Today we come to a very important message about our response to God’s word. The word of God is at work in the lives of those who believe it and receive it. But you must receive God’s word as a message from God in order for it to do you any good. The word of God IS powerful! But that power works ONLY in those who accept it as from God.      

The message about Jesus came to the Thessalonians with the power of the Spirit.  Paul, came with a loving heart and godly character. The issue then became would the Thessalonians regard the message as human ideas OR as a message from God.  Paul rejoices because when they heard the word of God, they accepted it “NOT as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God!” They received it as if God opened the heavens and spoke directly from His throne.

BECAUSE they accepted it as God’s message, Paul said “It performs its work in you who believe.”  Romans 1:16 “The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” To some the good news about Jesus is the power of God and it saves them and gives them new life. To others it does nothing. The difference is belief! Response. 

Hebrews 4:2“the gospel was preached to us, but the word which they heard did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it.”   

Jesus talked about this is the parable of the sower.  The seed that is sown is the message of the kingdom of God. The soil is “anyone who hears the message of the kingdom”.  They all hear the same message but one is hardened and the devil snatches away what was sown in his heart. Another responds with joy but when he realizes there is suffering involved he falls away.  Another hears the word but is so engaged with his riches and pleasures and his worries, that God’s word is choked out of his life and can’t take effect. The fourth person hears the word, and hold it fast and bears fruit.  

The point is many HEAR the message!  But the response of many people prohibits the word from having any effect.   That’s why Paul was SO thankful that the Thessalonians accepted his message AS the word of God. 

*Paul called his message to them, “the word of God”.  Verse 13 “You received the word of God which you heard from us”. Even though it came THROUGH Paul it was FROM God.  There was a voice behind Paul’s voice. A power behind Paul’s voice.  The Thessalonians sensed God in Paul’s message.

MLJ “The goal of true preaching is to leave a congregation with a sense of God.”   Paul’s preaching had that effect! 1:5 “Our gospel come to you not only in word but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” 

So Paul was preaching to them, the power of the Holy Spirit was present, and these idol worshipers, living in sin, ignorant of the Bible, said, “these are NOT just the words of a man.  Something more is here! These are the words of God.” THAT response changed their lives! That response changes your life!

*To accept God’s word as God’s word, means to believe that God Himself has spoken to us. What do we really know about life and why we are here and why life is like it is? Not much!  We are all in the dark unless someone comes from outside our experience and explains the whole thing to us.  God has done that in Jesus and through his word.  He has pulled back the curtain, and explained how we got here, what has gone wrong with life, why there is evil and sin, and how Jesus Christ is the Savior and solution to everything.  

God tells us to believe on His Son. And He will save us, NOT on the basis of our goodness at all, but because of his grace.  He promises to send His Spirit to live inside us.  And He tells us how to live now in a way that pleases Him as we wait for His Son to come again from heaven.  

To accept this all as God’s word means you regard ALL He has revealed to us, as the absolute and final authority in your life. We fall to the ground before Him and His word, and we obey the heavenly voice! 

*The word of God here is the gospel message, the good news about Jesus. Paul preached Jesus Christ crucified for our sins, raised from the dead, coming again to judge the world, and he preached Jesus as KING.

Acts 17 records Paul’s visit to Thessalonica. “They came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.”

Paul message was, “This Jesus (whom I proclaim) is the Christ”.  Christ means anointed one. Jesus is God’s anointed one, God’s King. He is destined to rule the world and reign forever and ever.  Paul’s enemies knew this was Paul’s message because they accused Paul of proclaiming, “There is another king, Jesus”.  Here is the story from Acts 17...

5 “But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying, “that there is ANOTHER king, Jesus.” 

The Jews clearly understood the message that Jesus is king! And hated that message!  The Thessalonians heard that Jesus is king, and pledged their allegiance to Jesus.  They “turned from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven.”   Part of accepting the gospel as the Word of God is accepting the teaching that Jesus is Lord and King! 

The gospel of Rome was “Caesar is Lord”.  So it’s no surprise that “Jesus is Lord” aroused such fierce opposition.  And THAT’s the part of the gospel message that arouses opposition today.  As long Jesus is presented as just a weak, gentle soul preaching love and peace, nobody objects to that! It it his LORDSHIP over all people and all time, and over all areas of life, that arouses resistance. 

This gospel message that Paul preached, always contained an urgent appeal to believe in Jesus in a way that involved bowing the knee to him, and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord. Paul told the Philippian jailor, “Believe in the LORD Jesus and you will be saved!” 

The response that saves your soul, and changes your life, is to believe that Jesus is Lord, trust Him alone to forgive you sins,  and to switch your allegiance away from all others, including yourself, to Jesus alone as King.    

*This gospel message, and all the exhortations to live in a manner worthy of God, Paul called “the word of God”. We now have all this recorded in the NT which is combined with the OT scripture, making up what we call the Bible.   

Of course, God gave Paul unique authority to preach his word. But God still uses people today to declare his word to the world and in the church.  That’s why Paul admonished Timothy to preach the word!  

We have a serious responsibility to accept God’s word when we read it in the Bible, of course! But also as we hear it proclaimed through sound teaching and preaching.  

We should test what we hear through the authority of scripture. But preaching and teaching, IF it preaches the Word, should be regarded as a time to listen to God’s voice speaking in and through the scripture. Preaching and teaching is to be a supernatural encounter with God’s word.  The teacher is only a human.  But God is present in His word and the power of the Holy Spirit is at work.  Those who come to the preaching of the word with that heart, grow and thrive!

Westminster Short Catechism:  “The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, the effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, AND of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith, unto salvation.” IE AS the Bible is preached by human preachers, the Lord uses the Word as His tool or instrument to work in us. 

An article in TableTalk magazine said, “It is not ordinary to be able to understand the reality of sin or to come to faith in Christ OR to grasp the breadth or the depth of the scriptures APART from preaching.  As diligent parents shape and mold the character of a child through their words., so the Lord ordinarily gathers in and shapes His children through the preaching of the Word.”

What are the Marks that we accept the word as God’s word. 

*Accepting the word of God as the word of God opens you up to the life-changing work of God inside you. Paul said the word “performs it’s work in you who believe” NASB. The work performs!  It is at work. It’s a powerful thing within you.  It changes your life, your direction, your attitudes. You begin to bear fruit!  You begin to love people with the love God has poured into your heart. You begin to forgive just as God in Christ has forgiven you.  

The word of God will affect everything about you. It’s just a complete makeover when you accept the word of God as the word of God. It will affect your friends, your lifestyle, your Facebook page, your devotion to the church, it gives you a reason for living. Your life obsession becomes how you can please the Lord, who gave himself for you. 

*Second:  Accepting the word of God will result in accepting the opposition that goes along with it. Follow the logic here: Verse 14 “God’s word is performing it’s work in you, (and that’s obvious) Because (or for) you became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. And you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as THEY did from the Jews.”

The Key evidence that you accept God’s word is your willingness to suffer for that message.  Once you have heard the voice of God, you are willing to suffer whatever obeying that voice costs you.   You won’t suffer for something you think is just a good idea.  You suffer for it because it is FROM GOD. 

They held fast to the word IN their affliction BECAUSE they valued it above their safety and comfort. It’s like a choice.  You can have safety OR the word of God. They said we’ll take the word of God! And you must make that choice too.  

The Thessalonians probably had fairly peaceful lives up until Paul came to town.  They were living in darkness, but there is a certain fellowship of darkness with darkness. They probably partied together, went to the market, raised their families, they fit into their society and culture. Then Paul, Timothy and Silas came. And their message about Jesus split the city! 

They were accused of turning the world upside down wherever they went and Thessalonica was no exception.  Violence and hatred for those who accepted the message ramped up to a fever pitch. There were riots. Those who believed paid a huge price. Their lives got harder.  

Loyalty to God’s word will lead to suffering for it, on some level! That’s because His word is at odds with the world, the prevailing culture.  If you don’t stand for God’s truth, then you won’t feel that discomfort and disapproval.  

When you accept Christ at first you may not realize the wedge that has put between you and the world, but it has!  The Thessalonians felt it immediately! Something will come up in your life and you will experience it too. 

Paul reminded them that it came “from your own countrymen”.  Just like the churches in Judea suffered from their Jewish brothers and sisters, you endured suffering from those closest to you, your own countrymen, you own family, friends, neighbors, the people in your own town.  And that’s always harder.  BUT that opposition you experience, is evidence that what happened inside you is REAL.  It’s evidence that you accepted our message as the word of God because you’re willing to pay a price for it. 

But they did not suffer in self pity or bitter complaint or just with stoic endurance.  1:6 “You received the word in much affliction WITH the joy of the Holy Spirit.” So that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.  The word got around about the way they endured suffering with JOY in the Holy Spirit.  They became the example to follow!  Both affliction AND joy come from embracing God’s word as the word of God.  I don’t know of anything that sustains my heart and joy in all the battles and drama of life that the joy of the Holy Spirit.  

Joy in the Holy Spirit is a clear sign of receiving the word of God as the word of God.  When you accept God’s word, God pours out of the Holy Spirit into your heart. And the Holy Spirit brings joy when he comes!!  A large part of the Christian life is learning to walk in the Spirit, and a large part of walking in the Spirit is learning to walk in the joy of the Spirit! It’s a supernatural joy.  It’s a joy that overcomes affliction!  It’s a joy that makes us overcomers. It’s a joy that even thrives in affliction. 

This joy IN the Spirit is how we survive life!!! It’s how these believers in Thessalonica survived their afflictions, people coming to their door, attacking their home, dragging them out into the street.  This joy is an incredibly precious possession!  

*Then, after commending these people for enduring suffering at the hands of their persecutors. Paul launches into an indictment of those Jews who were behind much of the opposition to Paul’s message about Jesus.  “They killed the Lord Jesus. They killed the prophets and they drove us out, from Thessalonica and pretty much everywhere we went. They are not pleasing to God. They are hostile to all men, in that they hinder us from telling the world how they can be saved.”  BUT their sins have piled up to the full amount that God will tolerate, and now they are under the wrath of God. 

First Paul said “They heap up their sins to the fullest measure”. Sometimes God allows your persecutors to continue for awhile.  He let’s it go on! That is NOT a sign that God hasn’t noticed!  He’s letting it pile up, till what He regards as the full measure. We don’t know when that point is, God does!  He is not ignoring what is going on in our day just as he was not ignoring what was going on in Thessalonica. 

But there IS a point when their sins have piled up so high that God is done.  As Paul said, “wrath has come upon them at last!” Or “to the utmost”. A point at which their sins reach the full limit God will allow, and then those people are under God’s wrath, now.  Even if the Christians didn’t see any punishment on their enemies yet, even if it seemed like God was letting all havoc break loose, God had already sentenced these people to a wrathful judgment. 

*Why did Paul tell them this?  For encouragement.  When people are out to destroy you, when people are pounding your door down, trying to attack you and drag you out into the street, it’s always good to know that God is on your side, and that God will vindicate you and deal with your persecutors.   

Also, perhaps it is to guard them from taking matters into their own hands. The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine I will repay.”  Vengeance is not your business! It’s God’s! David Guzik said, “Paul comforted the Thessalonians by assuring them that God would indeed take care of their persecutors. When Christians forget this, they often disgrace and curse themselves by returning persecution for persecution towards others.”

Certainly we ought to vigorously defend the truth but we are not concerned with paying back others for the wrong done to us.  We let God defend us and He will do that! 

Things to take away from all this:

*If you receive the word of God as the word of God, you have the promise of God Himself that He will be at work in your life.  And that’s a wonderful promise!  He who began a good work in you will complete clear up until the day Jesus Christ returns. The word of God generates new life in you, and transform you.  It will work righteousness, peace and joy into your life.  It will teach you to say no to sin and move your heart to obey and please God. 

*You will honor the scripture as your final authority, as the answer to life.  You will bow before what God says.  You will be concerned with being on God’s side, not the right side of history. Or culture. 

*You respond eagerly and with joy and obedience, to God as his word is preached and taught.  You come to church not expecting just to listen to a message, but expecting to be acted upon by the Word of God in the power of the Spirit. It’s people who come with that expectation who grow by leaps and bounds, they get well, they get healed in heart and mind, they make progress!  

*You’ll be willing to endure loss of friends and social acceptance for God’s word.  You regard God’s message as worth suffering for!  Heaven has spoken and you have no choice but to be obedient to the voice of God. 

*Most of all you will accept the message about Jesus! He is the theme of the Word of God.  You will gladly embrace the message of forgiveness of sins by His grace.  You will trust Him alone, to bring you to God. And you will love Him as your Savior and your Lord and coming King.

You will become a person who is all about Jesus! Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”  The word of God brings you to that place where Jesus is all in all to you.