Tag: Thessalonians

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The Intentional Christian Life (1 Thess. 5:12–28)

[Listen to an audio version here]

Human beings tend to react in certain sensible but often unhelpful ways. We recoil when people try to lead us. We retaliate against those who do us wrong. We notice the negative and quickly forget the positive. We gravitate to that which is easy and away from that which is hard. We love those who love us and distance from those who hate us. We accept uncritically what fits our preconceptions. We scrutinize critically anything that opposes our interests.

The Christian life calls us to move out of all these natural reactions and to live a life that is entirely different. It calls us to live a life where we honor our leaders, are patient with people, and do not react to wrongs committed against us. It calls us to live a life where we see the good and embrace it. It calls us to take our concerns and lift them up in prayer. It calls us to think critically about all things and embrace all good and reject all evil. It calls us to seek what is good not only for ourselves but for all people. This is the intentional Christian life.

Now, you might say to me, how can anyone do all this? How is it even possible? Well, let’s remember that Christianity is a religion of grace. It is a religion of God’s gifts. It is a religion where God enables us to live a new life. We work hard, but even our work is a gift of God. Work out your own salvation, Paul says, with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do (Phil. 2:12–13).

This letter began with grace, and it ends with grace. Paul took the common greeting of the Roman world, charis, grace, and filled it with new content, the content of God’s grace. He went on to say immediately that the Thesslonians believed, but they believed because of the work of the Holy Spirit, God’s grace and God’s gift.

As the letter ends, God teaches us that it is grace that brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home. He says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (v. 28). What this means is that he wants their whole spirit, soul, and body to be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ by Jesus Christ. He assures them, “the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).

It is important to recognize that this grace is not just ours to make us feel good or have peace. It leads us outward to serve those around us and to react differently in the world. Wherever the grace of God is operative, you will see what we have in these final instructions in this letter, an intentional Christian life of love and service rooted in God’s love and grace. I want to look briefly at how God’s grace leads us to four intentional ways of living the Christian life.

1. Intentional Submission. Our natural tendency is to love those who love us and seek the good of those closest to us. Instead, God’s grace calls us to “always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else” (1 Thess. 5:15). This is in line with what the Apostle Paul prays for in 1 Thess. 3:12: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else . . .” Instead of thinking just about ourselves or those closest to us, we should ask, what is good for everyone? We keep sending our thoughts higher and higher to align our thoughts with the Lord’s thoughts. He cares for all, the just and the unjust.

As we think bigger thoughts, we recognize that the good of everyone will require organization and leadership. This means that the general attitude of the Christian is one of respect and honor for leaders and cooperation with leaders. This includes being patient with their failings. Particularly, in the church, we should honor those in authority and those who work hard among us. He says:

Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live at peace among yourselves (1 Thess. 5:12–13).

It’s so easy to join in the general disrespect for authorities in church, home, and state that characterizes our society. We need an intentional attitude that empowers us to live differently than our culture. Submission to and cooperation with leadership should be our basic stance, even if at certain times, we have to choose to obey God rather than men.

2. Intentional Relationships. The way we relate to others is deeply programmed into us. Our tendency is generally to attack or distance when relationships feel strained. When we feel like we are on the outside, we want to make alliances with other people that make us feel better. This goes back and forth in a whole lot of interesting and often unhelpful ways. This is true for everyone, including leaders. It’s easy for the leaders to make a leadership position about making themselves comfortable rather than seeking the general welfare of the communities they serve. What this looks like is that we talk to people whom it is easy to talk to, and we avoid those who are difficult.

The Bible gives us a whole different perspective here. It teaches us that we should pursue the general good. This means there are times when we have to do the hard thing. We have to warn the unruly. We have to say, “no.” It also means that we have to meet people where they are. People have trouble moving forward for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are recalcitrant but at other times they don’t know what to do or are timid. We need to strengthen the weak and encourage the timid. In all of this, we recognize that moving forward together involves patience. Community is a process. When we enter into relationships, we need to embrace the lengthy process that working together involves.

In addition, we don’t react with wrong to those who do wrong to us. Instead, we seek everyone’s good. If others do wrong, let that be their issue, since it hurts primarily them. We continue to respond with a disposition of gentleness and love pursuing the good.

This is all very hard. It takes intentionality, and it requires the grace of God. It is the Spirit of Christ that did not retaliate but did what was good for all, even to His own hurt, that animates us.

3. Intentional Devotion. The power to live well with others is rooted in a life lived before the face of God. That’s what God calls us to. Many people are seeking to heal relationships, but they are too focused on the other person. They make the human relationships too large in their lives, whether looking for too much fulfillment in them or seeking to blame them for the evils and difficulties they experience. To counteract this tendency, we must seek the Lord and place Him above all human relationships.

Here is a brief summary of what that looks like: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit.” We are to seek joy, and our chief joy is found in God Himself and the loving communion that we enjoy with Him.

We pray continually. This means that we are ever in an attitude of prayer, ready to go to Him, referring all things to Him. We should also continually seek His goodness to us in every situation. We generally remember the bad and quickly forget the good. We need to work to even out this tendency. Don’t ignore the bad, but see the good. When you see the bad, pray. When you see the good, give thanks.

We must not quench the Spirit. This means that we think of the work of the Holy Spirit as a fire that should always be burning brightly in our hearts. We recognize that all our devotion to God is a result of God’s work in us, but we also cooperate with the Lord in living a Christian life. We should not quench the fire but do all that we can to to keep it burning brightly. Presbyterian commentator Albert Barnes says that quenching the Spirit is “anything that will tend to damp the ardor of piety in the soul; to chill our feelings; to render us cold and lifeless in the service of God.” Instead, we should put fuel on the fire by meditating on God’s love, singing praises, praying, and giving thanks. In this way, we will not quench the Spirit.

4. Intentional Thinking. All of this involves careful thinking. The command to test all things here is similar to what Paul says to the Corinthians, “Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults” (1 Cor. 14:20).

He begins by telling them that they should not despise prophecies. There was probably a tendency here as there was in Corinth to look for the spectacular miracles and look down on the simple preaching of God’s truth. That is wrong. The simple preaching of God’s truth is the general nourishment God uses to build us up in the intentional Christian life.

However, he didn’t want them to blindly accept what people told them. He wanted them to become mature. He wanted them to test all things. He wanted them to put it in the refiner’s fire and test it to ensure that it was consonant with reason and God’s truth. This is the job and duty of each Christian, critical thinking. We should do this with the ideas of others and with the ideas of ourselves, all those thoughts we have imbibed consciously and unconsciously through the years.

Once we see the differences between the good and the evil, we should cling to all that is good, wherever we find it, whoever teaches it. We should also reject the bad, wherever it comes from, including me, including you! We’ve got to think! It’s an absolute necessity for intentional Christian living that glorifies God, blesses others, and blesses ourselves.

Conclusion
How can we do all this? The answer is clear. The grace of God. That’s why the Apostle Paul asks God to make them pure and blameless. He asks for the grace of God in their lives.

But note one more thing here. Throughout this whole letter, we have seen that we grow, even in suffering, but we help each other. The grace of God is the source of our blessing, but we also show this grace to one another. Paul offers the very un-Covid advice to greet one another with a holy kiss. I do not think that we have to embrace this particular cultural practice in order to fulfill this command. We may not need to actually kiss, but we do need to show warmth. How we relate to each other shows God’s grace. When we walk in to this sanctuary, how we greet each other communicates something about God. When we have an open attitude towards others, we demonstrate God’s grace. We show each other grace. We show that God is willing to receive others by grace.

And that’s the message we all need. We have high ideals and much work to do to attain them. How comforting to know that we are simply joining what God is already doing. How comforting to know that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion, in the face of all opposition. How comforting it is to know that we have brothers and sisters here who will help us, encourage us, and show grace to us. With all this, we can join in a hearty prayer: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And all God’s people said, Amen.

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We Told You Life Would Be Hard (1 Thessalonians 2:14–3:5)

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The Inevitability of Suffering
Jordan Peterson is an interesting modern thinker. His book 12 Rules for Life has sold 3 million copies. He has toured the world speaking about these rules, giving long academic-style lectures to large audiences. As Jordan Peterson spoke around the world, one thing really surprised him. When he spoke about the inevitability of suffering and how hard life is, people were really encouraged. Why? Because everyone experiences hardships, and it can feel some like something unique to us. It’s good to know that it’s not something strange just happening to us. Suffering is part of life. Life is hard.

Modern life can deceive us on this point. Our industrial might has enabled us to overcome so many problems that our ancestors over the centuries and millennia struggled with such as basic clothing, shelter, and food. Because of this, we begin to think that life will be easy. The trouble is that industrialization simply solves some problems to reveal further problems on a higher level. We may have food in abundance, but we can’t solve our anxiety, loneliness, death, or need for meaning. For all our scientific know-how, we can’t achieve social cohesion.

So, everyone is going to suffer. Everyone will experience pain. The question is, what will we do with it? Will we rise to the occasion, or we will be crushed under its weight? Will we take the blows, get back up, and keep moving forward; or, will we retreat from the challenges of life and try to build a suffering-free bubble?

All of life has challenges, but Christianity has additional challenges. Much that is in this world is hostile to our faith. There will be attacks. How do we process this? How can we think about this in a way that will help us move forward?

The first thing to do is accept the truth: we will face opposition and suffering. When someone comes to Christ, we should tell them, get ready for trials. Get ready for suffering. Prepare for battle. Start training. This will be no cake walk. Prepare to get punched in the mouth.

The Apostle Paul says this very plainly. He did not want them to be be “unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know” (1 Thess. 3:3–4). He kept telling them, Christianity is not going to be easy. You will be persecuted.

There are two basic difficulties that we face here. The first is from outside. This was a significant factor in Thessalonika. “For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews” (1 Thess. 2:14). When we seek to do something good, we should expect to face opposition from people. This is inevitable. So, don’t be surprised.

The resistance goes beyond people, though. It also comes from Satan. Beyond the world that we see, there is a real spiritual world of evil with real personalities that are attacking us. “I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain” (1 Thess. 3:5).

But the most important struggle we have is the struggle within. Our own brain, spirit, and body conspire against us to keep us from doing what is right. It’s a battle to move in the right direction. It’s a battle to get ourselves thinking and moving in God’s direction.

The novelist Steven Pressfield wrote a book describing his struggle to write successful novels called The War of Art. He said the biggest challenge was his own “resistance.” So, producing something good was like a war. He had to fight every day the urge to give up and just go off to the beach instead of writing the novel. The struggle against the flesh in the case of our faith is a war of even greater intensity.

Faith Built by Suffering
So, how can we find encouragement in this struggle? The first thing is to accept that suffering and opposition are a part of the Christian life. But that’s just the first thing. The second thing is to re-interpret suffering to see the good in it.

Many people hear the fact that suffering is inevitable and think that this is an unmitigated disaster, but the Bible has a very different perspective. Paul says elsewhere, “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom. 5:3–4).

James says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2–3).

Peter says that we greatly rejoice even though we suffer a variety of trials. There is even something good in them: “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Pet. 1:7).

The point is that as we experience suffering and then exercise our faith, we grow into what we are supposed to be. There is no higher goal that we can have than to become people who trust God. It’s what the Apostle Paul said in Romans. He prayed that the God of hope would fill them with all joy and peace as they trusted Him.

Faith fills us with joy and peace, but the trials and opposition we experience can knock us off our game. They keep us from joy and peace and dim our faith.

In the case of the Thessalonians, however, they did not have a lot of experience. They were just getting started. They seemed to be doing well, but they had not yet felt the rattle of their teeth from blows in the midst of battle. That’s why the Apostle Paul was concerned that they would “be unsettled by these trials.”

However, Paul knew that if they could exercise their faith in the midst of the trials, then the virtue of faith would grow within them. It would produce perseverance, an ability to keep doing good in the face of opposition. This perseverance would build their character. This character would make them complete.

So, the stakes were very high for the Thessalonians. Would they rise to the occasion and become the people of faith, hope, joy, and peace that God designed them to be, or would they be thrown into turmoil by the trials? Would the tempter successfully induce them to abandon their destiny, or would they remain faithful to the Word of God?

Support in the Midst of Suffering
The stakes are high in the battle we face, but we are not without support. Even though we undergo sufferings, we should not think we have to do it alone. We have resources. We have the Holy Spirit, we have the new nature, and we have the people of God. If you are struggling with your faith today, come back to the community! We can help. If you are here and struggling, share it with one of these friends.

The whole context here is Paul’s support and concern for the Thessalonians. He wanted them to know that he left unwillingly and was kept from helping them in person unwillingly, but he was still a resource for them. He said, “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2:19–20). He wanted them to know that his failure to come back did not indicate any lack of affection for them.

In fact, he was so concerned about them that he did not want to leave them without a face-to-face support. So, he says, “we sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith . . .” (1 Thess. 3:2). Each of us have Timothy’s and Paul’s and Silas’ that we can turn to when we need support in the battle.

As a Pastor, a colleague of Pastors, and a friend, I have spoken to many about their struggles. They come sometimes with great trepidation, but they are almost always glad that they shared their struggle. They find that they are not alone and that people still accept them in spite of their failings and sins. There is support in suffering!

Conclusion
Let me speak to three groups of people here today. You may be experiencing some severe suffering today. You may want simply to be rid of it, but can I encourage you to look at in a different way? Can I encourage you to see that this as part of life and as part of the life of faith? Can I encourage you to see it as walking the path of Christ who first suffered and then entered into His glory? Can I encourage you to see it as an opportunity to trust God and so develop the most important characteristic that you can have as a human being?

Maybe you are not experiencing a large degree of suffering today. Maybe you’re just experiencing the small challenges that we all face in living day to day life. Can I encourage you to not let those things go to waste? Use them as an opportunity for training. Commit yourself to trusting God whatever the day brings at you.

What does this look like? First, make it a goal. Make it a goal to trust God throughout your day. Ask for His help. Ask for strength to face the day with trust that leads to love and peace. This means that you keep trusting even when it’s hard and keep showing respect to the people around you no matter what.

Second, if you fail, then analyze what happened and consider how you might have viewed the situation differently. How did you respond when you didn’t get all the work done you needed to? Did you trust God with your status and security? Or did you start to panic?

How did you respond to a broken relationship? Did you repent for what you needed to repent of and leave that person in God’s hand? Or did you let yourself get frustrated as if the relationship was ultimately up to you?

How did you respond to ongoing health problems? Did you fall into despair as if you were abandoned? Or, did you trust that God would be with you and help you every step of the way? These are just a few examples of the way we can dedicate our lives to God and continue to develop trust, even in life’s hard circumstances.

Third, keep doing it. Keep making it a goal. There is nothing more important than becoming a person who trust God. This is the sole rock and sure foundation for human life, human serenity, and human creativity.

Now, some of you don’t experience suffering because you have insulated yourself from it. This is not faith. God calls us out into the world to exercise our faith in the midst of all its blistering and bruising. Put yourself out there. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you know you’ll be challenged. Seek for bigger things. Push out in relationships. Stretch your abilities. Try the heavier weight! Reach out to your neighbor. Invite that person over. Do something! Move into a bigger world. Let’s see your work motivated by your faith and your labor prompted by love.

Yes, it’ll hurt! but it will get you closer to where you want to be. You can’t become your true self by closing yourself off to the world. You become your true self by extending yourself into the world. You learn to meet the world with serenity after you have learned to experience its harshness. You learn to keep loving and serving after you’ve been hurt by others. This is how God develops faith and love within you. This is where God is leading you. So, let’s lean into it . . . together!

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Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash

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How We Grow (1 Thessalonians 2:1-13)

[Listen to an audio version here]

If you are going to be successful at anything, you need two things. You need the right messages, and you need the right messengers. You need principles, and you need people. You also need practice, but I want to focus on the first two based on our text.

Now, these are not categories that are specific to our salvation. This is true in a variety of areas of life. Think of learning to play football. You need the right messages that tell you the rules, the plays, and the skills. However, you need the right messenger. You need a coach to teach you and remind you of the messages. If you are to improve in any area, you need clear messages and good messengers.

When God recreates us into His image, the way He grows us is no different. He uses messages to change us, and He uses messengers to communicate those messages. The point here is rather simple. If we want to grow, even in the midst of our suffering, we need the right messages and the right messengers. Those are the two points of this sermon.

The Right Message
The words we hear, and the messages we receive shape our hearts and lives. The stories we tell ourselves are the foundation of our character. Messages like “the future is bleak,” “you will never amount to anything,” “no one will like you,” “you are strange,” or “you shouldn’t have to suffer,” shape our character and our mindset.

If we want to change our character, then we will need different messages. Every attempt to grow a human being from the beginning of the world to today is fundamentally about new messages.

The Thessalonian Christians had received a new message, the good news about Jesus Christ and the restoration of human beings in Him. This was the Gospel.

In our passage it is called the Word of God. The reason it is called the Word of God is because it is exactly what God wants to communicate to us. Some people wonder how the Word of God can be written by humans. Here is the answer: “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21).

So, the message was not a message from any mere human. It was a message from God Himself. “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13). They accepted an entirely different message from God about their lives.

Now notice something here. He thanks God that they received this word. Why? Because it is the Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts. No one will believe except by the power of the Holy Spirit. The joy with which we receive the message is a gift of the Holy Spirit. That’s what we confessed together in the The Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. It is through faith alone that we share in Christ and all his benefits: where then does that faith come from? A. The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.

It’s important to see, though, that in the first movement of faith, we are wholly passive; in the continuing work of faith, we are active. We must exercise faith. When we exercise faith in the Word, then the Word is at work. The message from God works into our lives as we exercise faith in it. It is “indeed at work in you who believe,” as Paul says.

How does this happen? Well, first we need to know the message. However, it’s not enough to have heard it once and let it pass through our ears. We need to meditate on it in our hearts. What does that look like?

Consider: what if our parents don’t seem to approve of us? What if they abandoned us at an early age? What if our spouse is displeased with us? What if our children don’t like us? It can make us think that we are worthless. The message of God’s Word says something different, you are accepted, valued, and loved by God.

To make this message, the message of the love of God, the dominant factor that shapes our lives, we have to listen to it constantly and accept it into our hearts. We have to apply it to our lives and our thoughts. This is what it means for the word to be at work in us.

Let me add one more thing here. You need to have some time set aside to do this. If you want to hear from God, you have to make time for Him. This requires a habit and a regular time. It will not happen by accident. I encourage you to set aside a specific time each day in which you can hear the Lord: at morning, at lunch, at a break, or before you go to bed. Anything that is really good in this life comes through consistent work. A transformative relationship with the Lord is no different.

But God does not leave us merely with His message. He also brings messengers into our lives. He brings us into a community of friends.

The Right Messengers
A few years ago, on one particular month, I was preaching on relationships in the life of Jesus. One of my sermons was, “Relationships Are Hard,” based on some of Jesus’ difficult experiences with relationships.

One Sunday after that sermon, I was struggling with a relationship myself. I came into the River Plantation Conference Center where we meet, and one person there could tell that things weren’t right. He asked me how I was doing, I told him, “I had some negative interactions with some people, and I’m struggling with that, to be honest.”

He looked at me and said with compassion, “Relationships are hard.” Hearing the words that I had preached from someone else enabled me to hear them in a way that I would not have been able to otherwise. This messenger brought a message that put things back into perspective, and the light began to dawn for me.

We often underestimate the importance of the messengers. But if you think about it, what is it that people struggle with more than anything? It’s not just bad messages. The bad messages get their force from the messengers. Maybe it was a friend who turned on you. Maybe it was a parent who was always critical. Maybe it was a child who wants nothing to do with you. These messengers have a powerful force in our lives.

If your life has been dominated by the wrong messages from a messenger like this, then you will need new messengers who will deliver a more helpful message. You will also need to gain awareness of the messages you learned and re-think the truth of those messages for yourself. You will need new messages.

For the Thessalonians, that community began with the messengers who brought the message from God, Paul and Silas. Paul also wrote this letter. He was the messenger of God’s message to the Thessalonian believers.

Paul sums up what his relationship with them was like in this letter. He told the Thessalonians that he was, “encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2:12).

The design of the church is to be a messenger communicating the Word of God in practical ways to people. When people are down, they encourage them. When they are struggling, they comfort them. When they forget the promises of God, they remind them. When they become sluggish, they urge them forward. This is the work of the church.

It is interesting to note that the Apostle Paul describes himself as acting like the entire family. He was like a child in his transparency. He was like a mother who nurtured them. He was like a father who encouraged and challenged them. All these metaphors give us fruit for meditation. We can take different roles in our relationships at different times, according to the need.

The heart of it is this. You need people who comfort you, but you also need people who challenge you. If you go to people who simply affirm you, then they are not the messengers you need. You need people who will challenge you. If you go to people who simply point out what you are doing wrong or could do better, then you will you will get wrongly discouraged. You need encouragement and comfort as well as the challenge to live lives worthy of the kingdom of God.

The importance of messengers applies to us in two different directions. The first is that we need good messengers in our lives. We need people who will care for us, encourage us, and challenge us.

To get people into our live like this, we often need to take the initiative, especially in our modern world. To get people in our lives like this also takes time. Just like meditating on the message, it takes an investment. Relationships are not built overnight.

The second direction we need to take the importance of messengers is based on what the Apostle Paul says throughout this letter. The Apostle Paul had to leave this congregation. This did not mean that they were without the resources of good messengers. They would have to be this for each other. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11).

We need to be encouraged, but we need to move out in encouragement toward others. Now as I look at our church, I can say, just as the Apostle Paul said, you are in fact doing this. You are speaking into people’s lives. You are messengers. You just need to be more aware and do so more and more.

Conclusion
So, my friends, there is growth in suffering, big and small suffering. The Word of God, the message of God, supplies a foundation for joy that transcends our suffering. It is a foundation on which we can build our lives. The Holy Spirit produces joy through His Word that enables us to continue moving forward. It can give us a faith that makes us able to stand in trials and not be unsettled by them.

And so we will grow. We will move forward, but we will do it not alone but together. God uses a group of friends to enable us to grow. It is God’s messengers delivering His wonderful messages that enables us to grow and remain ever green in the changing seasons of life.

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Photo by Kev Costello on Unsplash

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Power to Live a Life of Joyful Service (1 Thess. 1:4–10)

[Listen to an audio version here]

“Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the Master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.” Tom Bombadil is a mystery in the book The Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson left him out of his film entirely.

But Tom Bombadil is a character that has always fascinated me. On the surface, he seems so simple, but he is complex. He is merry, full of joy. He delights in his wife and hills and home and food. He seems like he would be easily overcome, but the Ring cannot tempt him. In the midst of his joy, he is happy to serve.

He is a sort of picture of an unfallen human being, a human being not tainted by sin. I think such a person would be very different than we imagine. That person would be open to the world yet clearly defined. He would be a slave to none but a servant to all. He would be content and joyful yet always willing to serve. He would be transparent and simple yet complex and deep. I think Tolkien gave us a glimpse of this in his character of Tom Bombadil.

Sometimes, we think that joy and service do not go together. The Bible and this passage teach us something very different. Those who want to save their lives will lose them, and those who are willing to give them up will find them. Joy and service go together.

Some of us serve because we fear saying no. Some of us try to preserve ourselves but end up being self-centered. How do we get to a place of joyful service? That’s what the Thessalonians had found. They found joyful service to God and to their fellow human beings that made the world stand up and notice. How did it happen? In this sermon, I want to talk about the source, the means, and the effect of joyful service.

The Source of Joyful Service
How did the Thessalonians become joyful servants of the God of Israel and the Lord Jesus Christ? How did these servants of Aphrodite, Zeus, and Apollo who intertwined the worship of these gods into the fabric of their lives become servants of the God of Israel? The answer is clear in our text. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The first thing we notice is that the Apostle Paul gave thanks to God for their response to the Gospel. This means that their response was due to the grace of God. The reason why they accepted the message about Jesus was due to God Himself.

Paul says, “For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction” (1 Thess. 1:4–5). In other words, it was God’s choice and the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled them to respond. Paul and Silas could preach the Gospel, but it was God who gave the response.

This is what we see elsewhere in the Bible. It is God who makes our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh to respond to His Word (Ez. 36:26–27). The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14). No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).

This means that even though the Thessalonians had faith, hope, and love, the one who got the ultimate credit for it was God Himself. Even their good use of God’s gifts was a gift from God.

Human beings have turned away from the joyful service of God that they were created for. Instead, they exalted themselves in their pride. This is what we all do unless God intervenes. This is why we all need God’s grace.

Why do we struggle so much in this life? In part, because we start on a wrong principle: making ourselves the center of the universe. It’s only God that turns this around, and so it is only the Holy Spirit that begets joy. “You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:6).

This was evidence of God’s special love and the choice that He made of the Thessalonians. Their response was not due to their merit or their works but to God’s electing, eternal, gracious love. This is something that all who believe can say: “I believe because of the unmerited love and choice of God Himself.” That’s a rock on which we can rest our hearts and lives.

The Means to Joyful Service
Even though it was God’s Spirit that empowered them for joyful service, this did not mean that God did not use things and people to bring the Thessalonians to that condition. He used a message to bring them back to Himself, and He used the messengers who brought that message.

First, there was the message. They received what he will later call the “Word of God” because it came, as it were, from God’s mouth. In the next chapter, he will say, “when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13).

Here he calls it the gospel. The gospel in the ancient world was “news.” A messenger would proclaim a “gospel” when a king won a victory or a new king was crowned. Here, the “gospel” is that Jesus is crowned King and has won the victory over Satan, sin, and death.

Why did God use the Word or the Gospel to transform the Thessalonian Christians? It makes complete sense. What keeps us from joy? It’s the messages we believe such as, “You are unworthy”; “you can’t do anything right”; “things won’t ever work out”; and “I won’t ever get to enjoy good things” that keep us from joyful service. What leads us back to joyful service is God’s good message: “you are accepted”; “you are valued”; “you can do good things”; and “you will be blessed.” These messages believed and imbibed can lead us back to joyful service.

So, the message has to be the right message, but the right message won’t be received rightly unless the Holy Spirit works in our hearts. We need the Word and the Spirit. That’s why Paul thanks God that it did not come to them only with words but also with the Spirit and power!

Because it is the Word that transforms, people sometimes think, we just need to get the word out there, and that’s all that matters. This idea fails to notice that God not only uses the message, he uses messengers to transform people.

How the messenger lives and how the messenger conveys the message is very important. “You know how we lived among you for your sake” (1 Thess. 1:6). The Thessalonians’ conversion to joyful service was the work of people that they could imitate. They conformed themselves to the commandments of the message but also to the comportment of the messengers. “You became imitators of us” (1 Thess. 1:6). Paul says.

How we live and what we say matters in the work of transforming people. God uses the Word, and He uses His people who live out that Word to bring people to believe the Word. So, we need to ask, what am I teaching with my actions? What do I say about God by how I live? Do I communicate joyful service? Or, am I communicating angry grievances? The former brings about the righteousness of God; the latter does not.

The Effect of Joyful Service
When the Holy Spirit worked, it had effects. The Thessalonians changed. They who were followers of idols and the gods Aphrodite, Zeus, and Apollo gave them up to joyfully serve God and wait for Jesus to return from heaven. This meant more than a private decision. The worship of the gods was intertwined with their political, economic, and family life. It was a radical change.

This radical message was rooted in joy. They welcomed the message, but this was not a mere intellectual acceptance. It moved their hearts. “You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:7). They welcomed this message with joy. It caused their hearts to rise up as they heard the good news about Jesus Christ.

Christianity has a negative message. It says that all are sinners and that God’s wrath is coming against all sin, the pride of the theologian as well as the perfidy of the thief. Christianity also has a Gospel, a positive message tat answers the negative one. We are delivered from the wrath to come by faith in Jesus Christ. Recently, I read again the Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 60. It asks: “How are you righteous before God?” It answers:

Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, of never having kept any of them, and of still being inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without any merit of my own, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is accept this gift with a believing heart.

This is the beautiful message that can fill our hearts with joy in every situation.

Notice also this important point: they welcomed the message with joy in suffering. To enable us to live joyfully, we must have a foundation for joy that can last through suffering. The Gospel enables us to reinterpret our experiences of suffering in a way that preserves our joy. Even unbelievers can reinterpret suffering in this way to a limited degree, but we can do it in an ultimate way because Christ has experienced our sufferings and triumphed over them. Christ’s resurrection powerfully demonstrates that suffering is temporary but God’s love and power are forever for all His loved ones. The suffering is a refiner’s fire that brings out the pure gold of our faith more clearly.

So, they had joy. What did they do with it? They served. This joyful service means, first of all, that they served God Himself. In one sense, we all serve something. However, the true service that we are made for is service of the living God. We are not made to serve Aphrodite or romantic love, Athena or intellectual endeavors, Apollo or our talents, Zeus or our power, Bacchus or our pleasures. We are only properly aligned as human beings when we serve the living God.

Second, joyful service means serving God’s interests in the world. Joyful service means serving God in the everyday events of life. It means always and everywhere seeking to advance His kingdom and His interests in the world.

Third, joyful service means serving God’s people, His created people and His redeemed people. The Thessalonians served the people around them, and so their faith become known throughout the world. Our faith commitment is known by the love we have. It is always, “work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love” (1 Thess. 1:3).

God is recreating people to be the joyful servants He intended them to be.

Conclusion
All over the world, there are people like the Thessalonians, people who have left their previous way of life to serve God and wait for Jesus Christ. There are people like Michael. He was a Chinese student studying in Spearfish, SD, and I met him through a program connecting foreign students with local families. He had not grown up as a Christian but went to a church in South Korea. Through the work of his Pastor there, he came to welcome the message of Jesus Christ with the joy given through the Holy Spirit.

There are people like Charles Strohmer. He tried the American Dream and the New Age movement before the Holy Spirit took hold of him and brought him to Christ. You can read more about his transformation in the exciting book he wrote Odd Man Out.

There are people like me and many of you reading or hearing this. We do not know the time when we came to welcome the message with joy and enter into the joyful service of God, but for us and for Michael and Charles and all those like them, we sing with the church throughout the ages:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me!

________

Photo by Fernando Hernandez on Unsplash