God’s Plan
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God’s Plan
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Let’s turn right now to our Scripture. It comes from 1 Thessalonians, the very beginning, the first chapter. I invite you to follow along in your bibles or on the screen, as well.
(1 Thessalonians 1:1-10)
Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace to you and peace.We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of people we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place where your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
God’s word for us this day! Would you join me in prayer once again?
Mighty and holy God, thank you. Thank you that you are a God who moves in and among us and that you are here presently. So Lord, we ask that you would, by your Spirit, quicken our hearts to hear what you have for each of us. We ask that because of Jesus. Amen.
Well there was a church marquee in Streetsboro, Ohio that had a clever, double-meaning truth about the body of Christ. The sign said: This Church Is A Gift From God… Assembly Required. That is a good place for us to start today as we begin a series. We are going to work our way through the book of 1 Thessalonians. It is a church that Paul started on his second missionary tour and you can read about it to get a little historical context from Acts 17 and I want to encourage you to read through that. In his time in Thessalonica, Paul was driven out of the town by some Jewish residents; but before he was, he was able to start this little fledgling church. The book gives us some insights into Paul and Paul’s work with this church plant and how it was to grow, some of the problems that it faced, as well as how it is to spread the gospel.
So today we focus on the first chapter, which is ten verses. I want to encourage you to bring your bibles because we are going to work through those and I am going to invite you and encourage you to mark up your bibles. It is a good way to engage yourself with the text. If you are not used to doing some of that, it is O.K. to write in a bible. I know some people had some concerns about that. It is O.K. But you can circle, make little notations, whatever it is that God lays on your heart as we work through this book of 1 Thessalonians. So bring your bibles. We are going to work through those…I want to encourage you to do that. Today we are going to look at that first chapter. We are going to see how Paul tells this young little church how it fits into God’s plan, how it fits into God’s plan of spreading the gospel—the gospel is that good news—through the local church. So with that, let’s jump in.
So Paul begins this letter by impressing on the people that there are two main starting points for a church. The first is this gospel, the gospel that we sometimes call the “good news” of Jesus Christ. That good news is that Jesus died; he rose from the grave to save us from God’s wrath. We just sang about that. This gospel is the origin of the Church; it is the beginning of the Church. And then the second point is that the Church is to receive this gospel, this “good news”. We are to receive it and then transmit it to the world, so that more churches begin and follow-up out of that; and that is to continue on and on and on until the day that Christ returns. That is God’s plan for the Church, it is to spread the gospel. So what we want to do is we want to look at those two parts today and then ask: Well, what does that mean for us here at Faith Church?
So first, as we jump into it, to spread the gospel effectively, if you look at the very beginning of the chapter, the church must be founded in God and in Jesus Christ. We see that in the very first sentence of the book, where he writes: “To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now this church in Thessalonica was very new. It was only a few months old at this point. It was made up of both Jewish as well as Greek converts. They were just learning what it meant to walk faithfully, to follow Christ, trying to live out the new moral convictions that they had been taught by Paul when he was there. And as they are in the midst of learning this new way of life, they are suffering persecution, suffering lots of difficulties; in fact, some of their friends, some of their church members died as a result of that persecution. So they were struggling with that. We will look at that in a few weeks, when they were worried about: What about these folks that have already died? Will we ever see them again? So a lot is stacked against this little church as they are suffering this persecution from these jealous Jews that were following Paul around. You would think that in the midst of that they would barely be holding on, they would be struggling to stay alive. But Paul knows better. Paul knows better because they have their roots in God and Jesus Christ.
The word “church” in Greek actually means assembly. There were assemblies both Greek, as well as Jewish, in all the towns that Paul traveled through. So, what was the difference between all of those other assemblies that gathered in those towns that Paul visited, and in Thessalonica, and this little one that Paul helped start? Well this assembly, or what we would call, this church, was in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who Paul calls then in verse 10, the Son of God. And that is important. It is important because of that little word “in;” because that little word “in” refers to relationship. Being “in” God and Jesus, means that you draw your life from them. This little Christian assembly was different from all the other assemblies that met around it because they drew their life from God the Father and the Son, Jesus, because they were in a relationship with him. Jesus understood that. Jesus spoke of that during his time when he was on earth. Jesus said, “As the Father is in me, so you must be in me and I in you.” Jesus understood this idea of living and drawing our life from being rooted in God and that was critical that they understood that.
Paul also understood this idea of being in God, in Christ, because he references it in 1 Corinthians 12 when he uses the body as a metaphor and he says, “We are in Christ and we are all parts of the body in that with Christ.” There is this organic connection that is supposed to be made for the church in Thessalonica and really for any church that claims Christ today— that they are to be in Christ. So I don’t think it is too much of an overstatement to say that any assembly that doesn’t claim Christ as Lord is not a church by the definition that Paul is laying out for us here at the beginning of Thessalonians.
So we can say that God’s Church was living in Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Church was living in God. Two places—God’s Church lives in two worlds, two environments. It lives in God but it also lives in the world.
Now, why would that be important? Why would that be critical for this little church to know that they are in God? Well this little, young church that is struggling to stay alive in the midst of this persecution and the hardship they are enduring, perhaps they need a little bit of encouragement, perhaps they needed to know that, you know what? God is still with you guys. God is very present at your place right now, even during those hard times. Don’t you think that would be an encouragement? And I think that is an encouragement for us even today. Because as the Church in our world becomes less and less relevant, as it gets continued to be pushed to the fringes of our society where most people say it has nothing relevant to say to us today, do we need that same kind of encouragement?—that God is with us as we seek to bring Christ to the world?
Just this week right after one of our women’s bible studies, a few of the women came down, they were excited because they had just learned how Christ is present in our church right now. Christ is walking the aisles here at Faith Church. He walks the hallways; he walks with us into classrooms; he walks with us into the office. He is here in worship with us. How critical is that? How important is that to comprehend that? That is a very good thing. How good is it to know that we live in a world but we are not alone, for we live in God and in the world he created at the same time.
Then Paul continues. When Paul continues, he says that this church that lives in these two worlds simultaneously is to be marked by faith, love and hope and you see those in verse three of our text. Those three traits of faith, hope and love were traits that Paul remembered when he was in their midst; but Timothy also saw them when Timothy went back to visit them. So they are reflecting on those. If you notice, those traits sound fairly familiar, don’t they? The last one is changed. Faith, hope and love, that is what we normally hear about from 1 Corinthians 13. So it was on Paul’s mind, because most experts agree that Paul was in Corinth when he wrote this letter to the Thessalonians. So he is thinking about faith, love and hope. He is thinking about these how they are marks of the Church; and, as they are marks of the Church, they are both outgoing as well as concrete. Let me explain what I mean by that. Faith, love and hope are outgoing because faith is directed towards God. Love is directed towards others. And hope is directed towards a future. These marks are marks of a church and a person who is being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit begins to take root in our lives, these are the things that begin to emerge over time for they point our lives upward towards God, outward towards others, and forward towards Christ’s return. So faith, love and hope are outgoing, but they are also concrete. They are concrete in that faith requires that you work at it. That is something that you have to do. Love for others requires that you work for them. And hope in Christ’s return means that we need strength in the face of opposition. In fact, John Calvin said that faith, love and hope could actually be considered a brief definition of Christianity. You want to know what Christianity is about?…boil it down to its barest bones—faith, love, hope. That’s it.
So this church was formed in God because of the gospel, because of that work of Christ, but that is not all. That is just the start for Paul, for now the Church is to receive that gospel and then transmit it to the world. And with that then, we move on to verses 5 through 10. One of the ways, as we think about the gospel, is that the gospel came from the mind of God. It finds its origin in God. It was God’s idea who thought—O.K. one sacrifice once and for all for everyone. That’s it! That’s it! So the gospel finds its origin in God, it finds Jesus as the object of the gospel. He was the one who sacrificed. And then the disciples and now us are then to be the agents of that gospel to the world. It is because of that gospel that the Church even exists. If the gospel didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be here, folks. We exist because of the gospel. And we exist to spread it, to spread that gospel. The Church and the gospel depend on each other and they serve each other. Think about that. You can see that progression in these last five verses. In verse 5 you can see where it says, “Our message came to you” and then in verse 6 “You received the word with joy.” That is the receiving piece. Then in verse 8 “the word of the Lord sounded from you.” That is the transmitting, that is the spreading of the word. So the word came to you, you received the word, and then you passed it on. That is God’s plan for the gospel and the Church.
Now I am going to give you an opportunity to unpack that some more yourself. There are lots of different kinds of qualifiers and different ways that the Gospel came in those verses but if you take those three pieces that the word came to you, you received it and you passed it on, then look at how it is described in those five verses. That is something for you to work on as you go through this week, in your time of devotions and of quiet. I invite you to do that.
O.K. Who needs a breath now? Let’s step away from the text a minute and catch our breath a little bit. We have been digging kind of deep and so what I want to do is to give you a couple illustrations around this now. One of them comes from Charles Schultz. Many of you know Charles Schultz is the author of, or was the author (he has passed away now), of the Peanuts comic strip. I think personally one of his crowning achievements was the animated classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” that first aired in 1965. If you have seen that show, and I hope all of you have at some point, you know that the climax in that animated classic is an unforgettable sequence where Charlie Brown cries out “Does anybody know what Christmas is all about?” To which Linus quietly walks out into center stage of this little school auditorium; he calls for the spotlight; and then he begins to tell the Christmas story, right out of Luke, Chapter 2. As he finishes telling the story of Jesus’ birth, he says “That is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” I can hear that in my mind right now. What we don’t know is that that scene almost didn’t make the final cut. The producers cautioned Schultz against using it but Schultz stood his ground. He was relentless. He said, “If not us, then who is going to do it?” If not us, who is going to do it? And as a result, that clear statement about Christmas survives every time that show is aired and it continues to demand air time even almost five decades later because of its message. I think for us we need to repeat that in the Church, as well, to realize the gospel gift that has been given to us and that we have received and ask ourselves, if not us then who is going to do it?
The Church was formed from the gospel, was given the gospel to give away, to transmit to others. That is what we must be about as a church. That is God’s heart for the Church.
So what do we do with that? How do we get at that? How do we begin to make headway towards that? As I think about that, the one way I think to transmit that gospel is to embody it, to embody it, to make it all of who you are and how you live and the way you think about life, for that is what the Thessalonians did. We look through the scripture again, look at the way that Paul describes the Thessalonians. They became imitators of Christ. They began to walk in his footsteps. They became examples to others in Macedonia and beyond. Paul didn’t have to tell others about the faith of this little church; they had already heard about it. And they heard about how they were welcomed by the Thessalonians, how they lived God-honoring lives, how they turned from idols and turned to serving God. Paul is saying others have been impressed by your faith and they wanted to come and see it for themselves. That too is our call, that people would say, “Hmmm, there is something going on there. There is something going on in those folks. We need to go check it out. What is it?” …Just a couple examples of how we begin to live in Christ and God, as well as live in the world.
As I think about contemporaries, about who are best at embodying the gospel, the one person that comes to mind for me is the former coach of the Indiana Colts, Tony Dungy. Tony Dungy lives his faith very visibly in the world and I think he embodies that faith. There is a story of him speaking at an Athletes In Action (which is a Christian ministry) on a Super Bowl week and some of the stories he told and it was just recently after his son had committed suicide. His son committed suicide a couple days before Christmas and he talked about it in his talk. He said, “It was tough. It was very, very painful; but, as painful as it was, there were some good things that came out of it,” he said in this speech. He said that in the funeral eulogy he talked about regretting not hugging his son James the last time he saw him which was on Thanksgiving about a month before he died. He said, “I met a guy the next day after the funeral,” Dungy said. He said, “I was there. I heard you talking. I took off work today. I called my son and I told him I was going to take him to the movies. We were going to spend some time and go to dinner. It was a real, real blessing to me.” And Tony said he received a lot of other cards and letters along the same kind of lines, as well. They also talked about how right after his son had died, he took a week off from the team, but only one week; and then he was back with his team and everyone goes “How did he do that? How did he do that in the midst of such pain?” and he addressed that, too. He said, “People ask me ‘How do you recover so quickly?’” Tony said, “I am not totally recovered. I don’t know that I ever will be. It is still very, very painful. But I was able to come back because of something a good Christian friend of mine said to me after the funeral. He said, to Dungy, “You know James accepted Christ into his heart and so you know he is in heaven, right?” and Dungy said, “Yes, I know that.” And his friend said, “Well, with all you know about heaven, if you had the power to bring him back, would you?” Dungy said he thought about it for moment and he said, “No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I would not want him back with all that I know about heaven.” He said, “That helped me through the grieving process. Because of Christ’s Spirit in me, I had the confidence that James was there at peace with the Lord and I had the peace of mind in the midst of something that is very, very painful. That is my prayer today for all of you,” he said.
That is a man who embodies his faith, a man who lives his faith and is willing to share it with whoever he comes in contact with. That is God’s call for us as a church and we can do that because of this. This table is the gospel, it is the gospel that Jesus died and rose again to give us new life. So I invite you now to prepare your hearts as we come before this table.