The Work of the Word in Us
1 Thessalonians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
If you’ve grown up around the Church, you’re aware that we should have a passionate love for God. As a matter of fact, His first commandment is that we should love nothing more than Him. However, if you’re like me, you’ve often found yourself discouraged or questioning your lack of passion for God and the things of God. This might look like finding any excuse possible to get out of going to Church, or caring for your neighbor, or honoring your family. It might look like hiding who you really are until you're away from the people who expect you to behave like a Christian. Or it may just be a cold sense of lethargy in your spiritual life. Regardless, if this is how you’ve found yourself, I believe that 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 has help for you and I today because as we look at it we will find the source that sparks compassionate love for God and what it creates in our lives.
In verse 13, we find Paul still rejoicing in the work of God among the church in Thessalonica. As he does this, we find that his rejoicing is rooted in the fact that they were confronted with the word and heard it as the words of God Himself. Now, what we find at the beginning is that Paul is rejoicing not only as a minister who preaches the Word, but also as a man who has been confronted with the Word Himself. G.K. Beale writes, “A thankful attitude that Christ has died for one’s sins, including lack of faith and antagonism to God’s will, is the fertile spiritual ground from which godly attitudes grow and from which the desire to please God comes.”
In short, the heart that has passionate love for God, is the heart that has been confronted by God through His Word. Now, what was the word that these believer’s received from Paul? Well, in Acts 17:2-3, we find that Paul preached Christ as the one who died for our sins and rose again as the One who the Old Testament always spoke of.
So, what were they confronted with and what did it create in them? These sinners were confronted with the reality of their sinfulness and were shown that Christ is their only hope for forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. What does this create? It creates thanksgiving in our hearts because if we know how real our sin is, the gospel cultivates nothing but awe in us. Perhaps some of the reason that many people sitting in pews all over America are so cold in their worship is because although they have heard the gospel, they haven’t been confronted in their hearts with the fact that this is the word of God to sinners.
Another thing that we learn from this is how we should listen to preaching. The Second Helvetic Confession says that the preached word, if it is faithful and true, is the word of God to us. So, when we hear faithful preaching, we should hear it as though God is speaking directly to us and for us.
There’s more for us in verse 13 than this. As we look at the last part of the verse, Paul doesn’t say that it “worked” in them in the past-tense. But that is “effectively works in them…” The word isn’t just a one time checklist that we need to hear and then walk away from, but is something that we need a steady diet of and if we have a habit of constantly consuming the word of God, we will find ourselves enjoying a growing relationship with God because we will understand more about Him. The word for “work” in this verse is also used in Philippians 2:13 which says, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” So, if we know the Lord and have trusted Him for salvation but we feel as though we have grown stagnant, we need to examine ourselves and ask, “Am I reading the Bible like I should?” The reason this is so important is because God will work through His word to enable us to know Him better. Now, we aren’t going to experience growth if we are just skimming over black ink on white paper. When we approach the Bible, we need to understand that what Jesus said is true when He said that the Bible is all about Him. So, when we read, we need to look for Christ, we need to seek out Him and His glory and when we find that, we will find growth in our lives. Paul teaches us this in 2 Corinthians 3:18 as he says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” The more that we gaze on Christ in His glory, the more we will grow in our Christlikeness.
Now, as we look at the next verses, we will find that when we consume the word as the word of God, it will create two things in us. First, we will find ourselves faithfully persevering through hardships and second, we will find purpose for our lives.
First, we find that as God works in us through His word, we will find ourselves faithfully persevering through the various hardships that life throws at us.
First, we find that as God works in us through His word, we will find ourselves faithfully persevering through the various hardships that life throws at us.
In verse 14, Paul highlights the persecution that not only this church, but the church in Judea and even the Lord Jesus suffered as well. Now, their endurance wasn’t simply due to them being hardheaded, but is due to the fact that due to the work of God in their hearts, they heard the gospel and believed it to be a truth worth suffering for and a truth that could sustain them throughout life’s difficulties. In Acts 17, we find that persecution came up immediately after the gospel was made known in Thessalonica, so it wasn’t as though these Thessalonians didn’t know what they were getting into. Therefore, the Thessalonians' positive and persevering hold onto the gospel that they heard shows that this wasn’t just the words of some guy, but that it is the word of God and that He worked through it and in them.
The Bible has a lot to say about the Scriptures sustaining believers in the middle of hardship. In Jeremiah 15:15-16, we read, “O LORD, You know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke. Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.” In Psalm 119:23 we read, “Princes also sit and speak against me, But Your servant meditates on Your statutes. Your testimonies also are my delight And my counselors.”
As we think about these passages, we may be reminded of the suffering that the Lord endured. Remember in the wilderness how He fasted for 40 days and was certainly starving and Satan tempted Him and He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus sets an example for us as He meditated on the Word and found it to sustain Him in the middle of serious trials. Have you found yourself in these situations before? Maybe you feel alone, maybe you feel like a friend has betrayed you, maybe you feel like your spiritual walk has collapsed and you’re in a really dark place spiritually. If you’ve found yourself in the middle of hardship, let this remind you to meditate on the gospel and there you will find the Lord giving you rest and working through you for His glory.
GK Beale again says, “When Christians understand that suffering is the ‘stadium’ in which they run the race of faith and that God himself will provide them with the ability to complete the contest, they are motivated better to endure in the race and to thank God in the process.” One example he gives of this is from a book by Corrie ten Boom who was persecuted and thrown in a Nazi prison camp with her sister Betsy. “When she and her sister, Betsy, were taken to a horribly inhumane German prison camp named Ravensbruck, they had to live in flea-infested and overcrowded barracks. The morning they arrived, they read together 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, “be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances.” Afterward, Betsy told Corrie to thank God for every aspect of their new lodgings. Corrie initially would not thank God for the fleas, but her sister persisted, and Corrie finally gave in. As the ensuing months passed, they were surprised to discover how freely they could conduct Bible studies and prayer meetings without the guards interfering. Later they found out that they could do so many things openly because the guards would not come into the barracks for fear of becoming infested with fleas (Beale, G. K. 1–2 Thessalonians. InterVarsity Press, 2003, p. 81.).
The second fruit of the word working in us is that we will find purpose for our lives.
The second fruit of the word working in us is that we will find purpose for our lives.
Many of you have probably heard the statement that our purpose in life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. From the beginning of the Biblical story, mankind has a purpose and it is the glory of God. In the Garden, Adam is to fill the Earth with other image bearers to glorify God and is to subdue the Earth, but he failed. In Genesis 9, Noah is to subdue the Earth, but he failed. In the Old Testament, Israel is to do the same thing, but they failed too. However, when Jesus came, He perfectly succeeded in the task that He was given. After He rose from the dead, He gave the Church a mission which was to go into the world and to preach the gospel. We could say that we subdue and cultivate the world today by preaching the gospel to everyone.
Well, in verse 15-16, we find that the Jews, the people who were once God’s covenant people, are those who are most dogmatically opposed to God’s gospel and therefore do not please Him and the more they fight and prevent the gospel’s spread, the more wrath they store up for themselves on the last day.
Now, why does Paul tell the church of Thessalonica these things? I think for two reasons. First, to remind them that God is working in them and that they are in good company and second, to help them realize that they are the new creation people who glorify God in loving Him and living for His glory in sharing the gospel. So what do we get from this? Well, one writer said, “If we do not align ourselves with the goal of spiritually subduing the world with the gospel , we set ourselves against what pleases God and against God Himself, and we align ourselves with the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles who were hostile to the early Christians.”
In short, we could say that one fruit of God’s work in us through the word is that we have a concern for the spreading of the gospel to the glory of God. So, here are a few lessons for us to take from this passage of Scripture.
First,
God’s word is to be received with careful reverence.
Second,
God’s word is the instrument He uses to teach us of His saving grace and to grow us in grace.
Third,
God uses His word to ground us in the middle of life’s hardships.
Fourth,
God uses His word to grow our concern for the gospel.