Living in the Word, the Church, and the World
Notes
Transcript
For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
Sermon: Living in the Word, the Church, and the World
Last time I preached in the evening, we started looking at the first letter to the Thessalonians, where Paul gave quite high praise to this body of believers. He shared how he and his associates thanked God and mentioned them in prayer, remembering them. He reminded them that they were loved and chosen by God, and he was encouraged that they had imitated him and the other apostles by their conversion and service. The Thessalonian Christians, the believers in Thessalonica, had become models as “[their] faith in God has become known everywhere.” We turn now to the majority of 1 Thessalonians 2, where Paul is speaking about how his ministry operated among them.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, one of the greatest blessings of ministering in our area is the relationships that I have with Pastor Gary and many of the other area pastors in the CRC and RCA. It’s more than just being professional colleagues, but we have a great sense of camaraderie, of friendship, of genuine love and care for one another. I get along fine with pastors and leaders of the churches in other denominations and traditions, too, but it’s elevated among those who are similar in denomination and theology.
That being said, there are obviously many pastors out there today. There are many men and a small but growing number of women who have taken up a call or career ministering. We see positions of ministry through preaching, through pastoral care, through worship and music, through age-specific ministries, through public speaking and writing engagements, through evangelism, through parachurch ministries. I’m sure we could think of more. We can see it right here, around us—there isn’t just one church located only in towns over 300 people, with a single employed pastor. No, there are many churches, and more and more with multiple staff.
I say this not to have us try to determine if it’s right or wrong to have so many ordained clergy as well as lay leaders, but to point out that for pastors as well as regular believers, it can be very difficult to avoid judging and making comparisons. Sometimes we do it flipping through channels on TV and see a preacher or hear a sermon on the radio or a computer, or a member of a congregation tells us about so-and-so’s sermon that they heard or watched or visited when they were out of town—this is what they thought of it. This is something I’ve long struggled with, judging the presentation of preachers and speakers—I caught myself doing it at our Classis worship service just last week.
Preaching is probably the easiest and most accessible of a pastor’s tasks to judge, critique, and make comparisons. That makes sense, it tends to be the most public part of our ministry. I’ll speak as a pastor, maybe we wish to imitate the way another pastor speaks—he’s funny, he’s charismatic, the congregation hangs on his every word. Maybe we like the way another pastor dresses—some people like the robes, some the suit and tie, some jeans and casual. Maybe we wish we could tell jokes like other pastors. Maybe we wish we could say things that get an “Amen,” every couple of minutes. All of this can contribute to making a pastor feel insecure about themselves, about their public persona, about their style of preaching. It can also lead pastors to be competitive or territorial when it comes to attendance, member numbers, and attracting visitors.
Yet Paul and his fellow brothers give pastors and church members alike the reminder and instruction that ministry and preaching should not and must not be about the minister’s ego or persona. What we do in preaching and listening to sermons is not primarily about how well one scores on an evaluation of performance. That’s not to say that performance and delivery, tone and pace, and all those other things relating to good public speaking or good oratory skills are irrelevant. No, it is important that a congregation can hear and follow and understand what is presented. But someone may be a poor speaker, a poor presenter, and still present a good, true, and God-glorifying message.
As we look at this passage, we see at least three distinct lessons that apply to what Paul did as an apostle, a missionary, and a preacher to the Thessalonian church or other churches. These lessons speak to what it means for pastors, elders, and all of us who are disciples as we live in the Word, in the Church, and in the world. These are lessons about living with the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, and seeking to lead and share the good news with others.
We begin with what we find in verse 4, having been approved and entrusted with the gospel by God, we must seek to please God with our preaching. In our circles—the Reformed tradition here in rural South Dakota and broader into the Midwest, I believe, and I hope that we don’t often find this to be a struggle. You hopefully aren’t finding pastors or church leaders that take things blatantly called sin in the Bible, and telling Christians, “It’s okay for you to do that, don’t worry about it at all.” To go a step further, I haven’t heard a brother pastor in this area preach privately or to a group, “You know this whole repentance thing, where you’re supposed to hate your sin and say sorry to God and ask him to forgive you and then change? That’s not that big of a deal.” To go even a step further, none of us are saying, “You don’t really need Jesus. He didn’t actually have to die for you; you don’t need to be saved. Most people get to heaven, just try to be as decent as you can. Hell—that probably isn’t real, and normal people aren’t going to go there.”
Maybe you feel at times that one of us pastors or another pastor you listen to is being a bit light, a bit sensitive, a bit too gracious perhaps. Yet this is one of the reasons why we are part of a denomination and a classis. They give us an extra level or two of accountability. Those of us who preach and pastor must typically take courses and exams, and there are multiple rounds to pass through as you pursue ordination—we don’t just print an ordination certificate off of a denominational website for $9.99. No, we seek to test one another, to make sure that at least on the essentials, we believe that which the Bible says to be true, to be in agreement with one another.
But even when we remove the denominational structures and ordination titles and all of that, church leaders and church members still don’t get to teach or disciple according to just whatever they think. Orthodox Christian faith, true Christian faith must always be rooted in Scripture, in the infallible and authoritative word of God, the word which has been spoken and has been passed down to us as God revealed his almighty and sovereign self since the beginning. Maybe our doctrine at times gets a little confusing and we can’t understand every word and concept in commentaries or a systematic series; we even disagree with other Christians. But the essential truths that God created what is pure and holy to worship him and enjoy him and his creation together, our wrecking that and having original sin passed down, our need to be redeemed by a perfect and sinless God who is also like us, and the sacrifice of Jesus fully paying for all our sins, we can’t get away from that.
We can’t tell people sin isn’t a big deal. We can’t evangelize by saying, “Believe in Jesus, but go ahead and believe in and practice Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, or any other religion out there.” No, anything else that seeks to divide worship from Christ, that seeks to replace our need for salvation through him alone is a lie. It is from the devil. If we preach that or we teach that in small groups or 1-on-1, because we don’t want to offend or deal with disagreement, then we’ve sought to flatter, to trick, to please men and women. The intent and objective of presenting the Christian gospel must be to please God by offering to others in love what he has entrusted to us.
The gospel message is precious. That God would give his Son whom he loves to come and live in this world that God desires to save but is filled with sin and hatred and pain and death—that his Son would even die, that we might be saved is not a lesson that you just pick up once in a while. No, this is everything. If a person doesn’t have this, there is no real hope for them. Many of us recognize this—I’ve had a number of conversations where we wonder how a person can go through a cancer diagnosis and treatment, the sudden loss of a loved one, and on the other side, we should say, how can someone experience a miracle or abundant blessings, and not believe there must be a God? We’re not talking about just any random god or greater power, this is the one and only Lord God! He is the one in whom we find our ultimate strength, wisdom, and peace. Brothers and sisters, do not forget how precious this gift that you have been given is.
Now, to present truth does not require us to always and only appear angry or vengeful or scary. This brings us to our second point, we, the church, are to preach and disciple as parents ought to relate to their children. Verse 5, Paul writes, “As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.” If we look at the Greek, a more literal translation is as one who nurses or a nursing mother cares for children. That’s quite the sensitive, nurturing, even soft image. We also read in verses 11 and 12, “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.” Again, we, the church, are to preach and disciple as parents ought to relate to their children.
“Gentle…like a nursing mother [and] as a father…encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God.” One of the most difficult results of a growing number of broken or separated families in our society is reportedly that people struggle to receive well language of father and mother when it comes to God, the church, or families in the Bible. If a person’s dad was abusive or neglectful towards his wife, this person’s mother, then how ought they to view God who is declared as Father in Scripture? Something we as human beings have to remember though, is that it is us and others around us, all sinners, who have twisted God’s good purposes.
Paul is using really ideal qualities of mothers and fathers to describe how they were doing ministry: a gentle mother, an encouraging, comforting, and urging father. Parents and grandparents, these are important qualities that God desires for us to have in our families, in relating to our children and grandchildren. As they are growing up, being formed, learning, maturing, your role is to guide them, to disciple and discipline them—not to let them just explore and figure out everything and try to determine what they feel like. No, God calls us who are parents to nurture.
But we don’t need to look at homes only that are broken, where mom or dad is out of the picture, to see that we do fail. We sin, we hurt—our discipline goes too far, our words cut deeper than we’d like, we are impatient. Being sinners, however, does not require us to seek or abide only in our failures. We are called back to show gentleness, to show patience, to encourage, to in everything love our children. While we mature and perhaps we can say, “live worthy of the gift of parenthood,” we must teach our children that we sin, we fall short, but God redeems us and calls us to follow his intent.
All of this to say that if we feel we have fallen short before in nurturing others in the church or in seeking the lost, wanting to share the good news of Jesus with them, inviting them into the fold—do not continue to reject or neglect your calling to mother and father those who God puts before you. That doesn’t only mean to actively disciple, but it has bearing on how disciple. Do so gently as a mother caring or nursing her children. Disciple others in such a way that you truly want them fed and nourished by God, his Word, and his redemption. We don’t just want to persuade people to believe the gospel, but to truly experience the change that Christ, by his Spirit now, and for eternity offers.
The discipling mother seeks not just a declaration of conversion, but walks to make sure the disciple is supported. So too, the discipling father—we can apply this in our families but also broader into the mission of the church—we encourage, comfort, and urge on disciples. Notice, that has to include recognizing the positive, the joys, the celebrations that come in life, but also the hardships, the vulnerable times, times of sorrow when we need to be specially built up. The relation of one who disciples, the relation that the apostles had to these churches was making sure that they or someone else continued to journey and help the one being discipled.
That brings us to our final point, and there is a fair bit of tension with it. So far, we’ve looked at remembering that our goal in promoting biblical gospel truth is to please God—he has entrusted himself to us, and also that we act as parents in discipling—not seeking fear or wrath or to scare people or harp on them. So far, I think we could say, this isn’t easy work, but it could be an enjoyable experience! But then Paul reminds us of what he and many other Christians have gone through. Verse 14 and following reveal those who have received the word of God, “You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved.” Here is our third point: preaching God’s truth and sharing Jesus Christ is worth enduring suffering.
Last time I shared some of the background about Paul’s initial trip to Thessalonica as recorded in Acts 17—a group of Jews rounded up a mob to riot in response to his preaching, they drove him out of the city, and then they followed and continued to try and drive him out of at least one other place he preached.
Things like this happen still today. I’ve mentioned the ministry Voice of the Martyrs before, you can go online and check out their websites persecution.com or icommittopray.com. One of the stories posted this week was how “local authorities from 6 villages in Laos accused 2 Christian of illegally spreading a false religion.” The authorities “intend to ban Christian worship and revoke citizenship from those who convert to Christianity [and] if any more people convert to Christianity the two Christian men will be arrested.” Another account was in Sri Lanka where “100 angry locals surrounded a church building…during Sunday services recently, damaging windows, removing Christian symbols from the front door and vandalizing motorcycles parked outside. A few people even entered the church and told the pastor they would kill him if he did not stop worship activities and leave the village.”
There are wonderful benefits to faith in Jesus Christ, joy and comfort for now, eternal life with Jesus beyond this life. But this doesn’t mean that every moment, every day, every year of this life will go without persecutions. We can be thankful that most of our lives tend to be without persecution, without anything like what these brothers and sisters in Laos and Sri Lanka are going through. But let us not take that for granted. The devil can work persecutions against us here. The devil can incite pain against the church and believers, but let us not fall into thinking that God doesn’t care about our suffering, our pain. That just because civil governments and people make rules and laws that may work against us, that God isn’t the one who reigns supreme.
As we gather and as we go out into the world, as we interact with the Church and with those who do not yet confess Jesus as Lord, may the ministry we look for from pastors and even from one another not be first and foremost about flattering and receiving praise from men. Let us be filled with and cherish the Word of God that he has given to us. Let us disciple encouragingly as parents according to God’s intent. Let us pray for those who endure suffering and ask God to give us strength when we may face persecutions of any kind. Let us remember and encourage one another that in all of life, God, his redemption, and his plans will never be defeated. Amen.