1 Thessalonians
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
How the Gospel Impacts the Church Those who know me well know I can be a very critical person. And I confess that there are times when I’m critical of this church. Some of you may have some criticisms of our church as well. After all, churches are composed of sinners. There is room for improvement in any church, but overall I think we have much to be thankful for at First Free. When the gospel has an obvious impact…
1 Thessalonians 2:1-12
How the Gospel Impacts the Pastor It’s no secret to any of you that the media loves bad news. Bad news sells. Bad news titillates the public. Bad news can be used as a tool to further personal agendas, as we saw in the recent tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona. The media particularly likes bad news when it focuses on a politician they don’t like. The conviction of Tom Delay and the fall of John Edwards received a lot of attention because both men had already…
1 Thessalonians 2:13-16
How the Church Receives the Gospel Consider this quote from Graham Cole. “When it comes to the problem of evil, the Bible is not as interested in the arrival of evil as it is in the survival of evil.” The problem of evil simply put is this. How can a God who is perfectly loving, powerful, and just allow evil, pain, sickness, death, hardship, and conflict to exist? We are faced with these things on a daily basis. And these…
1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:13
How the Church Suffers for the Gospel The Apostle Paul and his two missionary companions, Silas and Timothy, came to Thessalonica and planted a church during Paul’s second missionary journey, but within weeks their success in winning converts stirred up tremendous opposition. In fact, a riot was generated, and they had to flee the city during the night. Paul’s detractors apparently used that fact against him, claiming he had used and abused his new converts and then abandoned them to handle persecution…
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
How the Church Must Live in Purity According to the Gospel God saves a people for himself through the gospel. Those people are called the Church. The title of this sermon series in 1 Thessalonians is “The Gospel and the Church.” We have explored how the gospel impacts the church and impacts pastors, and how the church receives the gospel and suffers for the gospel. Today we will look at how the church must live a life pleasing to God…
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
How the Gospel Gives Hope to the Church : Josh had a tough passage of Scripture last Sunday, but he did a great job with it. You could hear a pin drop as he talked about the need for sexual purity. If you weren’t able to be here last Lord’s Day I would strongly encourage you to go to the website, and either read it or listen to it. I have a real advantage this morning–my sermon text is a very familiar passage…
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
How the Gospel Enables the Church to Escape God’s Wrath Last week we studied the amazing truth that Jesus is coming again, and when He returns, the Church will be raptured, caught up together with Him to be with Him forever. We suggested that Paul’s teaching on this topic in 1 Thess 4 was designed to deal with a problem, namely the problem of bereavement. Some of the Thessalonian believers had misinterpreted Paul’s teaching on the possibility of the soon return of Christ as…
1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
How to Be a Gospel-centered Church I have a confession to make. I don’t read the news. I don’t watch the news. I don’t listen to the news. I don’t know the news. At least I didn’t until last week. In my internship meetings with Mike he became aware of the fact that I didn’t read the news and he admonished me to begin. My father-in-law has been on me to do the same for years. So, this last week…