Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 1:9 and 10. I will however read the entire chapter since it sums it up. 1 Thessalonians 1. I’ll read all of chapter 1.

“Paul and Sylvanus and Timotheus unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you, for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father, knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God.

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so that we were examples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God was spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything.

For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we have unto you, and how ye 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 delivereth us from the wrath to come.”

And again, see that you refuse not him that speaketh. One of the early church fathers, Tertullian, said this, speaking of the scriptures in the striking way in which they’re written. He said, “I adore the plenitude of the scriptures in which every letter is a word and every word is a verse and every verse is a chapter and every chapter is a book and every book is the Bible. In which every twig is a branch and every branch a tree and every tree a forest in which every drop is a rivulet and every rivulet a river and every river a bay every bay the ocean every ocean all waters.”

Marsh, who quoted this in his commentary on Thessalonians, said that in this particular verse we’re looking at today, verses 9 and 10, there is in these verses a mountain of matter in every line. Yea, there is a casket of jewels in each word. And then he quoted from Tertullian.

Hacket, speaking of these particular two verses 9 and 10, said that here we have the mission preaching to pagans in a nutshell. Neil said that this would appear to be Paul’s mind rather a summary of the presentation of the Christian gospel to the Thessalonians versus 9 and 10. Hebert in a more extended quote also commented on how much is contained in these two short verses.

He said in looking back over the summary statement of the remarkable testimony concerning the Thessalonians—that’s what 9 and 10 is, a summary statement of all chapter 1—he said one is impressed with the richness of its compressed theology about God, his Son, and the Christian life.

Concerning God, it indicates that he is a living person, is truly God, has a Son, raised him from the dead, is the proper recipient of Christian service, and his wrath against sin.

Concerning Jesus Christ, it indicates his dual nature as the God-man, his death and resurrection. By implication, his ascension, his expected return from heaven, and his delivering of believers from wrath.

Concerning the Christian life, it teaches the need for conversion as a defining break with past evil. That Christian living is characteristically a life of serving God. And that the Christian has the living hope of deliverance from the wrath of judgment through the returning Christ.

And so we have in verses 9 and 10 an excellent summation not only of the first chapter of the book of Thessalonians, but really of some very basic biblical truths and a great number of them.

Verse 9 says, “For they themselves show of us what a manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” And that’ll be the first point of our outline—how they turn to God. And secondly, how they serve the living true God. That’s the second part of the outline. And then third in verse 10, “and to wait for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivereth us from the wrath to come.”

Turning, serving, and waiting. That’s characteristic of the Christian life. And that’s the manner in which we’ll discuss this text today.

## First to Turn

The Thessalonians in a summation statement were said to have turned to God from idols. The particular word used to describe or translated turn is normally used of conversion. It can be used of simply turning physically, turning about as it were, changing direction, but it’s one of the normative terms that is used in the New Testament of conversion and it is used in that way in various other passages of scripture.

For instance, in Acts 3:19, the preacher said in that particular verse, “Repent ye therefore and be converted.” And that word converted is this word turned.

Acts 11:21: “The hand of the Lord is with them and a great number believed, received and turned unto the Lord.”

Acts 15:3 talks about the turning or conversion of the Gentiles. This causing a great joy unto all the brethren.

Conversion and turning are seen as one thing. In Acts 26:20, we read that people should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance. And so repentance is seen in the context of accompanying conversion and then producing the fruits of repentance.

As a result of this turning about, Acts 26:18 said that the preachers of the gospel had come to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. And so what this talks about when we read the Thessalonians turned to God is a radical change in their whole life direction.

One of the things we’ve done with our kids for the last couple of years, and the little ones particularly—and it’s not really worked that affectionately to you the truth, but it gets the idea across—and I thought of it as I was preparing for this sermon. I taught my kids that this—the hand going from this side over to this direction. That’s repentance to my children. Repentance isn’t just feeling sorry for what you’ve done, violating God’s law. It’s beginning to turn then and do what’s right. And that’s really the idea here of conversion.

Conversion and repentance talk to not simply a sorrow for past sins, but a whole new life direction going on in the believer’s life who’s been converted. And that’s what the Thessalonians had done. They had experienced a radical change in their whole lives, and they were now heading in a completely different direction.

Now, it’s interesting because the word can be translated return as well as turned. And in a sense, that’s what conversion is—returning to God—because all people that are living in sin have fallen away from God. They’ve apostasized. They’ve turned their backs on the living God whom they know exists according to Romans 1. We originally turned to idols. And God calls us to return and convert to him, to change our direction, to put it in line towards him.

So there’s a towards God that occurs here. The whole man—his emotions, his will, his intellect—all are described in this particular word. It’s a strong word. All of the man’s life in terms of his emotional life, his intellectual life, his volitional life, what his will is involved with, are all affected by this conversion. The verb emphasized is a change in external conduct that comes as the result of these internal changes wrought by the spirit of God. You can see whether or not a person has turned.

Repentance points to the past primarily, while conversion has a forward look to it as well as an alteration or break with the past. So it’s very important that we see that the first aspect of the Thessalonian church was a turning to God. But it was a turning to God that also implied a turning away from idols.

Now, the word used for idol here can be translated in lots of different ways. It is frequently spoken of as part of this conversion process. For instance in Acts 14:15, at this particular point Paul was being worshiped as a god or an idol himself, and his reply to this is “We are also men of like passion with you and we preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities, from these idols unto the living God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are in.”

So conversion is normally spoken of as turning not just to God, but away from idols as well.

Now, an idol—originally the specific Greek word here was originally referring to a phantom or you might say a figment of the imagination. It was a nothing. Wasn’t even a shadow. It was a figment or a phantom. By implication, it came to mean also those particular physical things that men would produce as gods, physical manifestations that are outlawed by the Second Commandment.

In Exodus 20, we have the Second Commandment. The Second Commandment is thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. So you’re not supposed to make anything that is a worship contact point for you with God.

Now what this particular commandment’s relationship to the First Commandment is a matter of some discussion. The First Commandment is you shall have no other gods. The Second Commandment is no idols. How are they related? Well, both the Lutheran church and I believe the Catholic Church as well—they’re brought into one commandment. The First and Second are brought together and they break up the Tenth Commandment, which would then be the Ninth. Coveting property separately from coveting your neighbor’s wife. That’s how they get ten out of it.

I think the Reformed perspective—where the Second Commandment is the Second Commandment, idolatry is separate from the First Commandment—is correct. But I think that relationship has to be thought out a little bit. Idolatry is often thought of just as simply people worshiping sticks and stones and stuff, and there is that aspect to it. But R.J. Rushdoony in his comments in his Institutes of Biblical Law talks about how all other gods are forbidden in the First Commandment, and the commandment against idolatry takes that general prohibition of all other gods, of worshiping other gods into the specific frame of formal worship, so no contact point with any other god you may wish to have through idol worship itself in terms of the Second Commandment.

Calvin said that when speaking of idols, he said that men don’t think of these things that they’ve created as gods in and of themselves, but rather they believe some power of divinity dwells in these carved or molten images that they would have. Calvin says, “We must not suppose the heathen to be so stupid that they did not understand God to be something other than sticks or stocks and stones.” He mentions how they change their idols frequently and yet they have the same god in mind.

And this kind of gets to the idea—the idol is a contact point with a particular god who is one of many gods—and the purpose of making the idol is to manipulate that god essentially and to kind of get him on your side as it were.

James B. Jordan discusses idolatry specifically in terms of a contact point or mediator, and he says that really the ultimate statement against the Second Commandment or the positive thing that gives us the Second Commandment is the fact that we have one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And so Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. And any other attempt to mediate between yourself and other gods or the God of heaven even is idolatry.

Now the scriptures tell us that certainly, and we’re going to look at a few passages a little later from the prophets that talk about idols that are actually made out of one’s hands. But it can’t be restricted to that because in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5, we’re told very explicitly that covetousness is idolatry. And so idolatry cannot be limited to the making of physical images and bending down and worshiping those images. Can’t be limited to that because we’re told explicit in the New Testament that covetousness is a form of idolatry.

And so the definition has to be a bit broader. I think that what Paul is saying here is that while a person—while in terms of the Thessalonians they had specifically actual idols, carved images of various gods that they worshiped in that culture—they did—the Thessalonians lived about 50 miles away from Mount Olympus, which was where supposedly when one of the gods shook his locks the mountain would tremble—so they believed in idolatry and various gods and they would have carved images representing those gods. So that’s true, but I think in a broader sense that what’s always true of conversion is it brings us away from idolatry in terms of worship of other gods other than the true God of heaven.

In other words, if you for instance worship the god of the dollar, if making money is your ultimate aim in life, then you are idolatrous in terms of money. Remember we talked about the seven deadly sins. Greed is a form of idolatry. We talked about that. Lust is idolatry and various other aspects as well. But in any event, the Thessalonians had turned and converted away from this idolatry and turned to the living God. And that’s what the essence of salvation, the conversion experience is.

Now, it’s very difficult to do this. And I think that has to be stressed. Hendrickson in his comment on this particular portion of scripture said that it’s not easy to reject and eject gods which one has worshiped from the days of childhood and which by one’s ancestors from hoar antiquity have always been considered very real, so that their names and individual peculiarities have become household words.

This implies, Hendrickson said, a religious revolution. We don’t live in a country that has actually had that kind of idolatrous worship. We’re beginning to see it more and more as the country continues to fall away from its Christian origins. But I think that it’s not hard to see analogies between that kind of idolatry and the various forms of idolatry that we have had in this country.

This year’s Christian Reconstruction Conference in April will talk about modern heresies that promise salvation. Reverend Rushdoony may be speaking on politics for the civil state. And certainly the civil state is an idolatrous manifestation of a false god. The civil state provides or attempts to provide security in all areas of life and salvation. And so it becomes, as it were, the substitute god. And as a result, it has to have many laws and regulations because of denying the providence of the living God. They have to take control of every aspect of life.

I remember several years ago now—probably I would guess five or six years ago—there was a Supreme Court decision. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember what it was even, but it was a real attack on the church. And I remember I preached on Gideon and how Gideon, in relationship to what Hendrickson says here—how it’s not easy to do these things—Gideon was told to destroy his father’s idols and actually went out in the middle of the night to do it. He was a little scared to do it in the daytime apparently. And I think that all of us have had at some point in time to root out some idolatry from our lives that has been passed on by our culture or in some cases our parents. And it’s not an easy thing to do.

Really, I think much of what Christian Reconstruction is trying to get rid of is various idolatry, idolatrous thinking that we have in our minds. We have tended in America, the Christian church has tended to break up aspects of their life and to have a god, if you will, for Sunday and for Sunday worship service and to have another god who controls what we do at play or what we do in our recreation or what we do, how we spend our money or how we celebrate various days of the week, etc.

I think that there are many things that are happening in our world today in the Christian church that shows that people are trying to self-consciously root out any other controlling principles in their lives that would take the place of the living God. I’ve mentioned the state. When I preached on Gideon, I made reference to Roosevelt and the way FDR was looked up to by many of our parents as a real savior to the nation in times of great trouble. And he received lots of praise and glory for doing really what only God can do, which is to bring salvation to a people.

And a lot of times it’s easy to identify idolatry by what really irritates people if you speak against it. And if you speak against Roosevelt among a great portion of our older population, it is as if you had taken that idol of Gideon’s father and began to break it down.

Social security, I think, is somewhat idolatrous in our nation. The public schools are a real problem. They’ve been seen as producing salvation. Richard Mayher gave me an article that’ll be running in the next Line Upon Line, very appropriately talks about the relationship of people’s belief that public schools can affect salvation. These are idols and they are every bit as strong as the idols that these people worshiped. Remember when men worshiped idols in the past, they—as Calvin said—they ultimately didn’t think that the power rested in that physical manifestation. They were trying to achieve something beyond that.

And so people today have these idolatrous areas of their lives, and we do as well. And God calls us to turn in every aspect of life away from those things and toward God.

Now one author said that the dungeon of idolatry must fall before the ark of God and not only be broken but expelled and abandoned. Another one recounted an account of a Chinese heathen temple in one land that had been converted into a place of Christian worship. They had bells that were once used—two large bells used to summon the gods—but instead now these bells were used to summon the believers to worship, the call to worship. They had an incense table which had been cut down and made a preaching table out of it. The platform which had supported the larger idols, actual physical idols in this case, were hewed into benches for the worshipers. And the Daoist sign, which hung in front of the worship facility, had now been painted with the letters “Jesus’s Chapel” on the front doors.

And I think that the reason I bring that illustration up is that I think that when we think of our homes and our lives that we live in the context of going throughout a whole weekly cycle for us, we should think of it in terms of the same thing. We should recognize that there are idolatrous aspects in our homes. There are areas of our lives that have not been fully turned away from in terms of our own personal pleasures or some other gods, and turning those things into specific areas of application of serving God. And our homes should be characterized the same way that Chinese temple was—where they self-consciously went through it searching out idolatry in the temple and how it could be manifested and instead converted that into a God-pleasing and useful aspect for Christian worship.

I think that evaluation of our lives in terms of idolatry should be a constant process. The turning, the conversion that we come to in the beginning of our Christian life, should be continued—I think—as we live it out, a continual search for idolatry and then driving it out of our lives.

Indeed in James 5, we read that “brethren, if any of you do err from the truth and one convert him and let him know he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death.” So if he says that in the context of the church fellowship, there going to be some of us that err from the truth and our responsibility is to convert one another. The word is the same word—to turn them. And so it is that when we see each other erring, essentially what we’re trying to do when we try to get people back onto a righteous path is to convert them or turn them back to God in that particular area of their lives. So conversion is an ongoing process in our life and it implies a moving away from idolatry and a moving toward God and his providence.

Now in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, we have the classic passage that people talk about not being unequally yoked in terms of why I believe a believer shouldn’t marry an unbeliever. And well, I’ll just read a portion of it here. It has to do with this form of idolatry.

He says, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? Or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God.”

He tells that to be unequally yoked is to be yoked in terms of volitional obedience to God’s law with others who are in disobedience to God’s law. Righteousness is righteousness and justice according to his standard. And so it is unlawful to come into covenantal union with those people who are in rebellion to God’s righteous standard and instead are unrighteous. It’s rebellion to come into covenantal union with those who are in darkness as opposed to light. Light is knowledge and it speaks to our intellectual aspect.

I said that man’s conversion involves his volition, his mind and intellect, and also involves who he declares to be Lord—Christ or Belial. It has reference to who we acknowledge as the supreme authority in our land as well. And so the scriptures say that to come into this unequal yoking is essentially to move back toward idolatry.

What communion does the temple of God have with idols? Now to identify idols in our homes then and in our communities and in our families and in ourselves, these are the areas we have to look. Our actions—in terms of what’s right and wrong, what do we do? Our thought—do we have thoughts that are really darkness as opposed to light that haven’t been conformed to the image of God and haven’t been washed, as it were, that particular portion of our thinking, our mind, by the word of God? And then our aspect of who we submit to—Christ or Belial—to counter the kingdom of Christ versus the counterfeit kingdom of Belial. These are ways in which to search out this idolatry.

By the way, one of the major aspects of the problem with the war in the Persian Gulf is that we have violated this particular portion of scripture by covenanting together with idolatrous nations. Now, we’re not exactly a Christian nation ourselves anymore, but certainly when we draw into covenants such as we’ve done with Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Syria, these are idolatrous nations and their cultures indicate that they work themselves out in extremely degrading practices and certainly a strong hatred for Christianity. And that is one of the central problems of the Persian Gulf War. It is essentially a turning away—it turns the country even more away from God and back toward idolatry. So it has application there.

Okay. So that’s one way to think through idolatrous regions in our own lives that we should—as the Thessalonians, model believers did—turn away from.

## Another way to identify that is with this second section

He says that they turned away. They turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. We can determine what are the idols in our lives by determining whom we serve. If we find that we spend most of our time, for instance, in search of money, then money has probably become somewhat idolatrous to us.

I was having conversations this week with one or two of you about investment strategies. And if the end goal of our investment strategies, for instance, is to simply increase the amount of wealth we have, I would submit to you that is getting close to being idolatrous. Now, if the purpose is to accumulate wealth to leave an inheritance or to guard our family economically as the end result to the glory of God, okay. But if the end result of our investments is to simply accumulate dollars, that’s idolatrous.

Now, that means a lot because it means that how we invest our money really should be determined not simply by our own family needs, but to see money as a gift from God to be used for the purposes of his kingdom. How do we serve God with our money? We use it to promote Christian endeavors in a nation. You know, the unrighteous steward puts in the hole in the ground and it sits there. He just wants to hold on to it. The righteous steward takes whatever talents God has given to us in terms of money or anything else and puts them to work for the kingdom, and then God blesses that return.

The end result is not to get return on your money so you can put it in T-bills or this, that, or the other thing. You’ve got to think about what you’re doing in terms of what are you supporting? What are you encouraging? What are you using that talent that God has given you to accomplish in the kingdom? And if it’s not bearing fruit for the kingdom in some aspect, then you’ve set up some other form of god over that particular area of your life.

Now, whom we serve then can tell us in what ways idolatry has penetrated into our own lives. The Thessalonians again, as model believers, served God. The term service here means very clearly a bondservant or a slave. It implies the absolute obedience of a slave. And some people don’t like that, but that’s what we are. Paul liked it. He was very prone—as he in his epistles—to take great pleasure in the fact that he was a bondservant, a slave to Jesus Christ. And that means the slave’s life is totally controlled by his master. He doesn’t hire himself out for just Sunday work in terms of the living God to worship him on Sunday. His whole life is affected by the implications of his master.

God is a living God. We’re told that explicitly. He is living in that he acts. In Joshua 3:10, he drives people out from before us. In Acts 14 and 15, he made the heavens and the seas and all things that are therein. He is alive in that he acts and he is alive in that he brings life as well. God is life. John 5:26, the Father hath life in himself. So he has given to the Son to have life in himself. In John 5:40, “You will not come to me that you might have life.”

So whoever comes to Christ comes to life. God is life in that he acts, he creates all life. He is the definition of life essentially and he communicates life to the believer, to the elect community.

And God is true. Now here the word doesn’t mean true as opposed to lie. It doesn’t mean he’s truthful. It means he is surely God, or in the words of the Nicene Creed, he is very God, a very God. He is true God. Jesus in John 15, the very first verse says, “I am the true vine.” Wycliffe translated that, “I am the very vine.” True in the sense of the genuine article, the real thing, as opposed to, of course, these idols we’ve been talking about.

God’s being a true and living God is related in other scripture passages to his holiness, his faithfulness, and his justice. Again, the truth of God is seen in the manifestation of who he is. And as a result of that, although the text doesn’t explicitly tell us this, but having set up the duality as it were—to turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God—true God distinguishes God from idols. And so he again says we’re to be serving God and we’re not to be serving idols.

Now in Galatians 4:8, Paul says, “Howbeit then, when you knew not God, you did service unto them which by nature are no gods.”

Another explicit statement—implied here in terms of logic, explicit in Galatians 4:8—that prior to conversion and turning to God, people serve idols. As Bob Dylan said, you got to serve somebody. You either serve an idol who is not God. It may be a physical manifestation, maybe a principle, maybe yourself, whatever it is. You got to serve somebody ultimately controlled by Belial or Satan, or you serve God. And so the Thessalonians turned from God’s idols who are both dead and false, not the genuine article, to the God who is indeed alive and true, the genuine article.

We mentioned a little bit about the foolishness of idolatry as seen in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 44:9 and following is a big section there that deals with the foolishness of the articles that are produced by people that make idols. In the context of that, in verse 16 it says, “He burneth part thereof in the fire. With part thereof he eateth flesh. He roasteth with roast and is satisfied. He warms himself and says, ‘Aha, I am warm. I’ve seen the fire.’ And the residue thereof, he maketh a god.”

So he’s kind of mocking them here for these idols they make when they actually use part of the thing they’re going to make the idol out of to roast in the fire to roast a piece of meat for them or something.

In Isaiah 46:1 and following, he again sort of makes fun of the idols. This particular passage is talking about when they had to go off into captivity. They had to take their idols with them on carts. The idols were upon the beasts and upon the cattle. Your carriages were heavy laden. They are a burden to the weary beast. These poor beasts are tired to haul these dumb, senseless, foolish idols around. They can’t help anybody. They stoop. They bow down together. They could not deliver the burden, but themselves have gone into captivity.

Idols—and remember the physical manifestations are simply a picture of all idols. All false gods are completely unable to deliver even themselves. They have to be carted about as it were through various mechanisms. And contrary to that, in Isaiah 46, he goes on in verse 4 to say, “I will carry you. I have made you. I will bear you. Even I will carry and will deliver you.”

Again, God is seen as someone who can act and who has power. The idols, all other gods are useless and pointless.

Jeremiah 10:1-10 also speaks of this and again it contrasts it to the living God. It says the idols don’t move in verse 4. In verse 5, the idols can’t speak out. They must needs be borne. They cannot go. But then in verse 10, “The Lord is the true God. The genuine article again. He is the living God.” You see Paul has reference back to these statements of the foolishness of idolatry.

In Jeremiah 10:10, the Lord is seen as the true God, the living God, and an everlasting king. At his wrath, the earth shall tremble and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation. So Jeremiah 10:10 is a very much a passage from the Old Testament that Paul is alluding to in this section here in Thessalonians. It shows the continuity of the scriptures.

Again, in Psalm 115, the idols are mocked. It says: They have mouths they cannot speak. They have eyes but they cannot see. They have ears they cannot hear. Noses have they but they cannot smell. They have hands but they cannot handle. Feet have they but they walk not, neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them. So is everyone that trusteth in them.

The foolishness of trusting in idols. This same thought is included brought into the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 12:2, idols is spoken of as being dumb. In 1 Corinthians 8:4, Paul says, “We know that an idol is nothing in the world.”

That idea of the phantom, a figment of your imagination. Now, in contrast to the idols, of course, the living God—as opposed to the dead, useless false gods of the idolaters.

The living God indeed has eyes to see the earth and its inhabitants. In Revelation 1, the first chapter, John sees the eyes of Jesus as a flaming fire. And that fire will in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation search out the evil in the seven churches. Woody Allen’s movie—what was it called? Crimes and Misdemeanors—had a man who was raised Jewish become an ophthalmologist because his father was always talking about the eyes of God, the eye of God that saw everything and perceives everything. Big theme in that movie and certainly a true theme that God’s eyes search out the earth and search out men’s evils.

Those eyes, however, are also described in Song of Solomon 5:12 as being the eyes of doves—to befriend us and to love us as it were. In Mark 6:48, Jesus saw the disciples in the storm and he came to them in the storm and quieted them and delivered them, as it were. So God’s eyes are seen as searing judgment against some, but his love and deliverance to others.

God has ears to hear. God says repeatedly throughout the scriptures, “Call on me, I will hear. I will deliver. I will hearken unto you.” Our God is alive. God has hands to help. And Isaiah 41:10 says that. He says, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

He holds us up with his right hand. What we’re saying here is that these scriptures are a strong encouragement to us to turn from idols to serve the living and true God. But having done that, to take great assurance in that God is a living and true God and his eyes, his hands, everything that he is as it were is for our benefit when we turn to him and are found in Jesus Christ the Savior.

Now this also can be seen in terms of application if we go a little bit further into the text. In Zechariah 14:20 and 21, we read of the day that shall come when there shall be upon the bells of the horses holiness unto the Lord. And the pots in the Lord’s house shall all be like the bowls before the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts. And all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them and seethe therein. And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanites in the house of the Lord of hosts.

The point of Zechariah 14 is that in the latter days when Jesus Christ comes to usher in the kingdom—as he has done—that and we are called to see a whole world and everything that we have consecrated in holiness—indicated by the phrase holiness unto the Lord.

In 1 Timothy 6:2, this method of serving is acted out explicitly in the lives of men who are in this case either bondservants or employees. They that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather do them service. Same word for serve, as serving the living God. When the scriptures tell us that we’re to serve God, and we don’t know what that means, one of the very first things it tells us in that passage and other passages is that we serve the authorities that God has ordained in our world.

And so in terms of the children in our households—we’ve always said that we have to present an image of God to them. But the children should serve their parents. It’s one of the best training they can have for adult life—is to serve their parents. That’ll teach them to serve God, to serve their employers when they achieve adulthood. And so children take this upon yourself as an admonition to serve the parents that God has provided to you as the basic training ground by which you serve God.

Wives are supposed to serve their husbands. You know, Sarah called Abraham “Lord,” and it’s a good thing to recognize that in the providence of God. He has given us specific aspects and relationships in which we are called to serve. And husbands are to serve their employers in that same way. Not despising them, not looking down on them, but serving them faithfully in the Lord. And that prepares us then to serve God in everything that we do.

## So these first two points are accomplished

The Thessalonians, model believers, they turned away from idols. They turned to God and they serve the living and true God instead of serving idols. And it’s called really a Christian, a biblical, a law-oriented world and life view in everything that we do. And it is very difficult. It is difficult to root idols out of our hand, out of our land, and out of our homes—is as difficult for us, I believe, as it was for the Thessalonians. But it was a task that God has called on us to do. And to self-consciously review our lives to see to what extent we’ve done that.

But then third, there was a waiting process that’s described as well. The Thessalonians, as model believers, waited for Jesus. Verse 10 says, “to wait for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead even Jesus which delivereth us from the wrath to come.”

Now the term here, wait, means a constant, impatient waiting and almost a joyous expectation for the coming of the Lord. We had Joshua Carmac come to stay with us. He arrived on the train yesterday afternoon, and that’s a good picture of what this particular word means. We waited for Joshua this week and what we did was we prepared a room for him. We tried to get the house straightened up and arranged for his entrance into our household. We tried to think through what patterns of our household should be changed to accommodate Joshua when he came. We tried to make his coming as pleasant as possible and as beneficial as possible to him and his growth. And so the same thing is implied: the one who waits for Jesus.

It doesn’t mean a passive simply letting the house run down before the houseguest arrives. It means being ready. And specifically in terms of the believer and the return of Jesus Christ, it implies a sanctified heart and a sanctified life. It relates back to that service to God. That is the preparation for the coming and the waiting we are to involve ourselves in.

Jesus is spoken of as his return as the Deliverer. The Deliverer who delivers us out of troubles. And the particular Jesus that they are waiting for is the historical Jesus who was raised up, and his resurrection is the proof that he is indeed the Deliverer, the one who delivers his people from the wrath to come.

Philippians 4:5 and 6 says, “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.”

Jesus is the present Lord and a coming Judge. If we recognize the return of the Lord is at hand, as it were, we will always be prepared and waiting for him, then our lives will demonstrate that through a holiness of life and through a holiness of conduct and a preparation form in that sense.

Now the book of Thessalonians—mentioned before—at the end of every chapter is a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ. We’re going to have lots of opportunities to talk about what that coming entails and specifically the question is: every time you read about the coming of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, is he talking about the final consummate second coming of Christ, or is he talking about the coming in judgment in A.D. 70 upon Jerusalem, or is he talking about various comings throughout history in terms of judging men and nations?

Some verses have more of an implication in one of these areas than another. I think this particular one—since it talks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ—is a good indicator that he is actually speaking here specifically of the last, the final consummative coming of Christ, the Second Coming of our Lord.

And so it is important that we see from this text not only a need to turn from idols to serve God in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion, but also to acknowledge the need to wait for the Savior and to be expectantly anticipating his return. That’s an essential part of what this newly planted church believed in and participated in.

Now, it’s 2,000 years ago. But remember that the First Advent of Jesus Christ was awaited by people. And you remember the very birth of Jesus, people were actually waiting in the temple, waiting for the Deliverer. That waiting had gone on for 4,000 years. The promise came and 4,000 years later the First Advent occurs. And the church has been characterized for the last 2,000 years as awaiting joyously and expectantly for history to culminate in the coming of Jesus Christ. And so that should be part of our lives as well.

Denny said that the Christian who does not look upward and onward wants the mark of perfection. E.P. Marsh, in his commenting on it, said, “Are we patiently waiting for the coming of Christ? It was the fact of Christ’s coming that lived and glowed in the hearts of the early Christians, and in that we have the reason for the unworthiness of their life, their intensity of purpose and service for Christ, their united prayerfulness in waiting upon Christ and their holy devotion and consecration to Christ. Is it because the characteristics of the early disciples are wanting to a great extent in the lives of professing Christians today that the corresponding waiting for Christ is absent in them?”

The point is we should expectantly anticipate and recognize that history has a purpose and that purpose is the final consummation when Christ returns, and that should affect our present day lives as well. So I think that this text speaks specifically to that.

However, it is also true that there is a present deliverance that Jesus affects in our lives as well. Jesus is identified here as the one who delivers us from the wrath to come. And indeed Paul said in Romans 1:31 that I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea. And in various other places—I won’t read all the occurrences—but in various places, Paul made reference to the deliverance he would receive from those who were persecutors of the faith.

In 2 Thessalonians 3:2, he writes that “we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith.” And so there specifically the coming of Jesus is a deliverance, a present-day deliverance from those who persecute them.

The whole book of Revelation, of course, has that emphasis to it. So deliverance is not only from the final wrath of God, which is what the wrath refers to in that particular verse of the Second Coming. It is also deliverance from present-day enemies of people.

And then third, the deliverance is from personal sin. In 2 Peter 2:9, “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.” And so God comes to us and delivers us. Jesus not only delivers us from the wrath of God to come upon the world at the end of all things, but also from the wrath of those who persecute us, and he also delivers us from various temptations.

The second thing I’ve pointed out there is that Jesus is the avenger. That is part of the present aspect. The coming wrath is the wrath of God upon unbelievers. And there is a present wrath as well that is being worked out in the lives of those who reject Jesus Christ, those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ. The scriptures say the wrath of God abides upon them. And there is a wrath of God present in the world. In particular points in history, it comes in a stronger aspect as it were.

Right now, whether or not George Bush intended it this way, the wrath of God is being poured out upon lots of Islamic people in the nation of Iraq. That’s the wrath of God. That’s what history moves in relationship to. And there is a coming wrath in the future, but there also is a wrath that comes throughout history as well. Wrath is an important part.

One thing that this points out very clearly is the Thessalonians, who have been preached to—maybe as short as 3 weeks—understood fully the wrath of God and its context that it was against sinners and it was God’s active involvement to suppress and punish wicked people.

We sang Psalm 83 a few minutes ago and we recited responsively Psalm 137. It just so happens that was one of the last Psalms we had not done responsively. You might remember we said before that we believe in going through the entire Psalms in public worship. What that forces you to do is eventually get to Psalms like Psalm 137 that concludes with a verse that we don’t like to think about too much—the wrath of God against the children of those who oppress Christ’s people.

But to the extent that we are ashamed of that wrath of God, we have turned away from the living God and back to this idol of humanism, that says that God should be remade in an image in which he brings well-being to all peoples and should never be seen as being wrathful to the unbelievers. The Thessalonians knew, Paul knew, that the wrath of God was real against unbelievers. An important thing to consider.

So that is certainly true. And as we said, there is a present indication of the wrath as well. In Romans 13:4, we read that the civil magistrate is a minister of God for good. He is a minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon he that doeth evil. And so…