The Power Behind God's Word
Tom Shrader walks through 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16, where Paul thanks God that the Thessalonians received his message not as human opinion but as the Word of God. Shrader uses this as a springboard to teach on biblical authority, explaining that Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. He draws on 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and other passages to argue that the Bible is the only sufficient and reliable source for understanding God, the human condition, salvation, and how to live a life pleasing to God.
“We don't worship in and of itself this Word. We worship the God who authored it. He is the one that gives us instruction for life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 1 Thessalonians
Recorded: 2000 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 14 min
Themes: bible authority, god's word, scripture, truth, answers to life questions, faith, transformation, reliability of the bible, seeking answers, dealing with grief, new believer, questioning faith, facing death of a loved one, spiritual seeker, young adult, struggling with doubt
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16, 2 Timothy 3:14-17, Philippians 1:6, Hebrews 4:12, Isaiah 6, Genesis 3, Acts 22:4-21, 1 Timothy 6, 1 Thessalonians 1
Theological Themes: bibliology, biblical authority, inspiration of scripture, theopneustos, god-breathed, sanctification, sufficiency of scripture, word of god
Full Transcript
Opening Prayer and Introduction
Father, we pray now that as we turn to the study of Your Word that You will open our eyes so that we can see the truth that You have for us this morning, and that that truth, once we see it, will change our lives in a way that is so exciting, so dynamic, so supernatural that You get the glory. Father, we pray these things to You now, in Christ's name, amen.
I invite you to open your Bibles to the book of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. This morning we are going to look at a few verses — 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 13 through 16. We will make one very important point.
If you are here today and there is a little sense of desperation in your life, maybe you are looking for answers to some of the most difficult and profound questions in life. Several people stopped me today and shared that they have parents or grandparents who are in the process of dying. Maybe you are simply looking at life and you want answers to questions.
This morning we are going to show you where you can find those answers — where you can get answers from a reliable and true source. For many of you it will be a day filled with a reminder as we cover territory that is very familiar, but for many of you as well, it will be a day that shows you answers to profound questions.
Receiving the Word of God
Verse 13 of chapter 2, Paul writes: "For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe."
Paul is writing to this church at Thessalonica. He says we thank God for you — we thank God for you for this reason: you received the word. That word literally means you heard, you listened, you received the message from God, and you accepted it. That word means you welcomed it, to accept it with joy and delight. It means literally to take it and make it your own, to believe it.
He says we thank God — not we thank you — we thank God, because God provided the opportunity when you heard the message to believe it, the understanding to accept it, to embrace it. This word we know was something you accepted, for it is the word of God which also performs its work in you who believe.
The phrase "performs its work in you who believe" is in the present tense. It is not that I once and for all accept this word and then walk away and it makes no difference. It is that it is in the continual process of reforming my life, of changing my life.
Faith, Love, and Hope in the Believer's Journey
Let me remind you — we have looked at this the first two weeks — Paul says he thanks God for this church in three areas: for a work of faith, for a labor of love, and for a steadfastness of hope. When Paul looks at this church, he sees these same three things, and they are the same three things he sees in the life of every believer.
There is a point of conversion, a point where I turn to God and turn from the idols in my life. That does not end the journey — it begins the journey. That journey is a labor of love. The word translated "labor" means to exhaust myself in work, to work to a point of weariness, to work to where I cannot move anymore — exhausted in this — as I serve the living God. How? By serving one another, by serving in the body of Christ, by taking a message to the lost world.
In the midst of all this adversity — and Paul is going to point out more of that adversity today — there is a steadfastness, a sense that I will persevere. Not because I am so strong, but because He is so strong. Paul says in Philippians 1, "I am confident in this very thing, he who began a good work in me will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus."
Paul says to this church at Thessalonica: I thank God that you accepted this word, that you believed it, that it changed your life, that your life was transformed, that there is evidence of it. The work that He began in you is evident — it is evident to us that you believe.
Suffering as Part of the Christian Life
Now, when we see people who were rebelling against God come to Christ in repentance and faith — when they were thumbing their nose at God and now they are studying His word, following Him, and believing Him — we have a tendency to think that now that they stand in right relationship with God, now that they are children of God, life should get pretty smooth for them.
Look at verse 14. Paul says: "You, brethren, became imitators of the church of God in Christ in Judea, for you also endured the same suffering at the hands of your countrymen, the same suffering he's saying that we did, even as they did from the Jews."
When we talk about coming to Christ in repentance and faith, when we talk about reconciliation, we talk about the peace of God. The peace of God is not the absence of turmoil — it is the presence of a personal relationship with Him. There is something that almost seems contradictory, and certainly paradoxical, about the fact that now I have come to Christ, now my life is lining up to what He has for me, and yet now my life is filled with suffering and pain.
I have people all the time who say that when they came to Christ they never expected their path to be strewn with roses and everything smooth — but when hardship comes, they seem surprised by it. We should never be surprised by it. The Bible is very straightforward. Paul says this to Timothy: "Those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." You ever pick up one of those books on the promises of God? Here is one of those promises that is not in that book. By the way, there are a whole bunch of promises that God gives us that
Suffering as Evidence of Changed Lives
If you desire to live godly, you will be persecuted. You will suffer. Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica and says they endured the same hardship and the same suffering that he did, at the hands of their own countrymen. He makes sure they understand: you will have that also in your life.
It may not be physical persecution, though someday it may be. It may be that you will live a life of isolation from many of the people that were closest to you. One of the things worth asking is how many people became Christians after age 18, and when that question is raised, half to two-thirds of hands go up.
Many of those people will say: after I came to Christ, my life radically changed. They were not little Christian twinkies all their lives. They did things that God would not be happy with, things God sees as an abomination — things so contrary that even lost people recognize them as wrong.
Now, through God's power and strength, their lives are beginning to conform to the image of Christ. Many of the things they used to do, they no longer do. Many of the things they should have been doing, they now do. And consequently, their friends have isolated them.
The people they used to hang around with don't want to hang around with them anymore. The guys they used to go to ballgames with don't want to be with them anymore. It can feel like rejection, but here is something important to see: those people still like you. What they are rejecting is the Christ they see in you.
The First Sign That Your Life Is Changing
That isolation is one of the first evidences you will see that your life is beginning to change. The people who used to be your countrymen, your friends, begin to pull away and say you have gone a little weird. It is one thing to go to church, but to go twice a week — to be in a small group, to study, to pray, to have a quiet time — that is going off the deep end, in their eyes.
You may have experienced that. Or perhaps it has come as ridicule — others who have flat-out made fun of you and laughed at you. Or the suffering may have come in a more profound way, more similar to what the Thessalonians experienced: family members who have said they no longer want to talk to you.
There was a woman in the church who came to Christ out of Mormonism. When she converted to Christianity, that was the end of her relationship with her family. Her mother made clear she did not want to speak to her as long as she was involved in that church. She came in one day and simply started to cry. It was Christmas, she had called her mom, and her mom hung up.
Maybe you have experienced something like that. Paul writes to these people and says that they, in some ways even more than the apostles, experienced this suffering in an exaggerated form. For Jewish believers, coming to Christ in repentance and faith meant the end of family relationships, the end of business relationships, and much else besides.
Six Things the Jews Did Against God's Messengers
Paul then lays out six specific things — six ways the Thessalonians suffered, six things these Jews did. He says in verse 15 that you have suffered at the hands of your countrymen, just as we suffered from the Jews. And he begins to list what those Jews did.
First, they are the ones who killed the Lord Jesus. This is not an anti-Semitic charge. Paul is simply declaring the historical fact that it was the Jewish leaders who led to the crucifixion of Christ. Second, they also killed the prophets. Their forefathers were the ones who executed the messengers from God. As God raised up men to speak the truth to the nation, they killed them.
Third, they drove the apostles out. They were the very ones who drove Paul and his companions out of Thessalonica, the very ones who kept them on the move. As we saw in the book of Acts, the Jews were going from city to city, tracing the steps of Paul and Silas and Timothy, coming after them to drive them out again.
Fourth, they are not pleasing to God. That almost reads as a summary of the others. If a people have killed Jesus, killed the prophets, and driven God's true messengers from city to city, they have displeased God. Fifth, they are hostile to all men. The New Living Translation renders it as they opposed everybody. They were the ultimate contrarians, concerned about themselves and themselves alone.
Hindering the Gospel from Reaching the Gentiles
Then in verse 16, Paul adds the sixth and perhaps most serious charge: they hindered the apostles from speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved. They did not just kill Christ and kill His messengers. They did not just drive the apostles along from town to town. They did not just displease God. Beyond all of that, they actively hindered the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles.
In Acts chapter 22, Paul gives to the Jews a defense of who he is and what he is about — what we would call a testimony. He speaks about who he was, his credentials. He was not simply a Jew who believed certain things. He was not merely a Pharisee, not merely a student. He was a zealot. He says in verse 4 that he was the one who drove believers out, who killed them, who bound them, who turned them over for imprisonment — so much so that he was on his way to Damascus.
The Gospel and Human Pride
Paul recounts his testimony of encountering Christ on the road — the bright light, the voice asking why he was being persecuted, his reply of "Lord, who are you?" and the answer, "I am Jesus." He speaks of the change that took place in his life, his new calling, his travels to Jerusalem, and all that he did there. God tells him to leave the city, and Paul reflects that surely the Jews would understand his transformation, since they knew exactly who he had been. He reminds them that at the stoning of Stephen, he was the one who presided — the witnesses laid their cloaks at his feet and he supervised the execution.
Then in Acts chapter 22, verse 21, God says to him, "I will send you to the Gentiles." The Jews had been listening up to that point, but the moment those words were spoken, they raised their voices and cried, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live." They carried him out to stone him. It is striking that they endured everything else he said, but there was one statement that caused them to say that was enough — the call to the Gentiles.
That is precisely what Paul identifies here. Not only did they kill Jesus, not only did they do all the other things he has listed, but they hindered the apostles from speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved. They believed salvation was for them and for them alone. Consequently, they were storing up wrath and piling up sin, and there is a day of judgment coming.
The Patience of God Is Not Infinite Toward Sin
This is important for anyone here today who is not a Christian, not a believer, not a follower of Christ. Part of that mindset is to say, "If God is really going to judge me, wouldn't He have done it by now?" The answer is no — but the judgment is still coming.
There was a prayer group where everyone prayed around the room, and by the time it reached the last person, all the obvious prayers had already been taken. The man just before the last offered this prayer: "Father, thank You that You are a God of infinite patience." That is true in one sense — God is indeed infinitely patient with us. But He is not infinite in His patience toward judging sin. When we reach Second Thessalonians, we will see that the wrath of God will be poured out. Paul says these men were storing up for themselves the wrath of God through their sin.
Why the Gospel Provokes Such Hostility
It is worth considering why there is such a consistent and deep reaction against the gospel, such hostility toward it. At its core, the reason is that the gospel strips us of all pride. When a person truly hears the gospel, they understand that their human achievements mean nothing, that their religious activity means nothing.
Anyone who has spoken with someone who does not know Christ about what it means to follow Him has likely heard the response: "I'm a good person," followed by a list of good deeds or religious acts. That person never grasps that they are responding to a holy, perfect, righteous God whose standard for His people is perfection. And when that message lands clearly, no one wants to hear it. We do not want to hear how narrow the way is.
There is another element of the gospel that people find deeply uncomfortable: blatantly sinful people go to heaven. Consider two names — Gandhi and Jeffrey Dahmer. Gandhi said he studied the Gospels every day, followed the teaching of Christ, but rejected the idea that Jesus Christ or any other man died for him. Based on that testimony, Gandhi is in hell. Jeffrey Dahmer, on the other hand, gave testimony that at the end of his life he responded to the gospel message, came to Christ in repentance and faith, and was baptized in prison shortly before he was killed. Based on that testimony, he is in heaven.
We do not like that. This was a man who did unspeakable things to his victims. And yet, if these testimonies are true, he is in heaven. What that illustration reveals is that it is not a matter of what we do or what we will, but of God's grace, God's mercy, and God's power.
Religion Preserves Pride; the Gospel Destroys It
It is also worth remembering that in terms of our standing before God, we are no different from Jeffrey Dahmer. Consider the question: what is the difference between Adolf Hitler and any one of us? The honest answer is not much. Our hearts are wicked. That is the very reason we are drawn to religion — because religion allows us to keep our pride intact. It lets us point to what we have done, what we are doing, what we have achieved.
That is why religion is so appealing. That is why the New Age movement is so appealing. That is why liberal theology is so appealing — because each of them allows a person to keep their pride intact. But orthodox Christianity says something entirely different: He is everything, and you are nothing. You come in repentance and faith, broken in spirit. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — literally, the spiritually bankrupt. Until a person reaches that point, they are not in a position where they truly want to hear the gospel. That, it seems, is the deep root of the persecution the gospel always provokes.
Returning to Verse 13
With the time remaining, we return to verse 13, and to what Paul highlights there. He says, "I thank God that when you..."
The Word of God in the Marketplace
When we received the word of God's message, you understood it wasn't from me. We weren't talking about our own thoughts, our own ideas. We weren't giving you our own instruction — we were giving you God's instruction. He speaks there of His word as he was teaching. In our context, what he's talking about is the Scripture itself.
Like all of you, I am in the marketplace during the week. I'm out with men and women who don't believe what you and I believe — men and women who not only don't believe it, but some are very hostile to it, and almost all who are non-believing are very cynical of it. As we talk to them, there is one issue that comes up again and again. Is the Bible the word of God?
Haven't you had that experience where you're sitting talking to somebody, and you start quoting, flipping from passage to passage, laying out things that just blow you away — and they come back and say, "Well, that's the Bible. That doesn't mean anything to me." Here's what Paul says: when we came and delivered this message, it wasn't our message. When we preached this message to you, we were able to say, "Thus saith the Lord," because this is what God says.
When you heard this message, you didn't just hear the teachings of a man. You heard the teachings of God. And here's the transition: when you and I hold this book — Genesis through Revelation — in our hand, we hold in our hand the authoritative, infallible word of God. We have to understand that.
The Spirit's Testimony to Scripture
James Montgomery Boyce — and several of you let me know this week that he is very sick. He has aggressive liver cancer. At 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, if you get on their website, there is a little seven-minute sharing he did with the congregation a couple of weeks ago that addresses this aggressive liver cancer and the treatment they plan to pursue. There is not a message of human hope in it, but it is a great thing to listen to as he speaks about the sovereignty of God even in the midst of this.
James Montgomery Boyce is a man quoted frequently from this pulpit and one whom I read almost every week. He talks about the Bible, and here is what he says: "The chief evidence for the Bible's being the word of God is its internal testimony of the Spirit to that truth. Without such testimony, the truthfulness of Scripture will never impress itself adequately on a reader."
Here is what he is saying. If you are here today and you don't believe this, it is not because you don't have enough evidence. We can flood you with books — stacks and stacks of volumes speaking to the evidence for the authority of Scripture. We can take the evidence you apply to human literature and apply it to this. Probability, internal evidence, what does Jesus say about it, what are the claims of Scripture itself — and then there is prophecy alone. Hundreds of prophecies fulfilled to the letter without exception, never a mistake, never an error, statistically pointing overwhelmingly to the fact that this is the word of God.
There is a little encouragement in that, because you can do apologetics all you want. What Boyce is saying is that unless the Spirit is alive in the listener, they are always going to say that is not enough for me. But when the Spirit comes along and applies it, something changes. And Boyce is equally clear on a second point: that does not mean there is no rational support for your convictions. Your rational arguments should be known by you and by anyone else who really wants to think about this.
What Scripture Claims About Itself
Here is the point for the next several minutes: this is the word of God. If you want to know what God says about any issue in life, you are going to find the answer here. You don't need to look anywhere else. And apart from this, you are never going to have a clear understanding of the world around you.
Turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter three. This is a classical passage speaking to the authority of Scripture itself. Paul writes to Timothy and says this: "You continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."
The first thing he says is: continue. It is an ongoing process — continue to learn, continue to study, continue to read and reread. Isn't it amazing that you can read a passage of Scripture you have read five, ten, twelve times, and all of a sudden God teaches you something brand new? There is a passage in 1 Timothy chapter six that I studied and taught two dozen times — and I mean not just passively, but broken apart — and one day, all of a sudden, there was this point, and I was asking how I could have missed that.
As I kept returning, the word of God didn't change. That passage was always there. That thought was always there. This is unchanging. I was in the bookstore the other day and bought a book that said "updated and revised version" on the cover. You never find that sticker on the front of this. A timeless God does not produce dated material. There is no appendix coming out, no revised edition on the way. This book has authority.
The Authority and Source of Scripture
Scripture does not have authority because we give it authority, or because some church leaders got together and declared it authoritative. It has authority because it is the finished work of God. That is where its authority comes from. It is the power for all of life, but especially the life that leads to salvation — the understanding that leads to Christ and who He is.
In 2 Timothy chapter three, verse 16, we read: "For all scripture is inspired by God." The point is that it is literally God-breathed. What we have in Scripture is not the thoughts of a human being — not even the thoughts of a man as great and wise as Solomon, or as brilliant as Paul. What we have are men who moved under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God breathed into these men these words and these thoughts, and they are absolutely true. All Scripture — Old Testament, New Testament — all of it is God-breathed, and it is profitable. That is, it is useful. It will benefit us.
What Scripture Teaches Us
Scripture is profitable first for teaching — and when it speaks of teaching here, it does not mean the method of communication. It means what to teach, what to study. As we work through the Bible, five themes appear continually throughout Scripture.
The first is the very nature of God. Who is God? How can I know God? In the first chapter of his small book titled *Authority*, Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes these words:
> Man is a dissatisfied and unhappy creature. He's in a world which he does not understand, a world so vast that it baffles him. He has his problems, personal and larger social problems. The whole world is in a state of confusion and turmoil. Moreover, man has within him a sense of God, whether he tries to deny it or argue it away or not. He has a feeling that things are not as they ought to be, that he himself is meant for something bigger. He has a feeling that there is something else, someone else. Man's whole trouble throughout centuries has been that he's trying to arrive at a knowledge of ultimate truth, a knowledge of final reality. He has a feeling all the time that somewhere there's a solution. So man has been constantly asking questions. If there is a God, can he be known? If there is an ultimate truth, and there must be, how can I arrive at it? What then is to be done? Man must come to the point at which he realizes his failures and realizes that he is but a child. What can he do? There is no hope for him unless, in God's kindness and grace and love, He reveals Himself to man. Now the full position for which I stand is that God has definitely done this, and that until any inquirer comes to that point, there is really no basis for discussion.
Lloyd-Jones then quotes Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician and scientist: "The supreme achievement in reason is to bring us to the point to see that there is a limit to reason." That, it seems, is the starting point. Use your reason, use your intellect, do it honestly, and you come to the conclusion that there is a limit to your reason — and then wait. It is at that point that God in His infinite grace and kindness meets us in revelation, and He has met us in that revelation in this book.
That is where we discover the nature of God. Someone recently was discussing the way God works — talking about people going to hell — and said, "My God would never send anybody to hell. A loving God is not going to send anyone to hell." The problem is that they do not know God. They have constructed their own guess at what God is like. But when we get into Scripture, we see the nature of God as He actually is.
The Fall of Man and the Explanation of Suffering
The second theme throughout Scripture is the fall of man. Watching Larry King interview Kathie Lee Gifford, it was clear that Larry was in an endless search — God has apparently never given him eyes to see the truth, because he hears it over and over again. Kathie Lee was sharing her faith, and Larry asked what he always asks: What do you do when there is hardship? What do you do when there is suffering? What do you do when babies die? How do you explain that? She said, "Well, I can't explain it." That is an inadequacy, because we can explain it. Read Genesis 3. It is the fall of man.
John MacArthur points out that there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and only four of them do not involve a fallen world — the first two and the last two, representing the time before the fall and after the creation of the new heaven and earth. The remaining 1,185 chapters are a chronicle of the tragedy of human sin. People study endlessly trying to understand humanity — where we came from, where we are going, why we are the way we are. Is it genetics? Is it environment? It is sin. That is the problem, and that answer is not available anywhere but in Scripture.
Blessing, Obedience, and the Portrait of Christ
A third theme seen throughout Scripture — both Old and New Testament — is the blessing God gives to those who are faithful and obedient. God blesses and God curses, and as we are obedient and faithful to Him, He blesses us. Life begins to fall into place. We start to see life as it really is.
Running all the way through Scripture, from beginning to end, there is also a portrait of Jesus Christ — the promise that He is coming, the prophecies that declare it, and the fulfillment of those prophecies. We see the Savior and His sacrifice for sin. That portrait is found in Scripture and nowhere else. No history book can take us to the very core of what Jesus' death was all about.
The Power of Scripture to Expose and Restore
That He died on the cross is a given, but why? Where do I see that? The Bible gives me that answer. The Bible tells me that He is coming again, that there is glory. One author writes this: redemptive history will end with the same precision and exactness with which it began.
The Bible is inspired by God. It is profitable for teaching. I discover in Scripture things I would never find anywhere else — special revelation. It is good for reproof, which means conviction. There is something that happens when the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to the heart and mind of a man or woman of God.
Let me read from the New Living Bible, Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12: "For the Word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into the innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from Him. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes. This is the God to whom we must explain all that we have done."
We can fool each other, but when I read this I hold the mirror up to my eyes and I see myself for who I really am. Not just my actions — it exposes us for who we really are. It cuts to our innermost thoughts, our motives. That is why this Word is so powerful.
This is the same point that Gary talks about repeatedly in the context of worship — Isaiah 6. When Isaiah sees God for who He is, what does he say? "Woe to me, for I am undone." I thought I had it all together, but compared to You, God, my life is in shambles. That is the power of this Word. That is why we study it again and again and again. It opens our eyes to sin in our hearts, to thoughts that are perverse, to actions that are good, to change in our lives.
Teaching, Reproof, Correction, and Training
The Bible is good for reproof, and it is good for correction. It does not simply come along and senselessly point things out. The word "correction" means literally to lift up for the purpose of restoration. Here is the way we say it: the Bible tells us what is right — that is teaching. What is not right — that is reproof. How to get right — that is correction. And how to stay right — that is training in righteousness. It is the most skilled of coaches that we bring to our lives.
Paul says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, and for reproof, and for correction, and for training in righteousness" — verse 17 — "that the man of God may be made complete, fully equipped, fully prepared, complete for every good work." That is the power of Scripture.
Why We Bring Our Bibles
One of the comments I hear frequently from people who come to church is, "I cannot believe how many people bring their Bible." It is because we do not read this out of mere fondness. We do not read it for instruction the way we might read a book from some secular thinker or philosopher. We know that this is the Word of God. We study the Word of God so that we might know the God of the Word. We do not worship this Word in and of itself — we worship the God who authored it. He is the one who gives us instruction for life.
If you are here this morning and you are desperate, if you are here trying to find purpose for your life, if you are here seeking big answers to big questions — legitimate answers for legitimate questions — if you are saying, "I want my life to make a difference, I want it to count for something, I want to live in a way that is pleasing to God," here is your answer.
One of the things I love about this is the same thing that happened to me in school. My favorite tests were open book tests. Actually, my favorite tests were honor system tests — that is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. When we went to the honor system, my GPA jumped a full point and a half. Of course, at that point I was unconverted, so I did not have any honor. But I loved open book tests. Well, here is an open book test. Here is the book. Study it. Memorize it. What does God say?
It Works — The Evidence of Changed Lives
Let me add one more thing. This is not merely something we argue is right because we believe it to be right. It is also evidence that it is correct — because it works. A couple of Mother's Days ago, I did a message on why wives should submit to their husbands. I thought I would throw a curve. I figured that would at least spark some conversation over lunch. When I was done, a woman came up to me. She and her husband had been married fifty-some years. She said, "I know that is true because it has worked in my life. For fifty-five years I have submitted to my husband the best I could, and he has loved me the best he could, and God has blessed us and kept us together."
You have stories all through this room of the way this Word has changed people's lives, has changed their hearts, has taken them from death and moved them to life. When you hold this book, it is not just another textbook. You have in your hands the Word of God. That is why we study it.
What does God say about motherhood? If you want to be the best mother you can be, find out what God says about raising children and about motherhood. Want to go to work tomorrow and be the best employee you can be? Find out what God says about work.
Receiving It for What It Is
Paul says to his church, "I constantly thank God that when you heard this Word, you accepted it for what it was — not the word of men, but the Word of God." That is where we have power.
Father, please help us see that. Let us be men and women who do not just study this Word endlessly, but who study it endlessly with a purpose — to know You.