Now if you would take your Bibles again and turn with me to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. We’re looking at verses 1 through 12 as we continue our way through Paul’s letter. Page 986 if you’re using a church Bible.
Now as you may know, one of our core commitments here at First Presbyterian Church is to the training of men for Gospel ministry. We spend a lot of time and effort in supporting pastoral interns as they prepare at the seminary and here in our church for a lifetime of service. We are currently developing a full time fellows program for a few post-graduate seminarians who want to go deeper in their preparations before they begin their ministry careers. We invest in pastors from all over the country and from several denominations and from all over the world through the work of the Twin Lakes Fellowship every year. Several of our elders serve on the board of Reformed Theological Seminary. We have a number of professors in our congregation. We are very much a ministry training church. That’s part of who we are, part of our vision. And we want to do that work well and to help raise up a new generation of faithful laborers for the work of the Gospel.
And given all of that, I’m sure you would agree that it is really important that we have clear ideas about what a faithful minister ought to be, what should his priorities be, how his ministry ought to function. In our passage this morning, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12, Paul is defending himself from accusations. Accusations of cowardice and of wrong motives. But as he gives us his defense, he also provides one of the clearest accounts of the nature and character of the Christian ministry anywhere in the New Testament. And it will help us as we think about encouraging, equipping and sending out a new generation of Gospel laborers, it will help us to understand what it is that we are doing.
So let me highlight five things from these twelve verses. First of all, a faithful minister we are going to see has an unimpeachable life. An unimpeachable life. Secondly in verse 2, a faithful minister possesses unbroken boldness. An unimpeachable life, unbroken boldness. Thirdly, a faithful minister has an unwavering focus, verses 3 through 6. An unimpeachable life, an unbroken boldness, an unwavering focus. Fourthly, a faithful minister has an unselfish love, verses 7 through 9, like a nursing mother, affectionately desirous of his people who have become very dear to him. And finally, a faithful minister has an unrelenting message, verses 11 and 12. And so there’s the outline; I hope you’ve got it. An unimpeachable life, an unbroken boldness, an unwavering focus, an unselfish love, and an unrelenting message.
Before we look at those five things, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to give us His help and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us all pray.
O Lord, now send us the light of Your Spirit to illuminate our sin-benighted understanding. Teach us, equip us, and use us as Your Word does its work for Your glory in our lives. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
1 Thessalonians chapter 2 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“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.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy and authoritative Word.
So first of all, a faithful minister lives an unimpeachable life. A 2022 survey asked a thousand people if they knew anyone who’d ever lied on their resume. Ninety-three percent said that they did. And then the survey asked a follow up question, “How many of you personally have lied on your resume?” Thirty-six percent said that they had. So it seems like everyone we know lies on their resumes but none of us ever do! As you read over the lofty claims about integrity and faithfulness that Paul makes for himself in the passage we read a moment ago, we might be tempted to wonder if perhaps Paul has been lying on his resume, inflating his reputation here a little bit, making himself look better than he really is. But there is a repeat phrase in this chapter – I wonder if you noticed as we read it together – actually that runs right throughout the whole letter of 1 Thessalonians, again and again, that tells us that he is not making this up and he’s certainly not lying on his resume. You can see it if you look at verse 1. “You yourselves know.” There’s a similar expression again in verse 2, “As you know.” Again in verse 5, “You know.” Verse 9, “You remember.” Verse 10, “You are witnesses.” And in verse 11 he says again, “You know.” All in all about thirteen times in 1 Thessalonians Paul appeals to what the Thessalonians already know, have learned, and can testify to.
And what they already know in our text is how Paul behaved himself when he was among them. He doesn’t need to inflate his reputation, does he? He doesn’t need to lie on his resume to counter the accusations and the slanders that have been leveled against him in Thessalonica in his absence. All he needs to do is appeal to their own memory of how he conducted himself when he was there. “You yourselves know brothers that our coming to you was not in vain. My mission was not a vanity exercise,” he says. Or again in verse 2, in response to the accusation that his departure from them was an act of cowardice, look at verse 2, “Though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated in Philippi, as you know, what did we do? Did we tuck tail and bolt from Macedonia so as to avoid any further suffering? Were we really cowardly? No, what we did was we headed straight for the capital of Macedonia, Thessalonica, where, guess what, the same thing happened all over again.” All he needs to do is appeal to their own memory of his behavior. But the point is, Paul has lived the life of such open integrity, manifest courage, that he can appeal to their shared recollections in his own defense. “You know this is what we were like.” His was an unimpeachable life.
The first and most basic requirement of faithful ministry, whether it’s ordained Gospel ministry or whether it’s serving God in Vacation Bible School or in ministry throughout the summer at Twin Lakes as you proclaim the good news about Jesus, the first requirement is an unimpeachable life. You must be above reproach. Paul was not ashamed to appeal to his own track record among the Thessalonians. Can you point to your track record as evidence not of perfect obedience, not of sinless perfection, but of faithfulness and integrity? A pastor should never move to a new field of labor anxious that his new church won’t talk to anyone in his old church in case they find out what he’s really like. We need to be able to look at people in the eye and say to them, “You yourself know how we lived and behaved and served among you.” An unimpeachable life.
Secondly, faithful Gospel ministers are marked by unbroken boldness. Boldness. Look at verse 2 again. “Though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had” – what? “We had boldness in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.” You will remember if you read back in Acts 16 the story of Paul’s ministry in Philippi and in Thessalonica. In Acts 16 in Philippi, the mob seized Paul and his team, they stripped him, they beat him with rods, and they had him thrown in jail. So Paul and his team, by the time they come to Thessalonica, they are shaken and wounded and sore. As one commentator puts it, “They had not strolled into Thessalonica as relaxed, overfed tourists. They entered still sporting the scars of woeful mishandling.”
And things at Thessalonica when they got there really did not turn out much better than they were in Philippi. Look at the end of verse 2. Paul’s preaching ministry at Thessalonica unfolded just like in Philippi, “so in the midst of much conflict.” So conflict in Philippi, moved to Thessalonica – more conflict! And yet even so, he says, “We had boldness in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God.” So despite the beating he received in Philippi and the conflict he endured in Thessalonica, he did not dumb down his message that was so provocative to those who heard it, that incited such violent reactions. He did not pull his punches. He did not tailor what he was going to say at Thessalonica based on the painful experience of Philippi. “No, no,” he says, “I was bold in God to preach the Gospel of God.”
Those two little English prepositions are worth paying attention to. Bold in God to preach the Gospel of God. They help us understand how come he was so bold. Where does it come from? He was bold, he says, “in God.” God was the source of his boldness. It wasn’t that Paul was pathologically unable to avoid controversy, some sort of twisted contrarian who just loves a good fight and would argue that black was white and up was down, just everywhere he goes he provokes a fight. That’s not what this is. No, rather out of his fellowship with God he was enabled to stand up and speak for Christ no matter the cost. He is bold in God to speak, he says, notice the other preposition, “the Gospel of God.” That’s the other part of his boldness. The Lord gave him boldness in his heart to speak the Gospel that belongs to God. It is God’s message, not Paul’s message. If Paul was a charlatan as some in Thessalonica seem to have alleged, engaged in some sort of religious ponzi scheme trying to trick people into buying his product, if that’s what Paul really was, well then he would be free, wouldn’t he, do adjust his message, to minimize negative pushback and to maximize profit, to ensure that everyone buys what he is selling. But Paul says, “No, I am a preacher of the Gospel of God. It is God’s Gospel and the content of God’s Gospel is not amenable to adjustment.”
Truth be told now, isn’t it true, many of us struggle to be bold when it comes to sharing the good news with our friends, our family, our colleagues. We struggle to be bold like this, don’t we? We back off. We shut down. We get tongue tied. Well here are two helps for overcoming our timidity. Go to God for the grace of boldness. Pray to become bold in God. If you will, listen, if you will trust Him and open your mouth to speak for Jesus Christ, even though it feels like your heart is about to jump out of your mouth, if you will trust Him, He will give you grace to be bold. And remember, when you do speak, remember whose Gospel it is. It is the Gospel of God. And so you have no choice to say anything other than what He says. No option but to tell the truth about Jesus. You are under orders.
Vacation Bible School teachers, you are under orders. Seminarians training for Gospel work, elders, deacons, Bible study leaders, you are under orders. You don’t get to adjust the message to make it more palatable or to ease your own passage to ensure everyone will like you and approve you. You must say what God says. It is the Gospel of God. It’s not our Gospel. It’s not First Presbyterian Church’s Gospel or the Presbyterian Church in America’s Gospel. It is the Gospel of God and we must preach it without accommodation or adjustment.
What matters most is not the good opinion of those who hear us but the good opinion of our God, which brings us neatly to the third thing to see. A faithful minister has an unimpeachable life, an unbroken boldness, and thirdly he has an unwavering focus. What is his great priority? Not that men and women should be pleased with him but that he should please God. Look at verses 3 through 6. Notice how Paul makes this point negatively first of all. Verse 3, “Our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive.” So his preaching does not come from wrong convictions; it does not spring from error. Neither does it come from wrong values; it did not come from impurity. And it does not come from wrong motives. There’s no attempt to deceive. He’s not operating from faulty thinking or twisted desires or selfish interests. He wasn’t preaching because he has been deceived or because he wants to deceive them or because he wants to manipulate them for personal gain.
And he makes the same points again if you look at verses 5 and 6. Verse 5, “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.” He wasn’t flattering them. He wasn’t scamming them out of their cash. He did not want glory from them either. He was not the center of his own ministry. And that’s something to watch for, isn’t it, whenever you hear of some new preacher making waves on the internet, ask yourself, “Who’s the real center of this man’s ministry? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ, His cross, His self giving love, His glory, His grace? Or is Jesus just a tool, a means to an end, so that the preacher can be made much of, celebrated, promoted, adored?”
And then Paul makes his point positively. He’s told us what he’s not doing, now he tells us what his focus is. Verse 4, we’re not trying to deceive you or use ministry to put ourselves in the limelight, but, he says, “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.” Paul’s preaching ministry is driven by the deep consciousness that he has been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel. The approval, the call of God comes with a sacred trust committed to Paul. Interestingly, every time Paul uses the word “entrusted” in the New Testament it refers, every time it refers in some way, to the ministry of the Word of God. In Romans 3:2, the Jews have been entrusted with the oracles of God. In 1 Corinthians 9:17, Paul has been entrusted with a stewardship as an apostle to preach Christ. In Galatians 2:7, he has been entrusted with the Gospel to the Gentiles. In 1 Timothy 1:11, he asks Timothy to teach sound doctrine “in accordance with the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
But there are two places where Paul uses this language of being entrusted with the Word of God not only to describe his own ministry but the ministry of someone else who is not an apostle. He uses it in 1 Timothy 6:20 and in 2 Timothy 1:14 where Timothy is described in exactly the same way. Timothy has been charged to guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to him. So when Paul says, “I have been entrusted with the Word,” he is not talking narrowly and specifically about his unique, never to be repeated, apostolic ministry. He’s talking about his own work more generally as a Word minister, as a preacher of good news. Paul and Timothy have both been entrusted. Anytime anyone has been appointed by God to the work of the ministry, he has been entrusted with this sacred trust. Every minister. And that language, it rings with high privilege, doesn’t it? “Approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel.” Priceless treasure – that’s the sense of it. Entrusted with the Gospel like priceless treasure.
Have you ever heard of the Cullinan diamond found in a mine in South Africa early in the 20th century, the largest uncut diamond in the world at the time? When it was finally sent by the British monarch to the Netherlands to be cut, a royal Navy ship was dispatched to carry the diamond amid much fanfare and ceremony as it made the crossing to Holland. But the diamond on the royal Navy ship was a fake. The real stone was to be carried by the jeweler in his coat pocket as he made the journey by train and by ferry all on his own. The largest uncut diamond in the world, worth a priceless sum, burning a hole in his coat pocket for all those many hours. This ordinary man, an ordinary man without fanfare or ceremony, carrying this unspeakably precious treasure.
That’s what the Gospel is – priceless treasure carried by ordinary men and women across the street and around the world, entrusted with the diamond of the good news to share with the world. And so you can imagine Paul, as he pens these words with the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end and gooseflesh on his arms and a thrill of electricity running up and down his spine. “Almighty God has approved me, me, wretched, sinful, limited, fragile me, and taken His precious, heart-renovating, world-altering, life-changing treasure of the Gospel and entrusted it to me!” Brothers in Gospel ministry, men who are training for the preaching office, I wonder if you’ve lost sight of your privileges lately, of the extraordinary privilege of being entrusted with such good news, approved by God to be entrusted with the sacred deposit. We have good news for the world – Christ has died for sinners!
No wonder Paul couldn’t keep it to himself. Look at what he says in verse 4, “Just as we have been approved by God and entrusted with the Gospel, so we speak not to please man but to please God who tests our hearts.” Since God has called and approved and entrusted him with this amazing treasure, the Gospel, he feels himself to be under obligation to God, to speak in such a way that will do Him honor. “We speak not to please men,” he says, “but to please God who tests our hearts.” Here’s something for pastors and congregants alike that we have to grasp in the light of this text. There is a sense, you know, in which pastors don’t work for the churches that call them. They do not work for the churches that call them. They don’t work for the members of the church; they don’t even work for the elders of the church. They work for God and they betray their calling if in their preaching they pander to the tastes and preferences of the people and do not pursue the priorities of God in the text. And Paul feels keenly the weight of that right here, doesn’t he? In the end he knows he must one day stand to give an account to the God who tests hearts for what Paul has done with the message entrusted to him.
And in the end, that has to be the great explanation for the willingness of Paul to endure beatings and mob violence because of this message in one city and then walk straight back into more of the same without making any adjustments to his message in the next city. How do you explain that? The only explanation, surely, for that kind of courage is a sense of higher accountability, higher than anything the world can afford. He stands before God who tests the heart and so he says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! I must! I am a steward! I have been approved and entrusted with His message, so whether you are pleased with my ministry or not is really not all that important,” Paul would say. “What matters most is that I fulfill the trust that God has given me. Beneath His gaze, I make it my aim to please Him, to please Him.” That was his singular focus – an unimpeachable life, an unbroken boldness, an unwavering focus.
Fourthly, a faithful minister has an unselfish love. An unselfish love. Look at verses 7 and 8. “ut 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.” It may surprise you to know that one of the hardest parts of preparing a sermon is finding decent illustrations, though perhaps having listened to me preach for ten years you would have already drawn that conclusion yourselves! I’m always grateful though when the text provides an illustration for me, and it’s a vivid illustration here, isn’t it. A nursing mother taking care of her own children. She’s not just a mother; she’s a nursing mother. That means she feeds her children. She is constant in her attention to them and they are constant in their need and dependence upon her for basic sustenance. And it’s not just children that she cares for but her “own children,” notice. There is a unique bond between them. She is theirs; they are hers.
That’s how Paul feels about his relationship with the Thessalonians. Having told them, “I don’t work for you; I work for God. I don’t preach for you to please you; I preach to please God,” having told them that, he now marvelously balances that carefully, doesn’t he? A proud, young preacher might hear the teaching of verse 4 and find in it a justification for ignoring the needs and capacities of his people. He might tell himself, “I don’t care what they want, what they say they can handle. I’m doing what I think is best because I don’t work for them, I work for God, and I am being faithful.” How many new ministries have made shipwreck on the rocks of pride masquerading as faithfulness like that. But the apostle Paul, I think, would be appalled at that attitude, wouldn’t he? If you work for God, you love His people. You love them, like a nursing mother full of gentleness. That’s his word, “gentleness.”
Rupert, one of our interns, was telling me the other day that when Dick Lucas preached at his ordination, he told the congregation back in Edinburgh, he said to them, “Rupert is your servant, but you are not his master.” That’s exactly right. “Rupert is your servant, but you are not his master.” That’s the apostle Paul’s mindset here. A minister doesn’t work for the congregation, but a minister is the servant of the congregation nonetheless.
And don’t miss the key phrase that really sums up Paul’s whole attitude in verse 8. It’s a beautiful phrase, “affectionately desirous.” “Being affectionately desirous of you.” It drips, doesn’t it, with a mother’s tender love. “Affectionately desirous” of the spiritual best for the people entrusted to his care. That’s the heart of a faithful pastor. It leads Paul, in verse 9, notice this, to share not only the Gospel of God but “our own selves with you because you have become very dear to us.” A pastor is not a mere preacher. Gospel ministry isn’t a 9 to 5 job. The call of God is to a life devoted to the work of the Gospel. A minister is to share himself not just his message because he loves the people. They are dear to him. He may not work for the church, but if he really works for God, he will give himself to the church. After all, the message that we are charged to preach is that Christ has loved us and given Himself for us. Jesus loves His church perfectly, completely, with affectionate desire for us. We are very dear to Him and He gives us not only the Gospel but His own self. And if that is our message, if that is the good news, it must also be our model, our pattern and template. Like our Savior, we need to learn to live what we proclaim and give ourselves as we give out good news.
So verse 9, “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.” Listen to those adjectives – labor and toil, night and day, holy, righteous and blameless. That’s a minister’s job description – hard work and a holy life. A minister is called to give himself to his people, to love them like a nursing mother, affectionately desirous for them because they are very dear to him, and it doesn’t stop at 5pm and it doesn’t stop on his day off and it doesn’t stop when he is on vacation. Seminarians, should God see fit to put you into the ministry, you will always be a pastor, all the way around the clock, every day of the year. Now yes, you must guard family time carefully, of course. You need to get rest and build healthy rhythms of work and time away. Of course you should. Being a work-a-holic is as wicked and unacceptable to God in the ministry as laziness or indolence. But if you think that ministry is a job and not a life, a career and not a calling, you will never fulfill the demands of the office nor will you care adequately for the nursing children of God entrusted to your care.
An unimpeachable life, an unbroken boldness, an unwavering focus, an unselfish love, and finally, verses 11 and 12, a faithful minister has an unrelenting message. “For you know how, like a father” – he’s like a mother; he’s also like a father – “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.” So the mother metaphor highlighted for Paul, tenderness and self-giving sacrifice and love. The father metaphor, as Paul is using it, is focused now on training and teaching and instructing and shaping the children of God in the household of God. Notice those keywords, they’re synonyms really, for preaching. “We exhorted” and “encouraged” and “charged you.” The piling up of those different terms is meant to imply unrelenting labor, constantly going, constantly pressing home the truth of God. “We encouraged and we exhorted and we charged you till the message began to sink in and take hold and bear fruit.”
And those three words balance beautifully both challenge and comfort, don’t they? They are about exhortation and encouragement. They are about rebuke and reassurance. And that’s what all good preaching should provide – discipline, instruction, correction, comfort, encouragement, nurture. And both together are necessary aspects of faithful preaching. And as Paul engaged in that kind of pulpit ministry in Thessalonica, what was his objective, his aim, his target? Look at what he says. “We did all of this that you might walk in a manner worthy of God.” That is to say, “you begin to live a life that is consistent with the call of Jesus Christ to follow Him.” “Our target, as we encouraged and exhorted and charged you, as we toiled night and day, our target was your Christian maturity. We want you to be like Jesus.”
And as we close, do notice verse 12 where the power for accomplishing and achieving Christlikeness really comes from. Where does it come from to begin to live a life worthy of God? Here is Paul’s wonderfully balanced pastoral theology yet again on display. Yes, preaching should exhort and encourage and charge. Yes, it should take aim at Christian maturity. Yes, but don’t forget the power to live like that doesn’t come from the preacher. It’s not the preacher’s job to nag and scold and cajole his people till they do what he wants. Paul says, “No, no, God calls you,” verse 12, “into His own kingdom and glory.” It is the mighty call of God through the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit that produces the reality at which Paul takes such careful aim.
And in many ways, listen, that’s the great thrill of being a minister of the Gospel. To know that as you open the Scriptures faithfully, God helping you, the voice of Jesus Christ is heard by the sheep, the Good Shepherd’s voice, calling them by name. He’s calling them and they hear His voice and they follow Him and He leads them to green pastures and quiet waters and they find rest for their souls and are restored. True preaching, you see, is more than education; it is communion. It’s more than just the impartation of information. It is a supernatural encounter with the risen Christ. That’s what happens in the faithful ministry of God’s Word. To see somebody meet Jesus for the first time as they listen to the Word of God, or see in the face, in the eyes of an older believer, to see the descent of long looked for comfort as God’s Word begins to do it’s work, or the dawning of clarity amidst confusion as the Word of God takes hold, that is a joy with which very few things in life can ever compete.
Here’s the romance in the glory of the ministry. It’s worth every minute of toil and trouble that comes with it. I have, without a doubt, the best job in the world. I do. My job is to read the Bible, to talk about it, to pray with you, to be with you sometimes in your most raw and needy moments, and to love you and to watch God work. And you pay me to do it! It blows my mind! I have the best job in the world! But oh that God would raise up more ministers like the apostle Paul – men of unimpeachable character, of unbroken boldness, of unwavering focus, unselfish love, and unrelenting message till Christ is formed in you, until you become like Jesus. Would you pray, please? Do you see our seminarians, our interns around the place? Would you pray for them and ask the Lord of the harvest to make them laborers and ministers like that? And to raise up many more, and perhaps to use us as a church to accomplish that, to raise up a generation of ministers with great Gospel clarity who know their calling and are willing to give out not only the Gospel of God but their very selves for God’s people that God might be exalted in their midst. May the Lord make it so. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for Your holy Word – that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. And You have entrusted us with this treasure, like that ordinary looking man with the priceless diamond in his pocket, ordinary people entrusted with priceless treasure, good news for the world. Would You make us as bold as Paul, as ready to give both the good news and ourselves to the people around us because we love them and have become dear to us? And would You please raise up a new generation of preachers of good news who will spend and be spent in the service of Jesus Christ because He is most precious to them of all? Would You do it for Your glory? In Jesus’ name, amen.