Perseverance

Introduction

You know the worst part of being married to a preacher or having a preacher as your dad. Now, not me in particular, just any preacher, is that you’re likely, very likely, to be used as an illustration in a sermon. I can feel Deedra cringing as I speak. You know, sometimes it’s we’re put in awkward positions when we feel like we need to compliment someone. You ever been there? You ever given just maybe a false compliment because you kind of felt pushed into the situation that you needed to compliment a meal that you just ate, or a speaker that you just heard. Let me tell you a true story. All of my stories are true, by the way. They may seem unbelievable, but they’re true. We were out at one of the parks one day, and there was a lull in the conversation.

I turned to my beautiful bride and just looked in awe at her.

And I just said, You’re beautiful. Deedra turned and looked at me and replied, You’re tall. Not exactly the compliment I was fishing for, but to be fair, I put her on the spot, and sometimes we’re pushed for what compliment we’re going to give. And to her credit, she didn’t lie. But sometimes we give false compliments, don’t we? Because again, we maybe feel like we need to say something and we don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. But I’m confident that biblical writers didn’t do that. That when the apostle Paul handed out compliments, that they weren’t false compliments, and they weren’t hollow. Well, you turn with me to the book of 1 Thessalonians. The Apostle Paul is in his praise of the Christians in Thessalonica. And it’s my firm contention that he’s not just saying this because he feels like he needs to say something nice to these Christians before he gets on to them.

Because the Apostle Paul is honest and truthful, and he is not just speaking honest and truthfully, he’s speaking by inspiration. These are the words of the Holy Spirit. And so I truly believe that every word that the Apostle Paul speaks, even these words of compliments toward these Thessalonian Christians, are absolutely the truth. This is the way Paul feels about them. Notice what he says about them. First Thessalonians chapter 1. Let’s start in verse 2. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of love, your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and Father, knowing, beloved, your election by God. For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and the Holy Spirit and much assurance, and you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake.

And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples. You became examples to all who are in Macedonia and Achaea who believe. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place.

Us from wrath to come. What a compliment. Now to understand that compliment, we need to put it in his context. And so let’s talk a little bit about this church, these Christians in Thessalonica. They were new Christians. It’s difficult sometimes in our minds to put the epistles, these letters that Paul and the other apostles wrote in their kind of timeline chronologically with the book of Acts. They didn’t necessarily always come long after the book of Acts. In fact, if our understanding is right, Paul wrote both first and second Thessalonians, probably about a year after he had established that church in Acts chapter 17 on his second missionary journey. And so they were new Christians, probably just a year old in their faith, and they had obeyed the gospel in less than ideal circumstances.

You may remember there in Acts chapter 17 that those less noble Jews in Thessalonica had literally run Paul and Silas out of town for fear of their lives. And we know based upon the language of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians that that persecution remained, that these Thessalonian Christians faced that opposition and persecution after Paul and Silas left. And it’s to these new persecuted Christians, Christians whose faith came out of very difficult circumstances, that Paul just praises, just gushes in praise toward them. He says, your faith, love, and hope is an example to everybody. The word has sounded forth in Macedonia and Achaia and everywhere. He says, everybody knows about you in your faith, love, and hope. Now, I want you to imagine being a member of that Thessalonian church.

I don’t know exactly how these letters worked. I know that they would have somehow had these letters delivered to them and they would have read them. I imagine that they were probably read at their assemblies, probably on the Lord’s Day. That one of the men, maybe one of the shepherds, got up and said, brethren, we’ve got good news. We’ve got a letter from the Apostle Paul. You remember him. He was here a year ago. He’s the one that taught us the gospel initially. And you remember how he had to leave under those circumstances. But he’s written us a letter. And so today, instead of having our normal, we’re going to read that letter. Don’t you imagine? Maybe that’s the way it happened in those circumstances. And we’re going to read that letter from the Apostle Paul.

And one of the men would stand before them and read that letter. And can you imagine as Paul read that? And he talks about your faith, love, and hope, and how that everybody, Macedonia, Achaea, and everywhere. Everybody knows about you and your faith, hope, and love. What do you think their response was? Do you think they were going, yeah, yeah. We’re a pretty big deal. We knew that. No, I don’t imagine that was the case at all. I imagine they were going, really? Little old little us. People know about our faith. We’re an example. Because that’s what good godly people, they’re shocked in their humility, that they’re an example of faith, love, and hope to everyone else. But I imagine they were encouraged by that compliment, real, genuine compliment.

Look over in 2 Thessalonians. It doesn’t end there. Again, if our understanding is correct, the book of 2 Thessalonians was written right on the heels of 1 Thessalonians. And notice what Paul says there.

And the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other. So that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith and all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which also you suffer. Again, he says, your faith and love are evident, manifest evident. But here in the second letter, he doesn’t just say your faith and your love, but he says your faith has grown exceedingly, and your love abounds in that. I want us to use these Thessalonian Christians as an example for us in how that we can persevere, of how we can be faithful in the midst of difficult circumstances.

1. None of Those Excuses Are Offered

You know, excuses are easy to be given. Excuses to why we don’t do something that we ought to do, or maybe excuses why we do something that we ought not to do in our lives. I’m telling you, if somebody could offer excuses, it could be these Thessalonians. Again, if our understanding is right, they’ve been Christians about a year.

Be easy on us.

That’s evident in Acts chapter 17. Paul and Silas left for fear of their lives. And those troublemakers in Thessalonica actually followed them and chased them to Berea and ran them out of that town. That’s the people they had to live and work with. Those troublemakers.

We are not the Christians that we ought to be, or maybe we’ve even given up our faith. And you know, when you’re making excuses, you can be irrational in those excuses. Here’s an excuse I could see given by these Thessalonians if they were so inclined. Well, Paul just abandoned us. We needed his apostolic leadership. We needed his teaching, and he just baptized us, and we were barely wet, and he leaves town. He and Silas and he left the B team here, Timothy and Luke, and we we needed him. And he just goes off and here, he’s off somewhere else preaching. What about us? But none of those excuses are offered. So Paul writes to them again shortly after their conversion and commends them. Commends them for their perseverance.

2. Your Faith Grows Exceedingly

And so this church, their faith, their love, and their hope sounded forth in Macedonia and Achaia and the whole world, and it’s still echoing. We can still read of these faithful Christians and how they persevered in the midst of difficult circumstances. And that gives me hope. Gives me hope to say that I can persevere. If they did it, I can do it. And it shames and silences me and my excuses as to why I cannot persevere and grow. And so let’s look at this triumphant that that triumphant that Paul uses, and it’s one that’s used throughout the New Testament that he uses that I think is the key for their perseverance, that will be the key for our perseverance, that we follow in their footsteps. He says, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and in verse 3, that your faith grows exceedingly.

Why did they persevere? Why did they persevere in the midst of difficult circumstances and surroundings? Because not just they had faith, but their faith grew. We cannot overemphasize the importance of faith. The Hebrew writer would say, without faith, it’s impossible to be pleasing unto God. And we, and I would argue that most all Christian denominations argue and put an emphasis upon faith. But we need to also put an emphasis upon not just faith, but a growing faith. Not just enough to have faith. Faith has to grow. Or we won’t persevere. That faith that we had initially when we obeyed the gospel, oh, that was important. Without it, we couldn’t be well pleasing unto God. Without it, we would be lost. But if we maintained that level of faith, that degree of faith, then we’re probably going to be lost.

Faith needs to grow. Because the need for our faith is going to grow. You know, in our memorial service for India yesterday, we made the observation through her own words conveyed by her son Mike that India not only knew that her redeemer lived, that’s one of the songs that we sang, but she knew her redeemer. She talked about in those last moments of her life about knowing God and having that relationship to God, and we emphasize that importance. So we talked about that kind of the two levels of the word knowledge. It can mean knowing things, but more importantly, it can mean about knowing God, that have that experiential, having fellowship and a relationship with God. The word faith takes on a similar attack to that.

Faith can talk about the idea of knowing or believing things about God, and certainly that’s an aspect of faith. We believe there is a God up in heaven though we’ve never seen him. We believe that Jesus came to this earth though we did not witness it and performed those miracles and taught those teachings and died and rose from the dead. But there’s another level of faith to faith, and that is the idea of our trust in him. We believe not just in his existence, but we believe in him.

What does that look like? And how is that accomplished? It’s a real gut check moment, I think, for Christians, whether you’ve been a Christian like they had for a year, or whether you’ve been a Christian for years, is my faith growing? As important as my faith was the day I entered into this relationship, the day I obeyed the gospel, has my faith grown exceedingly. Look with me at an incident. Hold your finger here in 2 Thessalonians, or maybe put your bookmark there. And I want to notice a story in Matthew chapter 8 of Jesus and his apostles. Matthew chapter 8, and I want to start in our reading in verse 23. A familiar story, and the main point of this story is Jesus’ ability to calm the sea.

But notice what happens here. Matthew 8, verse 23, when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him, and suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves. But he, that’s Jesus, was asleep. Then his disciples came to him and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us, we are perishing. But he said to them, Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and sea, and there was a great calm. So the men marveled, saying, Who can this be that even the winds and the sea obey him? Oh, you of little faith. I think that’s explained by their question. Who is this? I think Jesus seems to be indicating they should have known who he was.

Should have known that he had the ability to do that. Oh, you of little faith. You know what’s amazing about that statement about those men of whom it is said. That’s the same men who turned the world upside down. That’s the men who, from our eyes at least, would never waver in their preaching and teaching of the gospel in the book of Acts. That’s the men through profound courage, faith and determination, spent and gave their lives, and taught with such wisdom, courage, and faith that we marvel at it. The lesson of that is they only did that because their faith grew. And like the Thessalonians, it grew exceedingly. That can happen to me too. Though it may be at times in my life, I could be described, oh you of little faith, that my faith can grow.

3. Your Love Abounds Toward Each Other

I can accomplish those things, and I can be as wonderful as Paul describes those Thessalonian brethren. If my faith will grow, I can persevere. But the other thing he said in that text, your faith, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other. He had mentioned their love in chapter 1, their love for one another. But now he says, your love abounds. Grows exceedingly.

Paul loves his adverbs and his adjectives of describing, going over the top. It abounds. The idea of abounds is it goes over and above. They were able to persevere. They were able to receive these sincere compliments, not just from the Apostle Paul, but from the Holy Spirit of God, because their faith was growing and their love was growing. Their love was abounding. Love in the first letter, abounding love in the second letter. Your love grows for one another exceedingly. But the connection I want us to make this morning is not just the importance. Strike that, not importance, the necessity of love. Scripture makes it abundantly clear that love is essential. Essential to our relationship to God. And if we just want to just boil it down to the very basics of it, you’re not going to heaven without it.

But we make the connection not just between love and a relationship to God and love getting into heaven, but love and our perseverance. We’re not going to finish this race unless our faith grows and unless our love abounds, unless our love grows. It’s that the key to that perseverance. They were able to make it through their difficult circumstances, the challenges that they had, because they had an abounding love for one another. God doesn’t do things flippantly or accidentally. We’ve made this observation before, but we’ll repeat it again and again and again. God could have set things in order such that our faith could be an isolated event. We could have what I call Batman Christianity. Remember the old Batman, I’m not up on the modern day Batman.

My Batman is the pal zoom guy from the cartoon, the TV show back in the day. That Batman would do all these things and then he would drive, and remember that with a secret cave, and he would go into that cave, and nobody knew who he was or where he was. God could have set up Christianity that way. You be a Christian, but don’t tell anybody else about it. Keep it to yourself. This is a personal relationship between you and God. Nobody else needs to know about it. You just live your life. But God didn’t set it up that way, did He? God made this a very open thing that you’re to be evangelistic. You’re to tell, trying to bring others in. And not just that, it’s to be, and I don’t mean this in a trivial earthly way, but it’s to be a social relationship that we’re to seek out others of like precious faith, as Peter would say.

And we’re to unite with them and to fellowship with them and to encourage and admonish and even discipline one another in that relationship. Because the God who created us and made us this way knew that we were social beings. Now I know there are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, God said, You need people. And so find people. Find people with whom you have something in common, the most important thing in common. I know I have kept this a secret from you. And I rarely talk about it, but I’m from Alabama. And when I live out of state like I’m doing now, I’ll tell you about the first preaching, full-time preaching I did out of state was in Missouri. Goplin, Missouri. And I would embarrass my family in a lot of ways.

But this particular way I’d embarrass my family. If anybody ever walked by with an Alabama shirt or ball cap on, I would make a beeline to them. And I would say two things to them. The first thing I would say is roll tie. And the second thing I would say is, are you from Alabama? Where? And that would strike up a conversation. And we would talk about it.

And I’m a little slow, you know that too. And when we lived in North Alabama again, and I’d see somebody with an Alabama cap, and I’d walk up to them and I’d say, You from Alabama? And my kids would say, Dad, we’re in Alabama now. We’re drawn to people with whom we have something, a connection, a relationship. That when I was living in that foreign land of Missouri, it was great to find somebody else who was from Alabama. When we’re living in this ungodly society and world, it’s wonderful to find somebody that has the same home that I have, the same faith and hope, love that I have. So God said, find those people and help those people, and they’ll help you.

4. Hope Can Get You Through

So many times, the Bible puts these together faith, hope, and love. There in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 in verse 3, he commended them in that not hollow compliment for their faith, their love, and their hope. That’s what had caused them to persevere in the midst of difficult circumstances. Faith, their growing faith, love, their abounding love, and their hope. Hope can get you through so much. Sometimes hope. Seeing through the darkness, seeing through the difficulties and the struggles, and seeing to that better existence is the best thing that can cause us to persevere. So God gives us heaven. And God gives us heaven not just as that final reward. But he gives us heaven as a means to persevere. Because as bad as this world might be, as bad as it was for those Thessalonians, and as bad as it might be for you and I, know this, that as bad as this world is, because there’s heaven, this isn’t so bad.

Conclusion

I can persevere. I can endure because of that. And because my trust in God is growing. And because of you, and because of our abounding love for one another. Can you do it? Can you persevere? No matter what life, the world, Satan throws at you. Somewhere in that great beyond, the Thessalonian Christians are yelling at you, yes, you can. Yes, you can. Would you make the decision that these good brothers and sisters made some 2,000 years ago on that second missionary journey when Paul preached to them the gospel? He saw something in them, or God saw something in them. He saw the faith, hope, and love that could grow in them and cause them not only to obey the gospel, but to grow and to persevere.

And God sees that same thing in you. And we help you this morning as you obey the gospel or as you return, as you seek prayers of the brethren in any way that we can, we reach out to you as together we stand and as we sing.