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1 Thessalonians 1:2-4, We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, 4 knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you;
God did an amazing thing in the lives of these Thessalonians. They went from Jewish legalists, idolators, and pagans to people unquestionably converted to Jesus Christ. They went from being self-lovers to lovers of God and others, even laboring at serving others in love. And they went from people who feared the future, who lived in terror of death, to people who were filled with hope and looked forward to the return of Christ. What program or self-help system did Paul bring to these people to bring about this incredible change? As we’ll see this morning, God chose these people to be His beloved people.
WELCOME TO GOD’S CHOSEN FAMILY
1 Thessalonians 1:4, Knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you.
We’re going to dig into this verse this morning. There may be some stuff in this Bible class you may have a hard time with. Either you have never heard this before, or you don’t understand, or you don’t like what you hear, or you absolutely love what you hear. Someone asked Spurgeon why one should preach on election. Spurgeon said because it’s in the Bible and whatever is in the Bible we preach. A high view of God and Scripture means we let God and His Word teach us. If the Scripture doesn’t seem to run along the lines of our thinking, we submit to the Scriptures and let God be God.
Isaiah 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Our thoughts are so skewed by sin, so man-centered that we interpret life from our perspective and sit in judgment on God’s Word. And the Word of God often jolts us and confounds us when it teaches us God’s perspective. Or it dazzles us and delights us. We never thought this way before. We can hardly believe it. For example, how can you have three persons in one Godhead? How can you have God humbling Himself to take up residence in the womb of a young lady to be joined with the human race, so that there walked among us on this planet in a land just east of the Mediterranean Sea a person who was both fully God and fully man? How can you have 40 human authors over 1500 years writing 66 human documents that are at the same time breathed out by God and without any errors? And how can I, a guilty, hell-deserving sinner ever become a child of God, to enjoy eternal bliss, pleasures, and fellowship at God’s right hand forever when I should be under His wrath enduring the just reward for my sinful nature. And then I find out God loved and chose me to be His child before the foundation of the world!
We have to pray, “Lord, open the eyes of my heart by Your Spirit to grasp this.” Rather than reject this doctrine of sovereign, unconditional election, we should prayerfully hear it, search it out, seek to understand it, and rejoice in it. As Tommy Nelson told his congregation, “Now, go home and study your Bibles!” Verse 4 is rich with heart melting truth for the child of God. Thomas Watson said, “Majesty shines in every line of Scripture,” and that’s certainly true of verse 4.
Knowing – Paul and his friends knew God had done a great work of regeneration in their hearts, that they were new creations in Christ. They saw the great change in their lives, their working faith, laboring love, and enduring hope. So they knew God had chosen them. Paul was never afraid to teach this great truth of God’s sovereign election to salvation. In fact, it is the foundation of all hope for salvation. He knew left to ourselves, we would never come to Christ.
Brethren – Paul loved these new believers dearly. His heart was knit to their heart. In 1 Thessalonians 2:8 he says they became precious to him. He refers to them as brethren 15 times in this letter. They used to be children of the devil but now they have been adopted through Christ into God’s eternal family. You want to be part of this family.
Beloved by God – Brothers who have been loved by God. Beloved is a perfect passive participle. They were personally loved in the past by God and they continue to be loved by God right now in the present and, in fact, will continue to be loved by God into the eternal future. Imagine being personally loved by God forever and ever. He will never stop loving you if you are a genuine believer like these Thessalonians. Wouldn’t you love to have this said of you? This is not God’s general love or kindness He has for all the world. This is God’s family love for His people. We love Him because He first loved us. He didn’t start loving them when they came to Christ, or when they were born, or even when God created Adam. His love for those He saves reaches back into eternity past. This is really the same as God’s foreknowledge of you. God foreknew you in the sense that He placed His love on you from all eternity. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.” He loves them. We’re talking about a special, redeeming, family love here. One author described the church as “a people loved and chosen by God in eternity.”
This is simply awesome. First John 3:1-2, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God, and we are!” We are in God’s fatherly love. I was walking in our subdivision the other day when suddenly I heard the loud voice of a little girl, not more than 4 or 5. She was running out of the house with her arms out to a person who turned out to be her daddy. She was thrilled to see her daddy. He picked her up and held her, all smiles. That is family love. Your heavenly Father loved you from eternity past and has brought you into a family relationship that is infinitely sweeter than anything human.
His choice of you – Not your choice of Him but His choice of you. Can you put your name in the place of “you”? Did you know if you are like these Thessalonians who received the gospel by faith in power and it turned your life right side up, that it was God who had loved you and chosen you and drew you to His Son? It was His choice of you. That’s why you believed in Christ. Paul repeats the same thing in 2 Thessalonians 2:13.
2 Thessalonians 2:13, But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.
THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS DOCTRINE OF UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
To plumb the depths of God’s blessings to you, you must go back to the beginning of your salvation. That’s where Paul takes us in Ephesians.
Ephesians 1:3-4, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
Paul clearly taught this doctrine of election or the truth that God has sovereignly chosen those whom He would save. Calvin rebuked preachers who hide this great truth from God’s people. He wrote, “We shall never know where our salvation comes from till we have lifted up our minds to God’s eternal counsel by which he has chosen whom he pleased and left the remainder in their confusion and ruin.”
But folks stumble over this. Why choose one and not the other? Why Jacob and not Esau? Romans 9 says God is sovereign and free to show mercy to whomever He wills, for His good pleasure and to the praise of His glory. We all deserved His justice and would have found ourselves in His eternal wrath if He had not planned to save a vast number of sinful souls from every nation and tribe and tongue, including these Thessalonians, and including us.
The fact is that God chose all those who are saved. Out of the entire number of the human race from Adam and Eve to the last person saved, God chose them to be saved. He elected us to enjoy His blessings. Why? Not the way we go and pick out lumber at Lowes, “Hmm, this one’s straight, this one’s crooked.” Or how they pick players at the volleyball game, “Uh, don’t pick him. He’ll lose the game for you.” Or how you pick watermelon, thumping it and if it sounds hollow, you choose it. God didn’t go around thumping sinners to see which one was a good one. We were all rotten, and you know what rotten watermelon smells like! God didn’t look down through time and see you doing a fairly good job and decide, “She’ll make a good one. I pick her.” No, no. God didn’t check us out to see if we were qualified. None of us were. He chose us in pure sovereign grace because it pleased Him.
God chose us in spite of our guilt and regardless of the kind of life we lived. His choice of us is unconditional. He doesn’t choose us based on our merits but based on His loving mercy. No one is beyond hope! MacArthur tells about the gay pride parade guy with AIDS who came to him after a service to be saved. He came to Christ and at his funeral MacArthur said, “God loves and forgives any sinner who repents and comes to Christ.” God didn’t give us this great doctrine to keep people out of heaven but to give assurance to those who come to Christ. Why did you come? Because God knew and loved you and chose you before He even created the universe.
Lay two verses from John 6 side by side.
John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”
This was John Bunyan’s favorite verse. He wrote a whole book based on this verse: Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ.
And in the same chapter 6 is this powerful little verse with eternity in it.
John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
These are two beautiful verses with six great truths. 1) The Father gave you to His Son. Have you ever thought about that? You are a love gift from the Father to the Son. 2) The Father sent His Son to redeem you and all He chose. 3) The Father sends the Spirit to draw you to His Son. 4) The Spirit makes sure you come to Jesus in faith. 5) The Son assures you He will never cast you out. 6) Jesus will raise you up on the last day!
God chose you in Christ. No one gets to God outside of Christ. Everything God does, He does through His Son. God didn’t choose you in you; He chose you in Christ who did all that you needed to be redeemed. Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
You chose Christ because God chose you! Let’s see a few more references and then draw some conclusions.
John 15:6, You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
Acts 13:48, When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as (not one less or one more) had been appointed to eternal life believed.
Romans 8:33, Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies;
A SUMMARY OF THE WONDERFUL TRUTH OF “BELOVED AND CHOSEN”
I want to finish by showing why this truth is so important and wonderful. Here is where either God is sovereign or man is sovereign. Why are some people Christians and some aren’t? Who has the final say in salvation?
- God is kind to all mankind, but all are by nature under His wrath. He is good and patient and forbearing to the evil and the good. Romans 2:4-5 says God is kind and patient and forbearing to sinners.
Romans 2:4, Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? 5 But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
Instead of instantly judging people who refuse to repent and believe in His Son, God is patient. The problem, though, is that every day a person lives without coming to Christ he treasures up more wrath for the day of judgment! Does God love all men? Yes, in a general sense, but God’s love adds to his guilt. That’s why you should never assure people who are in sin to smile because God loves them. And especially don’t tell them God loves everyone unconditionally. Yet that’s how most people think about God today. “Cool, I can just keep indulging my sins because God loves me regardless of what I do Plus, it’s His responsibility to forgive, so I’m not worried.” That’s a fatal and could be an eternal error.
- Man is fully responsible for his decisions. God tells us this and we know this. Acts 17:30 says, “God commands all men everywhere to repent.” And if you don’t, you will suffer eternal consequences. Verse 31 says God has fixed a day when He will judge the whole world through Christ. Every sinner is responsible to repent and believe in Christ.
- We are all born in sin and sin by nature and by choice. That’s why we are all condemned. We are born rebels in God’s universe. None do good or seek God; all come short of God’s glory. All in our hearts have a hatred of God’s rule and authority over us. All are dead in sins and don’t want this God-Man to rule over us. None of us would ever choose for God because our natures are sinful and we always choose against God. We freely choose, but we freely choose not to submit to God, ever. All of us. Let me put it like this. We are like a stampede of guilty sinners madly in love with our own sin and rushing to our own destruction. If God doesn’t intervene, we’re all going to hell. So that’s where we are. We are a race at war with God. Left to ourselves, we will gladly choose hell rather than submit our hearts to the true God. All of us. And those who end up in hell will resent God forever, gnashing their teeth in bitter anger at God. But praise God, that’s not the end of the story! That’s where “beloved and chosen” comes in.
- God is just, but God is also loving and merciful and gracious. God determined to display His justice and power in judgment, but He also determined to display His grace and mercy in salvation, and that’s why we are gathered here today. God planned from all eternity to send His Son to die in the place of sinners. And in His love God gave His Son a vast number of these sinners who He would save out of sin and condemnation to be His people for His glory, to display His grace and kindness forever and ever. That’s what beloved and chosen means in verse 4. Every person who comes to Christ comes to Christ freely. But he freely comes to Christ because God loved and chose and calls and draws him to Christ and gives him a heart to believe in the gospel. That’s the effectual call. And God gets all the glory! Harry Ironside illustrates the doctrine of election like this. There’s a broad door and many are going through it, but it leads to destruction. But there’s a man calling people to a narrow door leading to eternal life with a sign over it, “Whosoever will, let him come.” That’s the gospel invitation to all sinners. Here comes a man who wants his sins forgiven and eternal life. So he enters the narrow way through the narrow door. Once on the other side, he looks back and there’s another sign over the narrow door, “Chosen before the foundation of the world.” Beloved and chosen.
- How do we know we are beloved and chosen by God? For the same reason these Thessalonians knew – because the gospel was preached to them and they gladly received the Christ of the gospel. Have you? Your business isn’t to wonder if you are beloved and chosen. Your business is to determine if you have repented and put your trust, your faith, your confidence in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior who bore your sins on that cross.
SO WHAT?
Friends, what do we as believers do with this great truth? We are humbled. We praise and glorify and thank God that He didn’t give us what we deserved but rather gave us in His Son what we absolutely did not deserve. Forever and ever we will never boast in our own merits or powers to come to God but rather we will boast in His grace that loved and drew and called and brought us to Christ and the cross. This humbles us, removes all boasting in man, gives God all the credit and glory, and lays us on our faces in praise and adoration of such a wonderful saving God.
Plus, it gives us confidence to preach the gospel. God has more people He loves and has chosen that He has yet to save. That’s what God told Paul in Corinth, “I have many people in this city.” We can say the same about Evansville. Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:10, “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it, eternal glory.”
Do you have the blessed assurance that you are beloved and chosen by God? Can you put your name in the place of “you” in verse 4? And let’s be ready always to give out the gospel message. It’s not our slick methods of evangelism that God uses to call and draw those He has loved and chosen. He uses the simple gospel that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom you and I along with Paul are the chief!