A Real Church in a Real World

Sermon Transcript:

(transcribed with AI)

Promontory Community Church exists to make disciples of Jesus who know, live, and share the gospel for the glory of God.

Good morning. What a privilege to be here with you today. I was looking forward to this day for a long time, but I've been so busy all summer, but every now and then they let me out. So happy to be here.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jorge Salazar. I'm the director of School of Ministry. This is a Bible school with college-level education that we do here in Chilliwack in partnership with Miller College of the Bible in Canada and Bethlehem College and Seminary in the States, which is better known by its Chancellor John Piper. The advantage that we have here is that we get to study the Bible in the context of the church. One of the important things is that you don't have to go to another place to study the Bible, you don't have to move to a different city, you can do it just right here.

The other advantage is that you don't need to have been a nerd at school because you have two tracks — you can study not for credit or audit a class, and you don't have to do all the projects, all the papers, all the exams, but just get soaked into the word of God. But if you were a nerd in school or you really like the credits and all that kind of stuff, then you can do it for credit as well. It's an exciting opportunity for all of us. Pastor Jonathan was teaching one of our courses this past winter and it was just an amazing experience.

Well, let me start today. We're starting a new sermon series called All the Saints, and this season you're gonna be looking at how God is speaking to these people here, but also in other parts of the world where we have brothers and sisters that are gathering together, praising the Lord. Sometimes we feel we're swimming upstream on our own, and then just being reminded that the body of Christ is everywhere — it's exciting. It's gonna be a fascinating time.

This morning I want to start my sermon by asking you a question. What would you think if I told you the story of this kid who loves school? He loves school. He wakes up early in the morning — by 6 a.m. he's jumping into his parents' room, waking them up. "Come on, give me breakfast, get me ready, because I want you to drive me to school." And he loves school so much that when he gets to preschool, to his classroom, he just enjoys dipping his hands in the viscous green paint and then starts imprinting like 35 prints of his fingers on the sheet. All covered in paint, and he just loves this. Don't you love that this kid loves preschool so much?

And what if I told you that this kid is exceptionally smart, perfectly healthy — but he's been in preschool for 13 years. There's gotta be something wrong, right?

Well, the same happens in church. There are churches that begin in one place and they flourish and they become ascending churches and they send missionaries all over the world — churches that make an impact in their community, in their province, in their nation. But then there are churches that remain stagnant in their every Sunday service with their every Sunday sermon and their every Sunday people in their every Sunday spot, and do not share the gospel with anyone. They do not risk expanding the kingdom of God and they just remain the same — 5, 10, 15, 20 years in preschool, feeding on mama's bottle.

What's alarming to me is that this also happens not only to churches but to individuals. Some Christians are vibrant — you see their faith, you see their hope and their love and their patience. But there are other Christians who did pray their sinner's prayer, and their lives seem the same as before becoming Christians. We don't see a real transformation in their lives, no contagious relationship with Jesus. They enjoy the music, they enjoy the preaching, they enjoy the fellowship, but they spend the next 5, 10, 20 years dipping their hands in the green paint without moving on to the next level.

So this morning I want you to see a church in Macedonia and the record of scripture about this particular church. Perhaps we'll learn a thing or two about this group of believers in the 1st century. With this in mind, I'm going to ask you to go to the word of God, to the book of 1 Thessalonians, and we're gonna read chapter 1 verses 2 through 10. I'll ask you to stand for the reading of God's word.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of man we proved to be among you for your sake, 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, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 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. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God 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 delivers us from the wrath to come.

This is the word of God. You may be seated.

Father, I want to pray one more time and thank you for your word. I pray, Lord, that your Holy Spirit will speak to each and every one of us this morning, that we will be encouraged by your truth, that you will kindle our hearts to obey your word and to follow you and learn to love you better and to serve you better. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Before we look at what Paul says about this church, let me give you a little bit of the story, because sometimes we read these letters and we forget that they were written to actual people and actual cities. Thessalonica was a city. It was not just that Paul wanted an illustration for a sermon and said, "Let me invent some church in Macedonia." No, these people existed. They were real people just like you and I. They had homes, jobs, families, problems, neighbors, religious traditions, political pressures — all the things that normal people have.

The church itself was very young. If you go to Acts chapter 17, you see how it began. Paul and Silas arrived in Thessalonica after being beaten and imprisoned in Philippi. They are not arriving refreshed from a sabbatical. These guys had suffered. They had been mistreated. They come to the city still bearing the scars of what just happened in Philippi. And Paul, as was his custom, goes to the synagogue and starts opening the scriptures for three Sabbaths, reasoning with them, explaining that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and then he tells them:

This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. He is the Messiah.

And some believe — some Jews believe, a large number of God-fearing Greeks believe, some prominent women believe — and suddenly you have the beginning of a church. That's simple. The word is preached, Christ is proclaimed, people believe, and now you have a church.

But immediately there's trouble. Opposition rises, a mob forms. They attack Jason's house, which is where they were meeting. Believers are dragged before the authorities and eventually Paul and Silas have to leave. I want you to think about that. These people had barely begun their Christian life and already things are difficult, they're tough. They didn't have 20 years of biblical studies behind them. They didn't have the New Testament leather-bound edition. They didn't have a podcast library. They didn't have a discipleship program with 12 different modules. They had none of that. They had Christ. They had the gospel. They had the Spirit of God. Just a few weeks of Paul's teachings. And then the heat came.

And yet when Paul writes this letter back to them, listen to what he says in verse 2:

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

Paul says things like this often, but what's interesting is why he thanks God for them. Look at 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.

I want you to pause here for a little while, because these three words are going to explain something powerful about this chapter — faith, love, hope. But notice what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say, "I remember your faith, your love, and your hope." He says, "I remember the work produced by your faith, the labor produced by your love, the endurance produced by your hope." In other words, their Christianity did something. You could see it. It was not simply something they said they believed. It was producing something. God was doing something.

This is where Christianity gets really practical, because I can tell you all day what I believe. I can write a doctrinal statement and tell you I believe the Bible is the word of God, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died and he rose again and that he's coming back. But sooner or later, the question becomes: what difference does that make in the way I live my life? That is where Paul starts looking at the Thessalonians and says, "I see it. Your faith is doing something, your love is costing you something, your hope is helping you endure something." God's using all this for something, and that is what a real church looks like in a real world.

I train pastors and church leaders in persecuted countries, and I can tell you some stories that would turn your stomach. But you see their faith, you see their love, you see their hope, their endurance. You understand that what Christ has done for us is bigger than life.

Look at verse 4:

We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.

Paul is saying, "I know that God has chosen you because I can see the evidence." That's what the doctrine of election is all about — because you have been saved, you know God has chosen you. It's a doctrine of reassurance. It's not a doctrine of fear. We could spend all morning talking about it, but what I do want you to notice is how Paul knew something real happened amongst these people. He says our gospel didn't come to you in words only. Obviously words were involved — the gospel is a message. Paul explained who Jesus is, he explained his death, he explained his resurrection, he explained his Messiahship. But it wasn't only information. Something happened when they heard it. The Spirit of God took their hearts, took their lives, and changed them.

This is the difference between knowing Christianity and knowing Christ. You can know a lot about Christianity and still remain exactly the same person. You can grow up in church, you can know when to stand up, when to sit down, you can know the songs, you can know how to say amen at the right time — amen — you could even know theology. But when the gospel comes in power, something starts happening in you. You begin to see sin differently. You begin to see God differently. You begin to see people differently. You begin to see yourself differently. You begin making decisions that you would never have made before.

And that's what happened in Thessalonica. Paul tells us later in verse 9 exactly what happened:

People everywhere were talking about how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

They turned. They changed direction. And those were not imaginary idols. Thessalonica was full of them. Religion was everywhere. Paganism was woven into society, into family relationships, business relationships, civic relationships, social life — everywhere. You couldn't do business before going and offering some sacrifice to their idols. And if you didn't do it, you would be cut off from society. So when these people turned to Christ, they weren't just changing what box to check on the census form. There were consequences. They were saying: we no longer belong to those gods. We belong to the living and true God. That is real conversion.

You and I may not have little statues in our living room. Most of us probably don't go home and burn incense. But don't think for a minute that we are less idolatrous. We just have more sophisticated idols. We worship success and comfort and money. We worship reputation, we worship our children, we worship sex, we worship politics, we worship security. And probably the biggest idol of our culture is self. My life, my plans, my happiness, my goals, my body, my truth, my comfort, my time. Me.

And then Jesus comes into your life and he says, "Follow me." And that changes things. If you said, "Lord Jesus, my life now belongs to you," guess what? Your life belongs to him. All your life — your dreams, your decisions, your desires, your purpose — belongs to him. Now you live for Jesus.

Let me ask you something: what has Jesus changed in you? I'm asking because Paul is looking at the Thessalonians and he's saying, "We know something real happened because I can see the fruit. We can see the evidence of God's work in your life, and this is why we know you were chosen — because we see the fruit." I know this is an apple tree because I see apples hanging off the branches.

What has your faith changed? What has the Holy Spirit worked in your life? Has it changed the way you speak to your wife? Has it changed the way you speak to your husband? Has it changed the way you use your money? Has it changed the things you watch on your phone, on your computer, on your TV? What about your attitude towards the people that you don't really like? Has it changed the way you work? Has it changed the way you respond to someone that has hurt you? If someone at work has known you for 10 years, can that person know that there is something different about you? That is what Paul is talking about when he says the work of your faith.

This is one of the reasons I love spending time with believers in other parts of the world, because sometimes they expose how comfortable our Christianity has become, to be honest with you. I've had the privilege of traveling to places like Ethiopia and Cuba and Myanmar and different parts of Asia and the Amazon jungle, and talking to brothers and sisters whose Christianity costs them something. I have come home many times thinking, Lord, I have so much to learn. Here back home, we ask questions like, "Hey, did you like the sermon?" "Oh, the coffee was a little too strong," or "It was too hot in the sanctuary." And then you sit with someone who has lost their friends because of Jesus, or who faces family pressure because of Jesus, or has very little but is full of joy — and that does something to you. It changes your perspective.

I remember being deep in the Amazon jungle. They don't have Walmart, they don't have Home Depot, they don't have Canadian Tire. They don't have electricity. They cook with the murky water from the river. Every day, because there's no power, they have to go out into the jungle and find out what they're gonna eat that day. That's the way they live day after day after day. And yet these people go out in hand-carved canoes for days, traveling through the river to go to other tribes and share the amazing gift of Jesus — what Jesus has done for us. Then they get together for worship, not on Sundays — they get together for worship every day from 5 p.m., four hours up until 9, really dark in the jungle, and they're singing, they're praying for each other, they're opening their Bibles. And you go, what?

What struck me was not simply what they didn't have. It was what they did have. They have Christ. You could see it. And this is what Paul sees in Thessalonica.

But let me show you verse 6, because this is even more striking:

You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit.

I love this verse because there are two things that we normally don't put together: much affliction and joy. If I say, "How are you doing today?" you'll say, "Things are going great, I feel wonderful," or maybe, "Awful, I'm suffering." But typically you don't have these two words together. And Paul sees these believers receive the word in much affliction and at the same time they have the joy of the Holy Spirit. How?

Because Christian joy is not pretending that everything is OK. Christian joy is not smiling while your heart is breaking and saying, "Praise the Lord, everything's fantastic," when you're not. Their suffering was real, their opposition was real, their pain was real. But their joy had a deeper source than those circumstances. It came from the Spirit of God.

I think sometimes we have the idea that the main evidence of God's presence in our lives is that he removes difficulties. So we pray, "God, if you love me, fix this. God, if you are with me, take this away. If you're really working, can you just make this easier?" Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. But the real truth is that sometimes the evidence of God's power is not that suffering disappears, but that you remain faithful even when suffering is right there.

One time I took Pastor Jonathan with me to a persecuted country, and while he was preaching, it was at night, the power went off. He just pulled out his cellphone, turned on his flashlight, and kept on going — because that's the way to roll there. I was once hosted by a family who gave me for breakfast a hard piece of bread and half a glass of milk, because that was all they had. This milk they had been looking for it for three days and couldn't find it before that. When you sit in a home where you know they don't have much and suddenly their best food is in front of you, and you hear their difficulties — you think, how are they doing this?

And when you talk to them, they talk to you with a big smile on their faces about the goodness of God. Sometimes I'm thinking, if this happened to me, I would be writing letters and chains of prayers: "Please pray for us, we're suffering here." They say, "God has been faithful. God has been faithful." Why? Because they have learned something that we all need to learn:

God's goodness is not measured by how easy he makes my life. God's goodness is measured at the cross. If I ever wonder whether God loves me, I don't have to look at my bank account. I don't have to look first at my health. I don't have to look first at my circumstances. I just look at Christ. I know he loves me.

He who did not spare his only Son but gave him up for us.

That's where I see his love.

I know some of you have walked in here this morning in a very difficult season. Nobody's trying to put you in prison for Christ, but you're hurting. Maybe it's your marriage. Maybe one of your children is making decisions that breaks your heart. Maybe your health has changed. Maybe you lost someone. Maybe your work is uncertain. Maybe you've been praying for something for years and it doesn't seem to change. And you may be tempted to think, "Well, where is God? Where is God? I've been praying. I go to church."

Look at the Thessalonians. They had much affliction. They had the joy of the Spirit. The presence of suffering did not mean the absence of God. And this takes us back to that third phrase in verse 3 — the steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope produces endurance. If this life is all there is, then some things are really unbearable. If my best life is to happen here, then every loss becomes a catastrophe. But since Christ has risen, since he has defeated death, since he's coming again, then this is not the end of the story. And that changes the way Christians suffer. It doesn't make pain less painful. But it gives suffering a horizon that we can look beyond to Christ.

Let me finish by pointing at something Paul says about this church that I find incredible — verses 7 and 8:

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

Think about that for a second. These are very young Christians, and already other Christians are looking at them. They could have said, "Well, we're new, we don't really know what we're doing, we're trying to mature — give us about 15 years and maybe we'll figure this out." But they believed, they suffered, they kept following Christ, and now other believers are saying, "Hey, look at Thessalonica." I love that. Paul says, "We don't even have to tell people about you anymore. Wherever we go, we hear about your faith."

These people were not known for their programs, they were not known for their pastor, they were not known for their music — it was their faith. Their faith had gone everywhere. The word of the Lord had sounded forth everywhere. I love that expression. It's like something ringing out all over the earth. The gospel came to Thessalonica, and this gospel echoed through the whole area.

Church, that is what the gospel is supposed to do. It comes to us, but it's never supposed to stop here with us. And that fits beautifully in this new series, All the Saints, because you and I are part of something much, much bigger than what's happening in this room. Somewhere today, there are believers gathering together in Ethiopia and in Africa and in Europe and in Asia. Some are gathering quietly, some are singing incredibly loud. Some are being baptized somewhere this morning. Somewhere somebody's hearing the gospel for the very first time. Somewhere a pastor is preaching knowing that there will be consequences, and he still preaches with passion. And all of them are our brothers and all of them are our sisters.

All the saints — different languages, different cultures, different traditions, different kinds of buildings. But one Lord, one gospel, one Spirit, one church. And we're all waiting for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.

My prayer this morning is that the gospel would come to us with such power, and Christ would become so real among us, that the word of the Lord would begin to ring forth all over the place, across our country, for the glory of God. Because the Lord saved us with a purpose. And this is the time he has chosen for us to be instruments in his hands — like a glove in his hand. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, you are such a wonderful guide. You're such a loving Father. What you have done for us is so impressive, Lord. Even though we were rebellious and we were sinners and we deserved eternal punishment for our sin, you provided a way. You came, Lord Jesus. You lived a perfect life and you died on that cross to pay the price for our sins. You were risen on the third day, demonstrating that the price was paid in full, and that all of those who come to you and repent of their sins, you will forgive. You will make them become your children, so that we will have an eternity with you. You promised that you will come back, Lord, and we are awaiting that day with joy.

Father, I pray that as we await patiently, you will continue fulfilling your promise, that you will keep us faithful, and that we will be able to complete the commission you left for us — to go and share the gospel, to go and make disciples, so that they will know you as well. Bless this beautiful place, Lord, I pray. And make us a reflection of your mercy. In Jesus' name. Amen.