The Virtues and Mission of God's Church

By now, many of us are aware that Open House Church is entering a new era. Things are changing, and change can be daunting. Change can be daunting. This morning, I want us to press into that idea a little bit to hear from God about what our hope might be in this time of transition. And the way we combat the destabilising effect of change is to look at the things that don't change.

This morning, we're going to look at the virtues and the mission of the ageless church. The virtues and the mission of God's church. Things that never change, things that never ever will change about who and what the church of God is meant to be, and we're going to do that from 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. Let's read that together. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. You know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord. For you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So far our reading, this is the word of the Lord. Across these 10 verses, the opening of Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church, we see reflections from Paul about the things he values, not only in the Thessalonian church, but the church in general, the things that he is thankful for as he thinks of the Thessalonians. These become essential elements of what I think Paul is saying to us about what the church is meant to be, who the church is.

And so let's begin firstly by looking at the first reason for Paul's thanksgiving. He has essentially four reasons for his thanksgiving as he begins. Typically, verses one and probably two and three are very usual for the way that Paul writes his letters. Firstly, we see in verse one, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, which is the opposite way to how we write letters. We say, yours sincerely, KJ Trump at the bottom.

Typically, in the ancient Greek world, you begin with who is writing it, then to the addressee, the church of the Thessalonians, and then Paul gives his greeting, grace to you and peace. That is typical for almost all of Paul's letters. But then in verses two and three, Paul begins to say, also in a typical way, that he is giving thanks for the Thessalonian church. And the first reason is actually threefold. There is a faith, love, and hope displayed in the church.

Have a look. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. Verse three, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Famously, we read from that passage this morning, Paul names these same three virtues at the end of his great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13, where he concludes, now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. For two thousand years, the Christian church has said, and I believe that to be true, that the greatest virtues in the Christian faith are faith, hope, and love.

Interestingly, we see here the order of them has been changed slightly. Where 1 Corinthians 13 ends with the virtue love, emphasising it as the greatest virtue, here Paul ends with hope, which as you read the rest of the Thessalonian letter, isn't surprising because hope is the main theme of the letter. But notice when Paul refers to these virtues here, they're not simply listed as intangible ideals, noble principles from a lofty imagination. Faith, hope, and love are grounded in the lived reality of these Christians. They have actions associated with them. Do you see that?

It's not simply faith. It's the work of faith. It's not love, but the labour of love. It's not hope. It is the steadfastness of hope.

So Paul begins his thanksgiving to God because the pinnacle of the Christian faith is being lived out by this church. Now this teaches us a few powerful things ourselves about these three virtues. As Christians, we often talk about faith. But faith isn't all about hallelujahs and high fives. Here we see the term work of faith mentioned.

And yes, very often it feels like work. Faith is a wonderful intimacy that we have with God, a union we have with Him, but sometimes we simply need to work at faith. Or harder yet, we need to let faith do its work in us. When Paul talks of the work of faith, what he's doing is he's highlighting our faith in Jesus as needing intentionality. It needs action.

It needs careful effort. Now even as Protestants, loving the mantra we live by faith alone, not by works of the flesh. We are saved by faith. Well, Paul will say faith is always shown by what we do. Faith is expressed by works, and work means being intentional.

The Thessalonians, in other words, have shown their faith by their work. Likewise, love doesn't always come easily. Life as a Christian is full of challenges when it comes to loving. So it's not surprising then that Paul calls it labour. Love can be labour because love is a choice.

Love is an effort. And yet, he says there is no greater virtue. Christians are people who love. We love when it hurts. We love when we are deeply disappointed, and we love when it's inconvenient.

Therefore, love is the glue of the church. It helps us stay together. But says Paul, just like faith, love is shown in action. It is more than a feeling. And action needs determination.

So at times, it's easy to love, and at other times, love is labour. And then finally, Paul's emphatic virtue, the virtue that he ends those three on, is the virtue of hope. Now, he puts this last because it's significant for the Thessalonian context. Why? Well, as we read, not just this passage, but further in, we understand that the Thessalonians are undergoing some sort of suffering, some sort of persecution.

There's debate as to what extent that was. It wasn't full blown empire-wide persecution like it was under Nero and subsequent Caesars and emperors. But it's either a form of mockery or at its worst, people were being put to death or hurt physically. So in the midst of suffering, the Thessalonians are looking for Jesus to return any moment to deal with their enemies, which is another aspect that the eschatological nature of why is Jesus taking so long. That's another theme.

And Paul talks about hope, being steadfast in it, holding on to hope. It's in the context of wavering hope that the Thessalonians are called to be steadfast in hope. And the hope, verse three says, is placed in nothing else than in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is a funny thing. We are so unaware of hope until it is lost.

Hope is subtle. Hope is hidden. And yet talk to any philosopher, and they'll tell you that we are creatures inherently of hope. We are confident for no particular reason that the sun will rise tomorrow. We are confident that while we're asleep, we'll keep breathing.

We are confident for some reason that our plans will more or less work out as we planned it. That expectation for things to work out is this subtle thing called hope. Now for the Christian, hope is the simple belief that God is for us and with us. And yet Paul adds that there's an action to this virtue, this inherent thing of hope. It becomes steadfastness.

That word means perseverance. It means endurance. It means constancy. It's about being unswerved. And so hope is subtle, yet it is not trivial.

It means everything to us. And the work it has to do is to produce, Paul says, steadfastness. It prevents us from becoming hyperventilating Christians terrified about the unexpected twist in the story. And hope also helps these other virtues of faith and love, if you think about it. Hope gives us the reason for displaying the fruit of the Spirit.

Think about all the soft aspects of the fruit. Gentleness, patience, kindness, faithfulness. Why will we display that to one another if we don't have hope that being patient will lead to something happening in our brother's or sister's life? We can be patient, we can be kind because we trust and we hope that God can and does bring change and maturity to believers. So Paul begins his thanksgiving by pointing to those three great values that we develop as Christians, the virtues of faith, hope, and love.

He is thankful that it is being displayed by the Thessalonian church. Then he moves on to a second reason for his thanksgiving, and that is that the Thessalonians are in turn loved and chosen by God. Paul gives thanks to God, verse four, because we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Paul knew that the Thessalonians were genuine Christians. He calls them brothers, a delphi in the Greek, which is more than a male counterpart.

It is brothers and sisters, like the old English word brethren, which can include both. God has elected these brethren, he says. God has chosen you, which is where we get the Reformed distinctive of our faith, election. That God has in mind those He has chosen to save. Or as Ephesians 1:4 says, that the elect are those mind-bogglingly, those that have been chosen by God before the foundations of the earth to be the objects of His love by His sheer grace.

To be chosen is to be shown God's greatest love, and that is why He calls them beloved. It's a love that has extended, He says, all the way back into eternity, extending all the way forward into eternity, and yet the present tense of those loved and chosen by God suggests this is a love that is continuing in the present. How can Paul know that these Christians are true Christians? How can he know that they are recipients of this eternal, unchangeable, never-ending love? Simply because, he says, the gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power by the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

There are a few factors, and there are only a few by which every single Christian knows that they have been saved. Every single believer here in one way or another has had the gospel come to them. The verb here, again, in the Greek is a very dynamic word. It simply means to come, but it can also mean to become, to manifest, to call into existence, to transition, and even to complete. In this context, it means that the gospel has come to rest on the Thessalonians.

The gospel, in other words, wasn't like something that bounced off hardened hearts, but it penetrated soft hearts. It stayed with them. The gospel has sunk in. And this happened, Paul says, through a series of factors. On the one hand, the gospel has come in the word.

The gospel, we know, is first and foremostly content. It is a message, and that message is Jesus Christ has come, and He has loved sinners so much that He has reconciled them to God by dying in their place and by giving His moral perfection to them forever. The gospel is a verbal or a written message that has specific content that points us to what God has done. That is the one factor in being saved, by hearing and believing that message. But says Paul, this word was not enough.

It came not only inward to the Thessalonians, but it came with power and with the Holy Spirit. When someone becomes a Christian, a miracle takes place. A miracle takes place. Like a defibrillator that shocks a person's heart back to life, a supernatural experience has to take place when someone believes. External power directly from God has to enter the soul, which causes them to understand, which causes them to see and to desire their love for God.

We sense God in that moment. We fear hell. We desire Him, and we stretch out our hearts towards Him. This never happens from our humanness. It's entirely spiritual, and its power is completely outside of us.

The Greek word for power that's used here is the word dunamis, which is where we get our term dynamite from. The miracle of faith is dynamite. That's the sort of power it needs to make believers. Now all of that is again impossible without this last factor in that process, and that is the Holy Spirit. As the third and perhaps the least understood person in the Trinity, it is the Spirit's sole pleasure to impart saving knowledge into the hearts of believers.

In other words, there is no power without the Spirit. There is no believing the gospel without His power. And so when you combine those three elements, the word, the power, and the Spirit, you get a fourth element, which is conviction, full conviction as Paul says here. Only once a person has heard the gospel, been brought to belief in it by the Holy Spirit, will anyone ever have this last element, which is a deep conviction that it is true. Paul thanks God, knowing that the Thessalonians are Christians, because at one point, he preached the gospel to them.

He brought the word, the content of the message of Jesus to them. It didn't bounce off their hearts. It sunk in, and that is only possible because of the power of the Spirit that has made them believe. And he knows, therefore, that they have been chosen by God. They are the elect recipients of His eternal love.

And that's how we know that we are saved. That's how you can know that you are saved. The assurance of our salvation is trusting in the gospel with a deep conviction. That is all that we need. Thirdly, Paul is thankful for the joy of these Christians in the midst of their suffering.

In verses six and seven, we read, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord. For you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. The Thessalonians have not only displayed the great virtues of Christianity, faith, hope, and love, but also exhibited these virtues through the posture of joy. This joy is essentially visible to everyone, but it is especially so because of the contrast to the suffering that was taking place at the time. Now Paul says this joy is sort of oozing out of them and is noticeable to onlookers. But Paul says the reason you have exhibited this joy is you took something of us.

You imitated both the apostles, he says, and the Lord Jesus in showing this joy in all of the affliction you were experiencing. What is it that they were experiencing? Well, again, we're not entirely sure, but some sort of suffering, some sort of persecution. Yet in their endurance, they did so with happy hearts. They let the gospel penetrate their hearts, but not only that, they guarded all the attempts of their persecutors from stealing that truth away from them. And they did this with an incredible joy, an incredible peace because they knew what they had in the gospel.

Friends, joy is always the brightest against the backdrop of pain. Apart from God, joy is almost never found in suffering. Talk to a non-Christian friend or family, and they will not associate joy with their suffering. Only sadness, hopelessness, and pity is associated with pain in our natural selves. But says Paul, this joy is so countercultural that it makes people talk.

Onlookers can't help but be amazed by this. It is beyond natural, therefore. Why? Well, we have that phrase, it is a joy from the Holy Spirit. It is a joy of the Holy Spirit.

Here's a wonderful reminder that firstly, it is always possible for every Christian, even in the most difficult circumstances. And because the human heart desires happiness, and that is not an evil thing, we can and should desire happiness. We can and should be encouraged, however, that by God's grace, joy is possible to us in every situation. But secondly, we have this incredible reassurance that it is not a joy that we must manufacture, scrounge up somehow by ourselves to white-knuckle it through the circumstance. No.

It is a joy given by the Holy Spirit with the same dunamis, the same power that has caused us to believe. It is entirely His work to give us this joy. And so we don't lose hope because He can give it to us at any time. This is the reality of the Thessalonians. This joy, says Paul, is so otherworldly that onlookers can't help but be impressed by what they see.

They see people living in peace even in the face of the hardship that had come upon them, and they find it mesmerising, which leads to this fourth and final point of thanksgiving, the privilege of the Christian church, the sharing of the gospel. This astonishing joy in the midst of suffering causes people to be genuinely curious about the Thessalonian Christians and their newfound faith. It seems that the Thessalonians, in turn, are all too happy to talk about this faith. Jesus, they say, is the reason for this faith and this joy. And the joy is found because God has saved them from judgement.

Again, Paul highlights the wonderful genuineness of this faith. Have a look at verse eight. It says that the word of the Lord, which is another term simply for the gospel, the gospel sounded forth from them into the surrounding regions of Macedonia and Achaia. That verb to sound forth comes from the bells or the gongs that were used in those days. So like later-day medieval church bells that would ring in the village, and the news of the church gathering would sort of roll through city streets and highways and byways and hills and valleys.

Similarly, the gospel is reverberating through the countryside. And the subsequent converts from that gospel proclamation have now told Paul somehow of the testimony of the Thessalonians. So not through the Thessalonians, but through these converts, Paul knows about what he saw from them, that they have turned from idols and worshipped the living God, that they are thankful for being saved from God's judgement through Jesus Christ. In other words, the gospel has so permeated those regions by the very simple sharing of faith that Paul says there is not even a reason for him or the apostles to go and preach there because it's already been reached.

That's a significant vision of the church. But says Paul, it's not only in their talking the gospel, it is also their faith in God, verse eight says, that has gone forth before them. The gospel was being shared. Its content of Jesus saving sinners went out, but not only in word, also in deed, as the commentator F F Bruce writes. He says, having received the gospel, the Thessalonians Christians had no thought of keeping it to themselves.

By word and life, they made it known to others. From the beginning, they, the Thessalonians, functioned as a missionary church. Someone once said that the local church is the hope of the world. The local church is the hope of the world. Now hearing that for the first time, it may sound far too optimistic, far too hopeful, but it's true.

An Open House Christian Reformed Church is the hope of the Gold Coast. Why? Because like the Thessalonians, we carry the gospel of Jesus Christ with us. Friends, we believe that our little church here, and I've made a bit of a saying of it now, Open House has always punched above its weight. It's been so significant for so many lives, whether they're here today or not.

And while we're undergoing a period of transition, you and I need to keep this in view always, that this church is the hope of the world. And we believe this regardless of who stands up here. We believe this because it is the collective mission of our church, the church that God loves and has chosen, that we have an immense confidence that the work we will do is a privilege that we've been given. And that privilege will somehow build into our joy, and that joy will be to see people's lives transformed. And so we have a great hope because the bones of this church remain strong. We as a church are more than our size.

We as a church are more than our wealth. We are more than our human resources. Open House is a church built on the unchanging truth of the gospel, clearly articulated, written down for us a long, long time ago. We have them expressed clearly for us in our confessions, written for us five hundred years ago, and to protect the church from the distractions and the heresies that can come up, we know what those confessions point to, the simple message that Jesus Christ saves sinners. That is what our church carries, and it's a pure, simple, unadulterated message.

But then, as we see all throughout this passage, we have this great hope that this work is going to be effective because the Holy Spirit is with us. He gives us joy in our trials and He promises us effectiveness. Why? Because ultimately, it continues to be His work. Like He did for the Thessalonians, and then for the converts in Macedonia and Achaia, He breathes life into lifeless souls.

And He's done it to so many people in our church over so many years. The Spirit sovereignly directs His elect, His chosen and beloved to find Him. And so the great privilege of our church is to simply share what God has done for us. And in that way, the local church is the hope of the world. And so nothing changes from what Paul thanked God for for the Thessalonians and us.

We love God with the work of our faith, the labour of our love, and the steadfastness of our hope. We exhibit these things with total reliance and hope in the Holy Spirit who brings life, who confirms faith. And we do that with an urgency of the mission to reach and to save the lost. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your word that speaks a clear and abiding message to us today.

Nothing changes even though things change. And so, Lord, we pray as we think about these things that You will bring us full conviction by the Holy Spirit of the truth that You give us. Not only the purity and the wonder of the gospel, but the implications of the gospel. That the gospel causes us to be a people of faith, hope, and love, love that is patient and kind that does not insist on its own way, patience to endure, to hope, to put up with. Lord, a faith that is gentle and self-controlled and kind.

Thank You, Lord, that we have this hope placed in even fragile vessels as we are, that we have this treasure in jars of clay. And so, Lord, we pray that these bits of clay, these bits of pottery will be strong and faithful and steadfast and intentional and determined. Use us, Lord, to be the place of hope for the Gold Coast, for Brisbane, for Queensland, and for Australia, and to the ends of the earth. Thank You, Lord. However, after all is said and done, that we can call ourselves the beloved of God, chosen by Him.

Because at one point, this gospel became precious to us. It sunk in, and we realised that Jesus Christ had come to save sinners of whom we are the worst. And now we live because He once died and lived. Thank You for this truth and for this hope in which we place our confidence. In Jesus Christ's name, we pray. Amen.