October 10, 1999; No. 2962
Open your Bibles with me today to the Word of God in I Thessalonians 1:8. There we read: "For from you (that is, from the Thessalonian church) sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing."
In this chapter of I Thessalonians 1 the apostle Paul states that he knew that the believers in Thessalonica had been eternally chosen of God unto salvation. He says to them in verse 4, "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God." How was it that Paul was able to know that they were the elect of God? Was Paul given by God a look into the Lamb's Book of Life, the registry of God's eternal election, where God recorded the names of those whom He would give to Christ? No, Paul did not look into that registry.
Paul knew their election because he saw the fruits of election in their life. The truth of election is not only that God chose who will be saved and did so from eternity, based only in His own grace. But the truth of election is also that God determined to work in these elect to bring them to faith and to the fruits of faith. We read in Ephesians 1:4, "According as he hath chosen us in [Christ] … that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." We read in II Thessalonians 2:13 that God has chosen us to salvation "through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." The truth is this: God, with an unchangeable and eternal decree of election, not only determines who shall be saved but determines that in them He will also work His good and holy pleasure and bring forth the fruits of saving faith.
What were the fruits of faith that Paul saw in the Thessalonians, fruits that he traced back to God's decree of election? He says that he saw in them the gifts of faith and love and hope (v. 3): "Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father." That is, the apostle saw the great trio of Christian graces (faith, hope, and love).
But more. The apostle says that he recalls how they had received the preaching of the Word of God, and that was especially, to him, an evidence that God had worked faith in their hearts. He says in verse 5, "For our gospel came not unto you in work only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." These Thessalonian Christians had received the gospel not merely as a discourse on religious issues, nor merely as an interesting subject. But it had come to them in the power of the Holy Spirit as the very Word of God and had given them unshakable assurance. Paul sees the effect of the gospel which was preached to them. He sees the effect that it had upon their lives and especially the effect that it produced in witnessing. He says, "for from you sounded out (or echoed) the word of the Lord." Having received the Word of God, those believers in Thessalonica began to echo, to reverberate, to witness of that Word of God.
Now Paul is reasoning back from effect to cause. He sees that the Thessalonians showed faith and love and hope. He sees that the Thessalonians had received the gospel in all of its power. He sees that the believers of Thessalonica engaged in a sincere evangelism and witnessed of the truth of the gospel. And all of this, says the apostle, could be true only if God had first elected them unto salvation. An essential fruit of God's sovereign election is that He works in us the desire to echo forth the Word of the Lord.
It is charged that those who believe in the doctrine, the biblical doctrine, of God's eternal election are people who do not evangelize. The truth is that those who are elected of God show their election by evangelism. It is because of God's eternal choice of grace that the believer embraces the Word of God with joy. Nothing is lovely, attractive, or catches our eye in the gospel unless God wills of His grace to soften our hearts so that we receive the Word. But then God makes that believer a sounding board to echo the word that we have heard. The word now begins to resound in us and echoes forth out of all of our life. This, too, was the reason of our election, or the reason for our election. God has, from the beginning, chosen us in order that we might show forth His praise. The church built by God's sovereign election, the church which is built because God from the beginning chose it to salvation out of His own free grace, will also, by the power of God's grace in them, become an echo of the Word of God.
The Thessalonian church echoed. The Word of God reverberated from them.
We want to answer this question: What is the connection between the life of the Thessalonian church and their witnessing? Usually we think of evangelism, witnessing, in terms of special activities: going door-to-door with tracts, special classes. These are good and profitable. But these activities are not first and are not most important. The Word of God teaches us that the spiritual condition of the congregation is involved primarily in the witness that the congregation gives to the community. Our witness does not begin when we go forth in various activities. But it begins in how we live together as fellow believers in the church, and how we stand towards the Word of God. Jesus said, "Ye are the salt of the earth." But a church which loses its salt, its savor, is good-for-nothing.
You see, we leave a witness before we go out, before we speak. In all that we do and at all times, we leave a witness. It is not a question of whether or not we witness. It is a question of what kind of witness we leave. And everyone plays a part in this, as members of the church: children, youth, adults - all the members of the church. It is in the way of first living a sanctified life, a holy life together in the church, under the Word of God, obeying that Word of God. That is the foundation of a church which proceeds to echo forth the Word of God.
From this chapter we learn that there were a number of things that characterized the life of the church in Thessalonica which are given for our example.
First of all, they genuinely received the Word of God as it was preached to them. In this chapter Paul is reminiscing. He is recalling how the gospel he preached to the Thessalonicans had been received. He says that it came not only in word, not only as a string of words, some new philosophy or fad. But it came in power, a power of the Holy Spirit, even as Jesus had promised. And it came in much assurance, so that the people came under conviction. As Paul preached to them, the Holy Spirit of God worked in their hearts as they heard that Word, and that Word possessed them and brought them under assurance and conviction and brought to them the joy of their salvation. And they received that Word, says Paul, in much affliction and joy. That is, that Word came at a cost in their families and in their business. They had to suffer for the Word of God. They did not look at that Word of God with a blasé attitude. But the very power of heaven broke into their souls through the gospel as Paul preached it to them in all of its truth and wonder. The gospel, you see, did not come to them through gimmicks. It did not come to them through beautiful buildings. It did not come to them through the charisma of the preacher. No, the Word of God was taught to them, it was preached to them. And by the Holy Spirit, their hearts were opened that they embraced it.
How did Paul preach to them? He tells us in Acts 17 that he reasoned out of the Scriptures. He spoke out of the Scriptures. He expounded, he made known the truth of the Scriptures. Still more, he says to us in Acts 20:27 that he left out nothing. He spoke the whole counsel of God - all of the truth of the Word of God - as the truths of the Word of God are not a hodge-podge mixture of various contradicting ideas, but as those truths are all arranged around one center, all hanging upon one line. That one center and line is the glory of God - the absolute sovereignty of God! That means that God is almighty, that all things are of God and by God and unto God, as we read in Romans 11.
That Word the Thessalonicans eagerly received as the Holy Spirit worked in their hearts.
Not only did they receive the Word preached to them, but they also lived it with a reverent faith. They expressed a faith, says Paul, that was toward God. They had a vibrant faith in God, a faith of devotion. Their faith was exemplary. It became a pattern, says Paul, for others to follow. It was a faith God-ward, that is, it was reverent, a reverence towards God. That is what characterized these believers in Thessalonica.
That sounds very strange today. That is the missing element so often today, the element of reverence. Many in the Christian church feel put off by reverence for God. But the Thessalonian faith was, above all things, reverent. They stood in awe before God. Their faith was not a giddy, superficial, flippant, surface faith. But it existed in a reverential fear and knowledge of God. Fear came upon every soul. We read in Acts 9:31, "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." Their faith was genuine because they had been brought before God in His majesty and in His grace. They saw that they were dead sinners, that they had no claims upon God, that they could not lift themselves up by their own will out of their debt. They saw that all of their salvation was of God's grace working in their hearts. And they embraced that not as a dead doctrine, not with stiff formalism. But it produced in them a reverence and a godly awe of the Almighty. A sense of the presence of the Holy One was with them.
What was the nature of that church? This was the nature of the church that echoed out the Word of God: there was a loving reception of the Word preached to them, and there was a faith which breathed out a reverence for the majesty of God. When those two are in the congregation of the Lord - a reverence for God and a love for His Word preached - then the results will be that the congregation echoes the Word of God. "For from you sounded out the word of the Lord," says the apostle, "not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing." Echoed, literally sounded out, reverberated, resounded. The picture is this: Through the life and witness of the Thessalonians, the Word of the Lord was resounding throughout the region. As sound waves or as an echo goes out over and over again, being heard everywhere, extending ever broader and farther, so the Thessalonians, in their life as they went forth upon the roads, upon the sea-lanes, in the shops, with their friends, as they traversed the Mediterranean world echoed forth the Word of God. So much, that Paul says, we need not say anything. The apostle is not saying that his work as an apostle and preacher of the gospel was no longer needed, no longer necessary, that he could just as well be quiet. No, but he means that as far as reporting, giving an explanation of the faith and zeal of the Thessalonians, he did not need to report or explain to other Christians what had happened in Thessalonica because it became evident from the Thessalonians themselves. And, as far as defending the reality and truthfulness of the gospel as having come now to the Thessalonian believers, he did not need to say anything. He needed not to say, "Yes, those people there are sinners and are very weak. But there is still a church there." No, he did not need to say that. It was very plain to all that Christ's church was established in Thessalonica because the believers echoed the Word.
The Word of the Lord which the Thessalonians (and we) speak, you understand, did not originate with them or with us. An echo does not create the sound. It repeats the sound. They had received the Word. They spoke that which they had seen and heard. They did not add to the message. They did not feel compelled to speak in tongues to add various things to the Word of God. No, the Word of God that they heard through the lips of the apostle in plain language that they understood, that was the Word of God. That is what they spoke in intelligent languages, spreading forth the Word of God.
Still more. It is an echo that reinforces. It passes the sound on with power. An echo is not a muffler. The power of the Word went on. The Christian, you see, does not simply absorb the sound of the Word of God. Oh, we do absorb. We pull that, by the grace of God, into our hearts. But then that Word of God must also sound out. The child of God becomes an echo of the Word of God.
The Word of God to you is purely academic and outward if it does not live in you. Then you hear it and it sinks into the gray matter and it peters out and you become absorbed in all of your own things. But when the Word of God is received to the soul, then that Word continues to echo in our lives. And it reverberates down through the valleys, going out and out so that our witness goes on and passes from one to another. You never know where that Word is going to end up. God does. But we never know.
I am reminded of what we read in II Kings 5, during the ministry of Elisha and of Naaman. And of how Naaman was told that there was a prophet in Israel who could heal him of his leprosy. That word came to him through a little girl who was carried captive - a little girl of Israel who was made a maid to Naaman's wife who, almost in an off-hand way, said to Naaman's wife, "Would God, my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria. For he would recover him of his leprosy." Just the word of a little girl, repeated by a wife to her husband, and Naaman heads off for Israel. That is the power of God's Word.
Your calling as a member of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is to live a holy life in your neighborhood, in your school, in your office, in order that your holy life and your words may be as an echo of the truth that God is God.
That applies to you children. Children, your life with your brothers and sisters and with your neighborhood friends is important. It is as important as a sermon. Sometimes people cannot hear what we say in a sermon because of what they see in our lives and how we live with each other. Would someone who knows you and whom you would bring to a worship service learn something radically different about the gospel? Or would he have a feel for what the gospel is and what he will hear from the pulpit because he knows you and has listened to your words?
Would you invite your neighbor to church and perhaps be afraid and say, "I hope the minister doesn't talk about this or that. Repentance. Separation from the world. Eternal election. I wouldn't want my neighbor to know that I believe that." Or would your neighbor already know?
We must live a life which is consistent, like an echo of the Word of God. We must echo that Word by our life and by our speech.
From you, says the apostle, echoed forth the Word of the Lord. Are you one who has been a recipient of grace alone of the Word of God? Have you been brought to know the truth of your salvation, that it was founded in God's eternal election, not in you, not in your will, not in your choice, but that it was God alone who, from all eternity chose and determined who would be saved and, by grace, rescued you out of death so that your salvation is not built upon something you did or you decided but upon what God has done? As a result of that election, has God, then, continued to work in you so that you receive and love the Word of God? Then the Word of God will also echo from you - wherever you go, wherever you are. Your life, then, will be as an echo of the living Word of God. And it will be said of you, "For from you sounded out the word of the Lord."
May God so graciously grant to you and to me.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for Thy holy Word. We receive Thy Word, O Lord, for our instruction. We are comforted to know that our salvation is of Thy grace. But now, O Lord, knowing that wonder of grace, and having received that Word of God by the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and possessing by Thy grace a faith filled with reverence for Thee, may it also then be that our lives echo the truth of Thy Word, that we may never, O Lord, be ashamed of Thee before others, but may our lives and our words be of such a character that others will see and hear the Word of God in us. Amen.
Last Modified: 21-Oct-1999