Watchman Radio Hour

David Shultier: Welcome to the Watchman Radio Hour. Coming to you from Portland, Oregon, here in the beautiful Northwest. This is David Shultier, announcer. The Watchman Radio Hour is a production of Watchman Radio Ministries International, an evangelistic ministry reaching out to the peoples of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And now here's our speaker Alex Dodson to bring you this week's message from God's Word.

Alex Dodson: For our Scripture reading today, let us turn to 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1. And we begin reading in verse 1. Let us hear the Word of God. Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you.

We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the Bible that you have given to us. We thank you that it's your infallible Word, that we can put our full confidence in everything that it says. Now, oh Father, as we come to study your Word, we pray that you will send forth your Holy Spirit and great convicting power. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

With so much going on in our world, it seems to be against the kingdom of God, we may get discouraged. Satan seems to be having his heyday at the present moment, especially in our own nation. Things unthought of by previous generations are happening today. Sexual immorality in all its forms is permeating the country and seems to be increasing.

Divorce is rampant. School violence in recent years was unknown in previous generations. The killing of the unborn continues. For such sins in the past, nations have been judged. Our nation is no exception. Even now, God's warning judgments are upon us. Yet the nation as a whole continues in sin and shows no signs of repentance.

Will this always be? Is there no hope for the nation or the world? We must believe that there is hope for the future. Great revivals have happened in the past when the nation was at its lowest point. Can a revival happen again? Will the Church, though it is very weak, now come alive again and proclaim the gospel with mighty power throughout the land? We must hope that it will.

Paul talked about enduring in hope. Our text for today is 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, and verses 2 and 3. Again, I read verse 2, "We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."

We must endure in hope. Paul commended the Thessalonian Christians and thanked God for them continually for their good works produced by faith, their labor in the Gospel prompted by love, and their endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. They were enduring in hope.

This is what we must do today as God's people. We must endure in hope. We must believe that there is hope for the future, not only for ourselves as individual Christians, but hope for the Church and through its influence, hope for the nation as a whole.

Now, let us see in the first place that we must endure in the hope of eternal life. First of all, our hope of heaven. As Christians, we have a hope of heaven. We believe the Lord will come for us when we die. In John 14:1-3, Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

Jesus will come for us and take us to heaven when we die. We must believe that. This is his promise. Then in 2 Corinthians 5 and verses 6-8, Paul says, "Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

Our confidence is that we die, our confidence is that when we die, we will go to be with the Lord. We endure in this hope. Matthew Henry writes, "Wherever there is a well-grounded hope of eternal life, it will appear by the exercise of patience."

"In a patient bearing of the calamities of the present time, and a patient waiting for the glory to be revealed."

"For if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."

Our hope of resurrection at his coming is also what we must endure in hope for. We endure in hope of the great resurrection at the second coming. We know that our life will continue and that we will have a new body and live forever with the Lord and his people in a new heaven and a new Earth. This is our hope for the future. No one can take that away from us.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul says, "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to be or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again. And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left to the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep."

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And after that we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage each other with these words."

Our hope is in that day when we will rise from the grave and join with all believers, whether still living or resurrected in a group, together to go up to meet the Lord when he comes. And then we will all be together. This is our great homecoming.

John Calvin writes, "He refers patience to hope as being always connected with it. We hope for what we wait for with patience. The statement should be interpreted to mean that Paul remembers their patience in hoping for the coming of Christ. From this we may gain a brief definition of true Christianity. It is an earnest faith, full of power, so that it shirks no task when our neighbors are in need of help."

"On the contrary, the godly are all to be strenuously occupied in the duties of love and on these to spend their energies. Intent on the hope of the manifestation of Christ, they are to despise all other things and arm with patience to arise superior both to wearisome delay and all the temptations of the world."

William Hendricksen writes, "Suffering for the name and sake of Christ also falls under the heading of exertion prompted by love. It implies endurance. A person who suffers such persecution is willing if need be, to remain under stress and strain, confidently expecting that in the very presence of the God who will one day judge all men, he will find a safe shelter with the Lord Jesus with his Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, his endurance is inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father."

And Leon Morris says this, "Patience is better rendered steadfastness. What is meant is not a quiet passive acquiescence, but an active constancy in the face of difficulties. As William Barkley says, 'It is the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope. This springs from hope, that hope which is more than pious optimism.'"

"It is a solid certainty. In the New Testament, hope is always something which is as yet future, but which is completely certain. The Thessalonian epistles have a good deal to do with the second coming and associated events, and hope is very prominent in them. The hope of the believer is in Christ, and it is also a hope which has reference to his standing before the Father and not merely before men."

And then Morris goes on to say, "hoopulmonae rendered patience, means not a negative passive acquiescence, but an active manly endurance. As Finley puts it, 'Not the resignation of the passive sufferer, so much as the fortitude of the stout-hearted soldier.'"

"Hope in a Christian context always has an air of certainty about it. It is a confident expectation and not the unfounded optimism which we often mean by the word. More particularly, the Christian hope is directed towards the second advent, which is possibly in mind here, especially if the phrase in our Lord Jesus Christ is connected with hope."

"But alternatively, it is grammatically possible to take these words as relating to all the preceding part of the verse, in which case they refer to the whole of the Christian life, which is then said to be lived in Christ."

Now, let's see in the second place that we must endure as the Church in hope of victory. We must have hope for the Church. Today there is so much pessimism and prediction of defeat for the Church in this age. It seems as though we believe the devil is going to win in this age.

Yet this is not what the Lord told us when he was here. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus said, "And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Jesus saw no defeat for the Church in this age. On the contrary, he had great hope for the Church. He saw it as a mighty tide rolling forth, which would not be stopped by the devil and all his forces. Yet today, so many have lost that hope for the Church. The popular teaching of today among many evangelical churches is that the world will grow worse and worse until the Church will have to be raptured out of the way. There's no talk of victory over Satan and his forces in this age. The Church will not prevail.

But this is not what Jesus had in mind when he said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. If we believe the Church will go down in defeat in this age, then we simply don't believe what Jesus said. We must believe the promises of God. We must get hold of the optimism of God.

Like in Malachi 1:11, where it says this, "My name will be great among the nations. From the rising to the setting of the sun, in every place, incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations," says the Lord Almighty.

And then there's this hope based on the promises of God. The Old Testament prophets often looked often talked about the future glory of Zion. In doing so, they look forward in many cases to the Church in this age. The Church is the New Israel or spiritual Israel in the gospel sense, in the gospel age.

She is the Zion that they look forward to in so many cases. Now, that doesn't mean that the Lord doesn't have yet a plan for the Jewish people. Paul points out in Romans 11 that their time will come and that all Israel, referring to the Jews as a nation of people, will be saved. They will be ingrafted again into the people of God and become a part of the true Zion.

When we try to interpret all the references of the prophets to Zion and to the earthly to the earthly Israel or rule out the Church as being pointed to, we miss a great deal of what the prophets foretold. Now, that's the problem with so much of popular teaching today on Israel and the Church.

Evangelicals of a former generation would much more likely to recognize the great prophecies in the Old Testament prophets concerning the future of the Church in this age. And Isaiah 60:1-3 is such a passage pointing to the future glory of the Church. It says, "Arise, shine, for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the Earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you, and his glory appears over you. Nations come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn."

This prophecy points to a future glory of the Church in this age. A time when she will be blessed by the Lord. A time when her light will shine with great brightness throughout the world to such an extent that the nations and kings will come into her.

The prophet is all excited as he looks forward to the glory of Zion, and he calls on the Lord to hasten that coming time. In Isaiah 61 and 2 it says, "For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem's sake, I will not remain quiet till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. And you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow."

We should hope for the glory of Zion to come. A time when the Church will be full of light to all the world like a blazing torch for all to see.

And then thirdly, we must endure by grace. It's only by grace that we can endure. It's only by grace that we can persevere in our faith as Christians. It's only by grace that the Church will endure. And though Satan may have the upper hand at the present moment, it will not last. God's grace is greater than Satan, and God keeps his promises. By God's grace, the Church will endure and be victorious.

In Philippians 4:13, it says, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength." In 2 Corinthians 12, verses 7-10, it says, Paul says, "To keep me from becoming conceited, because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' And therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. And that's why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong."

We must always look to the Lord for his grace and strength to enable us to persevere in our Christian life. And the same goes for the Church. It's only by his grace that the Church can persevere to the end.

Hebrews 12:1-3 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

"Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

John Gill writes, "And patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, or of our Lord Jesus Christ. These persons had a good hope through grace given unto them, and which was founded in Christ Jesus in his person, blood, and righteousness. And so was as an anchor, sure and steadfast. And it had him for its object, it was in hope of interest in him, of being forever with him, of his second coming and glorious appearance, and of eternal life and happiness through him, with a patient bearing of reproaches, afflictions, and persecutions, for the sake of Christ, and a patient waiting for his coming, his kingdom, and glory."

And then we need to pray for endurance. We need to pray for grace to persevere in the Christian life. We need to pray for the Church to endure and press forward in this age. We need the excitement of the prophets as they looked ahead and saw the glory of Zion. They longed for and prayed for that glory to come, and we should do the same for the Church today.

In Isaiah 62:6-7, it says, "I have posted watchmen on your walls, oh Jerusalem. They will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the Earth."

We should be praying for the Church, the new Zion, the spiritual Jerusalem, that her time of glory will come, and that she will become the praise of the Earth. This is where we fall far short today. We have our prophets of doom, and we follow them, and we fail to pray for the prosperity of the Church.

This has not always been the case, however. Ian Murray in his book, "The Puritan Hope," wrote of the Scottish Church of the 18th and 19th century and her zeal for missions and hope for the world. He wrote in conclusion, "Much could be said upon how Scotland's missionaries displayed unwavering commitment to the belief that all their endeavors were towards the realization in history of the kingdom of Christ filling the whole Earth."

"This goal would be reached not in their day, but before the second advent, and it was their privilege to draw constant energy and hope from the assurance which possessed them. Never for a moment, Alexander Duff, missionary to India, charged his fellow missionaries, 'Never for a moment lose sight of the grand ulterior object for which the Church was originally constituted and spiritual rights and privileges conferred, that is, the conversion of the world.'"

"There's no need, however, to elaborate on this school of belief, for its outlines have already been extensively covered in the preceding chapters," writes Murray.

"But one thing which does call for emphasis is the manner in which the promises of unfulfilled prophecy affected missionary labor. On the most practical level, it prepared men to face a baptism of sufferings, disappointments, and setbacks with unwavering confidence in the final outcome. And thus all those Sierra Leone and Caras, early fields occupied by the Scottish Societies, had to be abandoned. And four of the first six missionaries lost their health or lives in the cause, this was no deterrent to the continuance of the endeavor."

"John Love, preaching on the glorious prospects of the Church of Christ for the Glasgow Missionary Society in 1802, reminded his fellow workers that they had more than enough scriptural hope to sustain them. His text was Isaiah 49:18."

Which says, "Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold. All these gather themselves together and come to thee. Upon which he declared, 'The spirit of promise draws the picture of a whole earth thick set with living converts, like the sky bespangled with stars. It's a crowd, every individual of which appears rich with divine glory. The subject has enough in it if brought home by the spirit of truth, revelation, and power to form those missionaries against whom the gates of hell shall not prevail.'"

"Those gloomy, those burning shores shall become sooner or later a part of the triumphal ornaments of the Christian Church."

One of those Scottish missionaries to go out with this kind of vision was David Livingston, who went to Africa and died there. He wrote home to his wife, "I will go, no matter who opposes. I know you wish as ardently as I can that all the world may be filled with the glory of the Lord."

And again he wrote to another, "I am trying now to establish the Lord's kingdom in a region wider by far than Scotland. Fever seems to forbid, but I shall work for the glory of Christ's kingdom, fever or no fever."

Now, may the Lord grant us the same vision these early Scottish missionaries and Christians had. And may we also seek the glory of Zion. And may we not rest until she becomes the praise of the whole Earth. We must endure in hope, not only for the future heaven that awaits us, and the future resurrection that is coming when Jesus comes back, but we must endure in hope for the Church in this age.

Pray for the prosperity of Zion. Don't be silent day or night. Call on the Lord, and give him no rest until he establishes the Church and makes of the glory of the whole Earth. Now, our Father in heaven, our Father in heaven, forgive us for our great sins. Forgive us for our great lack of faith. Oh, Father in heaven, grant us the kind of vision that those Scottish missionaries had. Oh, Father in heaven, grant us the kind of vision that those prophets of old had. Oh, Father in heaven, we pray for the prosperity of Zion. We pray for the furtherance of the gospel all over the world. We pray, oh Father in heaven, that your Church will become a shining light, a glowing torch in this world, and that the nations will flow into it. Oh, Father, we pray for the glory of Zion to come. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

David Shultier: Before our announcer closes the broadcast, I would like to bring to your attention our Children's Fund. We are helping children in Nepal, India, and Kenya. We need your help with this ongoing project. Would you prayerfully consider giving to our Children's Fund? You may give online through our website at watchmanradio.org. You may also text us at 503-841-9643. That's 503-841-9643 and indicate your desire to give to our Children's Fund. Also, our announcer will give your mailing address at the close of the program. We can help one child with just $35 per month. Your gift of any amount is appreciated. Thank you. We hope this week's broadcast has been a blessing to you. If you have any questions about Mr. Dodson's message, please write us. You may email us at info@watchmanradio.org. Our mailing address is Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon, 97213. That's Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon, 97213. You may listen to this broadcast at any time on the Internet at www.oneplace.com. In the list of ministries, just select the Watchman Radio Hour. This week's program and previous programs are always available there for listening. Our web address is www.watchmanradio.org. That's w-a-t-c-h-m-a-n-r-a-d-i-o.org. www.watchmanradio.org.