All right, so yeah, our church is 13 years old and yeah, we're
just celebrating and the sermon is just normal sermon.
But maybe I bring up stories of, of, of, you know, of our church
a little bit. But yeah, it's more for just
looking back and, and, and thanking God for his
faithfulness and also for eating tacos.
After today, we're starting a new series.
I was kind of just to this week, but I was very intrigued that as
I was studying First Thessalonians, you know, some of
the books pointed out how often Paul talks about thanking God
for this church. I thank God for you.
He repeats it over and over again.
So I was very intrigued by that. So I said, you know what, I'm
going to pick out the passages where Paul's thanking God for
the church and let's just do a series on that.
So we're going to do like a mini series just five weeks on that.
And after that we will go to a Old Testament passage.
I think many of us, like Paul, like Paul is thankful for that.
That's only a church. I think many of us here are
thankful for the church that you go to.
Certainly the longer you have been here, perhaps the more
thankful you are for this church.
If you're new, you know, maybe not many of us are thankful for.
I personally are thankful, like when I see all these kids.
By the way, Annie and Ed gave birth today.
Everyone's healthy. Good news.
Yeah. No, no pictures because this
happened 10:45 AM, so 45 minutes ago.
I'm thankful for all that. I'm thankful like we have kids
from like, day one, like the zero is 1 year, one day old or
zero, OK, One day old to, you know, to high school.
We have kids of all ages. When we first started, it was
just one child, my baby, right? My child was the only baby, one
singular baby in our church. And now there are kids
everywhere. So I'm thankful for that.
We will have our first High School graduate this year.
Nikki, say hi. Yeah.
I'm thankful. Many of us are thankful for
maybe your CGS, maybe you met your, you know, husband or wife
here. Maybe you just love tacos.
You know that we have every once in a while there might be 50
different reasons why we might be thankful for SPMC.
But Paul doesn't mention any of those reasons.
He doesn't say I am thankful for you because all these new kids.
I'm thankful for you because of the food, this and that.
And today or with the entire series, let's find out what Paul
is thankful for. And we could infer based on that
because Paul is thanking God for it.
Perhaps those are some of the goals that we could have.
Those are some of the characteristics that we could
strive for as a church. So, so my prayer is that SPMCA
also will have the same marks of a church to be thankful for.
So that's the question we want to answer today.
What kind of church is Paul thankful for?
And really, that is the entire series.
But today we will be, it will be based on the passage that we'll
be covering today. All right, so if you have
Bibles, let's turn to 1st Thessalonians.
I'll be covering one to 10 before the first point.
I'll be reading just one through 8.
As we read this passage, I want you to take note of three words,
Faith, hope, and love. Paul's going to base on what he
thinks based on those 3 words. He's talked about those 3 words
before in First Corinthians. He talks about the spiritual
gifts and he says all those spiritual gifts will fade away.
Tongues and prophecy and all that will fade away.
But these three will remain forever, even in heaven, all
eternity, these three gifts will remain forever.
Faith, hope and love. OK, so those are the main things
that we'll be talking about today.
So take note of those words, OK? Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy.
Oh, I'm sorry, there's three authors in this letter.
Paul, Sylvanus, also in Silas and Timothy.
For the sake of a sermon, I'm just going to say Paul, I am
sorry the other two, but for the sake of the sermon, I don't want
to say all three people's names. So when I say Paul, just know
that I mean these three. To the Church of the
Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace
to you and peace. We always thank God for all of
you making mention of you constantly in our prayers.
We recall in the presence of our God and Father, your work
produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your
endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith, love, hope. For we know, brothers and
sister, loved by God, that He has chosen you because our
gospel did not come to you in Word only, but also in power, in
the Holy Spirit and with full assurance.
You know how we live among you for a bet for your benefit.
And you yourself became imitators of us and of the Lord,
when, in spite of severe persecution, you welcome the
message with joy from the Holy Spirit.
As a result, you became an example to all the believers.
Macedonia and IKEA. The Lord of the Lord rang out
from you, not only Macedonia and IKEA, but in every place that
your faith in God has gone out. Therefore, we don't need to say
anything. Stop there.
Paul is thankful that this church is marked by works
produced by faith, labor motivated by love and endurance,
inspire by hope. What kind of church is Paul
thankful for? He's essentially thankful for a
church that has love, faith, and hope.
Now before I go on to the actual point, I think some of you might
have noticed that these pairings of words might not go together.
Usually he pairs the words faith and works together, and often
they are on opposite sides. People have debates.
Are you saved by works? Are you saved by faith?
These words are usually far apart.
Paul puts them together. He puts the word love and labour
together. Those words don't go together.
You can't say to your wife baby loving you is labourist and you
can't say that yet he puts it together.
He puts hope and endurance together.
Hope seems like a happy feely word and endurance seems hard
and serious. Like endurance sports is like
marathons and triathons and long distance swimming.
It's just hard work. Hope and endurance doesn't seem
to go together. But what what Paul is saying is
1 produces the other. Faith produces works.
Works is hard, but faith produces it.
Laboring to love others is hard, but love produces labor.
Endurance is hard, but hope produces endurance.
So we have to understand that like what?
What is labor? It's it's it's work.
It's no these things, these three gifts from God will
produce these difficult things like labor, works and endurance.
OK, So what kind of church is Paul thankful for?
Let's start with the first one, a church with works produced by
faith. Start with faith, A church that
has works, Not just works alone, but a works that is produced by
faith. Of course labor and work are
essentially the same words, right?
Labor of love and work and labor and work are the same.
So is Paul saying basically faith produces works and love
produces works is the same thing?
Faith and love produce the same thing.
But here Paul is actually applying the work of faith.
He's applying the very specific way.
So it's it's it's applied in terms of the word coming to us
and how we respond to it. So verse 5, it says here that
the gospel did not come to you in Word only, but in power.
So the gospel came to you verse 6.
And then he said, you welcome the message with joy.
And then in verse 8, it says the word of the Lord rang out from
you, not only here, but every place that your faith in God has
gone out. So the word came and they
received it with eagerness. And then they respond by having
that word come back out wherever they are.
And in the verses that we didn't read, the two verses that talks
also talks about how they are turning away from idols and then
they're turning to the Lord. So it's the Word of God coming
and all the actions that follow after it is works kind of
limited to the spiritual aspect. How can we be a church that is
full of works? We have to take the Word of God
seriously. From reading about this church,
it seems like they have eagerness in receiving the Word.
The gospel came to you in power of the Holy Spirit, and they
welcomed them with joy. There's a sense that when the
Word was preached, when it was shared, that they had open
hearts and they received them eagerly.
I'm wondering how many of us have that eagerness in receiving
the Word? Far, many, far too many of us.
So sermons are like a spiritual Ted talk.
It's a speech, it's a lesson. And we're very picky about who
gives us that word. In over the 13 years of our
church, we've had our church always had a lot of preachers,
right? It's just not me, not me.
I'm, I'm, I'm only here about 3035 times and 20 other times of
someone else preaching. And people have complained.
Oh, I like that preacher. I like this preacher.
There was somebody who came after hearing Pastor Esther's
sermon and when she found out that she only preached 5 * a
year and she laughed immediately.
There were, there were people in the past where I mean, I'm
thankful they're like Pastor Tim, we only like our pastor's
sermons. So when we have guest speakers,
they wouldn't show up. I'm like, hmm, are you like
looking for excuses not show up because it's not like our
treasure, our sermons aren't that much better or that that,
you know, anything special. We just preach the word, you
know, just study and re preach it.
But there is this like pickiness.
I like this person. I like this, this type of
sermon. And there's been a lot of people
who've completed on my preaching too.
I remember there was this couple people that really didn't like
my sermons, and then the middle of my sermon I could see them
like I was like, sit in the back, man, like I can hear you.
But even in the Christmas story, the people who saw, you know,
Jesus born very first people to really preach the gospel, like a
Savior's come, Messiah's come. They were not trained preachers.
They were shepherds. They were not people who knew
the Bible. They were not trained in any
oratory skills. It was just ordinary people who
said, hey, Messiah came. Doesn't matter who speaks.
It doesn't matter if we read it. Oh, I don't like that quiet time
book. Oh, I like this authors, you
know, devotional. I don't like that translation.
We're so picky. I wonder how much of a
difference it will make if we are we focus more about the
content that the word of God is preached and then we receive it
eagerly. And then Paul talks about
wherever they went, the word of the Lord went out from them,
meaning they accept the word and it was part of them.
They digested it, they thought about it, they applied it, So
wherever they went, the Word of God just kind of oozed out of
them. And that's exactly the church
Paul's talking about. I'm thankful for you guys
because you guys receive the gospel and it comes back out.
You guys preach it, you guys share, you guys talk about it,
you guys apply it. And I hope that's something our
church becomes the gospel should be.
It's not just evangelism, right? Evangelism part of it, of
course. The gospel should be talked
about and shared everywhere needs to be talked about in our
community groups, in the classes that we teach, in the meetings
that we have. The gospel needs to be part of
the that should be the main point of discussion.
The gospel needs to be shared in people's living rooms, hospital
beds, coffee shops, just one-on-one situations.
Gospel needs to be talked about. Let me give you an example.
Often times when a married couple asked me to come and
like, hey, pastor, can we talk to you?
And we're struggling with this. And one of the things that I say
to really most couples is do you have another couple that you
could talk to? A lot of times people are like,
no, not really. We don't want to, you know, air
our dirty laundry with other people.
It's kind of embarrassing. And a lot of couples don't.
Some couples do, but this is this is my advice, fight another
couple and say, Hey, this is what we're fighting about.
What do you guys think? And the point is not to like
take sides, right? The husband takes the, the guy
side and the wife. You know, it's not, it's not
suddenly you're, you're dividing teams and it's not a group fight
suddenly, but it's an opportunity to share the gospel.
Oh, you guys are fighting. This is just a random example,
right? Many times newlyweds, they have
their habits and routines and they get married and they want
to keep it. Let's say a guy right comes home
and like for the last 10 years, they were either like, Oh, I
like to unwind and you know, watch Netflix for an hour or
video games for, you know, 9 hours or whatever.
They're used to their a lifestyle.
And then, you know, the wife has, you know, the her routine
and it doesn't match and they're fighting over it.
When they share that with another couple, that's the time
to preach the gospel, meaning, hey, our faith.
The gospel is about God sacrificing, right, his Son for
us. The gospel is about Jesus
sacrificing his his God powers, right God's side to die for us
on the cross so he could save us.
The gospel is all about sacrificial love, and the person
could say, the couple could say, hey, we go through that too.
But let me just say, like you guys are fighting to have more
of what you want, your rights and your privileges.
But I think in our marriage, what's helped is when we gave up
our rights and privileges for one another.
It's really helped things out. It doesn't sound like much, but
you just preach the gospel right there.
Gospel needs to be part of everything that we talk about.
So when Paul says work produced by faith, he means receiving the
Word and living it out both in words and actions.
When somebody asks you a question, help me, then the
gospel comes out. That's the works Paul's talking
about #2 what kind of church is Paul thankful for #2A church
with labor produced by love. If you're new to the church, I
know you. You think, oh, there's three
things, Faith, hope, love. They must be one point each 3
point sermon. You're wrong.
I have not preached a three-point in five years and
I'm not going to start today in my anniversary, so this is only
a second point. I'll be closing with hope for a
little bit, but I want to focus mainly on this, a church with
labor produced by love. Let's reread verse four and
seven. Four talks about how love could
produce labor. For we know brothers and sisters
loved by God, that he has chosen you.
And seven, as a result, you become an example to all the
believers. So how does love produce labor?
Well, loving people is hard, right?
It could become laborious. But what Paul saying is, you
know what, what inspires love, what produces love, what
motivates love is the fact that God loved us first.
That's verse 4, loved by God and he has chosen you.
When we know that we are God's beloved, that love, the
understanding of God's love for us produces something in us, The
ability to labor in love. When we know that God loves us,
we are able to labor for others, pray for others, serve one
another meals and liver tears shared forgiveness extended, not
quitting on relationships and that love from one another, if
it's not motivated by God's love for us, then it's you're going
to hit, hit a wall. It's tiring.
It truly will be laborers. But what is motivated by God
loving us first is if that is the source we get, the source we
draw from, then we could powerfully love one another.
You could powerfully be there for each other.
I could honestly say that the love people have from one
another is what allowed us to exist after 13 years when we
started the church, long before I started the church.
I read, you know, I've already graduated seminary and and I, I
read books. Even though I graduated, I went
back to take classes on church planting.
And as I was studying, although experts, you know what experts
have to say about church planning, they all were saying
that I shouldn't start the church.
I even took this exhaustive like test.
It was for the church planner. It was supposed to tell me that
if I was ready or not ready to start a church, I had to pay
money for that and it took hours.
It was it was a very exhaustive test.
Test. You guys think what?
And give me a thumbs up, thumbs down.
The test came out inconclusive. That should have been a sign.
And I was like, yes, the test didn't say no.
I talked to the professor. He said don't start.
He said you need at least 30 to 40 people to start, like ideally
about 100. He said how many people do you
have? I was like, well, 12 when my
wife's pregnant, so 13 almost. I was personally not ready.
We didn't have the money they said you got.
You need money for like at least six months of salary for the and
rent, you know, in the bank account.
We had $20,000. And then my praise reader said,
oh, we got to buy speakers. I said here it's $20.20 thousand
buy speakers. And I didn't know that he was
going to spend most of it. He gave me like 3000 back.
Those are the speakers. I will never get rid of these
speakers. Like someday we get like new
speakers, like better. It doesn't matter.
I will hang those up. Like I'll frame it and hang it
up right. With $20,000 you can start a
church guys. No, I don't recommend it.
Oh gosh, I mean, every anniversary I share some aspects
of it and I don't want to share all of it.
But it was that was just me not being ready.
And imagine, you know, a 32 year old just not ready, immature
trying to start a church. How many things will go wrong
and everything went wrong. So how do we get to year 14?
Well, the first reason is God's faithfulness, but that's not
today's sermon. But I really think the second
reason is labor of love. People who labored with love,
people who love the church. And even now I see the evidence
of people who love the church everywhere.
So many of us drive 3040 fifty minutes to come to church
weekly. For over 10 years, we worshipped
that 1:30 PM. What a terrible time.
If I was not a pastor, I'm sorry, I'm not going to 1:00 PM
church. I'm going to a 10 AM or 11:00
AM. At First worship sanctuary.
It's about this size, a little bit wider.
It's so hot. We had like 12 fans going
around, just rotating hot air. We had one little window and
sometimes like like a, a girl who gets like cold easily would
sit next to the window and then she'll be like, can we close the
window? You know, it's like 85°.
I posted a picture of our service once and somebody asked
me if I was, if I was missions, Like no, that's just no, that's
just my church. I work there.
So how, how did a church not fail?
Yes, God's faithfulness, God gave us some miracles, yes.
But I think really it's countless stories and
testimonies where I've heard where people said, you know
what? My community made a difference.
This person made a difference. I witnessed people's hearts
changing because someone poured out their heart for another
person. I've seen relationships healed.
I've seen people being uplifted, going through hard times and
uplifted by others. For whatever reason, God sent a
lot of people to our church that truly love the church.
Just this week, I was having a pastor.
It was like a pastor's lunch and somebody asked a question to the
pastor next to me. It was like, oh, how long have
you been serving there? And the guy next to me said 08
years. I've been there eight years and
the pastor goes 08 years. That's so long.
How do you guys do it? And I guess he like, the longest
he's ever stayed in one church is five years.
So he was asking the guy next to me like 8 years and how do you
do it? I was like 13, bro, like, but
you know, I'm humble, so I didn't say anything.
And the guy next to me said, you know, when so many people love
the church, it's easy. And I didn't say anything
because my answer would have been exactly the same as the guy
next to me. A lot of things are possible.
Difficult times get easier, and God's people labor with love.
When our love for one another grows, everything becomes
better. The hard times, it just becomes
a little bit easier. The good times become a little
bit more joyful. That is all because of the love
we have for one another. How do you keep that going you
got daily go back to the Lord. Remember it starts with verse 4.
Love by God, brothers and sisters, love by God that He has
chosen. Knowing that you are chosen to
be sons and daughters of God, that is your motivation.
That is the source of love. Without that, it does become too
hard. I want to close with this.
Of course, Paul talks about hope, right?
Endurance produced by hope. Hope is what allows us to look
forward and keep going. You know, so far in the sermon,
I talked a lot of things that happened in the past, recalling
what happened 13 years ago, 10 years ago and all of that.
LA being the, you know, the CG that started 13 years, the only
one that still exists. And we're thankful for that and
all of that. But I want us to not be
satisfied with what God has done in the past.
I want us to be encouraged by it, be reminded how faithful God
is. But we got to move forward and
keep loving, keep the word needs to keep coming out, and that
takes hope in verse 6 pauses this you became imitators of us
and of the Lord when in spite of severe persecution, you welcomed
the message with joy. So this church was going through
a severe persecution and I love one of the commentators said
about this. He said the author said the
severe persecution became a megaphone of their testimony.
Meaning these people going through hard times, they're
literally their lives are on the line and they're able to love,
they're able to serve, they're able to preach the gospel.
And people are like, wait, why are you still loving when your
life is in danger? Your life's not that great.
How are you caring for others? It seems like you barely have
enough time to talk, think about your own problems, yet you're
pouring out for others. So where did I get this?
Hope it's verse 10. I didn't read it yet.
I read it for you. And to wait for his Son from
heaven, whom he raised from the dead.
Jesus will rescue us from the coming wrath.
Their hope comes from heaven. Their hope comes knowing that
Jesus returned. Their hope comes from knowing
that this world is just temporary and our eternal life
is with God. So the Thessalonians are saying,
who cares? What we go through here is
temporary. I want to still preach the
gospel because that is eternity. So how can we move forward?
How can we keep loving? How can we not so be like be
satisfied what we did in the past and keep doing God's work?
Hope, hope in the Kingdom of God.
Otherwise, it's too discouraging.
You know, at least in my marriage, having young children
was the hardest time. And I, I, I think many of you
can say, hey, this is the hardest time of a marriage.
Having young children is a hard time in our life in our church.
Unfortunately, if that's true, well, then half our church is
having a hard time in a worldly perspective, like we, we
shouldn't be able to do anything.
We should just barely survive next five years.
But I don't think that's what God has in mind.
Your hardships provide a bigger way to glorify God.
It is now a megaphone. I'm tired.
Two kids, they're crazy. They're beautiful and I love
them, but they're crazy. And yet I have hope.
I am strengthened by the Lord, and I'm going to care for other
couples. I'm going to care for that
newcomer. I'm going to do my best at work.
I'm going to love my wife, I'm going to love my husband.
I'm going to do this. But the power of God gives me
knowing that God loves me and that just doing that is a
megaphone. The world will see you and say
man, you should be barely surviving, but you have time to
pray for others. You have time to take out that
newcomer out to lunch, You have time to go to mission.
You have time to do this and that.
You have time to be happy. That is all possible because of
the hope in Jesus Christ. Main point, a church to be
thankful for is marked by faith that works, love that laborers,
and hope that endures. Let's take time to pray.