A Life Pleasing to God: Soul Renovation
Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16. Discussion points: The word of God refers to any revelation of who God is, we have to be active and alert to kill the sin in our lives through God’s power, Jesus wants to renovate our hearts to more perfectly reflect the gospel.
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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:13-16] 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 in your believers. For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God and Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same thing from your own countrymen as they did. The Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and opposed all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved so as always to fill the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Good job, guys. All right, I'm gonna start with one of those awkward first date questions, OK? if your soul was a home. How would the real estate agent list it? Would you be a real fixer upper, which if you've ever done real estate shopping in this area, you know that's shorthand for a piece of junk, for something that's been sitting there dilapidated, the roof's caving in, the foundation's cracked, everything's wrong, but it has real potential. $2 million please. Have you neglected your soul for years pushing the feelings deep down into the fixer upper stage?
Maybe your soul would be listed as a historic home. OK, again, that's a red flag if you see that historic home means beautiful on the outside, but in order to do any work on it, you not only have to get a permit, you have to ask an entire society of old ladies if you're allowed to touch your home. And it's often times quite difficult and so when you get to the inside it's like the electricity was installed by Benjamin Franklin himself and it's like what am I supposed to do with this thing, but maybe you are your your soul might resemble that in some ways maybe you grew up in a home where. The gospel was taught when you grew up in a church you know the historical reliability of everything and you have that good kind of like outward appearance of religion, but inwardly it's all outdated you're not sure what's happening and you really have doubts yourself about what's what's going on.
Some of you might have a soul that's it's like one of those homes that the real estate agent is ashamed to put pictures of online because it's been filled with hoarders for the past 50 years and so you've got newspapers from like the 90s laying around. And maybe your soul is just so cluttered that you're afraid to ask anyone to come into it. You're afraid of what it might look like.
And then others of us, we might have souls like those houses in Newburyport that are on the news every time that there's a nor'easter, you guys know the ones I'm talking about, right? Every single time there's a major storm they go out there and they film these homes on the beach in Newburyport and, they're just waiting on them to fall in the ocean, I mean. Literally they are waiting on the make great TV, be a terrible thing to happen, but they're, they're ready for it to happen. And so maybe you've got these great views and ambitions, but you're susceptible to sudden disaster. When all falls in.
What is the condition of your soul? How would you describe it? People often people oftentimes say things like, I'm gonna take some time to work on myself. And that's all fair and good, but. Maybe this morning you can take some time to invite God to work on you. I guarantee that he is more skillful than you are, Adam. And so let's just take a moment to pray. This is what we're doing today is we're gonna take a moment to ask the Lord to work on us. And I would invite you to pray with me, so if you would like to, you can bow your head. And make the these words your words.
God, I'm inviting you to work on my soul this morning. However you want to renovate my inward being, I'm receptive. You can be the architect and and the contractor. I trust whatever you want to do. Amen.
So we're going through a series working slowly through the book of 1 Thessalonians, mainly just like a few verses at a time, 4 more verses today. Last week we did 4 verses today we do 4 verses and we're really camping out on verse 13 today because I believe that verse 13 teaches the main thing about this passage and then verses 14 through 16. are the kind of implications of verse 4 verse 13. So I'm going to read verse 13 for us one more time. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive 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.
So let me recap that. What Paul is saying is he's saying that when we came to you the Thessalonians, we preached a word to you and you accepted it not just as our opinion but as the actual word of God and that word of God is at work in your heart and your lives and it's apparent to even us who are far away, it's apparent that God is working in your life like that. It's God's word that's doing the renovation in your hearts.
And so as we explore this passage, we're going to look at it and with 3 different points. First, what do we mean by God's word? Second, how does God's word do the work in our hearts? And third, how do you know that God's word is working in you? So first, what do we mean by God's word in this? Most of the time when we are reading the Bible, and most of the time as Christians, when we talk about God's word, what we tend to think about is this right here, is it not? When I say God's word is a lamp into my path. Then what am I thinking about? I'm thinking about the scriptures in front of me and surely the scriptures are God's word. Anything that is a revelation from God is the word of God. In Psalm 119, it says, I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Obviously, the Psalm is just talking about the law of the Lord, storing up the law of the Lord that he might not sin against, but the word, word in the Bible in ancient times has a far wider semantical range.
So the word in Greek for word is logos. Everybody say logos. That's an easy one, OK? lambda omicron gamma omicron sigma, OK? L O G O S, Logos. And what logos means is word, but it has a wider range than that because dating all the way back to the 6th century BC we see the word logos being used by philosophers of the day to talk about the underlying idea of reality behind all things. They saw the Logos as the divine principle that made sense of everything else. It's like a golden key. It's the thing that all the universe is based upon. And so this wasn't just religious philosophers, this was all philosophers. It was the stoics talked about this. Plato talked about this. We see philosophers talking about the, the logos, the sacred thing that made the universe work, made it all make sense.
And so when the gospel author John starts his gospel by saying in the beginning was the Logos. And the logos was with God, and the logos was God. OK. No, no hesitation thus far by the modern philosophers. They would say, OK, I, I get where you're coming from with that. But then the next verse is where the old philosopher heads will turn because what he says is he was in the beginning with God. And not only is the logos here, according to the Gospel author of John, the unifying factor of all of the universe, the logos here is a person. He was with God in the beginning.
So John is making an astounding claim, saying that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the divine Logos that is the key to understanding the entire world. It's an amazing claim. And so when we see this thing about the word of God, what that's talking about when we see Word of God in the scripture anywhere, it's talking about revelation about who God is. You can have word of God as the scripture, you can have Word of God as the prophet receiving a message from God and delivering a word of God to the people. You can have the word of God being the divine law as Jesus Christ Himself. You can have the word of God being the message of the good news of the gospel, which is the revelation of God's heart for humans that he doesn't want us to live separate from him, but he sent his son to die the death for our sins that we might have relationship with God.
And so all of these are a way to talk about the word of God. And so which one is he talking about here? When Paul says that the word of God was at work within you, well, like I said, we normally would think about scripture that the scriptures at work within us, but here I'm pretty sure that's not what he's talking about because in First Thessalonians, that's like the first letter that Paul wrote and so he can't be talking about the New Testament. He might be talking about the Old Testament, but more likely he's talking about this gospel message that he came to preach to the Thessalonians that they received as the word of God themselves. And so here in Thessalonians, Paul is telling them, thank you. I'm so glad that you received the this gospel message, not as a word from men, but as the word of God, revelation of who God is, himself.
And so, point number 2, how does God's word do its work? If his word is any revelation about himself, but here he's talking about the gospel message of what Jesus Christ came to do, how does that work in us? Let's remind ourselves of the verse one more time, OK? And in verse 13 again, and we also thank God constantly for this, that you, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us. OK, so if he was talking about the scriptures, it wouldn't just be that you heard from us because, you know, surely he's teaching at the temple, they, they know the scriptures it's not something that they just heard from him so that you heard from us, you accepted it not as word of men, but as what it really is the word of God, which is at work in you.
And so how does the word of God work in us? OK, a few different ideas here. First, Paul says the word that is at work in you believers. We oftentimes think about the gospel as something that we accept once at the beginning of our lives, and then. We live the best that we can to glorify God after that. That it's something for new Christians, but not as continual Christians, but here, what does he say? He says that the word is at work in you believers. He's not saying that You become a Christian through the gospel, and then you move on to bigger and better things. He's saying that the gospel is actually the thing that matures you as a Christian. It doesn't just save you, but it continues to save you. It continues to be at work in you.
I love this old story from Martin Luther, where Martin Luther, he would preach the gospel week in and week out at church, and one day an older lady came up to him and said, Pastor Luther, every week you preach the gospel, surely we're ready to move on to deeper and better things. And Martin Luther said, Well, whenever you start acting like you've heard the gospel, I'll move on to deeper and better things. It's very Lutheresque, is it not?
The Bible teaches that the gospel is what saves you, but it is also what sanctifies you. The word of God is at work in you believers, continual, this is a present tense verb. It is at work continuing to work in you. It is not something you believe once and then move on from. This is why we have this commitment in our church, and it's one that sometimes people you have to like explain it a little bit, but we have these community commitments in our church. There's 10 of them, and one of them is we speak good news before we give good advice because if you have a friend coming to you that tells you a problem that they're suffering from, your initial reaction is I can give you a word of advice about how to handle that. But what humans most desperately need and what we see in this passage is not just good advice but good news about what God has done for them.
And so if a friend comes to you with a problem, you start. was reminding them of their identity in Christ, of encouraging them toward Christ, and reminding them of how all things are an opportunity to trust him more. And then you might move into some good advice eventually. We do need advice oftentimes in our lives, but we know that it's the word of God that works in us. If we can get to the position of worship in our heart, often times the other things will, will kind of reveal themselves to us and help us to, we'll be able to walk through them with God.
It's not simply that, and this is, let me just clarify this because I think that this, this idea of Christianity gets messed up often. It's not simply that we believe that Jesus is real. And then we try our best to be good people. That's a lie that's made its way into the church about what it means to be a Christian. That's not what it means to be a Christian though. That's a counterfeit Christianity that's slowly suffocating Christians. Instead, we received the word of God, which is the gospel. And then that gospel message does its work from the inside out.
So how does that work? How does that work? Well, first of all, it helps you to see the world in a new light. When you become a Christian, when you trust the the word of God, it's as if you put on some of those goofy looking Apple vision pros, OK? You, you know, the, the goggles that you put on, and those are like augmented reality from what I understand. I've never actually worn a pair. Maybe I should go to the Apple store. You might wanna go afterwards. But you, you put them on, how do they work for visually impaired people such as myself? I don't, I don't know, maybe I can wear my glasses under them, but you, you put them on and you can still see the world, but it gives you more things to be able to interact with basically is the way that these work.
And this is the way that the Christian life works is you see the world the same way, but it's as if you see them with see things with God's eyes. And so the things that you used to think would bring you joy. That nothing else could bring you joy, such as maybe wealth or building your own ego and pride or or whatever it might be some type of hedonism that that might satisfy you for a moment you're suddenly able to see it as God would see it with the with the gospel goggles on and you're able to know that that thing isn't going to bring me lasting joy in life because I see the world the way that God has created it to be. And so God has given us this, ability to see the world in that way.
But not only that, I think the gospel does change you from the inside out, and the more that, honestly, I, I really cannot emphasize this enough, that the gospel is at the heart of all all of our sin at the heart is a belief problem. We're not believing something about who God said he is and what he has promised to do for us. But I will also say this, I'm not trying to tell you, and this is another lie that snuck its way into the church. I'm not trying to tell you that the answer is let go and let God. I think that there's times that you can say that phrase and it's fine, and we know what you mean, OK? I, I'm not, there are times you do need to let go and let God, of course, of course. But if that's your mantra. Then how are you killing the sin in your life before it's killing you? Because when you read all of script, you can't just read one passage, right? That's, that's like a rule of reading the Bible. Don't just read one verse. You have to read the whole Bible and read it in, in context because let go and let God, if you use that to the place that I've seen some people do it, it almost means that like you don't fight against sin.
But the scriptures very clear that we do have to. Romans chapter 6. It says this, for the death that Jesus died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. OK, so that's the gospel. You believe this. Paul always puts the gospel imperatives after the indicatives. That means that he tells us the truth about the gospel and then he tells us what to do with it. So Jesus did this, so verse 11, so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin because of what Christ has done for you and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So what does that mean? It means you have to kill the sin in your life. You, you can't just let go and let God. You have to pursue after God and run after him. He has completed the work for you. He's defeated sin on your behalf, but you consider yourself dead to those things.
If we look to God, the founder and perfecter of our faith, our holy Savior, who calls us into His kingdom and into his glory, but that doesn't mean that we just sit back. He is at work in us, but we run alongside with him. We don't contribute anything to our salvation, but after we are saved, we follow after him with all that we have. He contributes everything to our salvation. So there's a lot of nuance there theologically. I'd be happy to answer questions about that, but for now, I'm just gonna move on to verse 3, to, to number 3, the third point for today.
And it's this, how do you know the word is working in you? How do you know if this is true for you? It's it's hard to tell that construction is solid unless you put it through something like a stress test, right? For example, those three little pigs were quite happy in their homes until the stress test of the big bad wolf came along. And when he blew, you saw which one had the faulty construction, which ones, and which one had the good construction in their life, which one had had the best renovation. And so similarly, the best way to tell if the word of God is at work in your heart, is by how you'd respond to adversity and challenges to your faith. By how you respond to adversity and challenges to your faith.
So for Thessalonica, let's look and see what happened. Now this is, this is gonna get kinda heavy pretty quick. Verse 14 for you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same thing from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind 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. Oh, you know, just what we're looking for at the end of the sermon is like a full exposition of the wrath of God, for you all today. I'm not gonna be able to go into it all, but I will say this, that this isn't just Paul. This is Paul quoting, drawing from Matthew and, drawing from Jesus in Matthew 23.
So Jesus is talking about the Pharisees there and how they're filling up their sins, and the wrath of God is falling upon them, and here Paul is drawing from that, and he's basically saying people who think that they have life figured out, these religious people, but without any humility, they're inviting God's judgment upon themselves, is what he's saying. And so he's using this example of how the word of God has worked in the lives of the Thessalonians. He, he knows that the word of God is at work in the lives of the Thessalonians, because when they suffered under persecution. They suffered and stayed faithful to the gospel. They had a stress test. They were rejected by those around them. But yet their faith remained true.
Those around them, they, they didn't necessarily want, they weren't trying to be evil people necessarily. They thought that what they were doing was right, but yet they were displeasing God and opposing all mankind by preventing the good news of the gospel to go forward. I know that many of you have your own version of stress tests going on in your life right now. Whatever that might be for you, relationships or marriages that are broken. Jobs that feel pointless, boring, depressing. Debilitating physical illness, financial struggles that keep you up at night, the pressure to conform to a culture that rejects what you believe, the weight of grieving someone or something that is now gone or soon to be gone.
But Jesus, the great renovation contractor of the soul, he is ready to work in you. I don't know how many of you guys have worked with a contractor before. Have, have you worked with a contractor before? I get a few giggles because, you, you probably know what's happening, contractors, there are some good ones, OK? But let's talk about the ones that aren't, uh. This past over the past couple of years, I have these screen doors on my house that are terrible. I mean they squeak the whole neighborhood knows when I'm entering or exiting my house because it's like what. And it's just like it swings in the in the in in the wind, it's terrible, it's, it's horrid and I've paid two different guys. Enough money to replace this door and they've both run off with my money and refused to answer a phone call or an email after that. To where I have now just done YouTube University. I know how to replace the, the door. I've ordered the doors, OK, I'm just gonna replace it myself in, in, in about 3 weeks when they come in.
Contractors, the thing with the contractor is you, you never really know when they're gonna show up, OK? They'll tell you one thing. They're not necessarily coming that day. It's like, oh yeah, something happened, sorry, you know, and you, you can't do anything about it. You're just stuck there. It's like I don't know how to fix the plumbing in my house, so like, OK, you're gonna come tomorrow? OK, yeah, I guess. And then they come in like 3 weeks and you're like, well, you're here, so get to work I guess. I, I, you know, I'm not ready for you to, I have a party today but. Like you're here, OK, that's, that's what we're doing. I, we gotta get it done and I don't know if you're ever gonna come again, so just do it right now, please finish the work. It's not like what you see on TV, you know, and TV they come in, they demo it they replace it, it's like one week later, let's move the boss and see your new home. No, no, never. They leave the job half finished or almost finished. They're constantly trying to upcharge you for things that they that were unforeseen that they totally should have seen and they probably did, but they're just gonna get more money.
Jesus isn't like that. He's not. The renovator of your soul is not like that. He doesn't leave you hanging. In fact, the scripture says that he's waiting at the door. Revelation chapter 3, he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me. Jesus, he doesn't cut corners. He finishes the job, he's got all the finishing touches. Philippians chapter one, he says, and I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Maybe you feel like you have a half finished project. And it's time to invite the contractor to come back into your soul. And to continue the work that he has begun.
Sometimes the work of the word of God requires a bit of demo. And for some of us it's more demo than others, and especially if you're at the beginning of this Christian life, you're gonna see that there's walls that keep coming down and as they come down. It's always replaced with something better. He wants to build in you a a beautiful home. He wants you to experience the glory of God where he can dine with you and be with you, but sometimes he's got to take out some of the junk in your life. He's got to declutter things so that you can hear the voice of God. He's got to take out the walls of resentment in your heart.
How does, what does God want to do in your heart today? What work is the word eager to do in your life? And this is just where I'm gonna end things today and let you meditate on this for a moment. What word what work does the word of God want to accomplish in your life? Just, just take a moment, close your eyes and and consider. Take a deep breath in. What work Needs to happen in your soul, maybe you haven't looked around in a little while, look around. Does God want you to grow in patience? Oh, that's, I was told never to pray for patience. But it is a virtue, it's a beautiful thing. Does God want you to grow in humility? Has your life been too much about yourself? Generosity Maybe God wants to add a contentment wing to your home. Where you can finally be happy with what he's given to you. Discontentment, it's such an, an evil thing that that plagues most of us. Maybe he wants to tear down those walls of resentment, declutter the distractions.
Friends, don't resist the demo. Know that he's going to build something for you with his word if you go to him and ask him to. I invite you to come back here and each week we, we take a moment. To recognize what Christ has done for us through a sacred meal called communion. And if you are inviting the contractor of the soul and your heart and into your life, I encourage you to come and receive this meal that what does Jesus do when he's standing at the door waiting, knocking? He wants to come in and dine with us, right? And so this is like a little appetizer of our eternal reality of being with Christ. And if you are a Christian here today, you're following after Christ, we invite you to receive this meal. You don't have to be, have everything put together, the word of God is at work in you. And if you would like to pray with someone today, if God's doing work in your heart, if you need him to do more work in your heart, we'll have some prayer counselors in the back, that would love to pray with you today. With that being said, let me invite you to stand and we'll pray and respond to God.
Father, we, we invite you now. We invite your Holy Spirit to do the work of renovation in our heart, that the gospel would continue to move us and change us, that the gospel would continue to shape us in the image of Christ. Father, we pray for anyone here who is resistant to demo day, that they would let the walls come down and that they would let and that they would trust that your word is better, that the life that you have for them is better than the life that they can build themselves that. They're really just kind of building the straw houses, the, the wood twig houses, but that God you want to build them something with a strong foundation that will last throughout all eternity. And so God, we pray that you would help us to encounter you today. Would your Holy Spirit fill us. God, thank you for the sacred meal, may we take it in a way that honors you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.