Spare a moment to think of all the preachers who are still preaching after decades, and how they have to find something new to say each Easter season. It’s not easy to fool some long-time listeners with a new title to an old sermon (a “re-bore” as one preacher’s kid put it). They might not be able to tell you next Sunday what you’ve preached on the week before, but they can smell an old sermon from the back pew!
This year it will be 59 years for Vivien and I as ministers of the gospel, and we’ve given too many sermons and articles on Easter to count! Yet my thoughts this week (2017) are on a passage in I Thessalonians chapter 1, where Paul commends the believers for their ready acceptance and sharing of the good news about Jesus.
“For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything.For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned 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, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1:8-10 ESV).
I’ve previously taught on verses 6 to 8, especially “followers” (verse 6: Greek is “mimics”), “examples” (verse 7: Greek is “types”) and “sounded forth” (verse 8: Greek is “echoed”).
So let’s just focus on verses 9 and 10 this Easter. The death and resurrection of Jesus was the greatest turning point in the history of mankind. There is a Christian TV program titled “Turning Point” with David Jeremiah, a Southern Baptist preacher. He encourages people to have a turning point in their personal lives, to exchange their old life with a new life in Christ.
This is the subject of verses 9b-10: “How you turned 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, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.” The Message Bible paraphrases it in this way: “How you deserted the dead idols of your old life so you could embrace and serve God, the true God. They marvel at how expectantly you await the arrival of his Son, whom he raised from the dead–Jesus, who rescued us from certain doom.”
When you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, when you “embrace God,” you turn away from “the dead idols of your life.” At that moment you tap into what Jesus made available in the atonement, “rescuing us from the power of the Darkness and transferring us to the realm of his beloved Son!” (Colossians 1:13 Moffatt). The spiritual gift package you received has to show on the surface, so your lifestyle changes, sometimes gradually, sometimes immediately. You start serving the living and true God. People will notice there is something different about you. People should want what you have. Religion has to be life-changing or else the church is just another “country club.”
Notice in this passage the early church’s emphasis on the resurrection of Christ and no mention of his death. Death without resurrection was and is a daily event, but resurrection from the dead is a miracle from God. A quick reading of the Acts of the Apostles will show that they did not major on the sufferings of Christ but always declared boldly and persuasively the resurrection of Christ from the dead (about twenty times are recorded). For example, Paul at Athens in Acts 17:18b,32: “Others said, ‘He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities’–because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection… Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.”
Jesus said, the night before he was crucified, “Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19b). Paul wrote, “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:8-11, see my video series “Dead & Alive”). — Peter Wade.
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