Starting Well

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Well, if you’d turn with me to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, I’d like to speak to you tonight and over the next several Sunday nights that we’re together on the subject of finishing well. And I was working on a different series for Sunday nights, knowing that we were coming to the end of our series on the Ten Commandments. I was working on something else, but I just felt like this week the Lord was impressing on me, go to 1 Thessalonians.

Go to 1 Thessalonians. And so I read and read some more through 1 and 2 Thessalonians and thought, what are these two books about? And when you get right down to it, there are two books where Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, two letters, that deal with the subject of how to finish well.

And when we bring up finishing well, the first book that would come to my mind would be probably the book of 2 Timothy, where Paul talks about the end of his ministry. He knows his life is coming to an end. He knows his ministry is coming to an end.

And so he’s writing to Timothy to encourage him as he presses on forward. But to go to 2 Timothy is to look at finishing well in a little bit different way than what I think we need to look at. Because when I hear people talking about finishing well, what they’re usually talking about is a chapter of life, or even life itself, coming to an end in the very near future.

We might look at somebody who’s just been given the prognosis that they have three months to live, and them ask themselves, how do I finish well? You may be coming to the end of a job or a career, and I’ve got one year left until I retire. How do I finish well?

You know, the idea that I don’t want us to get stuck in the idea that when the clock is set and we see the countdown on and we know how much longer we have left, then we need to concern ourselves with finishing well. The church at Thessalonica is a church that needed to know how to finish well, and that’s what Paul deals with in these two letters, because they were very much cognizant of the fact that Jesus was going to return sometime very, very soon. Now, when the Bible tells us that Jesus is going to return soon, that’s according to God’s timetable, where God says a thousand years is like a day, and a day is like a thousand years.

So we look at it 2,000 years later and say, well, why hasn’t Jesus come back yet? As I told an atheist professor at OU who asked me how I could still believe in the second coming, You know, when all these believers throughout the ages thought he’s coming soon, and he still hasn’t, so how could I still believe he’s coming soon? I said, well, it’s even truer now, isn’t it?

Soon is even shorter than it was then. He said, well, that’s a cute little one-liner. I said, well, cute’s what I was going for.

So they were very much concerned about the fact Jesus was coming again soon. They didn’t know how much time it was going to take. And ultimately, by the way, Jesus did come soon for them.

Because Jesus took each of those believers home in his own time. And if he tarries his second coming, then that’ll happen for each of us. But there will come a day, it’s promised in scripture, where God has a 100% accurate track record of always telling the truth and always keeping his promises and always fulfilling prophecy.

It’s been foretold in the scriptures that Jesus will come again. And so they were banking on that promise. They didn’t know how long they had left.

Some of them, and we’ll read about this later on in these letters, some of them started to do things that they shouldn’t have done because they were convinced it could be tomorrow. And by the way, it could be tomorrow. But they started to act like if Jesus could come back tomorrow, then we don’t have to worry about doing anything else.

We just sit around and wait for his coming. And Paul said, no, no, no, that’s not the case. I remember when Harold Camping was saying that the world was going to end, what was it, in May 2011?

People that followed him began to sell all their property, began to quit their jobs, took all their money and pooled it, and just began to sit around and wait for the world to end, and it was very devastating to them when it didn’t end on the timetable that they had been promised. And that’s sort of what the church at Thessalonica, some of them, started to do. But what we see in these two letters are people who were concerned, as we should be, that life does have an end.

Life here on earth, as we know it, does have an expiration date. There will be a day when Jesus returns either for each of us or for all of us. We just don’t know what that time frame is.

So rather than, like Paul in 2 Timothy, rather than to begin to worry about finishing well when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, It’s important for us to focus on finishing well when we don’t know how much time there is, when we could have 50 years left ahead of us, or 50 minutes. We don’t know. When it comes right down to it, finishing well in the context of 1 and 2 Thessalonians is all about taking whatever time we have left, whatever resources we have left, whatever energy we have left, as limited as it may be, and using it in the right way and for the right purpose, which is to glorify Jesus Christ and to grow his kingdom.

If we do that, we will have finished well. Again, if you take nothing else away from this tonight, I want you to realize that finishing well is not about, oh, I know I have this many months to live, or I know I have this long before I retire, how can I make it count? Finishing well is saying, I don’t know how much time I have left, it could be 50 years, but I still want to take it and make it count for the kingdom.

That’s what we’re going to be talking about the next several Sunday nights. And in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, it says, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God. We’re going to stop there for just a few minutes.

We’re going to read through the rest of the chapter tonight, but we’re going to stop there for just a few minutes. As Paul starts to address these people at Thessalonica, we know they were not a perfect church, as we’ll see later on in this letter and in the next one. There were some problems that needed to be addressed and some people who needed to be straightened out.

But by and large, this was a church that was on the right track. He starts out here in the very opening verses of chapter 1, telling them all the things that he’s thankful for them about. All the things that he thanks God for when he thinks about them.

When he looked at the church at Thessalonica, there was a lot to give thanks about. There was a lot that was going well, and there was a lot to commend them for. Again, some doctrinal issues, some practical issues that he’d need to deal with, which really rooted not from the fact that people in Thessalonica were just crazy.

The church at Corinth, I think, was pretty crazy. The church at Thessalonica was just, they hadn’t had the benefit of Paul’s ministry and teaching for as long as they might have. We’ll find out in later chapters that Paul was forced out of Thessalonica very quickly.

He was run out of town. And so he wanted to stay longer ministering to these people and teaching them, but what he had done is he’d led people to Christ and he’d helped start a church there, and he didn’t get to stay nearly as long as he wanted, and they were left on their own. They had the scriptures, they had other people that would come through and teach them, but Paul hadn’t had the time to stay and pour his life into them and nurture them the way that he had wanted to.

And so it’s not surprising that they would have some issues that stem from their ignorance, for lack of a better word. He just hadn’t had time to teach them yet. But in spite of that, what he had taught them, they took and they ran with.

They took and they made good use of what they knew, and they made good use of their time. And we see in these first four verses already that they had a good reputation for faith. They had a good reputation for love.

They had a good reputation for persevering and hope. Now, all these things, faith, we think of, oh, I believe God. Faith means believing God and believing him based on his past track record of faithfulness, even when you can’t see how he’s going to work the situation out this time.

And they dealt with severe persecution. They dealt with all kinds of struggles. And faith does, it’s not amazing, it’s not surprising when we have faith when everything is going well.

But faith is saying, I cannot see a way possible that God’s going to work this out this time. I can’t see how God’s going to take care of us this time, but I know He will. That’s faith.

Not because our circumstances are good. I heard this in a message on the radio this week that we don’t worship because our circumstances are good. We worship because God is good.

I think that’s exactly right. The same thing goes for faith. We don’t have faith in God because our circumstances are good.

We don’t believe God because our circumstances are good. We believe him. We have faith in him because he’s good.

And we know that he’s got this even when we can’t, we can’t see how he’s going to take care of us. They had a good reputation for love, for loving one another. And not just a warm fuzzy feeling, but it says in verse 3, that he remembered without ceasing their work of faith, their labor of love.

Their love wasn’t just a warm, fuzzy feeling. Their love was something where they went and did something about it. Love is an action.

Love is a choice. Love is a commitment. And so the people at Thessalonica had taken that and run with it, and they were showing love to one another and to their community, the love of Christ, in very real ways.

Not just saying, I love you, but they were demonstrating it. They were proving it. and for their faithful perseverance and hope.

He says in verse 3, the patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father. This was a church that did not lose hope. They may have been small, they may have been powerless, in contrast to the pagan culture around them.

They may have been poor, they may have had trouble and oppression, but they never lost their hope. They continued in that hope, realizing that ultimately, God was in control of these things. And I think it really helped them to maintain their hope that they still had faith that Jesus was coming again.

That this world and all of its struggles, this is not all there is. That there is a Savior who has died for us, not only that, but He’s coming again for us. And what we see in these four verses ultimately is that they were living in such a way that they demonstrated they belonged to God.

He says in verse 4, knowing beloved brethren, your election by God. Now that word election means chosen. And sometimes that’s a scary word for us.

That and predestination and things like that because of the way they’re interpreted. Folks, that word just means chosen. And you all know that I don’t believe that God chose some for hell and some for heaven.

I believe God predestined the plan of salvation. And I believe that God has chosen a people for himself in Christ. I don’t understand how all that works. But I believe anybody, anybody who comes to the Father through Jesus Christ can be saved.

I know others who are smarter than I am who don’t believe that, who believe that God chose some and rejected others. But folks, when we see this word election, don’t be afraid of it. All it means is chosen.

How chosen, when chosen, we don’t have to get into all that. He says, I know that you’re part of the chosen. Chosen in Christ, however God chose, he chose in Christ. He chose a people for himself in Christ. And when he says, I know, I know your election by God, what he is saying is you are giving proof of the fact that you are part of God’s chosen people.

Now, in the Old Testament, God’s chosen people was Israel. In the New Testament, God’s chosen people is the church. Perhaps the lines are not quite as black and white there.

as that, but as a general principle. And that doesn’t mean, by the way, that God is finished with Israel either. But in terms of this idea of election, Paul’s talking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about God’s chosen people.

And if I can paraphrase this just a little bit to help you understand the meaning, when he says, I know your election by God, what he’s saying is, I can tell that you belong to God. Now, how can he tell you? go back to the previous verses and you see he can tell because they acted like it.

They acted like it. I’ve told you before how I tell my kids, you’re a Byrns, act like it. I used to tell that to my sister after I graduated from Moore High School and she moved up to Moore High School the next year after I graduated.

I used to drop her off at school and say, my name means something. You’re a Byrns, act like it. If somebody had said that a hundred years ago, it would have meant something completely different.

Your burns act like it, but we’ve changed things. God has changed things. Your burns act like it.

Well, he’s saying, I can tell you’re a child of God because you act like it. And that’s exactly what the church at Thessalonica had done. Let’s look at verses 5, 6, and 7.

He says, for our gospel did not this is Paul again speaking, for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believed. Now when Paul came to them, when Paul came to them already and preached the gospel to them, he wasn’t just preaching empty words.

This wasn’t just a motivational speech that he gave them. When he came preaching the gospel, it wasn’t just empty words. it was a message that the Holy Spirit empowered and used to change the Thessalonians forever.

Paul came and spoke, and the Holy Spirit took the preaching of the gospel and empowered the message and transformed them. Now, I could give you some words tonight, just of my own opinion, that you might leave, you probably wouldn’t, but you might leave here and think, oh, there were some good suggestions there. That was kind of wise.

More likely, you’d walk out and say, what is he talking about. But I could come and give you a motivational speech of some of my opinions. It’s not going to change your life.

It’s not going to change your tomorrow, my opinion. But Paul wasn’t coming and preaching his opinion. He came and brought to them the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.

There is power in the message of the gospel, especially when the speaker gets out of the way and gives freedom to the Holy Spirit to work and to speak through him, and the people have been prepared by the Holy Spirit to hear. The Holy Spirit empowers the message and hammers it home, drives it home, and changes people’s lives through it. And he said, our gospel did not come to you in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance as you knew what kind of men we were for your sake.

So the Holy Spirit, when he says, you knew what kind of men we were for your sake, the Holy Spirit had done all this work. The Holy Spirit had moved in their midst and had driven the message of the gospel home with power. But one of the tools that the Holy Spirit used in driving the message of the gospel home was the life of Paul and his associates.

Because, see, the Holy Spirit, as they’re hearing this message, the Holy Spirit is speaking to their hearts and testifying to them and saying, look at the life of Paul. See, look, there’s evidence right in front of you. This is not a crazy concept.

Because have you ever heard somebody say something and do something else? Now, ultimately, any preacher is going to fall short of the message. But I have to say, here’s what God’s Word says, even if I don’t live up to it perfectly.

Here’s what God’s Word says, this is what I should be doing too. What’s really irritating is when a preacher comes in and says, here’s God’s Word for you. Excuse the cracking of my voice, I’m not 12, it’s allergies.

But when somebody says, here’s God’s message for you, here’s God’s word for you, this is what you’re supposed to be doing, I’m not going to do it. And that’s okay, and they start to justify it. A man of God should say, I fall short and I’m wrong too.

But we all know what it looks like when somebody, as a matter of habit, as a lifestyle, says one thing and does another. I’m sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying, your life is talking too loud, right? But when Paul came and spoke to the people at Thessalonica, and he began to preach the gospel and he began to lead people to Christ, they saw what kind of man he was, and the Holy Spirit used his testimony, his lifestyle, as something that would prove the point to the Thessalonians.

You want to believe that the gospel can change hearts? You want to believe that Jesus Christ can change you? Look at how he’s changed me.

That was the message the Holy Spirit connected with their hearts so that they could see the power in the gospel. It’s enough. It’s enough that Paul told them the gospel and that the Holy Spirit empowered that message, but it takes it to a whole other level when the Holy Spirit uses Paul to demonstrate through his life and his testimony to demonstrate the power of the gospel.

And when they saw this, folks, they were changed by the gospel. And their minds were so thoroughly changed, the change of mind was so complete that they were willing to follow the Lord at any cost. This wasn’t somebody going forward on a Sunday morning and saying, I need to get religion because it might make my life a little better, and then they go away and we never see them again. These were people whose minds were thoroughly changed by the preaching of the gospel.

That they realized how sinful they were before a holy God. They realized what utter destruction they deserved, what utter condemnation they deserved from a holy God. And they realized that everything that Jesus went through on the cross was for them and their salvation, that it was the only way they could be saved, and that he had risen again from the dead to prove it.

And when they heard this, they had to have been cut to the heart. Because, folks, their transformation, their change of mind was complete. They were softened by that message.

they were melted and they were changed and shaped it. God changed and shaped them into something else. And that’s what he’s promised to do for each of us when we truly trust Christ. If any man is in Christ, he’s a new creature.

All things have passed away and all things have been made new. Their change of mind. This was not Sunday morning religion.

This was not a jailhouse conversion that passes once the crisis passes. This was a thorough transformation through the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit so that their whole lives were changed and from here on out they were willing to follow Christ no matter what it cost them. And we see this in this part of the passage that they were afflicted and yet they followed Christ anyway.

This word afflicted means they were burdened, they were under pressure. There’s the idea in this Greek word of something being put under pressure. See, they weren’t just afflicted in the sense that they had a bad day.

When he says in verse 6, they’ve received the word in much affliction, that’s not just affliction in the sense that they’ve had a bad day, or they’ve got a rock in their shoe, or they’ve got a hangnail, or the lady that sits next to them at work is doing something irritating. This is talking about they were being kicked around by this world for their faith in Christ. Now, that’s not that uncommon. In the scope of history, and even throughout our world today, it’s not uncommon for somebody to be afflicted for the cause of Christ. But he says they experienced joy in the midst of that suffering.

That’s incredible to find joy in the midst of suffering. Because he says they received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit. They suffered, but they were still joyful in it.

That’s incredible. A couple weeks ago, I came in here on a Sunday night. I had something in my eye.

Just a little thing. But it irritated me. And it hurt.

And it stayed in there. I don’t know when exactly it came out. but I remember feeling that thing until Wednesday.

That’s when I was out of town, so I couldn’t just run to an eye doctor or anything. From Saturday to Wednesday, that thing was in my eye, and it didn’t matter what good things were going on. I was suffering.

I know it’s just a little thing, but your eyes are a sensitive part of the body. I was suffering, and you know what? It was hard to feel any joy, and it was hard to feel anything, but sorry for myself for that stupid little thing in my eye.

Yeah, pity party. Exactly. And if I feel a pity party like that over some little particle of something in my eye, I can’t imagine going through the suffering that some of the martyrs go through, even today, with a smile on my face.

I can’t imagine being like Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna early on, who was a student of John, who was burned at the stake for his faith in Christ, and not only went willingly, but died singing. Folks, that’s not something. Human nature is to do what I do and complain and have the pity party over the suffering of the little particle in my eye.

The joy of the Holy Spirit is something completely different. That kind of joy that they could experience when they were suffering intense persecution and rejoiced anyway, that’s something only the Holy Spirit can do in us. When Polycarp was burned at the stake and died singing praises to the Lord Jesus Christ, That’s something only the Holy Spirit can do in us.

And so for them to endure this persecution the way they did showed what a tremendous change that God had made in their hearts and in their lives. And because of this, they became examples to all the other believers who were in Greece. He says in verse 7, you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believed.

Everybody looked at them and said, I want to be like the believers in the church at Thessalonica. Let’s look at the last few verses here. Starting in verse 8, it says, For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place.

Your faith toward God has gone out so that we do not need to say anything. For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Now this says they echoed his word.

From you the word of the Lord has sounded forth. That word in Greek literally means that it echoed forth from them. They weren’t preaching some new message.

They weren’t coming up with some new gimmick to promote the church or to trick people into Christianity. The message of the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection that they heard from the lips of the Apostle Paul, They echoed that word out to every place that they could touch throughout Greece in Macedonia and Achaia. He says, not only in Macedonia and Achaia has your message, has the word echoed forth from you, but in every place.

Paul is saying he cannot go anywhere without hearing somebody who’s been affected, who’s been impacted by what’s going on in Thessalonica. And he says, you know, as we travel around, they would give reports to the churches about their missionary activity, much as our missionaries would do today. If they come visit, they talk about what they’re doing and what’s going on in the places where they’ve been.

As they would go visit the other churches, they didn’t need to tell anybody what was going on in Thessalonica because the other people already knew. They already knew how things were going in the church at Thessalonica. They had this reputation because they loved God and they loved people, and they were spreading the word of God, they were spreading the gospel, they were spending their days on things that actually mattered.

These people knew what happened in Thessalonica when Paul and his associates arrived. Not only what’s going on in Thessalonica now, but they’d all heard the story of the miraculous transformation of these people in Thessalonica. That when Paul arrived, these were idolaters.

These were pagans. Sometimes we think, oh, there’s that person over there, they really need Jesus, but I’m not going to tell them because that person would never get saved. We have pagan neighbors and pagan family members that we’re not all that concerned about sharing the gospel with, because we think, oh, they’d never get saved.

And yet this is what the Holy Spirit can do. These people were known for their idolatry, and yet the people know what happened. Throughout Greece, they knew what happened when Paul had gone in to the hardened idol worshippers of Thessalonica and preached the gospel.

The Holy Spirit got a hold of them and did what only the Holy Spirit could do. The Thessalonians, at least the ones who are now part of the church, had abandoned their idols. And the whole old way of life that came with it.

They had abandoned all of that. And they decided that from here on out, we’re going to serve God. And we’re going to serve God while we wait for the second coming.

He says, the return of his son from heaven. To wait for the return of his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. They said, we’re going to serve God.

And we’re going to wait for the coming of his son. and we’re going to work and we’re going to serve him like he’s coming back tomorrow. And they had gone from their passionate worship of idols to an even more passionate worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Folks, they lived like Jesus was coming back at any time.

I told you as we work through these verses, through these chapters of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, we’re going to talk about finishing well. Because the church at Thessalonica was a great example, even with their problems, of finishing well. We can learn from their good examples of how we can finish well in the sense not of taking, oh, I’ve got three months left to live or I’ve got six months left until retirement.

How am I going to make this count? But saying, I don’t know how long I have. Let’s make it all count.

We can learn from their positive examples. And even the things that they did wrong, we can learn from what Paul said when he straightened them out. And as we look at finishing well, something I hope we’re all interested in here tonight.

Because honestly, you and I don’t know how much time we have on earth. We don’t know how much time we have at our job, wherever it may be. We don’t know how much time we have with our family members.

We don’t know how much time we have with our neighbors. We just don’t know. And so our goal should be like the church at Thessalonica, to make all of it count.

To finish well by making it all count for the glory of God. however much time, energy, whatever it may be, how much we have, to use it to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and to advance his kingdom. For us to finish well, it means we have to start well.

Finishing well means we have to start well. Now, some of you may hear that and you’re already thinking, well, that leaves me out. I haven’t started well.

No, no, no, no. Hope is not all lost. You don’t have to have come to Christ as soon as you were out of the womb to finish well as a Christian. See, the Thessalonians were a group of people who were concerned about finishing well. They were a group of people that were concerned about, we’re going to do everything we can for the kingdom with however much time we have left, and it could be any day now.

They were concerned about finishing well, and they were able to finish well because they started well. Hear me on this. The Thessalonians started well.

And what we need to understand is that this doesn’t mean that they started from the beginning of life. See, if you think that leaves me out because I didn’t start well, you don’t know what kind of youth I had. You don’t know what I was like younger.

You don’t know the years I wasted when I was raising my children, not wasted on raising my children, but you don’t know how I lived when my children were younger and I wish I could go back and redo those years. You don’t know the struggles I’ve had. You don’t know where I’ve failed.

You don’t know. No, and I don’t, unless you’ve told me. You see, the Thessalonians, again, didn’t come out of the womb serving Jesus Christ either.

This was a group of people who finished well, but they began life as idolaters. They began life as people that went and bowed down to statues made of gold and stone and wood. They hadn’t started well from the beginning of life.

They’d been idolaters, as we see in verse 9, but there came a time when they did begin well in their faith. And I know this is going to sound like such a simplistic thing to say, Because we know it’s all true, and yet we need to be reminded of it, that we can’t finish well if we don’t start well at some point. And for them, there came a time in their lives when they had begun to run well.

Their starting well was not at the beginning of life. Their starting well was later on after they had years to practice their idolatry. They had years of rejecting God and His Word.

They had years and years of doing all the wrong things, and yet there came a point where they got themselves together by the power of the Holy Spirit, and they began to run well. We will never finish well if we never start running well. But there came that point, and it talks about at the end of the chapter, said the people heard how you have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

There came that point when they had abandoned their old way of life. There came that point