Coming to Know God (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10)
Sometimes, something happens that dominates the conversation. People everywhere are talking about it. Usually such topics involve decisions by the government, or a major event has happened, such as a visit by a well-known person. In the year AD 50, the hot topic in Greece was what had taken place in the city of Thessalonica after three strangers had arrived there with a message that caused so much consternation that a riot had taken place in the city. What made the incident so unusual was that effects continued in the city after the three strangers had been forced to leave (Acts 17:1-10). The three strangers were Paul, Silas and Timothy.
A new group had appeared in the city that had responded positively to the message of the three strangers, and they had started to take the same message to other places in the country. Some people could say that the Thessalonians had taken the message to their city, and other people were wondering if the Thessalonians would come to them. Both would be asking, ‘What happened to the Thessalonians that made them so different from what they used to be?’ Paul describes the cause in the first chapter of this letter and does so in different ways. We can consider the description he gives in verses 9 and 10.
They had turned away from idols
Idolatry was a consuming interest in Thessalonica, as it was in virtually every place at that time. It affected everything in the community. The way to get ahead was to participate in the activities connected to the temple. Every city had its temple, some more than one. If one did not take part in its activities, it was hard to live. People would regard you as very bad, as despisers of the system. Your employment was connected to various guilds, and these guilds had their idols, so if you did not worship, it would be hard to make a living. The authorities would regard with suspicion anyone who did not acknowledge the local gods. After all, they might get some bad weather as a result. If the gods were offended, who knew what they might do? Well, this new group that had begun in Thessalonica said that they already knew what the gods would do. They would do nothing because they did not exist. How could they say that? The answer is simple – they had discovered the living God.
This discovery had made a profound effect on this new group of people. They were now prepared to give up everything they had ever known before. Overnight it seemed that they had become the most zealous group in town. They were so different from anyone else. There was now something inside them that set them on fire. They could only speak about their discovery. But it had also made them very compassionate because another reason for their insistence on speaking was that they cared about others. They wanted others to experience what they had found. And no one could keep them quiet. They did not limit their communication to their hometown, but they took it everywhere in the country. And it had taken them long, only a period of a few weeks. So it is worth considering Paul’s description of this group.
They faced the living and true God
This is how Paul describes them. They had turned to God. What happens when we turn to someone? Whenever I turn to someone, I look into their face. What did they see when they turned? They saw a God who was living and true. Of course, they did not see anything physical. Instead, they saw beyond the visible. The message that they had heard and adopted was one that told them about an invisible world, an environment where they could encounter something very different from the meaningless idolatry that they had previously engaged in. They encountered God and they were changed, and they were changed forever.
It is the case that they had never seen a living God before they heard the message brought by the three strangers. In fact, they had no idea that one existed. But as they listened to the three strangers, they became aware of a power that was very different from anything else they had ever known. Paul describes that power in verse 5: ‘because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.’ The people in this new group had heard many a message from their pagan priests, but those messages had never affected them in the way that this new message had. In a way that was unexplainable to them at first, this new message was accompanied by such inner effects that it stopped them in their tracks and compelled them to think about it. Instead of merely regarding the message as another interesting theory they discovered that it changed them. That is how they knew that they had met the living God.
I suppose it is worth thinking about this question: do you think you could meet the living God and not know it? I don’t mean, is it possible to be beside someone else who met the living God and for you not to know that they have met him? It is possible to have the second experience because that was the experience of everyone in Thessalonica who had seen the group but who had not realised that the group knew the living God. But it is not possible to meet him personally and not know it. Why? Because he is the living God.
The true God
He is also the true God and the group discovered this was the case from the message that they heard from the three strangers. Paul, who was one of the three strangers, tells us what the message was, or at least mentions three details that were part of it. In the verses we are considering, he mentions the details in reverse order timewise: ‘to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.’ We can think about those details in their chronological order.
The first point that we can observe is that the message contained a reference to wrath that was coming. Who was the possessor of this wrath? The answer is the true and living God. What does it mean for him to have wrath? Since he is the living God, it means that his wrath is as alive as he is. This means that he has the power to inflict his wrath and he is capable of maintaining it for as long as he wishes. Indeed we can say that if one starts to experience it, they will discover that it will remain the wrath to come because it will never end. It is important to realise that this wrath is not an expression of someone losing his temper. This was how people imagined the false gods responded. If they were in a bad mood, they would send a storm. No, the wrath of the true God is his settled opposition to and dislike of all that offends his perfect standards. It includes his determination to punish those who remain guilty of offending him.
Of course, if that was all that they were told, the listeners would never have come to know the true and living God. He would have remained opposed to them. But the three strangers told them something else about this God. They told the Thessalonians that the true God had a Son called Jesus who had become a man in order to deliver those who had offended him. This he had done when he went to the cross outside Jerusalem and paid the deliverance price by enduring in himself the wrath of God. It had been an awful experience as wave after wave of the divine wrath came crashing with divine energy into the human heart of the Son of God.
The three strangers referred to a statement from an old book that said that it pleased the Lord, the true God, to bruise the Sufferer and punish him. They also said that this took place because the true God and his Son loved those who had offended them. In an amazing way, the activity on the cross was all about divine love even although it was about divine wrath. The three strangers also said that they too needed to have their sins forgiven, even although they had never worshipped in a pagan temple. And they said that all anyone needed to do in order to get the benefits of forgiveness from the true God was to trust in his Son and depend upon him.
The second detail that the three strangers highlighted was that the living and true God raised his Son from the dead. Jesus had died a terrible death physically on the cross, but he had also died as one who had been made a curse by the living and true God. Who could have believed that such a powerful God would do this? Why did he do it? Because he is the living and true God. Since he is the source of all life, he could raise his Son from the dead, and he did. But it is important that he was also raised by the God who is true. True to what, we might ask? To his own commitments and promises made to his Son. Before the Son came into the world, an agreement had been made in which he promised to pay the penalty of sin and his Father promised him that he would be raised from the dead if he did so. They had even agreed on the time – it would be three days after the penalty was paid. And so it happened. On the third day, very early in the morning, the true and living God raised his Son from the dead. Does the fact that it occurred early in the morning point to the eagerness with which the Father raised his Son?
We can see that the first detail concerned something in the past – the death of the Son of God on the cross. We can see that the second detail concerned something in the present – the Son of God is alive, having been raised from the dead. And we can see that the third detail concerns something in the future – the return of Jesus. The third detail also tells us where Jesus went when he was raised from the dead. He went to heaven in order to sit at the right hand of the true and living God, sharing the divine throne.
The return of Jesus meant a lot to the three strangers. We can see that is the case from the number of times that they refer to it in their letter. In their message to the Thessalonians, they said that the best response to the second coming of Jesus was to wait for it. What did they mean by that description? One obvious deduction that we can make is that the coming is certain. We only wait for things that we know are true. We can wait for an inheritance to come on the day indicated, we can wait for the sun to rise, we can wait for summer to come in order to go on a holiday.
Yet we also know that we can have different feelings as we wait for something to happen. Some may wait with apprehension because they know that the coming event will be bad for them. In contrast, others may wait with excitement because they know that it will be good for them. Obviously, the waiting here is positive, and it is part of their service of the true and living God.
Application
The obvious application concerns whether or not we have met the true and living God. It is the case that usually we know if we have met a living person, even if we did not interact with them. So it would be expected that we will know if God has come near to us. When he comes near, he indicates the difference between him and false gods. It did not take him long to do that in regard to the Thessalonians. All they had to do was consider the contrast between him and the false gods. We might say that it was easier for them to do that than for us with our twenty-first century gods. Of course, the contrast today is not between the living God and idols of wood and stone.
What would we expect from the living God that nothing else should have? Here are three suggestions. We would expect him to be sovereign over everything, we would expect him to be served by everyone, and we would expect him to satisfy everyone. That is how the Bible describes the living God, but it also says that many of his creatures refuse to recognise this. They cannot escape his sovereignty, but they refuse to serve him from the heart, and so fail to discover how he can satisfy their hearts. That is the challenge facing us. The proof that we recognise his sovereignty is that we serve him, and the proof that we are serving him is that his grace satisfies us.
A second application is that the truth we need to know and think about and have as a framework for our lives is truth about Jesus. We can see in Paul’s description of Jesus a threefold summary of the lives of his followers which deals with their past, explains their present, and anticipates their future. Is that how we would describe ourselves?
Third, we can see from this description of the church in Thessalonica that it does not take much to witness to faith over a very wide area, in their case the country. It is interesting that their witness was corporate. This does not mean that they were physically together all the time, but it does mean that they were together in heart. And it cannot be denied that they did a great deal in a short period of time.
Fourth, this experience in Thessalonica tells us how God’s power is experienced. It is experienced through the gospel. Paul later wrote to the Romans and said that he was ‘not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Rom. 1:16). I think we imagine that something else is needed. All that is needed is to speak the message where God has said his power is located. The proof is what happened in Thessalonica when the three strangers announced it to people who had never heard it before, and where many were converted.
Comments
Post a Comment