Turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Thessalonians 2. 1 Thessalonians 2, and we're going to be looking at verses 13 through 16 today, and the title of the message this morning is The Word You Received. The Word You Received. So 1 Thessalonians 2, and look with me at verse 13. And let us hear now the word of the Lord. 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. For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God and Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things 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 opposed all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved. So always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's wrath has come upon them at last. There can be no mistake that in tracing out through 1 Thessalonians that we see one of the grand themes that the Apostle Paul has is that of being a herald of the word, and that word being the word of God. The message he proclaims is that not of his own origin or of his own creation, but it has come from God himself. The testimony that this is the Word of God is manifested in what's happened in Thessalonica, the transformation that took place in the lives of these men and women. The repetition of the preaching of the Word, the need for the Word to go forth, the response each human being has to the Word and the power of the Word can sometimes fall on our ears, deaf in a way. Because we become so familiar with it, or we become routine with it, and we think, well, we know that, and we can miss, because we become too familiar, just how central the Word of God is. The very heart of worship is to always be centered around the Word. If you have to hunt to find the Word, it's not worship. Because real biblical worship is maintained, it is governed, it is formed, and its content is the Word of God. We speak often of the ordinary means of grace. How does Jesus minister to His people by His Spirit? And so we speak about what? We sing the word, we read the word, we pray the word, we confess the word, we preach the word, and we see the word in baptism and the Lord's Supper. That's the word. It's the content and it's central to everything. And the word is what marked the ministry of Paul. Paul lays out a defense of his conduct in coming to Thessalonica, that it was a ministry that was driven by the proclamation of the Word. He has set forth his integrity and how he conducted himself, the mission that he carried forth, what marked it, his behavior, as well as those who were with him. But as he did in chapter 1, we see here that he moves from describing his conduct and his behavior there to now giving thanks for how the Thessalonians responded. He gives thanks because God has worked in their hearts. And that work was centered upon the message that had been proclaimed by Paul to the people. So Paul never sees ministry as being caught up in the personality of the speaker, but in the content of the message. And that content was from God himself. And God's grace begins in our hearts when we see, when we hear what Paul says about them, that we hear and receive and accept the word, not as the word of men, but as the word of God. And that impact is not just at the beginning in conversion, but it sustains us. We need to understand that Jesus Christ forms his church by his word, and he sustains his church by his word. So God's spoken to us, and that's not a small matter. That's not a trivial thing. So I want you to see with me this morning, what's the proper response to the word? We received the word, we've heard the word. What does that mean? Well, in verse 13, we see that means accepting the word, And then verses 14 through 16, it's enduring by the word. So the two things to remember, accepting and enduring. So look at verse 13. We must accept the word of God. Verse 13, Paul says, 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. Now, Paul connects the thanksgiving here in this section with the ministry and the reception of the word there in Thessalonica. The way that Paul preached the gospel showed he came with a divine message, not a new philosophy he came up with, not something that he thought in his mind was creative and interesting and that they needed to hear because of that, but it was because God had spoken. and they needed to hear. So in verses 1 through 12, we've seen how Paul states he came not with flattery, not with manipulative speech, not out of greedy ambition or seeking financial gain, but to preach the word, to be a faithful steward. And part of that stewardship was proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ. So he gives thanks. He said, I don't cease to give thanks to God for how you received it, not as the word of Paul, not as the word of mere men, but as the word of the living God." Now, what did he come preaching? What was in the teaching and preaching of Paul? Well, we know, first of all, it was the gospel itself. Paul comes preaching the gospel itself, which means that he preaches about the holiness of God, the purity of his law, how that is the standard by which all men are judged, our sinfulness, and the coming of Jesus Christ, his perfect life. He is the God-man. By extension, therefore, his death and his resurrection, and the command and the call to believe in him and to repent and turn from sin. We know that's a part of his preaching. We know another part of his preaching is the ethical or moral implications that come with the gospel. If the gospel is in our lives, if we believe it, it will change how we live. There's a standard by which we've been called as the people of God. And then, no doubt, the instructions about the church. What do you do when you gather as the church? Baptism, the Lord's Supper. We see that in 1 Corinthians 11. It goes through an extensive description on what we do when we come to the table. So that would have been what Paul came preaching. But don't miss that he came saying, this is the word of the living God. And that word is what is at the heart of the New Testament church. Acts 2.41, so those who received His word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3,000 souls. Acts 8.14, now when the apostles of Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John. Acts 13.44, the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. So we hear this over and over in the book of Acts. The church is created by the word of God and the people of God want to hear the word of God. But the word of the Lord remains forever, and this word is the good news that was preached to you. It's always one thing that's fascinating to me about history. is that you can see in different years what was considered the most profound and impactful new line of thinking, what was the most important issue of the day, and we can keep going down, and most of the time, 90% of the time, the things that mattered the most in 1920, we don't even think about today. They're not our problems, or they're not in vogue. But the word of God, it remains forever. It is still the power of the gospel that saves men and women, regardless of what century, what culture, what country, what time. And that is why when Paul came here, he didn't say, I'm just in another line of interesting philosophers or preachers. I am here bearing the word of the triune God. So Paul and the New Testament writers, they saw themselves in the same way as the Old Testament prophets. We read all the time in the Old Testament, the prophets would say, thus saith the Lord. Here is the word of the Lord. Well, they came saying the same thing in proclaiming and writing the New Testament. That is why Paul gives thanks to God that they, by the power of God, heard the word for what it truly was. Yes, the Lord uses human vessels. He uses means to bring his word to sinners. But it is not the human. It is not our creativity. It is a divine message that the Holy Spirit uses to change hearts and to transform. If this were merely of men... It would be dead and unable to raise the spiritually dead to life. When we have that picture in Ezekiel 37, and the prophet is there at the Valley of the Dry Bones, Ezekiel's preaching and proclaiming, nothing happened there until the spirit came and brought life. Same thing. It is the spirit and our dependence upon him to come and to change. And the word, it is living. It does bring change. Hebrews 4.12, for the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That's why we resist the Word of God. That's why, because it shows us for who we truly are. We can lie to ourselves, we can deceive ourselves, we can have people tell us what we want to hear about ourselves, but the Word comes and it exposes everything. It gets down beyond and deeper and beneath the surface and shows us. So Paul understood when he came here, he said, you heard from us the word of God that what he carried had divine authority and that what he would write was divinely inspired. So that's not something that we read back into the New Testament and they didn't have any clue about it. They believed and understood that what they wrote was divinely inspired just as the Old Testament. Paul understood that his apostolic teaching was really the word of God. Therefore, verse 13, he says, you received, you accepted. They understood that the tidings that came to them, it was a divine summons, and it was a divine invitation. Matthew Henry writes, we should receive the word of God as the word of God, with affections suitable to holiness, wisdom, verity, or truthfulness, and goodness thereof. The words of men are frail and perishing, like themselves, and sometimes false, foolish, and fickle. But God's word is holy. wise, just, and faithful, and, like its author, lives and abides forever, let us accordingly receive and regard it. The question before all of us today is, which word do we hear and receive and accept? Is it the word of men? Or is it the word of God? The word of men is a word rooted in that which is passing away, but that word of the Lord is forever. Which word are you giving yourself to? But what happened in Thessalonica was they didn't just hear the word, but they received it. They accepted it. They believed it. So that means they didn't just give Paul a courteous audience and sit there politely and listen to what he had to say and then went about their business. They were gripped, they were changed by the preaching of the word. How did this happen? How could these pagans come to this realization that what Paul preached was unlike anything they'd ever encountered? How did this come about? What made them understand that the news that Paul brought to them was not of this earth? It wasn't just some Jewish philosophy from Jerusalem, but it came from heaven. Well, Paul's giving thanks to God for his electing grace in chapter 1, for his effectual calling and the testimony that was born of that in their lives, and now he ties all of that to their receiving of the Word. The reason that Paul gives thanks to God for this is because only God can do this. Only God, the Holy Spirit, can bring to the heart the realization that what is said in the Scriptures is truth. In the 2nd London Baptist Confession, chapter 1 on the Scriptures, it says this in paragraph 5, we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures. and the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfections thereof. are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God. So it's saying there, a person can believe. You may like me and you may think, well, he wouldn't lie to me. You may agree that all these things are here in the Scripture. You should. But then notice this, yet notwithstanding, Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. You may say here in a logical or in an intellectual way, yes, I agree the Bible is the Word of God. But if you don't submit to it, practically speaking, you don't believe it is. You may agree with everything that I just said in that statement and everything I've preached to this point, but if you've not submitted to the Word, you don't really in your heart believe that. You believe it's just on the same level as your own Word. So the Spirit brings forth the work of the Word of God in our hearts. Paul couldn't do that. I can't do that. The Thessalonians, receiving and accepting speech, they believed in what Paul preached. They believed that Jesus Christ was the way, the truth, and the life. The word came to them, and by the Spirit's power, they understood it for what it was. So Paul gives thanks. That's why he said, I constantly thank God. It's not because of Paul's persuasive preaching. But because of God's grace at work, this is a miracle, then and now. None of the apostles could do that, nor can we. And when God does it, when he opens that heart, when he gives that understanding, it's a marvelous sight to behold. It is an amazing sight to see someone go from being in the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And notice what Paul says. He says, you didn't just accept it, you didn't just receive it, but it's also at work in you believers right now. The word doesn't just impact us in conversion. But it is changing us in sanctification. What does Jesus pray in John 17? Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. That's a present reality right now. That's the testimony that the grace of God is really at work in us. Faith comes daily to remember and to rest upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the promises of the Word and what He has done, what He is doing, and what He's promised to do is the means in which we are sustained and strengthened in this pilgrimage. So I love what John Gill writes, he says, when the Word does come with a divine commission and power, It effectually works to the quickening of dead sinners, the enlightening of dark minds, the unstopping of deaf ears, the softening of hard hearts, producing faith, which works by love, encouraging hope, delivering from the bondage of sin, Satan, and the law, and comforting and establishing the hearts of the saints under all afflictions, trials, and persecutions. Brothers and sisters, do we not see our constant need of thanking God that He brought His Word into our hearts and changed us? Do we not constantly see our need for the Word? It's no strange reason to see why the psalmist in Psalm 19 or in Psalm 119 speaks so much about the Word of God. Are we guilty, though? of perhaps at times downplaying the word, maybe even despising the word in our lives. As Brother Harris said earlier, having a kind of head knowledge of knowing what it is, but our hearts not being moved by it and drawn to it as we should. And friend, that this is the word of God that is preached today. You might think the gospel is just another philosophy, or another musing, or something else in a long line of other things. But this is the divine declaration that man is a sinner, and God is holy, and God will judge, and Jesus Christ is the only hope for us as sinners. The word shows our condemnation. but it also gives us hope of justification. There's not one person here today who will leave this place in a neutral stance towards the word of God. We either come accepting and receiving and submitting to it, or we come opposing and rejecting it. That's the only options we have here today. There's not a gray this morning. It's black and white. It's either true or it's not. It's either God's word or the word of men. But every one of us is going to be judged on that final day by how we responded to the word of God, and we will be judged by the word. For John 1 tells us that Jesus Christ is the word incarnate. He not only came and revealed truth, He is the truth. He didn't just come to give life, He is life. Have you beheld the incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ? All of the Old Testament culminates in Him. And the New Testament is giving to us His life and His death and His resurrection, ascension, and then expounds upon Him and His work. Trust in Him today. Accept the Word. And I promise you, if you do, we will rejoice and give thanks to God and know it was because of His grace and the power of the Holy Spirit that Thessalonians believed in the Word. So, brothers and sisters, that they began, but it's not just beginning. We must also continue to endure. So look at verses 14 through 16 now. So not only do we see that the church of Jesus Christ is formed by the word, by us accepting the word, but it is sustained by the word. So verses 14 through 16, enduring by the word. For you brothers, there we go again with that language of who we are in Christ, a family adopted. He says, you became imitators. So this is pointing to how it is manifested or testified that they accept and receive the word. Chapter 1, Paul says, you imitated me. He imitated us as we imitated Christ. He said the other churches in the area imitated you. You were an example, a model. Now, he says, you became imitators of the churches of God and Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things 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 opposed 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 God's wrath has come upon them at last." Now Paul says here, you imitated the churches of God and Christ Jesus in Judea. Now the term Judea here means that he's not just talking about the church in Jerusalem, but other churches that would have been around Jerusalem and probably also as a reference to churches in Samaria, in Galilee, so in this general region. Why does Paul speak of this? Well, words always mean something in scripture. I want you to notice this language he uses. First of all, to describe this church, these churches. The churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. So these terms are important. They communicate some important things about the church. Number one, there was no state or national church. Churches, plural, in Judea, in a specific geographic location. So we see how the early New Testament churches were. There was no such thing as the church of the country or the church here. It was individual churches. So this is good Baptist ecclesiology here. That's why Paul was a Baptist. I say that in tongue-in-cheek. All right. Second, they were the churches of God. That means they belong to who? They belong to God. It's His churches. It's not the churches the apostles created. It's not the churches Paul created. The churches of God. Third, in Christ Jesus. So they are different churches, yet they're in union together because they're all in Christ. So they enjoy communion because of union with the Lord Jesus. Now, why does Paul bring up these churches to the Thessalonians? They never met each other. They were thousands of miles apart. Long way. And it wasn't like you could just get in a car and go drive from Thessalonica and make your way to Jerusalem. You'd have to also take a boat, too. It wasn't easy. But he says, I want you to think of these churches. He's writing in such a way that says there's a connection between all of you. I think he wants to remind us of the biblical pattern we've taught on here recently, that churches are to work together and commune together for the purpose of the kingdom. Now why, though, these churches? Why the churches in Judea and that area? They were a long way from them. They didn't know them personally in a sense. But why bring up their testimony? Well, there would have been several reasons. First of all, these churches did enjoy a place of prominence. They were there at the center point of where everything really began, the day of Pentecost. All those things happened in Jerusalem in that area. They were also the first Christians to be persecuted. The first ones to be thrown in jail, some of the first martyrs of the faith, it all took place in this region. Their suffering for the faith would have been well known. Probably no doubt the Thessalonian believers and others had come to hear, for example, about James, the brother of John, the apostle who had been beheaded by Aaron. So their testimony would have been known. And Paul is wanting to show that what's happening to the Thessalonians happened to them. And there's a history, there's a history of opposition to the work of God's kingdom. I believe a case can also be made that Paul wants the Thessalonian believers to remember that the kingdom of Jesus Christ transcends geographic and geopolitical boundaries. There was more to the kingdom than just what was happening there in Thessalonica. There was kingdom work going on in Judea, in Athens, in Corinth, in Rome, and elsewhere. And that they did not stand alone. The struggles they were facing, they weren't alone in them. They were being experienced by other brothers and sisters, and they were enduring in this struggle. And that would give great strength for the Thessalonians to endure. What were they enduring? Paul says, you're suffering the same things from your own countrymen as they did. Now, the term countrymen can mean basically fellow citizens. It's not really a purely ethnic term. He's not just saying, well, the Thessalonians are only enduring persecution from other Greeks. Because we already know from Acts that there was Jewish persecution and Jewish hostility. So he's basically saying your countrymen, your neighbors, those in your local location, the persecution was not that some army or some group from thousands of miles had came in and was doing this. This was a person down the road they'd known. It was his friends and family who were now persecuting them for the cause of the gospel. So these were the people inside the city, not strangers, but fellow citizens. And that's what had happened to the saints there in Judea. The believers among the churches in Judea knew what it was like to have those in close proximity to them oppose and persecute the work of the gospel. You know who knew that very well? The man who's writing 1 Thessalonians. He himself knew that because he had been a part of it. He at one time had been the persecutor. He had been the one who went after the churches in Judea. Acts 9, 1, but Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest for authority to go and imprison more. And then we read in Hebrews 10, 33 through 34 about some of the persecution, but recall the former days. when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Now, while there were exact ways of difference, in the persecution. It wasn't exactly all the same. The main thrust of the situation, though, was the same. Both the churches in Judea and the church in Thessalonica knew opposition from those closest to them, from those in their community, from those who could not tolerate this decision to forsake what we do and serve this Jesus Christ. As God's Word was at work, they experienced persecution at the hands of those closest to them. All of these churches proved true, though, with how they responded to it, with enduring faith, with joy in the midst of that suffering. The way they pressed forward testified to God's grace at work in them, and they believed in the Word of God still. Again, that's not just something at conversion. They believed that the promises of God were true. And he said he would not leave his people nor forsake them. He would keep them. He sustained them. And so they believed that. So, brothers and sisters, it should not surprise us to see fierce opposition and hatred towards the gospel. And in many ways, the resistance to the gospel by Jews and Gentiles in the first century, the philosophy behind it has not changed any at all. Not at all. So from the Gentile perspective, that is caught up in a paganism that really doesn't care much about morality in many ways, and that will sprinkle in a little human philosophy so it makes it feel like it's wise and intellectual, we're still dealing with that today. There's lots of pagans. They don't care really about morality unless they're using it to judge somebody else. And they sure enough want to do whatever they want, because it's my life and my world and blah, blah, blah. So I'll do what I want to do. And we will hear something interesting and say, well, that sounds wise. So it's in opposition to the gospel. That's not changed. And then, well, what's happening with the Jewish system here? It's a ritualistic, formalistic religion that had right terms, at times had right concepts, but was opposed to Jesus Christ. was opposed to the concept of grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, that was trusting in self-righteousness to justify self. So it's in opposition to the gospel of grace in Christ. It's not changed. First century, 21st century, those two same philosophies are at work opposed to Christ. That's why our confidence is in the spirit, to take the truth and bring it to bear in the hearts of sinners. Now we get to the controversial part. of our study this morning. Notice that statement Paul makes, verse 14, the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and opposed all mankind, hindered us from speaking to the Gentiles, they're filling up their measure and God's wrath has come upon them. There have been those who have stated that Paul's language here is anti-Semitic, that this is beyond God, he cannot speak like this. And there have been some who have said, Paul didn't even write this section. So bad could not have been Paul who wrote it. Somebody else came in here and wrote this later. Is this anti-Semitism in this text? We do need to be clear that there have been instances in the history of the church of anti-Semitism and actions towards Jewish people. It was sinful then, and it's sinful today to show vitriol and hatred towards any person, period. But is that what Paul's doing here? How do we reconcile this statement with Romans 9, 1-3, where he talks about his heart for his people, and he wants them to be saved? Well, just because Paul possessed a Jewish background and had a Jewish heritage, and they were his countrymen, did not mean that he was not going to expose their hard hearts and call out the sin that they were committing in opposition to the gospel. Too many in his day, including himself at one time, were relying on who they were as being their ticket for the kingdom. Their ethnicity, their heritage, their ancestry, that's what was going to get them in. They were Jews, they're going to be in the kingdom, and all the Gentiles are going to hell. That's what they believed. Paul is not denouncing the entire Jewish nation. I personally, my interpretation of Romans 11 is that he speaks of at the end there will be a future salvation. of Jews that marks the coming of Christ. So his denunciation is not upon every Jewish person who has or ever will live, but it was upon those individual Judeans who had done the following. What had they done? Well, he says, first of all, they killed Christ and the prophets. Now, again, this does not mean that every Jew was personally involved in these events. All of us are guilty when it comes to the death of Christ. The Romans, the Gentiles, they had a significant part in this too. It was Pontius Pilate who had to sign the death order. So Jew and Gentile is guilty in this. But we must understand that Israel did reject the Messiah. As a nation, they rejected the Messiah. And they had rejected the prophets who had come before them. You know who says that? Jesus did. In Matthew 5.12, he says, Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. One of the most awful statements in all of scripture is what the religious leaders and the people cry out in Matthew 27.25. When Pilate presents Jesus, they said, His blood be on us and on our children. And then the apostles carry this, Acts 5.30, the God of our fathers, raise Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. So everybody was complicit in this, Jew and Gentile. And Paul states that the Jews were opposing him. Notice he says, then they drove us out. That's in Acts 17. He was in Thessalonica. They raised up a ruckus. He went to Berea. They did the same thing. He still loved them, though, because his pattern was still going to the synagogue first to preach to the Jews. He says in Romans 1, the Gospels come to the Jew first and then to the Greek. But yet the main force behind him leaving these cities had been the opposition that had been stirred up by the Jews. He says they displeased God. Well, the only way to please God is in Christ. And they're in opposition to Christ. They rejected Christ. And friend, this morning it's the same thing. You can't please God outside of Christ. You might think coming here this morning pleases God. Well, I'm glad you're here. I want you to be here. But if you think that this is the way to earn God's favor just by coming, that's not the gospel. We can't please God outside of Christ. In fact, we displease Him outside of Christ. The only one who has done and had this statement and testimony, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, was Jesus Christ. So in Him, we do please the Father. We are accepted by the Father, but outside of Him. We displease. So don't trust in your righteousness and your goodness. Trust in the one who has pleased God. You can't do enough to please him. Christ has already done it. So Paul states these things and then he says, they oppose all mankind. How do they do that? By hindering us or sought to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved. The apostle makes it plain that anyone who attempts to silence the gospel, gospel preaching, shows they have no regard or care for their fellow man. So over and over we can see in Acts, they sought to thwart the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles by Paul. But notice what Paul says there, which I think is fascinating, by hindering us from speaking that they might be saved. Do you see the centrality Paul puts on the preaching of the gospel with the means of salvation for sinners? G.K. Bill writes, if we do not align ourselves with the goal of spiritually subduing the world with the gospel, we set ourselves against what pleases God and against God himself. and we align ourselves with the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles who were hostile to the early Christians. So, beloved, we're not trying to subdue the world for Jesus by military force. We're not going out there with swords and guns and saying, you must convert and believe in Christ or you die. We're not doing that. That's not the New Testament way, not the way of Christ, nor are we trying to transform culture to create a quote-unquote Christian nation. That's not what we're trying to do either. The kingdom of Christ expands by the preaching of the gospel and the local church exercising the ordinary means of grace. That's the king's program. And if you want to see lives changed, families changed, communities changed, and a nation changed, it will be through these things. Why did they say that the church had turned the world upside down in the book of Acts? It was because they were preaching the gospel. Churches were being established. They were gathering on the Lord's day, being ministered to and by and through the word of God. Now, we still haven't finished the controversy yet. He says then in verse 16, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but God's wrath has come upon them at last. What's he talking about? There's been a lot of different interpretations over the years. Exactly what does Paul mean when he says that they were filling up their measure of their sins? Well, it means there was a time allotted for them to engage in sinful opposition, and then judgment would come. Do you remember back in the book of Genesis, in Genesis 15, when the Lord tells Abraham what's going to happen? He tells him that your people, your sons, your descendants are going to go into Egypt, they're going to be there a while, they're going to be in bondage, and then they're going to come back into the land that I've given you, but not until, not until the sins of the Amorites have come into fullness. There was a space, there was a time, and then there would come judgment. God's the one who decrees the persecution of the church. That means He's proving and demonstrating their faith, and we take comfort in that. He's also the one who decrees who the persecutors are and what they will do. Well, somebody may say, well, that's just an Old Testament thing. You know, this is New Testament. Jesus says the same thing. And that chapter in Matthew 23 where he gives a strong denunciation of the Pharisees, he says this in Matthew 23, 32-35, fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar." There was a space that they had. There was a time. That they were engaged in sinful opposition. And Paul says it's intense in his heart, but no, there is a day of reckoning coming. So what is that? He says, but God's wrath has come upon them at last. When is that? Well, some say that is a reference to what happens in A.D. 70. When the Romans come in, they destroy the temple, they burn the city of Jerusalem to the ground, and they remove a lot of the Jews who live there. I do believe that's what's in Paul's mind. I believe that's what Jesus speaks about chiefly in the Olivet Discourse. But Paul is also doing something where you might say, well, he wrote this 20 years before, then how can he say it has come upon them at last? And he's just using a technique that a lot of the Old Testament prophets used. They would speak about future judgments that had not happened yet, but they'd speak about it in the past tense as if it had already happened. They could do that because God had decreed it. And if God says it's going to be, it will come to pass. I do believe there was also, we can see there were things happening around the time that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians that was giving a preview of what was to come. For example, in the years 44 to 47, there was a great famine in Judea. In the years 48 and 49, there was a great riot and it ended up being a massacre of many Jews in Jerusalem. And in the year 50, the Jews were expelled from Rome. There were things already that were happening that were showing previews of the judgment that was to come. The major point is that God will judge sin. And His wrath is coming upon all those who are opposed to the kingdom of light. Yes, God decrees and uses the kingdom of darkness for His purpose. He used it to try and bring forth his people like gold. He will judge those who are in open rebellion against his kingdom. Friend, there is coming a day of judgment. I know sometimes people think that's just old fire and brimstone preaching and that's not 2020. No, that's what God has said, no matter what year. He will judge. As just as real as us all being here, we will stand before the presence of the living God. I know what scripture tells us about that, but I don't even think our minds can fully comprehend just what that moment will be like. The good news this morning is Jesus Christ died for rebels. That's you and me, rebels. And he died a rebel's death. The Romans crucified those whom they considered rebels or traitors. Well, all of us in Adam betrayed the living God, rebelled against Him, and joined with the kingdom of darkness. And all of us are born in that. Jesus Christ came, and He endured that curse. So we sang that hymn earlier, the love of God? That's the love of God. And He would love rebels, yes, but He would send His Son, and the Son would willingly die the death of rebels, not just hanging on a tree physically, but drinking the wrath of God, the justice of God being satisfied in him. So come to Calvary and see him. Rest in him and you will be saved from the wrath to come. So what will you do today with the word you've heard? Will you receive it? Will you accept it? Will you believe it? Will you endure by it? Do you receive it as the word of God or as the word of men? Brothers and sisters, let us take heart in knowing that God always uses the simple preaching and testifying of the gospel. What I found fascinating this week in studying this passage to close us this morning is that statement. They've hindered us from preaching that they might be saved. Paul saw visions. Paul had dreams. Paul performed miracles, and yet he didn't raise any of those things here. He raised the preaching of the gospel. He raised the simple proclamation of the truth of Jesus Christ as being the key means of drawing a sinner to the Savior. Now, I can't do the apostolic ministry of Paul, but I can stand and preach the gospel. You can't do the apostolic ministry of Paul, but you can bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to your neighbor, your family, and your friends. And God still uses that to bring people unto himself. So may we be encouraged in that and never stray from the simple, because the simple and the ordinary is that word you received, that word that brings life. Father, we do thank you for that word that brings life, and we are thankful to know your word reveals yourself to us, and Jesus Christ is the ultimate, fullest revelation, the word incarnate. All that you show to us, all that is given to us in scripture from Genesis to Revelation, Christ is central to it all. And I pray this morning, if there is a brother or sister here who is struggling, who's hurting, who may be downcast, if they have not already today, I pray right now they would see and hear Christ anew. And remember, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Thank you for bringing us to the green pastures today here on this Lord's Day. And I pray your word right now would bring life to a dead, stony heart. And they would be born again. And we know they will not be born of a perishable word, but of that word that is imperishable, that abides forever. And it won't be so that we can pat myself or Brother Harry on the back, or pat ourselves on the back as a church, but we will give all the praise and all the honor and all the glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the triune God who accomplishes salvation. And it is in the name of Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king, I pray. Amen.