A Summary of Experience

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1 Thessalonians 1:7-10

So that you were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.…

I. THE ENTERING IN OF THE WORD. When we preach you listen, and so far the Word is received. But the preacher often feels that he is outside the door, because Christ has not entered the heart. In responding to a knock a man will sometimes open the door a little way to see and hear before admittance. The King's messenger has thus been treated, and has even got his foot in the doorway, but has received painful hurt when the door has been forced back with angry violence. But he has also heard the joyful cry, "Come in." The truth has many ways of entrance.

1. It affects the understanding. Men discover that the gospel is the very thing for which they have been waiting.

2. Then it works upon the conscience, that being the under standing exercised on moral truth. The man sees himself a sinner, and is thus made ready to receive Christ's pardoning grace.

3. Then the emotions are aroused — fear is awakened and hope excited. Repentance calls forth one after another of her sentinels. The proud man is broken down, the hard heart softened.

4. By and by the entrance is complete, for the truth carries the central castle of Mansoul, and captures the heart. He who once hated the gospel now loves it — at first he loves it hoping that it may be his, though fearing the reverse; then he ventures to grasp it, encouraged by the Word which bids him lay hold of eternal life.

II. CONVERSION. "Ye turned." Conversion is the turning completely round of a man to hate what he loved and love what he hated. It is to turn to God distinctly by an act and deed of the mind and will. In some senses we are "turned," in others we "turn": not promise or resolve, Reformation is not enough, there must be a revolution: old thrones must fall, and a new king must reign.

1. They turned from idols. The streets of London are crammed with fetish worship.

(1) Multitudes are worshipping, not calves of gold, but gold in a more portable shape. Small circular idols are much sought after. The epithet "almighty" is applied to an American form of these idols.

(2) Many worship rank, name, pleasure, honour.

(3) Most worship self, and there is no more degrading form of worship. No wooden image is more ugly.

(4) Men worship Bacchus still. There is a temple to him at every street corner. Other trades are content with shops, this fiend must have a palace.

(5) The gods of unchastity and vice are yet among us. If you love anything better than God you are idolaters.

2. Some turn from one idol to another. If a man turns from Bacchus and becomes a teetotaler, he may become covetous. When men quit covetousness they sometimes turn to profligacy. Nothing will serve but turning to the living and true God.

III. SERVICE.

1. The object of this service is —

(1) The living God. Many have a dead God still. They do not feel that He hears their prayers, nor take Him into their calculations. A living God demands a living service.

(2) The true God, and therefore cannot be served with falsehood. Many evidently serve a false God, for they pray without their hearts. When men's lives are false and artificial, they are not fit service for the God of truth. A life is false when it is not the true outcome of the soul, when it is fashioned by custom, ruled by observation, restrained by selfish motives, and governed by a love of human esteem.

2. Notice the order. The entering in of the Word produces conversion, and conversion service. If you are converts without the Word you are unconverted; if professing to receive it you are not turned by it, you have not received it; if you claim to have been converted and are not serving God, you are not converted; and if you boast of serving God without being converted you are not serving Him.

IV. WAITING.

1. Salvation is not a thing which only requires a few moments of faith and then all is over; it is the business of our lives. We receive salvation in an instant, but we work it out with fear and trembling all our days.

2. This waiting is also living in the future. The Christian looks for the second advent with calm hope; he does not know when it will be, but he keeps himself on the watch as a servant who waits for his Lord's return. He does not expect to be rewarded by men, or even by God in temporal things, but by Christ with heaven.

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