A Picture of Maturity (1 Thessalonians 3:6-13)
Following Faithfully: Lessons in Discipleship from Thessalonians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 52:36
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Sermon
Sermon
Key Passage
Key Passage
But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith.
For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.
How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?
Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Series Introduction
Series Introduction
It is our vision as a church to reach the whole world for Jesus, one person at a time.
As we talked about last week, this is not a game of trying to convert people to a world religion
This is real people with real souls and the eternal destinations of Heaven and Hell.
There is no higher, or more important mission than to strive to reach the world for Jesus.
We want to accomplish this vision how Jesus told us to accomplish this vision
We want to win the world for Jesus by creating Biblical disciples
We are a church of Biblical discipleship
First of all, that phrase “Biblical”
As we have emphasized throughout this series, we believe the Bible to be the inerrant, infallible and authoritative Word of God.
God oversaw its writing and because of this, it is holy and set apart.
If you don’t have a Bible or don’t know where to get one, I again encourage you to make a note on your connection card, or talk to me after the service and I will get a Bible into your hands
Bible app
Biblical discipleship begins with our surrender to the authority of God as revealed by the Bible
Disciples
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Matthew 4:19 Definition of Disciple
A disciple follows Jesus (Head)
A disciple is being changed by Jesus (Heart)
A disciple is on mission with Jesus (Hands)
If you are new with us today, or if you are new to following Jesus, it is important to know that church is much more than just attending services.
It is a journey you begin in life of following Jesus as God uses the Bible to plant truth within our hearts.
Series in Thessalonians
This brings us to this series in 1 Thessalonians
Paul’s missionary journey with Silas and Timothy
Came to Thessalonica
Some accepted, some rejected
Possibly only there for three weeks
Paul was driven out of town
He wanted to return to help the Thessalonians, but was prevented.
So he wrote a letter to this young church.
He is intentional in how he guides the Thessalonians to follow Jesus.
We are reading this letter and drawing truth about how we too should follow Jesus and help others follow Jesus.
We want to live out discipleship like Paul lived out discipleship.
Sermon Introduction
Sermon Introduction
To begin our conversation today, I want to look at a principle that Jesus presented to His disciples.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
This is the love that Paul spoke about earlier in our study in 1 Thessalonians.
This is the “agape” love that God gives.
I want to take a moment and define that, because we must never lose sight of the love God has for us.
Agape is a love that is based on our identity
An identity that God created within us.
Every human being is unique. Knit together in their mother’s womb.
And uniquely carries the image or fingerprint of God upon our lives.
There is no amount of sin, rebellion, failure, trauma or struggle in life that will ever change who God created you as.
You are loved by God. You will always be loved by God.
In this passage, Jesus said, “As I have loved you”
Agape love
“So you must love one another”
We must love one another with the love that was demonstrated in Jesus.
Then he says, ‘Greater love has no man than this: that a man lays down his life for a friend’
I want to draw this out into a point that we will drive home today:
The highest form of love is sacrifice for those who we love.
Also, maturity in love will always be focused on the other party.
Today in our text, we will see a snapshot of maturity in discipleship.
I think everyone needs a role-model in life to know what it means to be mature
This is a very important role that parents are supposed to play in their children’s lives.
But, I was thinking about what I thought it meant to be mature when I was a kid.
I think one of the hallmarks of immaturity is not knowing what maturity looks like.
I remember thinking that maturity was getting to eat whatever food I wanted, whenever I wanted to.
Going to bed when I wanted. Watching as much TV as I wanted.
Paul painted a picture to this church of what maturity looked like as a disciple.
I think it is a very important picture for us today:
If you are a new believer or not a believer:
You may think that being a mature follower of Jesus means that you have all of the answers, no problems in life and you have somehow become sinless.
If you are a mature believer:
We need to remember that there are no shortcuts to maturity. You never “arrive”
We must always strive to be the disciples Jesus has called us to.
Preaching
Preaching
Today is something of a continuation of last weeks thought.
After leaving Thessalonica, Paul was desperate to get back to them to help this young church grow.
But, we saw that Paul was blocked by Satan.
We talked this out. Satan didn’t defeat God.
However, Satan was allowed to be the roadblock in one area, so God’s will could be done in another.
Instead of going himself, Paul sent Timothy to the church:
We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith,
This is where we are going to pick up today:
But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you.
In our sermon today, we will break down identifiable traits of a mature disciple.
Maturity is devotion to relationship
This is something we have already seen in this text, but I want to highlight it again.
Let us look at Paul as an example of what a mature disciple looks like.
As we read all of last week and into this week: Paul had one desire, and that was to return to Thessalonica and help this church grow.
Paul was deeply devoted to relationship. It affected him so greatly that day and night he wanted to be with this church.
Last week, we even saw that he saw himself like a parent who was separated from them as his children.
Sometimes, we can hear the “affirmative” of an argument and it carries with it value. But when it is contrasted with the “negative” of the argument, it begins to make more sense.
This is what I would like to do now.
I think one of the traps that we are vulnerable to is the “Me and Jesus” approach to discipleship.
We hear phrases like “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and think that means that I don’t need anyone except Jesus.
There is nothing wrong with that phrase. We do need to know Jesus personally.
But maturity in Jesus means that I can only grow in Him as I grow with others.
Could you imagine someone telling Paul, “All that matters is me and Jesus.”?
Paul would have come off of his chair and started writing a letter to them right there!
We can see this in Paul’s life:
Who you are in relationship is who you are in relationship.
If you engage a relationship with Jesus, He will empower you to engage relationship with others.
If you are in poor relationship with others, then your relationship with Jesus needs work!
Maturity is devotion to relationship
Maturity finds true joy in others
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith.
For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.
How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?
Paul shares that he is in distress and persecution.
Distress and persecution is difficult and painful.
We don’t know for certain what Paul was enduring at this moment, but we do know that at points of his ministry he was beaten, imprisoned, chased, berated and just about anything and everything else you can think about doing to a person. Paul experience all of this and probably 2 or 3 times.
Re-read verses 8-9
I know the Thessalonians were getting a lot out of their relationship with Paul.
They received the salvation of their souls in part because of Paul’s obedience to preach the Gospel to them.
But what about Paul?
We know that as a result of his preaching in Thessalonica, he was chased out of town, fleeing for his life.
Then he went to Berea and things were good there until the Thessalonians heard he was there and they came to Berea and chased him out of that town as well.
This riled up the country of Greece so much that when he went to southern Greece at the writing of this letter, he was still suffering persecution and difficulties.
Why?
All because he had chosen to preach the Gospel.
But do you hear the joy he found in seeing this little church receive the Gospel and grow?
This made all of the suffering worth while!
I want to flip this understanding to the negative as well.
A couple of weeks ago, we made the statement:
“The Gospel you preach determines the disciples you make”
What I meant by that was if we preach a gospel that says, “God wants you to be rich”
Then what path will those disciples follow?
They will try to get God to give them money all the time.
If we preach a Gospel that says, “God wants you to be healthy and all of your problems to be gone”
Then those disciples will be trying to manipulate God into doing all of these things.
It is so easy to embrace a Gospel and say, “I can’t wait until I am mature and God cleans up my life and makes my life stable.”
The Gospel is not a pathway to our own comfort.
Far too many believers live their lives based on what is best for them.
How would Paul have responded to that thought?
No! You need to live your life for the best of those who need to grow!
In his suffering, his joy was found in the growth and maturity of that church.
Jesus demonstrated laying his life down for His disciples.
You might think I am talking about the cross.
Yes, but not only.
Did Jesus pursue comfort in his life? Money? Stability? Reputation?
No, he laid everything of life down THEN laid his life down.
That is what Paul is doing here.
He is laying his life down for the Gospel and those disciples.
Maturity is devotion to relationship
Maturity finds true joy in others
Maturity depends on God
Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
Paul prayed. How often did he pray?
Night and day they prayed earnestly, asking God to see them again.
This reflects what Paul said to open the letter:
We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers.
Paul prayed for these disciples
It wasn’t a prayer in passing. It was fervent prayer for this church.
I want to step back and look at prayer through a different lens: Why should Paul pray?
Paul was absent from this church. But God wasn’t.
I believe Paul prayed even when he was present.
Paul was humble enough to know this:
This was God’s gospel, not Paul’s
God could change their hearts, not Paul
God could protect them from Satan, not Paul
God would grow them, not Paul
God was with them, not Paul
What is humility?
It isn’t thinking less of yourself, like we often think.
The person that says, “I am great” and the person that says, “I am nothing” both struggle with pride, because we see that life is all about them.
Humility is seeing exactly who you are in the eyes of God.
Sometimes humility raises us up. Sometimes humility brings us down.
But humility always orients us to holiness and a God-perspective of the world.
Paul sees that God is present with them.
He know he cannot be and his heart is yearning for the Thessalonian church.
So Paul stands in the gap for this young group of disciples.
They may not even know how to pray correctly, so Paul is taking this church on his shoulders and going to God on their behalf.
Last week, we talked about the role of parents and how Paul was like a parent to this church.
I want to highlight this as a parent.
Your kids and grandkids need someone standing in the gap in prayer for them.
You might say, “I need someone standing in the gap for me.”
True, you may, but someone else needs you.
This is the snapshot of maturity here.
It is recognizing God’s role in another person’s life and standing in the gap between them and God and pleading on their behalf in prayer.
Maturity is devotion to relationship
Maturity finds true joy in others
Maturity depends on God
Maturity values face-to-face relationship
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.
By now, it should seem evident that there is something about discipleship that couldn’t be done by letter.
They needed to be face-to-face.
If maturity could be achieved through simply reading a text and learning, then Paul would not have wanted to visit so badly.
Paul would have said, “I would rather be with you, but here is how you grow: Step 1-...”
But Paul struggled and fought to be face to face with the Thessalonians.
When he couldn’t go, he sent Timothy, so someone would be face-to-face with them.
How does that differ from many of our own discipleship methods?
Maturity in our world tends to drift toward the intellectual.
Many hold this idea: “The more a person knows about the Bible, the more mature they are”
People read commentaries and Bible knowledge books seeking to learn more and believing that this is the path to maturity.
I’ve said this a number of times and I’ll say it again.
This would have been foreign to Paul!
Paul never said knowledge was a bad thing. But he did warn that those who pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge often end up prideful.
Pride is the opposite of humility and love.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
That phrase “teach them to obey” is what Paul is doing here.
If it were simply, “teach them to know” then it could be done by letter.
But obedience is greater than knowledge.
Paul had to be present because discipleship is relationship, modeling, and the application of truth.
Not just information.
Maturity is devotion to relationship
Maturity finds true joy in others
Maturity depends on God
Maturity values face-to-face relationship
Maturity lives out God’s love
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
We talked at length about God’s love and how we too must live out the love of God in our lives two weeks ago.
Paul highlights two area where the love of God must be lived out.
“Each other”
This was written to the church in Thessalonica. When Paul says, “Each other”, we can assume it is with every part of the intended audience.
When we talk about the love that God calls us to love, it is difficult.
Jesus said:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
He says, “You will know my disciples by their love for one another”
Jesus loves us, we should love others.
Paul is giving the same idea here.
He says, “I want to be with you. You will see the love I have for you and you can love one another within the church.”
Here is the problem with this command: In the church, we often strive to be right more than we strive to love.
I am not saying that theology is not important. It is very important.
But when there is conflict within the church, when there is hurt within the church, we often find some of the most unloving, bitter hearts in the wreckage.
Our pain is not an excuse not to love.
Our right-ness is not an excuse not to love.
The same goes for the world.
Paul goes on to say, “and everyone else”
Who is that. Well if he already spoke about loving people in the church, who is everybody else?
The unsaved, unchurched.
For these people that included the segment of their city that used to be friends who were now persecuting and arresting them.
This included the greatest of sinners.
As we said a few weeks ago, God’s love is the love we are called to show.
We love based on identity, not behavior.
Whether the person is a Satanist, a persecutor, a transgender person, a political party not my own, or my next door buddy.
All of these people were created in the image of God.
God loves them. I must love them like God loves them.
Who’s job is it to clean them up? God’s
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Sinners, no matter how great their sin don’t need an extra helping of condemnation, just to make sure we can signal to the other Christians that we aren’t taking their side on sin.
Their condemnation is already on their heads. They need to see the love of God, not the condemnation of the church.
How do you think God feels about them?
That is how we must feel about them.
Paul wanted them to see His love so they would have a model to love others.
Maturity is devotion to relationship
Maturity finds true joy in others
Maturity depends on God
Maturity values face-to-face relationship
Maturity lives out God’s love
Maturity strives for holiness
May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
I’m not going to spend much time here, because much of the rest of this letter cover holiness.
We will spend much time on this topic in the next few weeks.
But what I want us to know is that Paul demonstrates that holiness is a display of maturity.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to bring all of this into some very simple thoughts:
Unbelievers-
If you are here today and you walked in the doors of a church, not certain who Jesus is:
All of this talk about discipleship may be a step ahead of where you are, but you need to see the path.
Following Jesus is not just going to church. It will impact your entire life.
Jesus is:
Gospel presentation
Young in the faith-
If you are new to following Jesus, you need a clear picture of what maturity looks like.
Do you remember when I said the Gospel you receives determines the disciple you make.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is one of love, grace, and sacrifice.
Our lives must be defined by our love, grace and sacrifice lived out in the world.
It might be hard to know what this looks like. You need someone in your life discipling you.
You might feel like you are lost and not know what the next step is.
You need a guy like Paul to live this out.
You are not a hassle. You are someone’s joy.
You cannot read our text today and come to the conclusion that your next step is one of reading books and being by yourself.
You need relationship
Get connected in a group.
We have small groups
Womens groups
Youth groups
Mature
When I think about the mature in the room, I think of the words of Jesus, “The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.”
We need to continue to strive for maturity. You don’t “arrive”.
Much like the Thessalonian church, they were doing great to this point, but they needed to continue to grow.
Jim Dirks said this in our sermon prep time.
“You got straight A’s in first grade, good job.”
But you need to keep growing.
If God has given you His love, live it out in the relationships around you.
Stagnant
There are two last points I want to make:
Where do you get your joy?
If you get more joy out of our sermons than you get out of those you love following Jesus, then you need to take some steps of maturity.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t get joy out of this, but again I ask, would this make sense to Paul?
Did he say, “I get so much joy out of hearing sermons about Jesus?”
Or did he say, “I get so much joy out of watching you grow in your faith?”
There is not “empty nest” discipleship
You do not get to mature in discipleship so far that you get to stop making disciples.
You can’t say, “My kids grew up and now they are out of the house and I don’t have to disciple anymore”
Real Life in Action:
Head- What have I learned about the role of relationship in my growth?
Heart- Where have I embraced a wrong understanding of maturity?
Hands- Pray and ask God for direction to mature and love others.
