An Unstoppable Church

2 Thessalonians • Sermon • Submitted a year ago • Presented a year ago

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The church in Thessalonica continues to thrive since Paul's original letter. Is our faith growing abundantly and are we loving each other more and more?

Notes

Transcript

If you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it. We’re in 2 Thessalonians tonight and we will just be looking at the first 5 verses of chapter 1. I’ve noticed that we sometimes have the tendency when we get to these introductory verses in the letters that we kind of skim over them but there is something beneficial in these greetings. Before we get into these verses, I think it’s important to give you guys some of the background of this letter. 2 Thessalonians is written by the Apostle Paul and many date this letter to be around 50-51 AD making it and 1 Thessalonians two of the earliest preserved letters that we have from Paul. The only letter written earlier than these 2 is the book of Galatians. 2 Thessalonians was written relatively shortly after 1 Thessalonians and we can say this with a lot of certainty because Paul, Silas, and Timothy are all mentioned in the introduction of both Thessalonian letters and it is likely that Paul wrote these letters from around the city of Corinth. You might remember in 1 Thessalonians that we talked about how Paul had sent Timothy back to Thessalonica because the missionary team was forced to leave very quickly. The entire team was worried about the spiritual state of the church because they were not there for very long and the same group that had persecuted them in other cities had followed them to Thessalonica but despite that, Timothy brings back the best possible report that he could bring. Not only is the church still together, it’s thriving. It’s the exact kind of church that you would want to be a part of and we are going to see that this continues to be the norm for the Thessalonians in these early verses. This is a church that Paul was very proud of. Not in a boastful way but because they were faithful. What we are going to see tonight is what makes a church an unstoppable church. What we are going to see is how a body of believers should operate and how a body of believers really can make an impact on the world. I recently read a book by George Eldon Ladd and he said that all it takes to reach every tribe, nation, and kingdom with the Gospel is the Holy Spirit working through a handful of people. Someone that is devoted to reach the lost will find a way to do it. Let’s dive into this letter and let’s see the marks of an unstoppable church. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:1-5

2 Thessalonians 1:1–5 ESV

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—

Signs of a Healthy and Thriving Church

There are times when you preach verse by verse through the Bible, especially when you get to some of Paul’s letters where he writes to the same people, where you may end up repeating a few things and this isn’t an issue. If it wasn’t important, it wouldn’t be brought up again. Paul himself says numerous times in 1 Thessalonians that he is writing these things as a reminder to the Thessalonians. We learn best by repetition and what we are looking at tonight is no different. In March when we began this series, we started by talking about what to look for in a church because the church in Thessalonica set a very high bar for how churches should behave so what we are going to talk about tonight may sound somewhat familiar. What we are going to talk about tonight are what are the signs of a healthy and thriving church and you could even say, what is a sign that you are a healthy and thriving Christian. What makes a successful church successful? Some might say its the size of the budget or the size of the building. Maybe they have multiple buildings or maybe they have multiple services. Some say the sign of a healthy and thriving church is a large number of people that attend. Some may say it comes down to the number of programs that they offer but do all of these things best represent what makes a church a healthy church? A church can have all these things going for it but still be an unhealthy church. Numbers alone do not signify that a church is in good shape. I have said before that I would rather have 10 students that are serious about faith and serious about evangelism than 1000 students that are just here because we give them pizza and have a 5 minute devotional. That’s not what the church is here for. Several years ago, Mark Dever released a book called Nine Marks of a Healthy Church and while we are certainly not going to talk about 9 marks or things that signify a healthy church, we will look at 3 clear marks that we see in 2 Thessalonians 1. The 3 signs of a healthy church are 1. Growing faith. 2. Increasing love. 3. Steadfastness in Persecution and Affliction.

Sign 1: Growing Faith

One of the first things that Paul praises the Thessalonians on is their faith is a growing faith. Not only is it growing, it’s growing abundantly. If your a farmer and this is your harvest, you’re happy with what you’re seeing because the crop is just growing exponentially. In fact, the Greek phrase that Paul uses here only occurs in this 1 verse in the Bible and the Greek word really means to flourish and grow wonderfully and the way Paul uses it, it means that it is increasing in great amounts, even beyond what is considered the norm. Paul describes this church like no other church. Their faith isn’t just checking the boxes, it’s creating whole new categories to check off. And I don’t think that Paul is just saying this in a hyperbolic or exaggerating sort of way. He’s heard firsthand from Timothy how this church is operating and this is a faithful church. How can a church, and by extension you, have an abundantly growing faith? On the one hand, it comes down to what you are bringing in. What is your theology like? A higher view of the Scripture, a higher devotion to them, a higher devotion to Biblical preaching and teaching will lead to a growing faith. Is your church man-centered? Take a service and listen to what the preacher is saying, is he talking mainly about you or about himself or does it paint a picture of the glory of God in what he says. Yes there needs to be application and yes it should relate to your life but really the goal of preaching is to make you look to God and view things in His way. Preaching should drive you to worship. The voices that are around you are incredibly important in your growing faith. Surround yourself with older and wiser Christians. Read good books, read the old books. Don’t rate what you consume in terms of books and articles on how old they are because if they are based on Biblical truth, the truth of the Bible never changes. This is the reason why I love reading what Christian authors from 1600’s, 1700’s, and 1800’s wrote because the way they talked about God is timeless and refreshing and it pushes me to want to grow in my faith. They weren’t self-help books! I look at the Reformers, I look at Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, William Tyndale. I look at men like Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. I look at the Puritans and men like John Owen, Thomas Watson, Richard Sibbes, John Bunyan and these men weren’t just men, they were Bible men. These were some of the greatest minds to ever grace the earth and they didn’t just read the Bible, they knew their Bibles and that is a big difference. We need to be like what Charles Spurgeon said of John Bunyan and be a walking Bible. Prick him anywhere and he bleeds bibline, whatever that means. And you also have to examine what your prayer life is like. You will never hear me say that the hour or 2 that you spend at church each week is not important. You will hear me say that I believe that only 1 or 2 hours at church is not enough to really grow you in your faith. There is homework that you need to do at home. The time you spend with God alone is going to define the rest of your week and it is going to define how you act in public. You can tell a lot about the spiritual health of a Christian based on the physical state of their Bible. A Bible that is covered in dust is not owned by a thriving Christian. A Bible that is highlighted, torn, taped, underlined, and stitched back together is a thriving believer. If you want to grow in your faith, what are you willing to do to obtain that? A growing faith takes what the Bible says seriously and this means doing what Christ has commanded us so that means helping the less fortunate, making disciples, doing missions, all of this stems from a church that is growing abundantly in their faith because they take the Word of God seriously and recognize Christ’s claim on their lives. Christ doesn’t save you to sit on the bench and ride it to eternity. You are saved to do good works. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We distort the gift of faith and salvation when we neglect to do the works that God has called us to do. So, the first sign of a healthy church and a healthy believer that we can gain from these verses is that they are growing abundantly in faith.

Sign 2: Increasing Love

Sign number 2 is an increasing love. Would you agree that one of the things that most distinguishes a Christian is love? Our religion in a sense is built on love. If God did not first love us, we would never have loved Him. In order for us to faithfully follow God, we must love God. One of the clearest commands seen throughout Scripture is that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves and to even love our enemies. The Apostle John says in 1 John 4:16 “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” John directly equates God with love. We’re a people of love that are brought together by a God who really and truly loves us. The love of God for us should be working in us and through us. John MacArthur said, “Love, not as fuzzy sentimentality or emotional feeling but eager, sacrificial service, marks true believers.” If you are a Christian, you should be growing in love for those around you. Remember what I’ve told you before, your ability to love other people does not depend on other people’s worthiness to be loved. God doesn’t look at you and say, “I’ll love you today but maybe not tomorrow.” It does not matter how worthy someone is of affection when it comes to the people of God because we recognize the great depths of unworthiness that we possessed and despite that, God still set His affections on us. If we want to see a healthy church, it should be a church that is growing in love and this doesn’t just mean that you are walking into a place that just hands out hugs like candy at Halloween. This means the church loves the people enough to tear off band aids where they have to and tell them the harsh truth. A loving church is a correcting church. The church does not stand in a place to condemn but they are in a place to correct. Look at the issue of LGBTQ what should the church do in regards to that? Really I’m just using this because it’s prevalent but this mindset could be applied to any sin. Doesn’t it seem like we’re presented with only 2 options when it comes to LGBTQ? Either we as Christians and the Church hate them or we affirm and approve of them. Have you heard that argument before? “The church wants to correct homosexuals because the church hates homosexuals.” I’ve heard something like that numerous times but a true loving church does not hate AND it does not affirm or approve. Alistair Begg said, “We do not hate, but nor do we affirm. We cannot hate because of God’s Word. And we cannot affirm because of God’s Word. And we have to be prepared to say that we are unprepared to rewrite the Bible, in order to accommodate a society that needs the Bible, and needs the Jesus who is the focus of the Bible.” We can love someone that is made in God’s image and urge them towards repentance. Really, that is a greater showing of love then doing nothing and simply affirming because out of love to God, love to God’s Word, and the person made in God’s image, we want to see them living holy and sanctified lives. Do you think as Paul was being beaten by Roman soldiers he thought, “Well I don’t approve of the behavior but I better affirm them anyway in what they’re doing”? We know the destructive power of sin and it would be rather unloving of us to stand by and allow sin to run rampant in God’s house and allow sin to continue destroying those made in God’s image. A healthy church is one that is growing in love towards God, towards each other, and towards their neighbor. Let’s quickly look at sign number 3.

Sign 3: Steadfastness in Persecution and Affliction

The third sign of a healthy church is their steadfastness in persecution and affliction. You can tell more about the state of the church in times of trouble than in times of success. Same with any person really. Persecution and affliction plays a huge role in the church. Our suffering is never for nothing and even what we suffer as we saw back in 1 Thessalonians 5 is not happening to us because God’s wrath is towards us. In a way, persecution, suffering, and affliction is used to refine us. It’s like putting gold into the fire where impurities are removed and pureness is brought forth. John Piper wrote, “God has appointed our pain to be part of His powerful display of the glory of Christ. The worth of Jesus in the world shines more brightly in the lives of those who say by their sacrificial lives, ‘I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.’” One thing that I have been really inspired by in my life is the account of Christian martyrs and Christians that have suffered. There is something that is so amazing about reading biographies from men and women that have endured some of the harshest persecution imaginable and instead of running from their faith, they became more faithful and stood firm in what they believed in. One that I read fairly recently was about a man named Thomas Cranmer and Cranmer was at one time the archbishop of Canterbury, the highest religious figure in England. Cranmer was faithful to Protestant theology and the King of England was a devout Catholic and this was during a time where if the King was Catholic and you were Protestant, you would be swimming against the tide. Cranmer was arrested and accused of treason because he was in favor of Lady Jane Grey becoming queen of England instead of Queen Mary. Cranmer was tried and sentenced to death and he experienced such terrors that in his final days, recanted of his protestant beliefs and pledged his allegiance to the pope, Catholic theology, and said that salvation could not be found outside of the Catholic church. He signed a number of these recantations and they were sent to the Queen and you would think that after this that Queen Mary would let him go but Mary wanted to make an example of him so she still sentenced him to death. Cranmer was told that he would have to make his recantation public and so they brought him to a service at the University Church at Oxford and Cranmer wrote out exactly what he was going to say, really just a continuation of his recantation that he wrote earlier and he stood at the pulpit preaching for what would be the last time. He stood at his pulpit and he read word for word what he had written until he got to one specific point. Cranmer read from his paper, “And now, I come to the great thing that so troubleth my conscience more than anything that ever I did or said in my life; and that is the setting abroad” and there he stopped from what he had written. Originally he was going to talk of his recantation of protestant and Lutheran theology and all that he had said and written but instead of that he said: “ here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death and to save my life, if it might be; and that is, all such bills which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation; wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished. For if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” As he said this, there was not a single mouth that wasn’t on the floor of University Church. Everyone expected Cranmer to come in, read his recantation, and be killed. Instead Cranmer came and called Catholic theology false and the pope as the enemy of Christ. Cranmer was immediately torn down from the pulpit and they marched him to the place where he was to be burned as a heretic and as they lit the place where he stood, Cranmer held out the very hand that signed his recantation and put it in the fire to burn first saying, “this hand hath offended.” Cranmer died faithful. His story is a good reminder to us that God’s faithful endure to the end. They may fall but they will rise if they truly belong to God. One of Cranmer’s biographers, Arthur James Mason wrote, “God had allowed him to fall, that the miracle of his recovery might the more powerfully affect the Church forever.” Those that truly belong to Christ endure to the end. They endure through good times and they endure through seasons where weaker men would stumble and fall. The way you endure hardships, sufferings, and persecutions will tell you and those around you about the health of your faith. The way the church endures through these things will show you that that is a church that you want to be a part of.

Are We Worthy of the Kingdom?

Finally, let’s look at what Paul writes in verse 5. 2 Thessalonians 1:5 says:

2 Thessalonians 1:5 ESV

This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—

All that happens to us between now and our arrival to Heaven is preparing us for the Kingdom of God. John Stott puts it like this: God’s transforming grace prepares believers for their heavenly inheritance. So let me ask you this: These three marks that we have gone over, growing faith, increasing love, steadfastness through persecution, are these three marks seen in your life. Would you call yourself a healthy Christian? If God were to look at you, would He see someone that is worthy of His Kingdom? Are you happy with the way that you are living your life? Can you see in your life a faith that is growing? Is your love for others increasing? Or do you think you need to reevaluate your life? When your physical body starts to feel a little weird you go to the doctor to be check up on right? Don’t you think it’s important to do the same thing for your spiritual body and your spiritual life? What is going on in your life right now? Are you spending time with God? Are you persevering through adversities? What are the things that you need in your life in order to be a healthy member of God’s Church? God is preparing you for a Kingdom and He is preparing you for a King that reigns forever and next week, we will see that it is a good thing when God prepares Christians for His Kingdom because those that God is not pruning, those that God is not preserving, those that have rejected God and hated Him and His Son, they will have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. How will you stand when that time comes? For Christians, the day of Christ’s return will be the greatest day in human history but for all unbelievers, it will be a day unrivaled in affliction. Let’s pray.

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