I must confess that I'm looking forward with
great anticipation to this coming week.
It will be my first experience here with
you during missionary week, missionary conference time.
I'm looking forward to the week for more
reasons than one, but the main, of course,
is that one should have one's ears attuned
to hear what the Lord is to say
to us concerning the outspreading of his gospel
in this fast-closing age and in these
cataclysmic times.
We know that it is our duty to
be involved in the spreading of the glad
tidings, and every Christian man and woman will
surely have a sense of duty in the
heart.
But we sometimes need to reconsider our strategy,
and we need to hear how things fare
in this sector of the world and in
that.
And it is in this spirit that we
trust there will be a very goodly gathering
at every meeting during this coming week.
Gathering not simply to hear what the messengers
may say, we shall do that, but having
heard to meditate and see what has God
to say to us.
What will he have us do as individuals
and as a people to become quite certain
of this, that we are in his will,
we are fulfilling his purpose, concerning our duty
to the uttermost parts of the world in
this matter of presenting the gospel to many
who as yet have never, never heard the
name of Jesus.
I trust, then, that this coming week we
shall come together gladly and prayerfully.
I gather that there are quite a number
of conferences held in various parts of the
city and beyond its environs.
Well, I, the more earnestly, plead with the
people and friends of Knox to make a
very special effort to be present.
God wants us to hear his voice and
to know his will anew, not for yesterday,
but for today, and tomorrow, if there should
be a tomorrow.
Well, now, I indicated this morning that I
wanted to stay within the confines of one
chapter today.
This morning we were thinking particularly of this
being an anniversary occasion, and we addressed ourselves
to the first passage in the first chapter
of Paul's first epistle to the Thessalonians.
Now, tonight I want to read a passage
that begins with verse six.
It's really the second half of that chapter.
And this, perhaps, will bring out, as possibly
no other chapter does, the responsibility of the
Church of Jesus Christ to bear the tidings
of salvation out into the world and to
the distant places.
Now, having spoken in verse five of the
way in which the gospel came to the
Thessalonians, and of some of the things that
happened to them, Paul goes on, and he
became followers of us and of the Lord,
having received the word in much affliction with
joy in the Holy Ghost.
You notice that contrast there.
Having received the word in much affliction, it
wasn't easy to believe the word of the
gospel in pagan Thessalonica, but receiving the word
there was joy in the Holy Ghost.
Now, this is a paradox.
And there are people who are in our
service tonight who know exactly what that means.
When we are presented with a message of
the gospel, we know that it's going to
be a very difficult thing to take our
stand as Christians.
And yet in so doing, in the midst
of a furnace of affliction, there is a
joy in the Holy Ghost.
Affliction, and yet an undercurrent of joy.
So that, the apostle proceeds, he were ensembles
to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.
For from you sounded out the word of
the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia,
but also in every place.
Your faith to God's word is spread abroad,
so that we need not speak anything.
For they themselves show of us what manner
of entering in we had unto you, and
how ye 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, even Jesus, which delivered
us from the wrath which is to come.
An apostolic commendation of a church's mission.
This particular letter of Paul's dates back to
probably the year 50 of our era, 50
AD.
And is in all probability the very first
letter he ever wrote.
It is therefore important on that account, there
are some who believe that the letter to
the Galatians was written before this.
Well, now, we can't dogmatize, but it was
certainly the second, if it was not the
first.
This morning in our reading, our scripture reading,
Mr. Lowe read to us from Acts chapter
17, which provides the background to everything that
happened, or at least everything that is recorded
as having happened, in Paul's mission to Thessalonica.
The only thing I need to say at
this stage tonight is this.
Paul didn't receive a very warm reception there,
either in the synagogue of the Jews or
outside.
And as the apostle proceeded to preach Christ
and him crucified and risen, the Savior from
the wrath which is to come, he was
given not only the cold shoulder, but the
bitter look by quite a number of people.
But there were those who believed.
There were those upon whose minds and hearts
and consciences and wills the Spirit of God
came in power, and there were those who
received the word, it cost them, but they
received the word and with it the joy
of the Holy Spirit, and the joy of
salvation.
The Thessalonian church then proved itself to be
a genuine community of God's people.
And here, toward the second half of the
chapter, the apostle Paul proceeds to commend them.
He not only speaks highly of them, he
speaks warmly of them.
Now, you may say that there's nothing very
exciting about, nothing very exciting in this, but
when you realize that Paul is writing within
not many months after the founding of this
church, what we read about in this epistle
is nothing short of a divine miracle.
This church has not only come into existence,
it has gained the vision of evangelism and
of mission, it has set about its divinely
given business of spreading abroad the glad tidings,
it has grown in grace, it has caught
the vision and sensed the compassion of the
Saviour, and it has performed such an amazing
work, all in the very brief space of
scarcely twelve months.
Possibly thirteen, I don't want to argue with
anyone, but somewhere around there.
Now, the question to which I want to
address myself tonight, this is an anniversary day,
but it is also the beginning of our
missionary conference week, the question to which I
want to address myself is this.
Why commend this church?
Why commend it?
What is there to praise this community about?
And I want to reason it out with
you as briefly as possible from this very
exceedingly precious passage.
We shall note two intimately related causes for
the commendation elicited in the passage.
First of all, the Thessalonian Church was commended
by the Apostle because it so evidently demonstrated
the nature of the Christian life.
Now let's get this again in its setting.
They've not been converted very long.
They've not had, they've not had a succession
of Christian ministers and teachers of the Word,
as you've had here in Knox.
They've not had a background of 150 years
behind them, not even 150 months.
But the Apostle writes to them and he
says, look, you have become, by the grace
of God, exhibits of what the Christian life
is really about.
And I cannot other than commend you.
I cannot other than praise God on your
behalf.
In the first part, he's praising God.
Now in the second part, he's praising the
people.
He says, this is all so very wonderful.
In the space of a brief number of
months, you have become sheer exhibits of what
the Christian life is all about.
Now, please follow the reasoning with me.
We shall refer to the two-fold way
in which they did this.
One, the Thessalonian Church demonstrated the nature of
the Christian life by following the pattern divinely
prescribed for it.
The Christian life is a special life.
It's a different life.
It's a divine life, implanted in the soul
of man.
The Christian life is not, is not ordinary
human life, titivated and made a little better.
The Christian life is, is the life of
God, mediated through Christ, coming to us by
the Holy Spirit of the Word, and implanted
in our souls, so that God, by the
Spirit, comes to dwell in us, and we
have the life of God in our own
hearts.
Now that's what the Christian life is.
It's a new life.
It's life of a new dimension, life of
an entirely different quality from the ordinary.
To become a Christian, a man is born
a second time.
He's born anew.
Now, this new life, if it is to
come to its own, if it is to
flourish and to blossom to maturity, it has
to be lived according to a prescribed pattern.
There are rules and regulations for physical health.
Now we all know something about those.
If you get wet, your clothes get wet,
and you live for a week or so
in wet clothes, well, you know what to
expect, don't you?
There are rules and regulations concerning the physical
part of our being.
So are there rules concerning the intellectual, and
the mental, and the emotional.
When we receive this life of God into
our hearts, the new life, eternal life, this
life has to be lived according to a
specified pattern.
Now the Thessalonians, having received the life, set
about seriously to live it, and to live
it according to the prescribed pattern.
Paul puts it like this, and he, he
says, became followers of us and of the
Lord.
Now, let's analyze that a little.
The first thing I want you to notice
is that that divinely prescribed pattern was ideally
and perfectly personified in one, our Lord Jesus
Christ.
What is the Christian life like?
Well, ultimately, we can only point to one.
He not only provided it for us by
his death upon the cross, but he lived
it out in his life and in his
death.
He exhibited all the facets of it in
all their manifold glory, in temptation and in
joy.
In sorrow, as in joy.
In loneliness, as in the crowd.
In his own home, where he was misunderstood
with his disciples, where he was partly understood,
and with men that crucified him.
In all kinds of circumstances, this life divine
was lived out in all its perfection in
him.
All its graces, all its beauties, all its
vast potentialities came to, came to perfect fruition
in one and in one only, and that
is our Lord Jesus Christ.
The next thing is this.
That same pattern was, however, clearly and unmistakably
reproduced in his apostles.
He became followers of us, aha, of us
and of the Lord.
Now, isn't that wonderful?
Can you link yourself, Christian, can you link
yourself like that with your Lord?
So that if you were talking to me
or talking to somebody else, could you say
like this, you became followers of me?
And do you thereby become a follower of
the Lord?
But you see, these men, these men, though
they were not perfect, now let's make that
clear, they were all faulty in some sense.
They were not impeccable, sinless like their Lord.
They were made of the common, frail stuff
that you and I are made of, but
the grace of God so triumphed in them
that despite all their frailties and faults, the
likeness of Christ was represented in them, so
much so that in a pagan city they
became called Christ's Ones.
I think that's wonderful.
On a previous occasion, people spoke of them
that they'd been with Jesus.
Why been with him?
Because they bore a resemblance to him, of
course.
They saw him in them, and yet in
the other city to which I referred, they
were called Christians, Christ's Ones.
Why?
Well, because they were so much like him.
He lived on in them.
They were not blameless, but they nevertheless bore
an obvious resemblance to him.
I like to think of it, this may
not be good theologically, but I like to
think of it in terms of the original,
typed by the typist.
And then there is a first copy.
Now, there may be a snudge or two
on the first copy, but it's the first
copy.
And the apostles were the first copy.
He was the original, impeccable, faultless, without a
snudge, without a sneer, without a thumb mark
to spoil the page.
And they were the first copy.
So then, two things.
The divinely prescribed pattern was ideally and perfectly
personified in the Lord.
That same pattern was clearly and unmistakably reproduced
in the apostles.
Now, the third is this.
The pattern ideally personified in Christ, substantially reproduced
in the apostles, was evidently imitated by the
Thessalonians.
And you, says Paul, became followers of thus
and of the Lord.
Now, you may say, what is there to
get excited about in that?
Well, it's the word that Paul uses.
He uses here, in fact, I shall have
to say this at least three times tonight,
this passage is a passage that is built
around key words, three at least key words,
key expressions.
And this is one of them.
You, says Paul, became followers of me, of
us and of the Lord.
The RSV puts it, I think, you became
imitators of us and of the Lord.
Now, the Greek word, I don't like to
parade my little bit of Greek like this,
but permit me to say it, because the
very sounding of it is significant.
It's the word mimeti, from which we have
our English mimic.
Mimic.
And that's exactly what it means.
What is a mimic?
A mimic looks at someone and then does
exactly the same as he does, or listens
to someone and reproduces that exactly, as exactly
as possible.
And believe it or not, the inspired apostle
says this of the Thessalonians, you took a
good long look at the Lord and you
took a good long look at us and
you got your eyes still focused on us
and you're doing exactly as we did, as
the Lord did and as we did.
In other words, you are living the life
according to the only patterns given you by
God, the Lord, the original, and the apostles,
the first copies.
So that, you see, there was no error
here.
They were living the life in the right
way.
Let me put it to you like this.
If you try and copy any other man
or any other woman in living the Christian
life, you'll make blunders.
You good people have called me to be
your minister here.
I wouldn't like you to copy me in
everything, and I don't know that I'd like
to copy you in everything.
Now don't be cross with me for saying
that.
But you see, it's true of everybody.
You have flaws, I have flaws.
All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God, and we sin.
And if any man say, I have no
sin, well he deceives himself, and the truth
is not in him, but in our Lord,
the original.
There is no sin, and in the apostles,
the first copy, they're sufficiently near to the
original never to lead us astray.
To lead us astray.
Now, these people exemplified the Christian life because
they lived it according to the pattern God
had given.
Are you doing that?
Am I?
Would we be commended on the same score
as individuals and of the church?
Over and over again I find people saying,
ah, then so-and-so did such-and
-such a thing, it upset me so much.
Why should it?
Our pattern is the man Christ Jesus lived
and died, the pattern for men, as well
as the Savior for the Lord.
He is the one and only embodiment, though
he finds himself followed and represented without any
grave error in his apostles.
Secondly, the Thessalonians having first become imitators of
the divinely set standard, thereby became the embodiment
and exhibits now of that same pattern to
others.
Don't miss the picture.
Ye, says Paul in verse 8, were enshamples
to all that believe in Macedonia.
Have you got the picture?
First of all, they look to the one
and only pattern, the ultimate, in Jesus Christ,
represented also in his apostles.
But one pattern, seen in its perfection in
him, manifested then in them.
Having thus set themselves to pattern their lives
according to him, and as he is represented
by them, now in turn they become examples,
and this is the second key word.
True imitators of the authorized original become in
turn examples of the same authentic kind of
life, the Christian life and Christian living.
If men anywhere wanted to know what the
Christian life was like, and what real Christian
experience was like, well, they've only to look
to the Thessalonians, says Paul, and it was
their aunt who lived in the life of
this little church.
Now again, I say, we encounter here a
most graphic word.
It's that word translated in the enshamples, or
examples, and it certainly is a very remarkable
word.
It is sometimes transliterated into English, and used
as type.
It's the word type.
Again, forgive me for my, showing off my
little bit of Greek.
It's the Greek typos, and it's transliterated into
English as type.
That's not a translation, it's a transliteration.
Type.
Originally, the word meant the mark left by
a stroke or a blow.
If you, if a car bumps into a
wall, it leaves a mark.
The car that broke into our garden a
few weeks ago left some marks.
It left the traces of its tires behind
it.
Well, now we won't go into that story,
but that happens.
You leave a mark, you bump into something,
and that's what this word originally meant.
Whatever, whatever bumps, whatever collides with something else,
leaves a mark.
It's the mark left behind.
Then it came to stand for pattern, or
example.
But I suppose I can illustrate its New
Testament significance best by giving you one illustration
of it.
In Romans chapter 6, and in verse 17,
the Apostle Paul says this.
You have availed from the heart that form
of doctrine into which you were delivered.
Now, the AV says, which was delivered to
you, but really what Paul says, the form
of doctrine, and that's the word, translated form,
the form of doctrine into which you were
delivered.
Now, can you get the picture?
Paul says that the Christian doctrine, the Christian
teaching, is a kind of tupos, a kind
of mold, into which young babes in Christ
are delivered, so that they receive their character
from the mold.
Let me take you to a home.
Mummy's preparing some jelly, or blancmange, or something
for young Johnny on his birthday, and having
a little imagination, and knowing that Johnny likes
to see something exciting on the table, she
doesn't bring out jelly in its ordinary form,
but she gets a mold.
I hope you've got these things in Canada,
I'm sure you have, you're more imaginative than
the British anyway.
And, and so mummy goes to make the
jelly.
Now, how do you make the jelly?
Well, I think I know.
You pour the boiling water on the jelly
in the mold, do you not?
And you let it freeze, and it solidifies,
and sometimes it takes the form of, I've
seen this, of a bunny rabbit.
And then mother turns the jelly onto her
receptacle on the table, and there's a little
rabbit.
Well, why a rabbit?
It's just jelly, really.
Ah, yes, but it's been in the mold.
And the mold has made it look like
a rabbit?
Now, that's exactly the word we have here.
You became mold, with all the characteristics of
the apostles and of the Lord himself evident
in you, so that as you came into
touch with other people, you molded them.
They show in you all the characteristics.
You were mold, and men that came into
your fellowship felt that you were making them
also like the apostles and like the Lord.
The Thessalonians are praised, and well they might
be.
Would we be praised on this ground?
Do men who come near to us, do
men and women who come within the doors
of Knox, do they feel a sense of
divine fellowship here that begins to mold their
thinking and mold their living, that when they
go out they're not the same again?
Now, that's what we have here.
The Church is an exhibition of the Christian
life.
More than that, it has an active potency
within it that cultivates character and produces God
-like, apostolic-like men and women after the
image of the apostles.
Now, come with me to the second main
point here.
The second reason for their commendation was that
they disseminated the message of the Christian faith.
Now, I didn't realize until I was coming
to church tonight that I preached a sermon
here not very long ago, because I've not
been here very long, which virtually embodied these
same two points.
And I was almost apologetic, but you know
I can't be, because on second thoughts you
find these two points coming together in a
multitude of places in the New Testament.
In other words, preaching the word requires the
accompaniment of life, the exhibition of what it
means as well as the expression of what
it says.
The gospel over the lips and the gospel
in life.
The gospel expounded and the gospel exhibited.
Now we've come to this second point.
These Thessalonians were praised, my Paul, because they
disseminated the message.
They preached the gospel, they heralded the truth.
From you he has sounded out the word
of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, the two provinces of Greece, but also
in every place.
Your faith to God was spread abroad.
And I'd like to go on to the
other part.
I can't well on it tonight.
When we come there, he says, as preachers
and evangelists, we don't need to say anything.
They've heard about you, and what they've heard
about you is so expressive and so full
of significance, we don't need to preach what
we have to preach elsewhere.
Isn't that wonderful?
My good people, is the preaching of the
gospel made easier by your life than mine?
Is there an apologetic that is necessary because
our lives are not after this pattern?
Can it be, can it be, oh God
forbid, but can it be that there's something
in our lives which blunts the very edge
of the message?
The faithful imitators of the apostles and of
the Lord became examples to others.
The examples also were exponents of the gospel
whereby the Christian life can be received by
men and experienced by them in distant Macedonia
and Achaia and wherever the glad tidings come.
Now, I believe that the key to an
understanding of what is meant here depends again
upon the proper understanding of one word, this
time a verb.
I hope you'll forgive me for this.
It's Sunday evening, too, and people are a
bit tired, but I have to do it.
And once again I'm showing off a little
bit.
It's this Greek word for sounding out.
From you sounded out the word of the
Lord.
Now, commentators differ here.
They invariably do, of course, but here I
think they have a good old squabble.
Normally, from men such as Bishop, the Archbishop,
Chrysostom, right down to recent times, most of
them, I think, have agreed that what is
reflected here is the concept of a herald.
A herald making an announcement, clear as crystal,
trumpeting forth the gospel, trumpeting forth.
Others of them thought that Paul had in
mind the sound of thunder pealing.
From you peeled forth the gospel.
Now, both those suggestions, I'm sure, have a
place, but respectfully I want to suggest to
you that the proper understanding of the word
would take us elsewhere.
And it's more at hand.
It was nearer home to the Thessalonians and
to other Greeks at the time.
The Thessalonians are here compared, I believe, and
I quote, to a parabolic arch or a
sounding board.
And I quote again, a sounding board which
reinforces sounds and causes them to travel then
in various directions.
The arch, or the sounding board, does not
of itself create the sounds, it occupies a
middle position, receiving sounds, reinforcing them, and then
sending them on with its own complexion upon
them.
Now get the picture.
I have sometimes preached in England in churches
that have a sounding board right above the
pulpit.
I suppose that those edifices were acoustically rather
terrifying, and so they had a sounding board
erected.
I can think of two at the present
time.
And so when the preacher preaches, he's in
a kind of a canopy.
But now, you see, the idea is this.
He speaks, the words come from him, but
then the words impinge upon this canopy, this
sounding board above him or behind him.
And the sounding board, first of all, takes
the voice in and then throws it out.
And no two sounding boards are quite the
same.
Each one has its own distinctive characteristics, so
that if I preached under one sounding board
here and another one over there, my voice
would not be quite the same.
But the point is, they throw out the
voice, reinforced by their own distinctive hue.
Now, says the Apostle Paul, that's what the
Thessalonians did.
They received the voice, the message, the message
of the Apostle, the message of the Lord,
the word of the gospel.
They received it, and then the church became
a sounding board.
Having received it, and believed it, and experienced
it, they sent back the world, the word,
and broadcast it to the north, and to
the south, and to the east, and to
the west, and out it went.
That's why Paul praises the church.
Friends were very confused by the letters in
the Bible of a gentleman known to us,
who died and went to be with the
Lord.
A good, God-fearing Christian man, and his
Bible was well-hummed and well-used.
And here and there, almost on every page,
there were the letters T and FT.
T and FT.
And it was like that everywhere.
And they were quite confused, until finally they
came across a relative that was still alive,
who knew the secret.
Oh, said this man, what he meant was
this, tried and found truth.
T and FT.
Tried the truth, tested the truth, believed the
truth, and found it to be reliable.
That's exactly what happened here.
They received the gospel, they believed the gospel,
they were transformed by the gospel, they experienced
its glory, and its power, and its grace,
and then they broadcast it.
They sent it out, not simply as the
gospel now, but as the gospel woven into
the warp and goop of their own experience,
reinforced by the fact that they knew it
was true.
My friends, that's what a church is meant
to be.
Now, there may be some ecclesiastical friends among
us tonight, you'll forgive me for saying this,
but to me it's one of the greatest
tragedies of the, of the tragedies of the
twentieth century, that in so many of our
churches and colleges, the word is not sent
false.
We disseminate our doubts more than anything we
believe.
And the church of the twentieth century has
become largely the disseminator of doubts.
And we have men holding the highest positions
in church and ecclesiastical life, who are nothing
other than the persuaders of on beneath.
That's not what a church was meant to
be.
A church was meant to receive the word
of the Lord, the apostolic pyrrhugna, and then
having received it, and experienced it, to send
it out, impregnated, reinforced by the experience of
every man and every woman on the church
roll, that these things are true.
Would we be commended on this call?
Are there unbelievers on the church roll enough?
I hope there are not, because if there
are, it means that to that extent we
are short of the New Testament pattern for
the church of Christ, and we need to
repent.
It is not enough to preach the gospel
in vague terms.
It must be received as from the Lord
and his apostles, experienced as such, and reinforced
by a whole united community of believers who
know the grace of God through the gospel.
Now what is this gospel that they thus
disseminated?
I hurry towards a close, because I've given
you the principle, but let's just analyze it
very briefly.
What is this gospel?
Well, it is referred to as good news.
Good news in a word in the first
place, verse 5.
For our gospel, our good news, came not
to you in word only, but it did
come in word, first of all.
Not in word only, but it did come
in word.
But you see, this is the least we
can say about the gospel.
Now unfortunately, this is about everything that some
of us say about it.
What is the gospel?
Good news in a word.
That's the least, not the most.
We only begin to preach the gospel in
the New Testament way when we bring good
news in a word.
When we announce to the angel, behold, I
bring you good tidings of great joy.
For unto you is born this day in
the city of David the Savior, which is
Christ the Lord.
But that's only the beginnings of the gospel,
the gospel in a word.
As the good news in a word, it
is a message to be believed, a communication
to be received, alike on account of its
origin in God and of its content for
sinners.
For there is none other name under heaven
given among men whereby we must be saved.
But it is also referred to in this
context as coming in power and in the
Holy Spirit and in full conviction.
Now here I must repeat a little, because
we referred to this this morning.
It did not come simply to the Thessalonians,
it did not come to them simply as
a word, a bare naked word.
It came as a word charged with power,
charged with dynamite, in power, wrapped up in
dynamite, I think were the words we used
this morning, wrapped up in God's dunamis.
And of course this is quite theological and
this is biblical.
Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ because it is the dunamis, it
is the power of God unto salvation.
But wait a moment, the thing we wanted
to stress this morning at this stage, and
I want to stress it tonight, is this.
The gospel is no mere power.
It is the power of the Holy Ghost.
It's the power of a present God.
Let me put it to you like this.
My dear people, in the coming of the
gospel, God is coming to us.
It's a thing which we rarely appreciate as
we should or we would be worshipping the
Lord more than we do.
When the gospel comes to us, when the
word of the gospel comes to us, God
is coming to us, he's visiting us, he's
seeking us, he's addressing us.
The sovereign Lord of the universe comes down
to us in his word and he looks
us in the eye and he addresses us
with his word and it is the word
of God.
And that's what the gospel is, and God
is a God of power.
And he comes to us in the gospel
because he would win us and he would
rule us in order to save us.
Now some of us may not be quite
sure what's happening to us when we hear
the gospel preached.
In principle of a certain theological college where
I stayed for a little while and studied,
he once had what appeared to be a
nervous breakdown.
And his father and mother took him very
concernedly to a physician.
And the physician, when they saw him and
his parents come in, they said to him,
well now we'll have a little chat on
our own, shall we?
And so he bade mum and dad stay
outside.
And it took a considerable amount of time
before the physician, who was a God-fearing
man, elicited from this then young man with
a crippled thirst from Cambridge, something of what
was going on in his mind.
And the physician began to unravel it and
he said of the fears he had.
And he felt he was haunted and when
he went to a church he felt an
oppression come upon him.
And when he sat and heard the gospel
preached he felt he wanted to shout.
And he didn't know what to do with
himself and he thought there must be surely
something wrong with me mentally.
The physician put his hand on his shoulder.
My dear boy, said he, it's the hound
of heaven that's after you.
It's the almighty God that's after you to
save your immortal soul.
Don't be frightened of him like Samuel in
the temple of old.
It's the Lord that's speaking to you.
The thing for you to do is this,
is not to go and see another physician
or to go for a holiday as your
father and mother suggest, but go on your
knees.
And he did.
And when I knew him he was the
principal of a theological college and an influence
upon men.
He didn't know what was happening to him.
The power of the Lord, the power of
the Spirit, the convictions of an immanent God
dealing with him.
Is there someone here tonight in that category?
The gospel as they received it then was
the word, the good news in a word,
but the good news of a word in
a word wrapped up in power and in
the Holy Ghost coming with much conviction.
And lastly, if that was the gospel as
they received it, what was the gospel like
as they sent it forth?
Now there are two views of the gospel
here.
The gospel as it was received, the word,
good news, with power.
What was the gospel as they sent it
forth?
Well it was that, but it was something
else as well.
Paul tells us, everybody's talking about you.
And they're telling me when I go to
certain places what kind of a reception I
had when I came to you, and how,
notice, you turned to God from idols to
serve the living and the true God and
to wait for his son from him.
Now this is the gospel demonstrated.
This is what the gospel did.
This is what the word of the good
news coming in the power of the Holy
Spirit and with much conviction did.
This is the gospel expressed in life.
They turned to God from idols.
Having turned to God from idols, they began
to serve God.
Ah, but wait a minute, a God with
alliterance, a God who's alive, a God who's
true and genuine.
And having turned and in serving, they discovered
that life had more meaning than the present
can confine, but there was a future and
a hope and something that God had promised
them.
They began to wait.
I'm not going to stay with those steps
tonight, but I'm going to ask you this,
my friend, and especially if you're a member
of this church.
Is the gospel according to your life a
word that has so come in power and
in the Holy Ghost and with much conviction
that you're a turned man or a turned
woman?
Have you turned to God from idols?
The gospel that we disseminate must be a
gospel that has turned us right around.
Otherwise it's no gospel at all.
Notice the way the apostle puts it.
Turn not from idols to God, but to
God from idols.
What he means is this.
There's reason, there's rhyme to his mode of
speaking, his mode of writing, you see.
The positive involves the negative here.
The call of the gospel is primarily to
turn to God.
Turn your face to God, but if your
face is God-like, you've got your back
to the idols.
Paul didn't go around just persuading people to
leave their idols.
And I trust the Lord will give me
grace never to try to do that.
It's the wrong way around.
People have to attach to their idols until
they see something better.
But the biblical way is this.
Get men to a full square God-like,
face to face with God, eye to eye
with God, mouth to mouth with God, in
communion with God.
And when men have caught a vision of
the glory of the grace and the power
of God, they let go their idols.
Turn to God from idols.
I wonder whether some of us are still
clinging to our idols tonight.
And you know, we're wondering why it is
that we don't see the face of God
clearly.
Why we don't hear the voice of God
succinctly and clearly.
Why he doesn't hear us.
You know, half the trouble is this, we're
looking in the other way.
You don't catch his eye because you're not
looking in his direction.
The Bible uses this language, you see.
He tells people to turn round to God.
We've come behind his back.
The Old Testament is full of this.
One of the prophets says that they only
see my hinder part.
We only see the back of the Almighty.
But we want to see his face.
That's the Christian life.
And this is the life that counts, as
the gospel is preached and disseminated in word,
when it is bolstered and supported and read.
Indeed, I don't need to say any more.
When it is supported with men and women
and preachers of the gospel that know something
of this, looking into the face of God,
then it counts.
A turning to God from idols to serve
the living and the true God and to
wait for his Son from heaven.
I must leave it there.
Now, can you see why this church was
commended?
So much else, you see, is involved in
this.
Paul doesn't refer to them, to the multitude
of things involved in turning and serving and
waiting.
A turning took place in a moment.
The serving goes on for an age.
It's a present continuous serving.
And so also the waiting.
Because the Christian man that has really received
the Christian message and is living the Christian
life knows there is an end and a
terminus to history.
And it is in the hand of God
when he will send his Son, Jesus, whom
he raised from the dead and who is
already delivering us from the rock to come,
when he sends him back to wind up
the affairs of the universe and of time
and to usher in the day of days,
the everlasting day, to cast out sin and
Satan and those who are so inextricably bound
to him that they will not let his
skirt go, to cast them out forever.
An apostolic commendation of an ancient church that
had not had a settled minister or pastor
or a youth worker or anybody else, but
had lived in an utterly pagan environment for
the space of twelve, thirteen, fourteen months.
Men and women, where do we stand with
all our background, with all our privileges?
How far does the voice of our testimony
carry?
How mighty is the word of the gospel
impregnated by the testimony of this church and
of its people?
How compelling is it in Macedonia and Achaia
and where our missionaries go?
Do people say of us what they said
of the Thessalonians?
Are you a Christian tonight?
Are you living the Christian life?
Are you involved in the disseminating of the
Christian message in the Christian way?
I beseech you by the mercies of God
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy
and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service and mine.
For our mission requires and demands nothing less
of us than all that we are and
all that we have to do all that
is written and all to the glory of
God.
And his God grant us the blessing we
yearn for this week and give us a
vision of the distant vistas and the need
of the hour and a grace to be
and to become, if needs be, what according
to his word the standard is for an
individual Christian and for a Christian church.
Let us pray.
O Lord our Heavenly Father, the shadows of
the evening are upon us, and it may
be that many of us are a little
tired and weary at the end of the
day, but we have been meditating upon thy
word, which requires of us all honesty and
sincerity and attention, and we ask of thee
that thou wouldst make us God-fearing in
this respect.
O Lord, save us from trifling with thy
truth and enable us to walk in the
footmarks of the faithful, and by thy grace
to live evidently abreast of our privileges and
of our inheritance.
Forgive us our trespasses, renew a right spirit
within us, and use us to fulfill thy
purpose in the gift of Christ thy Son.
Father, as in highest heaven, so on earth,
on this bit of earth, where we are,
thy will be done.
Amen.