Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

How do you respond to hard times?

Do you respond with joy or with discouragement?

When things are tough, what do you do to find joy?

Is it possible to find joy that cannot be shaken by the circumstances in life?

Involvement:

These are the questions that we can ask of ourselves as we turn to our text this morning.

Context:

As you can see, this morning we are going to continue our series through Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.

Last week, we reviewed as we started looking at this letter that this is really the second letter that Paul wrote to be preserved in our New Testament.

Paul wrote this letter because he was concerned about this young church.

Paul, along with Silas (Silvanus as he is known by his Latin name in this letter) and Timothy, had come to Thessalonica after being released from prison in Philippi.

They arrived in Thessalonica and immediately started sharing the Gospel.

As we saw last week in Acts 17 there were some who believed, but it wasn’t long before serious opposition arose in that city…so serious that Paul and his friends had to get out of town quick.

As soon as he could, Paul had sent Timothy, the youngest member of their team back to Thessalonica to see how the young believers were faring.

Timothy had found that the church was doing well…the believers were standing firm and growing in the grace of Christ.

It was in response to this favorable report that Paul wrote this letter to send back to the believers so that it could be read to them when they gathered together for worship.

Paul had received good news.

We would expect that he might be thankful to hear that things are going so well and that is what we found as we started looking at the first three verses last week.

What we also found, though, is that Paul is directing his thanks to God—God is the One who is responsible for the growth that Timothy has observed in the Thessalonians.

Paul knows that and he thanks God for it.

He also wants to ensure that the Thessalonians know the same, so he tells them that he has been thanking God for them…they need to know that what is happening in their lives is because God is working in them.

Ultimately all praise goes to God because God is the Source of their growth.

This morning we will be picking up in the middle of Paul’s thanksgiving.

He, along with Silvanus and Timothy, has already thanked God for a threefold evidence of growth reported by Timothy in the Thessalonians.

This threefold evidence is actually the first reason that Paul is thankful to God.

Since we are in the middle of Paul’s ongoing thanksgiving, let’s read verses 2 and 3 of chapter 1 again to remind ourselves of Paul’s thanksgiving…<read>

As Paul thanked God for their evidenced of Christian life he mentioned three things: their work of faith, their labor of love, and their steadfastness of hope.

Illustration

We focused on this last week, but it is so important that I want to emphasize it again today.

We thank God for what He does in our lives…and every spiritual thing that we find in our lives is evidence that God is at work.

All too often, we find joy in what God is doing but we forget to thank Him for it.

We may indulge a child who receives a present and in his or her excitement doesn’t thank us for it.

We expect much more of adults, though....adults are expected to thank the hand by which the present was received.

Even more so, should be we thankful for all that God has done…in both our own lives and in the lives of others.

Preview:

I wanted to review the first reason that Paul has given thanks to God because we are going to jump right into the second reason as we move into our verses for this week.

I told you last week that we were breaking where there wasn’t a period in your bibles…at least not in most of our English translations and certainly not in the Greek original.

Verse 4, where we are picking up, flows right on giving another reason why Paul is giving thanks in verse 2.

Transition from introduction to body:

Let’s go ahead and jump right back into Paul’s thanksgiving this morning and read our verses for this morning…we are going to read verses 4–7 this morning, as you can see on the screen above me…<read>

These four verses really give a single reason for why we should thank God but we are going to build that reason up in three steps today so that we can think through what Paul is saying in these verses.

Let’s start our idea out this way…

BODY:

I. God’s electing love should cause us to thank God.

In verse 4 we see the beginning of Paul’s second reason introduced with the word “knowing.”

That word “knowing” means that he has knowledge about something.

Paul has already indicated that through Timothy’s report he has knowledge of the evidence of their Christian growth—the evidence of spiritual life that is obvious within them.

Now, though, Paul is adding something more that he has knowledge of.

The specific thing is found at the end of the verse—God’s choice of them, their divine election.

Divine election is the idea that God chose specific individuals for salvation, a choice that Paul says in Eph 1:4 occurred before the foundation of the world.

Whenever the topic of divine election comes up in our day…and frankly for the past 500 years at least, there seems to be the strong likelihood of emotions rising.

Election is one of those topics that make some of us uneasy…and one which some of us may think that we don’t even like very much.

If that’s the way you find yourself responding at this point, let me ask you to force your emotions to go on hold for a moment and let’s look at what Paul is specifically saying in these verses.

Remember, he is giving a reason for which he is thanking God.

That means that in Paul’s mind, divine election is a wonderful thing…and we should remember that Paul’s mind is under the influence of divine inspiration at the moment.

Our responsibility is to learn to look at this topic of election in the way that he is looking at it in this passage.

So, Paul is thanking God because he knows of their divine election…yet notice what words are inserted in the verse between “knowing” and “choice”, “brethren beloved by God.”

The way this sentence is structured Paul is indicating that God’s divine choice of them is connected to two characteristics that are such a part of their lives that he can now use them as forms of address—ways to speak to them.

One, he can now call them “brethren.”

And two, He can now call them “beloved by God.”

Let’s take the second one first.

“beloved by God.”

When the topic of divine election comes up, some people make the charge that it suggests that God is unloving because He only chose some people and not all.

They attempt to use the doctrine to paint God as ultimately cruel; they say that there is no other logical conclusion: if God could have chosen someone for salvation, ensuring that person’s eternal soul, and yet He did not, then God, then God is a cruel God and thus they reject the idea of divine election.

Such a picture of election, though, is completely contrary to what we see here…and really throughout all of Scripture.

Scripture always…let me repeat that…always connects the idea of God’s choice—divine election—with God’s love.

Consider for example, Deut 7:7–8 which sounds somewhat like our passage here:

“The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

God’s love is presented in Scripture as the source of God’s election.

The Bible teaches that God elects individuals because He loves them.

What is removed by the biblical doctrine of election is any aspect of human worth or merit.

God never elected individuals because of any virtue inherent within them—which is a good thing because every single one of us have nothing that we could offer in that sense to God—God doesn’t elect because of any virtue inherent in people, He elects because He has chosen to love them in spite of what He might find in the individual.

Illustration

We can somewhat understand this idea of choice as we watch new parents with a baby…I haven’t been in a position to observe Mark and Joy with Levi, but I fully expect that this observation holds true for them as the most recent example.

Parents love their newborns babies.

They love them because they choose to love them, not because the babies have done anything to earn that love.

I would assume at this point in life, from an objective standpoint all that little Levi has done is still a lot of sleep from the parents, filled a lot of diapers with less than glamorous keepsakes, and consumed an amount of financial resources that far exceed his size ratio to the family.

Levi has contributed nothing of objective value to the family, he only takes.

Maybe he has contributed a few smiles, but even then you really don’t know if he is just passing gas or something.

He really brings nothing of value—no virtue—to the table; and yet he is undoubtedly loved.

In fact, we would think there was something wrong with the parents if he wasn’t.

We expect them to choose to love Levi.

Well, God has chosen to love those He saves.

There is no explanation for it other than God’s choice.

He chooses and He loves.

And Paul thanks God for it.

Remember, God’s choice is also connected to the reason that Paul is addressing them as brethren as well.

You see, when God choose to love, His love transforms people from different sectors of society—different economic groups, different nationalities, different cultures, different tribes and tongues—into a united family of brothers and sisters.

A family which can address God as their loving Father.

This is a revolutionary way of thinking about the relationship between the human and the divine.

In the world of the NT…the world in which the Thessalonians lived, all interactions between the gods and the people were designed to placate angry gods or solicit favors from distracted gods.

There was no thought of a familial-type of relationship with a god, none of the many temples were for the purpose of communing with the god.

Yet, Paul says the true God is a God of love who chooses to pour out that love in a saving manner that results in a new community—a community of brothers and sisters who are able to bask in His love.

Application

We need to remember this distinction because it is still the ultimate distinction today.

The God of the Bible is a loving God; all false gods created by human minds are not.

The human mind cannot conceive of a god who chooses to love those who are unlovable.

Frankly, we even struggle to understand it when we see it written in the words of God’s own revelation to us.