Tues., 4/5/16 Devotion (1 Thess. 2:13b)

Today's encouragement comes from 1 Thessalonians 2:13b, where Paul wrote these words to the church:

“ . . . When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you ac-cepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God . . . “ (ESV)

The Bible teaches that there are three forms of the “Word” of God: the Scrip-tures themselves (graphe in Greek)—cf. 2 Tim. 3:16; the preached word (kerygma in Greek)—cf. Rom. 10:14, and the Divine Word (Jesus Christ), (“Logos” in Greek)—cf. Jn. 1:1.  Paul is referencing here (above) “kerygma,” or the preached Word.  This is the most frequent meaning of the OT and NT uses of the phrase “Word of God." 

The Word as the Bible, and the Word as preaching are both designed to bring sinners to The Ultimate and Final Word (Jesus).  When this happens, souls are saved, and God is glorified.  Let us be like the Thessalonian church, which received all three manifestations of the Word, and were pleasing to God.

[Puritan quote of the day: "Indeed, sometimes grace is as a sleepy habit in the soul, like sap in the vine—not exerting its vigor, due to spiritual sloth or by reason of falling into some sin—but this is only for a while. The spring of grace will come, the flowers will appear, and the fig tree will put forth her green figs.” —Thomas Watson, in, "The Art of Divine Contentment"]