All right, if you can make your
way back to First Thessalonians. The story is told of a Baptist
preacher who was walking along and came upon an older gentleman
who was fishing. And he happened upon the gentleman
just as he's pulling up this fish. And when the fish came
out, the fish was so ugly that it caused the Baptist preacher
to say, what kind of fish is that? And the old man said, it's
a Baptist fish. Like, why would you call it a
Baptist fish? Well, it starts to stink when you take it out
of water. Well, hopefully, what is true
of us in the flesh, that is emotional experiences or experiences that
we have in life that when we're out of that moment, things change,
are not true of us by God's grace in the spirit. Paul actually gives thanks here,
and if you were to examine this in the original language, verses
two through 10 are all one sentence in the Greek. Now, people complain
about my writing style, and I don't leave a lot to be desired in
that way, but I will say to you, I don't believe I've ever written
a single sentence that was as long as what Paul has to say
here. But the main subject, the thing
that everything hinges around in this passage, is that Paul
says to the Thessalonian church that he gives thanks for them. And he gives thanks for you all,
which I guess if we were down south we could say he was one
of us, but he gave thanks for them Now, based on the background
that was read in Acts 17, and what we saw in 1 Thessalonians
3, Paul was not actually with this church very long, and he
did not get a very good reception in town. If you recall from what
was read, or if you want to turn back there, essentially what
happened is not only did Paul get run out of town, but the
people from Thessalonica followed Paul into Berea and caused trouble
there. And possibly only because Timothy
was not as conspicuous as Paul or Silas, it was Timothy who
was sent back to see, are they still there? Is everything still
well with their soul? Are they still believing the
truths that I taught them when I was there for that short period
of time? So Paul sends Timothy there,
and when he comes back with the report, Paul is thankful. They didn't begin, unlike the
Baptist fish, they did not begin to stink as soon as they were
out of the water, but they had something that took. Well, unlike a lot of interpreters
of this passage, I will suggest to you it is not because of anything
remarkable in them. In fact, it is in spite of their
idolatry that Paul could say this of them. In fact, he makes
clear in verse two that he's giving thanks to God not to them,
for the state that Timothy found them in. And it's that thanks
that he, and the reason behind it that he seeks to explain as
he goes along. And I would suggest to you, the
reason he can give thanks to God, the hinge pin of our passage
is found in verse five. For our gospel did not come to
you in word only. Our gospel did not come to you
in word only. Now, when you think about that, a
lot of people would say, you're right, too much emphasis. In
fact, there are people who say you're a bibliolater, you're
idolatrous of the Bible because you guys just spend so much time
talking about what does the text say, what does it say about Jesus. But Paul does not say here, we
give thanks to God for you, for our gospel did not come in word. It did come in word. It came back then and does come
in words now. God uses the words. He says not in word only, but
let's talk about the words there. In Ephesians 1.13, Paul wrote,
in him you also trusted, when? After you heard the word of truth. God uses words. Those who would say, preach the
gospel, use words if necessary, don't understand the biblical
teaching. Likewise, probably the most classic
text on what the gospel is, 1 Corinthians 15, 2, Paul says, by this gospel
you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. And he goes on to say that it
is according to the scriptures so it he doesn't say not in word
but he says not in word only and in fact in this very passage
he goes on in verse six and says you became followers of us and
of the lord having received the word, and I'm looking at a New
King James here. The NIV has taken some liberties. I don't recall offhand how it
translates there, but in some of the other passages it does,
so I wanted to have reference to this text, which is a little
bit more literal. But the same Greek word, logos,
is in both. And he says, having received
the word. And then also in verse eight,
he says, for from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth. So it's true that the gospel
is not in word only. But it did and does come to us
in words. So what is this gospel here? And I thought about it, does
Paul define in his text the gospel that he's preaching? And he does.
If you look down at verses 9 and 10, maybe not as fully as he
does in 1 Corinthians, but he says the same thing here. He
says the true God raised his son from the dead. and true God, the living and
true God at the end of verse nine. And Jesus is the one who
delivers us from the wrath to come. I think that is a very
succinct definition of the gospel. I heard and listened to a number
of messages that Joe has done on defining the gospel, and he
said you're never gonna run out of things to say about it and
ways to define it, but just sticking with our text here, the way that
Paul defines it here is that the true God, the living and
true God raised his son from the dead and that son, Jesus,
is the one who delivers us from the wrath to come. So those words
need to be proclaimed. Those words need to sound forth. Paul's encouraged by what's happening
in the spirit in Thessalonica because He gets the report that
they not only received that word, but they were preaching that
word. The word of the Lord sounded
forth. And I believe by that he's not
talking about their good deeds, although I'm sure they had good
deeds. And I'm sure that all of us who
profess Christ in as much as the Spirit of God is able to
work with us, we're able to do some good deeds, but the goodest
deed, if you'll permit that English mangling, the goodest deed that
he could speak of is that the gospel, the word of the Lord,
would sound forth from a people. So not in word only. Well, what's
this only mean? Well, I'll let Paul define it. I will say that as a precursor
to that, Paul, I believe, is saying that the word preached
had impact. How so? Well, if you're familiar
with it, what might come to mind is the passage in 1 Corinthians,
and I didn't write it down, but there's a passage where Paul
said that he didn't seek to come to them in, and I'm paraphrasing,
grand oratory. He didn't try to persuade them
by the wisdom of men, but by the wisdom of God. So we know
that's a side. But he says in our text, in verse
5, it did not come in word only, but also in power. Also in power. Well, if you're
familiar and you think about the passage, Romans 1.16 comes
to mind. The gospel itself is the power
of God. And in the very preaching of
the words, not that they're magic words, but God is able to use
in the declaration that Jesus is the one who delivers us from
the wrath to come. In that very proclamation, God
shows his power. And then if you want to, you
could turn over to 2 Timothy chapter one, verses eight through
10. There it says the gospel is according
to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a
holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his
own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus
before time began. but has now been revealed by
the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished
death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. So the words of the gospel can
convey God's power and the fact that God is the one who stands
as surety of the gospel message and in history, in time and space,
the Lord Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and died and was brought
back to life, was resurrected through the gospel. That is showing
its power. But it's also true, even though
we still continue to struggle with the flesh, even as the last
hymn we sang speaks of, we struggle until faith becomes sight. Even though that's true, there
is a change that's brought to a degree upon the people of God,
and you see the power mentioned here in verse three, he talks
about remembering your work of faith and labor of love and patience
of hope. They didn't have that in their
flesh. Before Paul preached the gospel
and God, through the Holy Spirit, regenerated them, that could
not be said of them. It wasn't that these are basically
decent folks here All you need to do is just kind of turn their
thinking a little bit, point them in the right direction.
No, they were dead just like I was, just like those of you
who are believers now, just like you were. They were dead in trespasses
and sin, unable to see anything or understand anything. A fog,
a heavy fog was over their minds and our minds as they thought
or heard these things, and yet God, through the gospel, produced
in them faith and love and hope. And also verse nine, which has
been made note of here earlier, it talks about how they turned
to God from idols to serve the living and true God. when you
have a pagan people, and we're beginning to see, I think, more
and more in our country what that means. I remember having
this conversation not overly long ago with Joe and telling
him, you know, I would read things, especially in the Old Testament,
but also in like the Book of Acts and the Gospel accounts
and think, That just seems like, how could anybody be that messed
up? How could anybody be that far
gone that they would do that sort of thing? Cutting themselves
and running naked through the streets. I just don't understand
it. Well, now I guess I don't have
to think about that in theory. We see a lot of that, especially
hailing from your neighbor to the north. There's a little bit
more of that in our parts. But turning to God from idols
isn't just paganism. Some of those who turned to God
from idolatry in Thessalonica were actually Jewish in background. They had imbibed of that religion
and they had fallen to the idolatry that they themselves could add
to what God had done in the past. Satan had a vote, God had a vote,
and they were gonna cast a deciding vote. So turning to God from
idols isn't just that gross paganism that we see in our culture today.
Turning to God from idols to serve the living and true God
is giving up on our own righteousness and giving up on the belief that
it's God plus us as a way of salvation. That is the power
that's mentioned. Well, next he talks about in
the Holy Spirit. So the gospel that God raised
his son from the dead and that he alone would deliver us from
the wrath to come has to be accompanied by the Holy Spirit. Now, there
are those who either will directly say You know, we are gonna bring
the Holy Spirit into our worship. You know, we're gonna pray Him
down. Well, good luck with that. it's not going to happen. And
in fact there was a movement back when I was a newer Christian
and charismania was a little more prevalent than it is now
or at least a little more unique than it is now and they would
talk about power evangelism and it went as far as a gentleman
bringing some people from, I believe, from a church and possibly from
a seminary class. I don't remember all the details,
but they went to a cemetery because they said, our power of evangelism,
we're going to go to the cemetery and raise somebody from the dead.
Well, I don't think I'm ruining the story to say nobody got raised
from the dead. The only thing you see in that
realm is some leg lengthening and that sort of thing that happens. But we who are believers in sovereign
grace should not shy away from the Holy Spirit. We should embrace
the Holy Spirit as the necessary, not only precursor to us believing
in Christ, but the only one who can cause us to persevere to
the end. Verse Peter chapter 1 verse 12,
Peter says that those who have preached the gospel to you preached
it by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Now, When I think about Joe and think
about him at least as I knew him as a human being, I did not
think about him as one sent by the Holy Spirit, right? But
in the reading of that passage, it was a Holy Spirit given message
that was heard from this very pulpit for decades. And in other faithful churches
that preach the gospel of sovereign grace, really the only gospel
there is, but we have to put those qualifiers on it, it is
the Holy Spirit who inspires that gospel to go forth. I look out and when we drove
into town. And I'm going to be careful to
say I've never darkened the doors of another church in this town,
so I'm not going to speak to what goes on in there. But their
crowd looked to be a little bit larger than ours. And I hope
and pray that they would preach the same gospel But I know from
experience in other situations, having driven the three and a
half hours from our house down here, we drove past a lot of
other churches, and I know from sitting in those auditoriums,
there isn't a whole lot of preaching this gospel. And it isn't that
in some of those places they won't say some of the same words. And in fact, there's many very
moving statements in either sermons or books or catechisms or confessions
of faith that say the same thing. But there always seems to be
a but. There always seems to be a and. There always seems to be an addition.
And I'm here to say to you, anything that we add, anything that I
add to Christ and Him crucified and a work of the Spirit of God
to raise dead sinners to life is a deadly mix. There's death
in that pot. The Holy Spirit has to preach
through the human vessel and reach into the hearts of men
and women to change them by His grace. What's interesting here is in
verse six, Paul says, you became followers of us and of the Lord,
having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy
Spirit. Now, in workplaces, when somebody
new starts in a workplace, and something bad happens, At least
in, you know, maybe it's my Baptist fish background, but the carnal
nature comes out and says, bet you didn't know that was going
to happen when you signed up for this job, right? That isn't
what you thought was going to happen. And maybe the people
of Thessalonica could say that. How is it that this would happen? Well, he says in chapter 3 that
we actually warned you about that. But he says that they receive
the word in much affliction with joy. Those words don't generally
go together. I don't know about you, We recently got a puppy, and
one thing about puppies is they have to kind of learn it's not
good to bite the humans, and God, in his infinite wisdom,
not only gave puppies the desire to bite, he gave them real sharp
needle pen teeth. And I, as much as you can love
an animal, I love that animal, but not when she bites me with
those needle teeth. There's not a lot of joy in that.
But if it's a joy of the Holy Spirit, it's a joy that is otherworldly,
external to us. But it's put into us, even though
we go through affliction. Now, I haven't had the affliction
that some of you have had even prior to the recent events that
have gone on here. And honestly, when I look at
Western civilization, even though things are turning poorly, we
didn't have people following us from, there was nobody following
my truck down from Minnesota to come cause trouble outside
this church. We don't have the level of affliction
that they did, and yet that gospel, because they were changed by
God, they were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, that gospel
brought joy. They turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God, and even though they were
afflicted, because the Holy Spirit worked in their spirit, it produced
joy. And lastly, with this particular
section, not in word only, but in power in the Holy Spirit.
And he says, in much assurance. Now, it doesn't mean that he
was saying they never had doubts. And certainly, if you read anything
about saints of God in scripture, you can see there are doubts. And yet, God is able in those things to
give us tokens of his love and to show us that we can be assured
of his love for us. In Hebrews chapter 10, I almost said Paul. Had fun with
Joe about that also. I said, well, as Paul wrote in
Hebrews and of course we don't know who wrote Hebrews and that
may may not be an accurate statement but whoever wrote Hebrews in
addition to the Holy Spirit inspiring it in Hebrews chapter 10 it says
therefore brethren having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood
of Jesus by a new and living way which he consecrated for
us through the veil that is his flesh and having a high priest
over the house of God let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith. It's the same Greek word there
in Hebrews 10 as in our passage. Notice he doesn't say because
you've lived a good life and because you produce works that
accompany salvation, you can have the ability to draw near
with the full assurance of faith. No, he says because Christ by
his blood, consecrated through the veil that is his flesh, a
way into the holy of holies, we can draw near to God. We can
draw near to God because of that. So when you hear the gospel and
when I hear the gospel preached, I pray that it isn't just in
words only. I pray that it's in words, but
I pray that it isn't just in words only, but that we would
be able to draw near because of what Christ has done for us. Now And I didn't know how far I was
going to get in this text, and it looks like I have another
40 minutes, right? Oh. Didn't I just start? No, all kidding aside, I'm going
to draw some things to a close, which means probably another
10 minutes. One of the things that kind of
shocked me about this passage And I guess it didn't so much
shock me, but it is one of those things that, it didn't really
jump out. I've read 1 Thessalonians a number
of times in my Christian life. And I didn't really think about
the fact that Paul had said this to a group of believers who maybe,
we'll put it on the outside, maybe had been believers for
six months. There are some people who say
it's, like six weeks I don't know how they know that but either
way they hadn't been believers very long and if you notice here
in verse four knowing beloved brethren your election by God
now of people who will even say the word election without spitting,
right? Normally, they would say to you,
give it 30 years or so. Let's see if your fruits endure
to the end, and then we can know whether or not you're one of
the elect. Paul is saying here, I don't need that long. I can
see your trusting in Christ alone. And those of you who are truly
His, you're elect of God. You don't have to pray it through.
You don't have to wait to see if there's enough fruit there. You don't have to memorize the
Heidelberg Catechism. You don't have to know all the
questions from the Westminster Catechism. We don't have to wait
until you're married, have kids, they have kids, and see whether
or not they all turn out to be Christians. He said, I know. your election, and he didn't
have a crystal ball. I mean, there are people who
will hide behind, well, it's the apostle, and of course he
knew certain things that we can't know. No, he knew it because
they believed a gospel that wasn't in word only. They weren't trusting
in themselves. They were looking to Jesus to
deliver them from the wrath to come. And a quick word on that
phrase here. It isn't, and it's tempting to
think this way, especially with the current political climate,
he isn't talking about the wrath to come in November. Right? Or January, depending
on how you want to look at it. He isn't talking about that.
He isn't talking about this worldly thing. He's talking about the
wrath of God against sinners. We're saved, as Joe said, and
I'm not certain that he didn't borrow this from somebody else.
Usually the best statements have been borrowed. We're saved by
God. for God and from God, right? And Jesus is the one who saves
us from God's wrath. But these were not considered
to be high doctrines that, you know, we have to wait for somebody
to be a bit more mature before we start talking about sovereign
grace and election, no. Those doctrines were preached
to them And Paul was clear in his very first letter a few months
later to bring that up to them. We know your election. Well, I will say this. I give thanks to God for this
church being here. For many years I took it for
granted that this church would be here and Joe would be preaching
the gospel from this pulpit. And I took it for granted that
someday, you know, I would get a chance to meet some of the
other brothers and sisters and other like-minded churches that
are out there. And I thank God for them as well. Thank God for what they've done
for us in the flesh. Amazing things have been done
for us in light of things that have happened recently. But what
I thank God for the most is those who believe our gospel are the
elect of God and Jesus will deliver them from the wrath to come. As I was studying and looking
at various commentaries and quotes and everything, I came across
this quote from Joe that I'll use to close here. So here's
the good news. Your God reigns. The one in whom you trust is
in control. People ask the question, and
it's kind of a silly question, does a man have to believe in
the sovereignty of God in order to be saved? And in typical Joe
fashion, and stopping the quote here, he didn't answer the question.
It's like, no, you don't have to believe that. Well, what he
says is, well, I can tell you this. If God isn't sovereign,
they aren't going to be saved. So what difference does it make?
Nobody but a sovereign God can save. Pray that that will be something
that God brings to our remembrance throughout the week. A sovereign
God who, in spite of all of our sin and guilt, and utter depravity decided to
save a people for himself. All right.