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If you are going to be successful at anything, you need two things. You need the right messages, and you need the right messengers. You need principles, and you need people. You also need practice, but I want to focus on the first two based on our text.
Now, these are not categories that are specific to our salvation. This is true in a variety of areas of life. Think of learning to play football. You need the right messages that tell you the rules, the plays, and the skills. However, you need the right messenger. You need a coach to teach you and remind you of the messages. If you are to improve in any area, you need clear messages and good messengers.
When God recreates us into His image, the way He grows us is no different. He uses messages to change us, and He uses messengers to communicate those messages. The point here is rather simple. If we want to grow, even in the midst of our suffering, we need the right messages and the right messengers. Those are the two points of this sermon.
The Right Message
The words we hear, and the messages we receive shape our hearts and lives. The stories we tell ourselves are the foundation of our character. Messages like “the future is bleak,” “you will never amount to anything,” “no one will like you,” “you are strange,” or “you shouldn’t have to suffer,” shape our character and our mindset.
If we want to change our character, then we will need different messages. Every attempt to grow a human being from the beginning of the world to today is fundamentally about new messages.
The Thessalonian Christians had received a new message, the good news about Jesus Christ and the restoration of human beings in Him. This was the Gospel.
In our passage it is called the Word of God. The reason it is called the Word of God is because it is exactly what God wants to communicate to us. Some people wonder how the Word of God can be written by humans. Here is the answer: “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21).
So, the message was not a message from any mere human. It was a message from God Himself. “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13). They accepted an entirely different message from God about their lives.
Now notice something here. He thanks God that they received this word. Why? Because it is the Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts. No one will believe except by the power of the Holy Spirit. The joy with which we receive the message is a gift of the Holy Spirit. That’s what we confessed together in the The Heidelberg Catechism:
Q. It is through faith alone that we share in Christ and all his benefits: where then does that faith come from? A. The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.
It’s important to see, though, that in the first movement of faith, we are wholly passive; in the continuing work of faith, we are active. We must exercise faith. When we exercise faith in the Word, then the Word is at work. The message from God works into our lives as we exercise faith in it. It is “indeed at work in you who believe,” as Paul says.
How does this happen? Well, first we need to know the message. However, it’s not enough to have heard it once and let it pass through our ears. We need to meditate on it in our hearts. What does that look like?
Consider: what if our parents don’t seem to approve of us? What if they abandoned us at an early age? What if our spouse is displeased with us? What if our children don’t like us? It can make us think that we are worthless. The message of God’s Word says something different, you are accepted, valued, and loved by God.
To make this message, the message of the love of God, the dominant factor that shapes our lives, we have to listen to it constantly and accept it into our hearts. We have to apply it to our lives and our thoughts. This is what it means for the word to be at work in us.
Let me add one more thing here. You need to have some time set aside to do this. If you want to hear from God, you have to make time for Him. This requires a habit and a regular time. It will not happen by accident. I encourage you to set aside a specific time each day in which you can hear the Lord: at morning, at lunch, at a break, or before you go to bed. Anything that is really good in this life comes through consistent work. A transformative relationship with the Lord is no different.
But God does not leave us merely with His message. He also brings messengers into our lives. He brings us into a community of friends.
The Right Messengers
A few years ago, on one particular month, I was preaching on relationships in the life of Jesus. One of my sermons was, “Relationships Are Hard,” based on some of Jesus’ difficult experiences with relationships.
One Sunday after that sermon, I was struggling with a relationship myself. I came into the River Plantation Conference Center where we meet, and one person there could tell that things weren’t right. He asked me how I was doing, I told him, “I had some negative interactions with some people, and I’m struggling with that, to be honest.”
He looked at me and said with compassion, “Relationships are hard.” Hearing the words that I had preached from someone else enabled me to hear them in a way that I would not have been able to otherwise. This messenger brought a message that put things back into perspective, and the light began to dawn for me.
We often underestimate the importance of the messengers. But if you think about it, what is it that people struggle with more than anything? It’s not just bad messages. The bad messages get their force from the messengers. Maybe it was a friend who turned on you. Maybe it was a parent who was always critical. Maybe it was a child who wants nothing to do with you. These messengers have a powerful force in our lives.
If your life has been dominated by the wrong messages from a messenger like this, then you will need new messengers who will deliver a more helpful message. You will also need to gain awareness of the messages you learned and re-think the truth of those messages for yourself. You will need new messages.
For the Thessalonians, that community began with the messengers who brought the message from God, Paul and Silas. Paul also wrote this letter. He was the messenger of God’s message to the Thessalonian believers.
Paul sums up what his relationship with them was like in this letter. He told the Thessalonians that he was, “encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2:12).
The design of the church is to be a messenger communicating the Word of God in practical ways to people. When people are down, they encourage them. When they are struggling, they comfort them. When they forget the promises of God, they remind them. When they become sluggish, they urge them forward. This is the work of the church.
It is interesting to note that the Apostle Paul describes himself as acting like the entire family. He was like a child in his transparency. He was like a mother who nurtured them. He was like a father who encouraged and challenged them. All these metaphors give us fruit for meditation. We can take different roles in our relationships at different times, according to the need.
The heart of it is this. You need people who comfort you, but you also need people who challenge you. If you go to people who simply affirm you, then they are not the messengers you need. You need people who will challenge you. If you go to people who simply point out what you are doing wrong or could do better, then you will you will get wrongly discouraged. You need encouragement and comfort as well as the challenge to live lives worthy of the kingdom of God.
The importance of messengers applies to us in two different directions. The first is that we need good messengers in our lives. We need people who will care for us, encourage us, and challenge us.
To get people into our live like this, we often need to take the initiative, especially in our modern world. To get people in our lives like this also takes time. Just like meditating on the message, it takes an investment. Relationships are not built overnight.
The second direction we need to take the importance of messengers is based on what the Apostle Paul says throughout this letter. The Apostle Paul had to leave this congregation. This did not mean that they were without the resources of good messengers. They would have to be this for each other. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11).
We need to be encouraged, but we need to move out in encouragement toward others. Now as I look at our church, I can say, just as the Apostle Paul said, you are in fact doing this. You are speaking into people’s lives. You are messengers. You just need to be more aware and do so more and more.
Conclusion
So, my friends, there is growth in suffering, big and small suffering. The Word of God, the message of God, supplies a foundation for joy that transcends our suffering. It is a foundation on which we can build our lives. The Holy Spirit produces joy through His Word that enables us to continue moving forward. It can give us a faith that makes us able to stand in trials and not be unsettled by them.
And so we will grow. We will move forward, but we will do it not alone but together. God uses a group of friends to enable us to grow. It is God’s messengers delivering His wonderful messages that enables us to grow and remain ever green in the changing seasons of life.
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Photo by Kev Costello on Unsplash