privilege and pleasure to welcome to the pulpit this morning, and indeed this evening, Reverend Blair McFarland. I hadn't seen Blair for many years until now, and he hasn't changed very much at all. I just feel smaller. I don't remember him being so much taller than I am. But he's pastor in the Brady Congregation in Northern Ireland, where he was installed on my birthday, 29th December, 2007. And before that, served for many years in the Reformed Presbyterian Mission in Nantes. And he'll talk about that later. So welcome to the pulpit. Well, good morning and thank you for the welcome. It's my first time to be here in Southside, but I suppose it's the best church in North America for understanding the proper way of speaking English. But it's a pleasure to be here along with Claire, my wife, and David, our son, he is He has been living in France after we went back to Ireland, and he's studying in Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and we've come over for a week to visit. So it's a pleasure for us to be here today. Let's turn in scripture and read together from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17. Paul and his friends have crossed over from what is present-day Turkey into northern Greece, and they have been preaching in Philippi, chapter 16, and we pick it up, 17, at the beginning. Now, when they had passed through Amphibolus and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went into them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, this Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded, and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. Then turning over to 1 Thessalonians, some time has now passed. Paul is writing to the church that was founded there. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers. remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of our God and Father, knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God. For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith towards God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything. For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. Amen. Suppose someone invites you to go on a round-the-world cruise. What do you say? Perhaps you have a few questions to ask. Have I the time? Have I the money? Or who pays? In France, If someone invites you to a meal in a restaurant, for example, when they say, I invite you, that implies that they pay as well. I've never been to a restaurant in Holland, but perhaps in Holland it's different, where you go Dutch. But if you're invited to something, you want to know what is involved. What is involved in following Jesus Christ? The Bible uses various terms. Being born again, being saved, being converted. And that's our question today. What does it mean to be converted? It's important for yourself. Perhaps you're not clear. Perhaps you're here today for the first time. perhaps you've been here attending for 60 years and yet it is still fuzzy. What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? Or perhaps you want to share your faith with colleagues at work. How do you explain it? Well here I'd like us to look today at this chapter in 1 Thessalonians and in particular at verses 9 and 10. We've read of how Paul came to this town and how he went to the synagogue and over several weeks he opened the Scriptures, the Old Testament, and here in one hand he had the Scriptures and in the other hand he had the life of Jesus. and he explained to them, and he reasoned with them, here is a match, here is what God promised the Messiah would do, and here is what this man Jesus has done. Jesus is the Christ. And we're told in Acts that Paul reasoned with them, he argued his point, and he pushed the point, and he persuaded them, and a number of them were converted. Looking at it simply from the book of Acts, Dr. Luke, as he writes his account, is very much on a horizontal plane. It's what man does. Here is Paul, he preaches, here are the Thessalonians, they listen and they believe. But as Paul writes his letter now to these same people, you notice what he says. He doesn't congratulate them saying how wise they were in the decision they made. He doesn't give himself a pat on the back saying what a great preacher I was to persuade you. No, he says all of this was the work of God. This is evidence of God's election, and it was the Holy Spirit who was at work amongst you to bring you life. And so these people became believers, and their lives were transformed. They themselves were eager to tell others about this Savior, Jesus Christ, so eager, Paul implies, that it was almost that we had no more need to speak. You were so busy speaking and telling others. Of course, he's exaggerating a little, but we see the transformation in their lives. And I want us to look in particular at verses 9 and 10. There are three words, three verbs, that stand out. the verb to turn, the verb to serve, and the verb to wait. What does it mean to be converted? To turn. There is a decisive break with idols. You turned to God from idols. So conversion is turn around. In Acts chapter 3 and verse 19, in the preaching there, the command goes out, repent and turn to God that your sins may be blotted out so the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Conversion is means turning round 180 degrees. It's been a real experience for us, driving over here, driving in Chicago, and the first night we arrived, picked up the hire car and were looking for our hotel. And we were on the right, interstate, great. Then we discovered we were going in the wrong direction. So to repent means to recognize your mistake and to turn around. And to repent of our sin means to acknowledge our sin. Acknowledge that we're grieving God and to abandon it and to turn around and to go in the other direction. In Acts 26 verse 18, Paul is speaking about his own conversion and how God came to him with this commission that Paul would go as a preacher and God would use him in the conversion of others to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. So conversion means turning. There is a radical change of allegiance. to turn to God from idols. Now Thessalonica was just up the road, 50 miles from Mount Olympus. And this was for the Greeks, where so many of their gods were supposed to live. And many of these people, to whom Paul is writing, they would have worshipped idols. But now, there's been this radical change of allegiance. We are all born to worship. We all worship someone or something. And if we're not worshipping the true and living God, then we're worshipping some replacement. And the atheist, who will tell you there is no God, yet he is worshipping a God of his own imagination. He's worshipping his own reason, his own intellectual powers. Or he's worshipping some replacement. And We today might be more sophisticated than to bow down and worship an idol carved out of wood. But other idols exist. The idol of money that people live for, or pleasure, or power, or fame. Anything that takes the place of God in our lives becomes an idol. Work itself is something that is good, but work can take over, can become an idol, or sport, or television. We might become infatuated with a person. A boy meets a girl, falls madly in love with her, he idolizes her. We had a friend in Nantes who had a medical problem. She idolised various people at different times. Here was a neighbour, a person who lived in the same apartment block, and she had this fixation that she idolised her. She imitated the way she dressed. It was a problem. But we all worship someone. If it's not the true God, it is an idol, it's some replacement. So, as you look at your own life, is there an idol there? Are you devoting your time and energy to some idol? Conversion implies turning, turning to God from idols. Secondly, conversion involves service. The second verb is to serve, to serve the living and true God. So conversion is not only negative, turning away from certain things that we recognize to be wrong. Conversion is positive. We are turning to something that we recognize to be good and right. Turning to someone to serve the living and true God. Serving was the keynote of Jesus' life. in Mark 10, 45, where he gives that summary of what his mission on earth was about. He came, I came, not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. Or in Philippians chapter 2, where Paul is writing to the church there, encouraging them to be united in their life as believers, He takes Christ as an example. Christ did not hold on to his glory in heaven. He left that behind and he came down to earth, taking the form of a man, taking the form of a servant, going all the way to the cross. Jesus could have remained in the comfort of glory But instead, he thought of our needs, and he came as a servant, going to the cross, fulfilling the Father's will as our Savior. So, being a servant is the keynote of Jesus' life. And you and I, are either servants of sin or were servants of Christ. There's nothing in between. We could say that conversion is an exchange of one kind of slavery for another. But this new slavery, in fact, is freedom. People want to be free, of course, they want to do their own thing, but so often their life ends up in a mess. If you think of a train running on its tracks, and the train is going across the country And this train can speak to itself. And it says, look at the cows out in the field. Look at their freedom. They can walk where they wish. And here am I. I am restricted to these rails. I've had enough of it. I'm going to leave the rails. I'm going to go my own way. And what happens? It's a mess. The train finds freedom when it is restricted to the rails. And God gives us his word. That's the rails for our life. And it is as we stick to those rails that restriction, in fact, is freedom. So conversion means being freed from the bondage of sin and being brought into the service of Christ. But it is that service of Christ because he is the Lord of glory. The one who left glory and came down to earth was raised again from the dead and ascended into glory and he's on the throne today. So to serve Christ is true freedom. So we need to think about how we are serving the living and true God. When you go to work tomorrow morning, you're serving Christ as you work there. In your contact with your neighbors, you are serving Christ as you seek to make him known. you imitate Christ in your character, in your behavior, in your attitude, you're serving Christ. Through your church, you're serving Christ. So conversion involves turning, turning from Idols to God. Conversion involves serving, serving the living and true God. And thirdly, conversion involves waiting, to wait for his Son from heaven. Who is Jesus? He is the one who died on the cross. He died as a substitute to pay the penalty of our law-breaking. But he's also the one who rose again. He's a Savior today who is alive. And he is returning. He is returning as King and as Judge. And so, we wait for his return. We wait with expectation. And you see how serving and waiting go together. Serving, if you wish, is active. Waiting is passive. But each balances the other. There are limits to what we can accomplish by our service. there is no utopia on earth. There will be no utopia before the coming of Christ. So, we need to realize that we can't bring utopia here. It is Christ and his return that will bring the final triumph. Second, Peter 3 and verse 13. 2 Peter 3, 13. Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. We are waiting, we are looking forward to the return of Christ. And so this waiting delivers us from the presumption of thinking that we can do everything at the same time it delivers us from the pessimism which thinks that we can do nothing. Christ's return, in fact, is a major theme of this letter of 1 Thessalonians. It appears in every chapter. Here is the one, as Paul writes here, whom he raised from the dead. This Savior, not in the tomb. The tomb is empty. He's a living Savior, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. As Christ returns, there is the day of judgment and every one of us will be called before the judgment throne and everyone will have to give account of his life. And there we stand as sinners. There's no covering over our sin, no excusing of our sin. So what hope is there? For those who are trusting in Him as their Savior, Christ has died as their substitute. Christ has borne the penalty that my sin deserves. so I can stand on that day with confidence because Christ has saved me and Christ will save me. There was the story of an elderly Christian who was traveling in a train and there was a younger man sitting beside him, a young and keen zealous Christian and he said to him, are you saved? the older man said, well what do you mean? I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved. I have been saved because I have looked to the past, I've looked to the cross, and I've trusted in Jesus as my Savior. My sin has been forgiven. I am being saved because God is at work in my life and day after day by his grace I'm becoming more like Christ. And I will be saved because I'm looking forward to that day of glory when he returns and when we as believers will be publicly declared to be acceptable before God. So Jesus is our King who is returning. And we, as believers, we wait for that. So what does it mean to be converted? It means to turn. To recognize our sin and to turn from it to trust in Christ. What does it mean to be converted? It means to serve, serving the living and true God, that in our lives, day by day, we are seeking to serve him. And to be converted, it means to wait, to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. There may be different idols in our lives that we need to turn from. There will be different ways that we can serve our Savior. But always, the break with the past will be decisive, and our experience of serving Christ in the present is liberating, and we can look to the future with expectancy. But without this turning and serving and waiting, one can scarcely claim to be converted. What about you? Are you converted? Do you know Christ as your Savior? Have you turned from your sin? Are you serving Him? Are you waiting for His return? Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your grace. We thank you that salvation is not a matter of us working for our forgiveness, because we could never achieve it. That even the best of our efforts is tainted with sin. But Father, we rejoice in Jesus and the fact that he left glory and came to earth and died on the cross, that horrible, cruel death. Died as our substitute, bearing the sins of his people And we thank you that he rose again victorious over the grave, victorious over death and over sin. We thank you for that liberty that he gives us as we trust in him and as we seek to serve him. We thank you that we can find that fulfillment in life, that purpose for which we were created of knowing our Creator, and walking in fellowship with you and serving you. Help us then, Lord, to wait, to look to the future, to look to that return of Christ, expecting his return. Lord, thank you for these things. Speak to each of us then, we pray. Show us if there are idols in our lives that we need to turn away from. Forgive us where we have given allegiance to them rather than to you, the living God. Help us to serve you day by day and help us to look expectantly to the return of Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.