The Power of God's Word

1 Thessalonians 2:13 and the Need to Hear God’s Word as God’s Word

Open your Bibles, please, to 1 Thessalonians, in chapter 2. Our preaching text this morning will be just on verse 13, but I'll begin reading from verse 9 and go to verse 16 for the reading. And here we're going to find the Apostle Paul ending his defense of his ministry.

Up to this point, he's been defending it against unknown detractors, though he can tell what they had said by the things that he defends himself against. But now he turns to the Thessalonians' real need, and their real need is to be strengthened in their resolve to stay true to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're going to look at this verse and see what he gives them as he begins to tell them what they need to strengthen, and how they are strengthened as they await Christ, as they live a life worthy of the calling by which they have been called, which was the subject of last week's message by Pastor Conley.

We're going to hear verse 13, and I just want to tell you before we read the whole section that verse 13 sort of looks two ways. It looks up to what just occurred and why that occurred. It's because of the power of God's Word.

It's because of God's Word having gone forth, and it looks down to what follows. How do they find the strength to persevere in what is going to come in the persecutions that are sure to be headed their way?

As they and as we await for Christ to return, they and we must keep ourselves under the influence of the Word of God and not the Word of men. And so with that short introduction, and we'll get to the preaching in a moment, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

1 Thessalonians chapter 2 and beginning at verse 9. For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil. We work night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaim to you the gospel of God.

You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct towards you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

Verse 13, our text this morning. And we also 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.

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 displeased God and opposed 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. Please be seated. May God bless the reading and now the proclamation and the hearing of his Word. Let's go to him in prayer as we anticipate that.

Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you that we can come before you once again. We pray, Lord, that preacher and hearer alike have prepared themselves for the proclamation, for the hearing of your Word, that it might have the effect upon us, which you, Father, intend by the Word that you have given us.

We understand this Word to be the very Word of God. We submit ourselves to you in the hearing of it and pray that you would have your way with us, that it would be applied to our lives in the way that you intended.

For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, when I was a teenager, way back in the 70s, there were a lot of things happening. A lot of different movements and a lot of different things that were attracting people.

Crazes, we could call them. And one of them, when I was in my mid-teens, was a book by an anthropologist named Carlos Castaneda. And his book was called The Teachings of Don Juan, a Yaqui Way of Knowledge.

It was all the rage. Now, Castaneda interviewed this Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan, and Don Juan told him how, by ingesting certain psychedelic compounds and going into certain kinds of meditation, you could have this out-of-body experience that they called astral projection.

I don't know if that word's still in vogue, but that's what they called it then. It was very influential. I had a lot of friends who were good students with decent grades, and they were intelligent folks, and I've got a hand being raised and convinced you need to repent, and we'll get to that later.

It was all the rage for a long time. And a lot of my friends got into this, and I lost some friends over it. They were so much influenced by it. I don't know if any of them ever had an actual out-of-body experience.

I'm pretty sure not. I never tried it, okay? I didn't try it, so I speak from common sense, not experience. But that book was very influential. Intelligent people were taking it in and saying, Oh my goodness, if I do this and I think this way and meditate like that, I can astrally project and have this out-of-body experience.

I don't know what they intended to do with it. From what I could see, all that happened, all that was accomplished, and they became walking morons saying things like, Far out, man, and I lost friends over this.

I really did. I was amazed at how easily influenced people could be. They had been my friends, and some of them, like I said, good students with decent grades, but it did make me very cautious about the things that I read and the things that I took in.

Not that I'm impervious to being influenced, but it made me a bit cautious that I saw this silliness as I thought of it then and now, and it took hold with a lot of people. You see, we're all too easily influenced.

And I mean this in two ways. We're all too easily influenced, and we're all too easily influenced. Some new thing comes along, it tickles our fancy. One of my beefs is like the Acts 29. Well, Acts ends in chapter 28.

That's an inspired word of God, and some new thing comes along, and people fall for it, and off we go. Out-of-body world's unseen, mystery's unfathomable. Some new movement in society, some new movement in the church.

Too easily influenced. And if you think about it with me for a moment, before we dig into our text, this easily influenced aspect to our nature, we fall into things so quickly and so easily, really goes all the way back to the beginning, to Genesis 3.

Because when the serpent came to Eve, Adam and Eve really, what was he trying to do? He was trying to influence them away from being influenced by God. And what did the serpent say? Did God really say?

Did God really say, or did God really say? One good translation has it, is it really true that God said? Then they who heard the word of God from the mouth of God fell under the influence of not the word of God, but the word of the serpent.

Synonymous, I think, with the word of man. And since that time, the battle has been engaged. The serpent ever trying to influence mankind away from the Lord. And his most often employed weapon is just what we have here in 1 Thessalonians 2 .13, is to convince people that the word of God as we have it is really just the word of men and not God.

Satan even used this tactic unsuccessfully against the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Apostle Paul tells the Thessalonians that they've been brought into the kingdom. He reminds them of the power of the word of God.

And here's your insulation. Here's your protection. Here's what you need to keep yourself from being unduly influenced by those things around you and influenced away from God. The Thessalonians had been under the influence of their times, just as you and I are and have been.

They had once been idolaters who believed in a variety of gods along with all the rest. Just as you and I were under the influence of our surroundings. So what changes? What changed? What changes, what changed is that they heard the word of God for what it really is.

The word of God. I'm going to say that expression over and over because Paul does. You heard the word of God for what it really is. The word of God. That's what it actually is. And this is what changed.

And this is what stopped that influence from rushing in on them and brought them under a new influence of God. And the gospel of his son, Jesus Christ. They received it from the lips of men. That was Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.

But they accepted it as not from them but from God. The word of God at work in them. By the word of God they'd been brought to faith in Jesus Christ. And by that same powerfully working word they were sustained in the faith as they awaited Christ.

No different for us 2 ,000 years later. That you were brought to faith by the word of God and you're sustained in that faith as we await Christ's return by the power of that very word that converted you.

Now in verse 12, which I read a moment ago, Paul tells us to walk in a manner worthy of God. So how is this possible? How can you walk in a manner worthy of God? With all the influence around us driving us off of course.

1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13. In verse 14, just after our verse, Paul commends them for imitating the church in Jerusalem. That is by being influenced by a positive example. How did they do that? Verse 13.

Because they were influenced by the word of God at work in them. And in you who believe this powerful working, insulating word that will influence you towards walking in a manner worthy of the gospel and insulate from the wrongful influences of this world.

Do you find yourself easily influenced? Do you find yourself giving in to fads like the teachings of Don Juan back in the 70s when I was a kid? We all must check ourselves to make sure that our guiding light is the influence of God's word which is at work in you.

The powerful word of God will influence you in everything as long as you accept it as from God. We need to remember that it is the word of God. We need to be thankful that you've been enabled to recognize it as from God.

We give thanks constantly for this, he says, that you can recognize this word of God as the word of God. And being thankful is a great insulator against the influences of the world. You need to recognize it as the word of God transmitted by means of men.

And we're going to spend quite a bit of time on this. But this is what Paul says, you heard it not as the word of men, meaning himself, the inspired apostle. You didn't hear it as from me, he says. You heard it as what it really is, the word of God.

We need to recognize that the word of God is transmitted normally and predominantly through fallen men like myself and every other faithful pastor and preacher, even this morning preaching this word. And you need to be always under the power of God's word, the power of God's word that is working in you.

You know, God's word is cause for thanksgiving. And we also thank God constantly for this. Now, Paul's giving a lot of thanks to the Thessalonians. He began the letter this way, chapter 1, verse 3. He says, we give thanks to God always for you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.

Well, this is like that. When he looks upon these Thessalonians and how they heard his words and understood the words to be the words of God, he says this is cause for thanks, constant thanks. Paul's thanks are for the way the Thessalonians received, accepted, and were transformed by the word.

We're going to get to all of that as we go through this message, what it means to receive and accept and the transformation that comes from that. But if we take the parts of our verse in order, which we are, then the first order of business is that God's word is cause for thanksgiving.

And as we give thanks for knowing God through his word, this is a great protection against wrongful influences because it reminds us that this word that has saved our souls is truly the word of God that he, the God of all, made us able to recognize as what it really is.

I want to give one shameless plug for Sunday School. Next Sunday, we're going to start in Sunday School a series on Paul's theology of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a much more prevalent theme than often we think, and it should have great effect on our lives.

And one of the effects on our lives is right here, that as we give thanks to God, as we live lives of thanksgiving to God, as we remember that if I believe in God and I believe this word of God is the word of God, well, that's a grace that God showered down upon me, and I need to give thanks for it.

And as we give thanks for it, we keep our focus on him. Why give thanks? Because we worship a God who communicates. He speaks. In days of old, he spoke to and through the prophets and apostles who both spoke and wrote what he said.

When you think about it for a moment, God, who is sovereign Lord of all he created, which is everything, he speaks to man who he created, and he speaks in words that can be understood, common words, words that are in use by people in the times in which God spoke or speaks, common, understandable words in our own languages, in our Bibles.

We worship a God who communicates, and that's worthy of thanks constantly. Jesus, who is the very word of God, he spoke plainly and clearly and openly. He, who is God in the flesh, in the beginning was the word, that's Jesus, and the word was with God, and the word was God, meaning he always was God, always will be God, cannot be other than God.

And later on, in that same opening of that Gospel of John, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Is this not cause for constant thanksgiving and keeping ourselves influenced by this God who communicates and by sending his Son, his Son communicated to us what God is, who God is, what God is all about?

What? God in the flesh communicated the nature of God in simple language. Now, the words that are spoken from the Bible are easy enough to understand. If we just take the words, we understand the definitions.

If you go through your Bible, you're going to find the hardest thing to understand and pronounce is what? The names and chronicles and the genealogies. But the words themselves are not that hard to figure out.

And if you compare our Bible, and especially the words of Jesus Christ, to, for example, the Puritans, who we have so much respect for, those Puritans don't know what a period is. It's all hyphen. It's all semicolon.

It's all, these sentences are pages long. I have to go back and read them four times myself, but when you read Jesus' words, well, he's pretty plain spoken, is he not? It's just right there. It's short sentences.

It gets right to the point. It's in words that were understood then. It translated nicely from the original Greek into our English. Simple, understandable words. But what does he say in John 8, verse 43 to the Pharisees?

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot hear my word. It is because my word is not in you. It is because you do not hear the word that I'm speaking as the word of God. Not the definitions of the words or the sentences.

Their rage against him proved that they knew that pretty well. They understood the meaning behind it. We need to understand that the unbelievers around them, those to whom we testify, be it within our family, workplace, wherever we are, generally they don't misunderstand God's word.

You know, they often, they maybe even usually understand it very, very well, like I believe the Pharisees did in Jesus' day. You speak of sin and faith and repentance, I say, well, you know, you sinned.

Well, somebody who doesn't believe in God knows what you mean by sin. You did wrong. You did something wrong. They know what that means. You need to repent. They know what that means. The simplest means to say you're sorry, something like that.

You need to have faith in Jesus Christ, and they know what that means. It's easy enough to understand. Why does it have no effect? Why do we testify so often to those we love, those around us who we know, and it just drops to the ground because they don't hear it as the word of God.

They fail to recognize the word of God. You see, when a heart is changed, when God's word is recognized as what it really is, James says the word that is able to save your soul is a powerful word. That's a miracle of grace, is it not?

And that's one that should cause constant thanksgiving to God. And that constant thanksgiving to God is such a great protection against being wrongly influenced by the world around and the things that could draw us away from believing that it is his word.

Hear how the Baptist Confession puts it. The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled, now note the word, elect are enabled, not you're able to do this, you're made able, you are a passive recipient for by grace you've been saved through faith, and it's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, meaning the faith to believe is a gift.

The elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word, by which also and by the administration of baptism in the Lord's Supper prayer and other means appointed of God, it is increased and strengthened.

How do you know God? By his Spirit opening your heart to believe that the word you hear is the very word of God. So when that word calls you to repent, you unrepentant, unconverted sinner, and you feel that within your spirit stirring you up and making you want to repent and making you want to come to Christ and making you want to go to God in sorrow for your sins, it is God's Spirit showing you that the word being declared even from this pulpit, that you must repent and put your faith in Christ Jesus.

You're beginning to hear that as the very word of God. I ask you who are hearing me this day, has your heart been changed? Do you hear the word of God as the word of God in the preaching of his word, in the teaching of his word, in your own reading of his word?

If so, if you can say yes to that, we can say hallelujah. And I also say that this is constant cause for thanksgiving to God. Every time you hear God's word, every time you read God's word, every time you pray God's word and you know it as God's word, you have cause to stop for just a minute and say, Thank you, Lord, that I know that this is your word.

Only God could take ordinary language and cause you to accept it as his word. Only God could take a heart of stone, turn it into a heart of flesh that wants to hear and know and recognize God's word. And because it is his word and it is he who reveals it as such, he deserves all the thanks.

Because honestly, folks, we had nothing to do with it. We study his word. We understand his word. We take it apart as best we can so we can apply it to our lives. But in the end, I should say in the beginning, you had nothing at all to do with it.

It's a grace of God. Now, how does this protect us from the influence of the world? You know, when we are looking at a paper, especially with the Internet, so many things are so easy to put our fingers on.

I would think of QAnon, which I know very little about, except that it's very influential. People read it and they say, Wow, this makes sense. I want to go along with this, whatever this really is. What should the Christian do?

I don't say that reading these things is wrong in and of themselves within certain parameters of common sense. But what if you stop and say, Thank you, Lord, that I know you by your word. I have my Bible here, and anything I read, even if I'm just interested in it, and I'm going to shrug my shoulders at the end saying, Okay, that was nice.

I'm glad I know that. Now I have some knowledge. I'm going to look at your word, Father, because you made me able to know this is your word. Would that not insulate you well from undue influences? Would you not then be able to read something just out of interest within reasonable parameters?

I'm talking common sense here. But if you're thankful to God that you know his word, would that not help us from being unduly influenced? I believe it would. Being constantly thankful to God for your ability to recognize his word as such is a great protection from worldly influences.

His word of God comes to you through some very ordinary means, which is also a cause for thanksgiving and for wonder. God's word through men is still God's word. We need to spend some time here. But the Apostle Paul says he gives thanks constantly because of this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, important words, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, emphasis mine, the word of God.

The commentator William Hendrickson, he writes here, that received is external reception. In other words, you hear the word of God being spoken to you, it goes in your ear, processes in your mind, and you understand what is being said.

Simple words bringing forth a fairly simple message. An extraordinary message, really, because salvation is an extraordinary thing, that God, who is holy, would condescend to send his son to save sinners, none of whom are even close to holy, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And here's a wonder that that message comes to you from sinners like yourselves. This morning from me. Received is just to understand the words, to put together the sentences and say, okay, here's the point he's making.

God's word is God's word, and that's cause for thanksgiving. And Paul says that you receive the word of God, understanding it to be the word of God, even though it came flowing to you from the mouths of men.

That's the external reception. He goes on to say accepted is the inward welcoming. This is the transformation, the transformational power of the word of God. It's the difference between giving a hearing, which I hope you're giving me, if you don't know Jesus Christ, I hope you're listening, and giving me a hearing this morning.

But it's the difference between a hearing and accepting in your person what is meant by what you received. Edmund Heibert adds that acceptance implies a favorable evaluation of what was accepted. And brethren, you can't have favorably accepted God's word, given a favorable evaluation, excuse me, of God's word, but that God has changed your heart.

Because God's word is not easy to hear. It says you're a sinner. It says you're born in iniquity. You're woven together in sin. There's nothing good in you. All of sin falls short of the glory of God.

Your condemnation is deserved. You deserve nothing but to die forever and ever with the worms eating at you, and so forth. Are those easy to hear? No, but all glory to God. When I tell you this, if you will repent, you have eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You have peace with God. How are the Thessalonians insulated from outside influences that conspired to draw them back to their old ways? What keeps us from falling back into our old ways, those old influences?

It's the same way for us as it was for them, by having accepted God's word as the word of God. And what is God's word that is giving this protection? You received the word of God. You heard what you heard from us.

You accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God. What does that mean? That means in our immediate context this morning, for example, that the preached word, the taught word, the read word, when you're reading yourselves and home, is received as His word.

Now ask ourselves for a moment, what did the Thessalonians hear? He says you heard not as the word of men, but the word of God. But what did they hear? Did Paul go into the market and unroll the scroll and start reading directly from the scriptures?

No, his pattern was to find a likely place to gain an audience and to engage people with common or everyday words that explain the gospel of our extraordinary and remarkable Lord Jesus. So what's the wonder of grace here?

What's the cause of thanksgiving? They heard what Paul said as what God said. Now we're not talking directly here, 2 Timothy 3 .16, that all scripture is inspired by God or breathed out by God, which it is.

And Paul's the one who wrote that. But we're in kind of a more common, ordinary level here. That Paul is probably in a marketplace and simply found a crowd of people and found an entrance to begin to speak to them about this.

They heard these common words from the apostle as the word of God. Paul not elevating himself beyond what was proper. You know, when the people of Lystra offered him and Barnabas sacrifices, he was appalled.

He stopped it right away. But that said, the word of God in the context of 1 Thessalonians 2 .13 has a more expansive context than we might often think. The great Puritan Matthew Henry writes about the word of God through the lips of men this way.

I have to tell you, when I find myself lined up with the great Puritans, I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track. Not perfectly, because they're sinners like us. But it gives me some confidence. But listen to what he says here.

He says, However, it is in truth the word of God. What does he mean there? It is in truth. He's talking about the truth being preached to you. It is in truth the word of God. Such was the word the apostles preached by divine inspiration, as such is that which is left upon record, written in the scriptures by divine inspiration, as such is that word which in our days is preached, being either contained or evidently founded on or deduced from these sacred oracles.

Do you understand what we're saying? They heard Paul speaking to them in conversations, if you will. And yet what he was saying they heard as the word of God, because it was stirring their souls. That powerful word of God changing them and making them understand that it was indeed that word of God which was saving them.

Dr. Heibert writes in the same vein, The word of God here is not the written word, but the oral preaching of the gospel under the power of the Spirit. God's messenger must rely on the Bible. We understand there's no word of God beyond this Bible.

This is his word. We have it here. There's no innovation. There's nothing new. No man gets new scripture or new revelation. Zero. None. I want to make that very clear. But every loyal preacher or teacher is a channel of, quote, the word of God.

Most of us were converted by the word of God spoken through human lips. Now for me, the most influential people in my journey to Christ were my wife and my friend Mike Kelly. They told me something like this, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

That's a quote from John 3, verse 16. What does that mean, I ask? Well, it means that you must repent of your sin. It means that you need to put your trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation. It means that in Jesus alone can you be saved from God's eternal wrath.

Hey, Josh, what this means is that God, who is love, gave his son, and if you'll believe in him, he gave his son to you. So in the meaning of 1 Thessalonians 2 .13, which part of that is the word of God?

Well, the quote from John 3 .16 obviously is the word of God, but the explanation, as it is true to John 3 .16, is, in this context, the word of God. In Paul's meaning in 1 Thessalonians 2 .13, that's the word of God.

The true and accurate explanation is the word. Not new revelation, nothing innovative, not some fancy way of attacking the Bible. No. The orthodox faith as we have it, standing on the shoulders of great men as centuries of church history, as is explained accurately in language that can be understood, as is true to the Scriptures.

That's all the word of God. This sermon, so far as it accurately brings the word of God that we have in Scriptures, is the word of God in the broad sense we're speaking of here. The Thessalonians were able, by God's grace, to discern this.

They heard God's word is just that, whether quoted directly to them or explained to them. Now, if God dropped down here in some form and says, thus says me, well, we'd know that was the word of God. God doesn't do that.

He speaks to you through the lips of men, in our context, through me and through Pastor Owens. You can't leave here thinking that you've heard my ideas or my agenda, thinking that you've heard only the word of man.

It's a very dangerous thing to hear the gospel and say, well, that's just Pastor Josh's idea. That's what he thinks. No, this is what the Scripture thinks. You know, I follow McShane's Bible reading for my daily reading.

I recently went through Exodus 14. This is when Egypt is chasing after Israel. This is when the Red Sea parts, Israel on dry land, and the chariots of Egypt catching up to them, because they're chariots, and the Israelites are on foot.

Well, as they're chasing them, do you remember what God does? He drives their wheels into the mud so they can't keep up with the Israelites. And the Egyptians say this, I quote, let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against us.

That's the word of God. You know, hey, fellow Egyptian in that chariot, are you having a hard time getting ahead? Yeah, I am. What's your problem? The Lord is fighting against us. They knew the word of God.

They heard the warning of impending death. What did they do? They ignored it. They didn't hear the word of God as the word of God. They chased after the Israelites. They refused to turn around. The Israelites get on the other side.

The waters crash in. They all drown. Well, you too are warned. You too are warned about hearing the word of God as the word of God. The word of God is, and I quote, God now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. That's the word of God. But hear the word of God. He has fixed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness by a man. That man is Jesus Christ.

Now the scripture doesn't say Jesus Christ. The scripture says a man. But I just told you it's Jesus Christ. That's the word of God. And he's appointed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness by his righteous servant Jesus.

He raised him from the dead. And that gives you assurance that Jesus' sacrifice was full and sufficient and adequate to bring you to God. He raised him from the dead, and he will raise you from the dead now if you put your faith in him, and he will raise you from the dead later when you will join Jesus in a resurrection like his, he being the first roots, and we follow in his way.

Do you believe this? Did you hear the word of God, either as I quoted it or as I explained it to you as best I am able? Is the answer no? Hebrews chapter 4 verse 2, the word of God puts its finger on the problem.

For good news came to us as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith to those who listened. It takes faith. You must put your faith in Jesus Christ.

You must put your faith in this word of Jesus Christ that is coming to you and repent of your sin. Otherwise it will not benefit you. You will hear it and you'll think, that's his idea. He seems like a clever speaker, if I'm a clever speaker at all.

Those are kind of nice words. Seems sort of a waste of time on Sunday, but it was kind of fun. I hope there's some food afterwards. That sort of crass thinking, you're not hearing it as the word of God.

A very dangerous, eternally dangerous and consequential way to think. Never lose your wonder, you who believe. Never lose your wonder that the word of the God of the universe finds its way to you through mortal men, men with feet of clay.

As when Moses was made as God to Pharaoh. As when Elijah prayed to begin and end a drought. Or when Paul shut Elymas' eyes. You or I will never do those particular deeds, but the word of God that empowered them is the same as we have today, just as the Holy Spirit who empowers us through that word is the same Holy Spirit who was then.