title: gripped by the gospel...title: gripped by the gospel page 1 of 17 6 th january 2019 gbc-hp 1...

Title: Gripped by the Gospel

of 17 6th January 2019 GBC-HP 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Luke Thomson LT.S.1Thessalonians1.v.4.1.Website.docx v 4.0

School for me was not a great season of life.

I’m not sure what it was like for you.

A friend of mine says that grade three was best three years of his life.

Although turning up to kindy with your kids and finding that the teacher that taught you kindy, was to be the same teacher that was going to be teaching your kids, was interesting, you suddenly start to feel old.

Reports sent home from school was always a time of stress for me, not sure what it was like for you.

I know generally teachers generally hate giving them, I know that some kids wait anxiously for them.

Back in the day I remember getting reports, waiting nervously for what my teacher was going to say about my performance…

I’m a guy that likes to keep people happy, I don’t like to disappoint people.

In this case, it was my parents.

I tried to find some of my old school reports and thankfully I couldn’t, all I can remember is a LOT of RED ink.

However, I did find one glowing certificate of merit for when I played hockey for school.

That is probably my best memory.

Not sure what your memories of school reports are, you may be thankful like me and can’t find them anymore.

Probably for some of you here you may have them framed and they’re there, having a pride of place on your wall for everyone to admire – I could only dream of it…

Now a days there’s reports, reviews for everything, including work performance.

But do we do this in our lives as Christians?



The reality is that it should be happening regularly as we open God’s word, which is like a mirror, that shows in our lives where we need to do better.

Today in our reading in 1 Thessalonians, is like a report, a review given by the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonian church, giving an assessment on how they’re going.

The report card for them was glowing – they did have their areas of challenge shall we say – if you read further in 1 Thessalonians that will be clear, but they were still model Christians that could be looked at and emulated, who could be mimicked for the commendable things that they were doing.

If a report was written for you and me on how we’re going as Christians, what would that be like?

What areas could we be praised for?

This morning, I’d like us to take some encouragement from the Thessalonian Christians and be encouraged by the example they give us.

Big Idea: Lives Gripped by the Gospel, make us examples of the Gospel

Gripped by the Gospel. v1-5.

Examples of the Gospel. v6-10.

Gripped by the Gospel.

The Thessalonian church was a new kid on the block as far as Christian churches go1.

Paul and his companions – Silas and Timothy – had paid a visit there2.

Paul’s practice was to attend the local Jewish synagogue and speak with whoever he found that’d listen to him.

Paul had seen the gospel gain root there with some of the Jews, a bunch of God-fearing Greeks who also attended the synagogue along with a few prominent women.

1 Acts 17:1-15. 2 Acts 16:1-18:11.



However, Paul, Silas & Timothy were only allowed to stay short time before having to leave because the local authorities were concerned with a report that they’d received about Paul, Silas and Timothy.

There’d been a riot in Thessalonica that’d been stirred up by jealous Jews, they gave the report to the local government saying that the riot was over Paul and his mates because they had turned the world upside down with this new teaching about Jesus.

They wanted Paul and his mates gone from the city.

As a result, Paul, Silas and Timothy headed off to Berea, a place to the west of Thessalonica.

However, the “lads” from Thessalonica followed them, stirring up trouble, and so Paul was then forced onto Athens, after which he then went to Corinth, where he waited for Silas & Timothy to catch-up.

While Paul was waiting for the others to catch up with him, you’d imagine that Paul would be concerned about how the new Christians in Thessalonica were going seeing that they were new to the faith and were facing heated opposition.

We can get worried at times when we don’t hear from people that we care about for one day or less, let alone a few days, or a week or weeks, or even months.

The reality is we think that we’re being snubbed if we don’t a response in less than 90 seconds to a text message that we’ve sent from our phone.

Phubbing I think is the term given – Phone Snubbing.

Illustration: Joanne on Short mission trip…

In Dec 2010 to January 2011, our daughter, Joanne, went on a short mission trip to Africa for 3 to 4 weeks, this was on top of a couple of weeks training.

Communication to and from this part of the world was not good.

In fact, Joanne wrote a letter to us while she was there, and she got back home BEFORE we’d even received it.

In preparation for this, use of mobile phones were banned by those going on this trip, even in the 2 weeks of training before leaving Australia for Africa.

Yes, that does sound harsh doesn’t it, but yes, contrary to how some feel, life can still exist WITHOUT mobile phones.

The only way communication was to happen was via letters, and that was to be only one way – from Joanne to us as parents.

It can be hard as a parent not no hear how things are going with your child in a foreign land, particularly when communication was basically non-existent.

We weren’t allowed to contact for weeks, no phone calls, no letters, no news…

The only thing you could do was to pray.



We can take communication for granted, we hear news almost instantly when anything happens, we had a taste of what it was like for Paul.

For Dot & I we were relieved when we finally heard news that everything was ok.

So you’d imagine the relief that Paul had when he hears first hand from Timothy on how things were going with the new Christians in Thessalonica.

When the missionary team finally joined back up in Corinth, they got together and wrote this letter to the new church at Thessalonica.

We see this in verse 1 of today’s reading.

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.

Actually, you could nearly picture Paul, Silas and Timothy gathered around the BBQ one pleasant evening in Corinth reminiscing and recalling the blessings of seeing what God had done in the people’s lives in Thessalonica.

This led them to praise God , we read of this in verse 2 of our passage today.

Paul praises and thanks God for them, as they remember the way that the Gospel had Gripped and transformed their lives.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. 1 Thessalonians 1:2

This Gospel transformation had been dramatic; the Christians in Thessalonica had been worshipping idols – we read this together in verse 9 – but now they’d turned to the true God.

And they did this even when faced with severe persecution.

Whatever characteristics marked their lives previously, the new believers’ lives were now marked by something different, as we can see this in verse 3.

Remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1:3

How do recognise Christian character?

It’s marked by faith, love and hope, and it’s these characteristics that marked the young church of Thessalonica, that was a characteristic of the believers there.

And it’s these 3 characteristics that Paul remembers and praises God for.

They were firstly thankful for their work of faith or as the CSB puts it Work Produced by Faith.

Work Produced by Faith



This isn’t the work that produces salvation.

Paul states clearly that Salvation happens, that we’re justified, that we’re made right with God by faith ALONE. [Rom 5:1; Eph 2:8].

However, this faith doesn’t remain, doesn’t live alone.

As it’s been said before;

The faith that saves is faith ALONE, but the faith that saves is NEVER alone – it’s always accompanied by works.

This faith results in a changed character, and this changed character is accompanied by is seen in good works, in good deeds that are done.

Good works, good deeds are things that are done that we can do to the benefit, to the advantage of others, be it your spouse, family, friends or community.

It can also include things done in service for God in seeing His kingdom advance.

But it is the source of this that counts – and that is from a heart of faith.

Good works should characterise a life of faith.

They were thankful for their Work Produced by Faith.

Paul was secondly thankful for the labour of love, the CSB puts it Labour Motivated by Love.

Labour Motivated by Love.

Sometimes we say for little things that we do for people, that it was a “Labour of love”.

This may have been something from cooking a cake or a meal to someone who’s sick, driving a fellow Christian to a doctor’s appointment to cutting the grass for the neighbour, taking a cup of tea into wife in the morning – that it wasn’t anything at all it is just a labour of love.

That isn’t what is meant here with this sort of labour.

Sweat, fatigue, toil, effort is what is meant here.

It’s this that what Paul has in mind when He thinks of the church there in Thessalonica, a people who sweat, who are fatigued, who are weary in working for the cause of Christ, for the cause of the Gospel.

Here is the cost of love that’s in focus.

The word love here is the Agape love of God – which is an active love.

It was a Love that cost God something, it cost God his Son.

It was a love that was active in the cross of God’s Son – Jesus Christ.



It was a love that did and still does demand a decision.

You can’t stand there looking at this love of God and remain the same.

It’s the Love of God that demands something.

Love so amazing, so divine, does demand something doesn’t it?

It demands my soul, my life, my all.

When we look at the love of God to us as expressed in the cross of Christ, we can’t just ignore it.

You can’t shrug and say look that’s fine for you.

Because even in that action is a decision – and that is a decision of “NO”.

And in that no is there’s destiny of the judgement of God.

For the Thessalonian church, for the Christians there, they had an active, self-sacrificial love.

They had passion, they loved with conviction.

And it was this type of love that drove the Christians on in work, in hard labour for God.

This’s something that would’ve been so encouraging for Paul, that the people he had sowed the seed of the gospel of the Love of God to had taken it, been gripped by the love of God, and they’d in turn had been sold out to it.

What about us?

Are simply going through the motions in our Christians lives?

We grab our Bibles, head off to Church, come home, plonk our Bibles down, just going through the motions of Christian life – without any passion – why is this so?

Is it because we haven’t been gripped by the love of God, that then stirs in us a passion driven labour and devotion to God, a Labour Motivated by Love?

This leads us to the third thing that Paul notes in verse 3, as it says in the ESV

steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, I like the way that CSB puts it, Endurance Inspired by Hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Endurance Inspired by Hope in Christ

Endurance, it has been put this way: An active constancy in extreme difficulty.



Endurance is a pressing on regardless of the circumstances, even in the face of hardship and difficulty.

We see this in endurance runners don’t we, particularly the marathon runners, they press on regardless of the circumstances of the weather, terrain, even what’s happening with their own bodies – pressing on through the pain, pressing on even when things aren’t going well, when things and life aren’t smooth.

Things weren’t easy and smooth for the new Christians in Thessalonica, they’d heard the Gospel right in the middle of conflict, right in the middle of conflict [1 Thess 2:2].

How did they press on?

Not only were they passionate about the Love of God, but they had a hope in the coming of Jesus Christ.

They had a firm expectation of what had begun with the resurrection of Jesus, was soon to be completed at His return.

Where did these transformed characteristics come from?

The Thessalonian Christians had been gripped by the Gospel, and this was a work done in their hearts by the Lord God.

Reading from verse 4,

For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance.

First thing to notice is that these people were the objects of God’s love.

This love has been expressed in that He has chosen us, he has elected us to salvation.

This is a most loving thing to do – left to ourselves, our destiny was the wrath, the judgement of God.

But God out of His love has chosen some for deliverance.

This is not dependant on our goodness, likability, attitude or anything nice or good about us, but purely out of His will and this happened before we could have any influence or say in the matter.

As Ephesians 1:4 tells us;



For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him.

This verse takes away anything that we could boast in.

HE Chose us, we out of our wisdom didn’t chose Him.

There’s nothing of us in this choosing by God, this is only the divine choice.

If there was anything of us in this choosing, we’d then have something to boast in.

The reality is without this divine action of God, we’d be lost in our sins.

As Leon Morris puts it.

“Left to ourselves we do not wish to leave our state of untroubled sinfulness. It is only because God first convicts us and enables us that we can make even the motion of wanting to turn from our sins.”

How the Believers in Thessalonica were convicted and drawn toward God, Paul explains in verse 5.

Reading with me there in verse 5,

because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction

How the Gospel impacted and grabbed the Thessalonian Church is similar to how it impacts people today.

From these verses we see that it comes in word.

One way or another we encounter the Gospel through words.

It could be printed, either in leaflet, book, or Bible.

It may be through hearing.

It maybe it spoken across a coffee table, or maybe from a platform like this.

It could be a combination of both through visual media, or in maybe through a media broadcast of radio, TV, or via Internet.

Whatever way we heard the word.



But like any time we hear words, it can be just words, however there are times when words come in power.

The word power here is the Greek word dunamis – it was the idea of power that this Greek word was picked up to make the English word dynamite.

The word of God is powerful in breaking through into our lives, but also powerful in transforming hearts and lives.

The Gospel is the power of God to salvation, but it’s the Holy Spirit that reveals truth to people’s hearts and minds.

And once this happens, the truth of the word of the Gospel blows right through the hardness of our hearts and our minds.

For the Thessalonian Christians, it blew right through the idols in their lives, blew the idols of their hearts away.

But there is a constructive element to this power, through the word and the Holy Spirit and they turned from the idols to the true and living God.

This has happened to many here, where you came and heard the message of the gospel, words that maybe you’d heard before, but this time it was different, it was if they had been written or said just for you at just that moment of time.

And there it cut through to your heart and soul like it never did previously.

That is the power of the word, through the power of the Holy Spirit revealing and convicting.

This leads us to the last part of verse 5.

You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

Unlike what was heard regularly in their day, Paul didn’t come talking words of flattery, hoping to please people, or looking to deceive people, or working on an angle to get money out of people.

Paul was reminding the Thessalonian Church of their own character – which had not taken away from or dirtied the word of the Gospel spoken.

There was a harmony between the character of the messengers and the message that they preached.

Paul life was an image of what Gospel living was like.

Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-8, this



we were gentle among you, as a nurse nurtures her own children. We cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.

Pauls life was an example of what a life that had been gripped by the Gospel looks like.

This leads us into our last point for today.

Examples of the Gospel.

Reading with me from verse 6

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, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

Paul, Silas and Timothy lived lives that were a model to the saving grace of God, that were models of what a life that had been gripped by the Gospel looked like.

As we already noted, that they

“cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives” 1 Thess 2:8. CSB.

Paul and his fellow workers shared and lived life among the new believers so that they knew how to live the Christian life, they could see what it looked like to live and do life as a Christian.

They could see how to do life, even when life was like going uphill, hard and difficult.

Remember that Paul, Silas and Timothy had hard a difficult time in bringing the Gospel to Thessalonica.

They’d already been the cause and centre of a riot.

Before that Paul and Silas had already been beaten and spent time in the clink at Philippi and could well have still been getting over the lumps, bumps, cuts and bruises as they walked into Thessalonica for the next round.

Hardship, persecution and the Christian life go hand in glove.

It should be expected – 2 Timothy 3:12 tells us



In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 2 Timothy 3:12.

So these guys knew how to do life, even when life was like going uphill, hard and difficult.

So they were also great models, great examples that the new Christians in Thessalonica could imitate in their circumstances.

And we can see that’s what they did

for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit

In the furnace of affliction, the new Christians had a joy, had a delight that they didn’t have before.

It wasn’t based on their circumstances, possessions, season of life, relationships, social status or employment.

But it was a joy of the Holy Spirit.

Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and that is one that should mark a believer in the Lord, and it’s something that marked these new Christians in Thessalonica.

It’s obviously not a joy because of the circumstances, it’s a joy regardless of the circumstances.

Paul and Silas were living examples for them of what this would look like.

What did they do while in prison in Philippi? [Acts 16:16-40]

They were singing!

What did the Apostles in the early chapters of Acts do when they were beaten and flogged and told in no uncertain terms NOT to speak of Jesus?

They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts 5:41.

Paul encourages us in Romans 5:3-5 to rejoice in our sufferings, and why?



knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

There’s a similar encouragement in the beginning of James 1

Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. James 1:2-4.

These verses point us not to have a joy because of the circumstances, it’s a joy regardless of the circumstances.

It’s a joy because of what it produces in us – and that is Christlikeness. it’s a joy because it’s an honour to suffer for the name of Christ, because as He suffered, so we should expect to suffer. [1 Peter 1:21]

You might be sitting here today thinking how is this possible?

I know that we’re not facing the kind of pressures and persecution that the folks in Thessalonica faced.

You might be struggling with having the kids home for the holidays, where is the joy in that?

You might be struggling in that job that you have to go in and deal with each week.

You maybe the only Christian in your class at school, uni, or at work, and they’re maybe paying you out because of your different standard of morals or worldview.

These can be relentless, maybe you can handle it for a few days, but as days turn into weeks, and weeks into months your finding it tough.

How do I stand, how do I continue, how do we find joy in there?

I think a clue to this is found in observing what happened to the new believers in Thessalonica.

Remember where they came from.



They were worshipping the idols of their hands.

However, there was a change of worship centre for them.

They turned from idols to serve the living and true God.

Their worship centre had changed, and so their actions changed accordingly.

They had changed from being self-centred, pursuing joy and satisfaction from their own hands, to one that was Christ-centred, finding joy and fulfilment in Him, through the Spirit.

The difficulty that we can face is that we may start out well, but then through time the worship centre of our hearts shift, and in stead of finding our identity in Christ, it moves to be found in relationships, things, work, pleasure.

And when these things don’t happen the way the WE want, we don’t have the joy that we once did.

We can get cranky because the little idols of our own making aren’t being satisfied.

When we change the worship centre of our hearts, our actions change accordingly.

As Paul Tripp has said:

“Worship” is first your IDENTITY before it is ever your ACTIVITY.

How did Paul and his companions have joy in the middle of such trial, how did the new Christians endure affliction and severe persecution with Joy?

Two verse in 1 Thessalonians point this out

Instead, just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please people, but rather God, who examines our hearts. 1 Thessalonians 2:4 CSB.

1 Thessalonians 4:1



Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God—as you are doing—do this even more. CSB.

They had a God-centred mindset, they were Christ-centred in their hearts, and so this was the source of their thinking, emotions, desires and motivations.

When we change the worship centre of our hearts, our actions change accordingly.

This is why these people could have joy in the middle of trial.

Do you have the joy, the delight that these people have and that was in the Lord God?

What is the worship centre of your heart?

Maybe you need a reset, to dethrone the idol that you have stood up there.

The Thessalonian Christians had it right, as Paul goes on in verse 7

so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

The joy in the middle of severe persecution was an example to other Christians in other places.

But it would seem that this example was more than just the joy, but their entire way they lived life, in imitating Paul and his companions, but also the Lord Jesus.

When you first came to Christ, who did you first start to mimic?

It’s always good to pick Godly examples.

I know it’s cute when tiny tots start to mimic mum and dad, this can be great as long as they mimic the good things you do.

However, it can be a horror as these dear little ones start to mimic things that you wish that they didn’t.

Particularly when your out visiting people, or visitors are over to your home.



You to think; “Well, where on earth did they learn to do that”?

Where did they learn to say that?

Sometimes as parents we need to go and have a hard look at ourselves, don’t we?

And we can’t say, it MUST be the spouse, we need to start at the person who looks at us in the mirror.

When we were first saved, who did we look to as examples to imitate?

Can I encourage people to look to godly examples?

We do have some great ones here at church, older saints who have walked before us.

We have great examples here in our church in the Elders and their wives as a starting point to look to for examples to imitate.

But I’d like to challenge all of us at this point, what sort of example are you in your life, in your conduct with the Lord?

Is it something that you’d like to be mimicked, or something that you’d prefer NOT to be?

Because the way we live the example we are to others can have a wide effect.

This was so here in our passage today.

Look with me from verse 8,

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.

Like tossing a stone into a calm pond, and the ripples of the stone spread out to every corner of the pond.

So the impact of the Thessalonian church in their example of the Gospel went everywhere.

So much so that Paul didn’t have to say too much.

Their life and behaviour as new Christians were an example that could be modelled.

Their joy in the middle of testing and pressure was something that could be mimicked.

Their work produced by faith, labour motivated by love, and endurance inspired by hope in Christ..

Was something to be commended.



For us here at Grace Bible Church, is there something that we could be commended for?

What would our report card look like for this church?

What are we known for here at Grace Bible Church?

Is it GRACE or is there no or little grace?

Are we, as our website proclaims, enjoying His grace?

Does this really show, and are we known for it?

The Bible, is it truly at the centre of everything we do as a church?

Are we PREACHING the Bible?

What about Church, are we building it?

And if we are, in what way are we building it?

Is it just numbers, bottoms on seats, or is there a growing and maturing process here in the hearts and lives of the people here?

As those of us here who are members, are we actively involved in these things?

Those who aren’t members as yet, are you looking to commit and get on board with us here?

What about us as individuals, what would a report card about your life read like?

Looking back on last year, how did you go?

Are gripped by the gospel?

Are we examples of the Gospel?

What sort of ripples are we sending out the world around?

Do we need a reset in our lives, a worship realignment?

This morning we do get an opportunity to do this.

Today we get to come together in communion.



For believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we come to this time to remember the death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, it’s a time to offer thanksgiving to the one who gave himself for us!

We can take this time to reflect on the love of God, that love that’s so amazing and so divine.

That love that demands something.

We can reflect on the cross, the place where the love of God was clearly on display, where His love poured out.

This can be a time where we can be again gripped by the Gospel, as we reflect back to the price paid for our sin.

It’s also a good time to pause and confess sin to the Lord God. A time to examine our lives and hearts, and to ask, “Am I living my life in the light of Jesus sacrifice, is He at the centre of my life?”

This can be a time for us to reflect, confess and set things right with God.

It’s good also to ask yourself “Am I living in fellowship with my fellow believers here at GBC?”

Because as we partake of the bread and cup, we are not only expressing our faith, belief in the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf; we are also saying that I’m in unity, I’m in fellowship with fellow Christians gathered here.

If this isn’t the case, I’d encourage you to set things right.

Lets Pray..

title: gripped by the gospel...title: gripped by the gospel page 1 of 17 6 th january 2019 gbc-hp 1...

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