I would ask you now to open your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. I have been very deliberately working my way through this book. We will be studying in 1st and then 2nd Thessalonians over the coming weeks and months. And I want to very carefully cover these books. There's much in here and sadly, in our day, these books have been focused on more for just reinforcing some ideas of eschatology rather than seeing the deep instruction for the church. And our focus will be on what it means to be a local church, what that looks like, what it feels like. And to understand that Thessalonians, these letters were some of the very earliest books written in the New Testament. Probably Galatians, James, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and probably Matthew are some of our earliest books. And so, to have an idea that from the very beginning of the church, this kind of teaching was going on. And it was not something that developed much later. They were understanding strong doctrine right from the very start. And so, for a church, it's important for us as a church to have right concepts and right understandings. And so, we come to these passages to learn what is it to walk As a Christian in this world, what is it to be a local church? What is it to be a local church leader? What does that look like? And so, we will be focusing a great deal on those things in the weeks and months to come. And so, today we have this example of Paul that we saw last week, how he behaved himself toward that church. And I actually began this morning reading with, having thus a fond affection for you. This is 1 Thessalonians 2.8. We were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us." You see this over and over again in Paul's writings of his deep love for these people and deep love for each individual church and the people in it. If you would turn with me quickly to Philippians, you see this same kind of tenderness in Philippians chapter 1. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. In Philippians chapter 1, Paul says, In chapter 1, verse 3, he says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation, that is communion. fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart. And those words, it's interesting, the Greek construction is such that he can say, I have you in my heart, or you could also read it, you have me in your heart. It's a mutual thing of this deep and abiding love that Paul had for these churches. I have you in my heart. You have me in your heart. We love one another. He says, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me, for God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. This is this deep and abiding love. And one of the things that if you don't get anything out of this study, is to have an understanding of a love for the local church. Loving the local church. Today, we're going to have our monthly potluck, and we get together, we call it a fellowship lunch for a reason, that we get together, we eat together, we rejoice together. It's good for us. One of the things that I have seen in my own ministry over the years is, as the years have gone by, there has grown up, especially in America, a real ambivalence toward the local church. Of this, yeah, I go to church, but, you know, I'm a member wherever I go. What that is to say is you're not a member anywhere, and you don't really care about anyone else. This is serious business when we talk about the local church, of that love for one another. You can't have a deep love for others if you don't know them. How can you have great love for your spouse if you know nothing about them? I remember when my older brother was serving in Vietnam as a soldier. And he got engaged just days before he left. And so he went off to war. And he would send letters home. And he would write letters to mom and dad. But he wrote letters to his fiance, his intended. Would we not have thought it very strange if she took those letters and saved them, but never read them? And, oh yes, this is a letter I got in September, and this is a letter I got in the beginning of October, and this is a letter, but never read them. Just put them away, and these are the letters from from my intended. She devoured those things. Well, why was that? She was in love with him. And I'm sure at the other end, he was devouring those letters. Why? They were in love. And they wanted to know each other. They wanted to know everything about each other and what they were doing and all of that. And yet you have in the church folks who never take the dust off of their Bible. You have folks who have no love for the Word of God and no love for their fellow believers. What is wrong with us? I think part of the problem for the American church is a lack of persecution, frankly. I think if it was a little harder on us, we might care a little bit more about one another. You see in places around the world where it is much more difficult to be a Christian that those believers in those locales are drawn to each other. It is their lifeline. And so Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2.80, he says, a fond affection for you. We were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel, but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us. He was only there a short time, and yet his love was very evident. And then he says, for you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaim to you the gospel of God. Paul was not lazy. He was not just sitting back on his laurels and waiting for them to take care of him. Now, it is appropriate for local churches to care for their pastors. We have that abundantly clear in the New Testament. It is not so that they can be lazy or live at a lifestyle above the people they serve. I've had folks ask, well, what's an appropriate salary for a pastor? In my own opinion, I think it ought to be the average of the congregation. He ought not to be living at a lifestyle above them nor below them. If it's a church that's full of doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs, probably he'll live at a higher standard of living than someone, well, in a blue-collar church like ours. but it ought to be in keeping with that. And Paul did not live above his means, but he also worked. We find out in the book of Acts that on this same trip, when he ended up in Corinth, he got a job as a tent maker. Now, we're not told specifically what he was physically doing at this time, but he was working in some physical way along with proclaiming the Gospel. He was what we would call today a bivocational pastor. He was working, and he was working hard in the ministry as well, ministering to people night and day. And he proclaimed to them the gospel of God. One of the things that, it's funny, I was just talking with someone before the service, There's this idea out there today that there's nothing required of us, that as Christians, yes, we are saved by grace and grace alone. And we preach that constantly, but there's this idea that maybe you've heard it put, let go and let God. Have you heard that? That's not in the Bible. There's a lot of statements like that that people say, and most people get their theology today either from t-shirts or bumper stickers. They'll have these little sayings, and let go and let God. That is not biblical Christianity. That's mysticism. And what we are told over and over in the Word is that we are to be diligent. We are to be walking with God. It is to be an ongoing relationship. And that's part of the problem in the American church is that there's just kind of this, well, they're in the ministry. They're the professionals. There's a whole book by John Piper on brothers. We're not professionals. We need to watch out for that kind of thinking. I had a deacon years ago say that I was wanting to teach more on evangelism. And this deacon actually said, we don't need to know about evangelism. That's what we hired you to do. No, evangelism is us sharing the gospel with the people we meet, wherever we are. And should I be sharing the gospel with the people I interact with? Yes, but I don't know all the people in your life. You interact with people on a daily basis, at work, in your neighborhood, that I will never know. Yes, it's a labor of love as we proclaim the Gospel. Paul goes on to put it this way, that we did not want to be a burden to any of you, we proclaim to you the Gospel of God. One of the things that the local church is constantly doing, I like the way the Nine Marks folks put it, is that we are constantly rehearsing the Gospel. It is possible for a pastor or Bible teacher to give a very nice Bible lesson and never actually proclaim the gospel. I was guilty of that for many years. I considered myself a fairly good Bible teacher and I would teach on all these various things. But if I am not constantly dragging your attention to the gospel, I have wasted my time. And yours. It is not that the gospel is some kind of little message that we tack on to the end of a sermon about other things, and then we try to get folks to make a decision for Jesus or something of that sort. That is not the gospel. We are constantly talking about how God saves men. Over and over again, reminding ourselves of, how did God save me? How did He save you? If it had something to do with something you did, it's probably not real. Most folks that truly understand the gospel come to understand that it is a work of God and God alone in salvation. Do we respond? Yes, we do. But only because we were given the life and ability and ears and eyes to do so. So Paul was burdened in that sense of giving them the gospel, proclaiming to them the gospel. And part of his presentation of the gospel, look at verse 10. You are witnesses and so is God. How devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers. How did they behave themselves in that local group of believers? Constantly we hear people saying, well, you know, don't look at my life, only look at Christ. Well, in one sense that's true, but in another it's completely false. A teacher or pastor who is living in a way that is not exemplary of the gospel ought not to be a pastor. How many times do we hear of scandals in churches, and within a matter of weeks, the person who was involved in the scandal is back in the pulpit. It's a horror upon the church. Paul is saying, we behaved in a certain way. And as believers, we need to be walking with God. This is hard for us to hear. Fathers, are you behaving devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly in the home? Workers, are you behaving devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly at work? Neighbors, are you behaving in this way toward your neighbors? They are watching you. Look at what Paul says, just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you. It's not that just one thing, but it is this overwhelming idea of convincing and building up and that pleading with one another. How can you do that if you don't know your fellow believers? It's funny, there are several, like, mega churches in our town here. I run into people all the time, I ask them, do you go to church anywhere? Oh yeah, I go to fill in the blank, one of the three. And I know people that go to those churches, and I'll ask them, well, do you know so-and-so? Oh no. Well, do you know so-and-so? No. I just go and leave. But if I go, that's where I go. Why do they do that? No accountability. That's the reality of it. I don't want to be held accountable. I can show up when I want to, I can leave when I want to, and it's just kind of the cafeteria plan, I'll take a little of this, a little of that. Or they come for other reasons to churches. Becky and I were in a church years ago where At that time, there were quite a large number of younger couples. We're all old now. But it was a whole bunch of younger couples were in this church at the same time. And I remember I was a deacon at that time, and we had a couple come and say, well, we're going to leave the church. Well, why? Well, you don't really have a good sports program. You can't make this up. They wanted a better sports program. Really? Yeah. And they went and found a church that had that. That's a wrong understanding of the church for one thing. But how sad that is. He says, you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. Now, he used the example earlier in the previous passage about how a nursing mother tenderly cares for her children. And on the one hand, you have that tender care of mom. gently feeding and caring and wiping noses. And on the other hand, you've also got the Father who has a different role. And no, it ought not to be that He is some kind of tyrant in the home, but rather He is to be the one that is the driving force in reinforcing the Gospel. That is His role. Dad, if you're not doing that, shame on you. I've shared with you before, but it's such a great illustration, and some of you haven't heard this, of that understanding of exhorting. It's a word that nobody says anymore. We can encourage and we can implore, but nobody exhorts anymore. It's just a word you don't hear. It's a word that means to come alongside of. Many years ago, I was an avid duck hunter. I got victory over it. But at that time, I was a very avid duck hunter. And I was with two friends one day down here on the Colorado River. And it was right at the end of the season, like late January, early February, just as the season was almost over. It was bitter cold that winter. And there was a lot of ice on the river. And we had climbed down some pretty steep bluffs to get to where we were hunting, and I made the shot of a lifetime. I mean, you know, sometimes you just, everything is just so, and I made the shot, I nailed this duck way out there. And he landed on the far side of a sandbar. in the river. And between me and the sandbar was ice. So the only way to get to the sandbar, to get to the duck, was to cross the ice. Here's a tip, kids. Don't go on the ice on a river. Ever. You don't know how thick that ice is. And I got out in the middle of that channel, and I fell through the ice on the Colorado River in the middle of the winter. Not smart. And in a moment, the duck completely disappeared from my focus and now it was survive. My friends could not get to me. They dared not come out onto the ice and finally I laid out on the ice with my shotgun and worked my way to shore, but I was soaking wet and it was 10 below. And these two friends grabbed me, one grabbed my shotgun, and the other got beside me to exhort me. And they both began to say, you need to run, and you need to run to the truck right now. And all the way, it was quite a long ways to the truck that morning, because we'd climbed way down. This one fellow at my elbow, yelling in my ear, Keep going! Keep running!" And why was that? Death was on my heels. By the time I got to the vehicle, I was into deep hypothermia. I could not move my hands, I could barely move, and those men undressed me, put their coats around me, got me in by the heater and saved my life. That's how serious a word exhortation is. When we are exhorting one another, we are seeing the grave danger that a friend is in. And we are coming alongside and we are saying, you keep running. Don't give up. Don't stop. Don't back up. Don't do anything. You just keep going. That is one of the things that's missing in the local church. We need that. We rely on that. I need brothers who will come alongside of me and exhort me now and then. It's so important. If you are trying to be some sort of Lone Ranger Christian, the Bible knows nothing of such behavior. We rely on one another. And so, Paul is saying, I was imploring you as a father would his own children. To do what? He says, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you. Pardon. Are you walking worthy of the God who calls you? It's strange how people will do all kinds of things for secular acclaim and secular honor. Will do all kinds of stuff. Difficult things. You see folks who have joined the military and what it means to them to have made it through basic training or to become a marine or whatever branch they're in. It means something to them. Oh, ought it not to mean even more to us to walk worthy of the God who calls us? It's interesting that in Scripture we have over and over this same call to walk. Let's look at a few of these passages to get this idea in our mind, because early in Genesis, Genesis chapter 17, In Genesis 17, when God calls to Abraham. Now when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. Not just sit there and be blameless, walk before me and be blameless. We remember Enoch, it was said of him that he walked with God. Look with me at Deuteronomy chapter 8. If you turn to the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 8. Look at verses 5 and 6, "...thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him." God disciplines us as His children and part of that discipline is to walk with Him. Look at another passage with me in 1 Kings. This is a theme of Scripture that runs through all of Scripture. But in 1 Kings chapter 3, this is God speaking to King Solomon. God says to him in verse 14, and if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and commandments as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days. God is saying to Solomon, walk with me. Walk with me. Lest you think that's only an Old Testament concept, turn with me to Romans chapter 8. In Romans chapter 8, there we read, Verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin. He condemns sin in the flesh. In order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. No, you are not saved by keeping God's law, but if you are not walking in obedience to God, you are not a Christian. That is the problem today, is that there's this Especially the American church, and by extension the churches that we've affected around the world, there is this false teaching of the idea of the perpetually carnal Christian. That somehow a person can make a decision for Jesus, and then go on living their life with no love for God, no love for the church, no love for the Word of God, no love for the fellow believers, and yet, oh yes, I'm a Christian. Why? Because I made a decision back there in 1982 or whatever. Genuine believers walk with God. This is a theme that continues on through all of the New Testament. Look at Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5 verse 16. Just recently, I preached through Galatians, but it's always good to go back and look at what we once learned. See if it's stuck. Verse 16, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, the Spirit against the flesh. These are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. You will continually fight this battle until the very last breath you take in this world. There is no such thing as sinless perfection. No such thing. It is this ongoing battle that with the flesh, as long as we are in the flesh, we're going to be fighting it. Those appetites, those desires, yes, we are learning how to avoid some of those things, but it is still a battle all the way to the end. Don't kid yourself. There's not some experience that you can have that now you won't have that problem anymore. If you read the story of Johnny Erickson Tata and her struggle as a young person breaking her neck, being left basically not quite a quadriplegic but close. She could move her arms a little. She tells in her book of the struggle that she had. laying there in hospital bed with lust. Lust? Well, she's not even able to do anything! Yes! Do you think that there will be some miracle that will take place in you that you won't struggle anymore? Not till glory! No, that should make you long for glory, eh? Don't you long for a day when temptation is no longer a question? How I long for that day myself. Paul goes on in Galatians 5, now the deeds of the flesh are evident. immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these. Now, as you go through that list, you may be able to smugly say, well, I'm not doing that. Witchcraft hasn't been really a big problem for me. Ooh, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger. Wow. Envyings? Man, there's all kinds of stuff in here. Surely you can find yourself there. And he says, and things like these of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. This does not mean that a person cannot fall into these things. It says practice. It is the person whose lifestyle is this kind of living. And there are millions of people in America, especially today, who claim to be Christians, but this is the pattern of their life. All I can say is a stern warning that most likely these people do not know Christ. Oh, don't stop there. My favorite word. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Here is the part of that secret to daily walking with Christ. It is daily and hourly and minutely focusing on the cross. Nailing that junk over there. Focusing on Christ paid the price. Does it break your heart when you sin? When you realize that your sin cost the blood of God Himself? That's how serious it is. Doesn't it break your heart that you continue to do such foolish things? Why do I do that? For the Christian, it should be an ongoing, day-by-day, minute-by-minute surrender to Christ. It's not, I surrendered to Christ back in some year. Are you surrendering today? Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Over and over and over we're talked to about diligence and Christian behavior and that's what's missing in the modern church. I wanted to refer to some notes that I was reading of dear old John Bunyan. You know my rule of thumb, if they ain't dead, don't read them. I want to know how their life turned out. I want to know, did they persevere to the end? And dear old John Bunyan sure did. Most folks, their only acquaintance with John Bunyan is Pilgrim's Progress, which is a wonderful, wonderful book, one of my very favorites, which is a witness of his own salvation. But he wrote quite a number of other books, and one of them, just a short treatise called Christian Behavior, and I'm going to refer to some of the things that he talks about Look with me at Titus chapter 3. As we think about what it means to walk worthy of the gospel, well, we need to know what that is. So, look at Titus chapter 3. Because in Titus chapter 3 we have this wonderful statement of salvation. Verse 4 says, or verse 3 even, I could read the whole book, but starting with verse 3, for we also once were foolish ourselves. Disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. Does this describe your life? Does this describe where you were before Christ? It should. If you're honest, it does. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us. Remember what I was saying about how are you saved? It is a work of God alone. There was nothing in you that attracted His love, that somehow there was something better about you, so, well, I'll save Him because He's worth it. He deserves mercy. If you deserve mercy, you don't need any. Mercy goes to the undeserving. When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy. Why is any man saved at all? The mercy of God alone. Why did God only save Noah and his children and their spouses? Mercy and mercy alone. He was not being unkind to the rest of the world. He was giving them exactly what they deserved, exactly what Noah and his family deserved, and God in His grace and His mercy chose to save a few, a handful. Does that bother you? That God showed discriminating grace and saved Noah and his family? You'd better be thankful or you wouldn't be here today. God's mercy is from Him and Him alone. He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we've done in righteousness. Man, the majority of people today believe that they will be saved if their good works outweigh their bad. Talk to anybody on the street. If they have any hope of heaven, it's because their good works will outweigh their bad. Just ask them. That's not Christianity, that's Islam. That's what Muslims teach. Hope your good works outweigh your bad. Here's just one problem. One bad work outweighs everything else. But according to His mercy, how did He do that? By the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. Regeneration, the new birth, this is something that you cannot accomplish. When we talk about the Gospel, it does not start with you, it starts with God, and it is a work that He does. Over and over we look at that illustration of Lazarus in the tomb. Coming back to life. Lazarus did absolutely nothing to earn that. He didn't do anything. He was truly dead. So dead he smelled bad. Do you understand that your spiritual life before Christ stinks? that we are lost, that we're helpless. This is so important in the understanding of the Gospel. If we merely come to Christ to improve our lives, good luck with that. That's not what salvation is. But it begins with regeneration. God in His mercy regenerates lost people. How does that happen? the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. Notice that he is not listing anything that you have to do. I have in my heresy file over in my office a so-called gospel tract where this fellow says that your physical birth was something that you accomplished with your mother. Really? I would say that any lady in this room who has given birth knows a lot better than that. That kid didn't help you at all, did they? They didn't. We know better. That's foolishness. The new birth is something that God does. It's something that happens to you. where he says you must be born again, you must be born from above, born anew. Being born is a passive verb. Nobody studies grammar anymore. Passive verb is something that happens to you. An active verb is something that you accomplish. I walk, I laugh. I was born. I didn't born myself. And you can't do that spiritually either. It is a work of God and God alone. And in His mercy, the Holy Spirit blows where He wishes. And by means of the Gospel, He impacts human hearts and converts human souls from dead ones to live ones by means of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. It is through Christ and Christ alone that men are saved. My friend Mike Stockwell, who was arrested and convicted in Great Britain just a week or so ago, for preaching, here is what he was finally convicted of. He quoted John 14, 6. How dare he? And the judge was outraged with him that he said there's only one way to God, and Jesus is that God, and Allah isn't. How dare you, how hateful, how intolerant, convicted. That kind of thinking surrounds us here. He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Don't stop there. There are many Christians who know those verses very well, and do not know verse 8. This is a trustworthy statement, and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God may be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men, and that's the piece that's missing in the church today. Oh yes, I've got my beliefs all right. I know that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, based on Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone, but I'm going to live the way I want to. Well, if those things are all true, you're going to want to live for Christ, and you're going to want to obey Him, and if you don't want to obey Him, there's a spiritual problem back at the beginning. Paul says this is a trustworthy statement concerning these things. I want you to speak confidently so that those who have believed God may be careful to engage in good deeds. John Bunyan goes on talking about this very subject. Firstly, good works flow from faith. Genuine good works, not the good works of the world. They do it for all kinds of reasons. So other people notice them, so other people think they're a great person. So, oh, isn't she wonderful? She has such a good heart. He's such a magnanimous person. No, that's not. That's not a faith, that's for ourselves. But good works, the really truly good works, flow from faith. Why is that? I love the way Bunyan puts it, from the impossibility of their flowing from any other thing. They must either flow from faith or not at all, for whatever is not of faith is sin. Again, without faith it is impossible to please Him. Hebrews 11, 6. Every man by nature before faith is an evil and corrupt tree, and a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. We never on the farm went out and gathered corn and soybeans from the thistles and the cockleburs. Never produced any. You had to sort all that out. You had to weed all those plants out of the field. We understand that. There are times when a tree can appear to produce good fruit. I remember my parents lived at a place years ago in South Texas and outside of the little house where they were living there was this beautiful orange tree. Well, what had happened was this orange tree, years before, had suffered some kind of trauma, freezing or whatever, and the tree died, but it came back up from the root. Now, those of you who know about fruit raising, fruit trees grow, are grafted. And so they'll graft a good producing fruit tree onto a different kind of root. And this tree grew up, and it was this beautiful orange tree, and it had leaves, and it had flowers, and it produced these beautiful oranges that were absolutely inedible. That can happen. There can be people who appear to know the Lord, and even seem to be producing fruit. But sooner or later, it becomes obvious that it's fake. that it's no good. Good fruit has to come from faith. Bunyan goes on to put it this way. Faith will show me how distinguishing this love of God has set itself upon me. It will show me that though Esau was Jacob's brother, yet he loved Jacob. That though there were thousands more besides me that were as good as me, yet I must be the man that must be chosen. Are you appreciative to God that He saved you when you were no different than your buddies? You were no different than the rest of your family. There wasn't something about you that was just a little more pliable or just a little more this or that. By His grace and His mercy alone, He saved you. That ought to cause you great awe, not pride. Look with me at Romans 16.26. I love that Paul has these wonderful doxologies that he gives in a number of his books. You can usually spot them because he'll begin them with saying, now. In verse 25 it says, Obedience of faith. To the only wise God through Jesus Christ be the glory forever. Amen. Isn't that a great benediction? What a great doxology he gives there. Leading to obedience of faith. You say you have faith, James says, show me. Show me, how can I know that you have faith? By your behavior. Let's turn back now to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Paul says in verse 11, just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. Do you understand that God in salvation is calling you not just to rescue you from your past, but that you would spend an eternity in glory with Him and glorifying Him and praising Him. Do you long for that day? It is all well and good to be free of various bad habits or whatever in this life, but the whole point of salvation is that we would praise Him forever. That's seen from revelation of every tribe and tongue and people and nation gathered before the throne. Does the thought of spending an eternity praising and worshiping God bore you? Or does that thought make you long more and more for heaven? It's a great question for us. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that if Belief in Christ is only good for this world. We are of all men most miserable, most to be pitied. It's all about eternity. And we get caught up in the here and now of today and, oh, will I get that job or will I get that promotion or will I... There's coming a day when all of those things you won't care about at all. I was at the bedside of a man years ago who was dying of throat cancer. And he said, I would give everything I have for one more drink. Suddenly all of the things that he had and all the things that he amassed had come down to that. Would you give all that you have for just one glimpse of heaven? Let's pray. Father God, may we be diligent in our work. Oh, Father, that we would be serving you in love, not to gain salvation, oh, but to rejoice in it. Oh, Father, bless your people today by your word. In Jesus' name, amen.