Greetings To You!

If you would, take your Bibles this morning and turn to the book of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, as we look again at this book, as we begin this study, hear what God has to say to us. I'll be reading the first chapter, so you follow as I read. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians, and God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mention you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come let's pray Father, open now your word.

As we come to it, we pray that you would give us hearts that would listen, that we would seek to understand so that we can live before you as we ought and before others as we ought. Thank you again for your great mercy in Jesus. And as we come together to look at your word in his name, we pray that he would be exalted. Thank you now in Jesus name. Amen.

Dear Tim was the way a letter I got from an acquaintance started Now as I read those words I did not think Dear beloved love of my life Tim I did not think that The writer was merely an acquaintance, after all, someone I had recently met. So why would he use that kind of language? Why would he say, dear, Tim, beloved Tim, right? Because that's the way our culture says you start a letter.

That's the way we're supposed to start a letter. None of us know why, but that's just it. That's what we were taught. That's what our culture says. Now, as Paul begins his letter to the Thessalonians, you might be tempted to think that this, too, is just a standard greeting. After all, Paul begins most of his letters this way.

However, if you think that, I think you'd be mistaken. Paul cares deeply about the people that he writes to, and particularly about the people in Thessalonica, who you remember, as we saw last week, was worried to death that quite possibly under the affliction, the persecution that they faced, they had abandoned their faith. But he found out that that wasn't the case.

So there's much more packed into these first few words. Of course, I want to be careful and we need to be careful not to read more into the words than we ought to. But the words do carry some weight, some clear implications that would help us as we, like that church long ago in Thessalonica, face the issues that we face and the afflictions of our age.

So in the compass of one verse, in that very first verse, you can see the foundational work of God for all that follows. Now recall for a moment what we saw last week as we looked at the introduction to this letter. You remember that this is a champion congregation. This is a congregation that have withstood fierce opposition to their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Paul, receiving a report of their steadfastness from Timothy, whom he had sent back to find out how they were doing, now reflects on the ministry that the three men had with them and where they need to go now. They're like great competitors that Paul cheers to the finish. But in his first verse, he gives you the necessary first ingredients that account for theirs and for our faithfulness.

Here's what they are. Who you should follow who you are and what you have Who you should follow who you are and what you should have Those are if you might want to call it the very first ingredients of what follows as to what will set the stage for helping us to have a ministry like them, for helping us to understand how to withstand opposition to the gospel, for helping us to learn how to walk in a way pleasing to the Lord. Who you should follow, who you are and what you have.

Verse 1, Paul, Sivanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians and God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. Who should you follow? Who should you follow? The letter arrives at the congregation of Thessalonica and begins with Paul and Silas. Silas is the same as Silvanus. Paul and Silas and Timothy.

Now, imagine you're there for worship when the letter arrives. What happened in the first century church is when these epistles were written, they were sent to the church, and then they were read before the whole congregation. Remember, they didn't have printed books. They didn't have printed Bibles. This was a letter arriving from the apostle with his two companions.

And so what they would do is they would gather the congregation. They would read it to them like we did last week, read through the whole thing. That's what they would do. Well, what happens if, imagine now, you're in that first century congregation in Thessalonica. What happens when you hear those names? What happens when you hear those three names?

So, you know, I get a letter in the mail, and on the letterhead it says, Buffington, Cheatham, and Foster, right? And I don't know these guys. They mean nothing to me. They're faceless attorneys who are trying to enlist me in some class action suit. I don't know those three guys. Not so as you're sitting in that first congregation, not so as you hear the names of Paul and Silas and Timothy, because you immediately think of the faces and the voices and the mannerisms of the three men you know that have written you this letter.

They're not strangers to you. They've lived with you. They've taught you. These men taught together. They preached together. They worked side by side in your midst. as the congregation was being gathered.

You remember the men who loved you and shared their lives with you. Remember we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives You recall men whose character you noted You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake You see the men who were gentle with you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children, but who also loved you like a father, and like a father exhorted each one of you, and encouraged you, and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. Those are the men that you're thinking of.

And you know them as faithful servants of God. servants of God that you can trust. There's Paul, one whom Jesus himself called to be an apostle, one who Jesus arrested on his journey to Damascus and made him an apostle and told him, you're going to declare my message to people everywhere. I'm going to send you out. This man who went to the desert and studied, this man who went to Jerusalem, was accepted by the apostles eventually. this man who was sent out after he had worked in the church at Antioch who was sent out as a missionary now he's writing to you he's delivering the very words of God to you they're Silas now without I'm going to put the story together here okay we could look at all the scripture references and show how the story was put together that'd take a long time so I'm going to summarize what the Bible says about Silas and Timothy you can get a concordance or something look up their names and look up all the references to them and you can put together the story as well but who is Silas Silas had been a leader in the Jerusalem church in fact he was one of the prophets in the church in Jerusalem in the very first church he was appointed by the Jerusalem council remember in Acts chapter 15 there came a question the question was do Gentiles need to be circumcised in order to become part of the people of God and the answer was no they do not God has given us evidence that all you're doing to do is to believe in Jesus and to entrust yourself to this risen Lord and that is enough to make you the people of God no other thing can be added you remember in Acts chapter 15 this council gathered in Jerusalem and they sent letters out to the churches there were a few churches outside of Jerusalem by this time and what happened was Silas was sent with along with Barnabas with Paul, or Silas was sent with Paul and Barnabas back to their church in Antioch.

And he was sent along with that letter to help explain what it was all about. Well, then he's now part of the church in Antioch. And when Paul and Barnabas came They did not come to agreement about Mark. Barnabas wanted to take Mark on the second missionary journey, and Paul did not. He thought Mark was untrustworthy. They couldn't come to agreement.

So Barnabas and Mark went their way, and Paul and Silas went their way on a second missionary journey. So Paul went with Silas. You remember he was with Paul at Philippi and so forth and was in jail with him and singing with him. Now he had gone to Thessalonica. After Thessalonica, after this ministry, He participated in the evangelistic ministry of Paul in Corinth, and then it seems evident that Paul left him in Corinth after he moved on.

He eventually made it to Rome, where it seems he became Peter, the Apostle Peter's secretary. It is Silas who penned 1 Peter, not to say that he's the one who wrote it, but Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 12, by Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God, stand firm in it. In other words, I've written this by Silvanus.

Silvanus was the secretary who wrote it down as Peter dictated the letter. So that's the last we hear of him. But what we know about Silas then is he's a faithful servant of God. He proves faithful through it all. And then there's Timothy, the third and youngest member of this missions team. He was a native of Lystra.

If you read the Apostle Paul's first missionary journey, he came through Galatia and he went through Lystra and Derby. And in Lystra was where Timothy was. He was a resident of that city. His mother was a Jew. His father was an unbelieving Greek. Now he was either converted under the faithful ministry of his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois, as we read in 2 Timothy, or maybe under the preaching of Paul in Lystra.

What we do know about him is he developed a great reputation with the church in Lystra and some of the surrounding communities. And so Paul enlisted him on this second missionary journey as he passed through Lystra on his way to Philippi. Paul considered Timothy his spiritual son and also his fellow worker Timothy is mentioned in just about all the epistles and he a fellow worker with Paul and Paul claims him as his spiritual son Paul had such confidence in his son that he would send him on important critical missions to tend to the affairs of the young churches that they had established.

And so, as you see here, when Paul ended up in Corinth, he sent, or when Paul was in Athens, he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to see how they were doing. We read about him sending him to Corinth. We read about Paul sending him to Philippi. Paul trusted this young man and sent him on a number of journeys to the churches they had established. He stayed with Paul almost all the way through his third missionary journey, going with him to Rome and evidently staying with Paul in his first imprisonment in Rome.

He eventually becomes a leader in the church at Ephesus. And the last we read about him is in the book of Hebrews. Now, we don't know who the writer of the book of Hebrews is, but he says this. you should know that our brother timothy has been released with whom i shall see you if he comes soon so it appears that timothy spent some time in prison and he had been released as well what's the point all three of these men were faithful servants of god they prove themselves they're the ones who are ministering to these folks so when they hear those names they think of these men They think of the men who spent their time with them.

So the question is, who should you follow? It's faithful servants who love you. Faithful servants who love you. Faithful servants who are personally involved. It appears that God prepares you to live for him faithfully by the personal ministry of faithful servants. One of the means that God helps you to become steadfast in hope against opposition is the personal ministry of faithful servants.

These three gave their lives. Remember, as you read through this book, we not only want to give you the gospel, we want to give you our lives as well. They were vitally involved in the lives of these people. I needed to learn this when I first became a pastor, way back in 1985 when I first came here. My view of ministry was this. I'm going to disappear in my office for 40, 50 hours a week.

I'm going to study my brains out. and I'm going to come out here and I'm going to preach sermons and everybody's going to grow and this is going to be one happy place. Was I wrong? Not about the happy place part but about my ministry I learned very quickly very quickly and that a whole another story that you don just show up and preach You got to be involved in people lives.

You've got to be shepherding. You've got to love them. You've got to be faithful to them. You've got to weep with them when they weep and cry with them when they cry. And that's part of the ministry. And that's the part that brings along the Word of God so that people are going to listen.

And that's what they did. You've got to understand that 1 Thessalonians, as is the rest of the Bible, is not an impersonal field manual about how to fight the battle. It's not an impersonal field manual. It is the hearts of faithful servants who have ministered and served. Who should you follow? Who should you follow so that you're ready to live for Christ? those who have already learned to live faithfully and learned to love faithfully.

That's who you follow. Those who live faithfully, those who love faithfully. And that's what these three men were. That's what they were. That's what helped prepare these folks so that after a month of being with them and Paul and Timothy and Silas left, they were able to withstand the opposition that came their way. They were able to stand against the opposition, the affliction that they had, which Paul talks about in this book, they're able to stand because of those men who live faithfully and love faithfully.

Okay? Now, how else does God prepare us for living faithfully? Well, by telling you of your identity. Who are you? He talks about that in the next part of this verse. To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

What do you think of when you hear that word church? you are the church what do you think of when you hear that word I would bet that most of us think when we hear the word church we think of a group of Christians who meet on Sunday for a little bit of teaching in Sunday school and some sermonizing and singing and of course the offering in the worship service and who eat together once a week like we do maybe that's what you think when you hear the word church It just part of your normal Sunday routine You go to church Don ever think that when you read that word church or congregation in the epistles or in the New Testament The term means called out ones Now I don normally throw Greek at you but you would all recognize this Greek word ekklesia It's where we get the word ecclesiastic, which is where we get church. Ekklesia. Ekklesia meant called out ones.

It was originally used in the Greek city-states, right? It was originally used of the people who met to vote on everything. Those city-states in Greek were democracies, and all the free men would gather together to vote on public affairs. It wasn't representative. If you're a citizen, you showed up at the meeting to vote. A call went out.

You came. You gathered, and you voted. You were there to decide matters of public policy. That's what it meant. It was adopted, that idea of called out ones, the assembly of citizens who came to vote. It was adopted by the Hebrews to describe the assembly of Yahweh, the assembly of God, the people of God.

Now remember, let's go back in our history. Let's strain the brain a little bit. Remember this time the Hebrew people are spread all across the Mediterranean world. They've been dispersed. There are a few that live in what we would call the Holy Land. But most of them live dispersed like today.

Most Jewish people live all around the world. And they don't speak Hebrew. Most don't. They speak the language of their home country. Or as in this case, they spoke the language of the empire, which was Greek. And so if they got a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew, they couldn't read it.

Just like you probably couldn't read it either. What happened is they translated the Old Testament into Greek. It's called the Septuagint. And that's what they read. That was their Bible. And the word Ekklesia was used of a Hebrew word that meant the assembly of God's people, the assembly of Israel.

Turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 31, verse 30. Deuteronomy 31, verse 30. Here we read, as an introduction to chapter 32, Deuteronomy 31, verse 30. then Moses spoke the words of this song until they were finished in the ears of all the there it is assembly of Israel and all the as they would read it it would say all the ecclesia of Israel It was the assembly of Israel.

It was the people of God. You see, turn over to Acts chapter 7 for a moment. Stephen, a Jewish member of the church, as he's testifying before the Sanhedrin, who've arrested him, says this as he recounts the history of God's people in Acts chapter 7, verse 38. Here's what he says, verse 37. This is Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

This is the one who is in the, there it is, in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our fathers. This is the one who is in the congregation, the ecclesia. He's using other people of God. So what's the point? The point is that this congregation, this congregation right here is the church that is the people of God, the new people of God, the assembly of God, the people of God formed by Messiah Jesus.

We are those people. When you see church, you're not just saying, oh, yeah, that's the group I meet with on Sunday. You're saying you are a representative of the people of God. You are the people of God in this community. In the Old Testament, that assembly was to represent God to all the world. As you read through the Old Testament, here's what you see.

God says, I'm going to set you apart. I'm going to make you my treasured possession. And all the nations are going to look at you, and they're going to look at you as you obey the laws of God, and they're going to wonder at your God. Well, we're supposed to have the same purpose. As the people of God, We are those that people should look to and say, wow, that's what God is all about.

That congregation rallies around Jesus the Messiah, and it has the same purpose. We are the assembly of the people of God. But if that weren't enough, that should be enough, but he adds a phrase. The church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. every congregation has been united to the father and the son now look i hope you're getting the impact of this we not just the people who get together we not just like a club that gets together and hears a lecture from the Bible every week and we eat together We are in the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ This distinguishes us from every other grouping of human beings.

In this place, in this village, we are the church in the God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our identity. It's a unique identity. We're the only people, Christians are the only people in union with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you understand that? That is our identity.

No other group of people can make that claim. now look I've got nothing against Bible studies and things like that and these ministries that go to college campuses or anything like that I mean they're great but they don't have that unique identity they don't the gathered people of God in the congregation are the people of God they are the ones that are in union with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ no other group can make that claim we are set apart from the rest of humanity we are set apart from the rest of humanity and only those who belong to Jesus can make that claim we are the disciples of the Lord Jesus we are in union with the Father and the Son this is kind of unusual the Apostle Paul does not use does only in this place talks about being in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Almost always he talks about being in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here he says, in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So what? So what? What's so important about that? That means that because we Christians alone belong to God. Let me say that again. We Christians alone belong to God.

Therefore, we must be different. We must be different. Now that doesn't mean that we have to look goofy and all that sort of thing as some christians think you need to do it means that we ought to be different you know what we also also what we want to do right we want to get a lot of rules that you know wear certain kind of dresses never cut your hair do all this sort of thing that make us out as christians no no what make us out as christians is the fact that we look like jesus in our character In our character we like Christ We been transformed by the Spirit who comes at the behest of the Father and the Son And so we must be different.

He says something about that in verse 9. What does he say? Because you're part of that community, you have abandoned your idols. You've left your idols. You've cut off any kind of communication with that idolatrous worship that characterized the culture from which you came. You now live in a counterculture.

Right? He says to them, you're going to be alienated from your contemporaries. What does he say in verse 14 of chapter 2? Remember? And he said, for you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. you suffered you're alienated from those people but why were they suffering do you remember we read you heard it in acts this morning why were they suffering because they claimed jesus is king and so some people got a hold of that and said you trumped up some charges said they're they're getting another king here instead of the emperor emperor and that's not the case nevertheless because of their beliefs because they belong to this group of people they're alienated from their contemporaries listen that's why i believe baptism is a point of no return because once once you enter those waters you are saying publicly to the world i am a follower of jesus and i will follow him no matter what the cost my friends in high school may hate me my co-workers where I work may hate the fact that I'm going to work hard and do my best for the Lord but that is what I am and that is who I'm going to I'm going to follow Jesus no matter what the cost that's why baptism is so so important because it's saying those things I'm going to live a new life now.

I'm leaving the old life behind. I'm dead to it. It's not my life any longer. This is my life. Following and obeying the commands of Jesus even if it costs me my life that baptism And that what these people were starting to experience because they were identified as the church of god in the father and the lord jesus christ they had to be different and because they are different they suffered you know that also means it also means that you have a purpose to live for you have a purpose to live for no other association grouping of people have the purpose to live that we have.

And that is, we live for the glory of God and for the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a purpose. Now, there are all kinds of assemblies. There's all kinds of groups of people from a grouping called Americans to the VFW to the Kiwanis Club to LaRue Community Alliance. Okay? All these groupings of people.

All of them. But what's their purpose? Would you die for the LaRue Community Alliance? I love my village. I love my town. But I wouldn't die for LaRue Community Alliance.

Right? And you know, someone might get upset, which is normally what happens in small towns. Someone, if not yet, will eventually get upset with LCA, LaRue Community Alliance. And pretty soon they'll probably spread some rumors and people start losing interest. And when enough people don't show up, they're done. They're done.

What about us? What about us? People start spreading rumors about us. Are we done? No. We continue.

We stand. We're steadfast in hope. He talks about they're steadfast in hope. Their labor of love. Right? Their work of faith.

That doesn't end. Why? Because we live for the Lord Jesus Christ. We belong to the Father and to the Son. And we have a greater purpose. We have a greater identity as the people of God.

And so we fight on. We remain steadfast. We continue our toil in love. We continue our toil of faith. We continue our works of love. We continue those things.

Why? Because we are the church of God. There is no one like us anywhere. And so we need to embrace our identity. who are you who are you the people of God in the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ last thing he says is what do you have what do you have third ingredient here what do you have notice that we have what we have because of that marvelous Grace and peace.

We have grace. We have the grace of God that delivers us from the wrath of God. Verse 10 of chapter 1. Isn't that interesting? That what Jesus does by His sacrifice is deliver us from the wrath to come. Have you ever thought about it?

I'm going off on a tangent here for a minute, but have you ever thought about that? how are you saved from God by God the one who's going to bring down his wrath on your head is the one who sent someone to take that wrath away you are saved from God by God in the Lord Jesus that's what he says to them that's grace how many of you know a judge who after he sentences you says oh by the way there's a way of escaping that that's grace that's what our judge does he gives us the means of being delivered from his wrath that's the grace of God that delivers us from his wrath it's the grace of God in his enabling power to do what he commands because we in that community grace is available grace is ours grace to live we have the assurance that all is right with our God and that he will never abandon us and that he will always give us what we need That is grace because we don deserve it By the way grace is not just undeserved favor It goes beyond that Grace is undeserved help Grace is undeserved strength He gives us help More than just looks at us favorably he actually operates on our behalf even though we don't deserve it that's grace and because we are the people of god we have peace grace to you and peace now peace here does not mean a sense of inner tranquility i believe what he's talking about here is the peace that exists between us and god our relationship has been reconciled we have the assurance that God is for us and never let me say that again God is for us let's put it this way God is always for us never against us in Christ that's peace that's what we have with God we can be sure that no matter what comes our way it is never God against us it is always God for us now can you see how grace and peace are going to at least begin the process of undergirding you of preparing you for the fight that ahead and for the life that you must lead and for the ministry that God wants because we have grace, we're assured of our future, we have what we need now, we have the assurance that God is always for us, never against us. We're set. And so as the epistle opens, the Apostle Paul gives us these three main ingredients then.

That's going to prepare us to live like a champion congregation. first of all we must have and prepare faithful servants who love his people we have to have and we must start preparing faithful servants who love his people secondly we have to embrace our identity as the people of god we are the people of god no one else can make that claim we've been set apart from the rest of humanity by that very thing and lastly we have to recognize and depend on God grace and his peace those are the things we need if we going to be fit for battle fit for the race fit to serve and so the epistle opens with these ingredients we pray that God would manifest them to us in this congregation as we seek to serve him let's pray father once more we come into your presence and thank you for your great mercy to us in Christ. Because of that mercy, Lord, you have given us those we can follow. Because of that mercy in Christ, we have been gathered together and called out from the rest of humanity to serve the purposes of God and of the Lord Jesus.

Because of your mercy, we have grace and peace. We thank you for that, Father. We thank you. and we pray now that this congregation, this one in Leroux, would heed what you say in this book. God, help us as we seek to understand these words, this epistle, so that we too will serve faithfully and walk in a way that pleases you. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.