Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. As we look around the world today, we can see that the exact blueprint of what a church should be seems to be subjective. Big, small. There are so many criteria, but let’s go back to the foundational churches and see what made them a success. Paul? First Thessalonians chapter 1, a truly successful church.

The Apostle Paul wrote 13 letters that are preserved in our New Testaments. Most of them actually are to local churches or their leaders, which he and his team founded during their missionary tours we described in our study of Acts, the history of the earliest Christianity. This one, 1 Thessalonians as we call it, begins with these words: Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians, which just means it’s a letter from Paul, his two principal partners on that second missionary journey, Silas and Timothy, to those who accepted the gospel and formed a church in Thessalonica when they were there. Thessalonica, remember, was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, the northern half of Greece. When I say formed a church, what pops into your head? Is it an image of a building that you’re familiar with, church?

Or maybe it’s more a feeling that you associate with that term church. What church means to you is probably based on your personal experiences, if you have them, or general impressions of organizations that call themselves churches if you don’t. It could be of 50 people on a Sunday morning in a small frame building in the country singing, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Or 500 people in an imposing stone cathedral, kneeling and reciting memorized prayers. Or 5,000 people in a very modern venue clapping to a loud pop band replete with flashing light shows on stage. Very different experiences, but each of them, and others as well, are for different people their idea of church.

But can we capture what this key New Testament term church, which appears here at the outset of this letter and in so many other places throughout the New Testament, really means? Let’s focus in on that for a few moments. I can tell you from looking at that question quite a bit that Paul and the other New Testament writers do not anywhere describe for us how many people must come together to form a church, or in what kind of facility a church must meet, or prescribe some specific order for a church service to follow, or even the style of music that could be used. There’s no prescriptions like that at all in the New Testament. It certainly seems that, when it comes to describing all of the most obvious things we think about that define our church experience, the New Testament is vague. And this is an interesting thing to me.

Apparently, intentionally vague. Why would that be? Well, I think there is a good reason. Since the church is God’s idea for this whole era, since the day of Pentecost in 33 A.D. until Jesus comes back again, whenever that is, those who will come to know and follow Him from every society and culture around the globe will be forming churches. And it certainly seems like God has wisely given to us flexibility to design those churches and the experience people have at them that will work best in our place and in our time. Think about that.

Isn’t that another good indicator that the New Testament was inspired by the Holy Spirit and not just the result of men’s ideas? I mean, you have to know that if it was just the product of men’s ideas, there would be very specific prescriptions written down about how many people could form a church and how often it should meet, what a house of worship should look like inside and outside, and what exactly should happen when people gather there. How many songs should be sung? Where do these songs come from? How much time should be devoted to prayer? Does someone lead those prayers?

Does everyone pray at once? How long should a sermon last? What topic of sermons should be covered each Sunday of the year? A lot of denominations, you know, have prescribed exactly these things and more, actually. But God is not. God’s much wiser than we are.

He certainly knew a one-size-fits-all approach for church would never, ever work. So although we read constantly in the New Testament about different churches in different places in Acts and the New Testament epistles, you’d be very hard-pressed to come up with any kind of clear description of what they were actually like. We’re just not told. I mean, did the church at Thessalonica, which received this letter, have a dozen members? Fifty members? Over a hundred members?

We don’t know. Did it meet in someone’s large home or in some public building? We don’t know. How about in a park someplace or an outside venue? We don’t know. Did a service feel kind of formal or did it feel very informal?

We don’t know. Instead, what God wisely did, He gave us in the New Testament general directives, I call them, and objectives for the local church, which allows Christians in different places and living in different times to design ways to fulfill those directives and meet those objectives. What in the world am I saying? Good church leaders should look at the New Testament’s directives, what should the church be doing, and objectives, what is it trying to accomplish, and then figure out in their time and place what are the best ways we can do that here. That’s what we should be doing: clarifying what God’s Word says the church should be up to, and then designing services and ministries to best accomplish those things. This is important to recognize and understand.

God’s concept, the local church, is for this whole age, as I said, from Pentecost until Jesus returns, and for everywhere on the globe. In the New Testament, we are given these directives and objectives, meaning God tells us what the local church is to accomplish, but He doesn’t prescribe the exact means to get those things done. He gives us the freedom to determine what will work best in our place and in our time. A church existing in 2024 in Sydney, Australia, or Vilnius, Lithuania, or Berlin, Maryland, may well need to be different from one in 50 A.D. in Thessalonica, Greece, in order to be effective, don’t you think? The failure to recognize that is what has led to institutionalism.

By institutionalism, I mean when religious leaders design and then religiously prescribe everything about a church experience, and then try to force that blueprint onto congregations in different times and different places. You know what that leads to after a while? People just going through the motions, repeating forms which may not at all be working to achieve God’s objectives, perpetuating forms designed by men, replaces pursuing and accomplishing the purposes for which God designed the church in the first place. Purposes like what? Well, let’s ride this tangent since I’m on it for a couple of moments. When Jesus returned to heaven, he left his followers with the Great Commission, as we call it.

That was to carry the gospel message to all the people in the world, and then to teach those who accepted it all the things that he had taught them. I always like to use two E words to summarize Jesus’ Great Commission: evangelism, that comes from the biblical word meaning to proclaim the gospel message, and edification. That’s a biblical word that means to build people up in their faith. From the outset of the Christian movement, we see the apostles proclaiming the gospel message, and then those who accepted it gathering together to be built up in their faith. You can see this clearly right from the beginning of the book of Acts, the history of the earliest church. Listen to the end of Acts chapter 2.

It says there, So those who accepted his, that’s the apostle Peter’s, message were baptized, and that day, the day of Pentecost, 33 A.D., about 3,000 people were added to them, that is, the congregation of earliest believers. Then it says this, importantly, They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And the believers were together and held things in common. They sold possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had needs. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and they broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.

And every day the Lord was adding to their number those who were being saved. So, from the outset, the gospel was proclaimed, and those who accepted it came together to learn more of what it meant to follow Christ as the apostles taught them what Jesus had taught them. They worshipped God together. They joined in prayer together. They observed the Lord’s Supper together. They had times of praise together.

They shared with and served each other’s needs. They built a real fellowship, by which I mean a connected community. And they reached out with their faith, and the church kept growing and growing. That’s a healthy church, friends. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that either. This is what Paul and Barnabas replicated in Antioch, Syria, which became a model that Paul and his teams then replicated in the Gentile cities they visited, like Thessalonica and elsewhere.

They shared the good news, that is, evangelized, then formed a community of those who believed, appointed leaders for it, created a setting where edification could take place, building up these new believers in their faith through times of worship together, teaching and applying God’s Word, forming deepening relationships by loving and serving one another’s needs. These early churches were like spiritual families. Not all of them were growing and healthy, of course, but apparently this young church at Thessalonica in Macedonia was. Paul calls them at verse 7 an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia, that is, all of Greece. He has nothing but good things to say about this church.

If you remember from our study of Acts, Paul and Silas, who he calls here in his introduction by his more formal name, Silvanus, along with Timothy, had come to Thessalonica on their second missionary journey. It was around 51 A.D. This city was exactly the kind of place Paul liked to target. It was large for the time, around 200,000 people is the estimate. It had a significant Jewish population and so an active synagogue, which gave the missionaries a natural place to start sharing the word. It was also strategically located.

Paul liked to target major population centers from where the gospel, once a healthy church had been established, could radiate outward. Thessalonica was ideal because it was an important port city with commercial ships coming and going constantly, and was also strategically located right on the busy Roman highway called the Via Egnatia, a road that linked the eastern and western halves of the empire. I like Paul’s line in chapter one where he says, For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith is heard of. The message of Christianity was ringing out, reverberating from this young Thessalonian church as people, won to faith in Christ there, spread the good news of the gospel just through their normal travels and business.

Paul’s descriptive word means rang out like something like a satellite dish receives a signal and then is able to transmit it in all directions to many, many people and places. The Thessalonian believers had received the gospel message from Paul and his team, and now it was reverberating from them all over the place, affecting all of Greece and even beyond that, Paul said. What exactly were people hearing ringing out from Thessalonica? What was making such an impositive impact from their ministry? Paul says at verse 3, he was hearing good reports about their work produced by faith, their labor motivated by love, and their endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. That formula of faith, hope, love might sound familiar to you.

One of the most well-known passages in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13, is a place where Paul is exhorting another early church in Greece to pursue those virtues. What Paul was hearing back about that church in Corinth was just the absolute opposite of what he heard about from Thessalonica. Most of the first letter to the young Christian church in Corinth was urging them to correct problems and to get their focus back on God’s objectives. By faith, he meant confidence in God and His Word, that it’s the truth, that it’s our foundation, that it’s sure. By hope, he meant focusing on what God promises us in the future, the return of Jesus and all the good things that will follow that. And by love, he certainly meant treating each other kindly, selflessly, treating others as more important than ourselves.

The Corinthian church badly needed to correct problems and to refocus on these things. But in contrast, the Thessalonian church was excelling at these things. Word had spread all around about their rock-solid faith, their hopeful endurance in the face of difficulties, and their love for each other and their community. It was a very healthy church. The Thessalonians had learned by example about faith, hope, and love by watching Paul and his team when they were there among them. We see that from verses 5 and 6.

He says, You know how we lived among you for your benefit, and you yourselves then became imitators of us and of the Lord, in spite of your persecutions. As valuable as it is to teach people the truth, how much more effective that becomes when leaders also live it out clearly, when leaders are, in fact, examples and models of it. The Thessalonians who accepted the gospel when Paul and Silas and Timothy were in their city were able to see the apostles conducting themselves, how they reacted to things, to opposition and persecution. And like infants and toddlers observe their parents 24/7, constantly learning by copying and imitation, these early Christians in Thessalonica learned from the apostles when they were there what it meant to be people of faith and hope and love. You know, all of this should challenge Christians and Christian leaders today, don’t you think?

Congregations are going to reflect the qualities of their leaders. If you’re a church leader, how is your faith? Do those who you influence believe that you have absolute confidence in God and His Word? How is your hope? Do you confidently overcome obstacles? Do they see you keep after the work of the ministry because you believe in God’s promises?

How about your love, both for them and for the lost? Do they feel that is what truly motivates you? If so, you’re probably leading a pretty healthy church because people in your church family are going to pick up these genuine spiritual qualities and imitate you like a child imitates a parent. They’re going to reproduce them in their own lives. I’m not a very big reader. I hate to admit that to you.

But every now and then, I come across something that really affects my thinking. When I was a young pastor, I came across some books by a man named Gene Getz, who was both a seminary professor and also a church planter. One short little read was titled The Measure of a Church. It was all about the fact that too many ministries at the time had come to measure success, in North American churches anyway, by very wrong criteria. How big and modern are your facilities? How many attenders are in your Sunday school?

What kind of operational budget do you have? But when you read First Thessalonians or elsewhere in the New Testament about early Christianity, none of those things even existed. Yet clearly, some of those churches, like the one in Antioch, Syria, or this one in Thessalonica, Greece, are pointed to as exemplary, as very successful. Gex makes the point in that little book that from the text of the New Testament, letters written to local churches, what we see commended are the qualities they are producing in their members, like faith, hope, and love. A body of believers that’s clearly manifesting these qualities was successful in Paul’s eyes. I think it’s safe to say, in God’s eyes too.

Admittedly, these qualities are not as simple to measure as the square footage of your buildings or how many zeros there are on your annual church budget’s bottom line. But we should try. We should ask, is our church producing people with a solid foundation of faith in their lives, with confidence in God and His Word? Are we producing believers who live expectantly, positively, even through difficulties, because they have confidence in God’s promises, knowing their future is certain with Him? Are we producing believers who love one another, their neighbors, their community, people who are generous and unselfish? If so, your spiritual leaders are undoubtedly teaching and probably modeling these things, and you are in a very good church.

You’re part of a successful ministry the way God measures success. But if not, you should pray about whether those things are even salvageable in your church, whether they are correctable. If you conclude they are, become part of the solution. But if you honestly conclude that because of spiritual unbelief that has crept into many churches, or too many generations of mission drift as you’ve gotten off onto other things that are not even important in the Bible, your local church is no longer winning people to Christ or effectively building them up in the faith any longer, you probably need to find a healthier local church that’s busy making a difference for the cause of Christ and plug yourself in there. Church hopping, I’m not suggesting that. That’s no good.

But find a ministry that is reverberating faith, hope, and love around their community and beyond, and plug in there. The Great Commission is too critical to not be vitally involved in a church where both evangelism and edification are the focuses of the organization’s energy and resources. I can’t leave chapter one without mentioning that those who are familiar with the Thessalonian epistles probably associate them first of all with teaching related to the return of Jesus and events surrounding the end of our age. It’s noteworthy that each chapter in 1 Thessalonians, where the chapter divisions were placed, each ends with a reference to Jesus’ return, as here at chapter 1, verses 9 and 10.

When Paul is commending this church because of their great reputation and influence, he writes, They, referring to those who brought him good reports about the Thessalonians, they themselves report what kind of reception we had from you, how you turned away from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who will rescue us from the coming wrath. You can’t read the New Testament without realizing that these early Christians were expecting, as Paul says here, waiting for Jesus’ return from heaven. We’re going to get into that fascinating topic as we proceed further in 1 Thessalonians. But I wanted to comment on something that came up in our last epistle, the epistle of James we just finished. I passed over it then because I knew we would get into this topic more in 1 Thessalonians, and here it takes center stage.

But in James, you may have read this and wondered about it. He makes a couple comments that are relevant. Listen. This is James chapter 5, verses 7 through 9. Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord, for the coming of the Lord is near. Don’t complain, brothers and sisters, against one another, so that you may not be judged.

Behold, the judge is standing right at the door. When James exhorts his readers, who are going through tough times, to be patient in their circumstances and with each other in their circumstances, he says to do so because of the Lord’s return being near. And then he goes on to say, the judge, again a reference to Jesus, who will evaluate believers’ lives when he returns, the judge is at the door. Both Paul and James, and I could show you the same from Peter and John and Jesus himself, stress the return of Christ is near, and so their readers should be looking expectantly for it. He’s just on the other side of the door, and at any moment he could push it open and suddenly reappear. That’s a very clear image, isn’t it?

But almost 2,000 years have now passed. In what possible way could we say that they were not wrong about that? We’re going to get into this, so stay with us as we explore the truths in the New Testament’s Thessalonian epistles. Thanks, Paul. What a great insight as to not only what makes a church, but also it’s an important challenge for each one of us to look at the churches we attend and see how they measure up. As a Great Commission project, everything on Share the Word is done with the goal to not only share the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ, but we also pray that the Holy Spirit is speaking into your life with the message that you may need for your life.

Are you listening? And are you sharing God’s Word with others? Don’t forget to check out sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.