Trembling at the Word of God: Preparing Our Hearts to Receive the Word.
Father we cry out with the Apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Thou hast granted unto our hands and to our minds and to our eyes to see and to know and verily to handle thy Word. And yet oh Lord, we are conscience that we have not approached thy Word as we ought. We have not taken off our shoes, as it were, as we stood on holy ground. I pray that thou wouldst remove from our hearts those besetting sins, those vestiges that continue to cause our minds to wander and our hearts to turn away from thee. Turn us back to the right paths, I pray; grant to us not only to be knowers and hearers, but doers of thy Word. For I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
We should look at 1 Thess. 1:6, 7 in the light of receiving the preached Word. In verse five we saw how the Word of God came to Thessalonica. We examined the manner of Paul's preaching. We looked at Paul as a watchman who came to warn. In coming to warn, he brought not just the words of man, but the very Word of God. As he preached, he preached boldly; he preached clearly; he preached fervently. That is how the Word came. It came in word, in power, in conviction. It came, in a word, with the Holy Spirit. And now in verses six and seven, Paul begins to tell us not only how the Word came, but how the Word was received. If last week I was preaching to the preacher, then this week I'm preaching to the hearers as well.
First, before Paul begins describing how the Word was received, he explains what are the results of receiving the Word. And we will return to that. But his first thought is to link the gospel to their afflictions.
The Thessalonians believers had received the gospel in much affliction: so much that Paul was required to leave town. Those who preached the gospel in Thessalonica were persecuted and those who received the gospel were persecuted as well. The authentic gospel, the true gospel, the gospel which comes from God will always arouse hostility in man. Because it challenges man's authority, the Gospel is not easy to receive. We are not predisposed to receiving the Gospel. Why? Because the Gospel tells us we're not God's friends; we're His enemies. We're not on His side; we're rebels. We're not able to save ourselves; we're totally unable to do anything good. The gospel is not just counter-cultural; it's counter-everything-about-us-that-we-like. We must be humbled before the Gospel. The Gospel not only has to challenge, but to kill. It has to slay human pride. And so we see open hostility in Thessalonica. But even that open hostility, even that persecution, even that affliction did not deter those believers. They welcomed the message, Paul says, in spite of their sufferings; in the midst of their afflictions.
Not only did they receive it, not only did they sit back and say "well at least we have the Word of God," they received it Paul says, with the joy of the Holy Ghost. Not only was the Gospel being preached by the power and conviction of the Holy Spirit, it was being received with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit. And I want you to understand here, that when we have the phrase, "from the Holy Spirit" or "of the Holy Spirit," what we have is the fact that the joy came from the source of the Holy Spirit; that we have here in this phrase a construction that indicates a source. The joy came from the Spirit, and it was experienced in the midst of the persecution. The persecutions were not the source of joy. Persecution doesn't cause joy. Affliction doesn't cause joy. But what does cause joy is when the Holy Spirit lifts us above our circumstances or beyond our circumstances. So in James 1:2, James does not say the temptation, the trial, the afflictions are the source of joy. Not at all. He says for you to count it a joy; to reckon it a joy. To rejoice because God is going to use those afflictions. The trial is from the Holy Spirit, and the joy is from the Holy Spirit. So even in the midst of affliction those Thessalonian believers had joy. The same Spirit who gave power and assurance to the preachers gave joy to the hearers.
PRINCIPLE. When the Gospel is proclaimed, there is joy in heaven and on earth. Luke 15:7, 10. Acts 8:8, 39. Acts 16:34. What did Jesus warn about the night before he went to the Cross? He said, "in the world ye shall have tribulation. But be of good comfort, I have overcome the world." Be of good cheer. Rejoice. In the world you shall have tribulation. That's hardly the kind of thing we normally associate with "be of good cheer." "Be of good cheer, persecution is coming." It's not the way we normally think. But Jesus had to change the way his disciples thought. Be of good cheer, because in spite of the persecution, and in the midst of persecution, the Spirit will be with you.
THE GOSPEL PRODUCES CHANGED LIVES
And we see furthermore in this passage that they mimicked or they imitated (KJV) both the apostles and the Lord. What happens when a person receives the Gospel? They become followers of the Lord. Profound change takes place. These Thessalonian believers followed the example and teaching of the apostles and they followed Christ. There was no mere assent, but there was a transformation of behavior. Their lives changed.
PRINCIPLE. And this is what it is to receive the Gospel: It is a transformation of your life because of what the Gospel says.
Those who claim to believe without their lives being transformed, have simply deceived themselves into thinking that they have believed.
Therefore, because their lives had changed, because their lives had become imitations of the apostles and of Christ, they in turn became examples to all believers. Four relationships are implicit in 1 Thess. 1:6, 7.
1. Our relationship to the world: Opposition.
2. A relationship with the Holy Spirit: Joy.
3. The third relationship is between the Thessalonian believers and those who had gone before them. The apostles and the Lord. They were imitators of them.
4. And then there is the relationship of the Thessalonians to the church at large, they become examples themselves
So the preachers were marked by truth, conviction and power. The converts were marked by joy, courage, and obedience. The same Spirit that brought about the preaching, the conviction, the power, is the same Spirit that brought about the joy, the courage, and the obedience. Now, when the Spirit works in the lives of a congregation, so that the preacher is preaching from the Spirit, and the congregation is hearing with the joy of the Holy Spirit, lives will change. It is just that simple. God gave us the Word so that our lives would change. He didn't give it to us to make us smarter. He didn't give it to us to bring us into the room of his decrees. He gave it to us to make us more and more like Jesus.
DOCTRINE. The proper hearing of the Word of God results in changed lives for those who receive the message.
If I say the proper hearing, I have implied that there is an improper hearing. We will look at the Scripture mode, the proper mode of hearing the Word of God. And I will divide this for you (I realize it can be divided other ways) into a chronological sequence. We will be looking at this doctrine in three stages.
1. How do we receive the Word of God before the Sermon.
2. How do we receive the Word of God during the Sermon.
3. How do we receive the Word of God after the Sermon.
How do we receive the Word of God? Those of you who come to church whenever the services are being held, how many sermons will you hear this year? Over a hundred. There are 52 weeks, we have two worship services every Lord's Day, not to mention the fact that there are opening exercises, Sunday school, communion addresses. If you live forty more years, you will have heard over 4,000 sermons. Now stop and take stock for just a moment and put this in perspective. How many of these sermons are going to change your life? The Word of God says that all of them should. The Word says everyone of these 4,000+ sermons that you are going to hear over the next forty years (I'm talking a minimum now), everyone of them should change your life. They should change the way you live. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to receive the Word like the Thessalonians were? And yet I'm going to suggest to you that hearing, receiving the Word of God, is an art that few people cultivate. It is a skill if you will, because it requires practice.
I want to give you an Introductory Principle and then in three subsequent sermons I will cover chronologically receiving the Word of God before, during, and after the sermon.
PRINCIPLE: Hearing the Word of God, or having our lives changed as the result of hearing the Word of God is not automatic.
A Sacramentalist believes the sacraments function ex opera operato. The act of eating the bread or drinking the wine or having the water poured upon his forehead automatically does the work of grace. But we don't believe that. Neither do we believe that about the Word of God preached. Neither do we believe that about the Word of God heard. Neither the reading nor the preaching of the Word of God automatically changes our lives. In fact Satan would love for us to believe that it is automatic. If we believe it is automatic, how much effort are we going to expend? None. If it is automatic, why should we? The Sacraments don't change our lives unless mixed with faith, and neither does the Word of God change our lives unless it is mixed with faith.
Mere hearing, that is hearing without receiving, hearing without doing, mere hearing has the same Sacramentalist mindset, that same mentality, that maintains that grace is automatic. We must avoid that error at all costs. The hearing of the Word of God, like the sacraments, is a means of grace when grace is operating. When grace is operating in our hearts and causing our lives to change, when the Spirit is working in us in such a way that we receive the Word of God, then the Word of God is to us a means of grace. And yet you have known, I have known, we have sat under the preaching of the Word of God and gotten up and walked away unchanged. This is the kind of people we are. We are forgetful hearers. James (James 1:22) doesn't warn us about being forgetful hearers because there is no danger of it. He warns us about being forgetful hearers because that's exactly the kind of people we are.
I fear that some of us unless we work to change the manner in which we approach the Word of God, could become monuments, memorials to that Scripture, "These people have honored me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
There is a doctrine in Scripture of right hearing. Just as there is right preaching, there is also right hearing. And so we have the contrary examples of false hearers in Scripture, as well as false prophets.
Ezekiel presents one manner, one way in which people can be false hearers. "Also thou son of man" (God is speaking to Ezekiel) "the children of thy people still are talking of thee by the walls and the doors of the houses. And they speak one to another, everyone to his brother saying, `Come I pray you, hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord.' And they come unto thee, as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words . . . ."
The Lord is not talking about people who persecute the preacher. He's not talking about people who said, "Hey let's go down to the church and make fun of the preacher." The Lord is talking about people who wanted to go to hear what Ezekiel had to say. They referred to him as a man of God. They referred to him as having the Word of the Lord in his mouth. These are called his people. "They come unto me as my people come. And they hear thy word," and here is the indictment, "but they will not do them." "For with their mouth they show much love." Oh they talk about how much they love the Word of the Lord. They go to Ezekiel after the service and say, "Ezekiel, that really spoke to my heart." But it didn't, because their heart goes after their covetousness. "And lo thou art unto them as a very lovely song." What a fine turn of phrase he had. What a fine preacher he is. Oh we love his preaching. But the indictment from the Lord is, "For they hear thy words, but they do them not." If they really loved Ezekiel's words, the Lord's words, they would do them.
God indicts the people of Ezekiel's day not because they despised true preaching, in the sense of heckling the preacher, not in the sense of turning their backs on the preaching and walking away (that was going on as well). But this indictment is for those who loved the preacher. They couldn't get enough of his preaching. The judgment against them is that they sat week after week hearing the Word of the Lord, and didn't do it. They weren't going to a false teacher. They didn't have the wrong source for the Word. They weren't showing disrespect (at least not openly) for the Word of the Lord. They weren't coming to church and heckling the preacher. The indictment was that they didn't do the Word of the Lord.
Who is it that we deceive? Do we have to deceive other people? Don't we start off deceiving ourselves? Doesn't it start off in here, in our own breast? Look at what James says, lest you think this was a problem unique to the Old Testament people of God.
James 1:22. "Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." Isn't James talking to the same sort of people Ezekiel was? Those who love to hear the Word, but don't do it? "For if any be a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he is like to a man who beholds his face in a glass. He beholds himself, and then he goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the deed, this man shall be blessed in his doing."
The problem of the people James is writing to, is once again, not that they were hearing false doctrine, but that they heard the doctrine and somehow got it in their minds that everything was on automatic pilot. That somehow or other they weren't going to have to become doers. They forgot. What was the sermon about? I forgot. How did it affect your life? I forgot. How did you implement it? I forgot. They were forgetful hearers. And James says that a forgetful hearer, one who has deceived himself, is the opposite of a doer of the Word of God. There has to be an implementation of the Word.
So the Introductory Principle to this subject of how to receive, how to hear the Word of God, is that it is not automatic. We have to concentrate on being doers and not just hearers of the Word of God.
I know that some day we will all give an account. Some day we will give an account for the way we received the Word of God. As Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum (Matt. 11:21-23) had heard great words and seen great works, greater words and greater works than in Tyre and Sidon, so Jesus says to them, Woe unto you. It will be worse for you in the day of judgment than for Tyre and for Sidon. For if they had seen these works, if they had heard this word, they would have repented long ago. If it is worse for them, who had a little more light, how much worse will it be for us who have a full canon of Scripture, who have week upon week, sermon after sermon, more than a hundred a year for years, heard the Word of God and not changed? How much sorer judgment do you think there will be for us if these will be beat with few stripes and those will be beat with many stripes? How many more stripes will those be beat who have heard the gospel proclaimed clearly week after week and have refused the yoke of Christ? Hebrews 4:1 "Let us therefore fear." Are you trembling yet? If not, why not? "Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it." Is the Apostle writing to unbelievers? He is writing to the church! Fear lest some of you come short.
OBJECTION. `Ah, but God's not going to let a church member perish is he? I've been hearing the Word of God all my life. I believe it. I believe it from cover to cover.'
ANSWER. Well it was preached to a whole generation, the author says here, to a whole generation that died in the wilderness. "For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world."
We must never presume upon the grace of God. God has made more light available to us than to those Israelites crossing the desert. An entire generation fell in that desert. Their carcasses, Hebrews says, littered the desert. A whole generation of the church died. Why? Because the Word didn't profit them. That generation throughout Scripture, again and again, stands as a memorial to those who hear the Word and don't do it. The Psalms, Nehemiah, Paul in 1 Corinthians, the author here in Hebrews, calls our attention again and again to that generation. `Look, don't be like them!' They stood at the foot of the mountain of God! They heard his voice! But it didn't profit them. Will we be like that? When we lie on our deathbeds, will we be like that generation? Will we be, in our turn, a monument to those who the Word of God did not profit?
Here is what the Bible says. "Let us fear." Let us therefore fear. Why didn't the Word of God profit them? Is it because the Word wasn't quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword? This passage goes on to say that the Word is exactly like that. Why didn't it profit them? Because it wasn't mixed with faith in them that heard it. They ought to have found the fault in themselves, not in the Word.
Look once again at the parable of the sower. Is the fault in the sower? Did the sower simply not have enough seed to go around? Was the fault in the seed? Was some of the seed too old to germinate? The fault was in the soil. What kind of soil are we? Are we that stony soil, that shallow profession, that at the first bit of affliction, we run and hide our heads, and turn aside from the way of the Lord? Will we be the soil where the thorns choke out the seed? Will we be those that have our minds so much on this world, so much on other things, so much on our own cares, that the Word of God is simply choked out in our lives? Will we be like those that the birds come along and pluck the seed out of our hearts to begin with, because there is no grasping of the Word of God, no desire to keep the Word of God?
What is the point that Christ brought at the end of the parable of the sower and soils (Luke 8:18)? You see it is one thing to look at a parable like this and come up with some kind of a theology of seed or of soil. It's another thing to come up with what Jesus wants us to know. "Take heed therefore, how you hear." The point of the parable of the sower and the seed is so that we will take heed to how we hear. What we hear is important. We don't want to be hearing false doctrine. But Jesus' intention in telling this parable was to teach us how to hear. The state of the soil is going to determine the outcome of the planted seed. Therefore strive to hear the Word of God as the good soil. Not only take heed what you hear, but also how you hear.
Our catechisms tell us how to hear the Word of God, that the Word is to be read, preached and heard in such a way that we are fully persuaded of its truth. What does it mean to be fully persuaded? "Yep, I believe that?" No, what it means is that our lives change. The principle, once again, is that change is not automatic.
We will be looking at how we prepare the soil. We are going to be looking at how we hear the Word of God, what is necessary before we come, during the preaching of the Word, and what is necessary after the sermon is preached. We must consciously recognize that when we come to hear the Word of God, whether we hear it from our parents, children; whether we hear if from the preacher; or whether we read it in the Scriptures, when we come into the presence of the Word of God, we need to understand that we are coming into the very presence of God himself. And if we don't have that attitude toward the Word, if we have an attitude of reading critically and determining which parts are true, which parts apply to ourselves, and those that don't we cross out, when we come to the Word of God as judges of the Word we are bringing with us a sub-Christian attitude. It is simply not Christian. Rather, we have to come to the Word of God consciously recognizing that we are coming into the very presence of God himself. Would you tremble at the presence of God? Then you ought to tremble at the Word of God. The old Negro spiritual says, "sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." That is what we should be asking God for, that when we hear, we tremble.
Oh Lord how many times have we come to thy Word without a trembling of heart. How often have we come to thy Word as though we were reading the words of men. We have not trembled as those Thessalonians did of old. We have not trembled as the psalmist did at thy Word. We have not shown or known the fear of God before our faces. We have failed to distinguish ourselves from the wicked. We have failed to follow hard after thy Word. We have failed to do those things that we have seen in thy Word. Lord, we have deceived ourselves, and we forgot. We forgot what manner of people we are. We forgot what manner of God thou art. We forgot the authority of thine eternal Word. Oh Lord renew us we pray by thy Spirit and by thy Word that we might approach thy Word as it is in truth thy command to us, thy warning to us, thy suspended judgment over our heads. Let us fear, I pray oh Lord, lest we too fall into the same condemnation with that generation of thy church that fell in the wilderness. Lord, grant to us to be doers as well as hearers of thy Word, for I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
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