1 Thessalonians 2:13
You may be seated. Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to first Thessalonians. We have one verse today, but
it will take us into a world of many other verses. That’s
chapter two, verse 13. as you are making your way there.
Remind you we’re in the middle of our study of Acts normally,
and we’re in chapter 14 where Paul is on his first missionary
journey. He’ll make a trip back to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem council will take
place, make another missionary journey, and he’ll end up in
Thessalonica, which if you have your little maps in the back
of your Bible, you can follow with the arrows of missionary
journey one and two and three and If you can discern the colors,
mine are all one brown color, so I can’t tell the difference.
But you can usually figure along the way and see where they went
as they established the churches of Jesus Christ in various places. Before we read God’s word, let’s
ask for God’s help, blessing, and grace. Pray with me now.
Lord, we pray that your word would do its holy errand that
it would speak to our minds, that it would reach into our
hearts, and that it would change the way we live. All for your
glory, all for the good of our neighbor, and all so that we
can please Christ as his beloved brothers and sisters. We ask
this in his name, amen. First Thessalonians chapter two,
verse 13, Paul and His traveling buddies write this
and they say, we also thank God constantly for this, that when
you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you
accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is,
the word of God, which is at work in you believers. Amen. We can imagine in the Apostle
Paul’s life a couple of exhilarating moments. No doubt forever in
his mind, he remembered the Damascus Road experience where he was
literally knocked over by the power of God, the visitation
of the risen and exalted Savior, Jesus Christ. We have about three
places in the book of Acts where that is given to us, and we can
imagine what a What a what an event that was one he would never
forget, never lose the jitters of that encounter with Jesus
Christ. We can also imagine we have to
kind of have a little sanctified thinking for this one. We can
imagine that at the end of his life, when he was martyred for
his Christian faith and service to almighty God, that the experience
of of death and being received into the heavenly city, the New
Jerusalem, into the presence of God and the innumerable angels
and the festal gathering, the the mountain that forever burns
but is not consumed. We can imagine that his entrance
into the presence of almighty God at his death was quite an
experience. And we might think, well, that
was about it. He was beaten and he was shipwrecked and all kinds
of harsh treatments Paul went through. So it must have just
been the beginning that was good and the end was good. Well, I
think we can think a little better about the Apostle Paul and some
of his experiences. I think that every time Paul
preached, It was a rather exhilarating experience for him. And it wasn’t
because of the words that rolled off his tongue. It wasn’t because
of his gifts and abilities, his brain power, his smarts, his
training. It wasn’t because of all of that.
It was because he saw preaching as a significant event in the
life of the people of God. He saw much more into his preaching
than many of us may think or expect. You say to yourself,
no, no, no, Paul’s preaching had to be boring. After all,
he put Eutychus to sleep and he fell out of that third story
window and conked his head and died. And Paul had to go down
and bring him back to life. There is no way that Paul could
have felt good about his preaching. And then you say, oh, and we
suffer through it every week. sometimes twice on Sunday, we
suffer through preaching. Well, I wanna suggest to you,
the Bible wants to suggest to you that a sermon is way more
than we can ask or imagine it to be. We want to see today that
the word of God spoken by men, the word of God preached by men
is the very word of Christ himself. When God’s people gather, when
the word is read and when it is preached, it is a significant
event. It is a cosmic event, we might
say, in the life and in the ministry of the people of Almighty God. Now, remember the Apostle Paul,
when he was first converted to Jesus Christ, he was on the Damascus
Road. He was not a missionary for the
gospel. He was a missionary for the Jews.
He was going to snuff out all the people of the way, all the
people who were following Jesus. And on this road to Damascus,
as he carried papers and had this Judgmental entourage with
them, they were going to arrest people, going to haul people
to jail, even to bring some people to what would probably be their
death. This man met the risen Christ.
He met the risen and exalted Lord. And remember, Jesus words
to him, Saul. Who are you? You’re persecuting
me. I’ll show you how much you must
suffer. You’ll be a missionary to the Gentiles and you’ll preach
my name to a people. It will be difficult. It will
be hard. It will be. fraught with hardships. And so we’ve been making our
way through Acts the last, well, the last year or so, and we’ve
seen the Apostle Paul and others, they go on their journeys, they
stop off at synagogues, they preach to the Jews first and
then to the Gentiles. And along their way of ministry,
they have various receptions. Some receive the gospel with
great joy. And with great joy, they repent
of their sins. They are baptized. They’re brought
into the fellowship of the church, of the people of God, and they
go on to live lives of great significance. Others stir up
riotous mobs and run the apostles out of town. Paul tells in one
place in his sort of his autobiography about the shipwrecks, the beatings,
the hardships and the sufferings, the thorns in the flesh and all
those things that bring great difficulty in his life. The people
that he speaks to have one of two responses, one of receiving
the fragrance of Jesus, other continuing in the stench of death. And before Paul and his traveling
buddies make their way to Thessalonica, which is the people to whom this
letter is written, they’re at Philippi. And there at Philippi,
they are jailed and they are beaten and they’re let out of
town by night in order to escape the riotous mobs that want to
do them great harm. And so they make their way down
the roadway to Thessalonica, an important city. a city of
200,000 people. It’s a city, not only does it
have an important highway running through it, maybe like our Interstate
40 or Interstate 85 or I-95, it’s an important road for trade
and other things in the city or in the country life or the
capital life of Rome, but it’s also a seaport. And so a lot
of people come through this crossroads of the world. And it’s amazing
to think in God’s providence how he works. I think of not
to be an advertiser for Apple, but I think about how wonderful
the gospel transports its way across podcast. And, you know,
it comes through your iPhones, it comes into your earbuds, and
we read things and hear things and see things. We have our Bibles
and our resources for growth and grace on these wonderful
little things. God in his providence uses roads that were meant to
build an empire. He uses gadgets that were meant
to do all kinds of things and he uses them in his own special
way to help us grow in grace. And it’s neat to see Paul’s ministry
and the ministry with his traveling companions in this great important
place. Poor treatment in God’s providence
has brought them to Thessalonica. The sovereignty of God has brought
them to Thessalonica. The gospel will be preached in
a strategic place. And so we read in Acts chapter
17 of how Paul and his traveling buddies, they went to the synagogue
at Thessalonica and had a three Sunday or a three Sabbath, I
guess it would have been a Saturday, a three Sabbath ministry. And they reasoned with the people,
they explained to the people, they proved to the people, they
persuaded to some that Jesus was the Christ and that it was
the case that he must suffer and that he must die for the
sins of his people. It so upsets many of the Jewish
people. They accuse him and his traveling
companions of turning the world upside down. In fact, we know
the truth, don’t we? The gospel turns the world right
side up. But as they are run out of the
city, they make their way onto the next town. They continue
on in their ministry. And after some time, the apostle
Paul worries about the Thessalonians. He says, you know, the Jewish
unbelievers, they are so hated them. I’m worried about what
they may have done to these new converts. The world, the Roman
empire, so tugs at the hearts and minds of these baby Christians. We must go and see how they are
doing. And so he sends Timothy. Timothy
goes and ministers among the Thessalonian church. He finds
out how they’re doing, sees how they’re doing. He reports back
to Paul. And so Paul writes this letter to the Thessalonians.
And usually in these New Testament letters, there’s a, hey, how
are you? This is who’s writing. There’s
a thanksgiving. And then they get down to business. He’s so
thrilled with the progress of the Thessalonians and their faith
in Jesus Christ and in their service to him. He gives in Thessalonians,
1 Thessalonians, kind of two thanksgivings. And so in the
second chapter, we’re really in the second Thanksgiving. And
he says to them something that I think is so meaningful, not
only to the Thessalonian church, not only to the heart of the
apostle Paul, but I think it ought to be very meaningful to
us. And he says in chapter 213 to
the Thessalonians, when you receive the word of God, which you heard
from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what
it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. I think this is one of the most
powerful places in the scripture that speaks to the reading and
the preaching of God’s word. It’s one of the most powerful
places in scripture that we ought to always go to. Maybe when we
explain to our children, why do we go to church and why do
we sit under preaching? Or maybe it’s the thing you go
to when you are sitting at the office and your friend who doesn’t
go to church and another coworker who does go to church, but maybe
it’s on a TV screen or something of that nature. And you go to
one of those weird churches where a guy still gets up and yammers
on for 30 minutes while everybody listens. And you say to them,
preaching is God’s means of communicating to his people. It’s strange,
it’s weird, it’s almost unexplainable, but it’s what the Bible says.
And so when Paul and his traveling companions go and preach to the
Thessalonians, yes, they use words. Yes, they persuade. Yes, they preach. Yes, they teach.
Yes, they reason and explain from the scriptures. But as long
as they are speaking God’s word, as long as they’re faithful to
the scriptures, It is God himself who is meeting with his people.
It is the voice of Jesus, the shepherd. Yes, he’s on the throne
of glory. Yes, he’s ruling and reigning his church from heaven,
but through men, he is speaking to his people and governing his
people in his church. And Paul says to the Thessalonians,
Timothy’s come back with the report. Yes, I know what you’re
up against with the enemies to the faith, not just with the
world and the Roman Empire, but with the unbelieving Jews and
their hostility. And I’m so thankful to hear of
your testimony of faith. You’re living for Jesus, your
life in the world. You’re changed ways because you
turned from idols to serve the living and true God. And so he
gives thanks to God for them, for these great things. I want
us to think for just a moment or two about a couple things
about preaching that ought to stir our minds, that ought to
shape our hearts, that ought to change our practice. Maybe
how we think about coming to church, how we prepare for coming
to church, how we get ready to experience preaching and God’s
message to us. Let’s think first if we can about
the method of preaching. The method of preaching that
we see here in the ministry among the Thessalonians and we should
still see carried forward today in the life of the church, their
method of preaching was speaking. It was reasoning. It was explaining. It was arguing. It was proving
to the hearers that the message of God, particularly the message
of salvation through faith in Jesus, the Messiah. is the true
and living way. It is the message of God from
heaven that has salvation for the ends of the earth. You see,
Paul and his traveling companions, preachers today, me today, our
job is simply to be an ambassador of almighty God. God in heaven
raises up men, emissaries of the gospel. And in his prophetic
ministry that goes on today, we read the word and we preach
the word. We teach the word, we exhort the word. We do not
come with our own advice. We do not come with our own counsel.
We do not come with our own wisdom. We bring to the people of God,
the word of God, the wisdom of God, the ways of God. Both the duty to do the task
and the content that is given in the task, in the way of preaching,
is a divine errand. And we have no right to tinker
with it, to tamper with it, or to say we are wiser. Oh God, the world has changed. People like videos. Oh, God,
the world has changed. They like skits. Oh, God, the
world has changed. They’d rather a musical presentation.
Oh, God, the world has changed. You just don’t know it. You’re
stuck up there in heaven. And, you know, we’re living down here.
We could give you a little advice. No, God and his wisdom means
to save sinners and build up Christians through the reading
and the preaching of the word. We cannot improve on it. In fact,
I think when we have tried to improve on it as we were, we
make matters worse. We have a generation that has
itching ears, and so they gather teachers that will say anything
but the words of God. We have generations that that
that are into spirituality now and they want what they want.
They want God on their terms. But it’s our task to speak the
words of life to those who are perishing. It’s our job to speak
the words of life to those who are growing in the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is savior. Gives his message
of hope to a dark and dying world through his word, through the
ministry of his ministers, from the pulpits of his churches.
You know, from time to time we say we just need to elect the
right people and this world will change. We just need to pass
the right laws. We just need to throw more money
at it. We just need to do this, this, this, and this, and the
world will get all better. No, really the only answer to
this world. is that God would raise up more
faithful preachers, more faithful churches, more faithful pulpits
that people would get in front of them. They would hear, they
would believe, they would change, and they would turn the world
upside down just as the early believers did in the life of
Jesus’ church as it grew across this world. So the method of
preaching, strange as it is, it’s God’s method. How about
the response to preaching? If you read through the book
of Acts chapter 17, you read through the first chapter of
first Thessalonians and on into the second chapter, you can pick
up a lot about how the word of God brought a response in Thessalonica. The apostle Paul says at the
beginning of first Thessalonians, the word of God came to you in
power. The word of God came to you in
the Holy Spirit. The word of God came to you and
it brought full conviction of your sins and of your need to
turn to God from idols. It came in the context of hardship.
It was both hard for Paul and his traveling companions to preach
the gospel, but it was also hard for the Thessalonians to receive
it because there were angry mobs of people who wanted to prevent
the work of God. And you can imagine internally
inside every single person who heard and received and obeyed
the word of God, it was a messy turmoil. It’s no small thing
to be a pagan, to be a child of darkness. And to have Jesus
enter your life and to root out all that’s evil, all the old
and to replace it with good things, with wisdom and grace. And so
you can imagine in the response to the preaching, it was a cosmic
event of great turmoil in all kinds of ways. The powers of
darkness, the powers of light. but also the powers of change
in each person’s life. The response to their preaching
was one of the mind. I hear your words about Jesus. It was a response in the heart.
I no longer have a heart of stone, but your Holy Spirit has given
me a heart of flesh. I hear this message of Jesus
in my mind, but it sinks into my heart’s chambers and I love
him now. And I’m turning from idols to
serve him. But it changes their will, their
ways. Preaching is not just an information
dump. Preaching is not a TED talk.
Preaching is not CliffsNotes. Preaching is not all the little
tidbits of information that we might glean from the internet
or the news channel or whatever. It is a message from God through
his scriptures, by his spirit’s power, through ministers. And
it’s meant to mess with your mind and tinker with your heart
and give you a different to-do list for your life. And for the glory of almighty
God, it says that when they heard the preaching of God’s word,
they were persuaded and their minds, their hearts, their wills
were so changed. They turned from idols to serve
the living God. And it says that their faith,
their hope, and their love was now evident to the whole region,
even to the whole world. Their changed lives. We’re noticed
by the watching world. You know, one of the things I
think that will make a great difference in our age is our
response to preaching. You know, we talk about how we
want our churches to grow. We want our churches to be filled with
new converts. But here’s the thing, are you
looking like a convert out in the world? If you go to work
tomorrow morning, if you go to the doctor’s office tomorrow
morning, if you take your walk with your neighbor tomorrow morning,
if you do whatever you do with it, whoever you do it outside
your family and church family, and they say, what happened at
church yesterday? Well, I don’t know. What happened
at church yesterday? Do they notice a difference in
your living? Do they notice a difference in your life, your outlook, your
hope? Are you back to being Eeyore? Are you back to being the sky
is falling? Are you back to being hopeless and faithless and loveless
and lifeless? Would people see in your weekly
living that you sit under preaching that affects, that change your
lives? What a good question to ask.
I think that’s what will make Christianity most attractive
is to see people with a new reality, a new walk. Timothy’s visit brought
news back to the Apostle Paul that the people of Thessalonica
had a great faith. a great hope and a strong love. And it was manifest by their
imitation of the apostles way of living. But it was also made
manifest most clearly in their imitation of Jesus Christ. And
so the method of preaching, it must be God’s words, God’s ways,
God’s pulpit. And it must elicit a response
that’s not because of wordsmithing or word crafting or speech making,
but it’s by the power of Almighty God, not by might nor by power,
but by my spirit, says the Lord, people are persuaded and people
are changed. I want us to think last about
the reality of preaching. This wonderful little verse,
1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, when you Thessalonians received
the word of God, which you heard from us, so men preached it,
You accepted it not as the word of men, but you accepted it as
what it really is, the word of God, which is at work. It’s supernaturally at work in
you believers, evidence of that given in their response to Paul’s
preaching. But the reality of preaching
is not the word of men. Now, I want you to follow with
me, and I think maybe some of you who are in our new members
class will be the quickest to follow this because y’all are
y’all are the Y’all are the mighty ones, right? You’re getting the
new members class. How does Jesus rule his church? The risen and
exalted son from his throne of glory gives gifts to his church. That’s Ephesians 4. And when
he gives gifts to his church, he gives ministers. And those
ministers and those elders and those deacons, they serve you
for Jesus. Now it’s just the same for you
children. You’re under the ministry of
your mom and dad. God has given the family, he’s given mom and
dad to serve you children. He didn’t just put you out on
the street and say, good luck. No, he puts you in a home, mom
and dad. So that’s why we obey mom and dad. And that’s why mom
and dad are charged with teaching you the ways of God. You could
say it another way too. God puts us on earth and gives
us governments to rule over us. Caesar does not bear the sword
in vain. No, he commends what is, good
and punishes what is evil. And so in the same way God gives
us parents, he gives us government, he gives us the church for our
spiritual welfare. And so one of the realities of
preaching is that God from his throne of glory, Jesus from his
throne of glory, who is a prophet, a speaking God, he speaks to
you through his word, by his spirit, through men who are set
apart, and appointed to give the word of God. That’s why that
passage from Ezra was so important. There must have been a famine
in Jerusalem as the returnees there some 50 years or so now
had not really had a prophet, a scribe, a teacher, a preacher. Other places in the scripture
speak of a famine in the land because there is a famine of
the hearing of the word of the living God. When God means to
bless a people, he gives you a church. and he gives a church
a Bible, and he gives that church with a Bible a preacher, and
he gives preaching. And insofar, I want you to hear
this very clearly, insofar someone is duly called by God, gifted
by God, prepared, and gives a clear message from the word, it is
the voice of God. That is something to think about,
isn’t it? Now, let’s put y’all on hold a minute. That’s a lot
for y’all to swallow. That’s a lot for me to swallow. That’s
like a medical doctor, a heart doctor, being responsible for
whether your heart ticks or not. He can’t just say, well, take
an aspirin and call me in six months. He’s got to get to the
bottom of what’s wrong with you. And the same for other medical
professionals. Or you moms, you labor night and day for your
children. They need you. You can’t just run off. Right.
They need you. There’s a weight on all of us
and our various callings. And there’s a great weight on
me and other preachers who are called by God and have to do
this job for him. We are going to be held accountable.
But yes, there is a reality for you and some of the realities
that we ought to think about in the Christian life. We shouldn’t
skip preaching. If we were to say on a billboard,
Jesus, is gonna be thus and such a place at such and such a time,
I bet this place would be full. And guess what the reality is?
Every week, if you’re in a faithful church, whether it’s this one
or another one, and your minister is called by God and he’s faithfully
reading and explaining and preaching to you the scriptures, Jesus
is there speaking. So why aren’t we there? Why do
we say, oh, what, 20 Sundays a year we can be gone, or let’s
get a place at the mountains, that’s a really good idea, or
a lake place, or a beach place, or shoot, American Dream, let’s
get all three. And nowadays you can just watch
it, you know, iPad, that’s the new way after COVID. No, God
means for you to be in your pew, in your seat, under the preached
word of God. Also, I think our catechism,
particularly our larger catechism helps us. When it goes through
and teaches us what to believe about God, how to live for Him,
and how to pray, it tells us about how to sit under preaching.
It says that we ought to approach the reading and the preaching
of the Word of God with diligence, with preparation, and with prayer. That’s why every Wednesday we
send out an email, and guess what’s in it? The morning bulletin
and the night bulletin. Every scripture, every hymn,
every creed, whatever. You can, with diligence, preparation,
and prayer, get ready for church. What a great blessing that is.
But as the word of God is read and preached, we are to receive
it. We are to treasure it. We are
to lay it up in our hearts, and most of all, to put it into practice
in our lives. I bet for some of you, this is
something you’ve never thought of before, but I do pray with
all my heart that God, the Holy Spirit, confirms This to be true. I think of Romans chapter 10
and John chapter 10. Romans 10, Paul says, you gotta
preach the word of God in order for people to be saved. How will
they be saved? You gotta send a preacher. How
beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news. John 10
speaks of Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. My sheep hear my
voice. They know my voice and they follow
me. One of the great blessings of
being in a church, this is the sheepfold of Christ. This is
the shepherding fold of the Lord Jesus. And for some strange reason,
he calls men, sinful men, weak men, to do that job. But by his
grace, we work at it. I want to end by reading something
to you that’s out of one of the concessions that’s in the back
of our hymnal. It’s from the second Helvetic
confession. It says the preaching of the
word of God is the word of God. When this word of God is now
preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that
the very word of God is proclaimed and received by the faithful
and that neither any other word of God is to be invented nor
is to be expected from heaven. And that now the word itself,
which is preached, is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches,
for even if he be evil and a sinner, which he is, Nevertheless, the
word of God remains still good and true. Friends, this is Jesus’
provision for you, for your church. May we treasure it, and may we
never forsake sitting under its ministry. Let’s go to God in
prayer. Lord, we read of times and places
where people had no Bibles, they had no preachers, they had no
prophets, they had no word, and every time We know that to be
a dark period of history. So, Lord, what a blessing it
is for us to have stacks of Bibles, different translations, study
tools, computer programs, phone and tablet gadgets. What a blessed
time we live. But, Lord, it’s it’s a distracted
time where we’re too busy to think, too busy to hear, too
busy to listen, too busy to stop. And so rebuke us, Lord, by your
word to to see that we need preaching it is it is the bread from heaven
it is the manna for the soul and so help us to receive it
and to treasure it and most of all to put it into practice in
our lives so that you will be glorified our neighbor will be
served and the transforming power of Jesus will be evident to a
watching world hear us and help us as we make our prayer in the
name of Jesus our great prophet amen we want to