VIDEO
A Spoonful Of Scripture? (1 Thessalonians 2:13-16)
GIST: God’s Word is true and should produce Godly examples, but this life change will also bring deeply personal persecution.
Today, we’re continuing our study in 1 Thessalonians and coming to verses 13-14. I know I usually have some kind of opening remarks to make, but today let’s just dive straight in!
“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. 14 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, 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!”
In our journey through 1 Thessalonians, we’ve just wrapped up a section where Paul was pointing us to what impactful Christian living looks like. Though the end of chapter 2 starts to move into new territory, Paul was still very thinking about that context when we wrote these words. Reminiscing on the time they had together, he says he was grateful that not only they saw the work of Jesus in the lives of him and his companions, but that they received their message as what it was—the Word of God. They understood these weren’t just wise words persuasively promulgated; this was God’s truth spoken through His flawed but faithful messengers. That’s something we need to remember today as well. Here’s our gist and kind of the big picture message of these verses (which, honestly, do have some challenging pieces for us to digest): God’s Word is true and should produce Godly examples, but this life change will also bring deeply personal persecution.
I. God’s Word Is True
“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…”
The first piece we need to walk through is a foundational one: God’s Word is true. Entire courses are devoted to studying this reality. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to really search this out in your personal walk. You need to take this seriously enough to wrestle with it because it is something too often just taken for granted. Many who have grown up in the church assume it is true. Many outside the church assume it isn’t. When these two worldviews collide, often neither side brings much meat to the table. Their understandings are built largely on hearsay or speculation. Unfortunately, as we live in an increasingly non-Christian world, the pressure to conform to the more popular view that the Bible is just a collection of man-made tales is strong.
Studying why it’s not has been so helpful to me over the years. I want to wrestle with hard truths. I want to explore what people believe that view the world differently from me. I want to know why people oppose Christianity. Doing that, however, will inevitably lead you down a path where your faith is challenged. That’s a good thing… but it’s hard. There have been many times I’ve stepped away from a study of some kind and felt a weight of doubt. What has pulled me back again and again is remembering that God’s Word is actually true. Because if His word is true, then what it says about reality and what it says about itself is more credible than well-worded arguments which ignore that fundamental premise.
Again, we could spend a lot of time talking about why we can trust the Bible, but this is only point one from our passage today, so let me at least outline a few that have always resonated with me.
The first is the manuscript evidence we have for the Biblical texts themselves. When it comes to ancient manuscripts, two of the main criteria for determining reliability is based on the number of manuscripts and the distance of time between the manuscripts we have and the originals or the original events they describe. Absolutely nothing comes even close to the amount of evidence we have for the Bible. For the New Testament alone, between the thousand of Greek manuscripts and fragments and the 20,000(ish) old translations into other languages, we’re looking at nearly 25,000 manuscripts. The earliest fragments we have are of the Gospel of John, and that piece dates within 50 years of the original. The other 5,000+ Greek manuscripts are somewhere between 100-225 years from their originals. And if we were to lose all these, we could recreate nearly the entire New Testament from quotes in letters by early church leaders. What are the next best examples in ancient literature? Well, we have nearly 700 copies of Homer’s Illiad which are 400-500 years from the original… and that’s the next best outside of the Bible! Though this does not prove the Bible is true, it definitely gives us confidence that what we have is what it has always been.
There are other reasons to then believe its content. One is the internal unity of the text. The Bible is comprised of 66 books written by 40+ authors, composed on three different continents over the course of about 1,500 years. Yet, despite what some critics will try to claim, it presents one cohesive message. That’s miraculous. Within this unified text are also a number of fulfilled prophecies—not least of those being passages like Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 which clearly point to Jesus’ death years before the Roman Empire even existed let alone used crucifixion as a form of punishment. Take also what Jesus says about the authority of the Bible and the fact that first-hand witnesses chose to face death while holding to these truths, and the evidence to believe becomes very compelling.
That last piece of evidence, life change, is actually where the text takes us next→
II. Should Produce Godly Examples
“... which is at work in you believers. 14 For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.”
The Word of God comes into our lives and starts… changing things. It’s true, and it works ☺️. Last week, we talked a little about sanctification—the process by which you are made more and more like Jesus as you walk with Him. That’s the picture we have here, as well. As people are exposed to God’s Word, it starts making a difference in their lives because it starts changing their hearts. Our desires start to shift as we come to see the world more and more through His eyes.
Here, Paul says these believers started imitating the churches in Judea—the area from which the gospel was being spread. In what way? Well, the people in Judea who had accepted Jesus’ rescue were completely changed, so when you looked at their example, you’d see an example of devotion to Jesus. These Thessalonian believers were emulating this because they’d been changed by the same Jesus! What if someone came into our church looking for an example of devotion to Jesus? Is the Word of God changing your life in this way? Just some food for thought.
III. But It Also Brings Deeply Personal Persecution
“...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!”
The Judean churches weren’t just examples of devotion. They were examples of faithfulness even in the face of persecution. Because of the world we live in today, the end of this passage has led many of the resources I’ve studied over the past several weeks to clarify this is in no way meant to be taken as Anti-Semitic. Sadly, there has been a history of people carrying the name of Jesus and using it to persecute Jewish people. That’s wrong, and that’s not what Paul is doing.
First off, Paul was himself Jewish and very proud of that heritage. Not only did he start his ministry wherever possible by going to the Jewish synagogues, but in Romans 3 he wrote this: “So what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Considerable in every way. First, they were entrusted with the very words of God. What then? If some were unfaithful, will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? Absolutely not! Let God be true, even though everyone is a liar....” (Romans 3:1-4 CSB).
Paul is in no way condemning these people for being Jews. Instead, he is pointing to a grievous sin that is resulting in condemnation. What were they doing? They had persecuted Jesus and the prophets who pointed to Him. Now, they were opposing the gospel being spread in places like Thessalonica. This wasn’t because they were Jewish; it was because they were sinners.
The broader lesson in this? I think this points to the fact that Christians in all circumstances will encounter persecution, and sometimes it will come from those closest to them—their “own people”, those who they’d have expected to understand Jesus best and support Him most.
Now, I want to be careful about how I develop this because I know it can be tempting to let this reality turn into some kind of moping attitude where we’re constantly lamenting that it’s “us against the world”. Because we live in a sinful world, we will be at odds with the culture most of the time. However, our lives are not some dystopian novel where we’re fighting “the man” and rising victorious over injustices for our own glory. He’s already won. We’re fighting the good fight and finishing the race so that more people can see Him. Nonetheless, as we stand on the truth of His Word and let Him change us more and more into His image, we will be living in a way that opposes the status quo. Like the example set before us in this passage, we need to hold tight to Jesus even in those moments.
TAKEAWAYS
Will you feed your doubts a healthy dose of God’s Word? It is not a sin to struggle. Struggle with Him and His guidance.
What kind of difference is your walk with Jesus making in your life and the lives of those around you? What kind of example do they see? How near are you drawing personally?
Will you face persecution with faith instead of fear or self-pity?
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