We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, 4 knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you;
MAKING YOUR PASTOR GIVE THANKS
I didn’t include verse 1 of this chapter in my text for this sermon but I should have. Our text begins with Paul saying ‘We give thanks to God’ and we’re going to spend our time learning why he said that. But there is something in verse 1 that establishes his fundamental motivation for giving thanks to God concerning these Thessalonians. Look at verse 1.
“Paul and Silvanus [that’s Silas] and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ; Grace to you and peace.”
Who are the recipients of his letter? They are those who comprise the true church in Thessalonica. They are ‘in’ God the Father and they are ‘in’ Christ. See it? Paul is addressing himself to the elect of God – in verse 4 he reminds them that God chose them – so he bids them grace and peace, knowing that only a true, Spirit-born and filled believer can have or know God’s grace and peace, and he rejoices over them! He assures them that he gives thanks to God for them always!
Now I want you to think about this for a minute and not let this thing escape your notice today, because this is an expression from a pastor’s heart and it is not unique to the Apostle Paul.
Paul and the others had come to Thessalonica at an earlier date; not much earlier, for these were all still young believers in this church, and some had been saved and a church had been started and he had taught them for a while. But then jealous Jews who were in the city had driven Paul out, so after a short time Timothy and Silas had gone back and received this great report about the Thessalonica church that we read about in the early verses of this chapter. So Paul is rejoicing and thanking God for them.
What I want you to know and understand today is that a pastor’s heart can be greatly encouraged or sadly broken by the people God has sent him to for ministry.
Years ago I was placed by God in the midst of a congregation of people for a full year. Now I don’t say this to boast, I was doing my job and the task God gives every minister of His. For a year I preached the gospel very clearly to this congregation. I taught them the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. I taught them the meaning of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and many other things. I prayed for them when they were ill and visited them when they were troubled. I even visited one or two in jail. But at the end of that year when the Lord finally let me leave, there was only one person in that congregation whom I was convinced in my heart that they were even a true Christian.
It was a long, sad year. But this is what I want you to see. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me; that isn’t my point at all. I want you to understand that the reason I had no reason for rejoicing over that congregation is because in a year of knowing them and toiling over them I cannot remember one time witnessing any physical act or hearing any Biblically founded confession that would tell me any of them were even born again.
I saw plenty of evidence of worldliness, but nothing of the signs Paul is talking about in these verses we’re coming to; the signs that made him rejoice and that make any pastor rejoice because as he works and prays and teaches and counsels and leads his people to springs of living water, he witnesses the working of the Holy Spirit in hearts that belong to Jesus. And how can he witness that working? By the evidentiary fruit the Spirit is bearing in the very lives of the people he is striving to lead!
Ok, so I know I started on a bit of a down note but I won’t leave you there. I just wanted to plant a seed of thought in your head that you might reflect upon later and step back and ask yourself if your pastor has reason to rejoice over you or to be saddened by you. Whatever you find there will be between you and Jesus to work out.
Just let me give you this nugget to take with you and I’ll move on.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says that if anyone is in Christ [and remember that is what Paul called them here in verse 1] that person is a new creation. Old things have passed away and everything has been made brand new. So what is your pastor witnessing in you as time goes by?
Characteristics of a new creation? Let’s go see what those are so you can be equipped to make an accurate personal assessment.
WORK OF FAITH
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that his thankfulness to God and motivation for prayer for them grew out of the knowledge he had of these evidences of their calling and their election; and in so doing he gives us our outline.
The first thing he mentions is their ‘work of faith’. What does that mean? Well, it means much. He is talking about the deeds being accomplished by them and among them that testify of true, saving faith.
The word translated ‘work’ there is ‘ergon’. It has to do with function and with specific deeds. So the first thing Paul lists as evidence they are of the elect of God is their deeds.
Now I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me so I’m going to try to make this very clear to you today. I am not teaching, nor would I ever teach – because the Bible does not teach – that anyone is saved by works. In fact a great deal of Paul’s teaching in his epistles is dedicated to proving that no one is saved by works of any kind, to any degree.
To the Romans Paul wrote, “…by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested…” 3:20-21
When he says the righteousness of God there Paul is talking about being declared right with God. He has taught there that no one can be right or become right with God through the keeping of the Law; by the works of the Law.
In Ephesians 2:8-9 Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast”.
So salvation is entirely by the grace of God and it is a gift. If you have done anything, if you have even had any attitude or displayed any behavior that merits something, then that thing is not a gift. It is a wage or it is an award. That can never be, with our salvation. It is not the award of God and it is not a wage God has paid for a service rendered to Him. It is entirely a gift and it is by His grace alone through the shed blood of Christ alone, and even the faith to believe is implanted by God, otherwise we could never come to Him. We would remain dead in trespasses and sins; we would still be without God and without hope in the world.
Just like the great hymn says, “My Lord I did not choose you, For that could never be. My heart would still refuse You, Had you not chosen me.”
Now having established that, the other side of this doctrinal coin is that true saving faith living in the heart of the one God has called and given spiritual life and filled with His Holy Spirit, will produce fruit in the form of works – deeds – that demonstrate that faith.
Let me give you a definition of works in the Scriptural sense of the word; and I know it is a bit wordy so I have included it on your handout so that you can read it over later and have more time to absorb it. Here it is:
Works, good deeds, are the physical response and demonstration of an inner set of beliefs, and system of values based upon those beliefs, that are both stimulated into being by those beliefs and are also the seen and experienced evidence of those unseen beliefs and values.
In short, what I am saying is that faith manifests in physical action of some kind, and that action will complement rather than contradict that faith.
The life and deeds of a true believer will not contradict the faith he or she confesses.
Let me say that another way. What we truly believe in the heart will manifest itself in how we live and behave.
This is an unchanging principle that is as true in the spiritual world as it is in the physical. This is what Jesus was talking about when He told His disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing”. Jn 15:5
Good works are the same type of evidence of spiritual life in the believer, that fruit is of life in a tree or vine. If there is no fruit that is evidence that the plant is dead.
Listen to Ephesians 2:10.
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”
If you are a true, born again Christ-follower, there is really no point in Paul or me or any preacher calling for you to perform good works. Because, you see, the Bible says that God created you in Christ Jesus – did you hear it? New creation, all things made brand new? – God created you in Christ Jesus, ‘for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Christians, you can’t stop good works coming from you if you have the Holy Spirit in you, because even though on some human level you decide at times to perform certain deeds in service to God and your fellow Christians, the truth is that before He made you God prepared good works for you to walk in and they are borne in and through you like fruit from a vine. Just remember, you’re only a branch. The life comes from the Vine itself. You are the channel through which the vine sends its life and power to produce the fruit.
Now, having said all of that, again I have to go back to the negative and say that if there is no Godly fruit in and through a person’s life that is cause for concern if that person claims to be a born again believer.
James 2:17 says, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”
Someone paraphrased James 2:17 this way. Lonely faith is dead faith. Lonely faith is dead faith. It is knowledge without application; like a fully loaded computer that never gets plugged in or booted up.
You need to hear this and understand today friend, that according to the Bible, while salvation is by faith alone, saving faith is never alone; it manifests in good works. If you are truly a Spirit-filled Christ-follower, you can’t not do good works. God prepared them beforehand for you to walk in and His life in you will bear them like lush, beautiful, spirit-nourishing fruit in your life.
This is what Paul saw in the Thessalonian believers and it is what caused him to give thanks to God when he considered it.
Then there is another characteristic of a new creation Paul witnessed in them and it is closely related to the first.
LABOR OF LOVE
Let me point out first that we are not told of specific deeds these Christians were performing. That wouldn’t really teach us much to have that information, because deeds that believers do in our time and culture would largely be very different. The important thing to know is that Paul had received word that as a local entity; as a body of believers; they were involved with one another and performing deeds together and among them that glorified God and their Lord Jesus Christ.
Any work that does not bring glory to God is not of God. It is just that simple. We go off on our own and in our own strength sometimes and we think we’re doing service to God, but we’re just being busy. Only what God does through us is of Him and only what He does through us glorifies Him.
And that is where this next phrase comes in; ‘labor of love’.
In contrast to the word translated ‘work’, which is ‘ergon’ and refers to deeds done, the word translated ‘labor’ is ‘kopos’, and the focus is on not the deed, but the effort. It is a strong word and it speaks of arduous, toiling, exhausting effort.
What this says to me on the surface is that Paul must have heard some detailed accounts of loving deeds and actions between these embattled young Christians that spoke of sacrifice and demonstrations of true, Christ-like love and affection.
I mentioned that these terms were closely related because this agape (sacrificial, undemanding) love is the love with which Christ loved us, and gave Himself for us. It is the kind of love that comes from above and can only be in the believer, unbelievers can never have or experience this kind of love, and it manifests itself in good deeds. So Paul is saying that his rejoicing is due to the accounts he has heard of their labor, their purposeful, deed-producing love for one another.
This was important especially because they were under constant attack and harassment from the same people who had driven Paul away; the same people who hated their Lord and therefore hated them. They needed one another and they needed the strength of this kind of active love among them.
And church, this brought something to the foreground of my thinking that I want to share with you today – and I’m going to ask you not to get offended at me or even think that I am saying this in criticism of you or anyone else locally or even really in criticism at all. I say this out of concern and I hope that you will all receive it as a matter of great concern and something to pray about.
I have witnessed something in the time I have lived in this area, and my wife has seen it also and we have discussed it often, wondering what it was about this region that produced this phenomenon. However, in reading certain books and articles and hearing sermons by preachers from far away in just recent months we have realized that it is not unique to our area but apparently a trend that has taken a terrible hold on the church all over our society; and it is this.
It seems that a widespread apathy has settled over American Christiandom, a disconnectedness that has people floating from church to church, easily offended and therefore moving on again, never settling long enough to really be a part of a local body and letting that group of Christians become a part of them. As I said, I’m hearing rumblings of this trend from all over, not just our area.
So we have to ask ‘why’? Why is this happening and what should be done about it? Well, brothers and sisters in Christ, the only answer I can come up with is that on a grand scale the church of Jesus Christ in our day has grown cold.
Perhaps we’ve been at ease for too long. God may have to let suffering and persecution come in order to once more stoke the flames of passion in us for the truth of God’s Word and for His Spirit and for the Gospel message itself…and so that we’ll start loving one another again!
These Thessalonian believers only had each other. As soon as they became Christ’s they became targets and they were sustained by the labor of love manifest in good deeds among them that was born of the Spirit of Christ in them.
My friends and family, please do not think that out and out persecution and physical suffering can not come to us because this is America. I love my country and I have fought for her and I would never leave her, but it is my duty as a preacher of God’s Word to say to you that as a nation we have turned our back on God for many years, and it is getting worse, and there will come a time that God will say ‘enough’.
If and when that time comes upon us, church, we are going to need one another! We are going to need a fervent love for Christ and for the brethren burning in us, that will be demonstrated in deeds and labors for one another; because this I know for a certainty, you won’t find it coming from outside the church! If it isn’t found amongst us, it won’t be found!
In his book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace”, author Philip Yancey, speaking of his youth, said, “I left the church because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else”. And Christians, that is absolutely the truth.
We need – and I include myself in ‘we’ – we need to grow up and mature in the Lord. We need to be immersed in the scriptures and fortified in prayer. We need to put away squabbles and stop being offended at one another and walk once more with Christ, and share His Gospel and settle down and become truly a part of one another, so when the trouble comes we will be strong in the Lord and in our relationships with one another as the true church of Christ.
I can remember times in my life when I was in a church, not as pastor but as a member of the local body, over a long period of time, and everyone knew everyone, and everyone cared for everyone, we enjoyed each other’s company, when the service was over no one wanted to leave. We all stood around and talked or went together to lunch. And we prayed for each other and talked joyfully about the Lord to one another…and I MISS that!
We can have that again. I know we can. Can we have it before persecution and trial comes? I hope so. I hope you’ll pray with me for it, and as you do I hope you will ask the Lord to show you just where you stand in relation to not only the problem but in relation to the church you’ve chosen to attend. God can heal our hearts and our churches, friends; and He can bring from us these works of faith and labors of love if we’ll humble ourselves and begin to obey Him.
Hebrews 10:23-25
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; 24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
That might sound like a suggestion from the writer, but it is a command from the Holy Spirit who inspired the writer. Can we do that much? Can we be that obedient? I know we’ll find great blessing in it if we do.
STEADFASTNESS OF HOPE
The writer to the Hebrews exhorted us to these things and said “..and all the more as you see the day drawing near”. And that brings us to this third characteristic of the new creation witnessed by Paul in this young church.
Steadfastness of hope. Steadfastness could also be translated, ‘perseverance’ or ‘endurance’.
Now listen once more…
“Work of faith, labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father…”
This hope Paul sees the Thessalonians standing firm and persevering in, this hope that has caused Christians to endure through the centuries, is the hope of standing finally in the presence of God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is our hope of heaven and home. It is the hope of glorification and everlasting life in the place He has gone to prepare for us.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a hope; the hope that should be growing and growing in us day by day as we walk with the Lord. It is surer now than it was when the writers of Scripture penned their words. It is not less sure because it has been so long, it is surer because it is nearer!
Proverbs 4:18 says, “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day”. From the moment you first believed, Christian, and that hope dawned in your heart, it should be growing brighter and brighter until the day Christ calls you up. Because it is sure and certain and by this hope we endure; we persevere through all trial, through testings, through tribulation, through times of our own sin and failure as we repent and confess and are cleansed and renewed by the forgiveness that flows perpetually from the Throne of grace through the atoning sacrifice of God’s precious Son, and reassures us of His love and our place in Him, from which we can never be snatched away!
This is a hope that can never be killed. “And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me.” Jer 32:40
The steadfastness and perseverance of the believer is something stressed frequently in the New Testament, and we can see why, can’t we? If we just look around us we can see reasons every day to begin to have doubts, to let our hope waver, to become so focused on the physical and temporal that we forget for whom and for where we are made?
No less than eight times in His letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus encourages believers to overcome. Overcome. Overcome and eat from the tree of life. Overcome and receive a new name which no one knows. Overcome and receive white garments. Overcome and sit with Jesus on His throne.
In 1 John 5:4-5 we find,
“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
Jesus encouraged His chosen ones to overcome, to be steadfast in hope and He inspired His Apostles to preach the same encouragement, because He knew what they were to face; and He knew what we would all face, didn’t He?
He even promised that we, as His children in this world, would have much tribulation, but then He reminded us that He has overcome the world. He has overcome the evil one. He has overcome our sin. He has overcome in order to bring many sons to glory, believer, and that’s you and me.
Be steadfast in hope and let that hope inspire you to labors of love and works of faith among the brethren. Let it draw us together in true spiritual unity to build one another up in the Lord and see Him do the good deeds through us for which we were created.
Please excuse me if I give you one more illustration from recent personal observations.
We have a daughter who is only days away from graduating Marine Corps bootcamp. There is a term that her trainers use, which is ‘muscle memory’. The concept behind that term is that in teaching the various martial arts and hand to hand combat techniques that are learned to make them Marines, the moves are done over and over and over again. I remember this from my own military training and I can testify that it really works.
They know that if they have these recruits repeat the same motions over and over again, when battle is upon them they won’t even think about what to do; their muscles and their bodies will do automatically what at first may have seemed foreign and even awkward to them, and they will respond correctly at the proper time because they’ve been trained to.
Fellow Christ-followers, let’s not flit from church to church and sit and be fed and pampered to no avail and when the trouble comes be overcome by it. Let’s ask the Lord for a new corporate heart in the American church, in the churches of our region, in our local body, right here and in our communities, and in ourselves, and ask Him to rekindle a fire in us to stimulate one another to love and good deeds until it becomes such a lifestyle, such a reflex, that when we find ourselves under pressure we will automatically respond to the need with works of faith and labors of love founded on and born out of a hope of glory that perseveres.
Let’s ask Him that and believe Him for it.
HIS CHOOSING, OUR KNOWING
I just want to bring your focus to one more point and I’m done.
In verse 4, which is not a full sentence and is in the middle of the longer passage, I know… but just look at these few words… Paul says ‘knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you’.
Paul assumes that they know and are confident that they are among those chosen of God for salvation. He calls them ‘beloved brethren’, so we know Paul is persuaded they are; but he just considers it a given that they also are aware and confident that they are among the elect of God.
How is this? How can they be sure and how can Paul, who, after all is just a man and cannot read the human heart any more than any of us; how can he speak with such confidence?
It is because the characteristics of a new creation are in evidence. They are active in the body and among the brethren, and they are witnessed by those who have come to see, and they are reported to others who also receive the news and are changed.
Just look quickly at verse 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 you see, it is not only for our benefit and for the local church’s benefit that we are called to pursue these characteristics and long to see them displayed in us, Christians. It is for the sake of many outside the church who don’t even know they are lost and without hope; who don’t even know that they are waiting for us to truly become imitators of the Lord, examples to other believers, evidencing in our church and in our lives that we are those who eagerly await our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another”
Christians, do you want to make your pastor give thanks? Make yourselves available to one another. Be strong in the service of the church. Desire to walk in the good works God Himself has prepared for you to do and let Him develop in you a laboring love for believers everywhere.
JESUS IS COMING!
