1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

The Words of Men or God?

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on September 24, 2017 at Beacon Church

Jumping into verse 13 of this chapter, Paul gets right down to the topic of how the Thessalonians, before they had become followers of Christ, listened to and responded to their preaching--which he describes as "the word of God" they heard from these missionaries. If you were standing there when the Gospel was first preached in Thessalonica, you would not have heard a voice from Heaven. You would have heard men speaking Greek with a funny accent. So is this message that the Thessalonians believed actually from God or from men? Last week we saw that from verses 1-12, Paul challenged the skeptics in Thessalonica to examine the missionaries’ motives and conduct to disprove the accusation that their visit to Thessalonica was self-serving. But what about the accusation that their message was just man-made? How you respond to the claims of God's Word leads to significantly different outcomes. The humanist writer, Joseph C. Sommer wrote, "By treating this mistake-ridden book as the word of God, humanity has been led down many paths of error and misery throughout history."[i] I would challenge anyone to carefully fact-check that claim. But I would agree that where you end up does depend on how you treat the Bible: as "a mistake-ridden book" or as "the word of God".

Don't thank us, thank God!

“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,” (1 Thess. 2:13 ESV). When we got married in 1995, we both said, "I Do". But it occurred to me yesterday, that in the 8030 days since then, Heather says, "I do" every time she puts up with me again and every time she honours her vow.  In a similar way, Paul says to the Thessalonians, "You received the Gospel from us and you are still treating God’s Word as God’s Word, as Timothy reported.” (3:6)

What this shows us might be a surprise. These believers weren’t gullible. They had massive doubts. Just not about whether the Gospel was God’s Word. Modern skeptics sometimes seem to think ancient Christians were like simple children who would believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny if you told them to. But do you remember what it was about these Thessalonican believers that was getting the attention of people all over Greece? Not their gullibility of their faith, but the durability of their faith.

6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.  7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.  8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.  9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.  10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. (1 Thess. 2:6-10 ESV)

The way their faith made an immediate life-changing difference, and then just wouldn’t give up in the face of “much conflict”, revealed that they doubted the things they used to take for granted. Like whether the old idols were worth worshipping, or whether death was so scary after all, or whether anything was worth losing Jesus? The more real the Gospel became, the more doubtful everything else appeared. What I'm saying is this: Nobody tricked the Thessalonians into thinking the Gospel was really God’s Word. No, it was the content of the Gospel that convinced them it was God’s Word.

The best Christian missionaries don't expect people to blindly believe everything they are told in order to become Christians. They know that if they begin to really understand what they are told, they will eventually believe every word of God. And the difference is huge. If you come to love the Gospel, you will love the amazing God the Gospel introduces to us. And then you will believe everything He says because you trust Him. And then you will keep doing things that show you believe Him. In verse 13, Paul therefore “continually” thanks God that the Thessalonians were still, six months later, living like people who really knew they had heard God's Word. That's what he means when he said the word of God "is at work in you believers" (v13). That humanist writer argued that believing the Bible had led Christians to do many horrible things throughout history. Paul Chamberlain, in his book Why People Don't Believe, gives a really good answer to that challenge. But notice where Paul takes this line of thinking: he doesn't tell these Christians to go and do violent things to unbelievers, he points out how the Word of God is empowering them to survive the violence unbelievers were doing to them.

You're not who you used to be

“For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea,” (1 Thess. 2:14a ESV). In the opening of this letter, Paul addressed these believers as "the church of the Thessalonians". It's a unique way in the whole New Testament of saying that these people were citizens of Thessalonica, but God had made them into something new: a church. And not all churches are equal. Some drift more than others (like the church in Galatia did). Some have more scandals (like the church in Corinth did). Some are more faithful than others in how they hold onto God's Word--like the church of the Thessalonians did. In this, they were repeating the faithful example set by the mother of all churches, the church in Judea. Everybody had heard Paul talk about the famine in Judea, and his project to collect money to take back to Jerusalem to help buy food. This mention about the suffering of the Judean church is something Paul himself was partly responsible for. I’m sure he had stories to tell. And seeing what these new believers endured, surely brought tears to the old apostles’ eyes when they reminded him of other new believers among his fellow Jews years earlier, before he encountered Jesus. And with deep, fatherly affection and gratitude to God, Paul was impacted by the way the Thessalonians hung onto the Gospel, and treated it like God's very Word (v13). He could see that it was working in them. Their faithful endurance reminded Paul of another church, the original church where it all began. The apostle had no doubt this was a true church “of God in Christ Jesus”.

God's Word has changed your destiny

For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews,  15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind  16 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! (1 Thess. 2:14-16 ESV)

It's interesting here that Paul doesn't go on about how they were following the examples he, Silvanus, and Timothy had given them when they boldly shared the Gospel in the midst of much conflict (v2). Probably because someone was criticizing the missionaries themselves, Paul borrows the credibility of all the other Jewish apostles in Judea, Jesus' disciples and the churches they had established. He tells them that the earliest generation of Jewish Christians had suffered the same kind of things they had at the hands of Thessalonian opponents. You see how Paul describes the people persecuting the Thessalonican believers as "your own countrymen" (v14b)? It seems like he on-purpose contrasted their natural citizenship with their identity in God: as a "church of God in Christ Jesus" (v14a). When violence and suffering and hostility and loss took their toll, who would these people side with? Where would they turn for safety? To the arms of their countrymen, or to the arms of Christ?

Another contrast is found in verse 14 between "they" (the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea) and the "Jews", their countrymen in Judea who made them suffer for their faith in Jesus. That contrast is deliberate. It was always that way when people met Jesus in person in the Gospels. Some people hated Jesus for the things He taught, others loved Him and trusted Him. If anyone was sort of neutral it probably meant they hadn't understood Him. Jesus told His disciples that they would be hated because He was hated. In fact, it is the Christians' insistence that Christ is God and King, that He alone is to be worshipped and believed in for salvation from sin and death--this exclusivity of Christ alone that divides people. Jesus warned His followers in Judea,

"And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved."  (Mk. 13:12-13 ESV)

Jesus went on after those words to predict a time of judgement that was going to fall on Judea and Jerusalem, it turned out, within 40 years. The later Jews and Gentiles who didn't come face-to-face with Jesus in Israel, but who heard about Him through the Good News, were divided in the same way as the people who met Him. How people respond to the Word of God becomes a sign of their eternal destiny. How we respond in the face of opposition becomes a stronger sign. Holding the Word while enduring suffering is a sign of eternal life through death and resurrection. Hating the Word even to death is a sign of eternal judgement beyond death. The love of and submission to God's Word becomes the path to everlasting life for believers. The hatred of and opposition to God's Word becomes the path to everlasting wrath for unbelievers. So in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, Jesus' prediction and warning are recorded for both Jewish and non-Jewish readers. I'm not going to argue that history has proved Jesus' warnings were true (although history does prove it). I'm just arguing here that His warnings take on more weight because of the fulfillment of prophecy. Because I don't expect you to already believe every word of the Bible. I do hope, however, that if you begin to see the beauty of the salvation promised in the Good News about Jesus, that you will begin to believe every word of it.

Verse 15 is an awful indictment of those who opposed and persecuted the churches in Judea. Look at those words: they killed, they drove out, they displeased God, and opposed all mankind. Specifically they killed Jesus, Paul said, and the prophets. What prophets? 800 years before Christ, Elijah complained to God, " He said, "I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away." (1 Ki. 19:14 ESV) 600 years before Christ, 2 Chronicles 36:16 passed this judgement on the Jews:

"But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy." (2 Chr. 36:16 ESV) When Christ came to Israel, He said, "…You witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.  33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, …Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  38 See, your house is left to you desolate." (Matt. 23:31-38 ESV)

How we treat the Gospel—as just the words of men, or as the Word of God—determines our destiny. That desolation of the Jewish people, long predicted in the Old Testament (as we saw in our recent sermon series on the book of Daniel), was already beginning to come to pass in the years when Paul wrote this. God's Word had warned the Jewish nation, but by and large they rejected God's Word, and so, 5 years before this, Judea had been devastated by famine; shortly afterward, a riot in Jerusalem led to a massacre by the Roman army; a couple of years before this, Claudius Caesar had expelled the Jewish population from Rome.[ii] Things were getting bad and war was about to break out that resulted in the final desolation of Jerusalem and made its people refugees for 1900 years. As Paul said in verse 16, "wrath" [was coming] "upon them at last".

 Bad News or Good News?

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know many of you well enough to share with Paul that thanksgiving he wrote of in verse 13: gratitude to God for how you received His Word and for how it is working in you. So if you love Christ and His Gospel; if you honour His Word as divine, then use the time we have left, as Paul says they urged the Thessalonicans in verse 12: “…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,” (1 Thess. 2:12 ESV). Which makes me eager to know that more of you treat God’s Word as God’s Word. If you won’t listen to the Good News as if it’s God’s very Word, then the bad news is really, really bad. But why not listen to the Good News? Why not set aside some time every week to read one of the Gospels with a believer, so you can see for yourself what Jesus is like? Why not give yourself the chance to really hear His Word of hope and life and love and forgiveness? Why not? Verse 15 remembers that God had sent many prophets to ancient Israel, then He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, then Jesus sent missionaries like Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy who preached the Gospel in Thessalonica. And verse 16 is clear about the goal of all that sending, of all those announcements of Good News, of all that proclamation of God’s Word—“speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved” (v 16).