1Thessalonians: The Bearers of Truth: Living Templates for the Saints

Let's look again in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. I will read the chapter together. Verse 1, for yourselves brethren know our entrance in unto you that it was not in vain, but even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated as you know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention or conflict. For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile.

But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness. Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ.

But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were and became dear unto us. For you remember brethren our labor and travail, for laboring night and day because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

Your witnesses and God also, how wholly and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe. As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father doth his children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who have called you unto his kingdom and glory. For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

For ye brethren became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and they pleased not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the might be saved, to fill up their sins always, for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. But we brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face with great desire.

Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I once and again, but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing, are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy. Now the heading that I have put over this message is, Bearers of Truth and Living Templates for the Saints.

Now I don't know if that makes sense to you. You could use the word model, or example. But the basic thrust of my message is that we must be in harmony with the message we're preaching.

And we need to understand what that message is. It is the gospel of God. And that gospel of God is the most personal revelation of God that he has ever given.

God has spoken. He has spoken in different ways throughout history. But when he sent his son into the world, and when his son was on the cross, God was opening out the depths of his being to us.

He is unveiling to us the very depths of what he is. And so the gospel of God is a very intimate, personal revelation of God himself. And so as we preach the gospel, it is essential for us to not only appreciate what we have been brought into, but also to be able to be in ourselves, living out that character.

The people are not only listening to what we say, they're watching us. They're observing what we show and manifest towards them. So we're going to see a number of these principles brought out in the passage.

And so you notice how many times he seems to be vindicating himself. Normally that's not a good sign. It's usually an indication there's some underlying problem between them.

But I don't see that in the letter, that there's a problem between Paul and the converts, not like in Corinth. He doesn't have to do it because they're thinking this way of him, but because I believe the enemies of the gospel have been busy not only on one hand persecuting the saints, but also trying to slander the preachers, trying to insinuate false motivations. Now I remember going back to the work in Kapuskasing.

We came in there, Murray Pratt was, he might have hit the ripe age of 30, I'm not sure. And I was 27, now 26, 27 when we went there. So we were young.

And most of the ones who got saved were in our age range. It was a very, very young work in many ways. There were some really old folks that got saved in their 50s.

Anyway, so we were young. And you know what, one of the ideas that was circulating around that community was that this was a cult. And here were these young fellows coming in here, and they're stealing away our sons and our daughters.

These people were afraid of what we represented. Now it wasn't that long after, remember the Jonestown massacre and all that stuff way back? Well, that was just the year before. And some of the Moonies had come around that community not too long before we arrived.

And so that was another rumor, you know, we were these cults. There was a lot of suspicion. So when you don't know anything about people, and you don't know what they represent, it's easy to believe anything about them.

And so there are all kinds of rumors and insinuations. And so some of that is, I sense, looked at here in this passage. But it's interesting, the first thing that he mentions is to remember the persecution that he and his fellow laborers had experienced before he got to Thessalonica.

I find it interesting that Paul does the same thing when he is appealing to Timothy in his final writing in 2 Timothy chapter 3. They had experienced a lot of affliction and persecution together, but he reminds him of things that happened to him just before and at the time when Timothy got saved in Iconium, Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. And really, I get the impression from this is simply this idea, Paul is reminding these believers, I suffered to bring the gospel to you. I suffered back in Philippi, a hundred miles to the east, but I came to you as well.

We endured, we were shamefully treated, we were brutally treated at Philippi, and yet we had a boldness in our God. So it comes back again to this underlying confidence that God is working, and I am willing to work with God, whatever the cost may be. The gospel is a message of sacrifice, and these men were willing to sacrifice.

They were willing to suffer in the bringing of the message to these people in Thessalonica. And he reminds them of that at the very beginning. And so they would be encouraged.

Yes, this isn't just something strange that has happened to us. This is of the character of the message and its reaction of those who reject it. But then he mentions from verse 3 down, for our exhortation was not of deceit.

Now this word seems to imply the idea of falsehood, error. We didn't come like the Jonestown people, or the Mooneys. We didn't come, it wasn't something that originated in falsehood.

It wasn't a lie that we brought to you. Now I know that just because somebody's willing to die for what they are espousing does not mean it's right. And we know that today, very obviously in our world, when you think of things involving the Islamic world and so on.

But it does emphasize that these people genuinely believe that they're right. If you are willing to suffer for what you are preaching, if you are willing to suffer hardship, that at least brings this much credibility. You believe in it.

It matters to you. You're willing to die for this. So he says our preaching to you did not arise out of falsehood.

We didn't come here to spread a lie. We were willing to give you the truth. And I remember again how that was an important element in the beginning of the work in CAP as well, in establishing that sense in those who listen to us that these people want us to know what God is saying to us.

But then he uses two other expressions. One is uncleanness. It did not arise out of uncleanness.

That is really talking about moral uncleanness, immorality. And he says neither was our underlying motivation. It was not that we were trying to trap you into something that would make you trust us so that we could sexually, immorally affect you.

This is one of the scandals, isn't it, in the religious world. And it's not limited to the religious world. It happens in all areas of life where people gain a position of trust over other people.

And that is why if there's one thing we must be very, very sensitive to, we must guard against it. That neither by deliberate intention nor as we become involved with people, and as you're dealing with people, you become very close to them. Some of that is emphasized just a few verses down of how tender, how intimate the bond becomes between the messengers and the converts.

This must be guarded against very, very strictly, strongly within our own being that we do not let something of the flesh overtake our spiritual interest in people that we are trying to reach. And so he is making this bold declaration. This is not what you saw.

This is not what you experienced from us. And he says neither was it in guile. It was not a deceptive kind of thing that was in order to deceive you.

And then he says, but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tries our hearts. I think we get too used to the gospel. We get too used to spiritual things, living and serving in the presence of God as we meet together in assembly capacity and so on.

God has entrusted to us the most precious revelation of himself. And so this language, and I know that Paul, because of his background, because at one time he persecuted the Christians, he deeply appreciated God's mercy to him, to save him, and then to entrust him with the very message that he tried to blot out. So Paul had a deep appreciation for this.

Maybe some of us who have grown up in Christian homes and have had the gospel surrounding us all our lives, maybe we just take it for granted far too much to think of how precious it is that we are allowed, we are allowed to speak for him, the message that can save a person and bring them into eternal life, the most important thing that could ever be in a person's experience. And so he is saying here that God has tested us, God himself has tested and approved us. And so he served with that consciousness.

I am doing this for God. And in 2 Corinthians particularly, he repeats this over and over again, in the sight of God, in the sight of God, in the sight of God. And we need to cultivate this, to be conscious of this.

Somehow it seems too easy to just get on the human level as we interact with people. Paul was conscious that he was serving in the presence of God and for God, God who tries our hearts. And then he speaks about the issue of flattery.

You know, basically the gospel is incompatible with flattery, isn't it? It's pretty hard to preach the gospel honestly and be a flatterer, because the gospel confronts us with our failing. It confronts us with our guilt, our unfitness for God's presence. And so the gospel is incompatible with this human characteristic of flattering people to gain a following or to gain prestige among them.

And so he says, we did not come to you with these kind of motivations. And then he says, you know that, we didn't flatter you. And then he says, nor a cloak of covetousness, that they would never necessarily know that, but he says, God is witness.

Now, one of the things that I have come to appreciate, and my brother Sandy has already alluded to this from the other side, from assembly giving, Christians giving to full-time workers, from the standpoint of someone in the Lord's work and preaching the gospel in new areas and seeing how important it is that they do not get the impression that we're here for their money. I am deeply grateful, if you want to call it a system, the way that we handle finances among assemblies and the Lord's work. It protects against this all too common corruption in human nature to make use of something that matters to people.

Remember the expression, religion is a rocket. Spiritual things, eternal things, the things of God are a matter of concern to people, and they're willing to pay. They're willing to spend money.

And it's so easy for organizations to develop this system where they're working on this lever. Of course, there are certain religious systems that have taken it to the ultimate degree with things like purgatory and all of that kind of thing, where they have made a market, merchandising. This is one of the errors of the last days that are spoken of in 2 Peter, making merchandise of you.

And Paul is saying there was not in our hearts any desire to grasp after what you had. And he comes into that further when he says here in verse 7 or verse 6 and then verse 9. So I'll pick up that more when we come to verse 9. But he says, nor of men sought we glory. So people can have the aim through covetousness, or it can be to have a high position for people to glorify them.

He says, we didn't seek glory from you and impose ourselves on you and expect you to provide for us and to honor us in this way. And so he says, as we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ. But instead, we showed, he says, the character of parents.

And he starts out with this beautiful expression. We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children. Now, even though that's the way it's translated here, it really is not talking about a nurse at the hospital taking care of your little baby just after it's born.

This is talking about a nursing mother who is cherishing her own children. Now, I don't think there's anything more gentle, more tender than that picture of a nursing mother. With that little infant that is so helpless, so fragile, so dependent, so needy.

And here is someone who, as the mother of that child, nursing it from her own being, supplying life to that infant. And in that sacrificial spirit, sleepless nights, dad gets to roll over and go back to sleep after the baby stops crying. Mom gets to feed it.

That picture is so precious. We need nursing mothers. We need tenderhearted fathers.

We need those who, when they bring the gospel to people, are willing to impart themselves to those people in accord with the spirit of the message itself. Are able to draw people to themselves and love them and sacrifice themselves for them. That's what we have here.

So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls because you become dear unto us. I remember when we were in that transition stage in the work in Cap and Murray and his wife had left. This was after about five years, four to five years.

And he started to be involved in the next town that we got involved in, in the city of Timmins. And for about a year, I went back and forth, half a week there and half a week back in Kapuskasing. And then we ended up moving as well.

And there was one couple in particular that I had spent about a year in marriage counseling, just trying to help them. They'd had a very unstable relationship, a lot of baggage. And I had spent, you know, week by week, spending some time with them, trying to teach them, trying to help them become more stable in their marriage and so on.

And I remember the wife saying to me when she found out that Becky and I were leaving as well, she made this statement. She says, we feel like we're being put up for adoption. We feel like we're being put up for adoption and we don't like it.

Now, the brethren, one thing we'll say about the work that happened there, the Lord raised up men very quickly from among them, which showed gift and development and care for the Lord's people. But in some ways, partly because they were all quite young yet, it was almost like we were like parents who left a bunch of teenagers home and just left them on their own. Not left them home for the weekend.

We left and they're left to take care of themselves. And because they were so much the same age, it was difficult for some of them to put confidence in those that became the overseers among them. This is something that you can't force.

You can't just impose someone over the Lord's people and expect them to connect with them. And what I see in this passage is this very powerful bond that develops through the preaching of the gospel, through people getting saved. And there needs to be on the one hand of those who bring the gospel, this willingness to be involved in their lives, to take care of things that you might say, this wasn't part of a, you know, I didn't sign up for this when I signed up to be in the Lord's work, to help somebody with whatever, you know, help whatever, fix the house, teach them how to budget, whatever it may be, to help them in whatever needs they had, like a parent with a child.

Now, I'm going to say, make one comment about the practice that we have typically as assemblies become mature, and we have gospel series in assemblies, and I encourage that, I appreciate that, and we sort of hire in the preachers. Now, I'm not going to despise that. I understand at times it's very valuable to have men come that God uses.

There is one potential weakness that I'm just going to mention that relates to this passage, and that is because of this bonding that is intended by God, what happens when the preachers do all the preaching, they do all the visiting, they do all the caring for these new converts, and then they go. And they don't come back, and they don't visit, and they don't keep in touch. There's a potential weakness right there, and unfortunately, we have seen this happen too many times.

Now, I know everybody doesn't go on who professes to be saved, no matter how it happens, but so often we have people who show indication of life, they seem to be beginning to flourish, and then it fizzles, and this is where I would encourage local believers to be involved, local believers to be integrated into this gospel work, and I would even encourage having one preacher come, and local brethren working with them. Have the local believers an integral part of this, because somehow you must develop and maintain this bond. This is a bond that is very precious, it is very powerful, because those believers, those converts, are going to listen to the father in their faith, their father in faith, their mother in faith, and so on.

So that's an important part of the pattern that we see. And so he says, verse 9, this is where we get back again to the financial aspect. You remember, brethren, our labor and travail, for laboring night and day because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

Now, I will say this in my own experience, even though Murray and I were involved in new work in Kapuskasing and then in Timmins, and we basically were out of circulation as far as among the assemblies. The first at least 15 years of my time of being in the Lord's work, we rarely went anywhere, even for conferences. So how were we supported? Was it out of sight, out of mind? I can say, thankfully, in appreciation that the Lord took care of us.

The Lord's people were faithful, and there were times of testing. Yes, I'm sure every one of us who were involved in full-time work go through those times, but the Lord provided for us. Now, I have heard preachers at times, and this is not very often, preachers don't discuss finances usually.

I have heard at times a preacher saying, I have to circulate among the assemblies or I wouldn't be supported. So whose fault is that, and is there a fault? I would suggest there may be neither at fault, or it could be both at fault, and I'm not the judge of that. I can only speak from my own experience that I believe that what Paul gives by way of example in the New Testament, I think gives us a better framework of understanding this, of financing the Lord's work of the care of the workers and so on, than what sometimes we box ourselves into.

There are certain preachers who have had struggles, and have had to work part-time or even full-time during part of their time, and I've heard others saying, well, are they in the Lord's work or aren't they in the Lord's work? I would suggest that you'd have trouble with Paul, if that's the way you're thinking. Let me at least express what I see as the framework in which Paul worked. He was laboring in pioneer work, and I realize that that is easier to do when you're single, but as I say, even in my own experience, my wife and family were with me in those early years, and the Lord took care of us, even though we hardly visited other assemblies.

Paul's framework was this, the work must go forward, the gospel must be preached. If the Lord's people bring help and support, that's deeply appreciated. If not, I'll work as I have to, to supply my needs, and as he mentions in his little conference with the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, you know, he says, my hands have ministered to my own needs and to those that were with me.

So Paul didn't take the idea that, well, God's people have failed me, or somehow that God has failed me, but rather, this is my mandate, to preach the gospel, to spread the word of God, and by whatever means he would see it go forward, and so I would encourage us to not, well, I deeply appreciate the idea and the practice that we have to seek to support the Lord's work, and I will just make this one further comment, so I don't get myself into trouble here. Sometimes it's the practices that we have that have a weakness in it, and again, I have no idea what you do here. If we only give fellowship to preachers when they visit at the door, you are, in a sense, you are bringing that effect to cause that influence to happen.

Seek the will of God, seek to be in harmony with God, seek to be exercised about the Lord's work further afield, as well as what is right at your door, and by that I don't mean that it's wrong to support those who do come and help in the local work, and teach, and so on. That's also part of the pattern, but anyway, he is emphasizing here that as they preached the gospel, they made every sacrifice that was necessary, so that the impression that was conveyed was completely in harmony with the gospel of God. The gospel is a gospel of God's gift, of God's giving, of God's love, and that is what was conveyed, and then he mentions here in verse 10 and verse 10 to 12, you are witnesses in God also, how wholly, and justly, and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you.

I remember some years after Murray and I had left CAP, and so on, one of the brethren who was one of the elders there, he mentioned to me about a particular problem that was kind of developing among them, and it was basically that the brethren didn't know how to behave themselves in the Bible reading. They were allowing petty rivalry, and whatever disagreements they had in their thinking, they were allowing it to be very evident. They were handling each other as competitors.

It was becoming very, very, instead of being edifying, it was the opposite, and this brother said to me, he says, if you and Murray had behaved that way when you came among us, he said, we wouldn't have stuck around. We would have been gone, and so we need to think, and again, I think there's a problem that as we get used to the Lord's service in the assembly, as it's functioning, we lose sight of this. It still matters how you behave.

It matters what kind of impression you are conveying to the believers. Do they go home and talk about the fight? Do they talk about the animosity, the rivalry, or do they, they may not be able to discern who's correct and who isn't in the discussion, but they can sure pick up on our attitudes and the way we treat one another, and so we need to be very conscious of this, that we are to model the truth. We are to be examples that people will not feel a conflict between listening to what we are teaching and listening and seeing our behavior and so on, and of course that goes as well for the standards of godliness of our behavior, that we live out, because those who are younger and new believers coming in, they are going to measure what the word of God means by what they see being lived out in your life.

That's how they're going to value the word of God, and if they see that you just treat certain aspects of the scriptures very casually, carelessly, indifferently, they're going to assume that that means nothing or that you people are hypocrites, and so this is very, very important, and so that's why as I'm trying to bring this idea, we are bearers of truth. We are carrying the revelation of God in the gospel. It centers in his beloved son and all that he is, and so this is the charge that we have.

As a father, some of us find it easier to be the gentle mother, to be the soft, gentle side, the supportive side, the encouraging side, the comforting side, but there also has to be authority. There also has to be firmness. There has to be this, what a father is intended to convey, and that he says, as a father who exhorts comforts and charges, lays responsibility upon, and so again, this is part of the responsibility.

Now, there is a time of transition. Every family learns this. There's a difference in talking to your three-year-old and your 13-year-old and your 23-year-old, and if you haven't figured that out, you're really in trouble.

Part of that transition is from being their total authority, and what they basically frame their observation of what is life, what is good, and what is otherwise from, to you standing beside them, and then learning to have that focus upon God himself, and you notice how that's brought out here. He says here, we exhorted you, we comforted and charged every one of you, as a father does his children, that you would walk worthy of us. No, that's not what he says, that you would walk worthy of God, God who has called you to his own kingdom and glory.

This again is the one key element that we have to remember as well, even for those that we see saved and have such a personal involvement with, we have to remember they're not mine, they're his, and we may well discover that we can bring them so far, and we can't bring them any farther, and that's when that de-parenting part of life happens, where you have to step aside, and you have to learn to accept those people, not as being under your thumb, or even under your care as much as those who must take responsibility for their life before God. Paul mentions to the to spare you, I came not as yet unto Corinth, because he had spoken of discipline, and then he held back from coming, and some of them are saying, yeah, Paul talks tough, but he's a wimp when he gets close up, and Paul warns them, when I come, I will speak with authority, I will act with authority, but there in chapter one, he says to spare you, I came not, and the reason for that is so that they would come to repentance before God themselves, without the pressure of his presence, but then he adds this statement, not for that we have dominion over your faith, not for that we have dominion over your faith, for by faith you stand, and that basically is teaching this, I am not your Lord, even if I brought you the gospel, and I taught you, and I discipled you, and I brought you up through to develop as a Christian, I am not Lord over your faith, but we are helpers of your joy, helpers of your joy, and so that is what we see here as well, that transition from the mother's gentle, absolute devotion to the care of that little convert, of that newborn, and the father's administration, the father's authority being asserted in molding them in their Christian life, but ultimately to commit them into the hand of God, and the purposes of God, I'm just going to close with the last verse says, you are, you are our glory and joy, and I wonder if in your life, in your Christian life, is there any other Christian that is your glory and joy, is there any other Christian, is there anyone else that you have labored for, that you have sought to help, and so as you see them progress, you joy in their progress, you're like a father or a mother looking over a child who has become a responsible, dedicated adult, and you can say, you are my pride and joy, it's a very beautiful expression, may the Lord bless his word.