Ye turned unto God
from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his
Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus (1
Thessalonians 1:9,10).
Pauls first letter to the
Thessalonians, divided into five short chapters, can be read
entirely in about ten minutes. As we take it up, we find
ourselves in the presence of two or three quite clearly defined
things. First of all, we find ourselves in the presence of
Christians at the beginning of their Christian life. These
Thessalonians were comparatively new converts, and the apostle
speaks much about their beginnings - how they started, and how
they had got on so far - and so it is a message about the
beginnings of the Christian life.
Then we find ourselves in the
presence of the apostle saying that these comparatively young
Christians were most exemplary. He had no fault to find with
them, but everything to commend. He said that he gave thanks to
God always for them all; and he went on to say that they
had become an example to all that believed (1:2,7).
And then we find that the
apostle is defining the Gospel that he preached, which produced
such Christians. He uses the word our Gospel, the
gospel which we preach, speaking about his
Gospel; and then he gives us an epitome of his Gospel, his great
Gospel, in a few concise statements. It is a good thing to be
able to have the whole wonderful Gospel, in all its great range
and content and potentiality, gathered into the compass of about
four clauses. It needs a master hand to do that. We are going to
look at them quite simply and briefly. They occur, as you see, at
the end of the first chapter.
Turning
to God from Idols
Ye turned unto God from
idols, to serve a living and true God. That is the
first stage of the Christian life. Now, although they were pagans
formerly, in a pagan world with all its system of idol worship,
and you might think that it is not quite right and hardly fair to
compare people of a Christian country with those
pagans and to class them all together, I want to point out that
in principle and in fact the classing of all unsaved people with
those pagans is quite right. Ye turned unto God from idols
to serve - or to worship, for that is what the
word here means - a living and true God. Now, the
principle here, a principle which has many forms in many
different times and ages and parts of the world, is just the
same. These people had been giving the worth-ship -
for that is the meaning of worship - of their lives to other
objects than God. Who is getting the worth-ship of your life -
God, or... whatever else it might be? If you are not giving it to
God, then you are giving it somewhere else, to something else,
and that is idolatry. So the first stage of a true Christian life
is this - the realisation and recognition that God is worth your
giving everything to Him. He is worthy of having the worth-ship
of your life, of having laid at His feet all that you have and
are.
Now, when Paul and his
companions - you notice he speaks in the plural, we give
thanks - came to these people, he set forth in the first
place the worthiness of God to have their lives, and to have them
and their all; and as he set forth the true and living God, they
perhaps suddenly came to realise - Oh, how different from
what we have been doing! How unworthy has been the way that we
have been going in comparison with this! It is the seeing
of the worthiness of God in Christ. We sometimes sing, as we seek
to emphasize and reiterate the all-captivating worthiness of the
Lord Jesus -
Marvel not
that Christ in glory
All my inmost heart hath won.
That is where it begins.
Anything less than that, anything other than that as a beginning
will find us out sooner or later. Here is One who, by reason of
His self-manifestation and of the great work that He has done for
our redemption and salvation, is worthy to have everything that
we count worthwhile in life. That is very fundamental.
As we go on in the Christian
life, it is upon that very thing - our foundation, our beginning
- that we are tested again and again. It comes up repeatedly - Is
Jesus Christ worthy of this? Is God worthy of this? Is this
something that is too valuable to give up to Him, for Him? What
place does He have in comparison with this? And if at the
beginning there is any faultiness or weakness about that, we
shall find ourselves sooner or later held up, until we have got
through on the sheer and pure question of whether He is worthy.
These people made such a good
start, and went on so splendidly, and became the kind of
exemplary, praiseworthy Christians that they did become, because
they settled it very thoroughly in their hearts at the beginning
- There is nothing in all the world worth feeding with our
worship in comparison with this One. It indicates the deep
and large place that the Lord took with them from the start. And
that is the ground of testing all the way along: How large a
place has the Lord got in our hearts? Some of us know that, even
after many years of the Christian life, we are challenged - Is
the Lord worthy of this? Is He big enough even for this? Can we
stand up to this test as to His worth-ship?
And so it all comes back - I was
going to say, to the simple question, but it is not a very simple
question sometimes - Has He got us, has He got us captured and
captivated, has He taken the full place in our hearts? You go
bounding on if it is like that. You do not bound on if it is not
like that. When we have controversies and questions, any kind of
reserve, wanting our own way and our own interests, to serve our
own ends and do our own wills, and we are up against the Lord, we
do not go on; we are held up. You will see people going right on
when there is no division of heart between the Lord, themselves,
and other things; when He has got them altogether. The Lord would
make an appeal to us to look to the very foundation of our lives.
After all, the Lord does not
accept our head knowledge of Christianity and all its aspects.
The Lord does not accept all our informed mind about the church
and the cross and what not. The Lord looks right into our hearts,
and says, How much have I got of you? How much are you
still holding on to your own way and your own will, your
own course and your own programme and your own interests? I do
not ask how much you have got into your head, but how much have I
got of your heart? That was very precisely settled by these
Thessalonians; and so it was possible for the apostle to say
about them: I thank God always for you. How good it
would be if those who are concerned for our spiritual lives, and
have us on their hearts, could look at us and say: Thank
God there is no reserve in that life, there is no hold-up there;
they are going right on. The Lord has got His hand on them, they
are right out for the Lord.
A living and true God.
That is only a little qualification or characterization. After
all, if we give our lives and pour them out in any other
direction than for God, we are pouring our lives into the sand.
There is going to be no return. It is death, from which there is
no coming back. It is an end. Sooner or later we shall find that
out, that that kind of thing leads nowhere but to a dead end. We
shall see something more of the meaning of that in a moment.
The living and true God. That is the appraisal of
God. He is the living and the true God, and
everything else to which we might give our lives is false - it
will prove itself to be empty. He is the living God, He is the
true God, and we shall find that to be so. If there is one thing
about true Christian life, it is the absolute reality of God.
Sometimes that reality is not a pleasant thing to come up
against, but it is at least reality, and we would sooner come up
against God, in reality, in an unpleasant way, than not know
where God is or is not. Far better to have a living God who
checks you up, who deals with you and chastens, than to have no
God at all, or to be in question or doubt as to whether God takes
any notice. No, to a true Christian, God is very living and very
true, very real.
Waiting
for His Son From Heaven
Ye turned unto God from
idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son
from heaven. Many people have failed to
recognise that that is a part of the foundation of the Christian
life, and that it is a part of the Gospel of our salvation, and
it is fundamental to a really right kind of Christian life, such
as is here. To wait for his Son from heaven. What did
that mean for them? We know what Paul has to say about the coming
again of the Lord Jesus. Amongst a great many other things, it
means this one thing, that everything of hope for us and for this
world is bound up with the kingdom of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Apart from His coming and bringing in His kingdom, there
is no hope. For the Thessalonians it implied that all the natural
pouring out of their lives had been a hopeless thing; that they
had no future really for which to live; that life and the world
was a great enigma.
But when they came to the Lord
they did so on this basis: Gods Son is coming again, and
that will put everything right. Everything is bound up with
Christs kingdom which is coming. It is, of course, one of
those strange enigmas that the world still has false hopes of
putting itself right. Someone has said that all that we
have learned from history is that we have learned nothing from
history, and that is just what is happening. We are
learning that we have not learned anything, and yet men hold on
for a better world. They are getting into deeper and deeper mire
and perplexity, they do not see any way through, and yet all the
time they are seeking expedients to save the situation and save
the world, but it is a counsel of despair. The Word of God makes
it perfectly clear that there is no hope for humanity and for
this world apart from Jesus Christ being in the place of absolute
Lordship in His kingdom. And these Thessalonian believers came to
see that. They did learn something from history. What they
learned was that it gets you nowhere - except into more and more
trouble, more perplexity, more and more despair. Then they saw
that Gods Son is coming from the Heavens to set up His
kingdom, introduce His reign, and all will be well.
That is fundamental. Let us get
it settled right at the beginning - not as something further on
in the Christian life, and not as merely the study of prophecy
about the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus - that the foundation
that our hope does not rest upon anything of prospect in this
world. We have no hope at all for this world as it is, apart from
Jesus Christ, but we have a solid and firm hope and confidence
that He is coming, and when He comes all will be well. We shall
be lifted above all that which keeps us back, holds us up, makes
the going so hard. He is coming! We have often said something
like this: Is it not remarkable that, when we Christians sing a
hymn about the coming of the Lord, something happens? It is not
just that we have a lovely idea, and as we think about our lovely
idea we feel better. No, it seems that the Holy Spirit comes in
on it, and when we sing about Jesus coming again, we go home
feeling better just for having been reminded of that, just for
having entered into the spirit of that. I believe that this is
true to law. The Holy Spirit is managing everything in the light
of that day, and when He sees the people of God occupied with
that glorious day, He says, That is what I am after,
and we feel in ourselves a wonderful sense of uplift and life and
deliverance. How many poor souls in their sufferings and
afflictions and trials have been lifted clean out and up by just
being reminded - The Lord is coming - it will be all right when
the Lord comes!
Many years ago I used to visit
an old couple, poor as church mice so far as this world is
concerned, living in one room. The old man had never moved out of
his armchair for twenty years. He could not be left, and his wife
was with him, pottering about, very rarely going out. They had
nothing in this world. Twenty years, you know, is a long time to
sit, in weakness and limitation, in an armchair in one room - the
same old scene, surroundings, pictures, ornaments and everything
else every day for twenty years. Were they very, very unhappy,
miserable people? No, not a bit. I used to pay them a regular
visit every week, and they were always a rebuke to me. A smiling
welcome: Come in, Mr. Sparks, and talk to us about the
Lord! We heard what you were preaching about last Sunday, and we
have been enjoying it so much, and so on, and so on. They
were just above it all. And what was their hope? To the end their
hope was - The Lord is coming! It was their sustenance. Now, it
was no false hope with them. He did not come in their lifetime,
but it was not therefore a false idea, a misplaced expectation.
No, the Holy Spirit bore witness in them, in their lives and in
those circumstances, that, whether they lived to see it or not,
the coming of the Lord Jesus would put everything right. It was a
mighty inspiration to them.
These Thessalonians, if you read
the little letter again, knew something of adversity. You
received the word in much affliction, the apostle says.
They knew ostracism, they knew persecution, they knew what it was
to be frustrated in business transactions because they had become
Christians. They knew physical suffering and temporal suffering,
but they went on. They were examples. Why? Simply because they
knew - The Lord is coming! To wait for his Son from heaven
was something settled right in their very foundations.
Faith in
Christ Raised from the Dead
And thirdly - his Son from
heaven, whom he raised from the dead. What
did that mean for them? The only One, after all, who can raise
the dead is God. Now if God, who alone can do it, raised Jesus
from the dead, that implies - nay, that declares and attests -
that the purpose for which He died has been accomplished. Jesus
died. Why did He die? In His death He accomplished a perfect
salvation, a perfect redemption. He died to deal with the whole
sin question, the whole question of condemnation. It was a
finished work, and God, who would never have raised from the dead
otherwise, raised Him, and in so doing attested the work for
which He died as being a completed and perfected thing.
Now the Thessalonians saw that.
We know that from Pauls teaching. He raised Him from
the dead. Therefore the whole sin question is a settled
thing: forgiveness is secured, salvation is established, God is
satisfied. Oh, that we got that into our foundations! The thing
that we are constantly up against in Christian lives is
condemnation, accusation - this undermining of the fundamental
fact that God is satisfied in Christ for us. There is no meaning
in justification by faith if that is not what it means. We make
mistakes, it is true, we blunder, we default, we err, we sin.
Then all the forces of hell rush in, with their ever-determinate
purpose, to say that Christs death was unavailing, it has
not accomplished the work that is claimed for it, you are still a
sinner under condemnation.
What awful devastation these
evil forces make when we let them have ground. What is the
result? Ours is a very jerky kind of Christian life. We go on for
a little while perhaps fairly well, and then down we go. We come
up and go on. A little further on, down we go again under some
further condemnation, because of some fault, real or imaginary.
We make ourselves the playground of the devil. Now the settling
of all this is right in the very foundation of our Christian
life: that Jesus was raised from the dead by God as the universal
declaration that this whole matter of sin and condemnation has
been settled in His cross. Until you have got that, you will
never go on steadily and become exemplary, and those who are
concerned for you will not be able to look at you and say, Thank
God for them. But even there, if you have been like that,
do not let what I have said become the very occasion of
condemnation. If you have been like that, get out of it. God has
not only raised Him from the dead, but also, says the apostle,
raised us up with him (Eph. 2:6). Therefore we have
no right to be down. Dont you argue with the devil or let
him talk to you. Our place is up there, because God has set His
seal to the mighty death of Jesus Christ. No wonder there can be
such Christians as these Thessalonians, if there is a foundation
like that.
Delivered
from the Wrath to Come
And then finally, whom he
raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivereth us from the
wrath to come. Now here, a shadow steals in, a
shadow we do not like even to take account of; but we should be
unfaithful if we did not look at this other side, this dark side,
and face it fairly and squarely. For the Word of God declares
again and again that wrath is coming: there is a day of wrath,
what Paul here calls the coming wrath; something
quite precise, quite definite. It is the coming wrath.
There is a thing which is on its way, and that is what is called
wrath. It is something clearly defined, clear-cut,
settled, unavoidable. It is coming, and it cannot be escaped,
except by one way.
Let us look into this. What is
that day for? Why does it exist? Why has it been appointed and
settled and defined? Let us be clear as to one thing. It was
never, never appointed for man. It was appointed for Satan and
his whole kingdom. After all, in this universe there are only two
gods. The one may have many representations, in the countless
forms of idol worship, but behind them all there is only one
person: it is Satan, and Satans object from the beginning
has been to displace God in the worship of man, to set Gods
Son aside, put him out of His place. Satans determination
is to be in the place of God.
The number of those in this
world who would deliberately claim to be Satan-worshippers is
probably comparatively small. But it does not matter how we put
it. There are two gods, there are two objects of worship, one of
which is receiving the worth-ship of our lives. One
of them is this rival to God, who would take Gods place,
who would supplant the place of Gods Son, Jesus Christ, as
Lord. He has many, many subtle and beautiful ways as well as many
awful ways. Satans first way is always the beautiful - do
not forget that. He was more beautiful than all the creatures
that God had created (Ezek. 28:12-15). Even Satan,
says the apostle, fashioneth himself into an angel of light
(2 Cor. 11:14). That is how he comes to capture Gods place.
It is hardly believable, but he does. Satan does not come in the
first place in the traditional form, with the tail and horns and
pitchfork, and horrible leer, and belching fire. He can get your
life very much more easily and quickly by offering you his baits
- prizes in this world, and so on, as substitutes for Jesus
Christ. If you repudiate him, if you do not take that way, then
he will try to force himself upon you by cruelty and destroy you.
Now, for that one, be he the
horned, tailed monster, the awful dragon, or be he the angel of
light - he is the same being, the same person - for him, and for
all his hosts who are with him in his foul work, God has stored
up wrath, the day of wrath. If that one is receiving our worth-ship
and not God, then the day of wrath will find us, will include us.
That is the terror of the Gospel. God never meant it for us. For
this is the wonderful, wonderful fact: that every man, woman and
child in Gods creation is redeemed - not has got to be
redeemed, but is redeemed. You are redeemed. You
may not have accepted your redemption, you may not have entered
into the blessings of your redemption; but Christs work on
the cross was for all men, His redemption was for all. God has
not got to redeem you, He has not got to do anything more for
your redemption; He has done it all and offered it to you. But if
you spurn it, do not accept it, refuse what God has done, you are
tacitly taking sides with the other one, you are involved with
him and with his object of not giving God his place. And so the
day of wrath will overtake us - not only Satan and his angels,
but us - unless we have come to this One, Jesus, Gods Son,
who delivereth us from the wrath to come.
These Thessalonians were
delivered from all fear of the future, all dread of the day of
wrath. Those terrors had no meaning for them. Their faith in
Jesus Christ meant complete deliverance from anything like that
in the future. No day of wrath for them! All wrath, all judgment,
all condemnation, all death, all punishment had been emptied out
for them on Gods Son, and they had come to accept that.
They were free people. They did not dread the future, they did
not fear the afterward. Upon their horizon there was no dark
cloud of coming judgment. Jesus, who delivereth us from the
wrath to come.
If we can get settled on these
four things, we shall have a very sound foundation, and, blessed
be God, we shall have a very exemplary Christian life. It remains
for us to decide where we are. No child of God, however advanced
they may be, should be displeased at having had this brought
before them. All the way along we need to see exactly where we
stand: what is our position and what is our hope, and to keep it
always in view. For any who do not know the Lord, it is an
immense challenge, with immense consequences involved. The Lord
help us to do what the Thessalonians did: turn to God
... to wait for his Son... whom he raised from the dead...
who delivereth us from the wrath to come.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Jul-Aug 1955, Vol 33-4