Finding True Assurance in our Faith

Finding True Assurance in our Faith

7.14.25 — 1 Thess. 1:1-5

Open your Bibles to 1 Thess 1.

We are starting our new series as we continue our theme this year of…

Growing in Our Knowledge of the KOH

We started this theme at the beginning of the year, and I hope that you will say…Yes, I have been growing in my knowledge of the KOH.

I have learned more about my God, more about Salvation, more about sanctification.

We started off this journey by doing a study in Matt 3-9 called…

Seeking First the KOH

And I loved that study…I look forward to picking up in Matthew 10 next January…

There is something sweet to studying a gospel of Jesus today.

But after that, we did, for part of our summer…

Theology in the KOH

That was a study of some systematic theology in the doctrines of the Bible.

I’ll be honest, I was hoping that it would turn out longer than it did, but…there is only 52 weeks in a year…and there is just so little time to get done everything I want to get done in one year…

So, we could only do that study for nine weeks.

Part of that is because we needed to start our new series….

Walking Worthy in the Kingdom of God

Which is a verse-by-verse study of 1 Thess.

This will take us all the way until the end of October, where we will then do a four-week series on Thanksgiving and stewardship.

We are taking the series title from the key verse in the book…

1 Thessalonians 2:12 —“we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”

And my hope and prayer for our time is that you will grow in your walk with God…and you would say that you walk in a more worthy manner each and every day for Him.

Today, as we start our journey, we are not going to do a large overview of the book.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that…I’m just not a huge fan.

These were originally letters to churches…and I think one of the best ways is to take them as they come.

Yes, we need to do some study, but when you read a letter…you just start at the beginning and go through the end.

And today, what we are going to see is that…

Finding  True Assurance in our Faith

[Read 1 Thess. 1:5]

The first thing that this text shows us is that we are called to…

I. Embracing the Central Role of the Church in our Assurance

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it can be easy to read through those introductory verses, and just pass right on by…

OK, this is who it is from…this is who it is to…let’s get to the good stuff.

But, hey, slow down…that is plenty of time… 😊

1 Thessalonians 1:1 —“Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians…”

Did you notice that…to the church.

That is how all of these letters worked…they were to churches.

Now, I know that there are some who have been hurt by the church.

I am very sorry for that. The church should be a safe place for us to grow in Christ and to serve one another.

And yes, pain and suffering and sin do still happen in the church.

[illusion]

But for someone to say that they are done with the church because the church hurt is like saying you are going to work because you have a bad boss.

You might have had a bad experience with your previous or even current employer…but that doesn’t mean you can just stop working.

In fact, just imagine that conversation for a moment, that a child is having with a parent.

Child: Mom/Dad,  I’ve decided to stop working…even though I’m only 19. You see, my boss at the Meijer is unfair, unjust, he treats me poorly, and all my co-workers are unkind as well.

I’ve decided, I’m not going to work for the rest of my life…

How well do you think life is going to turn out for that child?

And that position, by the way, assumes that I’m right and everyone else is wrong…which could be true…but if you are constantly in the position of saying, “I’m the only person who is right…everyone else is wrong.” You have a hard life in front of you…

Beloved, too many people quit the church for all kinds of bad reasons…you might be here today, or even you might know someone who has quit the church… and very often it is because someone sinned, and many times it's really serious sin…

But just because that happened, don’t let that cause you to skip out on the church…and not just going to church… I mean, being a part of a church as a member.

If you view the church as just something that is nice to add to your life…you are missing what it is…

In this case, one church sent some missionaries…Paul, and Silas, on a missionary journey…and they were planting and strengthening churches.

Acts 15:40–41 —“but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”

So, the first thing I want you to see from this text is how essential the church is…but the second thing is…there is something that comes from this text, when you are part of a church that you are not doing this alone.

Did you notice these two things that Paul and others are doing on behalf of the other Christians?

1 Thessalonians 1:2 —“We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,”

They are giving thanks to God…and they are mentioning God in their prayers.

One of the beauties of being in a body of Christians that is dedicated to one another is that you are praying for one another.

In fact, when you join a church like ours, often you make a commitment, verbally, to one another.

This is often called the church covenant.

One of the main benefits of being in a church is the commitment you have made to each other.

I’m not going to read the entire covenant, but notice right here…when you join…what are you saying you are going to do…and what are you saying you want others to do for you…

We commit to rejoice in each other’s happiness and to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows. We commit to pray for each other and to help each other in sickness and difficult times.

You can’t do Christianity alone.

Three Takeaways here: [expand] 

(1) If you have not taken Discover Berean, we will start talking about it here soon…Consider doing it.

(2) If you have taken it…make a decision about joining. If you say, I’m not ever going to join…I’m not sure what to say other than…I’m not sure you and I are reading the same verses.

(3) If you have joined the church…the consider, are you living out the covenant that you made…and do you want others to live it out with you?

a. Meaning, your membership isn’t just like joining Sam’s Club or Costco.

b. It’s not just about the savings that you can get.

c. It’s about a lot more.

d. Consider how well you are doing at living in the Church.

Now, there is perhaps another “unpopular” if you want to call that, doctrine in this text…and that is…

II. Embracing the Central Role of God’s Calling in our Assurance

And I’m not trying to engage in every little battle, but rather to teach the full counsel of God, but what does Paul make plain and clear…

1 Thessalonians 1:4 —“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen (lit. elected) you,”

We are not going to take the time to run around the Bible proving the doctrine of election this morning… but to say that we see that the Bible teaches, plainly and clearly, that God chooses to save sinners.

It is by his direct will and counsel.

And until God calls a person, there is no life to those dead and dry bones.

But let me also provide a bit of balance here for a moment…

Now, does that mean that there is nothing involved on your end?

Does that mean you just sort of sit back there and relax…

No, of course not. You have to be engaged in the process of coming to know Christ as well.

I mentioned earlier that I would share who Silvanus was. He was the man who, with Timothy, helped plant the church in Thessalonica.

Notice here in this verse we see that, but notice how salvation was described…

Acts 17:4 —“And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas (aka. Silvanus), as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.”

Did you catch that…persuaded…

You say, hold on, I thought you said it was God’s election…I thought God did all of it.

There is a both/and. Yes, God calls you to him, and without that call, no one can come to him.

But of course, you must respond to Him.

So, to the person here today that has heard that message, let me ask you…is God calling you today?

Our passage makes clear that God has to call, but God’s word also says that you have a response to make as well.

Perhaps God has been working on your heart.

Perhaps God has shown you that you are truly still in your sin.

Perhaps God has shown you that His Son, Jesus Christ, is the only way to be saved.

Perhaps God has shown you that today, yes today, you can accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

If that's you, and you'd like to talk with me, another pastor, or someone else at our church about how you can come to know Jesus as your Savior, how you can know that we're called by God, we would love the opportunity to do that.

You can grab us after a service, you can call the office to make an appointment, you can fill out that card in the pew in front of you.

We would love the opportunity to talk with you today about the saving work of Christ.

[transition]

Now, for those in Christ, if you say that you have made that step of faith in trusting in Jesus…then, what I would encourage you to do is be…

III. Faith Lived out as Clear Assurance

We know that your good works will not save you…It is the blood of Jesus, and that is what saves…but that does not mean that your salvation will not produce good deeds.

Think about this for a moment…how do I know that I am married?

Well, I have several ways to do that…

· I have my wedding ring that I wear around as a public symbol for me and others

· I have a certificate from the State of Indiana that has a day, the signature of various persons, and a formal stamp to prove it.

· I have wedding photos that show we were married

· I have my own memory of the events…

· And of course I have my own wife, with whom I dwell each and every day.

So, they all serve to remind me of my marriage…of the commitment that I made on April 17, 2010, to my amazing wife.

But having rings on fingers and living with a person doesn’t make us married. It was the giving and receiving of the covenant in our marriage that did it…these are all things that remind me and prove to others that I am married.

Well, the same can be said of the list that we are about to look at.

Having these things does not make one saved, but they reveal evidence that persons are saved. This is not all there is, but it is a start, and what Paul says is that these three things…  

1 Thessalonians 1:3 —“remembering before our God and Father your:

(1) work of faith and

(2) labor of love and

(3) steadfastness of hope

in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, I put it up there like that on purpose because, as we all know, Paul can be a bit complicated sometimes.

In fact, verses 1-10 in the Greek are all just one giant run-on sentence…which is why some of our translations might differ from what the ESV has rendered.

But Paul gives three measures to assure, remind, and for us to look forward to.

The first is that of the “work of faith.”

Which might sound to many like an oxymoron.

But, he is highlighting a bit of what we have already been hinting at. Your Faith needs to produce something…it’s not idle and stagnant…

James, probably in the best way possible, answers why our Faith must be “working,” so to speak.

James 2:18–19, 26 —“But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! …For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”

What is his point…our Faith must be active…it must be busy…and that business must be about the things of God.

Let me say this…for those of you who served at ADC and the carnival this week…that is what this verse is talking about. You were busy living out your Faith.

I’m so grateful and thankful to hear that ______ kids made a profession of faith…and we have no idea how many kids had seeds planted in their hearts that may one day grow.

It’s when you are involved in that kind of work…that you are laboring…that you have a level of assurance.

Now, remember, I keep using that word…assurance. Works don’t earn, they reveal. But a person could easily do all the “right things” and still not know the Lord.

Anyone can fake it for a while… but you can’t fake it forever.

The second level of assurance is the Labor of Love.

1 Thessalonians 1:3 —“remembering before our God and Father your:

(1) work of faith and

(2) labor of love and

(3) steadfastness of hope

in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And our English word labor may not give us the full picture…

Labor — to engage in hard work, implying difficulties and trouble

Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 514.

Picture a guy who is doing landscaping work with a shovel on a hot July day.

Picture someone who has just spent a physically exhausting day at work.

Look, I work in an office almost every day…I’m not talking about that type of tired…I know…I come home some days and I tell my wife…I’m beat…and yes, I’m tired.

I’m talking about tired like you were working out in the hot sun swinging a hammer…that is what this is talking about when it uses the word labor…

And what is that labor all about?

It’s about Love.

That is the Christian right there…someone who is working so hard at putting others before themselves…

And here is the thing…go back to the guy who has been working out in the sun all day….

There is no doubt, if you walk up to a person working like that…sweet is dripping down his brow…his shirt is soaking wet…he needs a drink of water…

There is no doubt he is working hard…

Beloved, that is the picture of what our loving each other and others should look like.

It should not be something that we have to look for and hunt around…am I really showing love? Is he or she really showing love?

It should be as evident as the soaking wet landscaping worker…

· So, let me ask you…spouces….husband….is your love that obvious?

· Wives, is your life that obvious?

· Parents, is your life that obvious?

· Church members…in this body…is your love that obvious?

If it is not…then look at these words…it will not earn your salvation…no, but it is proof of salvation.

No amount of expression of love to my wife will make me more married to her than I already am. But, the more I show her love…the more I prove to her and others the power and validity of our marriage.

The more I love her, the more I express the true point of our marriage.

The last one here is the…steadfastness of our hope…in

1 Thessalonians 1:3 —“remembering before our God and Father your:

(1) work of faith and

(2) labor of love and

(3) steadfastness of hope

in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, that steadfastness of hope…it’s not in our deeds and anything we do…but in Jesus…

This is really talking about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints…

Well then, what is the assurance that is being mentioned?

Quite simply, we all have times of doubt, struggle, and so on…but the true believer will always be moving closer and closer to Christ…

They will be growing in steadfastness… they will not be tossed to and fro on the waves of doubt and fear of salvation.

There is nothing that can rob someone of their salvation…and our salvation in Jesus is the solid anchor of our souls.

In a world of constant change….nothing stays the same…Jesus Christ and the assurance of his salvation…it remains the same.

And I would say…if this is a challenge that you have… that you feel constantly tossed to and fro…and you doubt our salvation from time to time…let me share a resource with you…

Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints [link]

This book can help flesh our the things that we have been talking about more…and help you rest confidently in your salvation.

But Paul actually gives them more reasons why they can be assured of salvation, near the end of our passage, when he says…

1 Thessalonians 1:5a —“because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction…”

Now, you might be wondering, that is interesting, Paul says, our gospel.

That because it was a message that was entrusted to Him…just like I might say, this is my pulpit…

It’s not that I own it…as much as it is something that has, for a time, been entrusted to me to use…

That is what Paul means by our gospel …

But notice that he says this message came in Power…

Well that is a clear indication of the miraculous gifts that accompanied the preaching of the gospel to the primitive church.

But that was not the only way that people came to know the Gospel. IN fact, in the account of it coming to the Thessalonians…we read

Acts 17:3 —“explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.””

The point of that being…the Church there, which were Gentiles, they had assurance because the Gospel came to them with power, that is, signs, but also with something else…an inward conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit.

That is another way that a Christian knows they have been saved. There is a deep conviction of this…

“[Conviction is a] reference is to the Thessalonians’ deep inward persuasion of the truth of the gospel a token of the Holy Spirit’s work in their hearts, more impressive and more lasting than the persuasion produced by spectacular or miraculous signs. Such signs there no doubt were in the earliest stages of their new life, as there were in other Pauline churches (cf. Gal 3:5), but it is not to them that appeal is made here.”

F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, vol. 45, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1982), 14.

And so, there is always an element of the Christian walk that will be internal. That will be something that the Spirit is telling you deep down…you are saved.

And if you do not feel that… if you don’t sense that full conviction that you are saved…then ask yourself…

Are you doing the things that this passage talks about?

Are you laboring at love?

Are you living out your faith?

I love how Pastor Steve said it last week…you were not saved in order to sit and soak…

And so, let me ask you… are you doing just that? Sitting and Soaking?

If you want to have full assurance that comes from the gospel…then, let me encourage you with these words here…

Lastly, then, our text ends with…

IV. The Power of our Testimony for Clear Assurance

One of the most powerful things that a Christian has is the testimony of their life.

You can either show others what it means to live for Jesus with your life…or you can show them something else…

And as Paul was giving them assurance of the true Faith, he often pointed to his own life. Not as a means of exalting himself, but patiently demonstrating how to live the Christian life.

1 Thessalonians 1:5b —“You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.”

Notice there, for your sake…they lived a particular life.

We are going to study more about that life and how Paul lived…but for now, see that there is power in the way you live your life.

If your view is…that you are just living for you…and who cares what other people see and think…you know nothing of what the Gospel talks about.

We don’t need to live in fear of what people think, but we do need to live in such a way that they see our lives and when they see it…they glorify God because our life is so very different.

My hope and prayer in this passage that we have seen today is that you would know how essential the church is…how essential God’s calling is… and if you sense his calling, you…I would invite you to respond to that…even today.

That you would see how God gives us ways to be assured of our salvation and that we would be careful to live that out…before others.

Let’s pray.