I am working my way through the writings of D. Broughton Knox, a 20th century minister in the Anglican Church of Australia and came across this short sermon that he preached in 1981 which I think dovetails well with my sermon from this past Sunday (and likely my sermon for this upcoming Sunday too). I commend it to your benefit.
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My text this afternoon is a familiar one and it comes from 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10: “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”. This is a description of the normal Christian life. St. Paul is speaking in summarized form of the Thessalonians’ reaction to the gospel and the way they are now living: “You turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come”. Now how do we compare with this normal Christian life? That is what I want to ask you to ask yourselves in the next few minutes.
Turn
“You turned”: now that is, of course, an essential feature of the Christian life. You must turn. You may not be conscious of the moment of turning–the turning may be a sudden turning which you remember all your life, or the turning may be imperceptible to your memory. But whether you have had a vivid conversion experience, or whether you have been brought up in the Christian community and you turned little by little bit, it makes no difference. The important thing to know is that you are turned now, because if you haven’t turned to God, then you are not his child. Turn we must.
What do we turn from? We turn from idols. Now idolatry is endemic in the human race; it is a characteristic of humanity. St. Paul says that idolatry is greediness and greediness is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). What does he mean by greediness or avariciousness (pleonexia in the Greek)? Why does he call that idolatry? I think it’s because idolatry has the same principle as greediness: It is centered on this world only. You go to your idol with petitions for your present life and you never look beyond that particular need. I would say that idolatry is a characteristic of our present [Western] culture because the race for affluence—the race to get more—is very much a feature of our common life. No-one is content with the things they have. Everyone wants more money. You may be on a very low salary or a very high salary, but you are never content; you’re always wanting more. All this, of course, is very much bound up with this life. You certainly can’t take money with you. In fact, you can’t even take it to the nursing home. You can only enjoy it for a very brief spell of time. It is a world view deadly opposed to reality.
Now have you genuinely turned from idolatry to serve the true and living God? Have you turned from the pursuit of affluence—from the laying up of treasure on earth? I trust we all have, but I would warn you not to turn back again. Do not to be like Demas, who turned away “having loved this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10). Do not be like those who have returned and then turned back again, as Peter describes in 2 Peter 2:22 using terms which I am not accustomed to using myself. It is all too easy to turn back to the rottenness of our idolatry and the idolatrous culture of this world—its affluence, its greed and its avariciousness. It is all too easy—even when you are a minister or engaged in Christian service, which is fantastically absurd because presumably a person entering that Christian ministry in whatever form has made a decision that he is doing to give up the prospects of a certain level of income and accept a lower level. It’s by no means too low a level, but it’s a lower level than your gifts and training would otherwise enable you to attain. It is pathetic to see clergy—ourselves included—forgetting this and being anxious about an extra $500 or $1000 one way or another—and not taking a job because it means a lower salary. Do not turn back again. You have turned from idols to serve a true and living God. Man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses, but the temptation is always there. So heed the warning of 1 John 5:21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols”. Turn and keep yourself turned from a worldly world view to serve the true and living God.
Wait
“To wait for his Son from heaven”: this waiting characterized early Christians. St. Paul says in Philippians 3:20, “We wait for the saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ”. Waiting for the saviour—expecting him, living in expectation of the completion of his purposes—should characterize us. Waiting will put the things of this world in their proper portion and perspective. We have turned from dead and dumb idols to a true and living God—to the saviour who is coming from heaven in power. This is the one we are waiting for.
This waiting characterized the early Christian church and it should characterize the church of every age. But do not fall into the mistake of thinking that because you are living in expectancy, you can be certain as to when the event will take place. Some critics of the New Testament don’t seem to be able to distinguish between those two very different concepts. It is foolish for us to think that our Lord is going to come in our lifetime for sure, but there is no evidence in the New Testament as far as I can see that the New Testament Christians fell into that mistake. They lived with the constant expectation that our Lord is coming and coming soon. There is no further event to await but the coming which will happen in God’s own time. The Thessalonians’ hope is fixed in heaven, “from whence they await a saviour”. They have turned from the world to serve the true and living God, and to wait for his son from heaven. No longer earthbound, they are heavenly minded, seeking not earthly blessings, benefits and affluence, but the heavenly blessing of relationship with God and with one another.
Now it is interesting that in 1 Corinthians 15:48 St. Paul describes the Christian as “the heavenly one”. This should characterize those of us who have turned to God: we should be heavenly. As St. Paul says in Colossians 3:2 (“set your minds on things above”), be heavenly minded because you are heavenly. But what you are. You have ceased to belong to the earth, which will pass away. You are a heavenly one. We are to wet your minds on heavenly things. We are to lay up treasure to heaven. All that activity is determination of the will. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:49, by the better text, “let us bear the likeness of the heavenly”. It is an exhortation that Christ’s likeness—that heavenly likeness—should be borne out in our own lives. If you care to look it up in your Greek text, you will see that that is the way it ought to be translated, although most English versions don’t seem to have the courage to do so. Christians are heavenly minded—Christians are heavenly. Therefore let us be heavenly—let us express that—let us be like our heavenly Lord.
Heaven is really fellowship. We don’t know much about heaven, but everything that is said about heaven in the New Testament is relationship: “with me is paradise” (Luke 23:43), “present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8), “with Christ which is very far better” (Philippians 1:23), “they shall see God’s face” (Revelation 22:4). Heaven is relationship with God. It is relationship which we can enter into now. That is why you can enter into eternal life now, because eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ that he has sent (John 17:3).
How do we increase in this heavenliness? By fellowship with God and by prayer. Make this a first priority. If you have turned from the world, then turn to God in prayer. Read his word and allow it to speak to your mind and will. Have fellowship with other people. Fellowship comes through forgetting the self. The shy person, in this respect, is somewhat self-centered; he is thinking too much of himself. Try and think of that other person—try and enter, with sympathetic imagination, into the other person’s situation, and attempt to serve that person in that situation.”Let us bear the image of the heavenly.”
Trust
Finally, let us consider God’s activity. He raised Jesus from the dead: “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”. God has a plan and he is working it out. His plan is a plan of salvation. That ought to be your world view: abandon the idolatrous world view bound with this life and with that section of this life which is earthly, and turn your thoughts to the true world view of the true and living God. He is at work in the world to save, and he has accomplished this by sending the saviour to be cursed for us and vindicated by the resurrection by God himself when he raised Jesus from the dead. So we have a world view that is not just theoretical; it is actual and active. This world view takes in not only the salvation of Calvary and the promise of eternal life that the resurrection brings us, but also salvation from the future judgment which a righteous and true God will inflict upon all those who resist the truth and suppress it in disobedience. It is Jesus who saves us from that wrath to come.
Now of course wrath is not the centre of the gospel; wrath is the background of the gospel. But you can’t have the gospel unless people are aware of their guilt and its consequences. You don’t have to teach people that they are guilty or that they deserve retribution, but you do have to bring it to the surface of their consciousnesses—especially these days when they are chasing after so many other things. It is written in the hearts of everybody that they know that those who do these things are worthy of death, as St. Paul puts it (Romans 1:32): they know that it is so, and yet they not only do them but consent with those who do them. Now the gospel is salvation from that wrath—salvation from God to those who call upon him: “Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
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Therefore I suggest to you that if we are to live the normal Christian life, we have to do three things:
We must turn and stay turned, turning away from worldliness and worldly values;
We must be heavenly minded; and
We must keep putting our hope in a saviour who saves us from the awful and inevitable penalty which we have brought on our own heads by our godlessness.
So turn from affluence, live as a heavenly one and wait for that Lord and saviour with an obedient life, supported by the hope of his coming kingdom.