1 Thessalonians 1

CHAPTER 1THEME: The coming of Christ is an inspiring hope

1 Thessalonians 1:1

INTRODUCTIONThis introduction is typical of Paul’s other epistles, but there are some differences to which we need to call attention. Paul joins Silas and Timothy with himself in his greeting. Remember that Silas and Timothy had just returned to Paul with their report from Thessalonica. By joining their names with his, the Thessalonians would know they are all in agreement concerning this letter. Also, Paul reveals his humility when he joins these men with himself. Silas and Timothy would have been unknown had not Paul associated himself with them. This is a very noble gesture on the part of Paul. He is always identifying himself with the brethren. He was not aloof, separated, and segregated above all the others who were working for the Lord Jesus. This is something we need to remember today in regard to the ministry. Don’t put your preacher on a pedestal; let him be right down among you. Those of us who are ministers are largely responsible for trying to make a difference between the clergy and laity. When I entered the ministry, I bought a Prince Albert coat with a long coattail. I wore a wing collar and a very white shirtfront and either a white or a black necktie. When I stood up in the pulpit, I looked like one of those little mules looking over a whitewashed fence, and I felt like one when I wore that garb!

One day it came to me how ridiculous it was for me to dress differently from the officers and members of my church. None of them wore a robe or a Prince Albert coat, and I was no different from any of them. I don’t think that God is asking me to live any differently either. However, when I am teaching the Word of God, I am to be very conscious of the fact that I’m giving out His Word and actually acting in His behalf, and He expects that of everyone who gives out His Word. But as far as living is concerned, God expects all of us to live on a very high plane; the life of the teacher or minister is to be no different from the life of every believer in Christ Jesus. I wish we could eliminate this distinction between the clergy and the laity. According to the Word of God, it is a false distinction. God has a very high standard of living for all of us. I am frank to say that a paid ministry has been the curse of the church, although I don’t think it could have been done otherwise in this day of specialization. However, we need to recognize that the heresies of the church have come in through a paid ministry. There are two situations in the church which are dangerous. One is a minister who tries to exalt himself. The other is a layman who tries to be an authority on the Bible and has not really studied the Bible but has gone off on a tangent. The greatest discipline for me has been to teach the total Word of God. If a person will teach the total Word of God, he will deal with every subject in the Biblehe will be forced to play every key on the organ and to pull out every stop. It isn’t possible to ride one hobbyhorse and emphasize one theme to the exclusion of all others if one teaches the entire Bible. I wish we had that kind of discipline in our churches today. I wish every church would go through the entire Bible. “Unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.” They may have a little different life-style and have different problems from the church in Philippi, but, just like the church in Philippi, it is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t read that in his other epistles because this is the first epistle Paul has written. He says it only once, and this will be enough. He won’t go over this again. When the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father, He asked, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one …” (Joh_17:21-23).

Any believer who is in Christ Jesus is also in God the Father. That is a very safe place to be, safer than any safety deposit box! “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ” is a formal introduction which Paul uses in all of his epistles. Grace comes first, followed by the peace of God. Both the grace and the peace come from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 1:2

Paul prayed for all of the churches that he had founded. Paul had a tremendous prayer list, and it would make an interesting study for you to find all the people who were on that list. You would be surprised how many different churches, individuals, and groups of people Paul prayed for. “We give thanks to God always for you all.” Paul gives thanks for this church because of many things, and one of the most important was because they were an example; it was a model church. The next verse is one of the most remarkable in the Bible, and it follows a pattern of the apostle Paul which we find in his writing. He emphasized the number three.

1 Thessalonians 1:3

“Remembering without ceasing [1] your work of faith, [2] and labour of love, [3] and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a very important verse of Scripture and contains a wealth of meaning. Paul associates the three Christian graces: faith and love and hope. In 1 Corinthians he also brought these three graces together. “And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1Co_13:13). In New Jersey several years ago I had lunch with the scientist who had designed the heat shield that was on the space capsules to protect them when they go out into space and then reenter our atmosphere. He remarked to me, “Have you ever noticed that the universe is divided into a trinity?” “No, what do you mean by that?” “You and I live in a physical universe that is divided into time, space, and matter. Can you think of a fourth?” I couldn’t think of any, so he continued, “Time is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. Can you think of a fourth?” Again I couldn’t, so he went on. “Space is divided into length and breadth and height. They speak of a ‘fourth dimension,’ but it doesn’t happen to be in this material universe.” You can see that this universe in which you and I live bears the mark of the Trinity. The interesting thing is that the Word of God does the same thing. Paul speaks of man as a trinity. We will discuss this specifically when we get into the fifth chapter, verse 1Th_5:23: “…and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This tells us that man is a trinity. There are some other interesting examples of the significance of the number three. For example, have you noticed that in Genesis only three sons of Adam are named? I am sure that Adam and Eve had more than three sons; they probably had one hundred or morethey started the human racebut only three of the sons are named: Cain, Abel, and Seth. In this verse Paul actually gives three graces of the Christian life. The past is the work of faith. The present is a labor of love. The future is the patience of hope. That is the biography of the Christian and the abiding, permanent, and eternal features of the Christian life. Faith, hope, and love are abstract nouns. They seem to be way up yonder, but we are way down here. How can we get them out of space and theory into the reality of life down here? How can we make them concrete instead of abstract qualities? This is like the story of the contractor who loved children. He put down a sidewalk one dayfinished it in the afternoon. He came back the next morning to find that some children had walked on the concrete and had left their footmarks in it. He was very angry and was talking very loudly. A man who was standing by said, “I thought you loved children.” The contractor said, “I love them in the abstract but not in the concrete!” So the question here is how we are going to get these words down into something concrete. Paul takes these three words from the “beautiful isle of somewhere” and puts them into shoe leather. He gets them down to where the shoe leather meets the sidewalks of our hometown. He fleshes up these abstract qualities by taking them out of the morgue of never-never land. Notice how he does it. From the “work of faith,” the “labour of love,” and the “patience of hope,” he cites the three steps in the lives of the Thessalonian believers: “How ye turned to God from idols"that’s the work of faith; “to serve the living and true God,” a labor of love; “to wait for his Son from heaven” is the patience of hope. Now the “work of faith” is a strange expression because we are told that “…by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph_2:8-9). Yet here it is called the work of faith. I think that Paul is making it very clear that he and James do not contradict each other. James writes, “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (Jas_2:18). That is the work of faith. It is the way faith is demonstrated to others. (The writings of James and the writings of Paul certainly do not contradict each otheras some have suggestedbecause they are both writing about the same thing.) Faith is the response of the soul of man to the Word of God. When a man responds to the Word of God, then he walks by faith. Paul says this in 2Co_5:7: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” The Lord Jesus said the same thing: “Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (Joh_6:28-29). He didn’t say that you can come to God with your works, but that you must come to God by faith. Then a faith that is living will make itself manifest; it will reveal itself in the life that is lived. There is a good illustration of this in the life of the disciples, as recorded in Luk_5:4-5. The Lord Jesus said to Simon Peter, “…Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” That is a statement of fact, a declaration of naked truth: “We fished all night, and we caught nothing. We know this sea, and there is no use going back out there.” But notice what Simon Peter adds, “Nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.” He says he will go back and fish again. My friend, that is the work of faith. As believers we need to realize that the work of faith is acting upon the Word of God.

What is the work of God? It is to believe on Jesus Christthat is how the Lord Jesus defined it: “…This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (Joh_6:29). When you act on what the Word of God says, your faith will be evident to the world. That is the work of faith. We have the same thing illustrated in the life of Cain and Abel. What was the problem with Cain? He was a sinner by nature, but he was also a sinner by choice and act. We are told, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous …” (Heb_11:4). How? By being a nice little Sunday school boy? No. Although he was a sinner as Cain was a sinner, Abel responded to the Word of God, and he believed God. When he believed God, he was saved. He manifested that faith by bringing the proper sacrifice. Faith is the connection between the believer and God. It communicates His Word to your heart and you respond. And that is what conversion is. Conversion is to believe God. These Thessalonians turned to God from idols. Paul didn’t go into Thessalonica and say, “I don’t think it is proper for you people to worship idols. That’s a terrible thing to do.” He never said anything like that. When he went there he preached Christ! Idolatry wasn’t repulsive to these people, but when they heard Paul present Christ, they believed God and they turned to God. When they turned to God, they automatically turned from idols. People often say to me, “You converted me.” I haven’t converted anyoneI can’t do that! One man said to me, “You saved me many years ago, and I’ll never forget you.” I answered him, “I appreciate your not forgetting me, but I didn’t save you. All I did was to present the Word of God. You believed the Word of God, and the Spirit of God did a work in your heart.” That is really quite wonderful, my friend. Paul remembered without ceasing not only the work of faith of the Thessalonian believers but also their “labour of love.” Now, what is the labor of love? God does not save by love; He saves by grace, which is love in action. Labor and love don’t seem to fit together. But, you see, love will labor. And when it does, it just doesn’t seem to be labor. Let me repeat the illustration of a little girl carrying a heavy baby. A man passing by said to her, “Isn’t that baby too heavy for you?” She answered, “Oh no, he’s my brother.” Love makes all the difference in the world. Labor isn’t labor when it is a labor of love. The Lord Jesus really put it right on the line when He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15). If you don’t love Him, you will find it nothing but tedium and labor to try to keep His commandments. I don’t think it is worthwhile trying. Several years ago my daughter and I were riding into Los Angeles to the church which I was pastoring. She was helping us with some work at the church. We were stuck in the traffic on the freeway, and I remarked to her, “Look at all these people going to work this morning. Notice that nobody looks happy. Everyone has a tense look on his face. They are anxious and uptight. Ninety-nine out of a hundred are going to a job they hate doing.” I say it is wonderful to do what you love to do. Then it is a labor of love. If working for the Lord is a great burden to you today, I believe the Lord Jesus would say to you, “Give it up, brother. Don’t bother with it.” He doesn’t want it to be like that. We are to love Him. Then whatever we do for Him will be a labor of love. That should characterize the life of the believer. One time when Dwight L. Moody came home, his family said to him, “Cancel your next meeting. You look so weary and we know you are tired.” He gave this tremendous response, “I am weary in the work, but I am not weary of the work.” I tell you, it is wonderful to get weary in the work of God but not to get weary of the work of God. Love to God is expressed in obedience. I get tired of all this talk about being a dedicated Christian. If you want to make that claim, then prove it, brother. Prove it by your love, and love manifests itself in obedience. Now the third thing for which Paul commends the Thessalonian believers is their “patience of hope.” After they had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, they also waited for His Son from heaven. That is the patience of hope. Every man lives with some hope for the future. And that hope, whatever it is, will sustain him. Down through the centuries man has expressed this. Martin Luther said, “Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.” Long before him Sophocles, the pagan, had written: “It is hope which maintains most of mankind.” A modern man, O. S. Marden, says, “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.” The poet, Alexander Pope, wrote: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” A statesman, Thomas Jefferson, said, “I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.” And Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, commented, “Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope, this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.” What a glorious, wonderful life it is to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven. That is the “blessed hope.” Multitudes today place their hope in man, thinking that man can resolve all his problems and bring peace and prosperity to the world. Man cannot do that. If your hope is in this world, you are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp of happiness that will shatter like a bubble when you get it in your hands. You are following a Pied Piper who is playing, “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” God put man out of Paradise because man was a sinner, and man has been trying to build a paradise outside ever since. The church for years thought it was building the Kingdom of Heaven, and it was not.

God wouldn’t even let man live forever in sin, and we can thank Him for that. Every age comes to a time of cosmic crisis and says, “Somehow we’ll work our way out.” Frederick the Great, the great emperor of Germany, said, “The time I live in is a time of turmoil. My hope is in God.” What is your hope today? Is your hope in some political party or in some man-made organization? God have mercy on anyone whose hope rests upon some little, frail bark that man is paddling! I don’t think that any man or any party or any group down here can work out the problems of this world.

The sceptre of this universe is in nail-pierced hands, and He will move at the right time. This one thing I know: all things do work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to His eternal and holy purpose (see Rom_8:28). So here Paul has brought together faith and love and hope, the three tenses of the Christian life: the work of faith, which looks back to the Cross and produces good works in the life; the labor of love, which is the present basis and motivation on which a child of God is to serve Christ; and the patience of hope, which looks into the future. What a wonderful trinity of Christian graces! It should be the biography of every believer. It was the biography of the church in Thessalonica, and I hope it is the biography of your church too. Now Paul takes up another great truth

1 Thessalonians 1:4

Here we come again to that word election. I dealt with this when I taught Ephesians: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Eph_1:4). Afterward I received some letters criticizing me for being weak in emphasizing election, claiming that I had soft-pedaled it; others wrote that I was rather extreme and had gone too far in talking about it. Since I got both reactions, I came to the conclusion it must have been about right. I knew it couldn’t have been both extremes; so it must have been somewhere in the middle, which must be close to accurate. Paul doesn’t mind writing about election in this epistle to the Thessalonian believers. And he presents it from God’s side of the ledger. You and I do not see His side, and we have never seen it. But there are certain great axioms of truth that we must put down. When I studied plane geometry, certain axioms were stated without being proven, such as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I have never had an occasion to dispute it, but nobody has ever attempted to prove it to me, although there is a proposition in geometry that will prove it.

Nevertheless, there are certain things that we accept as fact without proof. And one of the things is the fact that there are certain things which cannot be proven to be true. Likewise Paul doesn’t attempt to argue election or to prove election; he simply states it as a fact. “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” That is God’s side of the picture. The Creator has His sovereign right. Dr. Albert Hyma, of the University of Michigan, said that for the past fifty years America has been under the control of men who do not know the origin and the beginning of our nation. They do not realize that the Puritans had a tremendous impact upon this nation. One of the great truths that the Puritans stood for, and which was basic to their entire life-style, was the sovereignty of God. Behind election and all of life is the sovereignty of God. The Creator has His sovereign right. We need to recognize that God created the universe. I’m not concerned with how He did it, nor am I concerned with the account in Genesis. I simply want to emphasize the fact that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now there are those who are willing to say He created, but they deny Him the right to direct the universe. They deny Him the right to give a purpose to it. May I say to you that we live in a universe that was created by God and exists for His glory. Even in the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Jesus Christ said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Mat_5:16). He didn’t say your good works were to glorify yourself. Oh, no!

They are to glorify the Father in heaven. May I say especially to you, my Christian friend, that God is the Creator, and this universe exists for His glory. He is God, and beside Him there is none other. He doesn’t look to anybody for advice. He is running this universe for His own purpose. He is directing it for His own glory.

You and I live in a universe which is theocentric, that is, God-centered. It is not anthropocentric, man-centered; nor is it geocentric, earth-centered; but it is uranocentric, heaven-centered. This is God’s universe, and He is running it His way. Something else needs to be said: God is no tyrant. God is righteous. God is just. God is holy. Everything that God does is right. You may not always think so, but I have news for you. If you do not think God is right in what He is doing, and if you think that God is not following the best plan, the news I have for you is that you are wrong. God is not wrong. You are wrong. You are the person who needs to get his thinking corrected, because if you don’t, you are out of step with the universe. This universe exists for God, for His glory, and for His purpose. There is nothing going to happen that will not work out to His glory. He is in charge, and He is running this universe today. With this in mind, let’s consider something else. Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that you were born? You could have been nonexistent. I could have been nonexistent. God did not come to me and ask, “Vernon McGee, do you want to come into existence?” I wasn’t even in existence so that He could ask me! He is the One who thought of it. He is the One who is responsible for my existence. And He did not ask me whether I wanted to be male or female. He didn’t ask me whether I wanted to be born in this day and age. He didn’t ask me to choose my parents. He didn’t ask me to decide whether my parents would be godly or whether they would be wealthyand they were neither one. God today is running this universe because it is His. You may not like it, but that just happens to be the way it is. Now God is no tyrantno one is chosen against his will, and no one is rejected against his will. God is right in all that He does. Paul asks, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?” And he answers his own question with a strong negative, “God forbid” (Rom_9:14). God is right in all that He does. We need to get back to that place where we recognize that we are mere creatures. Not only creatures, but we are totally depraved creatures. I know it’s not popular to say this in our day. We like to scratch each other’s backs and tell each other how wonderful we are. That’s the reason they hand out loving cups, and these knife-and-fork clubs are always recognizing somebody as the outstanding something or other. The human race must do that in order to bolster us up and make us think that we are great down here. The fact is that we are in rebellion against God. The fact that God even considers us as a nation is due to the early Puritans who founded this country. They are being downgraded in our day, but we have this great country because of them. Other men have labored, and we have entered into their labors. And one of the things that they emphasized was the liberty of each individual for private judgment. Even we as sinners have that right. Why?

Because no other sinner has any right to make a decision for you and me. Today you and I enjoy the freedom that we have because of our Puritan forefathers. The present generation of politicians doesn’t even know what it’s all about, which is the reason democracy isn’t working. There is no way democracy can work unless the people understand the sovereignty of God, recognize they are His creatures, and fall down before Him. Now let me repeat what Paul has said to the Thessalonian believers (v. 1Th_1:4): “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” Maybe you don’t like this verse, but this is the way it happened. And God is running this universe. Instead of joining a protest march against Him, I suggest that you fall down on your face before Him and thank Him that He has brought you into existence, and that He has given you the opportunity as a free moral agent to make a decision for Him. His invitation still stands, “…If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (Joh_7:37). Are you thirsty? Then come to Christ.

He stands ready to receive you. You say you are not thirsty? Then forget it. God offers a full and free salvation to this lost world today. He says to men and women, “Take it or leave it.” That is where our freedom comes in. We can either choose Him or reject Him.

There is no middle ground. Each person has the freedom to do one or the other.

1 Thessalonians 1:5

GOSPEL RECEIVED IN MUCH ASSURANCE AND MUCH AFFLICTIONNow here is another tremendous verse for us to study Paul is saying, “You knew that when we came among you, we were just human beingsjust weak human beings with lips and tongues of clay. All we could do was say words, but we gave out the Word of God. And the Word of God came to you, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit.” My friend, this fact makes my job the most wonderful job in the world. I love it. I love to teach the Word of God. Do you know why?

Because when I give out the Word of Godalthough they are just words as far as Vernon McGee is concernedwhen the Spirit of God takes those words and uses them, they are powerful! I suppose I have about five hundred letters on my desk right now that bear this out. For example, a wife has written that the first time she turned on my radio program, her husband spent thirty minutes cussing this preacher. But she continued to tune in the program, and one day he argued back at me. Then one day she forgot to dial in the program and he reminded her of it, and he listened. Finally the day came when he knelt by the radio and received Christ as his Savior!

My friend, if you think that happened because I am a super-duper salesman, you are wrong. I’m not even a salesmanI couldn’t even give away five-dollar bills, because folk would think they were phony! But the thing that is so tremendous is that the Spirit of God will use the Word of God. That is our confidence. Now hear me carefully: I believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. And please don’t write to me and explain to me all the introductions and all the problems about text. I’ve been through seminary, and I have even taught introductory courses so that I do know a little about them. But I accept the Word of God as the inerrant Word of God, that it is God speaking to us. And I go further than that. I believe that the Spirit of God can cause the Word of God to penetrate into your heart and life and my heart and life so that we are transformed people.

People are not born again by the weakness of the human flesh, not by saying a few words by radio or by the printed page. But they are “…born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1Pe_1:23). I believe the Spirit of God can take the Word of God and make it real to you. I believe the Word of God is that kind of thing. I don’t think the Spirit of God could do much with the telephone directory or the Sears and Roebuck catalog or with popular magazines that are published today. But I do believe that the Spirit of God can and will take the Word of God and perform the greatest miracle possiblechanging an unbelieving, lost sinner into a child of God! The Word of God went into Thessalonica, that Roman colony which was pagan and heathen and was controlled by one of the greatest political and military powers this world has known, and there it reached the hearts and lives of people and transformed them. That is what happened in Thessalonica, and it can still do the same today. Let me repeat verse 1Th_1:5 because it is such an important verse: “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.” The first thing necessary is for a person to hear the Word of God. That is the factual basis. People must hear the gospel. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom_10:17). That is the natural part of the process. But that doesn’t end it, because the Word of God is a supernatural book. Without the Holy Spirit the gospel is merely words.

With the Holy Spirit it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. This is exactly what the Lord Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him to you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged” (Joh_16:7-11).

1 Thessalonians 1:6

Paul could cite Silas and Timothy and himself as examples. Personally, I would hesitate to give myself as an example; I don’t think I am a very good one. But Paul the apostle, going from place to place throughout the Roman Empire, offered himself as an example to these believers. “Having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.” Affliction (or suffering) and joy are two words that are actually antipodes apartthey are as far apart as the east is from the west. They don’t belong together. They are as extreme as night is from daylight, as cold is from heat. They are not things that we would associate together. If a person is suffering and in affliction, he cannot have any joy, according to our natural way of looking at it. And if he’s having joy in his life, then surely he isn’t suffering! Yet there have been wonderful saints of God who have endured affliction and at the same time have had the joy of the Lord in their hearts. That is real triumph. We hear a lot about healing today, and I thank God that He has healed me. How wonderful it is! But I know some saints of God who are a lot more wonderful than I ever hope to be. These people are lying right now on beds of pain, beds of affliction, and they have the joy of the Lord in their hearts. There is not a person today who is enjoying the world’s entertainment and is suffering at the same time. The world cannot put these two together. Paul says that the Word was received “in much affliction"there was suffering, persecution, and heartache. But there was the joy of the Holy Spirit also. That is the bittersweet of life; that is like the Chinese dish they call “sweet-and-sour.” For the Christian there can be that which is sour and bitter in life, while at the same time there is sweetness in the heart and life. A woman who was a rather famous poetess here in Southern California was a member of my church. I had the privilege of baptizing her. We baptized her in a bathtub because we couldn’t take her anywhere else. The minute I touched her she screamed, because she was in pain all the time. She gave me a copy of one of her last books of poetry. It was titled, Heart Held High. In the midst of extreme human suffering she had the joy of the Lord in her life. I always left her with the distinct feeling that I was the one who had been ministered to. I never felt that I did much ministering to her. It is wonderful to see a Christian who is suffering like that and can still rejoice in the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 1:7

“In Macedonia and Achaia"this refers to the European section of the Greco-Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great. The church at Thessalonica, a Roman colony, was an exampleafter just a few monthsto all the other churches. What a glorious, wonderful testimony they had. Today we often hear of individual Christians who are examples to others. However, there are actually very few churches which are known far and near as being examples of the Christian faith. I think it is strange that we do not have more local churches which are examples to all believers. It has been my privilege to travel around the country and speak in many churches across America. There are a few, but only a few, that I would name as examples.

1 Thessalonians 1:8

GOSPEL RESULTSPaul found that wherever he traveled the reputation of this church had already gone ahead of him. The believers were already talking about the church in Thessalonica; so it wasn’t necessary for Paul to tell them anything about it. This reveals something of the great reputation this church had in that day.

1 Thessalonians 1:9

We have already looked at these two verses in connection with verse 1Th_1:3. Their response gave witness to the kind of “entering in” Paul and Silas and Timothy had had with them. Paul tells what that response was: (1) Your work of faithhow ye turned to God from idols; (2) your labor of loveto serve the living and true God; and (3) your patience of hopeto wait for His Son from heaven. Now I would like to look at these verses from a little different point of view. When Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he did not announce that he would give a series of messages denouncing idolatry or telling about the errors that were involved in the worship of Apollo, Venus, or any of the other gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire. But when Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he preached Christ. When he preached Christ, they turned to God from idols. Notice that he doesn’t say they turned from idols to God. Someone will say, “You’re splitting hairs.” I surely am. These are hairs that need to be split. We need to do some straight thinking about this. “How ye turned to God from idols.” We hear today that repentance is essential to salvation. Repentance and believing are presented as two steps in a process. Actually, they are both wrapped up in the same package, and you have them both right here. When Paul preached Christ, they turned to God from idols. I want you to see something that is very important. When they turned to God, that is the work of faith; that is what faith did. The Lord Jesus said, “…This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (Joh_6:29, italics mine). These people turned to God from idols; they turned from idols, too. That’s rightand that is repentance. The repentance followed the turning to God. It didn’t precede it. When they turned to God, they automatically turned from idols. Take your hand and hold it so the palm of your hand is facing toward you. Now turn your hand around. When you turned your hand around, the back side of your hand now faces you, and the palm of your hand automatically turned away from you. Just so, you cannot turn to Christ Jesus without turning from something, my friend. That turning from something is repentance. We need to hold up Jesus Christ as the Savior from sin. A man needs to know that he is a lost sinner. He can sit and weep about his sins until Judgment Day, and it won’t do him one bit of good. I know an alcoholic man who died an alcoholic. He could sit in my study and cry about the fact that he was an alcoholic and how terrible he was to be a drunkard. He could shed great tears and repent, but nothing changed because he never did turn to Christ! My dad used to tell about a little boat that went up and down the Mississippi River. It had a little bitty boiler and a great big whistle. When that boat was carrying a load and was going upstream, it was in trouble when the whistle would blow, because the boat would begin to drift downstream. There are a lot of people who have a little boiler and a great big whistle. They can repent and shed tears all over the place, but that doesn’t do any good. It is only when a person turns to Christ that he will turn from something. He will turn from his sin. If a man doesn’t turn from his sin, it is because he hasn’t turned to Christ. I am sure that when the Thessalonian believers turned from their idols, they wept over the time they had wasted in idol worship. After they had turned to God, there was a real repentance over the misspent years. The turning to God came first, then they realized that turning to God meant turning from idols. Now I want to point out that Jesus Christ the Savior of the world is to be preached to a world of lost sinners, but the message of repentance is preached to the church. Read the messages to the seven churches of Asia as recorded in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3. The message of the Lord Jesus to the churches is to repent. Today it seems that the church is telling everyone outside the church to repent. The Bible teaches that it is the people in the church who need to repent. We need to get down on our faces before God and repent. That is not the message for us to give to the unsaved man down the street. He needs to know that he has a Savior. “To serve the living and true God.” The Thessalonians were now serving God; it was the labor of love. You cannot serve Christ unless you love Him. The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15). Suppose you don’t love Him? Then there are none of His commandments for you. You think you want to go out to preach the gospel, but you don’t love Him? Then stay home. To go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature is a command, and it is for those who love Him. If you don’t love Him, don’t do it. When the Lord Jesus talked to Simon Peter (as recorded in John 21), He didn’t ask, “Peter, why in the world did you deny Me?” He didn’t say, “Peter, do you promise Me you will do better if I let you preach the sermon on the Day of Pentecost?” He never said anything like that. He asked, “Peter, do you love Me?” If Peter had said, “No,” I think the Lord would have told him to forget about service. Does that sound harsh to you? I didn’t say it; Jesus did: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” “And to wait for his Son from heaven.” That doesn’t mean to wait sitting down. It means you are busy. If you love Him, you will serve Him. You are busy for Him while you wait for Him. When I first went to Cleburne, Texas, all the downtown churches had outdoor evening services on the lawn of the First Baptist Church. Since I was the new preacher in town, I was asked to preach the first night I was there. An officer of one of the churches had heard that I was a fundamentalist and a premillennialist. The next day he said to me, “I heard your sermon last night. You didn’t sound to me like one of those fellows who has his nose pressed against the window waiting for the Lord to come.” I told him that people who are waiting for the Lord to come don’t have their noses against the window. They are out, busy, working for the Lord.

This was during the depression, but I told him that while his and other denominations were calling their missionaries back from the field, the China Inland Mission, which was fundamental and premillennial, was asking for one hundred more missionaries to go to China. Who was really waiting for the Lord to come? “To wait for his Son from heaven” does not mean to sit down. It means to be busy for the Lord. That is the patience of hope. It means to keep on serving the Lord, giving out the Word of God while you wait. The coming of Christ to take His church out of the world is not an escape mechanism. Rather, it is an incentive to serve Him and to give out the Word of God. “…Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev_22:20).