The Impact of the Gospel — Part Two

Before we come around the Lord’s Table, I invite you to take your Bibles, and we’ll turn to 1 Thessalonians and the first chapter. It’s actually some three weeks ago that we launched into this particular section. We had introduced our study by noticing the way in which Paul commends his readers for three things: first of all, for their work, which was produced by faith; and then for their labor, which was prompted by love; and then for their endurance, which was inspired by hope. And we then went into the section beginning at verse 4, where he explains their status in Christ and in so doing provides us with three truths concerning the church at Thessalonica and, indeed, three truths concerning all who are made members of the body of Christ at all times and in every place.

And you may remember we said that first of all, he reminded these loved ones that they were chosen by God. And we spent all of our time addressing this issue of what it means to be chosen by God and to a consideration together of the doctrine of election—which, I don’t know if I said to you, but in the words of Eric Alexander from Urbana some years ago, I think in 1984, speaking on this subject, he said that the doctrine of election is not a bomb to be dropped, nor is it a banner to be waved, but it is a bastion for the encouragement of the souls of those who have been gathered up into Christ.[1]

Now, from there we want to go on and notice at least one other thing tonight, and that is not only that these people to whom he wrote, and God’s people in all and every generation, are those who have been chosen, but they are also those who have been changed. They have been changed. And in verse 4 he says, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with [the] power [of] the Holy Spirit … with deep conviction.” And as he goes on to outline what has happened as a result of that, it is clear that these individuals have been radically changed. And let me suggest to you that there were three things which marked them.

A New Foundation

First of all, they had a new foundation. A new foundation. Where is this? Well, it is essentially in the truth of election: that up until this time they had been “without [God] and without [hope] in the world.”[2] They had been, in their thoughtful moments, trying to make sense of their existence; in their casual moments, denying, perhaps, the possibility that they had any significance beyond the moment. And then, along the journey of their days, they were arrested by God’s grace, they discovered what it means to repent of their sin and to turn to God in faith, and now their lives have been built on a totally new foundation.

They are those who have moved from the shifting sand, described in Matthew 7, of those who hear the Word of God and do not put it into practice to the solid rock of those who, hearing the word of God, do put it into practice.[3] They are those who have ceased to be the foolish men and women who built their house upon their sand, and they have become the wise man, who, in the words of the children’s Sunday school chorus,

Built his house upon the Rock,
And the rain came tumbling down.
And as the rain came down and the floods grew up,
And the rain came down and the floods grew up,
And the rain came down and the floods grew up,
The house on the Rock stood firm.[4]

Now, if you think about this tonight, there are many factors that face the believer which are distinctly unsettling. There are our great concerns for health, and some of us are buffeted by that. There are the issues of our ability to provide for ourselves and for those who are under our care. There are the issues of our future and our career and our studies and our hopes and our dreams and our possibilities. But one thing is not in doubt, believer, and that is that you have been radically changed, and your life is no longer on a flimsy footing, but it has been placed, by God’s grace, on solid rock. The psalmist testifies to it, and he says, “He lifted me out of a miry pit and from the slimy clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, and he established my going.”[5] That, then, is part of Paul’s confidence in writing to those who have been changed. They have a new foundation.

A Brand-New Family

Secondly, they have a brand-new family. A brand-new family. Notice how they’re described in verse 4: they are the “brothers.” He might equally have written “brothers and sisters.” And what makes them brethren? It is that they are “loved by God” and that “he has chosen” them.

You see, once again we are brought back to this foundational truth: that when God set his love upon us and redeemed us and brought us into his family, he did so purposefully, in order that we might have a whole new family. And indeed, this is very significant for some. For in the day that you discovered God’s goodness to you and reached out in repentance and in faith, your earthly family grew distant from you. And they do not like to come to your house in the way they once did, and they are perhaps resentful of the fact that you’re doing this with your children and you’re bringing them up in this way. And in one very natural element, there is all the pain that is attached to that. Well, God understands that, and that’s why he’s given you a whole new family, a whole host of brothers and sisters.

You remember the words of Jesus? He says, “You know, I want you to know that if you give up your mom, and your dad, and your brothers, and your sisters, and your houses, and your land, and your clothes, and your food, and your money for me and for my kingdom, I’ll give you much more back in the present age and in the age to come.”[6] And some of us have lost loved ones, precious ones, those near and dear to us. And God has made it up to us. He can never replace, until heaven, that great aching void, but nevertheless, he’s given us a whole new family.

And tonight, as you think of breaking bread with one another, and as we think of passing this bread along the line, and as you see the person next to you, it’s not just a person. In Christ, it’s your family. And we’re going to be together for a long, long time. So we might as well start liking each other, start being nice to each other, start loving one another.

A New Focus

Changed. Given a new foundation. Given a new family. And given, thirdly, a new focus.

No longer were they approaching their lifeless idols, you’ll see in verse 9. It was reported by other people describing these folks in Thessalonica, “They[’re] tell[ing] how you 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—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” Up until this point, their life was consumed with idols. In a very realistic sense, this whole area was consumed with idolatry. Mount Olympus was the home of Zeus, and Zeus was described as one who had curly, long, blond hair. And it was reputed that when he shook his long, blond hair, the mountain trembled. And people grew up believing this kind of stuff, and they grew up going to the shrines.

In the course of the last few weeks, traveling in different places, I’ve seen people at all kinds of shrines. I’ve seen them kissing the icons on the wall in the midst of a great and elaborate cathedral, walking up to a plate-glass sheet behind which are old bits and pieces. I stood and watched as a young woman with a little child stood and kissed the glass. I guess I admired her discipline to come. I guess I understood something of the longing of her heart. But it burdened me to think that there at those lifeless things, she was looking for the answers to the deepest longings of her life.

The people in Thessalonica were just like that. The people in Cleveland tonight are just like that: serving idols, things, achievement, academics, notoriety, bank balance. And then the grace of God comes in. And it is not that necessarily all of that is removed, but it is that there is a radical transformation.

Becoming a Christian involves a very definite break from all non-Christian habits. Becoming a Christian does not mean simply adding the Jesus package to a lifestyle of our own choosing.

You see, I sometimes think that we’re selling the message of the gospel a little short by failing to make it clear that becoming a Christian involves a very definite break from all non-Christian habits. Becoming a Christian does not mean simply adding the Jesus package to a lifestyle of our own choosing. And these people understood that. Because up until this time their lives had been consumed by these things, and now it was a radical change. It’s not easy to reject and to eject gods which we have worshipped from our childhood.

And some of you understand that. You have come from an extremely religious background. You have been marked by zeal. You have been marked by all kinds of things that represent the establishment of what it means to follow after God, and yet you knew in your heart of hearts that it was absolutely lifeless. And God broke in, changed you, turned you from the idols that are dead and unreal and helpless to the true God, who is living and genuine and able to help.

You may be here tonight, and you’ve just come in to this worship service, and you frankly are agnostic. Your life is unchanged. You’ve never been converted. You may have expressed an increasing interest in religion. You may be brought up in a Christian home, and you’re relying on the buoyancy of those around you. But may I ask you: Have you come to a day in your life where there was a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of direction, where the old passed away and the new arrived?

A New Future

You will notice that they had come into a dimension where they were going to serve and where they were going to wait. They not only had a new family and a new focus; they had a new future. Because in verse 10, they’re described as those who are waiting for the Son of God from heaven, the one “whom he raised from the dead—Jesus.” Listen to how Phillips paraphrases it: speaking of those who describe the Thessalonian believers, he says, “They tell … the story of … how you turned from idols to serve the true living God, and how your whole lives now look forward to the coming of his Son from heaven.”[7] Complete reorientation.

Once life was hopeless. Once there was no future. And now it all has changed. Now we’re looking forward to the appearing of the Lord Jesus from heaven. We wait with patience. We wait in anticipation. We wait with confidence. But we wait! The waiting implies a readiness, and a readiness implies a preparation. And the way that you or I may be identified as those who are waiting for the coming of Christ may ultimately be drawn down to two characteristics, I believe: number one, a genuine desire to live a holy life, and number two, an increasing passion for the souls of men and women without Jesus Christ. We cannot, surely, be keenly waiting for Jesus to come back and wrap up history, thereby creating a day of separation between the believer and the unbeliever, if we do not have an equally compassionate longing for those who do not know Jesus to come to know him.

Becoming Channels

So, they were chosen. They were changed. A new foundation. A new family. A new focus. A new future. And let me just hit this last point; otherwise we’ll be in this passage for weeks to come. Thirdly, they were channels. What does it mean to be a believer? It means to be chosen, it means to be changed, and it means to be a channel.

You will notice as you read this that they are described as those who were “imitators”—verse 6—“of us” and imitators “of the Lord” Jesus. They came to faith in Christ, and they said, “Well, who are we going to copy?” And so they said, “Well, we’ll copy Paul and his friends.” And that’s why when it says here that they were able to endure suffering, and yet they were able to do it with joy “in spite of [the] severe suffering”—and they “became imitators of us …; in spite of [this], you welcomed the message with … joy”—as they came into this experience of all the challenge and the changes, they must have remembered what Paul had told them about what happened in Philippi, and there in Philippi, how they’d had a severe beating, were put in the stocks, and yet they sang at midnight songs of praise to the Lord. And they must have said to one another, “Well, if that’s the way you’re supposed to do it, that’s the way you’re supposed to do it. You get a hammering, you sing songs.” They “became imitators of us and of the Lord.”

And then the imitators became the imitated. There is a progression here which is a principle. When you first come to faith in Jesus Christ, you become an imitator. After you have imitated for a little while, you become a member of the imitated. After you spend a long time copying somebody and learning how to do it, all of a sudden, you look over your shoulder, and you say, “Whew! Somebody’s copying me now!” It’s a great step forward in your Christian life. And you don’t have to be that far along the journey to look over your shoulder and say, “There’s someone following me.”

Howard Hendricks, whom we’re looking forward to having here in March, in ʼ95, God willing, says that every man in his life ought to have a Paul and a Barnabas and a Timothy: a Paul, whom he may imitate and emulate; a Timothy, who in turn is imitating and emulating him; and a Barnabas, a son of encouragement, to strengthen in the challenges of his day.[8]

Verse 7 is the key to this: “And so you became a model.” The word here is a very graphic word, túpos. It was descriptive of the mark that was left by a blow. You banged your elbow on the wall, and in the morning, you woke up and you said, “Where did I get that thing from?” And it was left there as an imprint from having hit your elbow on the wall the previous evening. That’s a túpos. Or you pick a coin out of your pocket, and you look at it, and you see the imprint on the coin. That imprint there, that stamped die, is a túpos. Or you observe the conduct of somebody, and you say, “That is exactly what I want to pattern myself after.” That pattern of conduct is a túpos. And look at what it says: “You became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.”

In verse 8 he chooses another lovely picture: he says, “The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.” This is a great church! This church at Thessalonica, it’s a good place. This is a good little letter to read.

Lord, we’d love to get even close to this. We want to become a sounding board that your message might ring out from us.

A sounding board’s a good picture, because a sounding board is a sounding board. The sounding board doesn’t create sound; the sounding board reflects sound. The source of the sound is elsewhere. It hits the sounding board, and the sounding board then magnifies it so that others may hear. What a wonderful picture of a church!

Parkside: may it become a sounding board for the message of the gospel in our generation. May we become channels of God’s grace.

The hymn writer puts it like this:

Channels only, blessed Master,
But with all your wondrous pow’r
Flowing through us, you can use us
Every day and every hour.[9]

[1] Eric Alexander, “The Basis of Christian Salvation” (lecture, Urbana 1984), https://urbana.org/transcript/basis-christian-salvation.

[2] Ephesians 2:12 (NIV 1984).

[3] See Matthew 7:24–27.

[4] Ann Omley, “The Wise Man and the Foolish Man” (1948). Lyrics lightly altered.

[5] Psalm 40:2 (paraphrased).

[6] Mark 10:29–30; Luke 18:29–30 (paraphrased).

[7] 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10 (Phillips).

[8] Howard Hendricks and William Hendricks, As Iron Sharpens Iron: Building Character in a Mentoring Relationship (Chicago: Moody, 1995), 78.

[9] Mary E. Maxwell, “Channels Only” (1900). Language modernized.