1 Thessalonians 1:1-3 - Faith Hope Love and Grandmas

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. It has been a length of time since I have needed to record in my own house, and it is because we had a great last weekend of ministry here at Tabernacle, and had a block party.

Gospel was presented. Tons of people received gospel invitations, church invitations, even had some people that received Bibles. It was just a wonderful time.

Then today, when I'm recording this, I had a great day at Tabernacle. Had many returning visitors that have begun coming to the church in the last few months.

We had some people that were out for sickness and summer vacation travel, but still had a ton of people that were there, baptized a new member into the church, and so, so thrilled about everything that God is doing.

I want you all to know, I am tuckered out. Yesterday, I did like a 12 and a half, 13 hour day of ministry. And so, then obviously today, all the regular Sunday things that pastors do.

And so, if I make a little bit less sense than normal, please have some forgiveness for me. We are gonna be in the Book of 1 Thessalonians.

And this is a book actually that I had memorized way back in probably, man, it would have had to have been about fifth or sixth grade perhaps. And this is a book that is written by Paul, as many of the New Testament books are.

And he is writing it along with Silas and Timothy. And they're writing it to this Church of Thessalonica.

If you remember in our study through the Book of Acts, Thessalonica was one of those places where when they interacted with the people, there was a lot of anger. They ended up having to escape.

And they went over to the city of Berea, which was nearby. And those people there gladly received the word. And they looked in the Old Testament Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was accurate.

And it was, obviously. And so this letter that Paul and Silas and Timothy write to this Church, they want to encourage them in some things. They want to encourage them in their faith.

They want to let them know that they're thankful to God for them. They want them to know what God says about the last times and the resurrection and how all of that will take place. They want them to know what God's will is for their life.

They want to encourage them in how they interact with God's Word and God's teachers. It is just a wonderful book. And so it's a shorter book.

It's only about five chapters or so. So that could be as few as five episodes. It could be, I don't think it'll be 29 episodes like Mark, but we'll just kind of go through it together.

And I'm going to kind of keep a little bit of a weather eye on the time, but we're going to dive into it today in 1 Thessalonians chapter one.

It says this, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. So here they give this greeting. It says, hey, here's who we are, if you remember.

Paul and Silas. Silas was the one that began accompanying Paul after him and Barnabas split ways, after Paul said, I'm not taking John Mark, who abandoned us on the first missionary trip. I'm not taking him with us on the second one.

And Barnabas said, well, listen, he's my nephew. He's my family. I'm like, let's forgive him.

And Paul said, no, I'm not doing that. And so Barnabas and John Mark went and they preached the gospel in kind of one area. And Paul and Silas ended up going another direction.

And they met up with Timothy, who had come to faith in Christ through the witness of his grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice. I might have that backwards. It might be mother Lois and grandmother Eunice.

And he had a Greek father who did not believe in God, not the God of the Bible.

And so he had learned all of his faith from his grandmother and his mother, and maybe you today, you have some care, you watch over maybe a grandkid or your kids, and maybe you don't feel like you've got a great big ministry to lots of people.

Can I encourage you? Timothy made a drastic impact in the first century church and his main spiritual trainers at first, where his grandma and his mom.

So if you're in a place where, man, all you've got is some kids that you're taking care of, you never know how God might use those kids in the future. So do it faithfully, do it joyfully and put everything you have into those children.

Here, they write to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. There's this affirmation that who they are is because God loved them and he died for them, purchased their redemption.

And then he gives grace to you and peace. Here from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, he is saying, may you have God's favor, his blessings, his unmerited blessing upon you. This would be the Greek word, charis.

This would be a pretty regular greeting that Greek speaking people would give to one another. So it would be a common Gentile greeting, hey, grace to you, favor to you, blessings to you.

Then obviously the Jewish greeting that many of us are maybe more familiar with, shalom, peace. May peace go to you.

So for those that were Gentiles in the church, those that were Jews in the church, he says, may you have God's blessing, his peace, his grace, his favor, may all of it go to you.

Verse number 2, we always thank God for all of you, making mention of you constantly in our prayers.

We recall in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to stop there, continue reading this, it's just such a rich section.

So he says, we always thank God for all of you. Who do you express gratitude to God for in your prayers? We can be very self-centered.

We can just be asking God for things and we can never think, hey God, like thank you for what you've placed in my life. Thank God for who he has placed in your life.

And here with Paul and Silas and Timothy, these are people that they had poured into that were not yet perfect, even as we'll see throughout the rest of the book, they weren't without sin, there wasn't a lack of things that maybe they could go to God

and say, okay, God, like we've been trying to help these people, and do you see what they're doing? But he says here, we always thank God for all of you. This is making mention of you constantly in our prayers. Who are you praying for?

Who are you thanking God for? Who are you bringing to the Lord in your prayer? He says, we recall in the presence of our God and Father, so as we're praying, as we're there in the presence of God, we remember your work produced by faith.

That if you believe in God, then it's gonna motivate you to action, to say, okay, I believe Jesus died, was buried for my sin and rose again, and that salvation is found in him.

So I'm gonna tell someone else, I believe that God wants me to show kindness to others, and so I'm going to do that. I believe God has forgiven me, and so I'm going to forgive others. It might not always make human sense.

It might not always be the most savvy business deal to be honest or to have integrity in this or to forgive someone. I might not come out on top if I do this, but that's okay because my work is produced by faith in who God is and what he has said.

We don't have faith just in faith itself. It's not a... I think that God can make my skin purple, and so I'm gonna have faith in it, and I'm gonna trust that God can make my skin purple.

That's not the goal. We ought to have faith in what God has said in his word, that whatever God has said, that's what I'm gonna believe, and that is the basis of our faith. Faith is as good as what the faith is placed in.

So you can have all the faith in the world in a rickety broken chair, but if you sit in it, you're gonna fall.

But even if you have only the smallest amount of confidence in a firm chair, once you sit in it, it doesn't matter how little faith you had in that chair, that chair will hold you up.

So it is with our faith that when we put our faith in God's word and what he has said, man, that is a firm foundation to have. And let's have that. So we remember your work inspired, sorry, your work produced by faith.

It says, we remember your labor motivated by love. Many times we can do things based out of guilt. Okay, I guess I have to do this.

Someone's going to make me feel bad if I don't. Sometimes this shows up in our generosity or our giving towards charity or towards giving towards the Lord's work.

That we would say, okay, I guess that I have to, and this is owed, and so I guess I must do this. God says, I want your labor to be motivated by love, that as you look at your life, you go, man, God has been so good to me, so I'm going to praise him.

I'm going to worship him. I'm going to spend time with him. I'm not going to him out of guilt.

I'm going to him because I know that he loves me and I love him. I'm going to interact with my family in a different way. I'm going to serve him not because I'm the dad and I have to lead or provide or something.

No, I'm going to do everything I do because I love them and I love the Lord and I want to make him happy. May we have that labor motivated by love. What's the reason for why you do what you do?

If you are perhaps in a situation in your life where you are operating out of guilt or perhaps duty or even fear, like, okay, if I don't do this, if I don't serve in this area, I don't know that anyone else is going to.

Let's relook at the picture, realize that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And so let's have our labor, what we do for the Lord and for others, have it be motivated by love, for God and for them.

Then he says, and your endurance, inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, you guys have gone through difficulties.

You guys have gone through persecution, you've gone through ridicule, you've gone through family, not accepting you, not believing you, perhaps even cutting you off.

And he says, you have had this endurance to keep on going because of your hope in Jesus.

Man, when you realize that this world is not the end, that this life is not where it stops, and that you have all eternity of joy and gladness and being with Jesus and being with all of the saints and loved ones through the ages that have received

him, man, I can go through this life. My friend Myron Campbell, he'll often read from the Message Translation of, I forget if it's, I think it's like 2 Corinthians 3, where Paul writes, eye is not seen, ear is not heard, nor is entered into the heart

of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love him. And there's also the verse, this momentary affliction, which is but for a moment, is not worthy to be compared with the glories that will be revealed hereafter.

And the message translation of it as Eugene Peterson is trying to just make you think about it in a different way.

He says that the difficulties and the heartaches here on earth, those are small potatoes compared to what we are going to receive in God's everlasting kingdom.

And I have thought that's such a humorous way to put it, but one that really resonates in my heart, that as I go through difficulties, as I grieve, as I fret, that I realize, okay, God, I can have endurance because I know that eternity is just around

the corner. And when it comes, it's nothing but good times forever. It's nothing but joy. It's nothing but your presence.

It's nothing but the love of you and your people forever and ever. Wonders beyond description and your word. So God, help me to endure right now.

Help me to go through it because I know that you will not abandon me and that forever I am yours. And so here Paul says, this is what I know about you guys. Here's what I'm convinced of.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to stop there for today. I know I'm going like half the time.

I went in some of my Mark lessons, but that is totally all right. We'll space that a little bit. But that's 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.

And just some of my favorite verses. I really love how the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, phrases these verses, in particular verse 3, just to draw out those truths that Paul is writing.

And I hope that you would have this joy, this heart, that you would invest in the next generation, like Timothy's mom and grandma did. That you would thank God for other people in your prayers, that you would pray for others.

I hope that you would have a work, your actions, your words, have those be produced by your faith in God. That what your faith says, what the Word of God says, you will believe wholeheartedly, and you will take action as a result of it.

Then that you would have your labor, what you do, have it motivated by love. You wouldn't serve out of duty or fear or guilt, but that you would realize how much you are loved by your Heavenly Father and that He wants you to love others as a result.

And lastly, that you would have an endurance, that you would be able to press through the difficulties, the health struggles, the relationship difficulties, the job ups and downs, and everything else that life entails, that you would have endurance

because you know the hope that is in Jesus Christ. Thanks for tuning in today, and I'm so excited to be going into 1 Thessalonians with you all, and I pray that it would be an encouragement to you. Thanks for tuning in. See you tomorrow.