Michael A. Murdock
*There are bits and pieces of this sermon borrowed from various sources, so I claim credit only for my own experiances and God leading me to the right sources to put this sermon together. If it helps you grow God’s people then awesome!
“What are You Working For?”
1 Thess. 1:2,3
Introduction:
*Don was having trouble with his printer. Even with a new cartridge the print was barely readable and very smudged. So he called a local computer repair shop where a very friendly man informed him that the printer probably only needed to be cleaned. Don winced as the man at the store told him the cost of cleaning his printer would be about $50. “I could almost buy a new printer for that price!” Don said. “Well you could try reading the printer’s manual and try doing the job yourself,” the man at the store said. Don was pleasantly surprised by his candor, and asked, "Does your boss know that you discourage business like this?" "Well, actually it’s my boss’s idea," the employee replied. "We usually make more money on repairs if we let people try to fix things themselves first."
-Many of us are fixers, we like to find ways to fix things, to make things work better, but when it comes to our Christian walk and our church we end up doing a lot more screwing up then fixing.
-Christianity is more about relationships that produce works and less about works that produce relationships.
*Frances Bacon said; “It is not what men eat, but what they digest that makes them strong; not what we gain, but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned; not what we preach or pray, but what we practice and believe that makes us Christians.”
Today I want to share with you the three marks of effective Christianity.
Our text is 1 Thessalonians 1:2,3
“We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thess. 1:2,3)
-Paul continually prayed for the church of Thessalonica and not only that but, he thanked God for their faith, love, and hope; which produced a very dynamic church.
I. Faith would Work
-The first mark of a Christian is having the kind of faith that produces good works.
-Faith is focused upon the work that God did in the past through Jesus Christ, the fact that Jesus went to the cross for our sins.
-The Greek word used for “work” in the phrase “work produced by faith” is the word (ergon).
-Ergon focuses on the product of our efforts, the fruit that is produced, not how we arrived at the fruit or the effort that went into producing the fruit.
*Let me give you an example. I’m going to pick on Dean Cleveland this morning, remember last year Dean did a wonderful job of working on the lights in the basement of the church. He made it so much brighter. And although it took much time and effort on Dean’s part, if you ask him he would just shrug it off and say that it was nothing at all, and that he was happy to do it.
-Therefore faith is more focused on the product, then the effort it took to get there.
A. Works do not produce Faith.
-Unfortunately there are many in the churches who think that by getting involved in a church project or doing something kind for someone, that they will either grow their faith or show that they have faith in God.
*Because I know the kind of person Dean Cleveland is, I know that it is his faith in God that motivates him to help others. He does not do things so that people think him a Godly person, but he is motivated by his trust or faith in God.
-Those who work to produce faith, or to show off their faith are like candles with very short wicks, they burn out quickly, and they are too focused on doing, or earning their way to heaven.
-When they fail to get praised or recognized for their efforts, when adversity befalls them, or church becomes a burden they simply fall away.
Ephesians 2:8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.”
-Nothing we can do, no product that we can make can earn our salvation, which comes through our faith, or our trust in Jesus Christ and in what He has done.
-Salvation is a free gift given to those who hand over their lives over to Jesus Christ.
B. Faith does however produce Work.
-Faith however should move us to action.
James 2:14-18 “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”
-On one side of the fence you have those who do good works to show that they have faith, which is wrong, and on the other side of the fence there are those who come to church, but do nothing, they don’t get involved, they don’t reach out to others, and in the ministry we call those kind of people pew warmers, or dead wood.
-A strong faith should produce a desire to serve, because that is what God created us to do, as new creations in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
-A good gauge of the depth of your faith can be the extent of your charity.
-The more diverse your involvement in the Kingdom of God at large, the greater your faith generally is.
-Why, because you are willing to risk and go where God wants you to go.
-You have not limited your service to God out of fear as to where that investment of your time, energies, and money will take you.
*A story from Our Daily Bread devotional says; "For 30 years, I had assumed that to swim I must constantly struggle to keep from sinking. One day an expert swimmer watched me for a few minutes and then shouted, ’Stop fighting the water and trust it to hold you up.’ He was right. Under his direction, I lay flat in the water without moving hands or feet and, to my delight, it held me up. Why didn’t someone tell me that years ago?" "So many people constantly struggle to become Christians. If they would only trust Christ, they would realize that He does the saving."
-Our faith, or our trust, is not based on works done by our own hands, but upon the actions, the end product of what Jesus has already done upon the Cross.
-It is out of that relationship with Jesus that we are moved to action and serve our Lord through our good works, our producing of fruit.
II. Love would Labor
-The second mark of Christianity is love that causes us to labor for others.
-Love looks to our present relationship with Jesus and expresses what it means to be in Him.
-Here we have a second “work” related word, the Greek word “kopos” translated “labor” in the English.
-The phrase “your labor prompted by love” focuses on effort, the word “kopos” means to beat ones chest, to toil, or expend great painful effort.
*For example last summer the weeds were taking over my garden. So one afternoon I went out with my hoe and worked like a mad man. I attacked those weeds until my shirt was ringing wet, sweat poured from my brow, and my heart was racing. I put some sweat equity into that garden, I worked hard hoeing and raking those weeds up, almost to the point of exhaustion.
-How many of us put that kind of effort into showing Christ like love for others?
A. Without Love we Labor in Vain
-If we love other but put not effort into our love for them, then what good are we to Christ, and conversely if we put great effort into being Christians, but we do it without love, then again what good are we
1. Our Love first Begins in Christ Jesus
-Our love for others should first begin with our love for Jesus
-To the church of Ephesus we read in Revelation 2:2-4 “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”
-If we do not have the love of Christ within, then we draw from an empty well.
*Have you ever tried pumping from an empty well. You can pump as fast and hard as you can, but your still going to get nothing.
-Some in the church do a lot for the church, but they have lost that passionate love for Christ and so they are drawing from an empty well.
-They have a hard time showing love to other people, they tend to be critical of others, always looking for peoples faults, they have forgotten that Jesus loved them faults and all, just because.
2. That Love then must fill us.
-When we are filled with Christ love it is easy to look past people’s mistakes.
-We are more concerned with how our actions will effect other people, then just getting the job done.
*Megan came in one summer soaking wet, her and Colby had got into the garden sprinkler. Megan’s jeans had soaked up so much water, that were ever she walked she left puddles of water on the floor all the way to the bathroom.
-When we are filled with God’s love, we are like soaking wet sponges that can’t help, but leak the love of God, wherever we go.
B. From the Abundance we Love others in Action
-It is often very easy to fall into a legalistic mind trap.
-Paul, a Pharisee among Pharisees reminds us in Galatians 5:6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
-Sometime the best way to express our faith is through specific, concrete, and practical works.
*When John Wesley was six-years-old the parsonage in which he lived with his family caught fire. The alarm was given and the parents thought everyone was out of the house safely. But when they started counting, they discovered that one of the children was missing. And, to their horror, they saw young John Wesley at an upper story window, caught in the burning building. The father, a devout, scholarly Anglican minister, immediately dropped to his knees, praying that God would save the boy. His mother, who not only was a person of great faith but also a very practical woman, immediately ran next door, got a neighbor with a ladder and, working with the neighbor, rescued her son from the flaming house. There are times when the best way to express your faith is to get off your knees, go get a neighbor with a ladder, and do what has to be done in a given situation. Apart from works of love, your faith is dead -- as "lifeless as a corpse."
-When we begin to get actively involved in loving our neighbors, our community and the world around us then they doors of this church will swing wide open as we begin doing what God has called us to do.
-Loving people into the Kingdom and teaching them God’s truths’.
-Our love for others and the efforts that are produced by that love toward other people is a result of the relationship, the love, which we have for Jesus Christ.
III. Hope would Endure
-The last mark of Christianity, which we find the church of Thesslonica struggling with in 2 Thessalonians, is hope.
-It is hope that pushes us forward.
-Hope looks to the future with confidence that God’s promises will be true for those who are in Christ Jesus.
-Here is our third and greatest form of “work” in the Greek, the word hupomone [hoop-om-on-ay] which means ceaseless action under great strain, perseverance, endurance, steadfast.
-The phrase “your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” is about not giving up or throwing in the towel no matter how hard life gets because of our hope in Jesus Christ.
*My brother, Mark, and I were hiking back to my car after a weekend of camping in the Cuhutta Wilderness area of north Georgia. We followed a trail called penitentiary trail and it was aptly names, as it was all up hill, with few sources of water. We had stopped at one point to run bug infested water through a coffee filter, and then boil the water and drink it with our last piece of summer sausage. Trust me when I say this, hot water and summer sausage, not a good combination. The fat in the sausage melts in your mouth like a spoon full of Crisco. We were miserable after a less then delicious meal, we continued up the trail with the scorching sun beating down on us, and our feet and backs aching. We however kept going knowing that at the end of the trail was my car and a Big-Mac was calling our names, along with an ice cold soda. We had hope.
A. Without hope we fall into the pit.
-Unfortunately many of us live our lives defeated rather then driven.
-The world around us robs of our dreams, people say it can’t be done, it never has been done, or you are not the one to make it happen.
-Heaven seem some far off dream, a fairy tale to comfort the dying, not a present reality.
*An article in Psychology Today said; The average thirty-year-old American male is ten times more likely to be depressed than his father and twenty times more likely to be depressed than his grandfather. At any given time in America, there are between fifteen and twenty million people suffering from depression. Fifteen percent of these depressed individuals will commit suicide.
-So many of us fight depression and thoughts of worthlessness, we are always worn out, sleepy, and feel the weight of the world upon us, all because we have nothing to hope for, nothing to hope in.
Proverbs 11:7 “When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes; all he expected from his power comes to nothing.”
B. Hope inspires us to endure.
-When we have hope in something greater then ourselves, when our dreams exceed our reality, then our spirit is set free to soar on angels wings.
Psalm 33:13-17 “From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth--he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.”
-The things of this world, like armies, our own strength, or a powerful steed, cannot bring that eternal hope and security we desire.
Psalm 33:18-22 “But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, [reverence; respect] on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.”
-But the fact of God’s unfailing love for us and His power to deliver us from the troubles of this world and into the blessings of eternity with Him are guaranteed.
-So, placing our trust in God, hoping in the things of heaven makes for a wise investment of our energies and time.
*Richard Hogan told this story at the North American Christian Convention in 1990. He says; “A few months ago I took a sad journey across Iowa to the little hamlet of Lenox. Jack Cutbirth, minister of the Christian Church there, was in his last hours of life due to a fast-spreading cancer. He had served in World War II as an army chaplain, and had since ministered to Disciple churches. We met in the Theology School of Drew University and became friends. He never married, but cared for his old mother until her passing. His family was his church and his community. Both loved him dearly. Now Jack was terminally ill. The doctors thought he had the flu, but further tests showed a malignancy. They operated in the spring, but sewed him up, and told him he had less than a month to live. I had been calling Jack and encouraging him with scripture and prayer. Now he wanted to see me for the last time this side of eternity and I was soon by his bedside in the parsonage. We talked together of old times and happier days. He asked about the convention. "Jack," I said, "you will soon be with Jesus and all the saints in glory. Will you greet those we have loved for awhile and lost for awhile? Tell them we’ll see them again one day soon. Will you do that?" He assured me that he would. Then I said, "Jack, is there anything you want me to tell your brothers and sisters on opening night at the [North American Christian] convention? Thousands of them from all over the world will be gathered to hear about "AMAZING LOVE...Good News for the ’90s." The old soldier of the cross spoke with such a feeble voice I couldn’t make it out. Then he said it again. "Dick, tell my brothers and sisters that Jesus never fails." "Is there anything else you want me to tell them?" I asked. "No, just tell them that the love of Jesus never fails."
-The Hope the causes us to endure the hardships of this life are found in the promises of Jesus Christ in a better life yet to come for us who know Jesus as both Lord and Savior.
Conclusion:
-In our struggles to overcome this world, we must remember the marks of a Christian;
-that of faith in Christ which spurs us on to do good works, because of what Jesus did for us,
-that of love first for our Savior and secondly for the lost as we labor to reach them for our Lord.
-and finally that of hope which causes us to endure the hardships of this world because we have a future in eternity with Jesus Christ.
