WWUTT 497 Receiving the Word of God?

The judgment of God is going to come upon this nation, filling up the measure of their sins. So we must be bold to declare the gospel that others might hear it and turn from their sin and be saved by the word of God when we understand the text.

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Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Receiving the Word of God as the Word of God

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of 1 Thessalonians 2. Today, I will be reading verses 13 through 18. The apostle Paul writes, and 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.

For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved.

So as always, to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them at last. So returning to verse 13 here, as Paul says, we also thank God constantly for this. And usually when we read that, it's the previous thought, but he finished that thought.

We finished the thought that we concluded yesterday with verse 12. So what he's thanking God for is actually what comes after the comma. 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.

So in other words, they weren't just receiving it as new philosophy. Because remember, this is what the philosophers do. They go from town to town, city to city. They will kind of give a teaser in the public square and then they'll say, hey, if you want to learn more, give me this much money.

I'm starting a school over here. And so I'll take you to teach you all the stuff that I know and unlock the secrets of the universe. So when Paul and his companions came preaching the gospel there in Thessalonica, they weren't listened to by these Thessalonians as though they were just another philosopher.

And like, okay, we like what you're saying. I'm gonna take it. Sounds like some new knowledge that I could use and combine with all this other philosophy that I know. If that were the case, then they would have received the gospel that Paul preached as it was the word of men.

So just because they accepted it did not automatically mean that they were saved unless they knew it as the word of God. And it came to them in full conviction. Remember what Paul said in the introduction to the letter, 1 Thessalonians 1, verse four, for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you, not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

You were so convinced by this word that we preached to you that you were convicted in your heart to turn from your sin and obey the gospel. That is how we know that power is at work in you and you received it, not as the word of men, but as the word of God.

It is a scary thing to consider, but there are actually men out there who have invested their whole lives in the study of the Bible and they do not know it as the word of God. They might think of it as a book of antiquity or as a biography or a history book, but it's the word of men.

It is not the word of God. And if they refer to it as the word of God, it's just in the vernacular sense, not because it is truly convicted their hearts to turn from sin and worship Christ. And I've had encounters with individuals like this in the past.

I remember one day in July, this was during the hottest summer as long as we've lived here in Junction City, temperatures getting over 110 degrees all the way through the month of July. We were living in the parsonage at the time, which is right next door to the church, kind of on a main road.

And so we would get a lot of foot traffic that would walk by the house. My wife just happened to be outside as this couple was walking by, this man and this woman, and she struck up a conversation with them.

The woman said that they were heading to a place that was still well north of town. And she said, hey, you shouldn't be walking out in this heat. Why don't you come in and get something to drink and my husband will drive you to where it is that you're going.

And I met him at the door as they were coming in the house and Becky explained what they were doing. I said, hey, let me have you wait outside. I'll bring the drinks out to you. And as soon as the door closed, Becky looked at me and she said, what are you doing?

It's over a hundred degrees out there. They're dripping with sweat. I said, babe, they are drunk. And she was shocked. And she said, really? I said, oh yeah, I can smell it on them. I didn't want them in the house with the kids.

We didn't know this couple. So I grabbed a couple of sodas and I came outside. I said, hey, hop in the van. I'll take you to where it is that you're going. And as we started down the road, I struck up a conversation with him.

I was going to share the gospel. The guy was pretty drunk. He was slurring his speech, but the woman was still kind of in her right mind. And so I thought she's got enough sense about her. I could share these things with.

And as I started quoting the scriptures, the guy who was sitting behind me, he spoke up and he started rattling scriptures off back to me. And so I would quote a verse and then he would quote a verse.

And I would say, that's pretty impressive, sir. Did you grow up in church? How do you know so much Bible? And he told me that while he was in prison, oh yeah, did I mention that they were ex-cons? Up until two hours before, they had never even met one another, never known one another.

They met each other in a park. And the woman said, hey, I've got some relatives that live north of town. So why don't we go up there and get a bite to eat and a place to stay? So they had just met one another and both of them had just recently done time.

And so the guy told me that while he was serving his sentence, he applied to be a student at Liberty University. And he got a master's degree in Bible. This is what he would do when he was sitting alone in his jail cell.

He just read the Bible over and over again. He read all of these doctrine and theology books and I quizzed him on it. And every question that I asked him, whether it was related to the Bible or something related to theology, like define justification for me, define sanctification.

He had an answer. He could rattle it off just like that, even though he was drunk. And I knew no matter what I said related to the gospel, it was going to mean nothing to him because it was not the word of God to him.

It was just the word of man. I have a friend who serves in the army. He's actually a high ranking officer in the army. And he met a man who also worked in the army, but this guy was considered to be one of the world's foremost experts on the book of Hosea.

He had actually written a huge volume on Hosea, which is not a very long book, but this volume, a real thick book on Hosea. And when somebody is studying Hosea, it's his book that they will read. And yet this guy did not know Christ.

He was not saved, invested his whole life into studying this one Old Testament book and yet did not know it as the word of God. It was just simply a doctrine of men. And there are probably other teachers that you can think of, maybe even famous men and women who have invested their whole lives into the study of theology and the study of the Bible.

And yet they come away from it without any transformation. It has not changed their lives. They don't know it as God's word, but it's just a book of antiquity, some sort of history or biography that they have been studying their entire lives.

And yet Paul says to the Thessalonians, we thank God constantly for this, that when you received 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.

So it's not just something you read or well, I mean, in their case, they didn't read it, but they heard it proclaimed from the apostle Paul and his missionary brethren. And it was not just another philosophy lesson from the teachers that came wandering through the major cities.

It was something that had the power to save a soul from death and then is still at work in them. So it's not just something that they claim they believe for a moment, but continue to grow in knowledge of it, maturing in it.

Their lives have been changed by it. Hebrews 4 .12, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

It transformed the lives of the Thessalonians. And Paul was grateful to hear that the word of God had that kind of an impact on them. And that's the way they received it, as the word of God, not as the word of men.

Imitators of the Churches in Judea

For you brothers, verse 14, you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. So this is how the word that they received has been at work in them. They became imitators of the churches of God.

That's the next part, verse 14. The churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, which was a certain distance from Thessalonica. To the south of them was the Mediterranean Sea. And then of course, to the east is where you would run into Judea.

And of course, that was where the gospel originated from. Jerusalem, the day of Pentecost, when the apostles went out and preached the gospel for the very first time, which we read about in Acts chapter two.

This was where Jesus did his ministry, where everybody saw the miracles, where he was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven. All of that happened right there. And the gospel has since gone out to the world from that location.

So this is where the first churches began. They're in that region of Judea. So it's quite a high compliment for Paul to say to the Thessalonians that you've become imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.

For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. Those who are living among you around Achaia and Macedonia, they have been persecuting you because of the gospel that you believe.

Well, those churches that were first planted in the very area where Christ did his ministry, they've been persecuted also. They were persecuted by the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus Christ and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind.

That's kind of like the CliffsNotes version of the speech of Stephen in Acts chapter seven. The whole point of that speech as he was preaching it before he was martyred was to show the Jews how they persecuted Christ and put him to death just as they had done from the prophets, just as had been done to Abel and then to Joseph and to Moses and all the way down the line, all the way up to Jesus Christ who was killed at the hands of lawless men.

But according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, what we read about in Acts two and in Acts four, the prayer that the apostles pray to their sovereign Lord there in Acts four, asking God for boldness.

They said, we know that Pontius Pilate and Herod only did what God had predestined to take place through his son, Jesus Christ, that he would be put to death at the hands of lawless men and rise again from the grave so that all who are in Christ Jesus, their sins would be forgiven and we would have fellowship with God.

But this did not alleviate the guilt that was upon those who had put Christ to death. And every person who persecutes other Christians is doing the same thing that those Jews and Gentiles did together in Judea when they put Christ to death.

They are opposing Jesus Christ himself. Paul had plenty of experience with this. In Acts chapter nine, we read about his conversion experience on the road to Damascus. And when Christ appeared to him in a bright light and knocked him down and said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And Paul, you know, Paul is his Gentile name, Saul is his Hebrew name, looks into this light and says, who are you, Lord? He says, I am Jesus Christ, whom you are persecuting. So Christ identifying himself with his very followers, whatever is done to these, you have also done unto me.

And so Paul was once among those who would put the people of God to death, but the Lord was gracious and merciful upon him. And he was saved from that and became an apostle to the Gentiles. This word of God that you received from us at work in you believers, you became imitators of the churches of God in Christ that are in Judea for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved.

So as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them at last. And this could be in reference to a couple of different things, this wrath that has come upon the Jews. It could be in reference to the great Judean famine, which was between, oh, it was in the mid 40s, 44 to 47 AD, we read about it in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 11, starting in verse 27.

Now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world. This took place in the days of Claudius.

So the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul, who of course was the apostle Paul.

So Paul was very familiar with this famine that was affecting Judea. The churches seemed to be taken care of while everybody else was suffering as a result of this extreme famine. Also in the mid to late 40s, there was the expulsion of the Jews from Rome.

Claudius thought that the Jews were proselytizing, that they were converting people to their religion. And that violated the terms of the agreement between the Jews and the Romans. Hey, you can be Jews and you can have your Jewish religious practices as long as you're not proselytizing and you're still paying your taxes.

Well, when people were converting to this Jewish religion, Claudius had them removed from Rome and he actually removed the wrong group of people. It wasn't the Jews who were converting people, it was the Christians.

So the Gentile Christians who remained there in Rome continued to convert and the church in Rome grew. And then after Claudius died and Nero assumed power, the Jews were allowed to come back and then you had the Roman church that was a mix of Jew and Gentile and that prompted a lot of the things that Paul would end up writing to the Roman church, which we have in the letter to the Romans.

So those two events, and maybe some other things that were going on with the Jews at that particular time, perhaps this was in reference to wrath that had come upon the Jews or it simply could mean, and Paul was indicating that stuff had been set in motion for an even greater judgment that was to come and that was the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD.

So everything was kind of leading up to that and as Christ foretold it and said it would happen within the generation, this is what led Paul to say, wrath has come upon them. Christ has declared it and it is going to happen.

The temple will be destroyed along with Jerusalem. So perhaps that's what was in reference to, but notice the way that Paul worded it, as always to fill up the measure of their sins. Remember that our God is slow to anger and so their constant disobedience against God leading up to putting his very son to death and finally God was gonna pour out judgment upon them with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple filling up the measure of their sins.

We have references to this in other places in the Old Testament, probably the first place that we see it as an act or I'm sorry, Genesis chapter 15, when God is talking to Abraham and telling him, making his covenant with Abraham, the land that he is going to give to his descendants.

And he says, Genesis 15, 16, they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. The sins of the Amorites against God had not yet filled up to the measure of God pouring out judgment upon them through the Jews who were gonna come in and wipe out the Amorites in Deuteronomy chapter nine, beginning in verse four.

Through Moses, God says, do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, it is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land. Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you, not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart, are you going to possess their land?

But because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you and that he may affirm the word that the Lord spoke to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, filling up the measure of their sins and God will pour out judgment upon them.

And so we need to understand that same thing is going to happen in the United States of America. Lot of chaos going on in our country this week and it's not gonna get any better. It is only going to get worse.

These are the days that we must be bold to declare the gospel and people will persecute us for it, but we are doing the work of the Lord just as the prophets were persecuted, just as Christ himself was persecuted and the apostles were persecuted.

So we will be persecuted for this faith that we have and that we share leading others to Christ, but we must be bold to do so because God's judgment will come upon this wicked nation and only those who believe in the gospel of Christ will be saved.

Those who receive that word as the word of God and not the word of men. Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for this gospel that has been given to us. It is not because of any great knowledge that we have acquired that we can call ourselves Christians and followers of Christ, but because we heard the gospel proclaimed and we turn from sin and we worship Christ the Lord as holy.

So let us do that with our whole lives and know this gospel and speak it with boldness so that others who hear it would be saved from the judgment that is to come. The wrath that is being stored up against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Save us from that great and terrible day in Jesus Christ our Lord and may there be others who will hear the gospel and repent and so be saved. We pray and ask this in Jesus name, amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the gift tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.