Sermon Tone Analysis

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.

1 THESSALONIANS 1:5

The key, as I want to show you, to the whole first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is found in verse 5.

But I do not propose merely to deal with that statement.

I also want to look at the entire passage because I want to try to show that in this chapter the great apostle deals with a modern problem, perhaps one of the most pressing and urgent problems confronting the Christian church at this present time.

That problem is none other than that of evangelism.

I know that it is not always referred to in those terms at the present time.

We do not talk as much as we used to about evangelism.

We feel that we are living in a different world, that people are different and that we are different.

So we have our new terms, and now the problem is the problem of “communication.”

But, of course, this is just another instance of the way in which we fool ourselves by changing terms.

It is really the same old problem, the problem of evangelism.

As we know, every section of the Christian church is very concerned about the problem of evangelism and has been trying to deal with it for many years.

Many commissions have been set up.

Many gatherings have been held.

Many books have been written on the subject.

There is a feeling that somehow or other the Christian church is failing to get her message over to the world that is outside.

We believe that this message and this alone can deal with the problems of mankind.

But the question is, how can we communicate this?

Another new term is articulate.

How can we articulate the gospel?

How exactly are we to do this?

This is causing great concern because, we are told, we are living in a post-Christian era, we are living in the atomic age, the scientific age.

And somehow the idea is that people are now altogether different, and it is no use doing what the church has done before and in the way she has done it throughout the centuries; we must have something new.

For these reasons there must be some new way of evangelism and of communicating the gospel.

And great effort and endeavor has gone into the attempt to discover how exactly we can do this.

Now some feel that we need a new message, a new gospel.

They say, “It’s no use asking modern people, with their scientific knowledge, to believe what their forefathers believed.

It’s no use asking them to believe in a three-tier universe.

They know too much, scientifically, to be able to accept the miraculous and the supernatural and so on.”

There is a movement on the continent of Europe associated with a man named Rudolf Bultmann.

This movement says that the greatest hindrance to the acceptance of the message of the New Testament is the fact that unfortunately there are accretions, additions, to the essential message—additions such as the virgin birth, miracles worked by our Lord and the apostles and others, and the whole idea of the supernatural.

Bultmann teaches, and many on the continent of Europe follow him, that the thing we must do is to get rid of the supernatural and miraculous element.

We must “demythologize” the gospel, we are told, before it can possibly be accepted by people today.

Many others are propounding their theories and ideas also.

These men say that what we need is a new message for this new age, for man come of age, for man grown up.

Another major school of thought says, “That isn’t what’s needed.

It isn’t so much a new message we need as new methods.”

These people concentrate entirely on the question of methods.

They say, “How does big business succeed?

How does any enterprise succeed in the world?”

And they look around and discover that success is achieved as the result of advertising.

You need a little money to advertise, so they persuade people to give it.

They present themselves and promote themselves, and an advertising agency comes into being.

And then they say that secular agencies use certain instruments—television, radio, and so on—and these agencies understand the psychology of the people, the psychology of salesmanship; so the church must become interested in these things.

She has a commodity to sell, as it were, a message to give to the people, and she must learn from big business and from the advertising people.

This is how to achieve success.

A great deal of attention has been paid to this question of method.

Particular types of services are planned almost down to the last minute, and in these services everything is designed to appeal to the palates of modern people.

It is argued that as long as we adopt these new methods, the people will come and listen to us, and the gospel will be propagated and will begin to influence their lives.

Now it is important that we should be aware of exactly what is happening.

The argument is that if we apply one or the other of these methods, and perhaps both together, then the church has some hope of getting her message over to this post-Christian world, to this atomic age.

I shall not weary you by analyzing those theories in detail.

My whole position is simply that all this is entirely wrong because it is based on the assumption that we are faced with a new position, and that is something that I cannot grant even for a moment.

There is nothing new about the problem confronting the church.

The church has always had this problem, and that is why I am calling your attention to this particular chapter in Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians, for here is an account by the apostle Paul of how the gospel was propagated and how churches came into being in the first century.

This letter is said by the scholars to be the apostle’s first epistle, and that is interesting in and of itself.

In this first chapter Paul reminds these members of the church in Thessalonica of how the gospel came to them and how they had become a church.

I want to show you, and it is very simple to do, that when the apostle went to Thessalonica, he was confronted by precisely the same problem that confronts us at this present time.

And that is why I am saying that instead of wasting our time trying to discover a new message or how to apply methods used by the world to bring success, all we must do is go back to the New Testament and discover how it happened at the beginning.

If you read church history, you will find that all the great eras and epochs in the history of the Christian church, the times when she succeeded most of all and when masses of people were converted and added to the church, were always those periods when the church went back to the apostolic method.

Indeed, I do not hesitate to make the assertion that you can try anything else you like, you can have your conferences and congresses and spend your millions in advertising, but it will achieve nothing finally.

We must return to the apostolic method, and here the great apostle tells us exactly what he did and how it happened in this first age.

There is no need to consider anything else whatsoever.

So, then, what did happen?

The apostle tells us quite simply.

Let me remind you of his position when he went to Thessalonica.

Here is a little man, nothing much to look at.

The Corinthians said, “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Cor.

10:10).

Paul did not look like a film star; he was most unprepossessing.

He had just a few people with him when he went to this city.

It was a pagan city, a part of Macedonia, what is now Greece.

Its citizens had no biblical background.

We are told today that the modern man cannot follow our preaching because he does not understand biblical terms such as justification.

That is why some new translations or paraphrases of the Bible are brought out, and people feel that if only we had the Bible in everyday language, everybody would believe the message.

Well, they did not understand the terms in Thessalonica either.

They had no background whatsoever, as I shall show you.

But the apostle went there, and as a result of his visit and his preaching, a church came into being.

And the apostle Paul tells us here exactly how it happened.

It is an amazing summary of the apostolic method of evangelism.

He tells us that there were two major factors.

The first was the preaching of the apostles.

This was essential.

Our Lord had given the message to these men.

He had given them the commission and the mandate.

And they had gone out, and they had preached.

This is always an essential.

You must have preachers.

We must have preachers in our homelands.

We must have preachers in other lands that can still be described as pagan.

Now I am a believer in books and in reading, but there is no question about this—it is the spoken word that has always been honored supremely by the Holy Spirit—preachers, truth mediated through personalities.

And as you think of the teeming masses in many countries today—nations in South America, Asia, the Far East, and other parts of the world—you see the crying need for preachers, for men and women who will go, as these apostles went, over their part of the world preaching the gospel, preaching this message.

Preachers are needed as much today as they have ever been.

Oh, I know that at the present time many say that the day of preaching is finished.

We must have what is called “dialogue”—which means discussion—but dialogue sounds so much better!

They say we must sit down and talk to people.

Others say that all we must do is spend our time reading modern literature and studying modern art and drama and then go and talk to people about these subjects.

And others say we must go in for politics and discuss politics and social conditions.

All these new ideas and new methods are being put before us and praised and advocated.