am a beggar. I've got nothing. That's who
the Gospel is for. When John the Baptist was put
in prison and he sent his disciples back to the Lord to ask, are
you the one or should we expect another? The Lord told his disciples,
tell John to the poor, the gospel is being preached. Tell John
that, and he'll be persuaded that I'm the one. I'm the one. What is the gospel to a sinner?
It's his salvation. It's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. In the gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed. The righteousness of God is revealed
in God's righteous judgments in the covenant of grace before
time ever began to choose whomsoever He wills and to put His love
on whomever He wills and to put them in Christ. That's His. In the gospel is the righteousness
of God revealed. The righteousness of God is revealed
in the perfect obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. The righteousness
of God is revealed in the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ,
atoning for, successfully atoning for, accomplishing. He didn't
make an offer of salvation. He actually accomplished the
salvation of God's people. That's the righteousness of God
being revealed in the gospel. The righteousness of God has
been revealed as the Lord Jesus Christ ever lives to make intercession
on behalf of His people. The righteousness of God is revealed
in that He keeps us. He keeps us. He causes us to
keep believing, to keep having patience, to keep hoping in the
coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, the righteousness of God
is revealed in the gospel. Romans chapter 10, men by nature
are ignorant of the righteousness of God, and so what do they do? They go about trying to establish
their own righteousness. The righteousness of God is revealed
in that we cannot look to ourselves for any assurance of our salvation. If you're a child of God, every
time you've tried to do that, it's failed on you, hasn't it?
Every single time you've been tempted to look to yourself for
assurance of your salvation. Well, I know I'm saved because
I'm doing this and I'm not doing that. Well, it doesn't work for
you, does it? Assurance of salvation can only
come in looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the righteousness
of God being revealed in the gospel. How do I know that my gospel
is God's gospel? It's consistent with the revelation
of the gospel in the scriptures. A lot of gospels out there. Lord,
give us grace to believe your gospel. It's good news, isn't
it? It's good news. That's what gospel
means. Why is it good news? Because God does it all. He does
every bit of it. All right, let's take a break.