My Job, Your Job
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My Job, Your Job
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
You remember our labour and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was towards you believers. As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you should lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.
God’s word for us this day!
As I pray today I want to also just mention that we just received word from John Parks that his sister-in-law, Karla, passed away this morning. She had been suffering from ALS and she is now home with the Lord. So let’s take a moment to pray for our word and let’s also remember John’s family and also Karla’s family, as well.
Lord God, we ask that you would be with the Parks family as they have lost Karla. She has fought a good fight and she is now home with you. So Lord we ask that in your great mercy and in your compassion that you would surround that family, you might be with them as they grieve, as they say good bye and as they celebrate the hope that is ours, because of you Jesus. And Lord, we thank you. We thank you that your word strengthens us, that it encourages us and it helps us to move forward. So Lord I ask that you would quicken our hearts by your Spirit to help us hear what you have for each of us this day. We ask it because of Christ. Amen.
Well, Bill is a nineteen year old university student. He has been a Christian for about five or six years. He made a commitment to Christ while he was in high school, and he now volunteers as a leader at the Youth group in his church. His friends call him “Blue” because he has red hair. Violet is a sixty-seven year old retiree. She continues to do ministry in the church. She leads a small group and she also does lots of pastoral care in her Stephen Ministry group, as well. Ruby is a little over twenty-nine, at least that is what she will admit to; and she is an IT specialist and she also leads a small group. She is involved in outreach in her local ministry. Norm Black, and guess what his nickname is: Jack, that’s right. He is a father with three teenage boys. He is in his late forties and he is an accountant. He is old enough to be considered a baby boomer but he considers himself as kind of a Gen Xer. He leads the men’s group at his local church and he also is involved as an elder and involved in some small groups, as well.
Well, all of these people have something in common. They are all followers of Christ and they are all involved in ministry in God’s church. As followers of Jesus Christ they seek to live as Jesus did, trying to live out those words that the apostle John describes Jesus with in John 1:14 where he says, “Jesus was full of grace and truth.” Hang to those words, “full of grace and truth” because as we get to the end of the message, we will come full circle with those words.
We are in our second message in the book of 1 Thessalonians and I would encourage you to bring your own bible. I know a couple of you have and I want to encourage you to continue to do that. It is an opportunity for you to follow along in the text as we reference it; as well as, if there is something that hits you in there, to be able to mark it up, make notes, whatever you want to do: do that. It is a good way to engage yourself and immerse yourself in Scripture.
We are doing that today. We are looking at 1 Thessalonians. We will be working through the book over the course of the summer. Today we are looking at how Paul is seeking to defend himself and to respond to those who were following him and trying to disrupt the ministries of the churches that he started as he moved on. So he is speaking to the Thessalonians to respond to those there that had heard about the fact that maybe Paul wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. Again, this is all background for you that you can find in the book of Acts, in Acts, Chapter 17. So I invite you to read that as background, as well.
In our passage today, which was a fairly long passage of Scripture, Paul gives insight into anyone who is involved in any kind of ministry; whether it be Bill or Violet or Ruby, or Norm or you or me, a lay person or an ordained person, it doesn’t matter. Paul in his call here today is not so much giving us a direct teaching thing—you need to do x, y, z; but rather it is more he is explaining from his experience working with the churches. That is what we can glean from that, we can apply to our own lives and in that we will find echoes of Christ being full of grace and truth. In this passage Paul really talks about four different roles that anyone who is involved in any kind of ministry needs to uphold. They are that of a steward, that of a mother, that of a father and that of a herald. These are to be the hallmarks of those who are involved in ministry. Two of them can be pretty easily seen from the text and the others are clearly implied through the text, as well.
So let’s begin by looking at this role of a steward which comes from verses 3 and 4 of our text today. Here Paul is defending his ministry and in it he says that he has been approved to be entrusted with the gospel; and, as such, he must speak not to please humans but to please God. The key word here for me is the word “entrusted” because that is a word of stewardship. God is giving the most important thing he has to Paul. It is the gospel of God and that gospel is that Jesus came, lived a sinless life, and became a sacrifice to die for our sins. In his death and in his resurrection the payment has been paid for our sins and that we now have life eternal when we put our faith in Christ. That is the gospel. That is precious to God and God is then entrusting it to Paul. He is handing it over to Paul, if you will, just as an owner that owns a piece of land might entrust their land to a steward to manage it and take care of it, to ensure that no harm comes to it, to watch over it.
Well, last weekend Les and I were visiting John in Chicago that is why I wasn’t here. As part of that we asked John’s girlfriend if she would like to housesit our house and watch the dog. We were entrusting to her our house, to keep our house and the hound safe. Our expectations were that no harm would come and she would do her best to take care of things and be accountable to us for anything that might happen. The same is true for those who carry the gospel to the people of the church. Those who carry the gospel first need to be approved in ministry by God. Just as you don’t let just anybody housesit your house, God wants to have approval of anyone who is serving in God’s church. Now there are lots of ways to receive that approval and it is way beyond the scope of what we have time for and beyond our scope just to be able to talk about that today; but, I want to say that, in general, much of that approval comes through the concurrence of the community, right here. We affirm the approval of God and the gifts that are being given to people.
If you want to read more about that, that is really just scriptural; that is the story of how the deacons were first called into ministry in Acts, Chapter 6. If you want to read about that you can see how that is in process the concurrence of the community. So part of this stewarding aspect is to be approved first and foremost by God. But stewarding the gospel also means that we need to use the gospel in a way that is pleasing to God and not to mortals. In the most macro view of this, those who teach in the church are going to be ultimately responsible to God for what they teach—not to denominations, not church boards, not committees but ultimately to God.
Scripture says that God tests our hearts. God knows our hearts. God knows our motives. He knows our secrets. And God has very high standards, for in James 3 the first verse it says, “Not many of you should become teachers, … for you …will be judged with greater strictness.” Ouch! But in the midst of that we should not fear if you have been called and approved by God to teach. You need to do that; because even though we may be judged with greater strictness, we also have the understanding that our Judge is the most impartial, the best, the most merciful judge we could ever ask for, which is God himself.
So let me take that now and let me turn that teaching on myself. When I teach about something and when I speak about something, whatever it might be regarding Scripture, I am always going to teach you what I believe to be the understanding of Scripture, what the truth is of Scripture; because I believe that I will be held accountable to God for what gets taught, not only here but everywhere in Faith. That means then that there are going to be some topics in Scripture that I am going to want to deal with very carefully in terms of how they are presented and how they are taught. Because I know that some of you may not even agree with everything that I may teach as I understand Scripture because I know I am fallen; I know I am mortal; I know that I don’t always see things clearly; I know I have my own presuppositions. But even in the midst of that my thinking around that is if I am going to be held accountable to God, that I better make sure that whatever gets taught here is the truth as I best believe it. Because I would rather stand before God and have him say, “You know Buck what you thought was truth. Uh-uh—not true.” I would rather deal with that judgment than dealing with the judgment of allowing something to be taught that I believe might be wrong and God says, “Yep, you are right. Buck, why didn’t you stop that?” That is going to be a harsher judgment for me.
So I am going to stand in that and try to do the best I can. I think that is the way for all teachers, I and all teachers must steward God’s word very carefully. That is God’s call on us. And that is the first image that Paul gives us, is that of a steward.
The second image that Paul gives us is that of a mother, and that comes from verses 5 through 8. Here we have the image of a mother that says “caring for her own children.” Even though our text says “nurse” it really means mother— other versions use that word “mother”. Paul is here kind of setting up this idea, this image, of a nurturer as opposed to what he sometimes used and sometimes his detractors used against him was that he was the guy who just came in and slammed his fist and said, “This is how it has got to be.” He used his authority of his apostleship that he received from Christ. Paul here is saying, “No, no, I didn’t do that with you guys. I didn’t do that with you; rather I took this approach of being a mom, of caring for you like a mother cares for her children, getting down on their level, using their language, playing their games”—a gentleness in his approach with ministry to them.
I am going to read a couple verses from our Scripture again, verses 7 and 8, and as I do I want you as you think about it and hear these words, think about what is Paul’s motivation behind these words. O.K. It says,
But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
Do you hear the love there? Do you hear the self-sacrifice in Paul’s s voice?…his affection for the people? If you read through the rest of Chapter 2, as well as a lot of Chapter 3, it is really talking about Paul’s love for the people in this church and how he cared for them. It should be no different for those of us that are involved in ministry; to have genuine love, to have self-sacrifice for those that are around them, whether they are teaching Sunday school, children, or whether they are leading an adult bible study, or whether they are supervising a Stephen Ministry supervision group, they are leading that kind of a group. We need to have that kind of love and self-sacrifice. I must tell you that one of the most satisfying moments that I have had here at Faith came just a few months ago. It was at the beginning of the year. It was right after Chris had left, and we had called a town hall meeting to kind of say, “What’s next because Chris is gone?” In the process of that, one of the questions that came up was: Buck, what are you going to do? Are you leaving too? I said, “No, I am not going anywhere.” Then I just kind of threw in this comment because I thought it was appropriate and I said, “You know, I am not going anywhere because I like you guys. I enjoy being with you guys.” And I just kind of threw that in. But out of that came this kind of spontaneous applause and that just warmed my heart and I need to tell you that. I thank you for that. It was very affirming. I do care greatly for you and I do want the best for us as a church, as well. For as Paul sacrificed himself for the church, he never considered it a sacrifice and neither do I. That is the image of a mother.
Then the next image that Paul uses is that of a father and that is from verses 9 through 12. Here Paul is saying, “I dealt with the people of the church as a father by my example as well as my instruction.” If you notice in our passage today, Paul uses this phrase “both you as the church and God are my witnesses.” And he uses it again here in this passage. He says “You guys, as well as God, are my witnesses of my holiness and my righteousness in your midst.” There was a reason for that. He saw that as part of his duties as a parent, as a father, to give them an example of what it meant to walk like Christ walked. Then he includes that he was helping them live lives worthy of God, that idea of following Jesus and that following Christ is about not only here and now but it is also in the future glory that is to come. That was all part of Paul’s understanding of the instruction that he gave them, that was the other part of it, was that, yes, we are being transformed and there are things that we need to rout out of our lives; and he talks about them in Chapter 4, and we will get to those in a couple weeks. But beyond that he says “also the future glory to come.” That is part of our transformation; that is also part of what it means to follow Christ. So he uses his image of a father.
The last image he uses is that of a herald, of one who speaks. This is from verses 13 through 16. Honestly, I was trying to come up with a better name than “herald”. It is kind of an old word but it is this idea of a town crier or someone who makes kind of a public proclamation; in fact, the word “preacher,” as it is used in verse 9 of our text, also finds its root from this same word. As Paul is talking about his role as a herald, notice the interplay between God, Paul and the church. He kind of explains like this, he says, “God’s word came through Paul” and Paul there uses the word “us”. Why is he using the word “us”?… because he is thinking about his people that were traveling with him—Silas and Timothy—but it is really Paul. So God’s word came through Paul and then it says, “You, the church, received it.” And then he says, “It is changing you. The word of God is changing you.” It is changing them so they began to imitate the other churches that had also received God’s word. And Paul affirms them for that, this idea of a herald. Those who serve are to pass the word on, proclaim it.
So these four images that Paul presents to us focus around really two commitments, two commitments that have to be a part of anyone that is involved in ministry. Those commitments are, first, a commitment to the word of God and secondly to the people of God. That first commitment to the word of God means that we need to protect the word of God and we need to proclaim the word of God, the stewardship, as well as the heralding of it. And our commitment to the people of God is to love them as a mother does and to grow them as a father does. These commitments are really the first one to the word of God is really about truth. And that second commitment to the people of God is really about grace. We need both of those. We need to hold them in tension with each other because if we just hold on to truth, truth is hard; truth is demanding; truth needs to be softened with grace. And if we just have grace, grace is soft, just like pudding (I just thought of that); grace needs to be hardened with truth, as well. You have to hold those in tension with each other. So anyone who is involved in ministry, they live with that tension. It is a hard road to walk but it is a road that we must pursue; and I will pursue that and I do pursue that everyday on your behalf, for it is our call to follow Christ, the one who is full of grace and full of truth.
Would you pray with me please?
Lord God, thank you, thank you for those who serve. And Lord we ask that you would continue to raise up those who you have gifted, because you have gifted every one of us with the building up of the body. There is no one that is exempt. So Lord, let these words work into our heart, into our soul and in our mind, that we might live as you lived Lord Jesus, full of grace and truth. Amen.