Normal

by Frank Turk

1 Thessalonians winds up being a somewhat-ordinary letter, which is where we trick ourselves into not listening to it very well.  It’s “ordinary,” and what we want from our life of faith is a release from the ordinary – something that somehow lets us step up out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.  I mean: we have faith in God, who is by definition extra-ordinary.  We have confidence and faith in Jesus, whom we call “Christ” – a word which means he’s not just another fellow: he’s God’s chosen savior of the world.  He’s not ordinary.  And we have the promise of eternal life because somehow God has paid the price for our sins and changed us from children of wrath to children of promise – children in his own household rather than orphans in a world which doesn’t care about us.  That’s extra-ordinary, and not ordinary.

But look: “ordinary” does not just mean “commonplace” or “uninteresting”.  It also means “normal” or “customary”.  It means, “the way things usually work.”  This is a book about how things usually ought to work out in a local church, and in the lives of people who have heard the Gospel and received the Christian faith.

John MacArthur says it this in his Bible Handbook about this letter:

Both letters to Thessalonica have been referred to as “the escatological epistles,” perhaps because of their treatment of end-times issues.  However, in light of their more extensive focus upon the church, they would better be categorized as “the church epistles.”  Five major themes are woven together in 1 Thes: (1) History, as correlated to Acts, (2) Church life (3) Pastoral Concerns for the local church (4) end times as the church’s hope, and (5) the need for missions and the proclamation of the Gospel.

This is a book about the way in which the local church usually ought to work out its life.  It’s the way the church ought to live, and find correction to the way it ought to live, because while its cause and creation is not an ordinary thing, it is meant to be God’s ordinary means for delivering His gospel to every tribe, tongue and nation.

Our passage for this series is in 1 Thes 2:7-12.

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 

For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

It’s a beautiful picture of Paul’s care for these people, and the purpose of his care for them – But it is an ordinary picture: one which fits into everyday life because it is Paul’s intention that this faith these people have be a faith for everyday life.

So, according to this passage, what is the ordinary life of the church?

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A somewhat-mundane Book

by Frank Turk

I have a confession to make about what happens when I write a lesson for adults: more often than not, I have written the lesson that I need most from this passage.  Sometimes, maybe, those lessons wind up being too simplistic because, while I have had faith in Jesus our savior for about 20 years now, I have a long way to go.  So when the elders at church let us know we’d be teaching through 1 Thes this fall, I have to admit that I was hoping to get inspired by the other guys’ lessons because while I have read the whole book once or twice, I feel like this book is not my favorite book of the Bible.

I don’t dislike it, I don’t have theological objections to it, and I’m not worried that it is going to lead us astray.  It is the word of God, after all.  We all believe that  All Scripture is inspired by God, breathed-out by Him, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that we can be equipped for every good work.  We believe it – that’s why we’re call Sunday School at our church "Equipping Hour," so that we can study God’s word, and get equipped.

But this book is not like the Acts of the Apostles, or the Gospel of John, or Ephesians, or Romans.  You know: when John MacArthur wrote his commentary for Romans, it turned into two 500-page volumes.  When he wrote the commentary on this letter, it was so small that it also included the second letter to the Thessalonians – and together that volume is about 300 pages long.  If we surveyed this class, or maybe the pastors we read and respect, I’ll bet this book doesn’t come up in the top half of the books of the Bible regarding its influence or its depth.

If I had to guess, there are two reasons for this.  The first one, which we haven’t gotten to in the text yet, is that this book talks about the end of all things in Jesus’ second coming.  In that, because it says more than, “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will Come Again,” it will open up a lot of conjecture and questions which, it seems to me, the Bible ultimately doesn’t intend to answer.  It will make us mindful of the intention God has to bring all things to a conclusion.  He will make Christ King above all Kings and Lord above all Lords, and the judge of the living and the dead, but we tend to want a lot more than that from our eschatology.  I can understand why a pastor doesn’t want to make a ministry out of threading the eye of that needle.

The second reason this book doesn’t get a lot of attention is sort of ironic, given the first reason.  It doesn’t get a lot of attention because it is a somewhat-mundane book.  The word “justification” makes no appearances in this book.  “Propitiation” is not mentioned.  “Sacrifice” isn’t given any consideration.  “Grace” is mentioned only as part of Paul’s greeting and farewell.  God’s sovereignty and omniscience is not extolled.  In some sense, it’s hard to see that Paul wrote this book at all since whatever it is he is talking about here makes no direct reference to the great and good theology he presents to us in other places – the places we enjoy more, the places where we feel like our roots as a “Reformed” people run deep and draw their best nourishment from.

This is a commonplace book.  But somehow, it winds up in the Bible as Scripture.  That, it itself, ought to be a lesson to us when we consider Paul’s view of scripture.  If we all believe that  all Scripture is inspired by God, breathed-out by Him, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that we can be equipped for every good work, then there is a use for a book like this one which winds up getting only a minor representation in our systematic theology.

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