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Second Thessalonians chapter two,
verse 13 through
chapter three, verse five.
But we ought always to give thanks to God
for you brothers beloved by the Lord,
because God chose you as a firstfruits
to be saved
through sanctification
by the spirit and belief in the truth.
To this he called you through our gospel,
so that you may obtain
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So then, brothers,
stand firm and hold to the traditions
that you were taught by us, either
by our spoken word or by our letter.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
and God our Father,
who loved us and gave us eternal comfort
and good hope through grace.
Comfort your hearts and establish them
in every good work and word.
Finally, brothers,
pray for us that the word of the Lord
may speed ahead
and be honored as happened among you,
and that we may be delivered
from the wicked and evil men.
For not all have faith,
but the Lord is faithful.
He will establish you and guard
you against the evil one.
And we have confidence
in the Lord about you that you are doing
and will do the things that we command.
May the Lord direct your hearts
to the love of God
and to the steadfastness of Christ.
Well,
welcome to the weekend gathering of Christ
Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm
so glad you are here with us this weekend.
And I'm going to break a rule
that I'm not supposed to break normally
on Thursday nights and use the word night.
We're so glad you're here at night.
The reason I don't normally say night
is because sometimes we use this video
on Sunday mornings,
in our East service, and I'm not supposed
to give away that it's at nighttime.
But I'm doing that here because actually,
in all of our weekend services
this upcoming weekend.
So all of our Sunday services
will be watching this video of the sermon.
That's not normal.
So if you're a guest,
normally I would be in person,
but you're watching video
because this Sunday, I'll be hanging out
with the students of Casey
at their fall retreat.
Over 200 middle school and high school
students at Camp Carl can't wait
to hang out with them.
And in some ways, I'm not going to be
with you to be with them, to let you know
that's how much value I place on your high
school and middle school students.
Can't
wait to hang out with them this weekend
and tell them about
how much God loves them in Jesus.
So thanks for hanging in there
with the video.
But we are going to continue our sermon
series, going through first
and second Thessalonians.
We're almost done, almost to the end
of our ten weeks that we've been spending
in these letters on the series,
we're calling
the church that God Calls good.
That's because these letters, first
and second Thessalonians,
are overwhelmingly positive.
The apostle Paul is writing
to a young church in Thessalonica,
and he is proud of them.
They are doing great,
and we're leaning in to what it was
that made them so special, what it was
that had God saying about them.
And to them.
You are a church that I call good,
in the hopes that we might become
more like that and become increasingly
a church that God is happy with.
So if you have a Bible, would you take it
out and open it to Second Thessalonians?
We're going to look at the end of chapter
two, the beginning of chapter three.
Take out your phone or your tablet
or whatever device you want to use.
And hey, also, if you're here
and you maybe didn't bring a Bible,
maybe you aren't super familiar
with the Bible,
you know you're never going to find
second Thessalonians first.
I am so glad that you're here.
Thanks for hanging out with us
this weekend.
I want you to know that this service
is for you, and I hope you enjoy it.
But I also want you to know
if you want to follow along in the Bible,
you can, just by reaching in front of you
and grabbing the Bible
that's in the pew in front of you
or in the back of East Hall.
And I preach from one of those Bibles
just for you,
so that I can tell you
that today's reading is on page 930.
It also be on the screen, behind me.
If you don't want to follow along
and just read it there.
All right.
As we're looking at this passage,
there are three things
that I want to pull out.
To show you three kind of points I want
to use as mile markers to guide our time.
They're very simple.
They go like this.
I want to talk about proof
power and potential.
Proof power and potential.
All right.
Let's start with the first one. Proof.
Now when I use the word proof here,
I don't so much mean, necessarily proof
to win an argument.
Like when, pastor talks about proof,
you would suppose maybe I'm going to get
into the scientific argument for God or
how you can know Jesus rose from the dead.
And there are great arguments
for both of those things that I hope
you'll check out.
But that's not what I mean this time
when I use the word proof instead,
I mean a little more,
what I'll call proof of concept.
Proof of concept.
It's when you show somebody enough
for them
to think what they didn't think was good
is actually good,
or what they didn't think was
possible is actually possible.
Like, like an example that comes to mind
for me is in the past, when my wife and I
have been looking to buy a house,
we are very different home buyers.
So we walk into our house, she sees
what will be when she gets done with it.
Okay, I see what is okay.
So when I walk in, if it's in disrepair
and I am not handy at all, like
if you came to my house and said, Zach,
do you have this tool?
I would have to have
you show me a picture of that tool
before I can answer that question
so I don't see what will be.
I see what is.
I see broken things that I couldn't fix.
And I, I think most people must be like me
because I've noticed that now
when you buy something on Amazon
or, or various other websites,
they actually have a feature where
you can place that thing in your house.
Have you seen this?
So like, you're gonna buy a couch
and you don't know if my wife can look
at that couch and go, oh, that will look
great in our living room, I can't.
So it's like this augmented reality thing
where you take your phone
and you can position
the couch in your living room to see it.
And that's because they know
people like me are never going to buy it
until there's proof of concept.
Proof that what I think might look good
is actually going to look good.
That's what this passage is about.
See, the Apostle Paul is a missionary.
He his job is to travel
all over the known world
and to tell people about Jesus
and to start churches.
So this is a letter from a missionary
to a church that he helped
start in a city called Thessalonica.
But they're important to him
for this reason.
Look at what he says in verse 13 and 14.
He says this.
But we are always to give
thanks to God for you brothers,
beloved by the Lord, because God chose you
as the first fruits to be saved
through sanctification by the spirit
and belief in this and the truth.
To this he called you through our gospel,
so that you may obtain
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He says to this church,
you are the first fruits.
And what he means by that is,
you are one of the first cities
that I went to and preach the gospel,
and a church was formed,
and you are the first evidence
of what God is doing, the first evidence
that our message is true.
You are our proof of concept.
So Paul says, I'm traveling all over
the world telling people about Jesus.
And you got to remember in Paul's day,
Christianity is a very new religion, okay?
It's totally new.
Paul is showing up and saying that
a guy named Jesus was the Son of God,
that he lived and died and rose
from the dead, ascended into heaven,
and he is now the only way
to have a relationship with God.
But he is the way anyone who wants to
can have a relationship with God.
It's a totally new religion.
It's an outrageous claim.
And what he's saying is, as I travel,
I point to you
as evidence that what I'm saying is true.
You are first fruits.
You are my proof of concept.
And that's important
because people have a hard time
believing something they can't see.
They have a hard time buying into
something that they haven't experienced.
So Paul's saying, it's important to me
that I can point to you
as my proof of concept.
Let me give you an example
that illustrates what I mean.
There's a guy in Hollywood
a couple years ago, decade or so ago,
and he had a script that he had written
about his experience as a jazz drummer.
Okay.
He was a drummer in a jazz, group.
He went to a jazz music school.
He lived in that world.
And, and he wanted to make a movie
about his experience.
Not not a biography, just a movie about
the experience of being a jazz drummer.
And he wanted to make it a movie
about the pursuit of perfection.
Like, like the work you had to put in
to be really, truly great at something.
And he wanted to drive at the question
of how far is too far?
How maniacal should you get in the pursuit
of being great at something?
And more importantly,
how much should you let other people
push you in your pursuit of being great?
He wrote the script
and he took it to every movie studio
he could get a meeting with,
and no one would buy it.
No one was interested.
Everyone thought, you can't make a movie
about jazz drumming.
That's too niche, that's too esoteric.
No one will want to watch it.
No one really cares.
No one would buy it.
Which you think
would make him give up. But.
But he believed that there was
a great movie there, and that it was.
It was just that they couldn't see it.
So what he decided to do was
he made a short film version of the movie
like a five minute version of the movie,
that he could show the movie studios
so that they could see what he had
in mind, that they could catch the vision
that he had for.
Why this movie would be so poignant
for people.
So he makes the short film,
and he starts taking that to the studios,
and the minute he does that,
they buy it right away.
They buy it.
That movie, by the way,
went on to become the movie whiplash.
Maybe you saw it.
That movie won three Oscars.
It was nominated for Best Picture.
It took $3 million to make,
and it made $50 million globally.
So in other words,
when this guy has a script, he has a $47
million script,
an Oscar winning, Oscar worthy script,
and no one can buy it because it's
really hard to buy what you can't see.
They couldn't see it.
So he
realized, I need to give them a glimpse.
I need to give them, a sign.
I need them to be able to see my vision.
And if they can just see
a little bit of it, I believe
they'll see the beauty of what I have to
tell.
That's what Paul is saying,
that Christians and churches
are meant to be proof of concept
for the message of Jesus Christ,
that their lives, that their community,
are meant to be a kind of vision
for people who are not yet Christians
to look at and say,
wow, there's something compelling there.
There's something interesting there.
Paul is saying, listen, I'm taking
the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Paul is writing the New Testament,
but he's saying, I am dependent on this.
I have a message,
but you are my proof of concept.
You are my proof of concept.
Well, I want you to think second point
about why that's so important.
What's the power of a proof of concept?
Why is it so important that I can
visualize a couch in my living room?
Why is it so important
that I watch a five minute short film
to be able to understand
what it's because seeing is believing.
It's because we can see something
and realize,
oh wow, what I thought wouldn't work
actually works.
Now, the best expression of this actually
is in the book of Psalms.
It's this beautiful verse in Psalm 34,
verse eight,
which says, this taste
and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed
is the man who takes refuge in him.
Other translations will say,
blessed is the man who trusts in him.
The psalmist is saying that
this is how most people work.
You have to taste and then trust.
You have to see
and then believe, experience
and then buy in and taste and see,
he says.
And then you can trust.
Now when I read that verse, I can't help
but think about a particular experience
I had a few months ago
at this annual get together of pastors
that I go
to every February in San Diego.
I know it's hard to go to San Diego in
February, but somehow I make it through.
And when I was there at this past time,
there's a guy who leads the group
that I go to. His name is, Larry Osborne.
He's a phenomenal teacher
and preacher, has written a lot of books.
And actually, one year from right about
today, he's going to come preach here.
I'm very excited for you to meet him.
You're going to really like him.
But we're standing
in the kitchen of the house where we meet,
and we're getting ready
to leave to go somewhere.
But everybody's putting together
a lunch really quickly, and I see Larry
working over the counter at something
that I assume he's going to eat.
And so I say to him, Larry,
what are you making?
What are you going to eat?
And he goes, oh, I'm making a mayonnaise,
peanut butter and pickle sandwich,
which I thought was about
the grossest thing I've ever heard of
in my entire life.
And I shared that opinion
pretty strongly with Larry,
both in my body language and my face
and in what I said.
That's disgusting, Larry.
I said, why do I fly across the country
to learn from a man
who would eat something like that?
And the thing is, Larry, in his wisdom,
he didn't say anything.
He just grabbed another piece of bread
out of the
the loaf of bread, put it on the counter,
started spreading peanut butter
and then mayonnaise and pickles on it,
folded it up, handed it to me and said,
all right, big shot, try it,
try it.
He's calling my bluff, so I did.
I tasted the mayonnaise,
peanut butter and pickle sandwich.
And I'm here to tell you it was one of
the top ten experiences of my life.
Okay, that might be an exaggeration,
but it was awesome.
It was awesome.
Mayonnaise, peanut butter and pickles.
Sandwiches are delicious.
They're delicious.
I know it sounds disgusting, and I know
some of you are never going to try it.
Others of you are going to go home
and try it as soon as you get home.
And when you do, you will see
how magically these flavors work together.
It's like three things you didn't know
belong together, but really do.
That's what I think of every time I think
of the psalmist saying taste and see.
And the reason
why is because in that moment I had zero
belief, zero confidence,
that a mayonnaise, peanut butter
and pickle sandwich would be good at all.
And Larry said to me, taste
and see, taste and see.
And when I did, I realized
just how good it can be.
Now you're Paul
and you're traveling over the known world.
In the first century, you're preaching
a religion that no one has ever heard of.
You are telling them that everything
they thought they knew about God is wrong,
that they can be forgiven through Jesus,
that they can have a relationship with God
through Jesus, that they have to turn
from their sin and follow Jesus.
You're
preaching a message that to most people
is a mayonnaise,
peanut butter, and pickle sandwich.
It's not something
that they're interested in.
You can see that,
by the way, in this passage.
Look at what he says right after he says,
oh, you're my proof of concept.
And he says this in verse 15, 16 and 17.
He says this.
So then, brothers,
stand firm and hold to the traditions
that you were taught by us, either
by our spoken word or by our letter.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
and God our Father, who loved us
and gave us eternal comfort and good hope
through grace, comfort your hearts
and establish them in every good work
and word.
Now that's quintessential
biblical language.
Stand firm.
Good works, good words.
He's telling them, keep doing
these things that God is telling you.
Be obedient.
Surrender your life.
Do the things God is telling you to do.
And I'm telling you, as a guy who's
spent the past 20 years of his life
preaching similar things to people,
for most people,
that message is a mayonnaise,
peanut butter, and pickle sandwich.
I feel that when I get up here
and preach messages
like two weeks ago on judgment,
or four weeks ago on death,
I feel that when I get up here and say
that God knows best how life works
and that he's telling you
that, for example, being generous leads
to greater happiness than being selfish.
I know for most people that's mayonnaise,
peanut butter, and pickle.
But when I say that God tells us
that that relationships work
best when they go straight to marriage,
and not when you get on the relationship
escalator and begin sleeping together
and then living together
and then doing things at your own pace.
I know for most people in their 20s
and 30s, that is a mayonnaise,
pickle and peanut butter sandwich.
Most of what the Bible has to say
doesn't sound very appetizing to us.
Most of what the Bible has to say doesn't
sound like or feel like good news to us.
The message that God knows best,
that God wants good things
for us, that we need to zig
when we've been zagging.
The message of surrender,
the message of repentance,
the message of forgiveness through
the life and death and resurrection
of Jesus is, for most people,
something they're not interested in.
Which is why Paul says it is the job
of every Christian to live their life
in such a way that the gospel of
Jesus is proven to be true.
That's what he said.
He's saying,
listen, I'm traveling all over the world
telling people about Jesus.
But what I'm dependent on in my preaching,
what I'm dependent on, in my message,
is that you are inviting
those around you to taste and see
that you are surrendering your life,
that you are pursuing
obedience,
that you are giving control to Jesus.
And as a result, those around
you are able to see how he leads you
to goodness, to stand back and say, wow,
I didn't think that
would lead to happiness, but there it is.
I didn't think that would be good,
but there it is.
I couldn't see it.
But now I can.
Brother and sister in Christ.
Do you realize what Paul is saying?
That what he's saying
is that your holiness, your pursuit
of righteousness, your obedience to
Jesus, is not just about you.
It is evidence
of the reality of the gospel.
In other words,
it says, you and I surrender to Jesus
that we become living testimonies
to the goodness of his authority.
We become living examples of the grace
that he extends.
We become living, breathing
examples of his goodness as a king.
We are ourselves.
The invitation to our neighbors
and friends and family members
to taste and see.
Which is why the church that God calls
good is not just a church
where the preaching is true and right,
or the music is true and right,
or the Bible studies are true and right.
The church that God calls good is a church
that yes, is preaching truth,
singing truth, teaching
truth, and living truth.
Because the reality is that
if I stand up here, for example,
and I say that God is telling you
that sex is only best expressed
in the covenant of marriage,
where you're not using each other,
but you're committed to each other
because God desires for you
to have a relationship full of intimacy.
And if you don't do it his way,
you will suffer
a lack of intimacy as a result.
If your friend turns to you and says,
do you believe this mayonnaise,
peanut butter and pickle stuff
and you say, never tried it.
They have no interest in it anymore.
You see, it's our willingness
to step into obedience
that is the proof of concept God uses
to bring those around us into a place
where they're willing to taste and see.
It's the testimony of your obedience
that gets your friend to come
and hear what
whoever is up here saying has to say.
Because they've seen the evidence,
they've seen the power.
It's the short film
that will lead them to watch the movie.
It's spreading the peanut butter
and mayonnaise that will get them to taste
and try it and enter into the idea that
perhaps there is a God who loves them,
and he does have a plan for their lives,
and they can meet him today.
And that well, leads me to my third point,
which is to say, do you see what Paul
is saying?
That it's
preaching and the power of your life
that increases the potential
that the nations
and your neighbor will buy into Jesus?
Look at what he says in chapter
three says it so well.
He says as finally, brothers, pray for us
that the word of the Lord may speed ahead
and be honored as it happened among you,
as it happened among you.
I love that he says, hey, pray for us.
We're going to keep taking the gospel out.
And what we're hoping to see
is that the same thing that happened with
you will happen with them.
We're preaching the message, but you,
the power is in the proof of concept
of what God has done.
He says this, by the way, in first
Thessalonians chapter one, when he says
everyone is talking
about the change in your life,
he is saying, I'm going to preach it,
you're going to live it.
And when you put those things together,
the potential is unlimited.
Now it means two things
here, and I want you to hear me say them.
The first thing I believe that he means
is that the reason, Paul,
you understand
if you read the book of acts.
Paul was chased out of Thessalonica.
Paul has been beaten.
He's been shipwrecked.
He's been snake
bitten. He's been lied about.
He's had to sneak out at night.
And sometimes I wonder
what kept him going.
And I think the first thing he's saying
here is what kept him going
was the proof of concept in places
like Thessalonica.
Let me just be super vulnerable
with you for a minute.
The last two weeks for me
have been incredibly hard ones
as a pastor.
I mean, Joe could tell you
I popped in his office
just the other day and said, man,
you gotta help me with this.
This has been really hard.
Being a pastor
sometimes means being in your living room
or your hospital room at some of the
hardest moments of your life.
And listen, that's a privilege
I want you to hear.
That's a that's a privilege.
It's an honor to be with you.
But it's hard
and it's heavy,
and sometimes it's hard to get up here
and preach about judgment
or death or something.
You know, people aren't going to like,
just the other day, my daughter was right
at the house going, dad,
somebody called you stupid on YouTube.
And it was my wife.
No, I'm just kidding.
It can be hard.
But what Paul is saying
is what keeps pastors going,
what keeps missionaries going,
what keeps preachers of the gospel going,
is the evidence
of the reality of the gospel in your life
and in God's grace.
Just this week, I got stories from,
a Monday night ministry
we have called Region of People's Lives
that are changing.
There's a testimony Joe shared with me
a couple of a couple
who's getting married here at the church,
and the guy was an atheist
when he started coming.
And Jesus has just changed his life.
And you read those
and you say it's working.
Paul says, pray for me.
Here's my prayer request that everywhere
I go, everywhere
I preach, what I saw happen with
you might happen there.
Listen, your pursuit of Jesus is what will
keep me preaching for the next 20 years.
In God's grace.
But the second thing he means.
Is that the power of gospel
ministry is in preaching.
And in your life.
You can have an effective ministry
just by having a phenomenal preacher.
You know that.
And I know that we listen
to the same people.
We watch the same YouTube channels.
Okay, you think they're awesome?
I think they're awesome to.
You can grow a church just on the strength
of an effective communicator.
You gotta have a really
good one. But you can do it.
You can also grow
a church on the strength of changed lives.
Even if the preaching is not interesting
or boring.
You can grow a ministry
just by showing the effect of the gospel
in the lives of people.
But if you want to take the gospel
from Jerusalem on the day of Ascension,
the day of Pentecost to Thessalonica,
to Rome,
to the ends of the world, you need both.
You need both.
You need powerful, unapologetic preaching,
but you need a congregation
that is living it out.
That is saying to people,
I know it sounds like mayonnaise,
peanut butter and pickle.
I know it sounds gross.
I know you don't think God is for you.
I know generosity doesn't sound great.
I know surrendering authority
to Jesus doesn't sound great.
I know on the surface it isn't appealing.
But watch what he's doing in my life.
Because I'm telling you, it's
transforming me.
It's preaching and testimony.
That's what this passage is all about.
Paul says, here's what keeps me going.
Here's what keeps me preaching.
Here's what keeps the gospel advancing.
It's the story of Jesus.
It's the truth of the gospel,
and it's the proof of concept in the lives
of men and women and families and churches
that are being changed.
It's when you forgive that family member
you've been bitter towards,
and when they ask you why, you tell them
Jesus and they go, what does that mean?
And you go, I don't know how to explain
it. Come with me.
This weekend there's another guy
who would tell you all about it.
It's preaching
and proof of concept.
It's preaching
and the power of changed lives.
If that can take the gospel,
hear me on this.
I'll end with this.
If that can take the gospel
from Jerusalem to Thessalonica
to Rome to Hudson, Ohio,
it can reach that family member.
You're so desperate to come to Jesus.
There's not a
single person in your family
or in your circle, beyond the potential
of what the gospel can do,
if it is rightly preached
and rightly lived.
Don't you want that?
I know I do, I know I do.
That's what makes a church
good. Let me pray for us.
Father God, thank you so much
for this passage and what it teaches us.
Thank you that you have given each
one of us proof of concept
in the lives of people around
us, in the the lives of people we know,
in the stories that we've heard
that led us to be interested in Jesus.
God make us those kinds of people.
Make us a church full of preachers
and teachers and evangelists and
and children's ministry volunteers
who accurately
and excitedly share Jesus with people,
but also make us a church
full of people whose lives
are being transformed by the gospel
so that
one might feed into the other
and vice versa.
We ask this because there are people
we are desperate
to see come to faith in Jesus,
and it's our hope
that you will use our lives as a vehicle
to make that happen.
In his name we pray. Amen.