So we're going to read together
from the first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians. And here's
what it says. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus
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. We give thanks to God
always for you, always for you all, making mention of you in
our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and
labour of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the sight of God and our Father. Knowing, brethren beloved, your
election of God. For our gospel came not unto
you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and
in much assurance, as ye know what manner of men we were among
you for your sake. And ye became followers of us
and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with
joy of the Holy Ghost, so that ye were in samples to all that
believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the
word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also
to every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad, so
that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves show of us
what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned
to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait
for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even
Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. The doctrine of election is at
the heart of the everlasting covenant of God's grace. And the doctrine of election
is foundational to all the divine decrees that form the ways and
the means of God's saving purpose in time and eternity. And election is directly and
intimately linked to the extent of the redemptive work of the
Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And election determines the range
and scope of the ministry and work of God the Holy Spirit in
the gospel through gospel preaching throughout all time. So that
in short, election is God's choice of who will be saved, how they
shall be saved, where and when they shall be saved, and why
they shall be saved. And nothing in our salvation
is dependent upon our works or the free will of men and women. Election explains the sovereign
purpose of God in saving a people out of Adam's fallen race for
the praise and glory of his name. and for the blessing of the objects
of his goodness and mercy. Now election is met with so frequently
and clearly in scripture that we might be forgiven for thinking
that it would be generally received and believed by the church. And yet what we find is that
election as a teaching has been attacked and maligned throughout
history. And today, many who claim to
be Christians are either utterly opposed to the truth of election
or completely ignorant about it because it has never been
preached to them. Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul
tells us in Romans chapter nine, the purpose of God according
to election shall stand. And Daniel tells us back in the
Old Testament, God doeth his will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth. and none can stay his
hand or say unto him what doest thou. Now it's not my purpose
to provide us today with the scripture proofs for election,
not on this occasion anyway. And if you would like a brief
scriptural overview of the subject of election, then all you have
to do is read Romans chapter nine or Ephesians chapter one. However, I state and affirm the
teaching of election to be throughout the whole of scripture. and all
God's dealings with men and women are founded on his own sovereign
will and his unchangeable, we call it his immutable, purpose
of particular grace and mercy. What I do want to do today is
to point out something interesting to you. And I want to ask a question
and I want to provide an answer according to the word of God
in these few verses that we've read together. So these are the
three things that I'm going to have in my mind. To point out
something interesting, ask a question and give the answer. And the
first thing is the interesting, if not altogether surprising
observation from these verses. And that is this. The Apostle
Paul preached election from the very start of his ministry, wherever
he went. He preached it as being the heart
of the gospel of God's grace. Last week we noted that Paul's
stay at Thessalonica had been brief and somewhat dramatic. In Acts chapter 17 and verse
2 we read, And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three
Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures. 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 Christ. Now, I suppose that the reference
to three Sabbath days there doesn't mean that it was only three weeks
that the apostle was there. Maybe those three Sabbath days
were not consecutive. Maybe he preached to them after
they had been, as it were, kicked out of the synagogue, after those
three Sabbath days. But it was a matter of weeks. It wasn't a long time. And yet
the apostle had clearly been preaching election amongst these
Thessalonians. The brethren, we're told, very
shortly after they started preaching, were chased from the city of
Thessalonica and later Timothy was sent back to the city to
establish and comfort the young converts in the gospel during
the period of persecution that arose following Paul's ministry
there. Paul had moved on to Corinth
and after a while Timothy returned to Paul. He likely met him at
Corinth with the news of the faith of these people at Thessalonica. And as we saw before, that news
appears to have been the motivation and the occasion for this letter
being sent to the city, to the believers in the city. But here's
what we notice. that the very first verse of
this letter, as soon as the opening greeting by Paul had been given,
at once speaks of election, the election of these Thessalonian
brethren. So that their election was high
in Paul's thinking as a teaching and they were evidently aware
of the apostle's ministry amongst them so that he could immediately
speak to them about their election and they knew what he was talking
about. And he's telling them that he knows they are amongst
the elect of God. Look at verse four. He says,
knowing brethren beloved, your election of God. So from this
we learn, from this interesting little observation, we learn
two things. First, that election is to be
preached as the true gospel, and it is not to be held back
as some kind of deeper truth. And second, it is possible to
know whether a man or a woman is one of God's elect chosen
people. Because Paul says, knowing, brethren,
Beloved, your election of God. So that's the interesting observation. That leads us to our question.
And it's a question which I think we probably all have asked ourself
at one time or another. How do I know if I'm one of God's
elect? How do I know if I'm one of God's
elect? Well, that's the question over,
so that's two out of three dealt with, and this is the answer. Paul gives us five evidences
in these verses that show us how we can tell, we know whether
we are the elect of God. And the first one is in verse
five. He says, the gospel came to you
in power. Paul tells us he saw an evidence
of election in that the gospel came not in word only, but in
power and in the Holy Ghost and much assurance. When Paul preached
the gospel, it was not simply the hearing of words to these
people, to these folk. The ministry was owned by God
in their lives. It had a spiritual impact insofar
as the people received gladly the words that had been spoken
to them of the person of Jesus Christ and the way of salvation
and the gospel of grace and truth. Now when the apostle speaks here
about assurance, it's an interesting point because some people talk
of assurance as though it were a special spiritual grace imparted
to a few honoured believers whereby they never doubt their salvation. whereas the rest of us have to
struggle through our Christian pilgrimage with doubt and fear
and facing sin and temptation. But that's not what Paul's talking
about here. The assurance here is that they
believed what Paul said was true. They believed the message that
they heard. They believed the gospel that
was preached to them. So we can forget that warm glow
feeling of the super Christians who never have any reason to
doubt. The question is, do you believe the gospel Paul preached? And I can ask that to you and
to me today. Do you believe the gospel that
Paul preached? Do you believe that Jesus is
the Christ? That's what Paul said in Acts
17, that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from
the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. Do you believe that? Because
are you assured that that is true, is the heart of the question. And faith enables a sinner dead
in their sins to believe the gospel testimony of scripture
to be true. That is, the gospel came to you
in power and not in word only. Then Paul gives a second evidence
of election. He says, you can discern God's
faithful servants. And I think this is another interesting
element of our awareness of what election is in the experience
of an individual. It's an indication of our election
that we can discern God's faithful servants. Not only do the elect
hear and believe the gospel, but they know what isn't the
gospel. They have a discernment for what
is true and also for what is not true. And actually it's even
more than that. It is who is true. and who is not true. It's the message and the preacher,
says the Apostle Paul. They could discern God's faithful
servants. Paul says, you know what manner
of men we were among you for your sake, and you became followers
of us and of the Lord. You see, they knew because it
resonated with them that this was the truth that these men
were preaching to us. and the Lord's elect can smell
a rat. The Lord's elect can smell and
detect error. They can tell something isn't
right, maybe even before they can properly explain what it
is that is discomforting them. And that is why the Lord's people
struggle to sit under free will preaching, struggle to sit under
works preaching. They can't abide it. It turns
their stomach. It offends their spirit. And
they're only in it a little while and they're saying to themselves,
this isn't enough. This isn't right. This isn't
doing my soul any good. And maybe you can't put your
finger on the exact thing, but you know what's right and you
know what's not. It's the same Bible, it's the
same format, it's the same hymns, it's the same surroundings but
it just isn't the same message and we know it and we become
suspicious of the ministers and we become suspicious of the message
that they're preaching and that is an indication that we are
the elect of God. And then Paul gives a third evidence.
He says You feel affliction of heart like you never felt before. But that sorrow is mitigated
by the joy of the Holy Spirit. And again, this is one of the
features of true faith and awareness of sin. These people followed
the apostles example and they followed Christ but their way
was hard and sometimes it was overwhelming. Again some people
speak about their victorious Christian lives and we think
I wish I was like that. But the Thessalonians were not
like that, and Paul certainly was not like that. Nor is it
the experience of many believers in scripture, nor the experience
of men and women throughout church history. Rather, we feel the
conflict between flesh and spirit, between doubt and faith, between
sadness for sin and joy in salvation. And it's an affliction of contradiction. And we genuinely struggle to
cope. We can be up and we can be down
because it seems as if we glimpse the Lord and then we lose sight
of him. We have fellowship that is sweet
and then we feel the bitterness of the circumstances of our lives. We understand the redemption
of the cross and then the old man rises again and we find ourselves
in a fight. and the battle that's a strange
mix of fleshy affliction and spiritual joy. And Paul indicates
that the very struggle that causes us to doubt our salvation is
an evidence of our election. And then the apostle gives us
a fourth evidence. He says in verse seven, you become
an example to other believers. Now, most of us would recoil
at such a notion, but within a few short weeks, these believers
at Thessalonica were gaining a reputation, as reported by
Timothy, of being faithful under pressure. They were becoming
patterns of good works and of what it was to suffer afflictions. And they endeavoured to be honourable
and truthful, to be courageous in the face of opposition, yet
being meek and patient. Now we may be sure that not everyone
all the time exhibited these qualities. But there was a change,
there was a move, there was a tenor in their lives already that they
would stand for this gospel because they had found something new,
something real, something meaningful in their souls. They had become
partakers of eternal life and there was no going back. And then the apostle gives the
fifth evidence. This is the last one. You want
to speak about what you've learned. Now I've probably already spoken
too long today, but this is another mark of a true believer. You
can't keep in what you've seen and heard. You want others to
know about it. You want others to have what
you have. And is that not true for those? I mean, we have that in a general
sense, don't we? We have it in the sense that
we want the gospel to go out. We long to see men and women
being saved. But think about those who are
closest to us. Think about those whom we love. Think about our children. Think
about our grandchildren. Their spiritual Eternal wellbeing is the greatest
anxiety that we have in our souls. And that's a mark of our election. We want them to know what we
have come to know. We want them to know whom we
have come to know. What a contradiction we are to
ourselves. And yet these very marks of true
faith that the Apostle and Timothy here delineate are the evidence
of the work of God in a sinner's life to provoke and to promote
and to bring to the experience of that sinner the grace and
the goodness of God. Am I one of God's elect? Am I
one of the Lord's elect people? Well do you believe the gospel
of electing grace in Jesus Christ? Do you know when what you are
hearing is true and when it isn't? Do you feel the sin of your own
heart despite the hope of grace that you hold? If you could go
back to what you once were Would you rather stay here? And do
you want to share with others what you have found? The answer
to those questions are yes. And that is what makes the evidence
of election sure in our lives. Peter says in his second epistle,
Wherefore the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling
and election sure. For if ye do these things, ye
shall never fall. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.