Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Introduction: Is your Christian experience as advertised?

As a kid, I would often wake up very early in the morning, head downstairs in the family room, and watch tv.

Unfortunately for my 6-yo self, the children’s shows weren’t on at 5am, so instead of watching cartoons I would watch infomercials.

And before long, I’d get all excited about a new vacuum cleaner or blender, and then they’d get to the end of the commercial and make their pitch, and I was 100% sold.

I’d be like, “My mom absolutely needs this thing.”

So I’d copy down the number, and at 5:38am I’d run up to my parents’ room to the side of my mom’s bed and I’d whisper, “mom, you have to call this number right now.

It’s really important.”

She’d ask what was happening, and I’d try to repeat the sales pitch from the commercial, but it seemed like no matter how hard I tried she would never call the number.

Looking back now, I understand why.

It’s because those products you see on tv don’t always work as advertised!

The fact that it was 5am probably didn’t help, but more than that, some things just aren’t all that they were made out to be, and so my mom didn’t want to take the risk when we already had perfectly functional appliances.

Things are not always as advertised, and the same can be true for being a disciple of Jesus when we don’t preach the whole Gospel.

When Christianity is just about me getting everything I need in Christ, which is true, but not about what I’m leaving behind to follow Christ, we can end up feeling like our Christianity arrived with some assembly required.

That it isn’t as advertised.

That it isn’t as immediately glorious as it was supposed to be.

That’s the tension that the Thessalonians are wrestling with as we come to our passage today.

As we read last week, the Word of God is working in this young church, but it’s working in some unexpected ways.

The Thessalonians had come to believe in Jesus, but the short term result of their chasing after Jesus was, as we will see in our text this morning, suffering.

They were receiving Jesus, but they were losing their safety, their comfort, their social status, their good standing with Rome, and possibly, their lives.

And this suffering was causing them to wonder, “If Christianity is true, why is it so hard?

If Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, why does following Him result in our suffering?

And if we’re serving the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, why are the Jewish people, their descendents, opposing us so strongly?”

And so in response to these tensions, Paul writes to encourage them.

Let’s see what he says, and what the Lord might have for us this morning.

*Read 1 Thes 2:14-16

As we look through our text this morning, Paul is going to show us three things to know about suffering in the sacred overlap.

The first thing I want to point out for us is this conjunction here in verse 14 — “for.”

Right off the bat, Paul is providing the grounds for an inference he’s making.

Everything that’s said in our text this morning is the grounds for something that Paul said previously, so let’s look at what that might be.

In verse 13, as I already mentioned, Paul writes, “and we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”

And immediately after that we get our passage starting in verse 14, “for…” What we’re seeing here is the reason that Paul knows that the Thessalonians have accepted the gospel, and that God is working in their lives in and through that message.

And what is that reason?

It’s that they became imitators of the churches in Judea (we’ll talk more about that), but how did they become imitators?

Because you suffered.

In other words, according to Paul, He knows that God is at work in the lives of the Thessalonians through the message of the gospel because they suffered.

And in this sense, Paul is saying that their suffering is proof that God is at work.

Now you may be sitting there thinking, wait wait hang on Clay.

I thought suffering was a bad thing!

How could suffering be evidence that God is working?

I mean, I thought God’s plan was to do away with suffering in my life.

Don’t you love to read that verse in Revelation that talks about God wiping every tear from our eyes?

What’s the deal here?

I know.

If you’re asking these questions, you’re struggling with the tension of the sacred overlap.

If you’re anything like me, there are times when you ask these questions, all of which boil down to this one contention: I thought that following Jesus was supposed to be easy.

There’s no way that it could be this hard.

We, like the Thessalonians, experience difficulty and opposition in our walk with Jesus, and we interpret it as a bug in the system.

We freak out!

What’s wrong?

Is something wrong?

Did I mess something up?

The only explanation for difficulty and suffering that we can fathom is some sort of systems failure.

And so we conclude that our suffering is because of some secret sin, or because we haven’t found the right church, or because we didn’t pray hard enough, and so we shuffle the deck and deal ourselves a new hand only to find out that the struggles and the tensions continue!

Surely this difficulty is a bug.

This suffering simply cannot be what Jesus intended for me.

And Paul is coming in hot off the heels of persecution and saying it’s not a bug my friend, it’s a feature.

This is the first thing we need to know: Suffering is not a sign that God has forsaken us!

Suffering is proof that God is at work.

This is so hard for us to internalize.

Deep down we believe that following Jesus should be easy, but the reality is that it is costly.

It is easy, and it is light.

But it’s an easy yoke.

It’s a light burden.

These are oxymorons!

Yokes are definitionally difficult!

Burdens are inherently burdensome!

This is the sacred overlap!

The adventure of becoming like Christ is full of beautiful mountaintops and grueling valleys.

It’s full of walks with the Lord in the cool of the day, and treks through the desert where it seems like there’s no water.

It’s this overlap of desolation and consolation.

And what Paul is saying is that he sees these young believers wading deep into the waters, and he knows that it is the truth of the gospel at work in them that is enabling them to do so.

He knows that they have accepted and received and believe in the truth of the gospel—that Jesus is all we need!

That just as Paul writes elsewhere, because of what Christ has accomplished through His life for us and His death in our place, for us to live is Christ and even to die is gain!

And so there is this mystery at the center of the Christian life: I die to myself so that I might live.

I decrease so that He can increase.

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book titled The Cost of Discipleship, in which he writes that “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

What he means is that the good news of Jesus requires that we no longer live for ourselves, that we relinquish control over our lives, that we surrender to Jesus Christ.

You may not recognize that as the Christianity that you signed up for, but this mystery of dying to myself so that I can live in Christ is exactly what Jesus describes in the gospels, and Luke 9 is just one great example.

Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

Jesus describes following Him as a literal death march!

And yet He knows that it is the only way we will truly live.

The Thessalonians are getting to know all of this, and as Paul hears the report of their perseverance and faith from Timothy, he knows not only that they have received the gospel, but also that God is at work.

You see, even their willingness to suffer demonstrates that Jesus has captivated their hearts.

Paul knows that if they were living according to their own desires, they would have avoided suffering like the plague (like we so often do…).

He knows that they could have easily turned away when they realized that following Jesus meant difficulty and suffering.

They had a decision to make early on: Which is more important, Jesus, or my family; Jesus, or my social status; Jesus, or my comfort and safety; Jesus, or my job and my ability to provide a good life for my kids; Jesus, or retirement; Jesus, or living the life I always dreamed of.

And when Paul hears that they are willing to suffer for their faith, he knows that they have chosen Jesus.

Not only is our suffering and our willingness to suffer proof that God has been at work, but Paul knows that God is at work in the midst of our suffering.

This is why he can write in Romans 8 that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose….

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

We don’t tend to think of suffering as included in the “all things” that God is using, but that may be the most explicit thing that Paul is referring to over and above anything else! God will use our suffering to refine us like a refiner’s fire.

We don’t die to ourselves, we don’t deny ourselves just for the fun of it!

God is using our self-denial to form Christlikeness in us!

None of it is wasted!

Whenever I put my daughter to bed, there are three songs I sing to her, and one of them is How Firm a Foundation, an old hymn.