Our study this morning picks up where we left off last week in our walk through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, where we'll be diving into verses 13 through 16 of chapter two. Hear now the word of the Lord, I'll be reading out of the English standard version, the ESV.

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!1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

This is the Word of the Lord. About 150 years or so before the Protestant Reformation broke out across the European continent in the early to mid 1500s. There was an English theologian who lived in the 1300s by the name of John Wycliffe. Now, Wycliffe may have preceded the Protestant Reformation by about 150 years or so, but he's known today as being somewhat of a reformer before the Protestant Reformation. Some have even called him the "Morning Star of the Reformation" because so many of the theological positions that Wycliffe advocated for were positions that drew the ire of church leaders in his own day and positions that would be well at home with many of the Protestant reformers who would follow on his heels about 150 years later.

Well, one of Wycliffe's core convictions, something that drove much of his work in the mid to late 1300s, was the conviction that the Bible, that is the Word of God and not the Pope or anyone else is the chief authority in the life of the Christian. Wycliffe once wrote, "Holy Scripture is the preeminent authority for every Christian and the rule of faith and of all human perfection." As a result, Wycliffe believed that the Bible should also be translated so that it could be read and understood in a language that the people could understand. In fact, many people today understand Wycliffe's name as basically being synonymous with Bible translation. In his later years, he devoted a lot of time and energy to translating the Bible into the Middle English of his day, so that people of his day could understand and obey this chief authority in the life of the Christian.

Now, unfortunately, this position, along with a number of other positions that Wycliffe held, were quite unpopular among many of the church leaders, the higher ups in his own day. Although Wycliffe ultimately avoided martyrdom, execution for advocating the theological positions he did, he was nevertheless first condemned by the Pope during his life. Then, a few decades after he died, he was posthumously declared a heretic; his bones were dug up and he was burned.

Yet, as unfortunate as that is, he still fared better than many other church theologians and leaders throughout the history of the church, including many in the world today. Who walk through severe affliction and even death for holding to the core conviction that the Bible is the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. This is the conviction that has driven Christians like Wycliffe throughout the centuries, even in the midst of great affliction. It's this very conviction that the Apostle Paul commends of the church in Thessalonica in the passage before us.

Understand that as Christians to be a Christian is to live out of the conviction first and foremost, that God has spoken. Specifically that God has spoken to his church in his word, in the Bible. It's in the Bible where we hear God's voice. It's in reading the Bible that God works upon us by His Spirit. It's by the Bible that every truth claim we encounter in the world has to be evaluated.

Christians like Wycliffe have always held that the Bible is a supernatural book unlike any other book. And that the only way that we ever have hope to grow as Christians, to mature as Christians, and is to endure the onslaught of any affliction that we might face in this world for being Christians, is to live like believers such as Wycliffe have always lived throughout history. Namely, by receiving and accepting the Word of God for what it is come what may.

As we studied the passage before us, this is our big idea. Namely, receive the word for what it is. As we study this passage. We're going to do that in two points. First, we're going to see in verse 13 that it's important that we know the nature of God's word. It's kind of our foundation. If the Word of God is important, we better understand what the Word of God is. That's our first point, know the nature of God's word. Then second is to expect opposition to God's word. We'll see how that's kind of flushed out in the text as we go.

1. Know the Nature of God's Word
2. Expect Opposition to God's Word

Know the Nature of God's Word

So let's start with that first point. First, know the nature of God's word. Just to orient us a little bit to where we are and 1 Thessalonians understand that up to this point in 1 Thessalonians, we've heard quite a bit about thanksgiving. We've heard Paul himself give thanks for quite a bit. In fact, you may recall that the entirety of chapter one was this extended acclimation of thanksgiving for how the newly planted church in Thessalonica, which Paul planted some six months before he wrote 1 Thessalonians, was faring in his absence. The church we come to find was doing well, even when they faced affliction from those outside the church who were bent on undermining Paul's gospel ministry and even the gospel itself. The question remains, how exactly where they able to endure such hardships that they endured in Paul's absence?

When we turn to verse 13, in the passage that we're looking at this morning, we learn that at least one of the big reasons why or how they endured in their faith was because they were convinced in their heart of hearts that the gospel Paul ministered and declared when he was with them was the very Word of God. It was therefore a word, a message that was worth staying committed to, even when that meant that they would have to endure quite a bit from their unbelieving neighbors. So, again, Paul writes in verse 13, "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."

Now, in making such a bold claim, as Paul does right out of the gate, it's important that we first understand something of what Paul is not saying here. You see, when Paul claims that the nature of what he declared and what the church then accepted was not the word of men. Well, he's not claiming, first of all, that he had nothing to do with it at all. Understand that throughout God's redemptive work in history, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God has seen, fit in his wisdom, that in giving his word to his church that he would do so by appointing certain offices or officers in his church for a particular time to serve as his authoritative spokesman. One of those offices in the early church were the apostles.

Understand that as an apostle of God, that's an office that Paul himself held, something he reminds us of earlier in 2:6, Paul was vested as an apostle with a certain kind of authority. It was an unique authority and unrepeatable authority that doesn't exist in the church today, but was given to him by the resurrected Christ to speak on God's behalf. Just like the prophets of the Old Testament were called and commissioned by God to be his authoritative spokesmen and to say to Israel, as they often did, thus saith the Lord, or thus says the Lord. Well, so too, the apostles, including Paul, were commissioned to speak as God's mouthpiece to the New Testament churches, including the church in Thessalonica. Whose written words we ultimately have preserved for us in the scriptures of the New Testament.

In this way, as Richard Phillips puts it, "There's an important sense in which the word that Paul spoke to the church in Thessalonica on his first visit, and then the written record of Paul's correspondence with the church in Thessalonica that we have here in the entirety of 1 Thessalonians is in a very real sense, a word that's declared through men." This is how another apostle, the apostle Peter, puts it in 2 Peter 1:21, where he writes, "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

You see, in rightly claiming that Paul's words and Peter's words and Jeremiah's words are ultimately the Word of God. We'll talk about what that means in a moment. We still recognize that God worked through these men in history, in their special offices, through their unique writing styles and personalities, and in the very human languages that they knew, to produce, ultimately what he wanted them to say. Yet, while we understand that this is the means that God appointed to deliver his word to his church throughout human history, redemptive history, he used a pointed officers like prophets and then apostles, that these men didn't simply catch some golden tablets that floated out of the sky and then hand them over to the church. Again, God used them and worked in them in ordinary ways. With all that being said, we still have to recognize that the word they spoke and then penned was ultimately the divinely inspired Word of God.

This is what Paul commends the church for recognizing in the second half of verse 13, namely, that you received my words, words from my lips when I was among you, not ultimately or even primarily as my words, although they were spoken by Paul. He didn't receive golden tablets and then just hand them over to the church. But ultimately, they received his apostolic word for what it really was, namely the Word of God. You see, the church in Thessalonica recognized that in the same way the words spoken by Jeremiah or Moses or Micah in the Old Testament were words inspired by God, that's so too, Paul's words to the church are words that are inspired by God. In recognizing the nature of Paul's words, well, they accepted what he said in their heart of hearts for what it really was, the divinely inspired Word of God.

Friends, this is exactly how we too are called to receive God's Word. What we have here in the 66 books of the Old Testament and New Testament today. Understand that when we open God's Word in the Bible, we have before us, yes, the words of prophets and apostles who lived in history men. But ultimately, these aren't merely the words of man. This is the divinely inspired, infallible, that means without error, and supremely authoritative Word of God. We as the people of God are called to receive it as no less than that.

You know, historically, some of the most brilliant theologians down to the most average Christians and everywhere in between, have long recognized that the Bible is no ordinary book. But rather that it's a book that bears divine qualities and that shows itself simply in the reading and study of it to be the very Word of God. What are some of those qualities?

One of the qualities mentioned in our confessional standards, the Westminster Confession of Faith, puts it like this. They say, "that the Bible possesses a certain doctrinal and theological unity." Understand that although God used a diversity of humans to pen what's before us over the course of 1500 years from various places, who wrote in various languages, there is a remarkable cohesion and consistency to all of it. All the 66 books we find in the Bible work together to tell one grand story, and each part agrees with the other parts in their whole. We also find that when we dive into the Bible that this is a beautiful book. It's a theologically majestic book. Unveiling significant truths that humble us as readers when we read it by faith. In all of these ways, the Bible reflects its divine author, its divine source, and proves itself to be no ordinary book.

Now, even if this is, objectively speaking, what the Bible is, even if some don't recognize that, well, then we would do well as Christians today, at the very least, to read and to see the Bible for what it is. In fact, theologian Charles Hodge has written, "The best evidence of the Bible's being, the Word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself." Throughout history, this is what so many Christians who have opened the word have found. Theologian Michael Kruger, in one of his excellent books, cites the example of a second century convert to Christianity by the name of Tatian, whose encounter with the Bible convinced him of just that, that this is the Word of God. Tatian reportedly wrote, "I was led to put faith in these scriptures by the unpretending cast of the language, the inartificial character of the writers, the foreknowledge displayed of future events, the excellent quality of the precepts."

This is what the church father Augustine discovered, too. Who took up the Bible and read it and was struck to the heart by it. This is what the Bible would have us do to pick it up, read it regularly, see the divine qualities in it, and grow in your conviction like the church in Thessalonica did in theirs. That this is the Word of God, something worth giving our whole lives to uphold.

So, as an aside, if you have doubts this morning about the authenticity of the Bible or whether this really is what it claims to be, well, there are first a number of resources that I'd love to point you to. Above everything else, I'd simply advise you to pick it up and read it. Know that as we do that in faith, the Bible doesn't just prove itself to be, although it does indeed do that, but it also works upon us too. The author of Hebrews and perhaps one of the most well-known passages in the New Testament, tells us this. He writes, "The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword. Piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." The Word of God proves itself to be the Word of God. When we pick it up and read it like so many others throughout church history have done, it's a book that works upon us as well.

In fact, this is exactly what Paul claims next at the end of verse 13. Notice that at the end of verse 13, he tells the church that the word which they heard and accepted is the same word that's now, "at work in you believers." Understand that though the Bible is a product, of course, of people who have lived in history. It details a number of historical events. It's also not a book that's stuck in history, either. Through the Spirit who inspired the apostles and the prophets to pen and write what they did in their own day. The Word of God powerfully works upon us as the people of God in our own day. In convicting us of our sins as we read it, and encouraging us in the hope of the Gospel as we read about the Gospel, and then in spurring us on in our sanctification and in making us more certain in the process of the Gospel we confess.

So putting all of this together. Do the Scriptures have that effect on you? Do you recognize the Bible for what it is? Then do you handle it in a way that's fitted to what we have in our possession?

Let me tell you a story. One of the oldest complete Bibles that's in existence today is a Bible called Codex Vaticanus. It's a Bible, a really old Bible, that dates from around the fourth century A.D. We have plenty of other Bible manuscripts that are older than that, but this is I think, the oldest complete Bible. Well, a few years ago, the owners of Codex Vatican's, the Vatican, produced a very limited number of exact copies of this Bible. The copies were so precise that even the paper was stained in the same places as the original. Interestingly, one of my seminary professors was somehow able to purchase one of these expensive copies for the seminary I went to, for nerds like me to enjoy.

Even though this was a copy that wasn't 1700 years old, like the original, it still had to be handled when he would pull it out with incredible care. It was a really expensive copy, for one thing. The paper was incredibly fragile, and because you couldn't get oil from your skin on it, you had to wear these white gloves every time you thumbed through this table sized Bible. In short, it had to be handled incredibly delicately and any time the professor broke it out, this heavy table sized Bible, it was a dramatic kind of event as we all stood around it and thumbed through it carefully with these white gloves on.

Now, even though there's nothing theologically significant and the actual age of a copy of the Bible or the technology it uses, it's not the paper or the ink that makes the Bible the Word of God. There's something of a parable in this, I think, into how we're called to handle the word in whatever format we end up handling it today. You see whether we read the Word of God in a printed Bible or on a Bible app on your phone, whether our Bible is leather bound or not, and whether our Bible is 1700 years old or fresh off the printing press, we're still called to value God's word with that kind of care and gravitas as we approach it.

So ask yourself the question, is that my approach to this book? On the one hand, this is a question that everyone who has any kind of responsibility in teaching the Word of God should ask him or herself. Even if the only context you have for doing that is in your home or with your family.

Well, recognizing that, of course, there are a lot of good books out there that help us wrestle through the content of the Bible or help us understand ourselves better or the world. At the end of the day, there's only one book in existence that's living and active. So does that book have pride of place in the wisdom that you seek to instill among those entrusted to your care? When you open the Bible, if you're entrusted with teaching it at any kind of level, do you handle it in a way that's fitted to the kind of book it is? Understand that as teachers, we have a responsibility not just to open up this book and shoot from the hip, but to devote intentional time of study and prayer so that we would proclaim it out of a place of thoughtfulness and care that's fitted to what this is.

But on the other hand, this is also a question that every Christian who hears and handles the Word of God is called to ask him or herself too. First do you recognize and appreciate the weight and value of God's word by actually turning to the word and reading it? If we really believed what we rightly confess about the word and what Paul claims about it, then this should be a regular and indispensable staple of our spiritual diet.

Then, second, when we hear the word preached or taught, or we study it ourselves on our own, do we really hunger to know God better through it? Do we spend the time to plunge its depths or are you really only looking to check a box to say you've done your Bible reading and all will be good? Ask yourself the question, Do I really appreciate and value God's word as the life giving nourishment that it is?

With this question in mind? The probing question about how we understand the nature of God's word and then functionally approach God's word that pull now transitions in verses 14 through 16 into something else. It's where we learn that it's only when we believe and receive God's word for what it is that we'll have any hope of enduring the reproach and affliction that God throughout history calls his people to walk in.

Expect Opposition to God's Word

So this leads to our second point, where we are called to expect opposition to God's word. Notice that when we turn to verses 14 through 16, what we come to find out, among other things, that the church in Thessalonica was probably learning the same lesson that Wycliffe and others throughout church history had to learn the hard way. Namely that holding to the conviction that the apostolic word and by extension the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. Well, that can be a conviction that brings cost when we hold to it. This is what Paul reflects upon in verse 14, as he continues to thank God that the church treated his words for what they are and was so convinced by them that they were willing to endure affliction and suffering for that.

In giving thanks for the church in this way, Paul reminds them right out of the gate that they also weren't alone in this approach either. Notice in verse 14 that Paul reminds the church that when they endured suffering and affliction, whatever that looked like, for holding fast to the Word of God as delivered by Paul, well, notice that they were actually imitating somebody else. In doing that, Paul tells us that they are imitating the churches in Judea, who likewise held fast to the word and willingly endured affliction and suffering in their own contexts for doing so.

Now it's not clear if Paul has one particular event in mind when he cites the suffering of the churches in Judea. Just a quick factoid, the region of Judea, we think of the modern day Israel, the Palestinian Levant, that's the place that he's referring to. We don't know exactly what the churches were suffering in that area or what Paul might have had in mind when he mentions this. We do know from elsewhere in the New Testament, specifically in the Book of Acts, that early Jewish converts to Christ who lived in Judea and in Jerusalem, well, they often suffered quite a bit at the hands of unbelieving Jewish leaders. Even Paul was one of those ones who persecuted the church initially in the region of Judea.

To cite just one example, we might think of the so called first Christian martyr Stephen. In Acts chapter seven, we hear about this guy named Stephen, one of the first deacons in the church, who's arrested for preaching the gospel. And we read how Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrin, which would have been the Jewish leaders of the day in Jerusalem. A pretty intimidating atmosphere. In that context, Stephen is forced to give a defense for preaching to other Jews that Jesus is the eternal Son of God and the answer to all of the promises of God found in the Old Testament. Something the Jewish leaders considered blasphemous.

In the course of his long speech that comprises the entirety of Act seven. I'm not going to read it; you can go there on your own. Stephen, we find offends these Jewish leaders down to their core. When he turns the tables on them and he accuses them, these ostensibly righteous Jewish leaders of acting like so many of their ancestors in the Old Testament, who, while claiming the status of God's true people, actually opposed God, his word and his purposes. Stephen says, basically, because you stand opposed to Christ, because you're culpable in Christ's crucifixion, and now for opposing the promulgation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Stephen basically equates those Jewish leaders with those in the Old Testament who killed the true prophets of God and who hindered the true Word of God from going forth. For this accusation, well, Stephen is then in turn stoned and becomes one of the first Christian martyrs.

Now, one of Stephen's main points there in Acts chapter seven is basically that it's unfortunate but true that it's never been unusual for God's true people, those who have held fast to the Word of God to suffer for doing so. Many of the true prophets of God from the Old Testament suffered at the hands of their fellow countrymen. Think of Jeremiah being one example of that. The Jewish converts to Christ in Paul's own day, as he tells us here, suffered at the hands of unbelieving Jews. Now Paul, in our text, places the suffering of this predominantly gentile non-Jewish congregation in Thessalonica in this long tradition that spans a millennia, going back of suffering for the word.

Now in placing them alongside the Jewish converts to Christ in Judea, he also reminds them that together with them, they belong to the one people of God, which is, to be sure, a great encouragement for these new converts. But he also reminds them that it's not unusual, and in fact it should be expected, that they would suffer for holding fast to truth. Understand, this has always been a hallmark of the people of God.

You see, the Word of God has always been offensive. Even today holding fast to the Word of God out of a deep and abiding conviction of the nature of what this is still incurs derision and affliction from those in our world. We should expect that. Yet we should also know that when we face derision or insults or the full-fledged affliction like the church in Judea faced, we are ultimately imitating the faithful who have gone before us. Friends, that's a better camp to be in.

If those who hold fast to God's Word, like Paul and Stephen, the Church and Thessalonica and even Wycliffe, who came much, much later, if they are bound to suffer affliction for living under the authority of God's Word and for accepting it for what it is. When we turn to verses 15 through 16, we learn that though affliction, this kind of affliction is of course distressing. It should be expected, but it's distressing in the short term. Well, Paul then reminds us, he reminds the people of God that in the long term, the situation is categorically more dire for those who stand opposed to God's word and God's purposes.

Notice in verses 15 through 16 that it seems like Paul goes on this mini digression or tangent. He mentioned at the end of verse 14 how the Jews opposed the churches in the region of Judea and how in doing that they ultimately opposed God's Word. Now in versus 15 through 16, he begins to pile up evidence, accusations against the unbelieving Jews in Judea. He accuses them of being those who killed the prophets and the Lord. You know, that's what Stephen also says in Acts chapter seven. He accuses them of driving us out, which is the very reason that Paul and his companions were forced to leave Thessalonica in Act 17 and then penned this letter to the church. He says that they displease God. After all, if you stand against God's son, you displease God. Then finally they oppose all mankind. How do they do that? Well, according to Paul, they stand in the way of the proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles so that they might hear the word, become the people of God and live in right relationship with God, which is the very hope of mankind.

Now, these accusations that Paul levels against the unbelieving Jews in his own day, I think on the surface of them sound quite harsh. So much so that some in modern years have actually accused Paul of being anti-Semitic. Of course, that's not the case, because elsewhere in Paul's letters, we find that he also implicates the Romans in the death of Christ. He implicates evil spiritual forces in the death of Christ. Paul's pretty opposed to idolatry of all sorts wherever he finds it. So, as Greg Beal puts it, I like how he says it. He says, "Paul wasn't anti-Semitic, but he was anti-sin. Like Israel's prophets, he declared judgment on sin wherever he found it, even in himself."

But it is true that he reserves some rather serious charges against the unbelieving Jews of Judea in his own day. Perhaps one of the reasons he does that is because they should have known better. They had the Scriptures. They had a biblical foundation that the Gentiles did not. Yet, in rejecting Christ and opposing Paul, they are in essence rejecting the Word of God. The one who all the entirety of the Word of God points to and finds its source in. So Paul declares in verse 16 that they have, as a result of what they've done in verse 15, "filled up the measure of their sin." Just like their ancestors who opposed the prophets. He's basically saying here that in their opposition to Christ, it's as if the cup has now overflowed such that Paul can then claim in verse 16 that wrath has come upon them at last.

Now, there's a lot of debate among commentators, as I'm sure you can imagine, concerning just what this wrath that's already come upon unbelieving Jews in Paul's day was precisely. Some look back to events just prior to Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians and point to an event like the Jewish expulsion from Rome that happened under Emperor Claudius in 44 AD, when Jews were kicked out of the city in mass. They say, well, that must be the judgment that Paul has in mind here. Others see this claim as a reference to 70 A.D. when the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. As if Paul sees this event as so certain that even though he's writing here 20 years before that happened, he's able to speak of it in the past tense. That's possible, too.

Whatever the historical form of God's wrath that's already come on unbelieving Jews that Paul has in mind, I don't think we can entirely be sure about what it was. The historical manifestation will most certainly one day give way to an even greater and ultimate form of God's wrath, that will most certainly come upon all unbelief at the end of the age. In short, there has been and will be judgment against all who stand opposed to God's word. That's Paul's point in this passage.

Now, understand that when Paul claims, as he does here, that judgment has come upon unbelieving Israel at last. That doesn't mean, he's not saying here, that those unbelieving Jews in his own day who presently oppose him and the churches in Judea and Thessalonica and ultimately oppose the Word of God are somehow people who are past the point of redemption. As if they could never be forgiven, should they turn from their sin and place their faith in Christ. Paul himself is an example to say otherwise. But it does mean that for those who remain blinded in their sin, for those who stand opposed or are deaf to God's life-giving message in his Word at any age, will in the end sadly be judged for opposing God and his word.

Understand that, though there always have and always will be attempts to silence God's Word. In Paul's day, it came from people in Thessalonica. It came from other unbelieving Jews in Judea. In our own day, it happens in persecuted nations all around the world. Ultimately, at the end of the day, know that God's word cannot ultimately be silenced.

Let me tell you a story. When I was a kid, there was one year I recall where my mom and dad caved and finally got me a telescope. It was something I wanted for a long time and every time we would go into this one store in the mall, that was still a thing when I was a kid. I would gravitate towards the telescopes and remind my parents and subtle and not so subtle ways, you always think you're more clever as a kid looking back on it, you're not, how much I wanted one. So one year they finally caved and they got me one. Yet, as soon as I started putting this new piece of equipment to use, I realized quickly that in order to maximize its potential, you had to get as far away from light pollution as you could.

You see, at first, I attempted to stargaze from my room. I put the telescope in my room, put it pointed out my window, and made sure the lights were turned off in the house. But that wasn't nearly good enough because of all the lights in the neighborhood. So next I took the telescope to a field close to my house, but that wasn't much better. There were still lights in the neighborhood everywhere. So one evening my dad and I drove, I thought, far enough away out of town to a remote park. But even there we weren't quite far enough away from the haze of the city lights. As remote as we were, I still remember being able to hear the hum of traffic in the distance. It seemed that no matter where I went, I couldn't quite escape the light.

Now, while that is bad news for any novice astronomer, in another sense, that's also the very hope that our passage leaves us with. You see, just as I could never quite escape the ambient light of civilization, so too the Lord has preserved a faithful gospel witness in this world. Such that the light of His Word will never be extinguished. That, friends, is incredibly good news.

Now, to be sure, there will always be attempts in our world to do just that. We can look to examples throughout the history of the church, all throughout the world where there have been everyone from those who profess Christ, who would seem to be insiders, think about Wycliffe's own day, to the most militant atheists, all of whom have sought to stamp out faithful heralds of the Word of God and even the word itself.

Yet, just as the Lord preserved 7,000 who did not bow their knee to Baal in Elijah's day, the Lord preserves a faithful gospel witness in our own day as well. While that should be a great encouragement to us, and it should be. It also leaves us with a question that we would do well to ask ourselves, too. Are you willing to abide in God's Word, even if it should bring affliction for you? Even if accepting it the way that Paul would have us accept it issues in contempt from your neighbors? The church in Thessalonica answered that question with a resounding yes. They love the Lord and His Word more than they did the bounty of this world. But what about you?

Well, you if you think about that question and as we prepare to close and transition into receiving the visible word in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, let me leave us with this closing thought. Don't give up on being students of God's word. Understand that we never grow past God's Word. Even after we hear the same things over and over and over again, the Spirit illuminates to our minds and hearts the things we need to hear. Because the God who authors the Scriptures is also the author of our hearts as well.

I once had a seminary professor who wrote a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, confess that he's read over 1000 books. I can't imagine this, but 1000 books on the Sermon on the Mount alone. And is still struck in fresh ways every time he reads those three chapters in Matthew's gospel, Matthew 5-7. You see, we never move past God's word and therefore don't ever give up on being students of God's Word, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.

Pray with me. Gracious Heavenly Father, you are the God who speaks to your people. Lord, we can, of course, look outside and see in the book of nature the ways that you reveal yourself to the world. But Lord, in a special way, you have given us all we need to know about life and godliness, how we can be in a right relationship with you through your holy, inspired and inerrant word. Father, I pray that we would be a people, a church that hungers and thirsts above everything else to know you through your word. Help us to be students who diligently pursue truth in and through your word. And help us to evaluate any wisdom that we hear from the world against the wisdom of the word that you give to us and preserve for us in your Holy Scriptures. We ask all this in Christ's name. Amen.