Immanuel Sermon Audio
1 Thessalonians (52:66)
Take a Bible and I want you to find first Thessalonians. Kind of unfortunate that spring break is next week and we will have to wait to look at second Thessalonians until after spring break. Obviously the two go together, but we'll cover first Thessalonians tonight. It's not a long book. It's just about in my Bible, two and a half pages. It wouldn't take too long to read it. We're not going to do that tonight, but you can do that on your own. It wouldn't take you 15 minutes to sit down and read through this book out loud and to read it carefully. So it's a short book. It should have an outline. We're going to go through some of those things. I'll show you some pictures of the city here in just a minute. How many of you have ever gone, just raise a show of hands, how many of you have ever gone on a mission trip before? Short term, long term, anything like that. One of the things that happens, at least on every mission trip that I've ever gone on, it doesn't matter if that trip is an overseas trip or a local trip or whatever, is that you build very strong relationships with the people that you're working with. And that might be the people from your church who go with you on that trip. That might be the folks that you work with on the ground. And in particular, that's the kind of relationship I'm talking about is the one that you build, relationships you build with the people that you work with wherever you go. And you don't have to be there a very long time to feel very close to those people. And so just as one example, Brooke and I went a few years ago on a mission trip with our church in Oklahoma, we went to Ecuador. And we were there for about a week or so, and did lots of different things while we were there, ministry things. But one evening, we were getting ready for a big community get together, and the ladies in the church had ordered sacks and sacks and sacks of potatoes. And I don't mean like the sacks you pick up at Kroger, I'm talking like stare you in the eyeballs, sacks of potatoes. And they wanted to peel all those potatoes before we boiled them. And somehow Brooke and I got put on the potato peel and crew with some of the ladies there. And we speak about four words of Spanish, and they spoke about four words of English, but we spent about five hours in a little kitchen peeling potatoes together. And we both feel like we bonded with those people over potatoes. And I hope they would say the same thing, I think they would. When you work with people for the sake of the kingdom, there can be a million things that divide you. And you can spend a very short amount of time with folks, but when you work shoulder to shoulder with somebody side by side with somebody for the sake of the gospel, it binds you together in a really unique way. And that's important to understand, because when we talk about Paul's time in the city of Thessalonica, it wasn't very long. A few weeks, maybe a couple of months at the most. But he loved these people, we're going to see that he loved these people and how he prayed for these people. He cared for them. And when we read through that, I just want you to understand, yes he was there a short time, but he connected with these people on a deep level. And we've talked about that, I said, you know, in Corinth, he stayed 18 months in Ephesus, he stayed longer than that, and he really had this great connection. And that's true. But even in a short stop like Thessalonica, he cared for these people and he connected with them in a real way. So let me tell you a few things about the city of Thessalonica. If you Google it today and you look it up, it's not spelled like it is in most Bibles. It's Thessal and Naikai, and it has a K at the end, not a C, so just so you know. Here's a map that sort of shows you the ancient kingdom of Macedon, or sometimes called Macedonia. That was an ancient kingdom, and you can see that's Greece and Persian empire over on the other side. This is not a big empire, but any stretch of the imagination. And this city in particular started or founded by a guy named King Cassandra in 315 B.C. So about 300 years before Jesus was born, he founded this city, and he named it after his wife Thessal and Naikai. He ends like N.I.K.E. like the shoot, Thessal and Naikai, and he named this city after his wife in honor of her. Kingdom of Macedon fell in 168, and Thessal and Naikai became a free city in Rome. And so things sort of changed. This is different colors here, not for different kingdoms. All of this is Rome, but those are different provinces. And you can see Thessal and Naikai up there in the red. A free city basically means the Romans let them run things themselves. They didn't have quite as much of a heavy hand over the day-to-day affairs. They let them sort of do things their own way. So it was a self-governing city. Thessal and Naikai was the capital of this province. It was a very, very large city by ancient standards. We're talking well over a hundred thousand people would have lived in this city. And it was located right on a major trade highway. One thing that's kind of cool about the city, compared to some of the previous ones we've studied the last couple of weeks, is that it's still a city. Like I showed you pictures of Ephesus, and it's just ruins. There's nothing left, and it would be neat to go see the ruins, but there's nothing there. You go to Thessal and Naikai or Thessal and Naikai today. That's just a small glimpse of the city. This bay right here is sort of the hub in the middle, and it wraps around the other side of that mountain and spreads out in both directions. Well, over a million people live in the city in the metropolitan area. You can see the coast there, picture of the street downtown. Next picture is of a church, and there's a ton of people that live there. It is an important city in Greece. It's a major, this one city is a major, major part of the Greek economy today. And you say, well, that doesn't take much because the Greek economy is pretty pathetic. It is true, but it's about this one city accounts for about 10% of the whole economy as a nation. It's just a very, very important city. It was in the ancient world. It's nickname today. The nickname of Thessal and Naikai is co-capital. And they don't call it co-capital. They have a Greek word for that. It sounds better than co-capital, but that's the nickname of the city, and so it's an important place today. In Paul's day, it was an important city, and it was his first stop after he went to Philippi. And so I just want you to get the picture of this in your mind of how all of this played out, okay? You can go back and you can read in Acts 16. Paul is in this area called Asia. We call that Turkey, or Asia Minor, but in Paul's day in the Roman world, that was the province of Asia. He's in the province of Asia, and his desire is to basically take a right and go back up to the northeast. But instead, he crosses over the sea here, and he goes to a city known as Philippi. We've talked about the book of Philippians, and his next stop after Philippi is Thessal and Naikai. Here's why that's a big deal, okay? Paul's desire was to go northeast, put this next slide up, and God basically led him northwest. So you see the star down there is Jerusalem. Paul's on a mission trip up here in the province of Asia. He wants to go towards the eastern part of what we call Turkey, out towards the Stan countries as we know him today in the direction of Russia and China. And instead, God leads him west, and for the first time when he goes to Philippi and Thessal and Naikai, the gospel goes to Europe. That's pretty significant historically. When you look at how the church spread and the church grew and how the church ended up here today, it can all be traced back to Acts 16. When Paul wanted to go this way, and the Holy Spirit said, "Nope, God's plan is for you to go that way." And he goes to Philippi first, and Thessal and Naikai second. If you read about that in Acts 16, here's just a little side note. Those were the first two stops when God redirected him to go back to the west. They were rough stops. In Paul's mind, I got to think that Paul was scratching his head thinking, "Man, did I make a mistake. Did I miss understand God?" We wanted to go this way, and we thought God was leading us this way. They go to Philippi, they get thrown in jail, beaten. They go down the road to Thessal and Naikai, they get run out of town after just a few weeks. His next stop, put this next slide up, was Berea. Things went pretty good in Berea, but then he went to Athens and they laughed him out of town. And then he went to Corinth where he stayed a long time, but he had some opposition. And I just kind of think as Paul's on that journey, he's constantly sort of second-guessing thinking, "Man, it's been tough. Why did God lead me this way? Why would God lead me on a path that is so hard and so difficult?" We wanted to go this way, God led us this way, and it just wasn't easy. And I don't have an exact answer for that other than to say God had a plan in it and know it wasn't always easy for Paul. God has a plan for your life. He will lead you. And know it's not always going to be easy. And just because your life isn't easy and you're meeting resistance doesn't mean you're not walking in God's will. That's what a lot of Christians think. They say, "Oh, God's just throwing up these barriers and these difficulties and blah, blah. Maybe he wants me to redirect." Well, Paul had barriers and difficulties and hardships, and he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do. And so these are the stops that he makes here. He goes to Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth. When he gets down to Corinth, and you can see that on the map here, he starts to wonder about the church in Thessalonica. He only got to stay there a few weeks. And so when he gets down to Corinth, he takes his buddy Timothy, and he says, "Timothy, I want you to go back up and check on those guys. I want you to make sure everything's going good." And he sends a letter with Timothy, and then Timothy comes back and reports that everything's going well, and Paul's relieved over that. So we're going to look at 1 Thessalonians this week, 2 Thessalonians this week, but that's some of the background to the story. Here's a couple of problems that were being dealt with at the church in Thessalonica. Some people said Paul was a money grubbing mooch who left town as soon as things got tough. And you can understand why they would think that, right? I mean, think about his pattern here. He goes to Philippi. He meets a lady named Lydia. She's rich. He avails himself of her hospitality that she willingly gives, but then he gets arrested, thrown into prison, and he takes off. He leaves. He goes to Thessalonica. People believe. He's gathering them into a church. Opposition arises. They run Paul out of town, and he takes off. And when Paul is down all the way down that picture of Greece down in Corinth, people come in behind him, and they're basically saying things like this. I got Paul's a scam artist. He doesn't care about you. He was here for what was it? A couple of weeks, a couple of months. He ate in your home. He took advantage of you. He did this. And then he just left. And so that was sort of the word on the street about Paul. And that's one of the things he addresses in this letter. Another problem, this is the other big problem, is that some people were teaching if you died before Jesus returned, you would be lost for all eternity. Basically, you have to be alive when Jesus comes back if you want to go to heaven. And if you die before he comes back, sorry, you missed out. Now, you hear that and you say, "Who would believe that? Who would fall for that?" Well, a group of Christians who came to faith in Jesus Christ were gathered into a church, and then their leader, Paul, was run out of town. He didn't have time to disciple these people and to teach these people and to go into depth with all these people. He was just sort of getting things off the ground, and he gets run out of town. And so this is a big issue in Thessalonians. We're going to see it in first Thessalonians, and then in two weeks when we read second Thessalonians, that's the major emphasis of the book. Paul is setting the record straight about what's going to happen when Jesus comes back. He touches on it in first Thessalonians, and then he really hammers it in second Thessalonians. Here's the outline of the book. This is on your notes, and it's a pretty simple book. He gives thanks for growth, and by growth we're talking about spiritual growth, thanking God for the spiritual growth of the church there. He responds in chapters two and three. Now think about this. It's only five chapters. Two of the five chapters he's responding to criticism. To the people who said, "This guy Paul's a scam artist. He doesn't care about you. He's just here. He gets what he can. He milks you, and then he goes to the next town." So he's responding to that criticism. He's encouraging Christ's likeness in the people. He corrects bad eschatology. Eschatology is the doctrine of the last things, and so he sort of set in the record straight on things pertaining to the end. And then he addresses a few small problems in the church, things that he probably heard about from Timothy. So that's the outline of the book. One of the things I want you to see is how Paul prays for this church, and I think it's a great pattern for prayer in our lives. And so here's how he prays. Two simple ways. He prayed to give thanks, and he's specifically giving thanks for the things that God is doing in this church. He's not saying, "Thank you for my big fancy house. Thank you for all my money. Thank you for all my stuff. Thank you for things." But he's thanking God for things that he's doing in the lives of these believers. And then secondly, he prays about the future, and we'll see how he does that. So let's just look at these verses quickly. 1 Thessalonians 1, starting in verse 2. He says, "We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning 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's chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in Word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. You know what kind of men we prove 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 Ikea. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Ikea, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 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 for the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Paul says it very eloquently in just common land and language, what he's saying is, we are thankful that God loved you long before you ever loved him. We're thankful that you received the word of God when we preached it. We're thankful that your faith is not just self contained within the walls of your church, but it's spreading out to the whole area of Macedonia. Everybody alone, you're sending out missionaries, you're sending out teams, you're sending out people and everyone knows about what God's doing in your church. We are thankful that you are continuing to wait patiently for Jesus who's going to return and he's going to deliver us from the wrath to come. So he's thankful for all these things that God has done in their church. Look at chapter 2, verse 13. He says, we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but as what it really is the word of God, which is at work and you believers. So he's giving thanks. Chapter 3, verse 9, he's still giving thanks. What thanksgiving can we return to God for you for all the joy that we feel inside for your sake before God. He's thankful for these people, in particular for what God's done in their life. Then he prays about the future. Look at chapter 3, verse 10. He says, we pray earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. That's one of his prayers. I want to come back to you. I want to see you face to face. Don't believe these people who are telling you, I'm just this con artist here today, gone tomorrow. We're working. We want to get back to you someday in the future, and we want to supply what's lacking in your faith today. Look at chapter 5, verse 23. May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's a future event. He who calls you as faithful, he will surely do it. So he's praying about future things. He wants to see them. He wants them to endure in the faith. And when you see Paul pray for churches like this, okay, you read it in all the letters he writes to churches for Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, the Thessalonians, the Corinthians. When he prays these prayers, those are things that you ought to grab hold of and say, when I pray for other people, this is the way I ought to pray. I ought to do it like Paul did it. I ought to pray for the things he prayed about. Because I don't know about you, but left to myself, I don't naturally pray for these sorts of things. I pray for lots of other things, but many of those things are man-centered, they're selfish-centered, they're temporal in nature, not eternal in nature, and you have a great pattern for prayer here that Paul lays out for you. Let's talk about chapter two and three, where he defends his ministry. And here's what I want you to see in these two chapters. As Paul defends his ministry and describes the way he served among these people, he's giving you a pattern for what true Christian ministry ought to look like. And when you read these two chapters, you're saying, this is how Paul did it, you can also step back and take these principles and say, this is how we ought to do it. And you can almost use these two chapters as sort of a measuring stick for your own church to say, Paul said, this was the way it ought to be done, is that the way we're doing it? When I look at a manual Baptist church and the way we do, quote unquote, ministry, are these things true of us or are there things we need to work on? Are there things we need to improve on? So we're going to go through this list and read a few verses, okay? Number one, true genuine ministry is marked by sacrifice, people who are willing to make sacrifices. Look at chapter two, verse one and two. He says, you yourselves know, brothers, that are coming to you was not in vain, but though he had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. When you think about what Paul just went through in Philippi, it is a pretty remarkable thing that he marched to the very next town and did the exact same thing. In Philippi, for only the fact that he cast a demon out of a slave girl and set her free from bondage, he was arrested, stripped naked, beaten and thrown into the inner part of the prison. All of those things unlawful for the authorities in Philippi to do to a Roman citizen, but they did all of them to Paul. He knew very freshly in his mind that was the consequence for preaching about Jesus and showing people the power of Jesus. And what does he do? He walks right down the road to the very next town and he does the exact same thing. And he's saying to them, it might happen again here. Thessalonica might just be exactly like Philippi, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice to share the good news about Jesus with you. Look at the very next chapter 2, verse 3. Our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, just as we've been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. Whenever came to you with words of flattery, as you know, nor the pretext for greed, God is witness, nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you. So we're saying, look, when we came to town, it was not to earn a great reputation, it was not to make you think how great we were. We were concerned really with what you thought as much as we were concerned with what God thought. We were willing to sacrifice our reputation to preach the gospel of Jesus, so he's willing to make sacrifice, true ministry in the church context requires sacrifice. Secondly, it requires motherly love, and it's kind of strange for Paul as tough of a guy as he was to describe himself in motherly terms, but that's what he does. Chapter 2, verse 7, we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us. What he's saying is true ministry involves people who truly love other people, just like a mother loves her children. That ought to be true of the ministry in your church. If that's not a mark of the things that take place, the programs you have, the leaders you have in place, then you're off track. And then he balances that idea of motherly love with fatherly integrity, true ministry requires fatherly integrity. Chapter 2, verse 10. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father, and if you like to make notes in your Bible, you just circle the word father in 11, verse 11, and you draw a line back up to verse 7 where he talks about motherly, and you connect father and mother. That's the two things he's balancing here. Motherly love, fatherly integrity. You know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. You've got to see that there's two things right there when he describes himself in this motherly way and in this fatherly way. Most churches lean or tilt one way or the other. Some churches tilt toward the motherly side and they say, "Well, we just want to love everybody. We don't want to be mean. We don't want to be judgmental. We don't want to criticize. We just want to love and accept." And isn't that what it's all about? Love. Jesus told us to love. We just want to love. And then you have other churches who say, "Look, we don't have time to mess around. We're just going to call it like it is and we're going to tell you you're an idiot and tell you need to repent and you need to line up and you need to -- and they're the father. They're the drill sergeant, right, coming in. This is how it is. You better line up, toe the line, get serious, knock it off." And Paul's saying, "You've got to have both of those. You've got to have both. If you find yourself in a place where it's just lovey-dovey-dovey-dovey all the time, get out of there. And if you find a place where it's just a mean, commanding drill sergeant all the time, get out of there. You've got to have both of those things. So fatherly, integrity, and motherly love. He also talks about fellowship. How do you evaluate the ministry of your church, genuine ministry? It involves fellowship. Look at chapter 2, verse 17. He says, "We were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time in person, not in heart. We endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you." Paul, I Paul, again and again, but Satan hindered us. "I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be with you." That's a mark of true Christian ministry. Do you want to be with the people you go to church with? Do you have a desire to be around them? He says the same thing in chapter 3, verse 6. He says, "Timothy has come to us from you, and he has brought us the good news of your faith, and love, and reported that you always remember us kindly, and you long to see us as we long to see you." Circumstances prevented them from being together, but there was this desire for fellowship. There was this desire to be together. Cory and I were talking the other day about a person that we had both visited with, and in the course of conversation this person had, it was clear, that they wanted us to know how much they loved Jesus, but they were not the least bit concerned about being part of a church family in a regular, consistent way. I'm all about Jesus, but I'm just busy. I don't have time to be there. We've got other things going on. Okay. You can tell me till you're blue in the face how much you love Jesus, but the biblical teaching in 1 Thessalonians, in 1 John, throughout the New Testament is, if you're genuinely walking with Jesus Christ, you will want to be with your church family. All the time? No. Some of the time? Yes. Paul says, "We want to be with you, and you want to be with us." That's a Mark of True Ministry. Next, this is a big one. Joy. That should be a mark of true ministry in a church. Joy. Chapter 2 verse 19. What is our hope and our joy and our crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus Christ? It's you. You are our glory and you are our joy. And then jump down to chapter 3 verse 7. He says, "For this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction, we've been comforted about you through your faith. For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord, what thanksgiving can we return to God for you for all the joy that we feel for your sake before God. When you're doing church right, it will be a joyful thing. Does that mean it will always be a fun, laugh, light, silly thing? No, but it will be a joyful thing. It won't be a miserable thing. Next mark of true ministry is prayer. We're not going to really talk about that because we read the prayers that Paul prayed for these people, but that's a mark of true ministry is prayer. And then the last mark is this is hope. Hope. When you're doing ministry right in a church context, there should be some expectation that good things not only are happening now, but they're going to continue to happen. We're moving in some direction. And so look what he says in 1 Thessalonians 3, 13. This is a prayer. Backing up to verse 11, "May our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Had this hope, this expectation that they would continue to grow and continue to mature." So there's a few marks of genuine Christian ministry, okay? That's looking at church as a corporate group, right? Signs of ministry corporately that say you're moving in the right direction you're doing it the right way. Now let's narrow it down not to looking at the church, but to looking at you, the individual Christian. And I'm going to give you a few signs of a true Christian, okay? Understand when I give you these signs, none of you, including your pastor, do these things perfectly. And there's a danger when I give you signs of a true Christian. The danger is some of you who are more tender-hearted and your conscious is soft will read this list and you'll say, "Oh, I don't measure up. I must not be a true Christian. I need to get saved. I need to invite Jesus into my heart again. I need to whatever." The other danger is that there's some of you who have a hard heart and you've deceived yourself and you're convinced that you are saved because of some prayer you prayed or a decision you made way back when. And your life doesn't line up with any of these things, but I share them with you and you say, "Well, it doesn't matter. I prayed a prayer." Does it give me this list for? I don't need a list. I prayed a prayer. Well, Paul gives us a list of things. If you're a true Christian, these things ought to be true of you. Not perfectly true, not all the time true, but increasingly true and consistently true. So, let's just go through the list. Signs that you're a true believer. Number one, you live to please God. Paul talked about that in chapter one. He said, "We don't care about what people think. We care about what God thinks." He says something similar in chapter four. Verse one, he says, "Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus as you receive from us how you ought to walk and please God just as you are doing that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. We want you to live," says it right there in verse one, "to please God." That's the way your life ought to be lived if you're a true believer. Number two, you live a pure life. Pure life in Paul's specific point here in 1 Thessalonians is in regards to sexual purity. It could be applied in many different ways, but what he's specifically talking about is sexual purity. Chapter four, verse three, "This is the will of God, your sanctification." What does that look like? Well, it means that you abstain from sexual immorality. That's the broadest term in the New Testament for sexual sin. Lots of different words used for adultery and prostitution and homosexuality. This is just like the umbrella term, sexual immorality, sexual sin. Each of you know how to control your body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgresses and wrong is brother in this matter because the Lord is avenger in these things. We told you beforehand and we solemnly warned you. God has not called us for impurity, and in particular he's talking about sexual impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God who gives the Holy Spirit to you. So you live to please God, you're living a pure life. Number three, you live a loving life. And here he's talking about brotherly love towards your fellow church members. Chapter four, verse nine, "Concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge your brothers to do this more and more. Love the brothers, you're doing it. Keep doing it, do it more. Grow in this, don't be satisfied with where you're at, but continue to live a loving life. Number four, you live a respectable life, a respectable life. That may not sound really super spiritual, but that's what he talks about here in chapter four, verse 11, "Aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." I hope you understand in that verse, verse 11, where the Apostle Paul says, "It's a mark of a true believer. One of the things you're called to do is to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands." A lot of people think, "Well, you know, the Sunday school class I teach, that's my service to God." Or, "When I go on a mission trip, that's my service to God." Or, "When I come to church in this building, that's my service to God." But what Paul is saying right here is, "You're nine to five. Your work, the things you do with your time, that is part of your service to God." Whether you're getting paid for it, whether you're working as a volunteer or whatever, your labor, your work is part of your relationship with God. So live a respectable life, he says. Number one, two, three, four, five. You live in fellowship with God. It means you have a close relationship with Him. Chapter five verse ten talks about Jesus who died for us so that whether we're awake or asleep, we might live with Him. When you die, you're going to live with Jesus. When you're alive, awake, you need to be living with Jesus. Every day in a close relationship. It is not, "I'm going to go through my week Monday to Saturday, then I'm going to go do my relationship with God on Sunday, then as soon as church is over and we go back to lunch, it's back to regular life." That ought to be part of your life every day, every moment that you have fellowship in a relationship with God. One, two, three, four, five, six, you live an encouraging life. Encouraging others. I think that this is something that challenges me and not to pick on anyone in particular. I'll just say I think it ought to challenge most of us. I can think of a few people in my life that I think they were really good at encouraging other people. I can think of a lot of people who aren't good at it. And a lot of people who are good at kissing up, buttering up, flattery. But Paul says part of being a believer is that you are encouraging other people. Chapter five, verse 11. Encourage one another and build one another up just as you're doing. Encourage each other. I've lost count. Next one. Live a God-centered life. God is the center. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16. These verses may sound familiar. Ron preached on these verses a few weeks ago. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. God-centered life. Lastly, live a discerning life. A discerning life. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19. He says do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophecies, but, but, but, but test everything. Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Look at verse 21 where he says test everything. Can I put that into modern English in the United States of America for you? Just because they sell it at the Christian bookstore doesn't mean you need to read it. Just because a preacher on the radio said it doesn't mean you need to believe it. Just because you watched a DVD at a manual Baptist church doesn't mean you ought to swallow it. Just because your preacher stands up on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning and says something to you doesn't mean he's right. Test it. Think about it. Use your brain. Don't fall into this shallow trap of American Christianity. We're saying well he's a Christian guy or that. We went to something that recently as a family and supposed to be a Christian speaker. There was nothing Christian about it. And a lot of folks left and said well it was motivational and it was uplifting and it was inspiring. Great. Call it all those things. It wasn't Christian. It wasn't anything Christian about it. And that's what Paul's talking about. Test everything. Hold fast to what is good. And by implication, he spells it out in the very next verse, abstain from every form of evil. So there's a few marks of the true Christian. Last thing is not on your outline. I don't think. Maybe it is. Let me see. Is that it? Okay, that's it. I want you to go back. We've read most of First Thessalonians tonight as we went through. Here's a part that we didn't read. Look at First Thessalonians 4. We just skipped over verse 13 to 18. We're going to come back to this in two weeks, okay? When we get to Second Thessalonians, the major emphasis is going to be on correcting bad eschatology. Reading out, this is what's going to happen when Jesus returns. This is what you need to know. There's this one paragraph in First Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 13 to 18 where Paul talks about eschatology, and then he's going to spell it out more in the second letter. But look at this, and I'll put a few things on the screen just to break this down. And like I said, we're going to come back to this, so don't feel like you need to get all this tonight. First Thessalonians 4.13, we don't want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep. When he says, "A sleep," he's talking about people who are dead, okay? Those who have died. We don't want you to grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord. We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep, those who have died. The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord, therefore encourage one another with these words. Let me say two quick things about those verses. There's some very simple ideas in there, okay? There's also a lot of individual ideas that preachers like to pluck out as sort of like a proof verse for their specific timeline of the end. And I'm just telling you, if you will look at that paragraph and read it for what it says, and then you'll add it to what you see in 2 Thessalonians, you're going to take a lot of these end-time charts and say, I don't know where you're coming up with that. I don't know how you're getting this chronology of events, because I don't see it in 1 Thessalonians or 2 Thessalonians. So we're going to talk more about that in a couple of weeks. Here's some very simple ideas from those verses, okay? Those who die are not lost forever. You remember, they thought that, they had people saying, if you're not alive when Jesus comes back, you missed out, and Paul's saying, that's crazy talk. Those who are asleep, those who have died are going to be raised. They're going to be part of salvation for all eternity. He says, eschatology changes grief. The things you believe about the end change the way you grieve today, at least they should if you're connecting all the dots. He says, the death and the resurrection of Jesus is our foundation of our faith, of what we believe about the end of all of it. This fourth one, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, Jesus will descend. I'm putting this kind of crudely with music. I've been thinking about this all week. This is the coolest part of 1 Thessalonians to me. You ever watched a movie, right? You've watched a movie. You're watching a movie, and it's this dramatic scene, and the composer who did the music for the movie just did a great job, and between the action and the scene, or the drama and the scene, and the music, it just sort of moves you, and then you sort of step back into real life, and you say, man, wouldn't it be cool if there was music throughout my life? Like when I did something great, music just queued up and came in, or I did something courageous, and the big drums were bong, music coming in, man, it'd be great if I had a soundtrack to my life. And Paul's saying, when Jesus comes back, there's going to be music. The ark angel is going to be screaming, and yelling, and singing, and it's going to be really loud, and God is going to be playing the trumpet. The soundtrack is going to cue, and here comes Jesus for everybody to see, so it's going to be a dramatic thing, it's going to be a moving thing, and he's going to come back with music. The dead in Christ will rise first, again, we're going to talk more about that next week. Those alive, put this in quotes, will be caught up. We're going to talk about that more next week, and what does that mean, and what can that not mean if you just take first and second Thessalonians at face value? And then the big kicker is that we will be with Jesus forever. So a few short thoughts about eschatology, and we're going to really hammer that in a couple of weeks in second Thessalonians and talk about what Paul has to say about the end times. So for tonight, we'll just do this. We're going to end with prayer, and in particular, as we've wrapped this up, we'll just think about this idea that eschatology changes the way that we grieve, because that's a reality for our community right now. So let's pray, and we'll wrap up first Thessalonians. Father, we're grateful for your word, and we're grateful for the way that you use Paul. We're grateful for the opportunity we have to read these letters. We believe that they came from Paul's heart. We also believe that they were inspired by your spirit, and that they are true, and that they have application to our lives today. Help us to evaluate the ministry in our own church, and to be honest, to look at these marks of genuine Christian ministry, and to see if they're true of us at a manual. And where they are, as Paul prayed for this church, we pray that we would continue to do these things more and more, and where they're not true, we pray that you would convict us and help us to change as a church family. Help us to do better. Father, we thank you for these signs of what a true Christian looks like, and I just pray that you would help us to be honest in evaluating ourselves. Not that we would be fretful and worried and spend too much time focused on us rather than you, but that we would be honest and we would look at our lives and to see do we match up with what Paul is describing as a true follower of Jesus Christ. And ultimately, we find great hope that Jesus is coming back, that he's going to come back in victory, in glory, that he's going to come back in power, he's going to come back to rule and to restore and to set things right, to wipe away tears. Father, we are grateful for the hope of eternity. And in particular, the hope that we will be with Jesus forever. And Father, that changes the way we think about life today and it changes the way that we think about our suffering. It changes the way that we think about our good days as well and our victories. Help us not to place our hope in this life and in this world, but help us to place it squarely in Jesus Christ and the eternity that we will spend with him. We're grateful for your word and we pray all of these things in Jesus' name, amen.