You and I live in an amazing period of human history. Most culture watchers and scholars believe that we are witnessing the decline of modernism that began in the 16th century and the emergence of a new phenomenon known as postmodernism.
One of the many marks of postmodernism is technological advancements. Consider just a few of the incredible changes we can expect to see in the next few years. According to Leonard Sweet, who teaches at Drew University, soon your computer will talk, your TV will listen and your telephone will show you pictures.1 So don’t be surprised when your spouse says, "Answer the television, honey, I’m watching the phone."
Within 5 to 7 years half of all the jobs listed in today’s classifieds won’t even exist anymore. Pollster George Barna tells us that by the year 2010, between 10 to 20% of Americans will use the Internet as their sole means of spiritual expression. Currently 27 human body parts can be replaced by mechanical parts. Fururist Geoffrey Meridith claims that by the end of the next century books as we know them will cease to exist and written language will disappear almost completely.
In their book Shopping For Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium, Richard Cimino and Don Lattin tell us we can expect to see a cease fire in the war between religion and science as more and more scientists talking about faith in God.2 Cimino and Lattin tell us that large corporations are going to become more and more concerned with the spiritual welfare of employees, even to the point of hiring corporate chaplains.3 Finally, a secular forecaster named Faith Popcorn has recently said: "We stand at the start of a Great [spiritual] Awakening. A time of spiritual upheaval and religious revival...What’s different about this awakening is that there’s very little agreement on who or what God is, what constitutes worship, and what this...outpouring means for the future direction of our civilization."
The word picture Leonard Sweet uses to describe our generation is a tidal wave of change as we enter fully into the post-modern era of human history. We live in remarkable times, times that are unprecedented in terms of social change and cultural upheaval in the history of human civilization.
Yet these seismic changes have caused many to become deeply fearful. Militia movements and separatist communities flourish. Christians have vacillated between the extremes of denial and hysteria in the midst of this chaos. Many Christians have advocated a "hunker in the bunker" mentality.
For instance, Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation and the guy who coined the phrase " moral majority," is calling Christians to systematically withdraw from all areas of public life.4 Weyrich says, "We are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions... Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have [become]...enemies of our traditional culture." Weyrich calls all Christians to completely withdraw from public education, all political involvement, for us to set up our own community court systems, and otherwise seek to live as cultural Amish in the midst of such chaotic social change. Weyrich may be extreme, but his view isn’t at all unique.
Others are giving into hysteria, especially as we approach the year 2,000. Although the y2k computer bug is certainly real, the most hysterical reactionaries have been people who name the name of Jesus. Some prominent Christian voices are advocating moving to unpopulated areas with lots of guns and food.
So as we’re 3 months before the start of the new year we’re going to start a new series to ring in the year 2000 called LIVING CONFIDENTLY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES. In this series we’re going to go through the New Testament books of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. The Thessalonians were also facing uncertain times, and these two letters were written to them to help them avoid both withdrawal and hysteria.The apostle Paul--who wrote 16 of the 27 books found in the New Testament—-started the church in the Greek city of Thessalonica back in the year 50 AD. Paul—along with his team members Silas and Timothy—planted this new church during his 2nd missionary journey, as they traveled through Greece along the Roman road called the via Egnatia visiting the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth.
Greece back then was the cradle for ancient paganism, as myths and legends about the Greek gods on Mt. Olympus had become an ingrained part of Greek culture. Thessalonica was a populous, important and sexually immoral city.5 From the city square in Thessalonica you could see Mt. Olympus fifty miles to the South, which was supposed to be the home of all the Greek gods. 6 The dominant religions of Thessalonica were the worship of the Egyptian mystery cult of Seripis, the frenzied worship of the Greek wine and fertility god Dionysus, and finally the Imperial cult, where the Roman emperor was worshipped as a god.7 Some of the statues used to symbolize these groups are so graphic that I couldn’t show you pictures of them on the screen without making our service rated-R. Worship in these various groups was characterized by actually worshipping statues of the sexual organs, drunkenness, and all kinds of sexual perversion.
Now shortly after starting this church, Paul, Silas and Timothy were forced to leave town because of persecution by the religious authorities. This left a handful of baby Christians--probably no more than 2 months old in their faith--all alone in the center of a pagan community. So after Paul settles in the Greek city of Corinth, he writes these two letters to his friends in Thessalonica. In these letters we’re going to find out how to live confidently in uncertain times. We’re going to start today by looking at "Facing Uncertain Times" in the first chapter. We’re going to see three realities that help us face uncertain times.
I. A Lifestyle Rooted (1:1-3).
Paul begins his first letter to this friends in Thessalonica in typical fashion for Paul. The order here--of putting letter’s senders first, then addressees, and finally a thanksgiving greeting--is typical of first century letter writing. But what isn’t typical is that this is only place in all of Paul’s New Testament letters where he doesn’t characterize himself as an "apostle" or "servant" of Christ. Here he’s simply Paul, along with team members Silas and Timothy.
Paul assures their friends in Thessalonica that everything he, Silas and Timothy pray together that they thank God for the Thessalonians.But notice what Paul and his team remember before God: Their work produced by faith, labor prompted by love, and endurance inspired by hope. This triad of faith, love and hope was one of the earliest summaries of the essence of the Christian faith.
Let’s look at this triad of virtues. We start with faith, which is believing "to the extent of complete trust and reliance."8 Faith is a confident trust in what God has done in the past through Jesus Christ, and according to the Bible without this faith it’s impossible to please God. This is the kind of faith that produces works. These works are the specific activities that faith in Jesus Christ inspires, and here it describes the totality of the Thessalonians’ new lifestyle since coming to know Jesus.9 Faith in Jesus Christ isn’t just some speculative, intellectual agreement, but it’s an energetic and productive force that propels us to good works.
Next is labor prompted by love. Now if faith looks backwards at what God has done, love looks upward and around, as it finds specific ways to demonstrate love for God and love for other people. The word Paul uses here is the Greek word agape, and this word for love was virtually unknown before the New Testament was written. This distinctive word for love describes love that’s unconditional, love that gives without any thought of return. Biblical scholar Leon Morris, who’s done a definitive study of love in the Bible, says that this word agape describes a "self-giving love," the kind of love that’s inherent within the character and nature of God.10 In the New Testament, the model for this kind of love is the death of Jesus himself, that by looking at the sacrifice of Jesus for us—as we’ve done in community today—we see this kind of love in action. Now we use the phrase "labor of love" to describe doing little things, but the word labor here means hard work resulting in exhaustion.11 This describes the cost of their love for each other, that their love for each other prompted toilsome activity, as they stretched themselves to the point of exhaustion on account of the love they had.
Finally Paul mentions their endurance inspired by hope. If faith looks back, love looks upward and around, then hope looks forward. The word "hope" in the Bible means "to look forward with total confidence." As baby Christians living in the cradle of ancient paganism, the pressure on the Thessalonians to give up their faith in Jesus Christ was enormous. Their own families viewed them as traitors for refusing to worship the traditional gods Serapis, Dionysus, and Cabirus. Their refusal to worship the Roman Emperor as a god made them seem like unpatriotic traitors to the surrounding culture. The Thessalonian citizens viewed a refusal to offer sacrifices to Caesar as the same way we view someone who burns an American flag. From every direction there was pressure to compromise, the pressure to conform to the culture at the expense of their newfound faith in Jesus. Yet their hope in Jesus led them to endure, to bear up under the pressure, even though the pressure was enormous. This endurance wasn’t passive resignation, but it was a heroic constancy that faces obstacles, trials and persecutions with a blazing confidence that Christ will make things right in the future.12
Now this triad of faith, love and hope is, in the words of John Calvin, a brief definition of true Christianity. Faith looks back at Jesus crucified, love looks up at Jesus glorified and around at other people, and hope looks forward to Jesus coming again. Thus, every Christian is a believer, a lover, and a hoper.
Here we find the first reality that helps us face an uncertain future. WE CAN HAVE CONFIDENCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES BECAUSE OUR LIFESTYLE IS ROOTED IN ETERNAL VALUES.
It’s not enough just to embrace these values of faith, hope and love, but God wants these values to reorient our lives and produce within us a certain kind of lifestyle. When we have true faith it will produce works, when we have true agape love it will cause us to labor, and when we have genuine hope we will endure pressures.
When we were on vacation this summer we camped along the central coast. We saw lots of huge redwood trees, especially in Big Sur, and some of those trees were hundreds and hundreds of years old. Now what’s the difference between a 900 year redwood tree with a tumbleweed? Roots, a redwood has deep roots that anchor the tree through centuries of pounding rain, howling winds, scorching heat, and so forth. I don’t think many redwoods are concerned over the y2k computer bug since most of them have been around since before the telegraph was invented. They have deep roots that enable them to withstand the most seismic changes the world can throw at them. A tumbleweed only just one little root that doesn’t go down very deep, so when wind comes it just pulls up and blows wherever the wind drives it.
The key to success in a turbulent uncertain time isn’t joining the Amish, but it’s putting down deep roots, roots that go to the very heart of God in faith, love and hope within the culture God has placed us in. When we live according to these values, then it doesn’t matter what seismic changes the future holds, our lives will remain secure, confident, rooted.
II. Demonstrating Our Election (1:4-7).
This reflection on living by eternal values causes Paul to remember his recent visit with the Thessalonians. Paul, Silas and Timothy are completely sure that God has chosen the Thessalonians. The word Paul uses here is "election," and it means "to make a special choice based upon significant preference."13 The Bible teaches that every person who comes to know Jesus Christ has been personally chosen by God. Jesus said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit" (John 15:16). Ephesians 1:4 says, "God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." Ephesians 1:11 says, "In Christ we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." Christian theologians argue over how God chooses, but all Christians agree that God chooses those who will belong to him through Christ.
Paul was sure of the Thessalonians’ election because of their response to his message. He’s sure because the message he communicated to them came not only with words explaining who Jesus is, but also with the power to drive those words home within the hearts of the hearers. He’s sure because despite opposition from their culture and their countrymen, the Thessalonians welcomed the good news about Jesus with joy. They became "imitators," which means they entered into discipleship, first patterning their lives after Paul, Silas, and Timothy, and then ultimately finding a mentor in Jesus Christ himself. Because of this incredible response to the message of Jesus they became a model church throughout Greece. Their response to Christ was a model, an example of how it should happen, an archetype, an ideal. Their conversion to Jesus is typical, a standard against which we can measure our conversion experience as well.
Here we find a second reality that helps us face an uncertain future. WE CAN HAVE CONFIDENCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES BECAUSE OUR CONVERSION DEMONSTRATES THAT GOD HAS CHOSEN US.
Second Peter 1:10 tells us to make our election sure. Many Christians have agonized over this idea, wondering if they’re truly elect or not, truly chosen by God or just fooling themselves. The 17th century American Puritans often lived in constant anxiety over their salvation, agonizing over whether or not they were among God’s elect. This anxiety just added to their uncertainty, often paralyzing them.
Yet here we learn that the sure sign of election is that we’ve responded to the message of Jesus Christ. If we’ve come to know Jesus, then that itself is sure proof that God’s elected us. This knowledge of God’s election of us sets us free in the midst of chaos and rejection to find security.
Consider an obscure young baseball player who desperately wanted to play in the major leagues. He was raised in a rich family, with an indoor batting cage, yet everyone figured he was a rich baseball wannabe. During the baseball draft this obscure young man was the sixty-first selection in the sixty-second round. That means 1,390 other people were chosen before he was. Later Tommy Lasorda, then manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, admitted that the only reason he chose this young player was as a personal favor to the player’s dad. Yet once he was chosen, he had his opportunity, and this young baseball player named Mike Piazza has been posting hall of fame numbers ever since. He was the 1993 rookie of the year, a 7 time all star, the 1996 all-star most valuable player, and has posted five straight seasons with 30 or more homers. But he wasn’t chosen because of any of that, he was chosen as a favor, or to use the Bible’s word, because of grace.
If you’ve come to know Jesus, God has chosen you. You belong to him, he picked you, not because you deserve it, or because you’re worthy, but for the same reason Tommy Lasorda chose Mike Piazza: grace. This reality gives us confidence, even in the face of seismic changes in our culture.
III. Communicating the Good News (1:8-10)
Now Paul moves from describing the conversion of the Thessalonians to the effect of this conversion. When the Thessalonians embraced Jesus, this caused God’s message to ring out from there throughout Greece. The verb "rang out" here is where we get our English word "echo" from, and it means "to cause something to sound forth."14 It was often used of a trumpet blast that sends sound waves in various directions, or the noise from thunder that echos through a valley. When the Thessalonians came to know Jesus, God’s message of salvation seemed to reverberate through all the hills and valleys of Greece.15 Wherever Paul, Silas, and Timothy traveled to in Greece, they didn’t have to tell people about the Thessalonians’ conversion because the people already knew. "Did you hear what happened to those people in Thessalonica?" people would ask Paul. The echo of their story had reached every place in Greece.
What is it that they heard? They’d heard how the Thessalonians, who’d previously worshipped Serapis, Dionysus, Cabirus, the Emperor, and multiple other gods had turned away from these dead and lifeless idols. They’d turned their back on their pagan past, to find a new reality, to serve a true God, a living God. John Stott captures the radical nature of this change, when he writes, "Idols are dead; God is living. Idols are false; God is true. Idols are many; God is one. Idols are visible and tangible; God is invisible and intangible. Idols are creatures...God is the Creator of the universe."18 They had encountered the true and living God and now were committed to a life of serving and waiting. To serve here literally means "to serve as a slave," and it describes a life commitment of total devotion to God and his ways. To wait means to look forward with expectation for Christ to come again, living in light of his promise to one day return to this earth as conquering king. To serve means to get busy for Christ while on earth, and to wait means to look forward to Christ coming again. This same Jesus, who rose from the grave on Easter Sunday, will deliver his people when he comes again and God pours out his wrath on the earth to set things right. Just as God protected Israel from the plagues he sent on Egypt, just as God protected Noah and his family from the flood, so also when Christ comes again he will shield us from God’s judgment as it’s poured out on a world that’s lived in rebellion against God. Paul doesn’t tell us how God will do this, only that we can count on him to rescue us from God’s wrath.
Here we find the third reality. WE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES BECAUSE OUR TESTIMONY COMMUNICATES GOD’S GOOD NEWS.
Our story is a trumpet blast of how God can save people. When we come to know Jesus, turning away from our own false gods, and commit to living for Jesus Christ as we await his second coming, our story sends shock waves through the hills and valleys of the Inland Empire. We may not worship Dionysus or Cabirus, but we’re certainly familiar with the idea of something other than God standing at the center of our affections. That’s really what an idol is, you know, any created thing that stands at the center of our affection. Every human heart has an altar in it, we’re born worshippers, whether it’s worshipping a lover or a Lexus, whether it’s the sexual god of Dionysus or the pursuit of another adrenaline rush, whether it’s Emperor worship or the quest for power. Until we turn away from these god substitutes that our culture spoon feeds us, until we turn in trust to Christ, to serve him, we’re not really followers of Jesus. Maybe we’ve tried to add Jesus to our lives, but we’ve subtracted nothing, we’ve tried to tack on a Christian faith to a thoroughly pagan life. But when we truly become followers of Jesus, devoted to serving him, that trumpets through our world.
As many of you know I wasn’t raised in a Christian home, that I was an atheist who was living a lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse. I’d never heard of the Greek god Dionysus, but my lifestyle would’ve fit in quite well in ancient Greece. And I lived this way right here, in Upland, among you and your families. So when I came to know Christ that sent shock waves through my world.
Yet you don’t need to have a dramatic story like mine, but every story fits into God’s orchestra of how God changes people’s lives. Have you blasted your trumpet lately?
CONCLUSION
No other generation of Christians in the last 2,000 years of church history faces such incredible cultural changes as we do. We live in remarkable times, times of seismic changes, times of upheaval. Some of these new things will be exciting, some will be terrifying, some will be hostile to our faith in Jesus. In the midst of such remarkable times, the worst thing we can do is become hysterical or "hunker in the bunker." God is looking for men and women who are boldly confident in Jesus, people who are willing to live by faith, love and hope in these cataclysmic times. We can only do this if our lifestyle is deeply rooted in God’s eternal values, our conversion demonstrates God’s election of us, and our testimony trumpets God’s good news. Are you ready for the future?
Notes
1. Taken from www.soultsunami.com web site.
2. Richard Cimino and Don Lattin, Shopping For Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium (Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 5.
3. Cimino and Lattin, p. 36.
4. "Is the Religious Right Finished?" Christianity Today 9/6/99.
5. G. E. Frame, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 2.
6. John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. ( Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1991), p. 39.
7. K. Donfried, "The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence" New Testament Studies 21 (1985).
8. J. P. Louw and E. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), CD rom version, 31.85.
9. Edmond Hiebert, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. (Winona Lake: BMH Books, 1992, p. 50; Charles A Wanamaker. The Epistles To the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), p. 75.
10. Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians. (NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 41.
11. Louw and Nida 42.47.
12. Hiebert 50-51; Morris, p. 42.
13. Louw and Nida, 30.92.
14. Louw and Nida, 33.222.
15. Stott, p. 37.
16. Stott, p. 39.
17. Louw and Nida 87.79.
18. Stott, p. 42.
