September 2001 chaplain's corner

The Chaplain's Corner is a monthly message for chaplains.

Chaplain's Corner - September 2001

Rev. Rich Hines

This month, I want us to consider a great verse, 1 Thessalonians 2:13. It says:

"For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe."

Let me give a little background. In the first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Paul repeatedly thanked God for the fact of the evident salvation of the people to whom he wrote. Then, in the second chapter, Paul began a defense of the motives and character of those that brought the gospel to Thessalonica. You remember from July's message (see "archives" if you missed it) that unbelieving religious Jews were dogging the heels of Paul's missionary party and trying their hardest to undo the work they began in every place they went.

In Thessalonica they attacked their character. One of the things the unbelievers said was that the gospel Paul and the others were preaching was of purely human invention.

That's why Paul wrote in 2:1

1 For you yourselves know brethren, that our coming to you was not in vain. (i.e. nothingness)

THEN, IN V.3 HE WROTE

3 For our exhortation (the giving of the message) did not come from error (being led astray by human doctrine) or uncleanness, nor was it in deceit (which means trickery, as a human invented religion would operate).

And he continued in v.4 -

4 But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing

men, but God who tests our hearts.

In verses 2,8 and 9 this "gospel" Paul referred to is described as "the gospel of God." It is God's message from His word.

So now in 2:13, he again stressed that the message they preached was not the word, the message or the ideas and invention of men.

In doing so, Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, laid down a key principle, one which many seem to have abandoned today, namely that CHRISTIANITY IS THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE, the word of God, and that it must remain a religion of the word. Christians are to know and live out the whole word of God. Each and every single word of the entire Bible is the perfect, inerrant and infallible word of an all holy, completely sovereign God.

It is not for little men to sit in judgment of it. We are not to take only what we like, what seems reasonable to us and call that inspired and then, throw away and disregard the rest. We cannot dismiss that which we may have a hard time swallowing or obeying. The Bible, which is the word of God, must ever remain the charter and daily road-map for our faith. Not the shifting winds of human opinion.

We live in a dangerous period of church history. A time in which many main line Protestant denominations and even independent, professed Bible churches, have turned and are turning away from the Scriptures as the only guide for life and worship.

Unbiblical traditions and pragmatic approaches to get the crowd out to the services often overrule the plain teaching of Scripture. Secular humanistic psychology has in many a church been redefined as Christian counseling, and often undercuts and opposes the clear teaching of chapter and verse of the Holy Bible.

As a result, many who call themselves the born-again followers of the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, are on the brink of a whole-sale sell out and compromise of the true message of how people are to be saved and live the Christian life.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

This really happened. Recently, a woman called in to a radio counseling program, supposedly a Christian program. She said she'd been having repeated affairs with many men and couldn't seem to stop herself. The supposed Christian counselor told her she had become a sexual addict and that she needed to get into regular, long-term counseling, and that it would take maybe years of therapy to straighten her out. That's tragic and unbiblical advice. Think about it. Jesus simply told the woman taken in the act of adultery in Jn.8:11 "go (present imperative) and sin (present imperative) no more."

Similarly, Christ ordered a man that was the prisoner of the sin of greed, who was in the very act of overcharging people on their taxes so that he could pocket the difference, to simply and completely cease what he was doing on the spot and to now continually follow Him. And Matt.9:9 simply says, "So he arose (aorist active) and followed Him." The verb tense of "arose" in that verse, means he did it immediately, on the spot!

In Rev.2:21-23, in dealing with sexual immorality and the woman that was teaching the church at Thyatira that it was all-right to participate in it, Jesus literally said:

"And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she continually does not want to repent. Indeed I am casting her into a bed (of sickness may be implied) and those who are continuing to commit adultery (present tense verb) with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death (meaning her spiritual children, that is those that thought like she did, that it is OK for those that are identified as His church to live in sexual impurity)

"... I will kill her children with death and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the hearts and I will give to each one of you according to your works."

The Christian counselor in such cases as the radio program I told you about, should have explained these verses or ones like them, to the woman and urged her to immediate repentance, warning her of possible immediate judgment from the Lord Jesus should she not repent.

The tragedy of it widens as one realizes the sinning woman called in to that radio program for help. She was looking for a way out of her sin, and by telling her it would simply takes years of therapy to get straightened out he was telling her there really was no immediate help from the Lord, from Christianity, from her professed faith - a faith he was there, on the radio, - to represent! I beg you Chaplain, do not do like this radio counselor did.

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ offers immediate power to turn from sin to serve God. Remember 1 Thess- alonians 1:9? This verse describes the pagan idol worshiping Thessalonians, who were involved in all kinds of sexual immorality in the worship of Dionysius and the Cabiri, the pagan gods of ancient Thessalonica. Idols whose very images were pornographic. It says these very people "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God."

They did so because the gospel had an attendant power to enable them to stop sinning immediately.

1 Thessalonians 1:5

"...our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit..."

The true gospel has the same power over sin today. We don't need years of therapy to get over our sinful practices. By His Spirit, Jesus can take them away right now!

But the cumulative result of practices such as I just described with the man on the radio, where no real immediate help from the Bible is offered, places us who call ourselves born-again followers of Jesus Christ as our personal Savior as I said before, on the brink of a wholesale sell-out and compromise of the true message of salvation.

Jesus summed up the message in Mk.1:15 "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel." That gospel, or good news for sinners, is that sin is put to death through His death and resurrection. With this in mind there is something very, very important to see in 1 Thessalonians 2:13

In this verse Paul said he and the others (Silas and Timothy) continually, even uninterruptedly, thanked God for the ministry they had with the Thessalonians, and specifically for they way they received the gospel message, which is the word of God. Thank God for inmates that receive your Biblical teaching as the very word of God!

Listen again to the inspired Apostle:

13 For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you

heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also

effectively works in you who believe (present participle - "who are believing").

O, pray with me that the majority of America's preachers and chaplains would return to giving out only the word of God, and that the people they minister to would do more than tolerate it, that instead, they would hunger and thirst for it. That they would love and obey the Bible as God gave it!

One Biblical evidence of a true spiritual new birth is such a love and hunger for the word. Jn.10:26-28 describes the difference between saved men and those with only human religion. There Jesus said to the religious leadership of the Jews, (those with a man-made tradition that overruled Scripture) :

26 ... you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you.

27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand."

The true sheep hear Jesus' words. The word of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is also the entire Bible. The Holy Spirit is the true author of every Bible word. Unsaved people, that God didn't call His sheep in eternity past, don't love the word of God. But each and every one that God by His great grace intends to save, will someday respond to solid Bible teaching. Those that have been saved, continue in the word. It is their spiritual food, and they can't do well without it!

With this scripture from Jn.10 in his mind, the great Bible preacher, A.W. Tozer, prayed when he was ordained in 1920 the following words. "Make my voice so like Thine own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow Thee." We need correctional chaplains with that same heart commitment to the word of God.

As Paul and his fellow-missionaries thought back on how their ministry was received at Thessalonica, they realized the response those people gave the word of God, proved they were in fact, some of God's true elect sheep.

So he wrote that they thanked "God without ceasing."

Are you like Paul and his companions, giving the inmates a solid, well studied, well interpreted Bible teaching? Are your inmate listeners today like the saved Thessalonians who received and welcomed Bible teaching as the true word of God?

Notice those two words, "received" and "welcomed." Received here means to receive from another alongside of you. And welcomed here means to take and accept with approval. "Received" focuses on the reception of the content of the gospel teaching, whereas "welcomed" pictures the inner joy and favor in realizing the value of what has been accepted. There's a lesson in those two words. We are to believe what God says is so and act upon it first, then, later we'll feel good about it.

In Matt.28:19,20 Jesus taught that in disciple making people who get saved are to be taught to observe, that means - to obey, all that He taught. That means among other things that with the exception of unrepentant adultery and the later teaching in 1 Cor.7 about the desertion of an unbelieving spouse because they can't stand your devotion to Christ, disciples are not to seek divorces.

If I'm in a bad marriage, I may not like that teaching, but if I honor God, and obey that which the Lord has taught, I'll feel good about obeying Him eventually! After all God, not we ourselves, knows best! The Scripture says "trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding!" (Proverbs 3:5)

Now listen again to this verse:

13 For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you

heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also

effectively works in you who believe.

Here, Paul said they heard the word of God from himself, Silas and Timothy. Again, let me stress that these servants of God gave His word not their own personal opinions. Sometimes they used Old Testament written prophecy and principle. Acts 17:2 says in Thessalonica Paul reasoned or dialogued with the people from the written Old Testament Scriptures. There were other times he and the others simply quoted Jesus, and gave His teaching before it had been written down. In either case the people knew what they were hearing was in fact the word of God, not the word of men.

Today, no one truly speaks God's message apart from the written Old and New Testaments. Which as Jude 3 says, is the body of truth to be believed, the objective faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints!

In closing this verse, Paul said this word of God, not human philosophy or opinion "also effectively works in you who believe." The word of God under the illuminating and empowering work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who is the Christians resident Truth Teacher, not only powerfully impresses and blesses at the time of the reception of the gospel, it also continues to work, to energize the new life, from the inside out. What a wonderful truth!

True Christianity, the religion of the word, continues to operate powerfully in ongoing grace in the life of those that literally continue to believe! Faith comes by hearing and hearing by a Biblical speech about Jesus Christ! Make sure chaplain you are continuing to give the inmates only the clear teaching of God's word. God says you are responsible to do just that. We at Aurora want to help you give out the word of God.

Rich Hines - Minister To Chaplains