- There is an eternal election.
- Which comes out in the election made in time.
- Let us rejoice in it, for apart from it none would be saved.—Stewart.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF VERSE 5.
The Gospel in Word and in Power.
You have passed through a bleak, barren moorland, where the soil seemed sown with stones and disfigured with stumps of trees, the only signs of vegetable life were scattered patches of heather and flowerless lichen. After a while, you have again traversed the same region, and observed fields of grain ripening for the harvest, and budding saplings giving promise of the future forest. Whence the transformation? The cultivator has been at work. Not less apparent was the change effected in Thessalonica by the diligent toil and faithful preaching of the apostles. We have here two prominent features in the successful declaration of the Gospel.
I. The Gospel in word.—“Our gospel came unto you in word.” In the history of the introduction of the Gospel into Thessalonica (Acts xvii.) we learn the leading themes of apostolic preaching. “Paul . . . reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ” (vers. 2, 3). It is worthy of note that the inspired apostle grounded his discourse on the Holy Scriptures. Even he did not feel himself free from their sacred bonds. The apostle’s preaching embraced three leading topics:—
1. He demonstrates that the preached Messiah was to be a suffering Messiah.—The mind of the Jewish people was so dazed with the splendid prophecies of the regal magnificence and dominion of Jesus, that they overlooked the painful steps by which alone He was to climb to this imperial greatness: the steps of suffering that bore melancholy evidence of the load of anguish under which the world’s Redeemer staggered—steps crimsoned with the blood of the sacred Victim. Out of their Scriptures he proved that the only Messiah referred to there was to be a “Man of sorrows” (Isa. liii. 3).
2. He demonstrates that the Messiah who was thus to suffer and die was to rise again.—This declared the Divine dignity of His person, and was the pledge of the future success and eternal stability of His redeeming work.
3. He insisted that the Jesus who thus suffered, died, and rose again was none other than the identical Messiah promised in their Scriptures.—The grand topic of apostolic preaching must be the staple theme of the pulpit to-day—Jesus Christ: Christ suffering, Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ regnant and triumphant. When John Huss was in prison at Constance for the Gospel’s sake, he dreamt that his chapel at Prague was broken into and all the pictures of Christ on the walls destroyed. But immediately he beheld several painters in the chapel, who drew a greater number of pictures, and more exquisitely beautiful than those that had perished. While gazing on these with rapture, the sanctuary suddenly filled with his beloved congregation, and the painters, addressing them, said, “Now, let the bishops and priests come and destroy these pictures!” The people shouted for joy. Huss heartily joined them, and amid the acclamation awoke. So modern unbelievers may try to expunge the pictures of Christ familiar to the mind for generations, and to some extent they may succeed. But the Divine Artist, with graving-tool of Gospel Word, will trace on the tablet of the soul an image more beautiful and enduring than that which has been destroyed; and by-and-by a universe of worshippers shall rejoice with thundering acclaim, while recognising in each other the reproduction of the image of Him whose visage was once marred more than any man’s, but whose face now gleams with celestial beauty and is radiant with the lustre of many crowns.
II. The Gospel in power.—“Not in word only, but also in power.”
1. In the exercise of miraculous power.—The apostles were specially invested with this power, and used it in substantiating the great facts of the Gospel.