We'll look at that part of the text that begins with verse 8 this morning, where it
says, For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have
no need to say anything. For they themselves report about us, what kind of reception we
had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and
to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is, Jesus, who delivers
us from the wrath to come. Someone has said that in Minnesota there are two seasons of
the year, no parking snow emergency and no parking road repair. Well, there's some truth
to that, and mercifully the road repair season is just about finished. It seems like there's
been an inordinate amount of road repair around our region during this particular season.
Often the roads have gotten narrower, traffic has slowed to a crawl and sometimes even stopped,
and the roadbeds have been rough. But that's sort of the way life is too, isn't it? There
are times when it also becomes narrow and slowed and seems to come to a stop, and times
when it's rough, or times when there are detours. Just as there are highway signs that
tell us, men at work ahead, so when those seasons come to our lives that seem slow and
rough, we can be sure that God's sign is up in our lives that says, God at work. God
is at work today in his church. His purpose is to build it. His work in you and me individually
is not unrelated to his work corporately in the total body. For what he is doing at any
given time in you and in me relates directly to what he is doing in the church as a whole.
What he is doing privately in our lives has a greater end than just in our lives. It fits
together with what God is doing in the lives of other people, especially those people that
we are related to within our local church. We are saved individually, but we are not
saved to an individualistic faith. You and I share the same Lord, the same gospel, the
same family name, the same spiritual life, the same destiny, and we share the same earthly
bond within the local church. God has designed for believers to be a part of a community
in this world. To be very honest about it, that runs counter to the individualistic trends
of our culture. In the 90s, it is predicted that one of the things that will stand out
in Western culture is individualism, privatism. People and families are going to withdraw
more and more into their shells, say the futurists, but that is not the plan of God for his people.
What God has called us to runs exactly counter to that. He has not called us to independence
but to inner dependence. The tendency we face, though, is to conduct ourselves, our lives,
in the same direction as the trends in our culture. Indeed, sometimes even the language
that we use in the church tends to further that. We talk about personal salvation. We
talk about personal devotions. We tend to come to church and sit by ourselves, or at
least relate to others as little as possible, be among the first ones out the door. We listen
to tapes in our cars. We read books alone. We keep our troubles to ourselves so as not
to bother others. We have to ask ourselves the question, what kind of a community is
that? That kind of a community leads to isolation into what I think is an unbiblical autonomy.
Because God has designed for us to be a part of a community. The Thessalonians felt that.
The Apostle Paul thanked God for what God was doing in their midst, in their church,
in their community of faith. He expresses a deep confidence, what we've called a blessed
assurance, that Jesus was building his church in Thessalonica in them. The cause of his
blessed assurance related back to how the gospel was proclaimed, as we studied last
week in verse 5, and how the gospel was received by them in verses 6 and 7. Today we pick it
up and we see that his blessed assurance also related to how the gospel was magnified.
Look at verse 8 where he talks about that. The picture is a very lively one. It says,
the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you. The verb there is related to our English
word echo. The picture that the Apostle is drawing upon is the echoing of a blast of
a trumpet within an auditorium as it reverberates off the walls. Or the rolling of thunder after
lightning strikes and from horizon to horizon the thunder spreads out. That is the picture.
The Thessalonians spoke the word of the Lord broadly in their region. It was like lightning
striking. And then the thunder of the testimony reverberated throughout the region, also in
Macedonia and Achaia, it says, two areas nearby. Their testimony was being noted with attention.
It was being gossiped about in conversations. It was being gazed upon with curiosity in
the pagan community. And it seemed as though nothing could stop the reports any more than
you can stop thunder from rolling. Like the wake of a boat that keeps rolling and rolling
and rolling outward. So the testimony of the Thessalonians kept rolling through their community.
What this seems to say to us is this was an enthusiastic church. There was a great boldness
there that got the attention of people. There was quite a striking contrast between them
and the people they lived around. And that did not go without notice. Because you see
they had ceased practicing and participating in the evil of their pagan culture. Their
lives had been cleaned up. Not so that they could become God's children, but because they
were God's children. They no longer did the things they did before. They didn't participate
in the kinds of orgies that were involved in their pagan worship. Their business practices
were different. Their language was different. The word of the Lord spread like a contagious,
wonderfully contagious disease through the community. Oh, that it might infect people
the same way today. The result was that the missionaries said, we don't have any need
to go back to that region. We were only there three weeks or so, but my, look what God has
done in the meantime. We can go to other places. You see the curiosity of the people had been
captured by the converts. I hope that's the kind of a church that God will allow us to
become more and more like. Where the gospel is so magnified and amplified, the people
throughout the region will hear about the word of the Lord. We certainly can't improve
upon the word of the Lord, but we can amplify it, and that is our calling. When you amplify
something it means that you give a louder voice to it. If we were to cut off the amplification
this morning, some of you in the front could hear me, but those of you in the back could
not. We have a system here that amplifies my voice. It makes it louder than it really
is. Now, if my wife were up here, you'd have no problem hearing her without the amplification.
Now we talk about this all the time. She goes out in the backyard and she yells for the
kids. She doesn't yell loudly, she just yells, and they hear her a block away. I go out and
scream at the top of my lungs and they can't hear me in the next yard. It's the difference
in the quality of voice. She has one of those voices that carries. Mine doesn't. It has
to be amplified. God's plan is for you and for me to be amplifiers of His word. When
you magnify something, you make something that seems small look big. You put it, for
example, under a microscope and what perhaps was invisible to you before suddenly seems
large. I remember the first time that I looked at a slide of water from a pond underneath
a microscope. It looked just like water until I looked in and saw all of those things swimming
and crawling around and I thought I would never get in water again when I saw what was
in water. You and I are to make what seems small to the world, the word of the Lord,
big in their eyes as they look at it through us. God has called us to magnify the gospel
of Jesus Christ just like He did the Thessalonians. How do we do that? Well, in our church we
are committed to it in at least two very important ways. We are committed to it in the first
place in every one of us developing a network of relationships. By that network, building
bridges into the lives of people so that we can share the gospel with them. Some people
call this relational evangelism or friendship evangelism. I believe it is the most single
effective way today to reach people for Jesus Christ. There was a time a quarter of a century
ago when churches had an evangelistic meeting at least once a year. For a week, Sunday through
Sunday and sometimes for two weeks, an evangelist would come in and people would invite their
friends to come to church. The evangelist would preach and people would come down the
aisles and be saved. Occasionally that works today but not very often. Our culture has
changed. Today people are skeptical of evangelists who come and preach like that. But they are
wide open to seeing the gospel magnified and hearing it amplified in the lives of people
that they know personally. That is what we are about as a church. When we talk about
our evangelistic strategy, it is this, relating to other people on a personal basis and earning
the right then, the privilege to present the gospel to them. There is a second key part
to our evangelistic strategy though and that is what we call cultural keys. Because there
are some people and there are some areas of our community that we will never relate to
on a personal basis unless we devise some strategy to go there, to be a part of that
community. I believe that God would have us develop cultural keys that would enable us
to unlock the door of people's hearts. Keys that will allow us to present the gospel to
them as we begin to prove the love of Jesus to them. Cultural key ministries focus on
felt needs of people. The people for example who are suffering from AIDS. People who are
of a different color than we are. People who might be in impoverished situations. How can
we as Grace Church Roosevelt develop cultural keys that will allow us to bridge into a culture
that is very different than our own and present the gospel to those people. Well there are
scores of ways we can do that. But I will be honest with you, we as a church are not
going to organize it en masse. What we are going to do is continue to pray that people
within our church will be burdened by God for particular cultural keys that he would
develop through their lives. And we as a church will do everything we can to support and come
along side and pray and help solicit workers to join but we are looking for individuals
in the church to say you know I believe God wants me. God wants our family. God wants
me and this brother, this sister to do this or that. There are already some people who
are working with foreign students. Some of them are teaching English as a second language
to them. And in that way developing a cultural key to people from overseas right here in
our city. There are innumerable ways, oh may God give us the creativity, the courage that
it will take to develop them so that the gospel can be magnified in our region. May it just
roll like thunder across our community. Let's remember that that is our primary duty, our
primary responsibility to God. There are other things that we can become involved in. We
can get involved in the abortion battle. And I think frankly as citizens we ought to. We
can get involved in anti-pornography things and as citizens I suppose we ought to. But
let's remember that as Christians our primary responsibility is to preach the gospel of
Jesus Christ. Well Paul was certain that God was building his church in Thessalonica because
of the way that the gospel was magnified in those people. But finally he was certain that
God was doing his work there because of how the gospel was incarnated. Verses 9 and 10.
The gospel to these people was more than just a message that they had given intellectual
assent to or to which they had given some kind of profession. The gospel you see was
fleshed out in the lives of these people. It embodied results because they had welcomed
it with all of their hearts. They had reached out and embraced it. They had received the
gospel. It was actually fleshed out and embodied in two very important ways which the apostle
tells us about. He says in the first place it resulted in true conversion in them. He
says they themselves report about us, what kind of reception we had with you and how
you turned to God from idols. That turning is what conversion is all about. Conversion
means simply to turn around, to turn about. It's the positive side of repentance. It's
the human aspect of salvation. It says they turned. It's a very intensive word. It means
that they did it in one completed act. They turned to God from idols. It's another way
of Paul saying that these people genuinely believed. For to believe is synonymous with
turning in the way that he uses it here. When one believes it is not merely giving assent
to certain things but it involves the very core of the life. To turn. Notice how he says
they turned. He says they turned to God from idols. This turning involved the basic belief
system of their lives before their lives were focused on Mount Olympus nearby which was
headquarters and home for the gods of their pantheon. Now they had turned to God from
these idols. Notice the order. It was not that they turned from idols to God. One Greek
expert Dr. Lineberry says in one sentence what is important. He says the difference
between the two expressions is the difference between salvation by works and salvation by
grace. They didn't turn from their idols to God but they turned to God from their idols.
The first way of saying it says that they had to give up something first. They had to
clean up their lives and get rid of their idolatry and immorality and then they could
come to God. That's not the way it was. It says that they turned to God and as they turned
to him in saving faith the automatic result of that was they turned away from their idols
and all of the other things dropped away. There are a lot of people who get that confused.
There are some people who think well I can't come to God because I'm doing this or I'm
involved in that. God says just come to me and I'll help clean up your life. Don't
clean up your life first. Conversion involves turning to God and then letting the results
come as they may and will. Paul was certain that these people had been saved and that
God was doing his work in their midst because of the way they had turned. But also there
was something else that came about as they incarnated the gospel. It says they also were
waiting for his son from heaven. These people were waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus
Christ. To wait for his son means to wait up expectantly for someone. It's the picture
of a mother who waits up for her child. We've gotten into that stage of life now where that
becomes necessary occasionally. When the child is out and the car is gone and you wait up
to hear the sound of the engine arrive and the garage door go up and the car come in
and the child enter the door and you know everything is alright. It means to wait up
expectantly. That's how the Thessalonians were. They had turned to God from their idols
that they might serve him but also that they might wait expectantly for his son. His son
from heaven, he describes what Jesus has done for us. This one who died for us so that he
might be raised on our behalf. The one who is now in heaven from where he's coming.
The one who is returning for us and the one who is and will rescue us, he says, from the
coming wrath. They're waiting for his son from heaven. The Apostle Paul was sure that
these people were genuinely saved and that God was doing his work building the church
in Thessalonica because of how the gospel was being incarnated in their lives, the changes
that were being made. They had turned to God from their past belief system. They were serving
God sincerely with all of their hearts and their eyes were focused on the future. They
were waiting for the son to come from heaven, the one who would deliver them from the wrath
to come. Yes, Jesus was building his church in Thessalonica. Paul had blessed assurance
that it was so. I wonder if he was privileged to what we're like today in 1990 if the Apostle
could write a letter to Grace Church Roseville and say, oh, I thank God that he has chosen
you and I have blessed assurance that he is doing his work in your midst because of how
the gospel was preached and how you received it and how the gospel was magnified in your
midst and how the gospel was incarnated in your lives. I wonder if he would have similar
certainty because of your life and mine that God was still at work in the world today.
Jesus is still building his church. He's been about this now for about 2,000 years. If we
were to picture it in our minds, I think he's up on the steeple somewhere. I think he's
right close to the very top of this church that he's building and it's just about done,
but he's still doing it. He's still putting into place people who come to him in faith.
Do you need to do that? Have you come to Jesus Christ in faith, come to him, and in doing
so turned away from your idols? If you have, are you serving him? Are you as committed
to the local church as Jesus is? Do you exhibit that by your faithfulness in attendance in
the local church? Your faithfulness in praying for it, your faithfulness in serving through
it, your faithfulness in giving to its work? That's what Jesus is calling us to. To faithfulness,
to the work of God in our world today. That work is the same as it was 2,000 years ago,
the building up of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's wonderful to have God
working in our lives individually, but never forget that God is working in us individually
so that he might work in us together. We can't separate the two. My prayer is that we will
be the church that God calls us to be in the 90s, and that that work will embrace every
one of us participating, faithfully contributing, being a part of the whole, what God has called
us to be together. Let's pray. God's design for you is to be a part of a community of
believers. Are you? Are you a part of this church? Have you joined it? Are you a member
of it? Have you indicated your willingness to labor alongside of others in Grace Church
of Roseville? In just another week we're going to have a series of meetings that may
help you understand what membership in the church is all about. I hope you'll come to
that elective. It is not God's will for any of us to float around from church to church
or to come half-heartedly. He wants us to be built into the very frame, the very stonework
of the church he's putting together. I pray that if there's been a tendency in your heart
to take the church lightly, maybe even to be careless about it, that God will write
upon your heart today a new desire to be faithful and committed to what he's doing in the world,
to buck the trend of the culture, to go in the opposite direction of it indeed, to say,
Jesus, have your way in my life. I want to be your man, your woman. We want to be your
family. We want to be faithful to your work in the world, your work in our church. Let's
stand together with our heads bowed, please, and sing just this chorus that many of us
know. Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Hold me and make me after your will while I am waiting, yielded and still. Lord, may
those words describe our spirits this morning, waiting, yielded and still. And as we are,
fashion us, mold us, make us, and fit us into the church as a living stone where you want
us to be. By your spirit, double, reinforce, underscore in our hearts the importance of
faithful commitment to the church, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he's building.
May we go from here this morning with that echoing and rolling across our minds and producing
in us faithful service for Jesus. We pray this in his name, amen. God bless you.