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1 Thessalonians 1.5

Evangelism By Martyn Lloyd-Jones

 Now this evening I should like to call your attention to the chapter that has been read to us, namely the first chapter in Paul's first epistle to the Thessalonians, taking particularly perhaps the first part of the fifth verse, where we read our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance.
But I don't propose, as I say, nearly to deal with that statement, though it is the key, as I want to show you, to the entire chapter, but I want also to look at the entire message with you, because I want to try to show that in this chapter the great apostle deals with a very modern problem, perhaps the most pressing and urgent problem confronting the Christian church at this present time, and that problem is none other than the problem of evangelism.
I know that it's not always referred to in those terms at the present time.
The term that's implied at the moment is the problem of communication.
This is just another instance of the way in which we fool ourselves by changing terms.
We don't talk so much as we used to about evangelism.
We feel that we are living in a different world, that people are different and that we are different, so we've got our new terms, and now the problem is the problem of communication.
But of course it's really the same old problem, the problem of evangelism.
And as we know, every section of the Christian church is very concerned about this problem and has been engaged in trying to deal with this problem for many, many years,
many commissions have been set up, many gatherings have been held, many books have been written on the subject.
There is a feeling that somehow or another the Christian church is failing to get a message over to the world that is outside.
The position is that we believe that this message and this alone can deal with the problems of mankind.
But the question is, how can we communicate this?
Or, there's another term, a new one which I've forgotten for the moment.
How can we articulate the gospel?
Same thing, it just means preaching, but it's articulation now.
How exactly are we to do this?
Because we are told that we are living in the post-Christian era.
We are told that we are living in the atomic age, in the scientific age.
And the idea somehow is that man is now altogether different, and that it's no use doing what the church has done and in the way she has done it throughout the centuries.
And we must have something new, there must be some new way of evangelism and of communication of the gospel for these reasons.
And as I say, great effort and endeavor has gone into the discovery, the attempt to discover how exactly we can do this.
Now there are some, as you know, who feel that the answer is that we need a new message.
We want a new gospel.
They say it's no use asking the modern man with his scientific knowledge to believe what his forefathers believed.
It's no use asking the modern man to believe in this kind of three-tier universe.
He knows from that scientifically to be able to accept the miraculous and the supernatural and so on.
There's a great movement in the continent of Europe associated with the name of a man called Bultmann, which says that the greatest hindrance to the acceptance of the message of the New Testament by the modern men is the fact that unfortunately there are these accretions, these additions to the essential message, such as the virgin birth and the miracles worked by our Lord and by the apostles and others, and all this idea of the supernatural and so on.
And he teaches, and so many follow him, that the one thing to do is to get rid of all this supernatural and miraculous element.
We must de-mythologize the gospel, we are told, before it can possibly be accepted by the modern men.
And there are many others who are propounding their fairies and their ideas.
You've got numbers of them in this country, and we've got their imitators in Great Britain,
and they're found, as they say, on the continent of Europe.
These are men who say that what we need is a new message for this new age, man come of age, man grown up.
And that we must find, which says, no, that isn't what's needed.
It isn't so much a new message that we need. What we need is new methods.
And these people concentrate entirely on this question of methods.
And what they generally do is something like this.
They say, well now, how does big business succeed?
How does any enterprise succeed in the world?
And they look around and they discover that the success is achieved as a result of advertising.
And you need a lot of money to advertise, so they collect it and persuade people to give it.
And they present themselves and promote themselves and put themselves forward.
A great advertising agency comes into being.
And then they say that these agencies use these instruments, television, radio, and all these others,
and that they understand the psychology of the people, the psychology of salesmanship.
And the church must become interested in these things.
She's got a commodity to sell, as it were, a message to give to the people.
And she must learn from big business and from the advertising people
as to how this can be presented and put over.
And so we shall achieve success.
And as you know, a great deal of attention has been paid to this question of method.
Particular types of services arranged almost to the minute with particular items,
everything designed to appeal to and to please the modern men and his parrot.
And it's argued that as long as we adopt these new methods,
that the people will come and listen to us and the gospel will be propagated
and will begin to influence the lives of the people.
Well, I mustn't weary with all this,
but it is important that we should be aware of exactly what is happening.
And the argument is that if we do one or the other of these things,
and perhaps both of them together,
well then the church has some hope of getting her message over
to this post-Christian world, to this atomic age.
I'm not going to weary by analyzing those things in detail.
My whole position is simply this.
That all this, it seems to me, is entirely wrong.
And for this reason, that it's based on the assumption
that we are faced with a new position.
And that is something that I cannot grant for a moment.
There is nothing new about the problem confronting the church.
The church has always had this problem.
And that's why I'm calling your attention to this particular chapter.
For what we have in this chapter is an account by the apostle Paul
of how the gospel was propagated and how churches came into being
at the beginning and in the first century.
We have here what is said by the scholars to be his first epistle.
And that's interesting in and of itself.
But what he does in this chapter, as you noticed in the reading,
is to remind these members of the church of Thessalonica
of how the gospel had come to them, how they had ever become a church.
He's writing a letter to a church, and he reminds them
of how they'd ever become a church.
Now, I want to show you, and it's a very simple thing to do,
that when the apostle went to Thessalonica,
he was confronted by precisely the same problem
as confronts us at this present time.
And that is why I'm saying that instead of wasting our time
and time to discover a new message or to discover some methods used
by the world to bring success, all we've got to do is to go back
to the New Testament and discover how it happened at the beginning.
And then, if you like, read your church history,
and you'll find that all the great eras and epochs in the history
of the Christian church, when she has succeeded most of all,
the masses of people have been converted and have been added
to the church, have always been those periods when they've reverted
and gone back to the apostolic method.
Indeed, I university to make bold with this assertion,
that you can try anything else you like.
You can have your conferences and congresses and spend your millions
in advertising.
It's achieved nothing for us.
We must return to the apostolic manner and to the apostolic method.
And here, the great apostle tells us exactly what he did
and how it happened in this first age.
There's no need to consider anything else whatsoever.
Well then, what is it that happened?
The apostle tells us quite simply.
Let me remind you of his position when he went to Thessaloniki.
Here is a little man, nothing much to look at.
The Corinthians said about him that his presence was weak
and his speech contemptible.
Paul didn't look like a film star.
He was nothing to look at at all.
Most unprepossessing of just a few people with him.
And he goes to this city.
What sort of place was it?
Well, it was a pagan city.
A part of Macedonia, what is now Greece.
They had no background.
We're told today, you see, that the modern man can't follow our preaching
because he doesn't know anything about justification.
He doesn't understand the terms.
That's why they're bringing out these new translations of the Bible
almost every week.
The idea seems to be that if only we get the scriptures in the language
of Tom, Dick, and Harry, everybody will believe it.
They said they don't understand these terms of yours.
Well, they didn't understand Thessaloniki.
They had no background whatsoever, as I'm going to show you.
But here the apostle goes.
And as the result of his visit and his preaching,
a church came into being.
How did it happen?
Well, the apostle tells us exactly here in this one chapter.
It's an amazing summary of the apostolic method of evangelism.
And he tells us that there were two big factors.
The first was, of course, the preaching of the apostles.
This was essential.
Our Lord had been given the message to these men.
He'd given them the commission and the mandate.
And they'd gone out and they'd preached.
This is always an essential.
You must have preachers.
We must have preachers in these homelands.
You must have preachers in other lands which still can be described as being dead.
And I hope that every young person here tonight realizes this.
We must have preachers.
Now, I'm a believer in books and in reading.
But, you know, there is no question about this.
It is the spoken word that has always been honored supremely by the Holy Spirit.
Preachers.
Truth mediated through personalities.
And as you think of the teeming message in many countries today, South America,
Asia, Far East and other parts, there is a crying need of preachers.
Men and women who will go as these apostles went to their world,
preaching this gospel, preaching this message.
Paul and these other preachers.
The preacher is needed as much today as he's ever been.
Oh, I know that amongst these new ideas and new methods
that are being propagated and praised at the present time,
there are many who say that their preaching is finished.
What we've got to have is what they call dialogue, which means discussion.
But dialogue sounds so much better than a lot of these magical terms with which we delude ourselves.
We must just sit down and talk to people.
Others say that all we've got to do is to spend our time reading modern literature
and studying modern art and drama and go and talk to people about things like that.
And we've got others who say we must go in for politics and discuss politics and social
conditions. All these things are being put before us and advocated.
But I'm here to remind you that God's method has always been the preaching of the gospel.
And there has never been a greater need for preachers than at this present time.
Nothing can substitute for preaching.
Very well, but that was the first factor only.
There's a second factor.
I wonder whether you ever noticed it as you read this chapter.
Did you notice it as we listen to the reading tonight?
There was a second vital factor in the spread of the gospel in the ancient world.
What was there?
It was the life and the witness and the testimony of the members of the Christian church.
Listen to Paul's anger.
He says here that in verse six they became followers.
He became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction
with joy of the Holy Ghost.
So that ye were ensembles to all that believe in Macedonia and the Kyre.
For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and the Kyre,
but also in every place you were faith the government is spread abroad.
So that we need not to speak anything for they themselves show of us what manner of entering in
we have done to you and how we turn to God etcetera.
Now this is the most vital matter.
You see what the apostle is really saying is this.
He said you know you good people you members of the church of Thessalonica.
You're making my preaching very much easier.
What I'm finding now is that Paul is this that wherever I go and I begin to preach people
stop me and they say ah you were the men who preached in Thessalonica.
We've heard about you.
We've heard the news of what happened there as a result of your speaking and preaching.
This news about the amazing things that have happened to these people in the city of Thessalonica
it has spread abroad.
Everybody was talking about it.
Not only is in Macedonia and in the Kyre but in every place this was being talked of
and Paul says there's a sense in which we don't need to speak anything now.
Because they seem to know about it.
The news about you has opened the doors for us and the task has been made much easier.
Now my friends this is the most important matter.
I've sometimes had a fear you know that we are rapidly getting to the stage in which
there'll only be two or three preachers if that many in the world and the rest of the
world will be listening to them on tapes or on television or something else.
Everybody's sitting back and listening as if that is the way to evangelize the world.
It isn't.
You need preachers but you need the testimony and the witness of the members of the church.
Whatever the preaching may be if it isn't verified and substantiated by the lives of
the people in the Christian church it will be of no avail.
And this is what the apostle tells us happened in his day and generation.
Now I confess that I haven't fully revised the tremendous character of what he says here
until in 1961 when I had the privilege of visiting the land of Greece.
And then I realized something of what this chapter is saying.
He says the news spread abroad he said not only in Macedonia.
Now let me give you a bit of geography.
First on the night I was up at the northeastern tip of Greece and the hinterland the section
of country behind it it's a sea port as you remember the country behind it is known as
Macedonia.
So it's not a bit surprising that what had happened under the preaching of the apostle
in the town of Thessalonica was being talked about in Macedonia.
But he says not only in Macedonia but also in Achaea.
Where's that?
Well that is the part of Greece that we now know as the Peloponnesian Peninsula.
It's the part of Greece that is south of the Corinthian canal.
We saw a picture of it in the lecture this morning with Dr. Schultz.
It's that lower portion of Greece and this is what I discovered in 1961 and did amazing
and littered this whole passage for me.
I did a journey from Corinth to Thessalonica and I found it was the most arduous journey
we had across a portion of sea.
Then we went in a car and we literally had to cross three high mountain ranges.
It was quite a difficult journey in 1961.
It's quite a considerable distance over the most difficult terrain and country.
And yet you see the apostle says that what has happened up there in Thessalonica
had spread the news of it had spread right away down over these great mountain ranges
right away down to Achaea.
They had no television, they had no radio, they had no telephone, they had no television,
no newspapers.
But this astounding thing was being talked of and was being spread from mouth to mouth
so that when fall even went round to the southernmost tip
they were ready for it and they were waiting to receive his message.
My dear friends this is the most important matter at the present time.
We need preachers, evangelists, but I say we equally need men and women in our churches
who open the door for the preacher, who proclaim the message in their lives,
who attract people to come and listen to the gospel
because they've heard of the marvelous things
that happen to those who believe this particular message.
Now these were the two great factors.
The book of the Acts of the Apostles makes the point frequently
how the ordinary church members as well as the apostles and other preachers spread this gospel.
It has been a leading factor in all great revivals and reformations.
You've got it in the time of the Protestant Reformation.
Everybody knew when a man had become a Protestant.
He became an object of conversation and of comment.
The same was true of the Puritans in England and the Covenanters in Scotland, the early Methodists.
Everybody saw what had happened to them and they talked about them.
This astonishing thing that had happened in the lives of the people and it made others
perhaps merely out of a spirit of curiosity
go along to listen to the preaching that had produced such a result.
These were the two factors in the first century.
They're the two absolutely essential factors in this our century also.
Very well.
They're the two main elements, but they combine together.
What did they combine to do?
They combined to present this message.
Now, what is it?
Here's the vital thing.
Well, the apostle puts it like this.
Our gospel came not unto you in word only.
What is the message of the Christian church?
Alas, that one has to ask the question.
But one must ask it.
Because there are people out in the world, one meets them constantly,
who think that the message of the Christian church
is nothing but a protest against the war in Vietnam.
They think that that is Christianity.
That's what they hear on the television and on the radio.
That's what they hear from the lips of so many popular preachers.
It's a protest against that war and other wars, a protest against the bombs.
It's always a negative protest.
It's a political, social message.
They think that that is Christianity.
But my dear friends, by definition, it isn't.
The message is a gospel.
And what does that mean?
Well, as you know, the word gospel means good news.
And this, you see, means at once that the others have no Christian message.
It's not good news to protest against a war.
But the essential message here is good news.
It's the most thrilling good news that has ever come into the world.
And that is how these people received it at Thessalonica.
And that's how others heard about it.
It's an amazing message, some wonderful proclamation of great good news, a gospel.
And if what you and I preach and represent
doesn't give people the impression that it's the most wonderful and
glorious good news that they've ever heard, you and I are failing completely.
And we're unworthy of the name of Christia, our gospel.
Oh, let's never forget this.
Let's be certain of the message.
And then he goes on to say this interesting thing.
Our gospel came not unto you in word only.
But also, now here's an interesting thing.
You see, when the apostle says that the gospel did not come in word only,
he means that it did come in word, but not only in word.
Is this clear to us, I wonder?
It's a very vital point, as I'm going to show you.
Let me give you an illustration.
A man may come to me and say, I hear that you had a cold last week.
Did you run the temperature with your cold?
What's he saying?
Well, he's saying that it is possible to have a cold without running a temperature,
but that you may have a cold with the temperature.
So he says, our gospel came not unto you in word only.
That means it did come in word, but there was something in addition to the word.
Why do I take this trouble to emphasize this point?
Well, you see, it's something that one is compelled to do.
For the popular teaching today, the preaching that gets the publicity and the popular applause,
is the preaching that tells us that the gospel is something that does not come in word or in words.
What is it?
What is Christianity?
Well, they say, you know, Christianity is a wonderful spirit.
A wonderful spirit that possesses the man.
There was a slogan a few years ago that put it like this.
Christianity is caught, not taught.
You are a marvelous spirit, wonderful brotherhood and friendship,
goodwill and love to one another, the sort of Christmas spirit.
And they say, this is Christianity.
They say, you know, the trouble in the past has been that there have been too many theologians.
And they said it's this and it isn't that.
And they described it and defined it in words.
And they insisted upon particular things.
But they said it's entirely wrong.
Christianity is a spirit.
It's a quality of life.
Not so much a doctrine as a way of living.
Well, I'm simply to say this, that that view is a complete and utter denial
of what the great apostle tells us here and everyone else,
and what indeed the whole Bible tells us.
The gospel comes in words, in words.
And if it doesn't, it isn't a true gospel.
Very well.
What are these words in which the gospel must all come
in a most extraordinary manner?
The apostle gives us a summary of it in the last two verses of this one little chapter.
For they themselves show us what manner of entering in we head into you,
and how we turn 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,
even Jesus, which delivered us from the lost to come.
There are the words.
Let me put it to you.
Let's go in imagination and listen to the apostle Paul
preaching to these people in Thessalonica.
There they are, I said, pagans, not even Jews.
They haven't been brought up from the Old Testament.
Polytheists, idolaters, and so on, living the kind of life we'll soon see.
How did the apostles preach?
What did he say to them?
Here's the problem of communication, the problem of the angels.
These people, utterly without any knowledge of this terminology,
everything the apostle had to tell them, what did he preach about?
What is the Christian message?
What are the words in which we convey it?
Well, you notice that he started in this way.
He started by telling them about God,
how he turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God.
This is only a personal picture.
He said, you know, you good people, you are worshipping your idols,
and you don't realize that you're doing something that is foolish,
and utterly vain.
What are your idols?
They're simply creatures that you made yourselves.
In those days, as you know, they would make gods out of wood,
or out of stone, or out of some precious metal.
They'd carve them.
We've been seeing this in the wonderful lectures
we've been privileged to listen to every morning in this institute.
They made these gods, and then they said, you are my God.
They'd build a temple to the God, and then they'd take their offerings,
and they'd bow down, and they'd worship their gods.
And Paul dealt with this, and he showed them the utter emptiness of it.
There was nothing there.
These gods are nothing but the projections of their own minds and imaginations.
They have no being.
They can't do anything.
They can't achieve anything, but they worship them as gods.
And he pointed this out to them, that they're just deluding
and fooling themselves, this idolatry.
You get this in the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
Indeed, you get it in the Old Testament.
There are two psalms that deal with this in a really wonderful manner,
full of most divine sarcasm.
Look at your gods, says the Psalmist.
They've got eyes, but they can't see.
They've got hands, but they can't use them.
They've got lips, but they can't speak.
They've got legs.
You've given them legs, but they can't walk.
And you are like the gods whom you've made, idolatry.
The Apostles started with that.
That was their kind of life.
And he showed them the utter emptiness and vacillity of it all.
But you see, he didn't stop merely at enunciation.
He pointed out to them the seriousness of all this.
He said, what makes it serious is this,
that while you have been worshiping the gods that you've made yourselves,
you have not been worshiping the only true and living God.
You've been worshiping lies.
There's nothing there.
You've called lies truth, but they're lies, but there is a true God.
You have worshiped dumb idols, useless, masses of substance,
but there is a living God.
And so he began to tell them about the God
who had revealed himself to the children of Israel, the Jews.
The God who had given this marvelous manifestation of himself
in the Old Testament scriptures is the true God.
This is not a lie or a fabrication of the creation of men's mind.
He is God from eternity to eternity,
the author of all things, truth in himself, just and righteous and holy.
The God who is light and in whom is no darkness at all.
The true God, yes, but also the leading God.
And so the apostle told them about how this God
had created the world out of nothing, the first verse in the Bible.
In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth and the sea and all that in them is.
The living God, the God who interferes in the lives of men,
the God of history, the God of providence.
He gave them this exposition of the great message of the Old Testament.
And he pointed this out to them.
He said, you've been ignorant of this.
That's why you've made your dumb idols and have worshiped them.
But this is the fact.
You all have been made by God.
And he says, this is why it's so serious.
This is why it's vital to you.
That if you die as you are in your ignorance, worshiping your idols,
you will go to condemnation, everlasting misery.
He talks, you see, about the rastakhan.
In other words, he told them that God
had made the world and had made men in his own image.
He'd given men certain powers and propensities he'd made irresponsible.
And that whether men realizes it or not,
he has got a given account of himself to God.
That it is appointed unto all men once to die, but after death the judgment.
And he told these people that this great God,
the only true and living God, was going to judge the whole world,
then included, and that they would be judged
according to the law that he'd given to his people,
the Ten Commandments and the moral law.
These are the standards by which they were going to be judged.
The rastakhan and the eternal destiny that was to follow it.
He preached the truth and the living God
and showed them that all this was vital to their present position
and to their eternal destiny.
That is how the apostle preached.
And my dear friends, it is only when you and I return to such preaching
that we will be truly able to engage the interest in the attention of the modern men.
For the world is full of idolatry.
Doesn't take the same form.
We're not so crude as they were.
Men no longer make their idols in that way.
They make them now into the shape of what we call motorcars, and they worship them.
Literally, I know many men whose job is their motorcar.
They're always talking about them.
They spend most of their time cleaning them,
getting them to look better than somebody else's and always getting a better...
They live for their motorcars.
Others live for their houses.
I've known parents who've literally worshipped their children.
They thought about them.
They schemed about them.
They dreamt about them.
They'd sacrifice anything for their children.
The children were their gods.
I've known wives regard their husbands as gods,
and husbands rarely regard their wives as gods.
They've turned them into idols.
The world is full of idolatry, wealth, sex, prosperity.
These are the things for which people are living.
They're threatened by them.
They're moved by them.
Their whole lives are governed by them.
That's your religion.
Those are your gods.
The world is as full of idolatry tonight as it was in this first session.
And so what is needed is this apostolic preaching
that starts with the only true and living god
over all, the judge of the ends of the earth and the wrath to come.
And how every one of us will have to stand before him.
Well, dear niece of someone,
I thought you took a little time just now to say
that the message of the church was what you call gospel, good news.
It doesn't sound very much like good news to me at the moment.
You're preaching wrath and judgment and terror.
Is that good news?
Of course it isn't.
But I'll tell you what it is.
It is the introduction to the good news.
And I have a feeling that the masses are outside the Christian church today
because we inside it have forgotten the introduction.
Let me solemnly remind you of this, my friends.
The gospel of Jesus Christ does not start even with the law of Jesus Christ.
It starts with God.
It's no use going to people and say come to Jesus or come to Christ.
They say we couldn't care less.
Why?
But they've never seen any need of you.
That's why they don't come to Christ.
They've never seen any need of Christ.
The only man who truly comes to Christ is the man who's seen his own condition
under the condemnation of the law of God, facing God in the eternal judgment,
hearing the thunderings of Sinai, being confronted by the test,
and realizing that he's an utter and a complete failure.
It is only such a man that is ready to listen to the gospel message
concerning Jesus Christ and fly to him as the only hope of salvation.
The preaching of the message of the Christian church is a message that starts with God,
the only true and living God.
And it is only as we realize our condition before him
that we are ready, I say, to receive and to accept the message of the gospel.
What is it?
Well, I needn't keep you.
We are familiar with this.
This is where we start, isn't it?
Instead of starting with what the Puritans used to call a good law work first.
The trouble in the church today is that the law work has been neglected.
There are too many people who've never repented.
They don't know what it is.
They've taken on Christ as a friend.
They want to walk down the streets of life with heads erect and never having another problem.
No, no.
We must start with a law work.
The law leads to the gospel and there are no true conversions without a law work.
You can bring people to religion.
That's a very different thing from making Christians.
But having heard the law and having seen the position, then comes the glorious gospel.
What is it?
Well, here it is.
And to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus.
Having shown them their terrible plight and predicament,
the apostle began to tell them about Jesus.
He told them about this man who lived in Palestine.
Told him about his extraordinary birth,
those quiet years when he just worked as a carpenter.
And how at the age of 30 he began to preach and the astonishing and amazing things
that he did, his preaching, his understanding, and his miracles.
Jesus.
But who is Jesus?
Here's the question.
They say, you see, that the gospel doesn't come in words,
that you mustn't be theological.
You don't need doctrine, but you can't preach without it.
The question is, who is Jesus?
Is he only a man?
If he is, we're all damned and hopeless.
But who is Jesus?
The apostle tell them, even his son from heaven.
What's this?
The doctrine of the incarnation.
You can't preach the gospel without doctrine.
The very beginning of the gospel is to say that when the fullness of the times was come,
God sent forth his son made of a woman made under the law to redeem them that were under the law.
Jesus Christ, son of God, God and men, two natures in one person unmixed,
the person of the Lord who preached Jesus and told them who he was,
that God had visited and redeemed his people, the person of Christ,
attested by his miracles and so on.
Jesus.
But then he went on to say this, that this Jesus had delivered us from the wrath to come.
What's this?
Well, it's more theology, I'm afraid.
You can't get away from doctrine.
If you don't know the truth about the person of the Lord, you're not a Christian, my friend.
But what's this statement about his having delivered us?
Well, it means this, you see.
Jesus didn't come into the world just to teach us how to save ourselves.
But Jesus didn't come just to give us an example.
Jesus came in order to deliver us.
And he has done the one thing that is essential to it.
What's that?
All this was the great theme of the apostle.
He has made him to be sent for us who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
God was in Christ, reconciled the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them.
What's it mean?
Well, this is what it means.
He has taken our trespasses and imputed them to him, laid them upon him, made him to be sinned,
smitten, structured.
We beheld him, stricken, smitten of God.
The great doctrine of the atonement.
You can't be a Christian without this.
You can be a pacifist, a socialist, and many other things, but you can't be a Christian.
This is the essence of Christianity.
That the son of God came into the world in order to take our sins in his own body on the tree.
In order to receive our punishment by whose stripes we are healed.
This is what he preached.
That's the orgy of the atonement, the doctrine of the atonement, the substitution.
The fulfillment of what John the Baptist said,
Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world which delivered us.
From the wrath of God, Christ dying on the cross.
The innocent dying for the guilty, the good dying for the vile.
He bore our sins in his own body on the tree and he died when they buried him in the grave.
Is that the end?
No, no, no.
Listen.
And to wait for his son from him whom he raised from the dead.
What's this?
Well, the Apollo times.
It's the doctrine of the resurrection.
There's no gospel apart from the literal physical resurrection.
Let the clever men see what they will.
Let them attempt to philosophize it away as some were trying to do in Corinth so long ago.
It comes to nothing, for it means nothing.
We are saved by the fact that Christ literally rose from the dead,
having made the grand atonement.
If Christ be not risen from the dead, our preaching is in vain, your faith is in vain.
You are still in your sins and you're under condemnation.
Delivered for our offenses, says Paul to the Romans, raised again for our justification.
What is the resurrection?
It is God's proclamation to the whole cosmos that the son's work is complete,
that he finished it, that the law is satisfied, God's satisfied, everything is satisfied.
The resurrection, the literal physical resurrection,
which incidentally also was the thing that gave the final proof
that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the son of God,
declared to be the son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from among the dead.
Here it is, the doctrine of the resurrection, but he hasn't finished it.
To wait for his son from him, he not only rose from the dead,
he ascended, do you remember the ascension?
He ascended, passed through the heavens and took his seat at the right hand of God.
And there he is seated, waiting until his enemies shall be made his footstool.
But this isn't the end.
There is a day when he will come again to wait for his son from heaven.
The son of God's going to come back into the world,
as the author of the epistle to the Hebrews puts it,
not for salvation this time, but for judgment.
He won't come as the babe of Bethlehem.
He'll come as the king of kings and as the Lord of lords riding the clouds of heaven.
And he'll come to judge the whole world in righteousness.
And he will destroy sin and evil and all that belong to that realm.
And he will set up his glorious kingdom of righteousness and of peace.
Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run,
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more.
The whole universe will be restored to its pristine condition and perhaps even more,
and shall be glorified and the son will hand back the perfect kingdom to the father.
And God shall be all and in all.
That was what Paul preached in Corinth.
And you can't do that in 20 minutes, can you?
Christian people, if you object to preaching of the gospel,
you are denying the gospel.
This is the message, and you mustn't leave out any part of it.
The gospel comes in words, in words.
And those were the words then, and they're still the words tonight.
But you see, I haven't finished.
If I were to stop at that point, in a sense, my preaching would be in vain tonight.
That alone does not account for the spread of the gospel,
the rising of Christian churches in the first century, or in any other century.
Listen, our gospel came not unto you in word only.
It did come in the word, and there they are.
But also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.
What does he mean?
Here's the whole secret, not only of the apostles,
but of all the great true evangelists throughout the centuries.
Here's the secret of your Protestant fathers,
those Puritan preachers, Whitfield, and the others in the 18th century.
Here's the secret.
What is this?
What do you mean by saying, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much assurance?
To whom does the assurance apply?
In the first instance, it applied to the apostle himself.
Do you now, sirs, fall to these people?
When I was preaching to you at persona mica,
it wasn't simply that I was speaking and uttering words.
I knew that I was clothed with the Holy Spirit.
I knew that I was nothing but a little channel and a vehicle,
and that the Almighty God, the Holy Spirit, was taking me, and using me,
and driving my words to your minds, and hearts, and consciences.
I did it with assurance.
I knew.
You see, the position seemed hopeless.
What was there for him to build on?
These people were ignorant.
They knew nothing.
They'd been living a life of debauchery, and evil, and sin, and vileness.
He describes this in so many places.
Second half of the first chapter of Romans, 1 Corinthians 6.
That's how they were living in this seaport town of Thessalonica.
What have you got to go on?
Oh, what he went on was this, the Holy Ghost.
And he felt the power, and he had this great assurance that he was being healed.
You know, the apostle is so concerned about this,
that he describes it in a little more detail in the next chapter.
Let me just note it in a moment.
Here it is.
He says in verse 4 in the next chapter,
as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel,
even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts.
For neither of any kind used we flattering words as we know,
nor a cloak of covetousness God is witness,
nor of men sought we glory,
neither of you, nor yet of others,
when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ, and so on.
Do you realize what he's saying?
The apostle Paul never pleased men.
You can't imagine the apostle Paul tripping lightly onto a platform,
and then cracking a few jerks just to put the audience right.
The thing is unthinkable.
It's insulting to the very name of the great apostle.
He has no tricks.
He has no methods.
Manipulating lights and music and other things
in order to get people into the right condition to receive.
No, no.
He eschews it all.
I determine not to know anything among you,
said Jesus Christ and him crucified,
and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom.
He knew all about it.
Greek rhetoric and all the tricks of oratory.
He dismissed them.
He rejected them.
He eschewed them.
He hated them.
And here he repeats it again.
The never new flattering words.
Never got around the audience.
Never ingratiated himself with them.
No, no.
He was a herald of the gospel.
He proclaimed the words of the message,
and the spirit was upon him,
and his total reliance was on the spirit of the living God.
He had the assurance of it.
Power and the Holy Ghost and not so foolish.
And that, I say, has been the characteristic of the church and her preachers
in every period of reformation and of revival,
and there is no hope for us until we return to this.
We must be fools for Christ's sake,
and in simplicity be lasted and delighted by the world,
but trust to the message and the power of the Holy Ghost upon it.
That was in the apostle,
but he says that the Holy Spirit was working in them also,
and he must have beat him.
For how could ignorant pagan people like this
have any connection with such a message?
They had no background.
It was the Holy Spirit.
At first, as they listened to him,
they didn't know what he was talking about,
but gradually they began to feel that he was speaking to them
and that this was true.
Something was gripping.
Something was moving.
They said, it's right.
It's true of me.
And they got into trouble,
and they were unhappy about themselves.
They'd never heard this before,
but it became living and real.
They were convinced and convicted,
and they saw that terrible predicament.
Then they heard this wonderful message of the gospel,
and they believed it,
and they submitted to him.
He says, you became followers of us and of the Lord,
having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost.
But they gave truth and evidence
that they had rarely received it and truly believed it.
What was the evidence?
Well, I'll tell you the evidence.
They themselves show us what manner of entering in we head into you,
and how you turn to God from idols.
This is the test of whether we've received the message or not.
Not that we may come forward at the end of a meeting or sign a card.
No, no.
And then wonder next day what we've done,
and be back where we were before in a few weeks.
The evidence is this,
that you leave your idol.
You turn your back.
You turn to the living and the true God from,
and you begin to serve him,
to serve the living and the true God,
which means that you begin to worship him.
He becomes the Lord of your life,
and you live to his glory and to his praise.
You put into practice now the answer to the first question
of the shorter catechism of the Westminster Confession.
What is the chief end of men?
The chief end of men is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
Serve the living and the true God.
And they gave further evidence.
You became followers of us.
They listened to the apostles and they joined the company,
and of the Lord.
They became members of the Christian church.
And listen, they didn't merely do it as a kind of flash in the pan,
it went on.
Remembering, he says, without ceasing,
your work of faith, not just believers,
believe-ism, easy believe-ism,
your work of faith,
faith without works is dead,
your work of faith,
your labor of love,
your patience of hope.
They didn't merely start, they went on.
And they persisted, and they gave themselves to it.
It became the biggest thing in their lives.
This was their great characteristic.
And still more amazing?
You received the word in much affliction.
Persecution, derision, sarcasm, and scorn.
But it made no difference.
Having received the word in much affliction,
with joy of the Holy Ghost,
you could do what you like to these early Christians,
you'd never make them deny the faith.
You could ostracize them, it didn't matter.
You could put them to death,
throw them to the lions in the arena,
it made no difference.
In spite of the affliction, in the affliction.
Joy of the Holy Ghost.
And they went on doing it.
And the result was, as Paul tells them,
they've become a phenomenon.
And everybody was talking about them.
Everybody in Thessalonica was talking about them.
Everybody in Macedonia, everybody in Acar,
everywhere in the then known civilized world,
they were talking about this phenomenon.
And this is the only hope for us at this present time.
Come with me for a final visit to Thessalonica.
You see that group of people standing there on the street corner?
They're talking together about politics,
the injustice of the Roman Empire,
in imposing its taxes upon them and so on,
exactly as men do now.
And then the man who suddenly passes by.
And one of the companies says to another,
do you recognize him?
And this man looks and he says,
no, I don't know him.
Of course you do, isn't it?
That's so and so.
Impossible, says the other.
Why?
Well, this other man had always known the man who's passing
as a drunkard, an adulterer, a wife eater,
one of the worst men in Thessalonica.
But here he is, entirely changed.
His very dress is different.
His face is different.
Everything about him is different.
And so the other man says,
well, what on earth has happened to him?
Well, you know, says the first man,
he's been like this ever since a man called Paul came here.
You remember what he used to be.
But you know, this man came here,
this strange little man with this extraordinary message.
And this man, once he heard it,
he was absolutely different and he's been different ever since.
He's going down to what they call a prayer meeting.
And he seems to be doing this constantly.
He's a new man.
His life is different.
His children are different.
His home is different.
We have never seen such a change in a man in the whole of my life.
It's amusing.
It's extraordinary.
Well, what is this, then, says the other man?
And his curiosity is aroused.
And then a woman passed.
And the first man said to the other,
do you recognize her?
No, he said, no idea.
She amazed at that.
Mentioning one of the worst women in the city.
An adulteress.
A woman who was never a tool.
Neglected her husband and her own children.
Children in rags.
Didn't prepare the right food.
Neglected their health.
A woman hardly worthy of the name of woman.
But there she goes, well dressed, neatly dressed.
And she is going to this same meeting.
Prayer meeting.
Preaching meeting.
And her home is changed.
Her children are different.
Her husband is different.
Everything is different.
This is what was happening.
Under the preaching of this Gospel,
these words which had come in demonstration of the spirit and of power,
these people had been born again.
They were renewed.
They were entirely changed.
They were saints adorning the church of God.
And they'd become a phenomenon in Thessaloniki.
And they were being talked of right away through Macedonia.
Over the mountain ranges down in Achaia.
And through the then civilized world.
My dear friends, here is the question with which I leave you this evening.
Are you a phenomenon in this city of Pensacola?
Are you an object of wonder to your neighbors and associates?
It is only when you and I who are members of the church are people like this
and become phenomena, objects of conversation and of talk and of remark and of curiosity
that we shall begin to see revival and renewal in the church.
Oh yes, the preaching, the word, the only Gospel, the power of the spirit upon it.
But the proof of its truth in the daily life and living of the members of the church,
people who claim to be Christians and who belong to the only true and living God.
My dear friends, let's make certain of the message,
but let us pray without ceasing that God shall send down his mighty spirit of power again.
Upon us who preach and have the privilege of preaching and upon all who listen,
let us pray for true spiritual awakening and revival.
And do so until God in his infinite kindness and condescension shall be pleased to hear us
and to open the windows of heaven again, send down such a shower of blessing that we shall scarce be
able to contend. That's how Christianity spread in the first century, that it is how it has spread
in every other century, it is the only way in which it will spread in this century.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, our God, have mercy upon us. Forgive us especially, we pray thee again, for our
frothing, for our foolish talking about our century and the modern man, as if anything
have changed. Awaken us, we pray. Bring us to see that thy method is still the same,
that the truth remains unchanged and unchanging, and that the power of the blessed Holy Spirit
is in no sense diminished. Lord, hear us. Revive thy work, O Lord. Thy mighty arm,
make there, speak with a voice that wakes the dead, and make the people cheer. And unto thee,
and unto thee alone, shall we give all the praise and the honor and the glory, both now and forever.
Amen.
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