Peter Barnes: 1 Thessalonians 1:5b-8
SERMON NOTES: EVIDENCE OF GOSPEL POWER
– ‘you know’ is an appeal to their experience of his ministry – e.g. 1:5b; 2:1, 2, 5, 11; 3:3; 4:2; 5:2.
- We learn from godly examples.
– 1:5b-6a. Paul is surely referring firstly to the fact that he took no money from them – 2:9-10. There is an element of imitation in receiving the gospel – Phil.4:9.
– 1 Pet.2:21-23.
- We receive the Word with much affliction and joy.
– 1:6b. Some commentators refer this to the internal affliction associated with conversion. Other commentators say Paul is thinking mainly of external affliction, meaning persecution (see 3:3).
– The Christian life is a mixture – 2 Cor.7:4; 1 Pet.4:12-13. To everything there is a season: a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance (Eccles.3).
- We are to proclaim the gospel.
– 1:7-8. Note Rom.1:8.
– John Stott thinks that this refers to Christians going about their day-to-day business and engaging in ‘holy gossip’. John Chrysostom says that the gospel was sounded forth like a trumpet blast.
– the Moravians in the eighteenth century. Some of them became slaves in order to reach slaves. Others went into leper colonies to preach the gospel to lepers.