A Faith That Gets Remembered

Good morning! My name is Matt Martinez and I am the pastor here at Renovation Church Shoreview.

The football season has started, and I am excited. Whether you are a fan or not, there is one thing I can guarantee. If you were to watch a game of football and saw the camera pan across the stands to all the fans, you would be able to tell who every person in those seats was supporting.

As followers of Jesus, our lives should show who we worship. Is this true for you?

We just heard in the video that Paul was writing to a very new church in the city of Thessonalica. While the Thessalonians had very recently started following Jesus, Paul wrote to them saying that because they now followed Jesus they should start to look and think and act differently. But they needed some help in knowing how to do that.

This letter of 1 Thessalonians in the New Testament of the Bible is filled with practical thoughts on how Christians should live when they are following Jesus; and there should be some apparent differences from the people who do not follow Jesus. People should be able to tell.

We are going to begin discovering what those things are today, so please open your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 1:1-3. That will be on page 807 of the Bibles under your chair if you are using one of those.

We are a Bible teaching church. We open the Bible every week and walk through each passage, reading each verse, discovering what God has to say to us. We recently finished up a series on the life of Jacob in the first part of the Bible called the Old Testament. We would sometimes walk through passages that were 50 verses long. For this series in 1 Thessalonians, we will be in the NT or the second part of the Bible walking through not as many verses each week. But what is amazing is that God can teach us just as much in 50 verses as He can teach us in three verses.

The letter of 1 Thessalonians is actually one of Paul’s earliest letters. Paul was a very influential church leader and church planter. And he wrote this letter just 15-20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Meaning, this letter and this church and Paul were basing their thoughts and beliefs off of something they had experienced. The life of Jesus was very real, and very recent to all of them. These people had heard about what had happened. They witnessed what had happened. This is an account from people who saw Jesus, and knew what he taught. These witnesses are telling us as followers of Jesus many centuries later, what it means to be a Christian.

So, let’s start reading our passage where you see the big number 1.

1 Thessalonians 1:1–3

Paul, Silas, and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

In just these three short verses, we discover that whether you are a recent follower of Jesus, or a veteran in the faith. Whether you are a high school student, in college, just married, a parent, or retired- followers of Jesus need to have what Paul says in verse 2:

A Faith That Gets Remembered

I ran cross country in high school. The races would be in all different places. One time, we were running a race through woods and I hit a confusing turn and came across a path with a few different ways to go. I was lost for just a moment before I found the markers for the trail I should be running on in order to finish the race.

Sometimes, the path of a follower of Jesus gets unclear. You lose your way, or you are unsure about the next step.

Your faith can leave markers for others running after you on how to continue to love the way God does, to have hope and faith, and how to endure.

Sometimes, you will hit a new season that causes you to lose a little faith in God, or forget the things that God has done in your life. There is nothing wrong with you in that moment, this happens from time to time in the Christian faith. But in these moments, you need to go back and remember when you experienced God’s faithfulness, when you were passionate and following God. You need to remember the faith of those who have gone before you. A faith that is remembered is so important for you and for those who follow after you.

Paul in our passage writes about three markers of following Jesus that help make our faith memorable: Faith, love, and hope. Paul comes back to these three things again and again in many of his letters in the Bible: Romans 5, Galatians 5, Colossians 1, Ephesians 4, and most famously in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul believes that faith, love, and hope are foundational to followers of Jesus.

In verse 3, Paul writes that those who have a faith that will be remembered know that:

Faith produces work

Paul’s wording here really matters. When he talks about faith, he means the belief in God. Faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But Paul believes that faith is not just intellectual or a fantasy, followers of Jesus are different. Their faith in God drives them to action. Paul’s word for work here has this sense of a passionate vocation- your work is good and stimulating. Faith is a lifestyle. It shows up. It is taking care of what we have been given.

You first have faith, which then produces the work. If we put work first, fear can be produced. Fear of losing it all, fear of not measuring up, fear of falling behind, fear of not having enough.

We can do the right kind of work with the right kind of faith, and finding the right kind of faith means anchoring your life in Jesus.

Often, I will ask God to bless my work, when I should be asking God to bless my faith. My faith will anchor my work to the right person. Followers of Jesus whose faith is remembered are called to put their faith in God, and their work will follow.

Let’s come back to verse 3. A faith that gets remembered is a faith that produces work. It also has a love that prompts labor.

Love prompts Labor

We have a lot of single people here, perhaps looking for a relationship. We also have a bunch of dating, engaged, or recently married couples. If you are one of the people I was describing, I want you all to especially take note here. Paul’s language is incredibly insightful and helpful. Let’s take a look at the word love in this passage.

Love is not just passion or a feeling. The word Paul uses for a Jesus kind of love is a love that requires action above passion. A love that acts whether or not it feels like acting; and it acts in the best interest of the other person. Love as action is hard work!

This brings us to Paul’s second word here: labor. This word is different from the word ‘work’ that we read earlier. Labor here means something that produces fatigue and even exhaustion. When we love, we have to labor. Love means we sacrifice.

House Church is starting up in just a couple of weeks. I have been a part of Renovation Church for just over year and have been in two House Churches. I have witnessed and remember so many acts of labor that have been prompted by love in many house churches.

There was a Renovation Church House Church with a family whose child got sick. They had to go to the hospital, and a nice big, unexpected bill followed. The house church

heard about this, raised money to help cover the bill, provided meals for the family, visited the family in the hospital, and prayed with the family. Was the work and money a sacrifice? Did it take some effort to visit and make meals? Sure. But their love prompted them to labor for people in their house church.

There were members of the family who did not attend Renovation Church, and did not follow Jesus, and they saw this House Church come and love their family when they were in need. You can bet that the labor of money, meals, and time born out of love is remembered by every member of that family whether they are following Jesus or not.

Sign up for House Church to love and be loved. You will be discipled and cared for and you will find accountability and community.

Alright, let’s come back to verse 3 for Paul’s final marker of a faith that is remembered.

Hope inspires Endurance

A number of years ago, I worked on staff with a family who suffered the terrible tragedy of losing a young child in an accident. There was nothing redeemable about the situation if you heard the story, and it would have seemed like after that, the family would have no hope to carry on.

But I remember them sharing their story with me, and how the hope of seeing their daughter again one day in heaven with Jesus, helps them to keep going.

The word Paul uses for endurance here means to not only persevere, but if you endure through the problem it can actually produce opportunities. For the followers of Jesus, we have the opportunity to hope because this life is not all there is. There is hope beyond this moment and so we can keep going.

Do we conjure up this hope of a future ourselves? No. Paul gives us the pathway to hope right in verse three, “Hope in (who? Say it with me:) our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Hope is not based on escaping reality through ignorance, diversion, financial security, or pleasure. Hope must be anchored in Jesus.

This hope produces the opportunity for our faith to be remembered and encourage others who need to endure.

Conclusion

And this matters because what Paul is asking the Thessalonians to do is not easy. At the time this letter was written, the Thessalonians were going through intense persecution because of their faith in Jesus. You can bet they were wondering if all this suffering was worth it. They were wondering if they would or could endure. They were

wondering if they had lost their way. That is why Paul prays for them. That is why he continually offers them grace and peace.

They needed God’s grace. They needed God’s peace. They needed the hope that there is something beyond this world and its present circumstances to keep them enduring.

Grace is receiving from God what we could never earn or deserve.

Our striving and our sin deserve punishment. But God loved us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to die for us in our place. And when we believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord, when we believe that he died and rose again for us, we receive the grace of God.

We are saved, not because of what we have done, but because of what God has done for us through Jesus.

And from that grace, we receive peace. That peace allows us to rest in the faith, love, and hope that God has given us so that we can work well, labor on, and endure with hope.

We don't work, labor, and endure to earn God's grace. We work, labor, and endure because we have received God's grace.

Grace points us back to God and what he has done for us. Peace allows us to step forward and live that life of grace.

I want to get really practical with all of you at the end of this message. We talked about being able to do all of these things when we are anchored in Jesus. We talked about how Jesus is really the person that forms the faith, hope, and love in our lives. So how do we get ourselves in a position to receive all of that from God?

I believe it starts with repentance. Coming clean. Getting honest about all the things we have turned to before we have turned to God. We have to admit that no matter what we do, we cannot create the faith we hope to have ourselves. I believe that repentance to God leads to rest with God.

Because if we bring all these things to the foot of the cross. The place where God's grace met us in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we can see how Jesus covers the distance of all our shortcomings and gives us a new way to live life.