Improper Response to Good Spiritual Leadership: 1 Thess Lesson 19

The Improper Response to Good Spiritual Leadership

1 Thessalonians 2:15-16

 Let’s turn in our Bibles back to 1 Thessalonians again this morning. We are in the latter half of the second chapters. Stand with me as we read verses 13-16. As we read them together I want you to notice the stark contrast between the responses of the Thessalonians to good spiritual leadership, to the response of the Jews. Great teachers utilize comparisons and contrasts to drive home their points, and Paul uses a contrast very effectively in these verses. Read the verses.

 I have entitled this message “The Improper Response to Good Spiritual Leadership.” Last week’s message reflected the truth of verses 13-14. It was “The Proper Response to Good Spiritual Leadership.” I gave these messages these titles because the theme of the first part of chapter 2 was Paul’s example as a spiritual leader. In the first twelve verses Paul detailed what he did as a spiritual leader to bring the gospel and the message of God’s word to the Thessalonians. Every spiritual leader needs to understand what Paul was doing and model his leadership after that of Paul.

 It was abundantly clear throughout those twelve verses that Paul’s focus was on delivering the word of God. This is what spiritual leadership is. It is the delivery and demonstration of the truth of God’s word. He referred to it most often in those verses as “the gospel of God.” He said in verse 2, “we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition.” In verse 4 he writes, “but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak.” In verse 8, “we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives.” Verse 9 says, “we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.”

 As we noted whenever we encountered that phrase, Paul used that phrase “gospel of God” to include not only the message of how one is born again into the kingdom of God, but also everything associated with the transformed life the gospel produces. He introduced them to faith in Christ and taught them how to live a life of faith. He summarizes that by telling them in verse 12 that the purpose for everything he did was so that they would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. The gospel of God included the message of salvation and the particulars of living a life for the glory of God.

 So, the passage we are currently looking at details for us, not just the responses to good spiritual leadership, but really the proper and improper responses to the word of God. We saw last week that the Thessalonians responded to the teaching of Paul by receiving the word, hearing it from him, and accepting, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God. The proper response to Paul’s spiritual leadership was a proper response to the word of God delivered by the spiritual leader. This was how the Thessalonians responded to Paul.

The proper response was to receive the word of God they heard, and to accept it for what it really was, the word of God. The way you tell if the response is a right response is by looking at the results produced. The right response produces the right results. The result of their response was that the word of God performed its work in them and they became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. The next result was that they were able to endure the sufferings at the hands of their fellow countrymen.

 Responses have results. Responses will always produce results that indicate the truth about the response. Proper responses bring about good results. A proper response to the word of God results in the word of God performing its work in you. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind. The unity of the church depends on a consistent and uniform response to the word of God. The word of God performing its work in those who believe makes us like-minded. It also equips and prepares us for the inevitable opposition that will come when we begin to live according to the word of God.

 The Thessalonians show us how to respond to the word of God. They also show us the results of a proper response. Just by way of reminder, the Thessalonians didn’t require years and years of intense discipleship to see these results. Paul wasn’t there very long. As we will see moving forward that he wasn’t sure he was there long enough. He was concerned that the foundation he had built on the word of God was sufficient for the struggles they would face. As we will see, it was. The word of God does not fail to do its work when it is responded to as we should respond to it. If we hear it, receive it, and accept it as the word of God, it will perform its work in us who believe.

 But now we must look at the contrasting response. The contrasting response is the complete opposite response to the word of God being preached by those spiritual leaders. Because there is a contrasting response, there are contrasting results. So as we look at this contrasting response, bear in mind that the results will always be consistent with the response. The results produces will always tell the truth about the response.

 So, in contrast to the response and results of the Thessalonians, Paul describes the response and results of the Jews in verses 15-16. The response of the Jews to the spiritual leadership of Jesus and the prophets and the Apostles was to reject their message, kill the messengers, or drive them out of their presence. As a result they were displeasing to God. They stood in direct opposition to the work of God, and they filled up the measure of their sin, and the wrath of God comes upon them to the utmost.

 It is not hard to understand what this means. Understanding what we find here does not require a lot of definitions of Greek words or a lot of cross references. This is plainly stated by Paul.

We are very familiar with the experience of Jesus who was killed as the result of a plot of the Jews. He was crucified by the Romans, but only because the Jews pressured the Roman authorities to commit such an unjust atrocity. We don’t have a lot of detail about the deaths of most of the prophets. There are some traditions. But the point here is that the prophets were killed because the people did not want to hear their message. The Apostles were driven out of Israel because they were preaching the truth of the gospel and the Jews hated the message of salvation by grace alone through faith alone because it was not consistent with their own works based system. Their system was a perversion of God’s truth in the Scriptures.

 The Jewish people, the people to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory, and the covenants, and the Law, and the Temple services, and the promises, and from whom came the Christ, these Jews rejected the message of the truth that came from the mouth of Jesus, and the truth of God’s message that came from the prophets, and the truth of the gospel that came from the Apostles. They rejected the message and killed Jesus and the prophets and drove the Apostles out of Israel. The Jews rejected the word of God.

 The Jews had so many advantages. There was never a nation of people with so much opportunity to hear, receive, and accept the word of God. When Jesus began preaching the truth of God’s word in their hearing, He spoke as no one had ever spoken before. He spoke as one having authority, not like the scribes. His message was accompanied with miracles. His life was lived in perfect holiness. His message was filled with the offer of salvation by grace through faith.

 The response of the Jews was rejection. Jesus was hated because of His message. The word of God preached by Jesus exposed the sin of the self-righteous. Jesus was trying to help them see that man cannot achieve God’s righteousness by his own merits. Jesus shined the light of truth and exposed the sinful hearts of the Jews. They hated Him and His message. His miracles were attributed to the power of Satan. And He knew all along what the end result would be. Please turn with me to Matthew 21:23-46. Jesus told them beforehand that they would kill Him. It went exactly as He said it would. In Act 2:23, where the Pentecost message of Peter is recorded, we find that this was according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. 

 As you read the Old Testament prophets you see a consistent response. Their message was the word of God. The word of the Lord came to the prophets, and the prophets proclaimed the word of the Lord, and for it they were hated. The message was rejected. We don’t have a lot of detail about the death of many of the prophets, but the words of Jesus confirm the reality. In Matthew 23:37, in a passage where Jesus has just confronted the Jewish religious leaders with a scathing rebuke, looks over the city of Jerusalem and laments, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.”

 The Jews killed Jesus. They killed the prophets. They drove out Paul and the other Apostles and followers of Christ who were proclaiming the gospel of God. You can read in the book of Acts all is recorded of the opposition and persecution and suffering of Christ’s followers. They were doing exactly what Paul says here in verse 16. They were hindering Paul and the Apostles from speaking to the Gentiles. The Apostles and others were preaching to the Gentiles the gospel of God so that they may be saved. Clearly they were preaching to the Gentiles the word of God. 

 As I said, responses produce results. The Thessalonians responded properly to the word of God and the results were obvious. The word of God was performing its work in those who believed. The Thessalonians were becoming like other faithful Christians. They were being equipped to stand firm and faithful in the face of suffering. These were all very positive results of the proper response to the word of God. Paul is also clear that the improper response of the Jews also produced results. The results of the improper response are not pretty. 

 First, the Jews were not pleasing to God. The problem with the Jews is that they never learned from the examples of their forefathers the importance of focusing on pleasing God. Look at 1 Cor. 10 with me for a moment. Read verses 1-11. All those things happened because God was not pleased with those people. The people upon whom all these judgments fell were the same people who saw all the plagues that came on the Egyptians, who walked through the Red Sea as the waters were divided, who witnessed God’s leadership and provision through the wilderness. Even after all they saw, and all the evidence God gave of His faithfulness and protection and provision, they threw their ear rings into the fire and made a golden calf and worshiped it while having a wild orgy.

 It is always a consequential thing to not be pleasing to the Lord. Out of the probably two million Jews who exited Egypt under the leadership of Moses, how many of those experienced the blessing of the Promised Land? Only two. Even their leader Moses failed to understand the importance of demonstrating before the people a commitment to always doing that which is pleasing to the Lord. God said “speak to the rock.” Moses struck the rock. God was not well-pleased. Moses did not enter the Promised Land.

 The first result of an improper response to the word of God is that God is not pleased. We do not want to take lightly our responsibility to always please God. There is another result we see here in verse 15, “They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so they may be saved.” An improper response to the word of God always results in the perversion of the truth of God’s word. The Jews, because they did not respond to the word of God properly, had perverted and distorted the entire Jewish religious system. Their perverted form of Judaism resulted in ugly prejudice and an ungodly form of extreme nationalism. The result was that they hated everyone who was not Jewish, and they limited the kingdom of God to only those who were Jewish. The Jews wanted to silence the witness of Paul because he was preaching the gospel, and the gospel was out of step with their understanding of salvation. But their greatest beef with Paul was that he was preaching it to the Gentiles.

 In our study of Genesis in the adult Bible study time on Sunday mornings, we are currently looking at the life of Abraham. God told Abraham that He would make of Abraham a great nation, the number of which would be as the stars of heaven. God told Abraham that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed. This was a clear indication that God’s plan was to bring the Messiah through Abraham’s descendants, and that the beneficiaries would be those from among all peoples.

 It is clear from the Great Commission of our Lord that the gospel is to be preached to the entire world. God will save some from every nation, tribe, and tongue. That was His plan from the beginning. But the Jews rejected this truth from God’s word. The Jews drifted into a radical nationalism and extreme prejudice that made them despise anyone other than a Jew. The religious leaders took that to the extreme, despising even the Jews who did not look, think, and act just like them.

 In stead of being included in and involved with the plan of God to bless the nations of the world with the message of the gospel, the Jews, because they were hostile to all men, hindered the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. They didn’t believe God would ever save anyone other than a Jew. This was completely out of step with God’s plan as it had been consistently revealed in His word. The Jews didn’t get it because they didn’t respond properly to the word of God.

 There is a warning in this for us. Here is Paul, who is a great spiritual leader. He is trying to do the will of God, taking the gospel to the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles. The Jews are hindering him. They are standing in the way of God’s work. Because they did not respond properly to the word of God, they were opposing the advancement of the work of God among others.

 Please know that if you are not responding properly to the word of God, you are standing in opposition to the work God wants to do in others. If you call yourself a Christian, but you do not live like the word of God tells us a Christian is to live, you are a stumbling block to others. Jesus issued a grave warning to stumbling blocks. He said it would be better for one to have a millstone tied around the neck and be thrown into the sea than to become a stumbling block to one of God’s little ones. 

 This takes us to the next result we see described by Paul in our text. Verse 16 goes on to say, “with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins.” This means that their sins just keep piling up, and piling up, and piling up, until they reach the limit. In our study of Genesis we have seen God’s plan for Abraham’s descendants included a 430 year stay in Egypt. One of the reasons for that delay in bringing Abraham’s descendants into the Promised Land is given. Genesis 15:16 records the promise of God to Abram. “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”

 The Amorites were representative of all the inhabitants of the land God had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants. The 430 years in Egypt would give time for two things to happen. The descendants of Abraham would grow large enough and strong enough to take possession of the land. At the same time the iniquity of the inhabitants of the land would increase until such time as God had set a limit. The wicked inhabitants of Canaan would continue in their sinfulness until God says, “Enough!” The measure of their sins was filled up. It was time for judgment.

 The same thing happened to the Jews. The last statement in our text says, “But wrath has come upon them to the utmost.” The Jews rejected the truth of God’s word. They killed the One who was the Word. They killed the prophets who delivered them the word of God. They rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ and drove out the Apostles and those who were bringing them God’s message of salvation. As a result, the wrath of God came upon them to the utmost.

 In A.D. 70 the Romans, under Titus, son of Vespasian, laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. After five months of siege the city was burned to the ground, including the Temple. It is estimated that 1.1 million Jews were killed and almost 100,000 were sold into slavery. Since that time there has been no priesthood, no Temple, no sacrificial system, nothing resembling the Judaism of Paul’s day remains. The wrath has come upon them to the utmost.

 Ok, well, we are not the Jews. We didn’t kill Christ or the prophets. We didn’t drive the Apostles out of Israel. So what does this passage have to do with us? It has nothing to do with us if we are responding to the word of God as we should and receiving it and accepting for what it is, the word of God, and faithfully and consistently putting every truth to work in every area of life. This is the only appropriate and proper response to the word of God.

 But, if there is any indication in our lives that we are not responding properly to the word of God, we need to hear and heed the message of these verses. If we are not responding properly, there is only one other way to describe our response. If it is not a proper response, it is an improper response. If we are not hearing, receiving, accepting, and obeying the truth, we are rejecting the truth. We may not be antagonistically rejecting the truth, but if all we do is hear it, think about it, consider it, but never ordering our steps according to it, we ultimately reject it. Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me.” John 8:31-32 records these words, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

 Let me close by challenging you. We must be honest about how we are responding to the word of God. It really doesn’t matter what we say about our response. We can say we are responding as we should. My challenge to you is to examine the results. The results will reveal the truth about our response. Is there compelling evidence within you that the word of God is performing its work in you who believe? The word received will perform its work. Are you becoming more and more an imitator of the faithful followers of Christ we find described in the Scriptures? Are you ready to stand firm in the truth no matter what kind of suffering is required?

 If we are not responding as we should, the results will tell the story. If we are not responding as we should, the results will be a life that is not pleasing to the Lord. We will find ourselves being a hindrance to the work of God because we are a stumbling block. And we will be piling up sin upon sin upon sin. We will prove by our response to the word of God that we are deserving of the wrath of God to come.

 Genuine Christians prove themselves to be genuine Christians by the way they respond to the word of God. The unconverted prove themselves to be what they are by the way they respond to the word of God.

 Let’s pray.