Live This Day #1 - With Conviction (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund starts a new message series entitled "Live This Day" looking at the book of 1 Thessalonians. In this week's message he delved into the concept of living with conviction in anticipation of Jesus Christ's return. This conviction transforms our thinking, behavior, and what we love. Paul commends the Thessalonians for their faith, love, and hope, which are hallmarks of a life lived in anticipation of Jesus' return. By reflecting on our convictions, transforming our thinking and behavior, and prioritizing our love for God, we can navigate life with purpose and hope.

Message Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2024/9/9/live-this-day-1-with-conviction

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Transcript

Good morning. Let's pray together. God, thank you for the chance to gather and to be led so well musically by our team. And Lord, I ask in this moment, as we're gathered, that you would speak to each of us, and that my words would reflect your words in content, tone, and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Only a fool doesn't prepare for the inevitable. I remember a year that took place a couple of decades ago now. And so, I'm going to describe a period that if you're a little younger than me, you've heard about this, but you may not remember it personally. I'm talking about the year 1999 and the Y2K phenomenon.

Now, I was a young pastor. I was at a church in Michigan. My wife and I had been married a few years before this, and we had two young kids. And what happened, if you're not familiar, is there was this belief that there was this computer glitch, that when the year changed from 1999 to 2000, because of the way code was written, everything was going to go a little wonky, like computers would shut down, the power grid would shut down, and all of this.

And so, there were people in this church, and again, I'm a young pastor at this point, who were in there that thought if you don't teach people to prepare, you're a bad pastor who's not being faithful to the word of God kind of a thing. Okay? Like, this is what was going on. And so, it caused me to at least research this whole thing.

There are those who will say that the crisis was averted because of the government task force and everything like this. But what happened was people started to believe that since the world was going to go crazy, that they needed to stockpile like five years of dried canned goods and have everything ready for this event. And so those of you who are around, you know what I'm talking about, you remember this. This actually happened.

When the time came, I did my research and I said, I'm going to take a chance that this isn't going to be a thing. And so, I did not prepare. I was not one of those people. And part of it was, as I looked at it, I said, okay, so you prepare, you have spam for five years. Your downside is you have spam for five years. Your upside is you get the right to like kill somebody who comes to your door because you have spam for five years, if they want your spam, or you're going to give your spam away kind of a thing. So for me, that was my calculus.

So, the year came to an end, and my mother-in-law and father-in-law came to visit us for Christmas. My mother-in-law got sick and ended up in the hospital where we lived and had emergency surgery. And so, our whole Christmas to New Year was in this hyper crisis of taking care of my mother-in-law and everything like this.

So, when the actual New Year's Eve day came, my wife went to bed exhausted. I remember I sat down in my house with my two little kids in bed, my wife waiting to see who was right, and along came midnight. 12:01, 12:02, 12:03, and the lights were still on. I had that moment where I said, okay, I made the right choice, but it could have been the wrong choice. But I had that moment. I said, okay, I made it through.

Here's what is true. And that is your convictions, my convictions, drive our decisions in life. The people who were convinced that there was a catastrophic event had prepared one way. Those who were not convinced prepared another way. And the same thing is true in our lives. The things that we're convicted about drive the way that we make decisions. Today we're beginning a new series on the book of First Thessalonians. And my guess is First Thessalonians is not a book many of us have studied. I mean, you've probably read it at some point if you've been around church, but it's one of those books that you never hear anybody say when they're asked, what's your favorite book of the Bible? First Thessalonians? That's my book. Part of it is because First Thessalonians is about a topic that sometimes seems a little bit remote. But I believe that this is probably an important topic for us today.

Often when people start a series on a book of the New Testament or the Old Testament, we'll try to give some background. Here's where the city was, here's where it's located, and here's why it mattered. And usually they'll say this is a really significant city, and this city really mattered in ancient times. Can I just tell you, I studied this, and I don't think Thessalonica was that significant. It was kind of a second-rate city. It was on the coast about 200 miles north of Athens. This book is not in the New Testament because Thessalonica was a significant city. 

This book, the reason it was preserved is because the issue that it addresses is timeless, and it addresses the coming of Jesus Christ. And what was happening is in the city, in the church, there were people who became so enamored with the idea of Jesus coming that it consumed everything about how they saw the world. They became so consumed that they stopped working and needed to be exhorted to work. Then on the other hand, it appears that there were people who heard about it, and they said that’s such an extreme way of thinking that we're just not going to think much about it.

So, let me ask you, if have you been around church, do you see any parallels to our day? You see, there are people today who will say we are living in the last times, and they'll look at Israel and the situations in the Middle East, and they'll say, we just need to all live with a heightened state of anticipation because this is happening. And there's always something going on where they're saying, this is how we need to be ready. And then there are people who say, that's just a lot. I'm just going to live over here where I don't think about it much.

And this book talks about the coming of Jesus Christ, which is one of the significant ideas in the New Testament that is meant to inform our lives. In fact, what we've called the series is Live This Day. But what we're really going to be talking about is how we live this day in light of that day, how this day is informed by the day that's coming, because only a fool doesn't prepare for what's inevitable. And what we're going to do is we're going to look at this, and each week we're going to talk about a different aspect of living this day in light of that day.

There's a Greek word that's used throughout this book that is used more in this book than anywhere else. And it's a technical term for the coming of Jesus Christ. The Greek word is parousia. If you transliterated it into English, it's parousia, and it has this idea of coming. And let me just give you some background on this word and probably the most well-known Greek lexicon. It's known as BDAG, which is an acrostic for the authors of it.

Here's what they write about parousia. “On the one hand, the word served as a cult expression for the coming of a hidden divinity who makes his presence felt by the revelation of his power. On the other hand, parousia, became the official term for a visit of a person of high rank, especially of kings and emperors visiting a province. These two technical expressions can approach each other closely in meaning, can shade off into one another, or even coincide.” So, the idea of the parousia was there is a secret coming of divinity or this idea of a dignitary coming.

William Barclay in writing about this says, “In the papyri and in Hellenistic Greek parousia is the technical word for the arrival of an emperor, a king, a governor, or a famous person into a town or province. For such a visit, preparations have to be made.”

And so, throughout the book of First Thessalonians, this is the theme that Paul writes to the church about and says, I want you to live this day in light of that day, the day that Jesus returns, His coming. And in fact, it would be foolish not to. And today we're going to look at chapter one especially. I believe that it calls for living with conviction. I see this because in verse five, here's what it says, “because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction.”

Now, conviction is something that people often feel like they have. But what's funny is we use the word conviction in a lot of different ways. Some of us will be convicted that our deodorant is better than another deodorant, and we have this deep belief that this is the best option in terms of something that we use. But conviction is something that you don't actually need to muster. It's something that is. Here's what I mean. When you don't have a conviction of something, you might believe that it's true, want it to be true, or you may have a preference that it's true. But when you actually believe something as a conviction, it changes the way that you act.

So, for example, you probably have a conviction about gravity. Your conviction about gravity is this. And that is when you come to the edge of something that is high and you look down, you say, I'm going to stop right here, because my conviction is if I step across this, gravity will win. Okay? Now, sometimes kids will have a belief that they can fly. They'll get up on the picnic table, make themselves wings, and say watch me as I run and jump off of the picnic table and fly. I believe I can fly. I think that was a song, you know, in one life. And what they'll do is they'll quickly say, no, I have a conviction about gravity because a conviction is something that is almost unavoidable.

And so, what I'd like to do here today is just ask the question, what is this conviction from this text? Where does this conviction lead? And then where does this conviction come from? So first, what is this conviction? I mentioned this word parousia used in First Thessalonians. It's not actually used in chapter one, but the idea is here in verse ten where he says, “and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.” So, talking about the return of Jesus Christ.

But then the word is used in each of the other chapters. Chapter two, verse 19, puts it this way, “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes?” When the parousia happens. Chapter three, verse 13, “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.” In chapter four, verse 15, it's used again. It says, “According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.” And then chapter five, verse 23, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.“

So, all of these are words, other than chapter one, are the technical word for the presence, this royal arrival, this divine royal arrival. And so, the idea of of conviction here is that human history has a focal point that is yet ahead of us. Here's why this is significant. When you talk to people today in our world, often the predominant view is you live, you die, and when you die, that's it. If there is anything beyond this world, what's beyond this world is probably nothing more than there's some kind of a god. And however you've lived your life, that God will assess things, and it'll all kind of work out. But if you live with the conviction that there is a God, that Jesus is coming back to reign and to set things right, then what happens is you live differently in this world because in verse nine, we're told that this will be ultimately a restoration and that we’ll be rescued from the wrath to come.

In fact, in verse five, there's a word that's often used as kind of a church word. It says, “because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction.” And gospel is a word that just simply means good news. The announcement of victory. That it's not about your effort or my effort, but it’s about what Jesus Christ has done that you can share in Jesus’ return. And so, he's saying, live this day in light of that day, with a sense of conviction.

Since I've already referenced something from way back, I'm going to go even further back in terms of time travel movies. Probably the best known is a series of movies that came out in the 1980s called Back to the Future. So, if you never saw it, the movie has this guy in 1985 who goes back to the fifties to try to fix something that he messed up. But what happens when he goes there is he shows up, and he's wearing his 1985 red puffer vest. And everybody looks, and they're like, yeah, that thing's weird. And then as he goes back, has this rock and roll moment where he plays music from the future, and everyone's blown away. But there's one scene in that which is particularly instructive. And that is there's a black man who works in the diner, and he kind of wistfully says, one day, I hope to be mayor of this town. The person in charge of the diner scoffs at the idea, like, that'll never happen. But, you know, if you've seen the movie with the perspective of time travel, the man actually becomes the mayor.

Here's my point. The idea of conviction about the coming of Jesus Christ, is in a sense, you already have a perception of what the future will be. If you are a person of faith, living in the present, the way that you live now is not constrained by the way things have always been because you have an idea of what can be. And so, your conviction says in essence that this world is not everything.

So, what is this conviction? This world isn’t everything. Jesus is coming. He's coming to reign. What does this conviction do in our lives? Where does it lead? And I'm just going to suggest three different things. First, it transforms the way we think. We see this in chapter one, verse six. It says, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” So, what does he say? The Christians in Thessalonica were persecuted, and he says because of your conviction, basically you were able to endure and to do so with joy. Your thinking changed.

This is the weekend that the NFL starts. If you didn't know that. And in fact, some people have said that we changed service times around here to be home for kickoff. I don't know. I'll let you judge, but actually it has worked out well overall. If you ever watch a game live, you know how this goes. You kind of go up and down with everything. But sometimes the teams that I follow, I don't get to watch the game live, and so I'll record the game and then watch the game later often knowing the result. And it is a totally different experience when you know the result than when you don't know in terms of watching a game. Sometimes it might be more fun to watch the game live because you'll have the moment of saying I like the emotional roller coaster of not knowing. But the idea is when you know how the story ends, then you don't go up and down with every bad situation because you can know that there's a victory in the end.

If you watched yesterday, you know how this could go. I did not see it live. I saw some of the recording afterward. I would have stopped in the first quarter. But 22 points at the end, last minute field goal, and there was no reason to be concerned. That is the idea when you know how things go. So, it changes how we think, transforms how we think, and it can transform how we live.

We see this in verses three, six, seven, and nine. Here's just a few of the places. Verse three says, “We 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.” Faith, love, hope, he says, these are the hallmarks of your faith, talking to the people there because of their conviction. This is what characterized them. John Calvin says that this is one of the best definitions of true Christianity that we have in a brief sentence. And so, there are these qualities that become part of us.

Then there's this imitation in verse six. “You became imitators of us.” Verse seven, “And so you became a model to all the believers.” And then verse eight, “The Lord’s message rang out from you.” And he tells where the message went. Then earlier in the chapter where it says, The Church of the Thessalonians, the word church is in the original language, the word ecclesia. That means a gathering. It wasn't a spiritual word or a word for a formal structure. It was just a gathering. And so, he's saying the gathering of the people of Thessalonica, who are followers of Jesus, it is your character, your imitating of character, and the message that rang out so that everybody in the region knew who God was.

And then I think that we also see that this will transform what we love. And I say this because in verse nine it talks about our idols. It says, “They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” And an idol is really anything that's a good thing that we make an ultimate thing. That's how Tim Keller wrote about it over a decade ago, where he said what we do is we take something that's good and we make it our ultimate thing. But what happens when we have a conviction about the coming of Jesus Christ, we realize that even our good things are not ultimate things. And so, rather than putting everything into the good thing, we're able to say this is a good thing that I can appreciate, I can love, but this isn't an ultimate thing.

Becky Pippert was writing about this, and she talked about how she was talking to a young man who had experienced a breakup that he didn't want. And certainly, that's a reason to be sad. But she talked about how ultimately it was an issue of worship where he was worshiping the relationship. Here's what she said. She said, “I told him, because we've been created to love and worship God, we have worshiping natures. Where we run into trouble is when we try to worship something other than God. When we put something else in God's place, it can be good things or bad things, but God’s substitutes will always fail us because they aren't big enough to ultimately build our lives upon.” So, what conviction will do, at least in part, is it will produce the ability to say, what I love is what is ultimate. It isn't just the things that can bring a temporary joy, but now it's something that's lasting. The conviction is ultimately that Jesus is coming. This life isn’t everything. Where it leads, it transforms our thinking, behavior, and how we live, and what we love. 

So, where do we get this conviction? And again, there's a couple answers in this text. Verse four tells us that it's because of God's choice. It says, “For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you.” Sometimes this idea of election or God choosing is troubling to people because they say, if God chose some, it means that by necessity he didn't choose others. We don't like that idea of somehow it seeming like God is unfair, but the idea is that God chooses. And the reason that that's significant is it means it's not up to you. It's not up to me. I don't choose my way into God, so I can choose my way out. Therefore, my conviction is I will participate in the coming of Jesus Christ because it is all about what God has done.

Here's how John Stott writes about this. He says, “To whatever denomination or tradition we may belong, the doctrine of election causes us difficulties and questions. To be sure, it’s a truth which runs through Scripture, beginning with God's call of Abraham and later his choice of Israel out of all nations’ to be his treasured possession... ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ This vocabulary is deliberately transferred in the New Testament to the Christian community. Moreover, the topic of election is nearly always introduced for a practical purpose, in order to foster assurance (not presumption), holiness (not moral apathy), humility (not pride) and witness (not lazy selfishness). But still no explanation of God's election is given except God's love. This is clear in Deuteronomy: ‘The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you..?’ Similarly in 1 Thessalonians 1:4 Paul unites the love of God and the election of God. That is, he chose us because he loves us, and he loves us because he loves us. He does not love us because we are lovable, but only because he is love. And with that mystery, we must rest content.”

So, we see this election of God. And if that troubles you, what you see next is in verse five and six, the idea that the Word of God comes with power. As we put ourselves in a place where we can hear the word, take the word in, and we act on it, we actually receive the word. Meaning, you never need to ask the question of am I one of the elect. If you are responding to God's word, you can say I have been chosen by God because I'm loved by God. Then in verse nine, we see this anticipation, this idea of saying that Jesus will come again.

As a church, we've had a long-standing relationship with a church and some ministries in Haiti where we send teams for literally decades and supported them for decades. And it's been hard for us to do that over the last couple of years because of the pandemic and the unrest and things in Haiti. But one of the things that always strikes me when I go there is this, and that is when we go to Cap-Haitien, where we have our work, any time I have gone, I think, I would hate to live here. Like this is not a place I would want to live. And what happens is that when you live there, the people who live there, what happens is they end up with this incredible anticipation and joy. In fact, the Christian people surprised me because there isn't this our world stinks but there's this, we are thankful to God, and we anticipate what will be.

And I have a concern sometimes that those of us, me included, who live in a nice place with a lot of opportunities and options, live without a sense of anticipation because we think this world gives us everything we need. Instead of living with a sense of saying there's a coming, and that coming, that presence of Jesus Christ is where the best things will ultimately reside. You see the hope that somebody has, based on conviction of Jesus Christ, is based on a person. It's based on his coming. The hope that our culture often has is based on situations improving. It's based on certain outcomes, but those situations and those outcomes are not certain. Therefore, it is not just a conviction, it's a hope. It's not a settled hope. But the hope of the coming of Jesus Christ is that one day Jesus will come, and he will put this world to rights.

As I was getting ready to teach on First Thessalonians this fall, there was a little piece of me that was not looking forward to the fall. And part of it is I talked about the Y2K thing a few years ago. What I've learned as a pastor is every four years, there's like this kind of ugliness that can happen inside the broader church. And here's what I mean. I'll just say it very straight. And that is there are some people who go crazy every four years. And what I mean is that they start to say, if this candidate, this party doesn't win or if this party wins, everything is lost.

But like, everything that's going to happen now, don't misunderstand me. I believe that voting is important. You should vote. You should understand the issues. They matter. Elections have consequences. So, I am not in any way suggesting that you say, hey, it doesn't matter. But when I say people go crazy, the reason I say this is because here's what this text teaches and that is Jesus is coming someday, and that day is the day of liberation. The day of liberation is not the first Wednesday in November. And not only that, here's what I believe. And that is I don't believe that God is sitting around this fall going, oh, I hope that that person doesn't win. What'll happen? Because who's in the White House is secondary to who's on the throne.

And as a church, our calling is not to get a party elected, but it's to be people who live in the character of Jesus this day, in light of that day, conviction, that changes how we live so that we're characterized by faith, hope, and love. And there's an imitation of Jesus Christ that's palpable to the people in the community in which we live. And sometimes even our politics can work against that and not for that. And the message of Jesus Christ rings out so that more and more people live with the hope that one day Jesus will return, and that will be the day of ultimate liberation and deliverance. And that is where I want to live this fall and where I hope we live as a church community, as we move through what's in front of us. Conviction to live this day in light of that day.

God, we ask today that you would help us who are gathered here and call Orchard Hill home, to be people who live with conviction about what is ultimate and love what is ultimate. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great week.