8 “For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. 9 For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.”
Sometimes when beginning to study for a sermon one of the first things I will do is go to my books and also websites to find sermons and commentaries on the passage I am about to teach. Sometimes I will read all that another preacher has to say on the target passage; other times I will just browse their outline or even go down a list of sermon titles just to get a feel for how others have approached the passage.
I was doing just that in preparation for beginning this sermon and I ran across this catchy title by Pastor Darrin Hunt. “The Stained Glass Aquarium”.
I did not go on to read that sermon, but the title itself says a great deal about where this pastor was going to go with it and although my primary focus is in a different direction it is worthy of mention that we as Christians and the church as an organization in the world are indeed on display.
The gospel message is either helped or hindered in its delivery to the world around us by the reality of our conversion or the hypocrisy of our witness, insofar as they are able to discern and decipher what they see.
TRUMPET BLASTS AND ROLLING THUNDER
The language guys tell me that the word translated ‘sounded forth’ there in verse 8 is exclusive to the New Testament and means ‘to blast forth’ or to ‘sound forth very intensely’ and might have been used to refer to a blasting trumpet or rolling thunder. (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – 1&2 Thessalonians J. MacArthur)
Paul is commending the believers in Thessalonica for their faithful proclamation of the gospel in the Greek regions around them, saying that their efforts have been so constant and so intense that everywhere Paul and those traveling with him were going they were hearing good reports of the young church in Thessalonica.
In fact, he says in verse 9 that ‘they themselves’, meaning the inhabitants of these other regions, ‘…report about us what kind of a reception we had with you”. In other words, the news was traveling faster than Paul and company, so that when they came to a new place they were hearing stories about themselves and the reception the gospel got in Thessalonica, before getting a chance to tell it themselves.
If you were to look at a map of the regions around the Mediterranean, perhaps in the back of your Bible, and find Thessalonica and then see what area Paul was talking about when he mentioned Macedonia and then Achaia, then went on to say, ‘but also in every place your faith in God has gone forth’, it might inspire you to imagine what an amazing thing it would be to hear this news.
Imagine having a letter come in the mail to our church, or perhaps generally to our association of churches here in the region in which we live, stating that the one writing the letter keeps hearing good reports about us as he travels in Denver and Cheyenne and Salt Lake City and Santa Fe and even Phoenix.
Not stories about how big we’re growing or the buildings we’re building, or how we’re working to rid our community of drugs and crime or some other social improvement, noble and good as those things might be, but evidences of our faith in God even in the throes of persecution (vs 6), and the spread of the gospel message through our lives and our efforts to sound it forth.
I do not know what the precise setting was in which these reports came to the ears of Paul and his companions. Since it was being conveyed as joyful news it most assuredly came from other Christians, and probably primarily from leaders of local churches.
I suppose then, that the modern day equivalent would be pastor’s conferences.
Now I don’t usually attend pastor’s conferences and seminars and conventions. The few that I have attended have not given me anything helpful to come away with and men whose opinions I trust have referred to these events in words that encourage me to save my money and stay home with the family.
One relatively well-known preacher that I have listened to often has indicated on more than one occasion, his disgust with the triumphalism and the breast-pounding and the disdainful size comparing he has witnessed between pastors at many of these functions.
So I admit that I am judging these meetings largely as a third-party and not a veteran eye-witness, but as I say, there are those who I trust to assess accurately and report truthfully.
In light of this reputation that seems to have been earned over the years at pastor’s conferences and conventions across our land then, I have to wonder how much more encouraging and inspiring and spiritually nourishing the time would prove to be if what was being talked about was the faithful spread of the gospel and its joyful results throughout the regions in which we move and work.
Let’s focus in on the specifics of what was being reported about the Thessalonians and find application for ourselves.
TURNING
Paul has indicated that what has sounded forth like a prolonged trumpet blast from the Thessalonian family of believers is their faith in God in their acceptance of the good news of the gospel, and their open reception of the men who came to tell them of that same good news.
He goes on now to cite the visible evidences of true conversion that were demonstrated in this community of believers, beginning with the first actual physical demonstration. They turned.
Not that they turned physically as one might spin in a circle, but he says they turned from idols and in that process there must certainly have been some display of rejection of the old and adoption of the new. After all, in those days, idols were still sitting on the high shelves of their living rooms and adorning their front doors and in some cases hung around their necks or their wrists; you know, like some of the junk that we can find in our local so-called Christian book stores today.
That word ‘turned’ does not simply imply a turning away, but a turning around; facing in exactly the opposite direction from which one had been facing.
This was not a gradual process and true conversion to the living God never is. The process of sanctification in the Christian’s life is a gradual one, with spurts and slow times. But when there is true conversion in the life through belief in the good news of Jesus Christ and spiritual birth from above there is always instant change, and the initial things to change will always be the most obvious offenses against God as the new Master in the life.
There could not have been a turning to God and clinging to their idols. Idols are dead, God is living. How could anyone desire life and cling to death?
“The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, the work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear; nor is there any breath at all in their mouths.” Psalm 135:15-17
But the good news of the gospel calls men to turn from “…these vain things to a living God…” (Acts 14:15) and this is what they had done in such a way that news of their turning had spread like wildfire throughout the Greek world.
Listen, Christians. You do not have a private faith. Your religion is not a private thing. Oh, you may and should have a very personal and sometimes private love relationship with your Heavenly Father.
But as Paul boldly declared to King Agrippa, these things were not done in a corner (Acts 26:26), and the message that Paul preached, which has been handed down to every believer in history is one to be shouted from the rooftops and the mountain peaks; indeed delivered as though from a blasting trumpet to be heard in every corner, every dark place, wherever the dead lie waiting the call to life.
And the first undeniable evidence of entrance into this life is a pronounced turning around from the world and dead works and dead religion and dead desires to respond to the call of the living God.
SERVING
By the same token, true conversion is not just a setting free to live irresponsibly and do as our flesh pleases with no accountability.
The Thessalonians had turned from serving idols, but as we have noted in the recent past, we all serve something or someone.
Since only God is worthy to be Master over us, simply turning from idols would not have been sufficient to help them. If they did not turn to serve God then they only would have begun to serve some other demonic influence.
The modernist thinks he is safe in his enlightened state. He doesn’t carve statues, most of the time, and he doesn’t paint his face and bow down to a rock or a figurine. But he is deceived. He worships an idol or idols that rule his heart even if he does not give them a physical presence to revere.
And Christians there is something we have to be on guard against also. I have heralded this warning before and I should probably do it more often than I do.
It is this. Even the Spirit-filled believer in Christ can begin to worship an idol of his own making when he drifts from closeness to the Heavenly Father, when he drifts from the Word and therefore from sound exposition of the Word, and when he or she refuses to accept some of the harder things to understand about God’s revelation of Himself just because it doesn’t fit their pet theologies. God is God and we do not decide who He is. He reveals Himself and we come to Him by faith in that revelation or we worship an idol.
C.H. MacKintosh said the same thing more succinctly:
“The first step in evil is to place confidence in a form apart from God; apart too from those principles which make the form valuable. The next step is to set up an idol.”
But the Thessalonians had it right. Their about face away from idolatry brought them around to service of the living God. The word Paul used there refers to a bondservant as we find described in Deuteronomy 15. It is a service of love rather than oppression.
They turned from harsh slavery to dead, demonic idols to loving servitude to the God of life. They now fit the definition of Romans 6:17-18
“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
Now before we move on there is something that must be said about service to God. You see, in our age of comfort and affluence we think of service as doing things for people. If you sit at the table I will serve you dinner. Every agency advertising on television wants to convince you that they are there to serve you.
When it comes to the church we ask one another to ‘serve’ in various ministries. “Brother, would you consider serving as a Sunday School teacher for the next quarter?” “Sister Emma has served in the choir for almost 45 years now”.
But there is an element of service to God that is addressed in this letter and I want you to note that God did not wait until He had a church of so-called ‘mature’ believers before He placed this particular burden of service on them.
Chapter 1 verse 6
“You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit”
Chapter 2 verse 14
“For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews.”
As I stood in a local store just the day I was coming back to the preparation of this sermon I heard two people in a conversation that was loud enough for anyone within 10 feet to hear and neither one was trying to be subtle.
The man mentioned that he had driven by the woman’s house and saw a crew working on her lawn. The way it was said made me think she had been ill or for some other reason unable to take care of her own lawn.
She said to him that it was a few members of her family that came over and did it; they felt it was her right to have it done, and the rest is a quote, “…because I live across the street from some ‘holier than thou’ Christians who mow their lawn three times a week”.
Now this is not by any means the kind of persecution and suffering endured by the early Christians in Judea and Thessalonica; but it wasn’t too long ago in this country that people would not have had such a conversation in a public place and so brazenly ridiculed Christians.
We may find ourselves in coming years faced with an opportunity to serve God in suffering and hardship pressed upon us by our own countrymen, Christians; are we ready? Are you ready to serve the living and true God through sufferings?
WAITING
Well, perhaps it was the hardship and persecutions they endured as new believers in a place hostile to the gospel that made them even more eager for Christ’s return.
Remember, we were talking about the things that were being reported of them all over the regions around them. Turning, serving through endurance of suffering, and now, waiting.
They must have talked a great deal about the return of Jesus Christ if one of the things they were known for was the fact of their anticipation of that day.
In the 1970’s we all thought Jesus was coming back any minute. Does anyone remember that? There was so much talking about His return and so many churches were doing studies of the last days prophecies and so forth that for a while there, there was just a sort of electricity in the air when Christians got together and talked about the rapture.
There were buttons that had a pair of feet disappearing from the top of it and the button said “The Big Snatch”. Because Jesus was going to snatch us all away at any moment.
Well that seems to have cooled off a lot, but the truth is that it is closer now to happening than it was then and each day brings it nearer.
They were waiting for God’s Son from heaven. They knew He was in heaven because they had believed the message that had been delivered to them, and in that message must have been the account of His ascension into heaven.
Remember the disciples who stood on the mount with Him on that day?
“And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
10 And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.
11 They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11)
So they were waiting because they had heard these words told to them and received them with joy.
There is something else that just follows naturally. If He was taken up into heaven in a visible way that His disciples could watch, then He must have been raised from the dead in order for that to happen.
So they waited for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead…” and just in case anyone is confused about who we’re talking about, “…that is Jesus…”
Folks, listen. These are gentiles living in a land pretty far removed from the events of Jerusalem on that Passover eve and the things that happened over the next 50 days.
They never saw Jesus, never heard Him talk or watched Him heal. They weren’t at His mock trials, didn’t see Him on the cross, had not visited the empty tomb.
Like you, they heard from others and they believed. Like you, they turned, they began to serve, they began to eagerly wait.
One of the marks of true conversion, one of the things that earmarks the Christian, is that he eagerly awaits the return of the Savior. It is a fundamental theme running through the New Testament epistles; this great hope we wait and watch for, that quickens our hearts when we contemplate it.
Jesus is coming back!
Romans 8:23
“And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
I Corinthians 1:7
“…so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
Philippians 3:20
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;”
Hebrews 9:28
“…so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”
DELIVERED FROM WRATH
Then Paul finishes this line of thought with the reason they, and we, eagerly wait for His return.
“…who delivers us from the wrath to come.”
Men and women of this world who reject the gospel and deny God also deny His truth and scoff at His warnings. Peter foretold it and we’re seeing it today.
“Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” 2 Pet 3:3-7
The wrath of God, ready to be revealed in the last times, is real, not imaginary; not just a tale some parents made up to keep their kids in line.
The very ones who scoff at it should now be dreading it. It is not affected by our belief or unbelief. It is coming upon the sons of disobedience and neither they nor even we have an inkling how terrible it is going to be.
But Christians, it ought to be a prominent message of the church in our day. It is sad that our so-called ‘gospel’ has gotten so watered down and so weak that the church is afraid to peal out warning of the dreadful things to come on those who defy God.
Whether they will listen or whether they will scoff and mock and even cause us to suffer for it, we should be telling them plainly that it is only through faith in the Son who died, who rose, who ascended and indeed, who will soon return that they can hope to escape their destruction.
Because that is what marks the Christian; belief in the gospel of the living and true God that manifests in repentance, faithful loving service even in the face of suffering and adversity, and a very public and vocal expression of anticipation of His imminent return at which time He will ‘snatch up’ His own and deliver them from the wrath to come.
This is what we believe, these are the things that ought to be said about us from Denver to Phoenix and points North and West, this ought to be the report that travels faster than we can keep up with; that a bunch of on fire, sold out Christians in Southwest Colorado obviously believe Jesus when He says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
