To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 5:27 “I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.”

My wife attended a church when she was a child, but it was a church where she never heard the gospel.  It’s almost unbelievable that this could be the case, but that was her experience. I don’t know what they talked about there, but it’s pretty obvious that things other than the Word of God were the focus.  I wonder how often this is the case?  I wonder how many places that call themselves churches rarely, if ever, preach and teach the Word of God? And I wonder how many that do use  the Bible in their worship services actually teach it as the absolute Truth of the Living God?  How often do we see church leaders espousing views that are clearly influenced primarily by the views of society and the world rather than the views of Scripture that are antithetical to such things?  The only way this can happen is when a church’s focus, like the church my wife grew up in, is on other things than God’s Word.

In the verse above, we see a warning against such a drift. Here Paul puts the leaders of the Thessalonian church under an oath that they publicly read his letter to all the brothers.  It was to be their focus. And it is to be no less ours.  If a place of worship has a focus that is on anything other than the Word of God, any believer that finds themselves in such a place should make a quick exit, for it’s not the place God would have them stay.  The knowledge of God, the way of salvation, and the means by which a person learns to walk in a way that glorifies God is contained within the pages of the Bible.  If that’s not the focus, then the Holy Spirit is not directing what goes on in that place of worship, no matter what that church calls itself.  Nor is the Holy Spirit guiding a church when the Bible is read, but not believed. That’s the case when we start down the insidious path of believing that the Bible only contains the Word of God, but that it’s every word is not the Word of God.  It’s the devaluing of the Word of God in this way that leads, inevitably, to elevating other things to a place they should never be. 

Nothing- no personal stories or experiences, no poetry, no platitudes and philosophical reasonings, and certainly no writings from other religions – approach the perfection and the holiness of the Word of God.  Listen to the words of the early apostles as others tried to divert their attention from the Word of God to other things, including good things, like helping others with works of service: “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.  And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.  Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.  But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:1-4).

So, are you in a place where the pastor is devoted to prayer and the study of God’s Word like this?  If you are, you will know it, because it will be evident when he speaks that he has spent time in the presence of the Lord.  But if you are not in a place where God’s Word holds the very high place that it should, it would be wise for you to go elsewhere, a place where the words from the Apostle Paul from 1 Thessalonians 5 above are taken seriously, for in the end, these are not just the words of Paul, but the Word of the Living God spoken through Paul. And it is the Word of the Living God that the wise listen to and by which the wise grow spiritually and are equipped to glorify God in every aspect of life.  Anything else is a distraction to the true believer, and anything else is not worth comparing with the glorious Truth of the Word of God.