Echoing Christ

 

Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Focus: Witnessing

Function: to help people know the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives

¹I Paul, together here with Silas and Timothy, send greetings to the church at Thessalonica, Christians assembled by God the Father and by the Master, Jesus Christ. God’s amazing grace be with you! God’s robust peace!

^2-5Every time we think of you, we thank God for you. Day and night you’re in our prayers as we call to mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ, before God our Father. It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.

^5-6You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined to live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master. Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble.

^7-10Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you? The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—you’re the message! People come up and tell us how you received us with open arms, how you deserted the dead idols of your old life so you could embrace and serve God, the true God. They marvel at how expectantly you await the arrival of his Son, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescued us from certain doom.

My goal this morning is to help us see how the power of the Holy Spirit is inside of us to witness our faith to other people.

Just last week, while looking at a map I noticed how close we are to Pleasant Hill Missionary Church. I was raised in the Missionary Church, as a matter of fact, my uncle was the presiding elder in the denomination. He was a great man, full of conviction and he allowed the power of the Holy Spirit to work in his life.

And true to the name, Missionary Church, I was raised with a strong emphasis on the Church’s responsibility to share the faith with the entire world. In Matthew 28:18-20 we read this: ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We call these verses “The Great Commission.”

And these were our marching orders. It was our mission from the Missionary Church to fulfill this command of Jesus and make converts of the entire world.

And according to 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 it is God’s plan to reconcile the entire world to God’s own self. And we are indeed part of that plan.

I believe in the importance of the Great Commission and take it seriously. I especially like the idea of “teaching them everything I have commanded you.” I hope you notice that I focus on the teachings of Jesus and His commandments when I am preaching. Even today, I am using the introduction to this letter where Paul commends them for their incredible witness to their faith as a way to get back to what Jesus said in his final instructions to the disciples. I love to focus on Jesus.

When I read this text, I read Paul’s commendation to them for the way they were growing the faith beyond themselves.

So they too, like the missionary that Paul was, were taking this command from the Christ to reconcile the world to God seriously and it was working. And our text today tells them why it is working.

They were doing it in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus commission, he says that because he is given all authority and he is with them, they are to go out trusting in his power to transform people through the love that they show to others.

I wish I was always as loving as Jesus.

Love is the Spirit’s witness to the world.

In the Matthew 28 Commission he gives them some components to this work.

The first is to be willing to Go. Go is the imperative command. In other words. Take the risk when necessary to show the love of Christ in a given situation.

Nest, he says: Baptize them. I don’t believe that water baptism is necessary for salvation. But I have seen time and time again, professing Christians who love Jesus and never been baptized filled with the Spirit in an overwhelming way when they are baptized by water. It is what Paul is talking about in our text when he tells them how the Spirit emboldened them.

I think that step of baptism, in obedience, is a public witness to our faith. But, be careful, baptism doesn’t restore a person who does not repent from doing the things that are destructive to themselves and others. From 1 Peter 3:21 we read that baptism is a symbol of the fact that we have given over our lives to Christ and are trusting in his power to heal the brokenness in our lives.

I was filled with the Spirit of Christ when I was baptized, it was an experience that I have seen repeated in others and sometimes not. It isn’t feeling that confirms our faith. But God’s promises to seal us in his love by the power of the Spirit inside of us according to 2 Corinthians 1:21.

The spirit is the breath, the power, the life giving force in the supernatural world that energized us and opens the door to the success in showing our faith in the midst of trials like the Thessalonians were doing.

Paul commends them for the way they obey, even thought they suffered.

About suffering. Witnessing was the word I heard when I was growing up.

We are concerned with how we appeared to those around us. Did they see us as followers of the Christ? Or did they see us as the same as them?

Because of this, some of us adopted the plain dress so that we could indeed be seen as different.

I have always been concerned with showing Christ in the way I love and practice forgiveness more than in the way I look.

But the word witness here has a connotation to it that is kind of scary.

The word witness in the New Testament is actually Martyr.

Paul commends them for the fact that once they received the word of Christ, they were persecuted because of their beliefs and they stayed true. They witness by the way that some of them were martyred for their faith.

That is kind of scary.

Sadly, I heard a lot of shame in my motivation when I was growing up. I was taught to be a witness and unless I was willing to go as far as being a martyr, I really didn’t love Jesus.

Shame does not come from God. God’s love empowers us to be faithful. It is up to God, not us.

I never was allowed to question why love for Him demanded that I die.

And sadly, it was just a bad focus.

Yes, Christians were martyred for their faith throughout the Roman empire.

Remember, the first thing they did with Jesus’ teaching was start a commune.

When they said, “Jesus is Lord” it was a political statement and that was a capital offense. The only legal and correct Roman response was “Caesar is Lord.”

Jesus came, he said, to establish a new kingdom in the hearts of men and women and it had a completely different value system to the Roman system of economics and government.

We read in the epistles how Paul commanded them to follow Christ by sharing their resources, some freeing their slaves and etc because this is a different kind of Kingdom than the ones of mankind that do not exist to care for the least of these.

So, they became martyrs for the faith because they were wiling to live by different values.

I mentioned that I had a bad focus when I was told that I didn’t love Jesus unless I was willing to die.

But Jesus said and is still saying, come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.

I preach this because I do not want you to be afraid of failure. You are already doing this obedience to Christ ministry. And I commend you for it.

If we get to the point where we are called upon to be martyrs, success won’t be up to us.

In that Matthew passage that we used to focus on the teaching of Jesus while looking at Brother Paul, Jesus said, “I am with you to the end of the ages.”

Instead of fear, Christ fills us with faith in the power of the Spirit to love God by loving others.

The believers in Thessalonica rested in this fact and endured and it was a great testimony to their faith.

May we show the love of Chrst as well.