Week #4: Serve and Wait
Blog Series Intention Recap
City on a Hill: Living Out Your Faith
Yeshua (Jesus) told His followers, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden" (Matthew 5:14, ESV). Our faith was never meant to stay hidden.
City on a Hill is a four-week Theology Thursday series about what it means to live faithfully in the world while we wait for Yeshua to return. The Church has a unique place in God's plan in this present age. We are not here to build the promised kingdom, replace Israel, or retreat from a world that desperately needs the gospel. We are here to follow Yeshua, make disciples, love our neighbors, do good, and make the truth of the gospel visible through the way we live.
The world should not only hear what Christians believe. It should be able to see the difference our faith makes.
This page is a post in the series “City on a Hill: Living out Your Faith.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.
Let’s jump into Week #4:
"Serve and Wait"...
Not long after Paul left Thessalonica, he found he had very little to tell people about the church there. They had already heard.
"Your faith in God has gone forth everywhere," he wrote to them, "so that we need not say anything" (1 Thessalonians 1:8, ESV). Travelers passing through Macedonia and Achaia were telling the story themselves: how these believers "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, ESV).
That young church, planted in a few short weeks and under pressure from the start, had become a city on a hill. And what people noticed about them came down to three verbs: turned, serve, and wait.
The last two belong together. We live faithfully now because we know this present age will not last forever.
Why it Matters:
The Thessalonian believers became known for three things: they turned to God, they served Him, and they waited for His Son.
Paul calls this time "the present age" (Titus 2:12), and it won't last forever.
When the disciples asked about restoring the kingdom to Israel, Yeshua left the times and seasons with the Father and turned their attention to the work ahead.
The kingdom will be set up by God, "by no human hand" (Daniel 2:45).
Waiting never excused idleness in the New Testament, and work done for the Lord is "not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Peter tied the Messiah's return to the fulfillment of what God spoke through Israel's prophets (Acts 3:21).
Go Deeper:
Waiting can pull Christians in opposite directions.
Some Christians begin to treat this age as though it were the kingdom we're waiting for. If Yeshua's return is far off or hard to picture, the work in front of us starts to look like the whole story. It becomes easy to pour our hopes into cultural influence, political victories, or movements that promise to finally set things right. Without anyone quite saying so, the promised kingdom becomes something we're expected to build.
Others lean so hard on the future that the present stops mattering. The world is falling apart anyway, and the Lord is coming soon, so why invest in neighbors, jobs, or the long, slow work of discipleship?
Scripture corrects both. The kingdom is coming, and God will bring it. Until He does, His people have work to do.
A Church People Talked About
Thessalonica was a hard place to start a church. Paul and Silas were there only a short time before opposition forced them out of town at night (Acts 17:1–10). The new believers "received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 1:6, ESV).
Even so, they "became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia" (1 Thessalonians 1:7, ESV). Word of what God was doing in them spread faster than Paul could report it. He didn't need to tell anyone about the Thessalonians. People told him.
Visible faith in the New Testament looked like this. A group of ordinary people had changed so plainly that others couldn't help talking about it.
Turned, Serve, Wait
The report had three parts.
They turned. They "turned to God from idols." For people raised in a city full of temples and household gods, that could mean a very public break with the religious life they had always known. Turning happened once, and it changed everything after it.
They served. They turned "to serve the living and true God." Their faith went to work immediately. Paul thanks God for their "work of faith and labor of love" (1 Thessalonians 1:3, ESV).
They waited. They turned "to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thessalonians 1:10, ESV). (The deliverance in that verse was a major focus of the series "The Blessed Hope.")
Serving and waiting are both ongoing. Paul doesn't picture the Thessalonians serving until they got tired and then switching to waiting, or waiting so intently that they stopped serving. They did both at once, and the combination is what made them stand out.
"The Present Age"
Paul has a phrase for the time we're living in. Writing to Titus, he says God's grace trains us "to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:12, ESV), and the very next words describe believers as "waiting for our blessed hope" (Titus 2:13, ESV).
Paul's wording reminds us that the world as we know it isn't permanent. The Church lives within this present age, in the period between Pentecost and Yeshua's return, when believers are called to live godly lives while waiting for Him. Beyond this present order lies the kingdom God promised long ago.
That changes how believers see their circumstances. The pressures of this age are real, but they aren't permanent. And the opportunities of this age, including the chance to make the gospel known to people who haven't heard it, won't last forever either.
A Question on the Mount of Olives
Just before Yeshua ascended, His disciples asked Him one more question:
"Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6, ESV)
They had spent forty days listening to Him teach about the kingdom (Acts 1:3). Their question assumes the kingdom will be restored to Israel in the future. Yeshua doesn't tell them that expectation is mistaken. Instead, He tells them that the times and seasons belong to the Father's authority, then turns their attention to the work immediately ahead:
"It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:7–8, ESV)
The kingdom is coming, and its timing belongs to the Father. In the meantime, the disciples have a job: to be His witnesses, starting where they are and moving outward.
Then He was taken up, and while they stood staring into the sky, two men in white asked them, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, ESV).
That short scene holds the whole shape of this age. The King will return. The kingdom promised to Israel will come. The timing is God's. And the people waiting for Him aren't meant to stand still.
Two Wrong Turns
Seen from Acts 1, the two errors from the start of this post look different.
The first error tries to produce what Scripture says God will establish. Daniel saw God's kingdom as a stone "cut from a mountain by no human hand" that breaks the kingdoms of this world and "shall stand forever" (Daniel 2:44–45, ESV). The kingdom Scripture promises arrives when God establishes it. Believers can do a great deal of good in their cities and nations, and they should. None of it turns a city into the kingdom, and none of it replaces the return of the King.
The second error quits working because the end is near. Paul faced this in Thessalonica itself. After writing so warmly about their waiting, he later had to correct some who had stopped working altogether: "we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies." He told them "to do their work quietly and to earn their own living" (2 Thessalonians 3:11–12, ESV).
Waiting for Yeshua was never meant to make believers idle. As Paul says elsewhere, believers can abound in the Lord's work because their labor "is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58, ESV).
How Does This Help Me Understand "Serve and Wait"?
We live faithfully now because we know this present age will not last forever. The Thessalonians served and waited at the same time, and people noticed. Yeshua told His disciples the kingdom's timing belonged to the Father and then sent them out as witnesses. Paul told believers that their labor in the Lord would not be wasted.
That brings this series to its last word. The world should not only hear what Christians believe. It should be able to see the difference our faith makes. A city on a hill is visible for a reason. Its lights are meant to be seen until morning comes.
For believers today, that means holding two things at once. The promised kingdom belongs to the future, when the King returns, and God fulfills everything He spoke through His prophets. The present age belongs to faithful work: turning from our idols, serving the living God, making disciples, doing good, and speaking the gospel. We don't build the kingdom, and we don't wait for it with folded hands. We serve until He comes.
Serving While We Wait
Ask what people would report about you. Travelers told stories about the Thessalonians. If people who know you described your faith, would they mention both serving and waiting? Would they mention either one?
Name your idols. The Thessalonians' faith began with turning. Ask God to show you what still competes with Him for your trust: money, reputation, comfort, or a political outcome. Name it honestly, and turn your trust back toward Him.
Pick up the work in front of you. If the Lord's return feels like a reason to coast, take 1 Corinthians 15:58 at its word. Choose one piece of faithful work this week, at home, at your job, or in your church, and do it well because it matters to Him.
Hold your hopes in the right order. Care about your city and your country, and pray for them. Don't mistake any earthly victory for the kingdom, and don't let any earthly loss convince you the kingdom isn't coming.
Pray with the disciples' question in mind. The disciples asked about the kingdom and Israel, and Yeshua left the timing with the Father. Peter later preached to Israel that heaven must receive the Messiah "until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago" (Acts 3:21, ESV). The return of Yeshua is therefore tied to the fulfillment of what God spoke through Israel's prophets. Read Acts 1:6–11 and Acts 3:19–21 this week. Pray for Jewish people to recognize their Messiah, and thank God that the promises He made to Israel have not been forgotten.
The present age will end. The King will come back the same way He left. Until He comes, keep the lights on.
