came headed for hell and departed bound for heaven; they came lost and left the church saved; they came blind and went out seeing. Today too many churches are filling up with members who have never turned to God from idols. They are just what they have always been. You will observe that the Thessalonians turned TO GOD first. If we truly turn to God we will certainly turn from idols. Yet Paul said to the people of Lystra: “We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God” (Acts 14:15). Either way, it comes out the same. If you tell me that you have turned to God I will say “ Amen,” but I will also ask, “What about your idols?” We are growing a crop of church members who “ fear the Lord and serve their own gods.” “ The Lord knoweth them that are His” but they should prove they are His by departing from iniquity. On the other hand, if you say, “ I have turned from my idols” I will say “ Amen, but did you get through to God?” If not, you only sweep out the house and seven demons return so that your last state is worse than your first. It is good to give up liquor and gambling and theatres (although some look at the same old movies they saw twenty years ago now brought to their living rooms!). But unless men get through to God by living faith in Jesus Christ, they are only reformed sinners . . . and the hardest sinner to convert is a reformed sinner. That is the correct order: Christ must first dwell in the soul to fill the vacancy when the idols go. Idolatry is not confined to pagans across the sea. There are more strange gods in America than anywhere else on earth. The first two Commandments, to say nothing of the other eight, are perhaps broken by more people under the Stars and Stripes than in all heathendom. Furthermore, these saints “ served the living and true God.” They made a good start and they followed it by patient continuance; the step became a walk. Our Chris tian witness is weak and ineffective today because most of our church people have never made up their minds to say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” “ No man can serve two masters.” We live with divided loyalties. We equate “ Christian service” with an hour at church on Sunday and a contribution in a duplex en velope. Every Christian is meant to be in full-time Chris tian service, living for God every hour of the day, every day of the year. We put what we do at church in one compartment and how we live all week in another and never the twain do meet. Serving God is not bondage; it is the expression of loving devotion. Our Lord’s commandments are not griev ous. We are told to be “not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Rom. 12:11). Mr. Moody said: “ I never knew a lazy man to be. converted. I have more hope for the conversion of drunkards, thieves and harlots than of a lazy man.” What impressed the people of Macedonia and Achaia about the Thessalonians was not that they had turned to God from idols. If they had turned back to their old ways, the impression would have been faint and fleeting. It was not that they were looking for the Lord from heaven for that might have been dismissed as superstition. What the outsiders saw was these Christians busy day by day serving the living and true God. What sounds out as a clear trumpet call to this world around us is men and women happy in the service of the King. They are hot interested in what we do at church on Sunday. Our business is serving God all the time while we work in the shop or office to pay ex penses. There is too much impersonal witnessing. We can be so busy with religious organizations that we don’t have time to be Christians, so busy going to meetings of the Gospel Witnessing Association that we have no tune to be Gospel witnesses. It is possible to get people FEBRUARY, 1964
busy doing things Christians should do without being Christians or without Christian motivation. We confuse Christian work with mere church activity. We pay a church staff to do “ church work” and we go to church on Sunday to sit and watch them do it. Pastors, teachers and evangelists were meant to perfect the saints for THEIR ministry (Eph. 4:11, 12), for every Christian is meant to be a missionary. It has been said that Chris tianity began as a company of lay witnesses but has become a professional pulpitism financed by lay specta tors. The devil never won a greater victory than when the church got fouled up on this point and Christianity be came a performance instead of an experience. Finally, these Thessalonian saints not only turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; they waited for His Son from heaven. The early Christians looked for the Saviour to return. They were not only ready; they were expectant. It has been said that such expectation discourages evangelistic and missionary en deavor. Yet here in Thessalonica the same people who were waiting for God’s Son from heaven were busily serving that living and true God and it has always been so. It was only when that blessed hope died down that the church settled in this world and began to try build ing the Kingdom here. That hope has never been fully recovered in the centuries since but wherever it shines it is a mark of the New Testament Church. The Thessalonians were waiting. This world is one great waiting room. The whole creation is “on tiptoe” waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19). The Jews are waiting for their final restoration to the homeland. The world is waiting for Antichrist. The church is waiting for her Lord. And in glory our coming King is waiting till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled and the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, “from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His foot stool” (Heb. 10:13). Sometimes we grow alarmed over the failure of Christianity and the growing power of evil, “ Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” But God is just abiding His time. When the right moment comes, our Lord will step into this tangled bedlam and take over. These boastful enemies of Jesus Christ do not know that they are merely getting His footstool ready! We are not awaiting an event; we are looking for Someone. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Our souls “ wait for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning.” A little girl riding on a train said to her mother when they came out of a long tunnel, “ O mamma, it’s tomorrow!” The night will soon pass and it will be God’s tomorrow. Are you a Thessalonian Christian? Have you turned to God from idols? That takes care of the past. Are you serving the living and true God? That takes care of the present. Are you waiting for His Son from heaven? That takes care of the future. How did these Christians get that way? It began with the election of God (I Thess. 1:4). God chooses us before we choose Him. “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” They received the Gospel (verse 5). They became followers of the 'Lord (verse 6 ). They became examples (verse 7). They be came God’s trumpet, from them the Word sounded forth (verse 8 ). Paul did not lecture on idols in Thessalonica. He did not preach ten sermons on Diana in Ephesus nor discuss demonology in Philippi. He preached the Gospel. When men really believe the Gospel, they have no truck with idols, no use for Diana, no traffic with demons. Only the Gospel can produce a church like Thessa lonica. What it did for them it can do for you. Repent and believe the Gospel! 9
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