1 Thessalonians 1:6-10 - Turning From Idols to the True God

6 You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. 9 For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.

Target Date: Sunday, 27 March 2022

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

Turned - ἐπιστρέφω – epistrepho – a twice-strengthened form for turn (from tropestrepho) – meaning not just turning, as in repentance (metanoia), but a re-turning.

The view here, and in many other places, is not that these people were from the start turning to God, but that they were re-turning to Him.

They had been created in Him, and had been lost in the Fall.

This word has, more than anything else, the idea of being re-captured, reclaimed from the evil that had claimed them.

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord - Acts 3:19

20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God - Acts 26:20

Repent (metanoia) and return (epistrepho).

For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls. – 1 Peter 2:25

The other meaning of the word can indicate a sudden turning:

But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” – Acts 16:18

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. – Revelation 1:12

This passage can be seen as a group of bullet points:

Knowing…His choice of you

Gospel not in word only

But in power

And the Holy Spirit

And with full conviction.

You saw what manner of men we were

And you became imitators of us

and the Lord

Having received the word in tribulation

With the joy of the Holy Spirit

To the result that you became an example to all the believers around you,

And your example is still rippling out

They are proclaiming YOUR testimony (to God’s glory)

And you hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ

You hope in the return of Jesus Christ

3 Great Evidences of God’s Election:

5 – Their faithful initial response to the gospel.

6-7 – Their faithful growth in the gospel.

8-10 – Their faithful proclamation of the gospel.

Thoughts on the Passage:

“Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways; 17 and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” – Acts 14:15-17

Idolatry – misplaced worship, devotion, and trust (faith) – is the natural state of fallen man.

Freedom from this idolatry is the primary change made in a person who comes finally to Jesus Christ for salvation.

Idolatry happens in any area of life. Some of the idols of our life could be money, but it also could be our pride. Idolatry could be our desire for what we want. People make idols out of history and nature and economics and politics. Americans have made idols out of their country and their government. It is idolatry when we think the government will save us from catastrophes and trials. Do you think these Christians expected Caesar to come save them? Guess what—Caesar killed these Christians, and if the tide shifts in our country, there will be no hope with our government. We must be careful not to make an idol out of all these good things. Our only hope should be found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. – 1 Corinthians 8:4-6

What do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons. – 1 Corinthians 10:19-20

But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. 4 Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands. 5 They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; 6 They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell; 7 They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat. 8 Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them. – Psalm 115:3-8

For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. 27 Splendor and majesty are before Him, Strength and joy are in His place. – 1 Chronicles 16:26-27

When Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-five Theses” on the church door at Wittenberg Cathedral, the issue of repentance was in the very first thesis: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ … willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

There was no syncretism between their new faith and old religious loyalties. Nor did they take half a step by adopting God into their pantheon, placing him alongside their other religious loyalties. They took the radical step of abandoning those gods that were part of the worship of their family and their community. When the Christian faith arrived in the cities and towns of the empire, its presence was rightly perceived as an attack on the images of the gods (Acts 14:11–18; 17:22–31; 19:23–41).

There was no mixing of indigenous religious practices with the new Christian worship. The Thessalonians came to the one God (implied by the use of the article before God—ton theon) and abandoned the multiplicity of idols. In Judaism, the description of pagan gods as idols did not imply that they were alternative gods but rather that they were not truly gods (cf. 1 Cor. 8:5), a perspective that Paul heartily embraced.

who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? – Deuteronomy 5:26

Q. 94. What is repentance unto life?

A. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.

Applications:

For the Christian:

Idolatry can be worshiping a false god, or worshiping the True God in the wrong way. For many in churches today, they stand either deceived that they are worshiping God, or that He has no concern for their manner of worship. Both are dangerous lies.

For the Backslidden:

What are you trusting in your life? Is it position, power, profession, provision? If you are trusting in anything except God through the Lord Jesus Christ, that object is an idol.

Sermon Text:

We come before God again this Lord’s Day, seeking His message to us in His written word.

We pray this morning for a message that must be sought in truth, understood through the Spirit of God, and applied to our heart in godly obedience.

This week, in our focus on the end of verse 9, we begin the last of the evidences Paul and his fellow writers give for their confidence in God’s election of the Thessalonian church.

We mustn’t forget that in this great introduction, extending from verse 4 to verse 10, Paul and the others are describing why they are so confident in the salvation of this young church in Thessalonica.

But, as we have seen for many weeks now, this is not a mere history lesson of an embattled but faithful congregation;

Rather, the things listed in this passage are instructive for any church and its members to show us what God desires from us.

How WE are supposed to BECOME His church, His emissaries, to our community.

But I would invite you to notice that the things he points out are not their zeal for missions, not their great preaching gifts.

We did look last week at the way the word of the gospel spread from them through their normal business and other relationships,

Reaching into the regions around them organically as their business and other pursuits took them into those places.

But even as their witness in the regions around them was heralded, it was not their organized missions to these areas that inspired the churches around them;

It was the purity of their faith, and the complete surrender to the gospel of Jesus Christ that served as an example to all the other believers.

I would to God that we would be known as a pure and faithful church long before we might be known as an eloquent or organized church.

That the works of our faith would speak more loudly and clearly than all the sermons and songs we might utter.

That we would be found more faithful in our obedience than even in our doctrinal understanding.

And that our love would be known to our neighbors long before our address or confession.

All of these things are good and needful – doctrine and worship and a common confession –

But the commendable things we see in the Thessalonian church are how they obeyed and followed at every step the things they were learning.

They didn’t simply accumulate this doctrinal knowledge, nor did they simply proclaim it –

They LIVED it. They sold out to God’s effectual call.

And over this next month, God willing, we will look at these last four points that are brought out in their obedience:

Today, we will look at how they turned from idols to the Living God.

Next week, if the Lord wills, we will see them not only learning of Christ’s exaltation and future return, but they were WAITING for it.

Then we will see the hope the Resurrection of Jesus Christ brings to His people.

And finally, I plan to see the rescue Jesus Christ accomplished, saving us from the wrath of God.

You will note, every one of these things is doctrinal at its heart,

But each one of them, when we allow the doctrine to penetrate our heart, must change us in the measure in which we trust in it.

We are changed by the truth of the gospel, transforming us, converting us, in our very soul.

This week, then, let’s look at how the word of God comes so as to turn us to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

Idolatry is the natural state of EVERY person.

Not just of “some” people, or primitive people.

ALL people, if they are unredeemed, are idolaters.

Perhaps you think that statement is too large, that I am playing with some hyperbole, some overstatement of the case to make a point.

But I assure you, on the whole teaching of Scripture, I am not overstating this matter at all.

Some of you may remember that we spoke many times in our recent study of Ezra of the idolatry of the people in the land, and how God’s people were commanded to separate themselves not only from the sin but from the relationships with these idolaters.

Now we see, in the Thessalonian epistles, God’s mission into the world that is thoroughly infected and septic with idolatry.

On almost every page of the Bible you and I read, there is the mention and condemnation of idolatry.

Perhaps you may say, “We are modern. We don’t go bowing down on every hill to Ba’al.”

Perhaps not, but each person trusts something or someone.

They might even go so far as to bow down or sacrifice to something or someone.

Every person who is not a follower of Jesus Christ is an idolater.

Because an idol is, at its heart, a god we can make and control. It is what we trust in times of ease and times of trouble.

Psalm 115:4-8 describes what we often think of as idols:

Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands. 5 They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; 6 They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell; 7 They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat. 8 Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them.

Certainly, not as many people would confess to bowing down to a statue or an image, although many still do.

No, in our “a-theistic” nation and culture, we are more likely to idolize ourselves.

To worship our wisdom and understanding.

To follow our opinions and leanings.

To believe that we are the only completely virtuous person, and everyone would do well to be like us.

To believe that our thoughts and words have a greater weight than those of other people.

To expect others to validate us in all things, even when we are objectively wrong.

To believe that, on a whim, we can declare ourselves a different sex, or different origin, or a different person, simply because in that moment we choose to make that identification.

So many think they have the power to bend the language to their will, creating personal pronouns that others must use of them.

Or that everyone else must submit to their delusion that they are something simply because they declare it.

This is where idolatry inevitably leads – everyone does what is right in his own eyes.

Because idolatry is ALWAYS worship and devotion to one’s self first – selfishness institutionalized.

And there is one inviolable law among idolaters: don’t talk bad about another person’s god.

Peaceful idolatry is a live-and-let-live proposition.

“You don’t question my god or my beliefs, and I will live at peace with you.”

That is where we get this insanity today where a sitting judge cannot determine a difference between male and female.

Or where people are compelled to use a person’s private pronouns or face punishment.

Even if those pronouns may be changed on a whim, like a sweater.

Where we must bow to every pop-up virtue or face the consequences.

Because if we don’t play along, if we don’t support these pocket religions,

We are not good citizens.

We are not good people.

And if we should ever have the temerity to declare that the God of the universe has declared absolute and unchanging truth, we are assaulted from every side with accusations and opposition.

And if we continue to declare the GOOD NEWS of Jesus Christ, and refuse to confess it as simply our opinion, we have broken the primary law of idolatry:

Thou shalt not insult another’s god.

But as believers in God through Jesus Christ, we follow a higher Law, a Law that stands even if every person on the planet disagrees:

You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them - Exodus 20:3-5

One commentator put it quite eloquently when describing the invasion of the gospel of Jesus Christ:

There was no syncretism between their new faith and old religious loyalties. Nor did they take half a step by adopting God into their pantheon, placing him alongside their other religious loyalties. They took the radical step of abandoning those gods that were part of the worship of their family and their community. When the Christian faith arrived in the cities and towns of the empire, its presence was rightly perceived as an attack on the images of the gods.

Which brings us to the testimony about the Thessalonian believers:

how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God

These Gentile Thessalonians –

We know they were Gentile because there was no active idolatry among the Jewish synagogues in this time –

These Gentile Thessalonians had not simply adopted God as one of their gods, but had ABANDONED their old gods to serve the One and Only Living and True God.

We see that in the word turned.

It is a word with special emphasis, used only a few dozen times in the New Testament.

It is the word for “turn” with two different intensifiers added to it.

It would be similar to having the base word be “turned”,

And then the first intensifier meaning “really turned”,

And the second meaning “really, really turned”.

In the times it is used in the New Testament, it has two enhanced shades of meaning:

The first means to RETURN to something left some time ago.

The second is to turn SUDDENLY.

In that first case, where the word means RETURN, we see it used in this way in several places, like Acts 3:19:

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord

Perhaps you may be concerned about the idea of Gentiles RETURNING to God.

After all, for Jews who had followed only the Pharisees or who had left God all together, they were the people of God, the people of the promise,

So coming to God would be a return for them.

But what about godless Gentiles – those who had never even heard of the one true God – who worshiped only the “Unknown God”?

Here, even as we understand the idea of RETURN, we must look further back – to the Garden and the Fall.

Because in the beginning, the entire race of man, embodied in Adam, walked with God.

And thus, when man fell, we all became lost, and needed to return.

For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls. – 1 Peter 2:25

And Isaiah put it this way:

All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. – Isaiah 53:6

What a mighty verse! This great Messianic prophecy.

We see that everyone – Jew and Gentile – all the race of man has gone astray.

That each of us has sought his own way, his own god apart from the true God.

And that God Himself – the LORD – has laid on Him – Jesus Christ – our rebellion and sin to save us.

The second meaning of this word “turned” implies SUDDENLY.

We see it when Paul was traveling in Philippi and the fortune-telling girl kept following him and Silas, proclaiming their credentials.

But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” – Acts 16:18

He rounded on her, turning suddenly, even radically.

We can see this shade of meaning in the Thessalonian believers as well.

They did not simply add the teachings of Jesus Christ to their doctrine –

The radically, even suddenly, left what they had always known to follow the living and true God.

All the years of going to the pagan temples,

All the sacrifices they made to these so-called gods.

All the family ties and relationships they had among these idolaters.

Severed so far as the idolatry was concerned.

No more would they meet their families at these temples to have a meal;

No longer would they seek the sin that these temples so easily provided.

They had left these false gods and their false morality to follow the true God who created everything, sustains everything, and saved them through His Son, Jesus Christ.

There was no mixing of indigenous religious practices with the new Christian worship. The Thessalonians came to the one God and abandoned the multiplicity of idols. In Judaism, the description of pagan gods as idols did not imply that they were alternative gods but rather that they were not truly gods, a perspective that Paul heartily embraced.

The church of the true God has no interest in the temples of these idols, no matter if they are made of stone or mere ideas.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, - 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

And we all need to keep in mind that especially in this spiritual warfare, those people who may oppose us are not our enemy – they are the ones we are trying to rescue from their darkened state.

They are our target, our objective – not for destruction, but for salvation.

We must beware lest in winning the argument, we lose the soul.

These weapons we have are not against the flesh, but against the arguments and opinions of those who worship only themselves and their thoughts.

We may take an example from the Apostle Paul when he and Barnabas were being heralded as the false gods Hermes and Zeus:

He declared:

“Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways; 17 and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” – Acts 14:15-17