One thankless task that Anita and I have to do every year is complete a form for the Church of England entitled 'Statistics for Mission'. It's a questionnaire that we get every January that includes some questions that are really easy to answer — how many people were in church on October the fifth last year? — we just look it up. It includes some other questions that are literally impossible to answer, and we just have to put 'don't know'. But it comes around every year, and it's one of those slightly tedious tasks that just has to be done.
But statistics can be strangely alluring. It's lovely to see the numbers gently going up year on year — that feels good. YouTube lets you see not only the number of people who joined in a particular service in total, but how many people are online at any given moment in time. So at the moment, for example, there are 32 computers, tablets, phones connected to this service — 32. Now you can watch that happen in real time. It's hard not to pay some attention to that. If the numbers start to drop off mid-sermon you start to think, well, did I say something wrong? What happened? And the answer may just be that their statistics thing has glitched out slightly.
And if we as a church ran a series of events in the hope that people would have access to the Christian message, and that new people would become Christians as a result, the number who signed up or gave us some positive feedback after a series of events like that would be something we would watch with great interest and anticipation and excitement.
Statistics are very enticing, but it's a dangerous game to play — the numbers game. And after all, if the numbers are good, it would be very easy for a church to start to get proud, and if the numbers are not good, it would be very easy for a church to collapse into despair. And numbers can be misleading — someone signing on the dotted line does not necessarily make them a true convert.
So instead, better questions to ask would be: am I a true Christian? But the people that I care about who are currently exploring the Christian faith for themselves — are they true Christians? Are they there yet? And if you're someone this morning joining us who's still thinking all of this through and trying to work out what to make of the claims of Jesus — what would it mean in practice, what would a real response look like, if I were to start to follow Jesus? — well, let me remind us of some of the background from this letter of 1 Thessalonians.
This is a young church. The apostle Paul spent just between two and four weeks there before he had to flee the town under cover of darkness. And since he left, life has continued to be tough for the Christians he left behind. But Paul has just received news from his friend and colleague Timothy, who's joined him in Athens and reported back that the Thessalonian Christians are in great shape — the church is in great health, things are going well. Paul is delighted, and he writes this short letter to encourage them to keep going.
And one of the main things he's looking to do in this letter is encourage these Christians that they are the real thing — they are proper, fully-fledged Christians. And in this passage that we're looking at this morning, there are four qualities of their life since Paul left Thessalonica that served to confirm that they are the real thing. And I'm going to open those four for us this morning.
Here's the first quality, then, that shows that they're the real thing. The first quality is that they have endured suffering.
Suffering endured
Verse 6: 'You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.' So Paul has heard that the Thessalonian Christians have been mistreated since he left them. And Paul was clear when he was with them: to be a Christian is to be mistreated — you will suffer if you're a Christian. And yet they received Paul's message, they signed up, and they haven't just endured suffering — no, they've done so, Paul says, with joy.
Now, what could possibly cause someone to sign up for something that they know will bring them suffering and hardship? Well, Paul answers the question. It's in the middle of the reading there: the answer is the Holy Spirit. 'You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.' So left to human devices you would never sign up for something like that, but if God himself changes what you find attractive and palatable, then you can.
This is one good way to see that someone is a real Christian. If someone is willing to suffer for the Lord Jesus, then something deep must be going on — they're not just in it for the perks and for the easy lifestyle, not if they're actually willing to suffer real and genuine hardship. Although this isn't necessarily a sign that they're the real thing — I mean, after all, some people are just plain masochistic, they just enjoy suffering. Other people who are devotees of false religions are willing to suffer for those false religions. So we need to read this quality in parallel to the other three. But here's one sign someone's a real Christian: suffering endured.
Lives changed
Number two: lives changed. The Thessalonians didn't just change their beliefs when they became Christians — they changed the way they lived. So here again, verse 6: 'You became imitators of us and of the Lord' — that is, the Lord Jesus. They became imitators; they imitated the way that Paul lived and the way that Jesus lived. And so Paul says they became a model — verse 7: 'You became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. Your faith in God has become known everywhere.'
Well, what is the reputation that these Thessalonian Christians have everywhere, as followers of Jesus? What is said of them and the way they've changed? Well, that comes in verse 9: 'They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.' They turned from something, and they turned to something.
So firstly, they turned from idols. Many of these new Christians were Greeks, were Gentiles — they would traditionally have worshipped the Greek and Roman gods, and when they became Christians they stopped going to the temples, and they took their collection of statues of the Greek and Roman gods to the tip.
Now, we today may not worship actual false deities as it were, but if we don't worship the one and true God, we will worship something else, and something has to be — kind of — number one in your life: the thing that you live for. And when we turn to Jesus, whatever it was that was number one has to go. It doesn't necessarily have to go from your life completely — that depends what it is; some things are good in themselves, just not when they get treated as God — but they certainly have to go as the deity, as the thing that you live for. Whether that might be perhaps your career, your job, your home, your family, your house, your garden, your friends, your popularity, or whatever it might be — things that you previously lived for now need to be no longer on the throne of your life.
They turned from idols to serve the living and true God. Their conversion, their change of behaviour, is not just negative — they haven't just stopped doing things that are not wholesome, they have started doing good things. They haven't turned from false gods to a vacuum; they've turned from idols to serve the living and true God, to serve him. Their faith is marked out by action, by the way they live. Lives changed.
Message shared
Suffering endured, lives changed, and number three: message shared. So we've just heard that their reputation has spread far and wide, but it's not just that. Have another look at verse 8. The second half of verse 8 says: 'Your faith in God has become known everywhere.' People have heard about the Thessalonians' response. But not just that — look at the first bit of verse 8: 'The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia — your faith in God has become known everywhere.' The Lord's message rang out. The message has gone out from them to others; the message is spreading, is being shared.
Perhaps it's helpful here to compare the apostle Paul's ministry. Paul says here, verse 5: 'Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction.' So Paul's ministry in Thessalonica was marked by deep conviction — he wasn't just delivering a script dispassionately, as a salesman to earn some commission. No, he really believed this stuff; it gripped his life and you could tell. He delivered it with deep conviction. And he delivered it — this is his lifestyle — he says: 'You know how we lived among you for your sake.' He didn't just deliver a message as a professional; he lived among them and modelled the message he taught. Deep conviction, a lifestyle. But those things — the conviction and the lifestyle — were the way in which the message was delivered. 'Our gospel came to you not simply with words' — but it was with words. The Christian message is a message; you can't communicate it without words. But those words need to be adorned by lifestyle and conviction. That was how Paul ministered amongst them, and that's what was going on with the Thessalonians — their changed lifestyle was being talked about, but so was the message that drove it.
And that word 'ring out' — 'the Lord's message rang out from you' — could be the word for bells literally ringing out. You know how it is when we were allowed to have bell-ringing before the service starts: across the village you would hear the church bells from our tower ringing, and you could hear it from one end of the village to the other. Indeed, on a clear, still day you can hear the church bells from the towers of neighbouring village churches as well. That could be the thought of this 'ring out'. Or this is also the word just for a general loud noise — it was used of thunder. So if you've ever been somewhere really mountainous and hilly on holiday, maybe parts of North Wales, maybe parts of the Alps, you know that if you get a thunderstorm you get some huge thunder, but you just hear — after one peal of thunder — echoing and reverberating all around the valleys as that one peal takes ages for the sound to die out. That's the picture of the Thessalonian church. The gospel, the good news, has landed with them, but it doesn't stay there — it then reverberates and echoes all around Macedonia and Achaia, and indeed everywhere. It's the picture of a ripple: the stone that lands in the middle of a still pond, and you watch the ripple waves spreading out wider and wider and wider.
The genuine Christian, the genuine church — others will be hearing the good news from them. This is a good question to ask yourself: who this week will be hearing the good news from your lips?
A Saviour awaited
So there are the first three evidences of their genuine Christian faith: suffering endured, life changed, a message shared. And fourthly: a Saviour awaited.
The reputation of the Thessalonian Christians wasn't just, verse 9, 'turned from idols to serve the living and true God' — it's also verse 10: 'and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.'
You see, the idea that Jesus will come back is not an optional extra that some Christians could choose to believe — no, it's part of the essential Christian message that Paul taught the Thessalonian Christians when he only had a few weeks with them. And this is one of the essential hallmarks of being a Christian. As well as suffering, as well as serving, as well as sharing, we will be waiting. And that's because if Christianity is about being rescued — about being saved, and it is — the rescue is a future event. We're being rescued. So we are waiting for Jesus to come back from heaven to rescue us.
And it's future because what we are being rescued from is the coming wrath. And again, this is an essential part of the Christian message: God is not disinterested in human sin. When you and I are not the people we were meant to be, when we are bad rather than good, God cares deeply and he's angry. And the day will come when Jesus will return — and not vengefully, spitefully, and capriciously, but in a settled and just way — and will deal with and punish all that is wrong in this world. That is the future: God's wrath, God's anger, will come against all that is wrong.
And the evidence of that is that Jesus rose from the dead. In fact, Paul wrote this letter — remember — from Athens, and when Paul preached in Athens he said exactly the same thing: that God 'has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.' Acts chapter 17.
And if you are a Christian, yes, it's wonderful to know that God has saved you — that you are forgiven, adopted, and loved — but it is far more wonderful to know that God will save you. There is a tsunami coming, and if you know the Lord Jesus, he is the shelter that will keep you safe when it hits. Jesus will rescue you from the coming wrath, and we are waiting for that rescue.
So you see why Paul's so excited about these Thessalonian Christians. They're not just numbers on his statistics form — no — and they're not just people who signed up on his mission so he has something exciting to report back to Antioch. No, these are real Christians. They've been enduring suffering, their lives have been changed, they're sharing the message, and they're waiting for their Saviour, the Lord Jesus.
How about us?
Where is it with you? If you're still looking into Christian things, if you're still investigating the claims of Jesus, then this is what you would sign up to if you became a Christian. Jesus's call to you is a call to suffer, a call to be transformed, a call to share the good news with others, and — wonderfully — a call to wait for the most precious rescue of all, which will surely come.
But if you are a Christian this morning — and many of us watching are, I hope — you are encouraged, I hope. I hope you found that, even if in a small way, these four changes do indeed describe you: you're enduring suffering, your life is being changed by the Lord Jesus in small ways maybe, you're sharing that message with others, and you're waiting for his return to come and save you. And assuming that is so, I hope this then encourages you to press on and to keep going.