1 Thessalonians No.2 The Model Leader

I have a few minutes of music to share with you today. I hope you enjoy. Praise the truth, O Lord, praise the name of the Lord.

Praise to thee the name of the Lord, Long live St. Paul, and forevermore. Thy keen glory is a conquering star, And that is a victory thou o'er heaven's far. Angels in thine enchantment, Proclaim thy holy name.

Thy keen glory is a conquering star, And that is a victory thou o'er heaven's far. Comingly he brings us sanity anew. Let the church be gladness, hymns of triumph sing.

For the Lord now liveth, death hath fought to sin. Thy keen glory is a conquering star, And that is a victory thou o'er heaven's far. Oh, glory of thee, glorious Prince of Light, Life exalted of thee, made a king of strife.

Make us more than conqu'rous through thy giftless love, Bring us safe through Jordan to thy home above. Thy keen glory is a conquering star, And that is a victory thou o'er heaven's far. What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear.

What a privilege it is to carry Everything to God in prayer. And Father, as we acknowledge our confidence in you, our great Sovereign Lord, we embrace in our prayers this morning not only those who are beloved as this fellowship, who've lost their partners, but we bring to you all who are in need, all our sick and all our suffering folk. We bring to you our total membership.

We thank you for the way that you've been with us for all these years since this church was founded. We praise you for the many new people that you're giving us, for the young lives in our creche and Sunday school, for young mums and dads, as well as older friends. We bring the whole gamut of this family church to you, and we ask, Lord, that you'll bless us and in these days own us for your honour and for your glory.

We pray afresh for those of our number who are serving you abroad and those who are preparing for such service. Be with them and bless them, we ask of you, and keep this church always a launching pad from which people can go to the very ends of the world to preach and proclaim the good and glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Come upon us, Father, here.

And those of us who are suffering from spiritual inertia, those of us who've found the past weeks and months difficult, those who are having a struggle to hang on to faith, Lord, we just ask that they might know the mighty overwhelming of your Spirit's power upon them this day so that their vision shall be refocused, their ears shall be touched by the hands of the Lord, and they shall hear again the word of God speaking to their own circumstance. Bless us all here, Lord, and do us good, and keep us looking up to our Lord Jesus Christ, waiting for the day when all of us, with Peter and all who've gone before, shall be with our Lord Jesus, taking part in that new eternal dimension which he has yet to inaugurate. We thank you that ours is an optimistic faith.

We bless you for the resurrection of our Savior. We bless you for the thought of his soon return. And we ask that our eyes may be fixed always upon him, for his name's sake.

Amen. Now let's read together from the word of God and from the epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians. I commenced what I said would be a fairly brief series of addresses from this practical letter last week, and I want to read to you the first 12 verses of the second chapter.

This is Paul's first letter, one of the earliest letters that he wrote to the emerging Christian church in Asia Minor. And in the second chapter, having put the spotlight of attention on the church, he now unusually for him turns the spotlight upon himself and his colleagues who were with him when the gospel was first proclaimed in that Greek large city, port, so many years ago. You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure.

We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know. But with the help of our God, we dare to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.

On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We're not trying to please men, but God, who tests our hearts. You know, we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed.

God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. 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.

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship. We worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believed. 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. Amen.

1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. Last week, you recall, I was addressing you on what I claimed to be, because Scripture gives me the reason for my conclusion, the model church. Verse 7, chapter 1 of Thessalonians. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia.

Now listen to this. When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great, but of the good. Repeat that, because some of you won't listen.

When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great, but of the good. John Knox, one of the best preachers Scotland ever produced. He was talking to us, in effect, about the influence of one person on the community where he or she happens to be placed.

Dr. Stanley had a commission from one of the American newspapers to seek out that intrepid, missionary, pioneer and explorer, Dr. Livingstone. When the two met, you know what Stanley said to Livingstone. But perhaps a better quotation of Stanley about Livingstone occurred years later on, not in most of the history books.

Stanley said, speaking of his own conversion and of Livingstone's reaction to Stanley, or rather Stanley's reaction to Livingstone, he made me a Christian without ever knowing he was doing it. He made me a Christian without ever knowing he was doing it. The reason I put to you at the human level why the Thessalonian church was a model church was because happily, in the provisions of God, it had benefited from a model leadership and something of what the Apostle Paul was and his two colleagues Silas and Timothy rubbed off, so to speak, on the total congregation and that emerging church became one of the greatest expressions of the power of the Christian gospel in the whole of Greece.

Now, my reason for directing you to the second chapter of Thessalonians is so that I'm putting the spotlight on Paul and his colleagues. We too might learn because you remember I unblushingly said that one of the aims that we have, in fact, the prime aim that eclipses perhaps every other aim for our fellowship here is that we might be a model church. I argue that that was not dishonorable last week, you recall.

But you see, a model church requires model people who are part of its constituency. Now, I'm not just referring to elders and deacons, though obviously they come into our subject matter. You see, the amazing thing about the tabernacle, which is shared by many in other church, but nonetheless is one of our dominant characteristics, is that so much of our ministry is diffused amongst so many people.

If I were to call together all the leaders of our church, of every department, I'd probably be numbering about 100. And then there are others who are also engaged in vital aspects of ministry behind the scenes. And it's at that level that I'm directing my comments this morning because I am concerned that we become more of a model church and that we know something of model leadership.

So the Apostle Paul is going to help us as he engages in some unusual autobiography reminding the Thessalonian Christians of things that they have learned from him and from his colleagues before. And I stay our concentration just on these 12 verses. And I shall open them to you by bringing four words which I'll use as levers.

And I think that those words will enable us to get the gist of what the Apostle is teaching. I first want to show you about an observation or observations that he made that his brothers also at Thessalonica, and by the word brothers he's also including the ladies, that they also can recall. Observations that he made.

And then I'll take you down halfway through the opening paragraph from the fourth verse to the ordination that the Apostle Paul had received. Observation followed by ordination. Followed by the Apostle Paul speaking of the occupation that he and his colleagues fulfilled in Thessalonica.

And then I shall show you in the final verses how Paul and the congregation there went through an orientation. They were different people on hearing the gospel from what they were when they were ignorant of it. So those are my four key words.

If you didn't get them all right at the beginning, hold on, you'll get them towards the end, I do assure you. And you'll see how these words will act as a lever which will give to us the meaning of what the Apostle here says by way of challenge. First of all, then, the observations that he makes.

Look at the first verse, will you? He comes in with the words, you know, brothers, this is something that they have a knowledge of. And he's speaking of him and them together in Thessalonica some years before he sent them this letter. He's talking to them about the way that the gospel, when it was preached in that Greek port, was preached with great effect.

Our visit was not a failure. You know, brothers, as the authorized version beautifully puts it, our entrance into you was not in vain. Now he recalls what they too had been informed about.

Paul underlines memory. We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi. You see, Thessalonica was 100 miles away from Philippi.

And there, as you will find in Acts chapter 17, the apostle had been very, very badly treated indeed. He'd been blooded. He went with scars on his body and scars in his spirit as a result of the maltreatment that he had received.

And he comes to Thessalonica and the memory of bad treatment in the past in no way affected his ability and his desires with his colleagues to proclaim the gospel in the present. His first observation, which he shares with them, one of memory. You recall what we were like when we came to you.

You're also aware, he goes on to say, emphasizing from memory ministry, you're also aware how nonetheless we continued to preach to you what we have been proclaiming in Philippi. With the help of our God, we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. There's nothing more that Worthing needs than the declaration of the gospel of God, is there? You see, the apostle is very careful to point out here, as he just brings these preliminary observations to the attention of the Thessalonians.

He's very careful to point out that what he had to say, he had received from the Lord. And it was by the help of God that he was successful. This is his gospel.

Paul refers to it four times as being the gospel of God. Now he has every right, does he not, to water down that gospel. Let's imagine, let's put this in an understandable context, shall we? Let's imagine that you have been preaching in Bagnor.

You've been telling people in Bagnor about the gospel of Christ. Let's just assume for a moment that that is your role. And they have done you bad in terms of treatment there.

And so you limp your way down, not 100 miles, 20 miles or so is it, into Worthing. You might have by that time come to the conclusion that you ought to take the cutting edge of your gospel off. So that you present a more neutral fashion.

You're not so belligerent in saying that the gods in Bagnor and in Worthing are false gods. You compromise. You do what some theologians are doing today.

You try to make a synthesis and say that the Christian gospel, really, can merge into Hinduism, can merge into Islam. We're all following the same road. That's a temptation, is it not? It certainly was a temptation for the Apostle Paul as he comes in his bloody spirit, in his bloody condition into Thessalonica.

But despite the blood, despite the marks on his body, he still proclaims the gospel in an unadulterated, unqualified fashion. Now they know this. You know this, brothers.

You know that this is what we did. And what is more, he preached this gospel with no intention at all of trying to feather his own nest or deceive the people. The appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.

You say, why on earth is the Apostle saying that? Well, again, you've got to go back to the Greek world of his day. Many travelling philosophers, many charlatans, incidentally we do have them today, they come in different guises. Very often they will mislead thousands of people as they come and they proclaim something that's not really a gospel at all.

They feather their own nests. They sometimes use religion for their own financial advantage. Now the Apostle Paul says, you know, we weren't like that.

These are his opening observations, you see. He thinks of the memory of Philippi. He thinks of the ministry that he proclaimed in Thessalonica.

And he deals with the fact that there are many people who are engaged in impurity, who go around from town to town, who advance themselves, who promote their own personality, who, as a result of their religious wares, increase their bank balance. Now, says the Apostle, we're not like that. You're leaders who were enabled by God to found this model church.

We weren't like that at all. Those are his opening observations. But then the second word that I suggested would be helpful for you in understanding this passage is the word ordination.

The Apostle tells us quite clearly that he has been brought by God into the ministry. He has been ordained by the Lord with a particular message to proclaim. Look at verse 4. On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

What is he doing? Well, he's speaking everywhere. Look at the present tense of verse 4. We are speaking as men. But why is he doing what he is doing? Well, because he has been approved by God.

You see, no one really can be a leader. No one really can be sharing the gospel message unless God has revealed himself to them in a very personal fashion. The Apostle Paul, you remember, wasn't always a Christian.

There were times when he was the leading candidate in terms of the opposition league against the Christian church in Jerusalem. And then on one remarkable day, he sets off, you recall, the incident from Jerusalem to Damascus, the Syrian capital, and God stops him. He's going to rid the Christian church, or at least the city there, of the Christian church.

But God unhorses him. He falls to the ground. There's a great light.

Paul has an encounter with the Lord. And when he has been given directions to move into Damascus, you remember how God speaks to one Ananias, and he tells him that Paul, otherwise known as Saul of Tarsus, is coming his way. And Ananias says, Well, I know about this man and all the many harmful things that he has done to the cause of Christ in Jerusalem, but Ananias, says God, he is a chosen vessel unto me.

He's approved of me. And when the Apostle writes letters in years that are yet to come to ordinary Christian people like Timothy and Titus, he basks in the fact that though it was surprising to him, God had approved of him. God had ordained him to the ministry.

Now, don't use that word ordination in the sense that it's setting apart some sort of hierarchy within the church, a sort of professional clergy. I don't read that in Scripture at all. What I do read in Scripture is that God gives a variety of gifts within the body of Christ, and he enables people to use these gifts in specific functions.

And there is a sense in which all of us here need to be, as the Apostle Paul was, aware of the fact that we have been approved by God, because we have been entrusted with his gospel. What is Paul doing? Verse 4, we're speaking. Why is Paul and his colleagues speaking out the word of the gospel? Because they have been approved by God.

And not just approved by God, but they are accountable to God, aren't they? Approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men, but God who tests our hearts. Now, did you notice that? Those of you who are good at English grammar, that the word approved of God was in the past tense.

You see, there was a day when you were approved of God, not so? The day that marked your conversion. You may not be able to pinpoint it, but you do know that a time occurred when you moved from darkness into light. You were accepted into the family of God.

You had his approval. It was a once for all approval. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance.

But the fact that he has approved you also carries with it the consequence that he's continually inspecting you. You know that it is God who tests our hearts. This is what the apostle is saying to these Christians who are amazed at the way that he and his colleagues were so successfully employed to establish their church.

Well, says Paul, wherever I go, I'm aware that God has his eyes upon me. You know what quality control is, don't you? I mean, why do you buy British? Quality control. Because you know that our manufacturers are concerned to ensure that what comes from our factory belts is good merchandise.

Quality control. And some of the countries who are beating us in the markets of the world are doing so because their control is that much more intense. Now don't you understand, my friend, that this man who shared a few observations with his beloved Christian brothers and sisters, when he refers to his ordination, he says that I work as though God is constantly inspecting what I am doing.

And that's true, isn't it? The eyes of God are upon us. Not as a big policeman in the sky wanting to chop down every crime that we commit, but in a shepherd-like care, concerned for his sheep, concerned that they may be obedient, concerned for you and for me that the quality of our discipleship may be the best that we can ever offer. I think we would live our lives more carefully if we realized that God had his sights upon us all the days, of the weeks, of the months, of the years that make up our earthly pilgrimage.

You see, the Apostle Paul, when he refers to his ordination, he tells us what he's doing, he's speaking the Gospel, he tells us why he's doing it, because he's approved of God, and he tells us to whom he is accountable. He's accountable to the Lord, who is always testing their hearts. That's why, verse 5, Paul is delivered from being a man-pleaser.

You know, we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed. God is our witness. We're not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

The preacher that I am sorry for is the preacher that's afraid of his congregation. Now, don't misunderstand me, or else you'll do me an injustice. There are many defects about this pulpit, but I can say this before God.

I have never been afraid of coming into the pulpit and declaring what I believe to be His Word, whether it offended or whether it soothed. The responsibility is basically the Lord's. Once the preacher is looking to the congregation, he really has lost every right he had to enter the pulpit.

Now, so, the majority of you here, not all of you, some people have come and gone away because they can't stand the bluntness of the ministry, but the majority of you come here because you want to hear something that comes from the Lord, to soothe you as necessary and to correct you where necessary. Sometimes it can be a very bruising ministry, can't it? Well, thank God if the preacher will bruise you if you'll do it lovingly in the name of God who is concerned for your spiritual well-being. Now, this was the reason, surely, why the Apostle Paul had been so successful with his colleagues at Thessalonica.

Their concern wasn't to patronize the press in Thessalonica, it wasn't to play down the middle, so to speak, in terms of controversy, so the mayor and the counselors would say, what a good guy this fellow Paul is. He said, I wasn't looking at men, I was looking to the Lord, because I realized that one day, God who tests my ministry now will bring me to book for the way that I conducted my affairs as a preacher. So there is, as I suggest to you, the observations that he makes, the ordination in which he entered into at the hands of God, and there is also a description of the way he saw his occupation as he came to Thessalonica.

Look at verse 7, will you. And here it's surprising. As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you.

As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden. In other words, we might have made our weight felt. That's what the Greek word weight or burden here actually implies.

But you see, the apostle Paul, he never stands on his dignity, does he? He's always concerned to relate to the people with whom he has to deal on a brotherly basis. And so he uses a most surprising analogy. He tells us that he sees his occupation in two distinct categories.

One is metaphorical and the other is literal. When he came to them, he came metaphorically as a mother nurse. We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.

I think the authorized version actually gives the word nurse. But the problem with it, that translation, is that the nurse generally looks after somebody's child who's not their own. Not so? She does it lovingly.

She does it efficiently. She does it because she's called. But it's not her child.

Now says the apostle, you really are our children. We led you to the Lord. And when we were amongst you, we treated you as though we were your mother nurses.

We were mothers to you. What a blessed congregation was that one at Thessalonica. Don't you think so? To have a man, to have men at the heart of the fellowship who looked on them, whose concern for them was akin to that of a mother nurse with her child.

And he goes on, unblushingly, we loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well. Isn't that the mark of a true mother? Which mother would not forfeit her life in order to preserve the life of her child? It's a remarkable thing, isn't it? The maternal love. There's a sort of automatic reaction for a good mother towards her child.

She will always endanger herself to preserve the child. You find that in the realm of nature, don't you? Mother bird will endanger herself to preserve her own species. Now that's what the Apostle Paul, he's saying, Pastor Paul, he's so concerned for his children at Thessalonica along with Silas and Timothy, who he also reckons, incidentally, as being apostles.

Interesting comment that. He has such an affection for them that he employs the metaphor of the mother nurse. And so concerned is he, or was he, when he was there in Thessalonica to ensure their spiritual well-being that he was prepared literally in his occupation to be a tent maker.

Isn't that, at least by implication, what he's saying? Verse 9, Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship. We work night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preach the gospel of God to you. Part of the night, part of the day, engaged in his ministry as a tent maker.

And yet here is the great apostle. He has authority from God. He has reason to command the respect of these people in Thessalonica.

But he doesn't stand on his dignity. Neither, incidentally, did our Lord Jesus. You remember our Savior.

He came into the world with a right to assert his rights. But in the interest of others, he passed them by. That's godliness, isn't it? That's true humility.

Why is it that ordinary people were endeared to the Lord Jesus? Well, because of this character, you see. He never had to assert his dignity. It's only the little men climbing up, the aggressive spirit of the 20th century, the go-getters, the weakest of the world.

These are the people who really have to assert their dignity. But paradoxically, Christianity does not in any way enhance that. The way up is the way down.

The way to command respect is by making yourself the servant of all. This is why the apostle, you see, has been so marvelously successful here in Thessalonica. Now, in no way does he declare his disinterest in the office of an apostle.

He glories in the gospel. He glories in the ministry. But he himself is always a servant washing the feet of those people whose lives he has won through proclaiming the gospel of Christ to them.

He's always the mother nurse. Hey, you who are leaders in our church, are you like that? My brother elders, deacons, youth leaders, you who work amongst the women, is that your attitude? Mother nurse. Little child sometimes doesn't always obey.

Tosses the rattle out, doesn't he, umpteen times. And the mother nurse forgives and cherishes and continues to love. You don't expect your six-month son to be grace with the maturity of a sixteen-year-old or of a sixty-year-old, do you? You treat them in regard to their life, the six months of it thus far.

This, the apostle Paul, he exemplifies, he illustrates, and he's concerned for his people to the extent that he's prepared to wear himself out at night in order to make money so that he can maintain his ministry during the day and not be chargeable to them. That was his practice when he did pioneering work with established churches and when he was on preaching itineraries amongst established churches, he would live off what he was sent by those churches. So there was his occupation.

Let's close up in our study. The last word I brought to you was orientation. The apostle in the tenth verse says, Your witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believed.

What does that word orientation mean? Well, if you went to the worldwide evangelization crusade as a missionary, you would spend some months before they sent you out into wonger-wonger land being orientated. That means to say that they teach you something about the culture of people because they differ. They don't all live like they live in Worthing.

Some may say, praise the Lord for that. Well, I don't know. But what is true is that to be a successful missionary, you have to orientate yourself into the culture where you are living or going to live.

Now when the apostle Paul became a Christian, life was so different. You see, he didn't live as a Christian. He lived as a Jew.

All things were passed away. All things had become new. Now here is the apostle, and he comes to Thessalonica, and the thing that attracts them to him is the quality of his life and those of his colleagues.

To the extent that Paul brings together three synonyms. Those are words that mean almost the same thing. Holy, righteous, and blameless.

Verse 10, and he says, You are witnesses, and so is God that this is the way that we lived amongst you. This was our orientation, you see. Now the best preacher is not the one who always is engaging in talk, but the one who engages in doing.

Do you remember the illustration I told you about five years ago? I'm sure you won't because I can't believe that your memory is that good. About two doctors married to one another. One was a doctor of divinity, and the other was a doctor of medicine.

And they lived together in some large house, and some lady comes to the door, rings the bell, the maid comes to the door, and the sickly lady says, I want to see the doctor. And the maid says, prophetically, Do you mean the doctor who preaches or the doctor who practices? You see, there can be a distinction, can't there, between preaching and practicing. But Pastor Paul and his colleagues, they were both preachers and practitioners.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, blameless we were among you who believed. That was their orientation, you see. And that rubbed off, 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.

Did you get that subtle point? It's just a change now. Not just Paul living like that, but them living like that also. Lives worthy of God.

Did you notice how Paul earlier had said he'd been a mother to them? No, he says he's been a father to them, doesn't he? Dealing with each one of you as a father deals with his own children. What a marvelous concept of Christian leadership. Being a mother and a father to people.

You see, outside of the divine affection, there's hardly anything that's more close in illustrating human relationships, is there? Mother and father. If you've had a good mother and father, my, you had wealth untold. That's as the apostle to these Christians.

We were like a mum and dad to you. You saw how we lived, and you've started to live the same way yourselves. So my argument was simply this, though it took me 25 minutes to say it.

The model church really is traceable at least at Thessalonica back to a model leadership. And the greatest model, of course, is our Lord Jesus Christ. Now isn't that what you and I want to be? So much like him that we shall be affecting other people.

The serene beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world next to the power of God, says the Frenchman Pascal. The serene beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world next to the power of God. You may not be a great person.

Maybe nobody will ever write a book which includes your name. Maybe you'll go into heaven sort of incognito, anonymous, as far as this world is concerned. But remember again those words of Knox.

When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great, but of the good. Do you know something, my brothers and sisters? God has called us to be good. Doesn't that sound so simplistic? You wonder what on earth you came into the tab for, to hear a man say that.

But it's the simple things that need to be repeated. God has called us to be good. Murray McShane, another Scottish preacher, he once wrote a sentence.

You finish it. My people's greatest need is... What would you say? He responded, my personal holiness. My people's greatest need? Not my eloquence, not my erudition, not my academic ability.

My people's greatest need? My personal holiness. Do you know what we need as a congregation? The goodness of one another. The holiness of one another.

The godliness of one another. Because it's in the amount that we have there, amongst our leadership and our sub-leadership, right down to the newest person on our books, the more that we have goodness and godliness, so the more we will be the model church that I believe God wants us to be. © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon