Recognizing the Word of God
1 Thessalonians 2:13
Breakaway Ministries Video podcast
1 Thessalonians 2:13
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.
-We need the words of God.
-Are we just random molecules bouncing around that at any moment can be tyrannized by the whims of unstable men? Or is there meaning and purpose to all this?
-We need a God to give us subjective answers to why bad things happen.
-We long for truth because there is such a thing as truth. We long for answers because there is such a thing as answers and we were meant to know them.
-We long for the transcendent because He exists, and we are made to know him.
-Pain serves to jostle us out of the mundane and remind us that these big questions are stirring in us and we need answers.
-The good news is that the God who is communicates with us.
-We are obviously communicative creatures, we like to talk to each other. That’s not random, we look like our Dad in this. We were made in the image of God and we long to communicate because we have a God and he communicates.
-What we have in our bible is not theology. Theology are mans thoughts about what God might be like. What we have in the bible is revelation that God has come to tell us what he is like.
-Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and he’s thanking God again, he says I thank God constantly for this, that when you heard the words of God from us you received them as not the words of men but as what they really are, that is the word of God.
-How did they know that? What about that presentation made them think that’s not the words of some philosopher, those are the very words of the God who created all things.
-How did they know that? And how can we know that?
-Some people say they were just so primitive back then and that when someone said these were the words of God that they just believed it. That’s not actually true.
-When Paul preached to the Greeks it challenged there world view, and it took them awhile to buy it.
-When the Thessalonians heard it and sat and struggled with it they see that what we have here really are the words of God.
-How do we know that we have the words of God?
-another view: we know these are the words of God, but why do we believe that they are?
1. There’s a spiritual component.
-You see it here when we Paul thanks God. When Paul thanks God, he thanks God that the Thessalonians believe that the word of God is the word of God. Why does he do that? Because our belief that we have here is that the word of God is at one level is a spiritual issue that God has to show us that these are his words. He enables us to hear. We find out in scripture that the Holy Spirit of God superintends this process.
-2 Timothy says that all scripture is ‘God breathed.’ That he breathes through human agents to give us his very thoughts.
-What we find out in this text is that God didn’t just inspire the very writings of the old and new testament, that the Holy Spirit inspired the delivery of this writing to people.
-It says in 1 Thessalonians 1:5 “Our Gospel came to you not only in words but in power in the Holy Spirit.”
-God not only inspired the words, he inspired the presentation so that when the words were spoke to you it landed deeper then just hearing some guy talk.
-He was empowering the understanding.
-When someone says that they just understand these are the words of God because they just do, because God helps them understand, the people who don’t understand yet don’t like that, it sounds circular, that makes you feel very uncomfortable.
-Spiritual moments can sound séance-y and weird, its sort of emotional and vibe-y and you don’t like that.
-Though Paul will thank God for revealing to them that these are the words of God, Paul won’t argue that way.
2. Intellectual component.
-You received what you heard.
-The bible never presents spirituality and rationality at odds. The bible isn’t afraid of rationality, that’s one of the ways you discover the words of God, you use your mind engage it.
-Paul presents to them that the life of Christ is in accordance with the scriptures. And by that he meant the old testament. He gave them documentation of prophecies in the old testament talking about the life of Jesus. Like Micah 5:2, or Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, they give you details about Jesus’ life long before it happened.
-Thessalonians was written somewhere are 50 A.D. 20 years after the death of Christ.
-Paul says there are people still alive that traveled with Jesus, go ask them. This story is too early to be a legend.
-If you were writing a story about your god hero you wouldn’t put into it the things we have in the gospel.
-Women were the first witnesses at the crucifixion, and then, women’s testimonies were dismissible in court. If this were a made up story, that would have been counterproductive in that day.
-The gospel presentation that we give is too human to be legend.
-Its also too detailed in form. Modern fiction is an 18th century phenomenon. Ancient epics aren’t written with this amount of detail. Beowulf isn’t written like the gospels.
-C.S. Lewis says this, “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends and myths all my life, I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. There are only 2 possible views, either this is reportage of what really happened, or else some unknown ancient writer without known predecessors or successors suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modernistic realistic narrative. The reader who does not see this has simply not learned how to read.”
-they are historical accounts of a guy who really lived, who really died, and who really rose.
3. There is a social component.
-The Thessalonians got to see the messenger. They watched Paul get beat and not stop presenting it. They watched him not take money and keep presenting it.
-People have died for bad causes all throughout human history. But someone willing to take a beating and die for something does make you take that message seriously.
-The social component alone isn’t enough to believe this, but when you hear that Paul was rational, that there’s a spiritual power to what he was doing, and that you watched his life and you saw that there is a sincerity to this man.
-Some of you resist this because the guy who presented the gospels to you in the first place doesn’t live it out. They might actually like Jesus if they got to know him, they just hate the guy who talked about him because of his hypocrisy.
-They see your life.
-People will buy what your saying by how you approach them with it, come soft.
4. There is an affective component
-This book is alive and it is at work in you.
-It knows you. The words of God cut through to you. It resounds with the human heart.
-That’s how you believe it.
-It fits with what I know of how the world works. Its so beautifully designed that someone had to design it.
-It fits with how people work. There is something so beautiful and glorious about us.
-It fits with our humanity, that there is something deeply broken in us. It tells us that you cant fix this deep brokenness yourself.
-In our hearts there is longing for a hero. In every movie there is a rescuer. That’s because God sent one.
-He presented to the world the perfections that we long for a human being to have. They are filled in Jesus.
-His penalty paid for what we know we are guilty of.
-C.S. Lewis said it this way. “If you walked up to a piano and saw sheet music then saw a little sheet of music on the ground, how would you know that that sheet on the ground fits into the sheets in front of you? You would pick that sheet up off the ground and place it among the others and you would just play. And if those notes sync up with the other notes and they all play together you know its part of that song.”
-How did God let me believe these words? He let me, it’s a spiritual miracle. This music plays.
-How could Shakespeare meet Hamlet? If he wrote himself into the play. God wrote himself in so we could meet him, and he inspired men to faithfully record the story.
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