Well do please turn with me once again in your Bibles, this time to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, beginning at verse 17, page 986 in the church Bibles. First Thessalonians 2:17. You’ll notice from the bulletin we entitled this message, “What Keeps Pastors Up at Night,” because as Paul continues really what is his defense of his own ministry against those in Thessalonica who were suggesting that he doesn’t really care about them, here we get to see his pastoral heart breaking with love for the Thessalonians, frustrated that he can’t yet be back among them in person and full of concern about the spiritual dangers that they were facing. Here is Paul’s burden. It’s what keeps him awake past midnight as he thinks about the baby church in Thessalonica.
As we work through the passage together, beginning in 2:17 and running through chapter 3 verse 5, I want to think about five things with you. First of all, in 2:17 and 18, we see something of a parent’s love in the way that Paul speaks. A parent’s love. He’s like a father bereft of his children. Then in 2:19, a pastor’s reward. Suppose the accusation against Paul was that, “He is only interested in us Thessalonians for the sake of material gain.” Well here is Paul’s answer – Their eternal welfare is the only reward he is interested in. “You are my joy and my crown,” he says. A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. Then thirdly, look over to chapter 3 verses 3 and 4 where Paul talks about a painful trial. A painful trial. He reminds the Thessalonians that suffering, which might easily derail their young and fragile faith, suffering is actually a normal part of the Christian life. A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. A painful trial. Then fourthly, look back at chapter 2:17 and 18, and then again at chapter 3 verse 5. Paul mentions a powerful enemy. On top of their trials and sufferings, behind them the devil is active, seeking to hinder the preaching of the Gospel and to tempt the people of God to turn aside from the Lord Jesus Christ. So these four things, they make it absolutely plain, don’t they, that the apostle Paul is not a charlatan. It’s clear he is in complete earnest in his love for them, in his commitment to them. So burdened is he for their eternal welfare and so grieved over this separation that has taken place between them. Here are the things, really, that keep all faithful pastor’s up at night – a parent’s love, a pastor’s reward, a painful trial, and a powerful enemy.
But then finally, in the fifth place, in response to those four realities, look again at chapter 3 verse 2 where Paul faces them all with a practical solution. He sends Timothy to do among the Thessalonians what circumstances prevent Paul from doing himself. What they need, he knows, despite their separation from him, despite their suffering and affliction, despite the depredations of the evil one, the one thing that can meet the scale of the challenges confronting them, what they need, what we still need is the faithful ministry of the Word of God. So he sends them Timothy, who is God’s coworker in the Gospel, to establish and encourage them that they may not be moved by these afflictions.
So there’s the outline; I hope you’ve got it. Five things – a parent’s love, a pastor’s reward, a painful trial, a powerful enemy, and a practical solution. Before we look at each of them, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us pray.
Lord our God, Your Word is spread now before us. We know that our hearts and lives are also open to You. We ask You please, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to take Your Word and apply it to our hearts. Teach and instruct us, shape and conform us into the likeness of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for we ask it that He might be exalted, so we ask it in His name, amen.
First Thessalonians chapter 2 at the seventeenth verse. This is the Word of God:
“But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.
Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Now I suppose, if I were to interview each of the parents in the room this morning, every one of you would admit to seasons where your concern for your children has kept you awake at night. And while Paul doesn’t exactly admit to insomnia in our passage, he certainly talks about the Thessalonians in ways that parents robbed of a good night’s sleep would recognize. Doesn’t he? Look at chapter 2 verse 17 and 18. “Since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again.” This is a most un-British passage! Paul is almost Mississippian in the way he expresses the depth of his love and his feelings toward them. He says his heart stayed with them even though he himself has been forcibly separated from them. He’s worked hard to get back to them. Ever since he was torn from their side, he has endeavored eagerly with great desire, again and again, to get back to see them. The text pulses, doesn’t it, with tender emotion and love.
But part of the explanation for the depth of his feeling towards them is actually found in a word that he uses in verse 17. Would you look at it again? The word is translated rather prosaically, I have to say, in our English Standard Version as “we were torn away from you.” The Greek verb is more dramatic. It is “———–”. We get our English word, “orphan,” from a form of this word. And if we were to say in English that someone has been orphaned, we would mean that they had been robbed of their parents. But in Paul’s Greek, the word can also be applied to parents robbed of their children. That’s what Paul says has happened to him. He feels like an orphaned parent, forcibly torn from the nurture of his children with all the attendant fears and concerns that a parent would naturally harbor for them while they are separated. “Are they well? What’s going to happen to them? Who will care for them?” He’s an orphaned parent.
And of course in putting it this way, he is simply building on imagery he has already used. So remember back in verse 7 he said he is like “a nursing mother” taking care of her own children. And in verse 11, he said he is like a father, “exhorting his children to walk in the manner worthy of God.” The Gospel Paul wants them to understand has established a bond between them as pastor and people that is analogous to the profound bond between a mom and a dad and their sons and daughters. And just as there is no pain quite like the pain of parental separation, so Paul feels acutely the pain of being separated from the Thessalonians.
Last week as we looked at verses 13 through 16, Paul reminded the Thessalonians of the way they began their Christian lives back when Paul had first come to them. And he spoke to them, do you remember, about how gladly they received Paul’s preaching ministry, not as the word of men only but as it really is – the very Word of God. Well today, as he writes these verses, he wants the Thessalonians to continue to receive the apostolic Gospel that he had taught them in the same way that they had at first, and so he drops his guard and he shows them his heart. He is not a cold manipulator as his opponents were perhaps suggesting, out to gather a following only to cast them aside cruelly when things get too difficult. If that was the case, well then of course they should abandon Paul’s message right away and go look elsewhere for hope. But that’s not the situation, is it? No, no, Paul loves them like a father who is trying everything he knows to get back to be with his children but who is kept at a distance by circumstances beyond his control. He aches to be reunited with them. And he thinks to himself, “If they can just see how much I care for them, how deeply I hate the separation that has been forced upon us, maybe they won’t desert the message that I preach to them after all. Maybe it will help them in all their trials to stand firm. That’s Paul’s thinking. Just as there is an agony that love causes in the heart of every parent as they sit up at nights worried for their children, so also there is an agony that faithful pastors feel for the spiritual welfare of their people as the Lord knits our hearts together in love.
Now you would never guess it, I know, but it might surprise you to learn that despite my naturally effusive Scottish temperament, I am not given to gushing displays of sentimentality. I say that so that you will understand when I tell you serving you is the greatest privilege of my life that I am not putting on a show. You have become our family. You are our people. The Lord has given me to you and He has given you to me, and I love you. The welfare of your souls, your growth in grace, your likeness to Christ, your failures and your faults, your setbacks and your dangers are the burden of my heart and the focus of my prayers and my labors. Paul is not trying to manipulate the Thessalonians into receiving his teaching by pulling on their heartstrings, and neither am I. But it is, nonetheless, a part of a minister’s burden, part of the burden of a pastor’s parental love for his people that you would receive his ministry not as the unfeeling fulfillment of an employee’s contractual obligation, nor as the performance of a hired pulpit entertainer, but as a nursing mother and a dedicated father who preaches and prays and pastors for the everlasting welfare of your soul. And if by letting you see a little of my heartache for your growth in grace, how I long for you to be more like Jesus, if by letting you see that I can incite you to hear the Word of God more willingly and obey its truth more readily then I will gladly tell you again that I love you and I long for nothing so much as your holiness and your happiness. And so that’s the first thing to see here – a parent’s love.
Then secondly, notice what Paul says about a pastor’s reward. Look at chapter 2 verse 19. “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.” Now the image of a crown of boasting, you see that language in the text, that really shifts the scene away from the family home and the anxious love of an orphaned parent to the coliseum, to the stadium, to one of the ancient Greek games. You might know that in the Olympic games, in the Olympic games the victorious athlete wore a crown of olive leaves. At the Pythian games, they wore laurels. Bizarrely, at the Nemean games, of all things they wore a wreath of parsley. But Paul says the only crown that he wants, the only reward he is dreaming about for all his labor and work is the Thessalonians’ spiritual welfare. They are, he knows, trophies, trophies of redeeming grace. They are what we might say as Paul’s pride and joy.
“What Paul seems to mean in this transport of love,” writes John Stott, “is that his joy in this world and his glory in the next are tied up with the Thessalonians who Christ through the apostles’ ministry has so signally transformed.” I think that’s a helpful way to conceive of Christian service and Christian ministry, isn’t it? We’re not in it for our own glory, no matter the form that our ministry might take. Whether yours is a lay ministry or an ordained ministry, we’re not doing it so that we can stand before the Lord Jesus at His coming in the expectation that we should be made much of. No, Paul says, “My present happiness and my future glory are inseparable from the eternal welfare of the people that I am sent to serve.” That is really the true spirit of Christian ministry and the real test of Christian love. You know it’s the real thing when those who minister to you can’t imagine being happy in heaven without you being there beside them. They can’t imagine dwelling in endless glory themselves unless part of what makes that glory shine so brightly is your glorified likeness to our common Savior.
We sometimes sing Anne Cousin’s lovely hymn here at First Church, “The Sands of Time are Sinking.” Do you know it? Do you know what I’m talking about? “The Sands of Time are Sinking.” It was written as an imaginative recreation of the last words of Samuel Rutherford. And much of the language of Cousin’s hymn, much of the imagery was drawn from Rutherford’s own writings, especially his letters. Rutherford was a formidable theologian, a prolific author and letter writer, but above all, Samuel Rutherford was a pastor. And he served a tiny little congregation actually in a place called Anwoth near the River Solway. But during the struggle for the continuing reformation of 17th century Scotland, Rutherford was banished from his people, banished from Anwoth by the king. He spent the rest of his life cut off from the congregation that he loved. One of the stanzas of Cousin’s original poem that is not included in our hymnals imagines Rutherford’s dying longing for the people of Anwoth. And the words might as easily have been spoken by Paul about the Thessalonians as by Rutherford about the people of Anwoth. Listen to what Cousin makes Rutherford say. “Fair Anwoth by the Solway, to me thou art still dear, e’en from the verge of heaven I dropped for thee a tear.” And this is the line, “Oh if one soul from Anwoth meet me at God’s right hand, my heaven would be two heavens in Immanuel’s land.”
Isn’t that what Paul is saying here about the Thessalonians? That’s really the pulse of all true ministry, the heartbeat of all authentic Christian service, isn’t it? If even one Thessalonians, or we might say, if even one Jacksonian meet us at God’s right hand, our heaven would be two heavens in Immanuel’s land. What is my hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at His coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy. Your glory will make my glory complete and my heaven will be two heavens if you are there with me when Jesus comes. All I want, all I want is for you to know Jesus Christ and live for Him until He comes.
A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. Then thirdly, look over at chapter 3 and verses 3 and 4 please where Paul speaks in the third place about a painful trial. A painful trial. He is concerned, he says, that “no one be moved by these afflictions.” The Thessalonians and Paul too, they are suffering for their faith. The persecution that arose during Paul’s stay among them has continued on. And part of what keeps Paul up at night is the worry that the Thessalonians might be incited under pressure of opposition to the world to turn back from faithfulness to their Savior. But he reminds them in verses 3 and 4 that actually suffering like this is part of the normal Christian life. Suffering is part of the normal Christian life.
I came across some comments that elementary school children were asked to make by their teacher imagining what life is like at forty. Rita Monahan, age 9, wrote this – “I am forty. I have wrinkles and gray hair and I would have a walking stick to help me walk.” Jennifer Turner, age 8, wrote, “I am forty. I am turning old. I just left work because I cannot manage going up and down hills. I know I will soon die.” In verse 4, Paul reminds the Thessalonians that he had previously warned them about what was coming and his warnings were not the gloomy exaggerations of little children who cannot possibly know what life will be like in the future. These, rather, were the settled convictions of a man who knows personally the great cost involved in following Jesus Christ. And so he tells them in verses 3 and 4, “You yourselves know that we were destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass and just as you know.” Part of Paul’s discipleship program at Thessalonica had been to prepare new believers for the inevitable pushback they would experience from friends and family when they began to tell people they no longer lived their lives on the basis of devotion to the old pagan gods or to the emperor as though he were divine or in accordance with the morals and habits of their culture. They lived their lives now in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ alone. And Paul warned them again and again that there is a cost to following King Jesus.
Some of you are about to head off to college and you will be put into contexts where you may be the only Christian in your class or you might have a roommate who doesn’t believe in Jesus and there will be pressure to conform, sometimes significant pressure to conform in your language and your habits and your morals and your lifestyle. There will be an expectation that you will join in where you know that as a follower of the Lord Jesus you can’t do it, you mustn’t do it. Let me encourage you that the last thing you should pack is your Bible so that the first thing you unpack when you arrive in your dorm room is your Bible. Put it on the nightstand for everyone to see. Be open and straightforward about your faith in the Lord Jesus with all the people around you early on. The longer you leave it before you tell people where you stand, the harder it will be to do it later. Face the challenge early. If you don’t, the pressure to go with the flow and live like the pagan you are not can become overwhelming. The fear of exclusion, of becoming the butt of other people’s jokes, of opposition, of affliction can be a powerful motivator to dumb down your devotion to Jesus. Paul is writing here to remind us that affliction, hostility from the world, is actually a normal part of the ordinary Christian life and he wants us to be ready, to be prepared. He wants us to know that we can’t be faithful, we can’t be faithful to the call of Christ in our lives if we are unwilling to bear affliction in His name.
A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. A painful trial. And then in the fourth place, notice back of all of that, casting a grim shadow over everything is the malevolence of a powerful enemy. A powerful enemy. There are really three references to the activity of the devil in this passage. The first is a mere allusion, a bare hint in chapter 2 verse 17 when Paul says, “we were torn away from you brothers, we were orphaned from you,” the verb there is in the passive voice. In other words, this was done to him by the malice of another. This is not Paul’s choice, this separation between them. It was forced upon them. And verse 18 identifies the culprit. “We wanted to come to you – I Paul, again and again – but Satan hindered us.” Paul sees behind the malice of the mob that drove him out of Thessalonica, and behind whatever circumstances now kept him from returning to Thessalonica, behind it all he sees the still darker malice of the evil one himself. Satan wanted to hinder the proclamation of the Gospel in the Thessalonian church and so he worked to keep Paul away.
But notice carefully that Satan’s strategy takes aim not just at Paul but at the Thessalonians too. It is a double-pronged attack, isn’t it? Deal with the minister and deal with the people. Undermine the preaching and lead the hearers astray. So look over at chapter 3 verse 5. Paul says he was “full of fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.” We must not be unaware of the devil’s schemes. And this is the heart of his agenda. He wants to rob you of the ministry of the Word. He will oppose and attack and divert and delay and distract and accuse and undermine the work of Christian ministry every chance he gets in every way he knows. And while he’s at it, he will tempt you. He will entice you. He will do whatever will work to get you to listen more to the voices of the world than the voice of Jesus Christ speaking in His holy Word. He wants the work of discipleship in your life all to be for nothing. Or to use Paul’s language, for it all to be “in vain.” That is his agenda. I wonder if you are alert to it?
In 1938 when the Nazis invaded the Sudetenland, the German speaking western provinces of CZechoslovakia, Europe stood on the precipice of world war. And the then British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, went to Berlin and secured an assurance from Hitler that if Hitler was able to keep the Sudetenland then he would make no other demands for land in Europe. It was of course a promise Hitler had no intention of keeping, but Chamberlain returned to Britain and told the people, “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” “Peace for our time. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” How incredibly naive we now know he really was.
Beloved, do not think as you sit comfortably in church surrounded by friends and family, singing our familiar songs, enjoying the blessings of Christian fellowship, do not think that it is peace time. Too many Christians tell themselves that we enjoy only peace for our time and they fall into a nice quiet sleep. We do not realize that Satan opposes us. He hates you and he works to disrupt the ministry of the Word and to tempt us in such a way that all the progress that the Scriptures have made in our lives will be undermined. That’s why Jesus told His disciples, do you remember, to “keep alert and to watch and pray that you do not fall into temptation.” Pray. Pray for the protection of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Pray for the provision of God for the maintenance of the ministry of the Word. Pray as Jesus taught us, to “lead us not into temptation but to deliver us from the evil one.” Are you alert to the devil’s schemes? Are you? Or are you half asleep, telling yourself that it is all peace, peace when there is no peace?”
A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. A painful trial. A powerful enemy. You can see why Paul is so full of concern for the Thessalonians, can’t you? Well what can be done? Look now in the last place at chapter 3 verse 1 and chapter 3 verse 2. Here is a practical solution. How do you counter the assaults of the devil? How do you stand firm and not be moved when affliction comes? Look at the text. What does Paul do? He can’t go to the Thessalonians himself but he sends Timothy, he says, who is God’s coworker in the Gospel of Christ “to establish and exhort you in your faith that no one be moved by these afflictions.” Paul goes to minister the Gospel to encourage and exhort, to comfort and direct, to teach the people that their faith might be strengthened and established that they might not be shaken by whatever might come their way.
We need to be reminded day after day, Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, Jesus Christ died and rose and reigns for sinners. He is coming soon and He is all sufficient for your daily battles. He is the conqueror of the devil and the defender of His people. He is an inexhaustible fountain of strength and sustaining grace. When you suffer, when you are tempted, when the enemy comes in like a flood, you can flee to Jesus Christ. The Gospel that Timothy preached is the Gospel we need. The Gospel establishes and exhorts us in our faith that we might not be moved. It is God’s survival plan. It is His counter attack. It is His only strategy for victory. Press the Gospel down into your heart. Cling to Christ speaking in His Word. Because if you cling to Him, the solid rock, you can never be moved. The practical solution, Paul knows, is the proclamation of the Gospel to establish and exhort us that we might not be moved.
To go without the preaching of the Word, to neglect the preaching of the Word is like taking off your helmet and stripping away your bulletproof vest and wandering unconcerned and oblivious directly into the line of fire in an active warzone. It is the height of folly. That’s why Paul sends them Timothy. He knows that in the ministry of the Word, God responds with the resources of heaven to protect us from the assaults of the devil. In the regular, ordinary preaching of the Gospel, so familiar and so easily taken for granted, so easily neglected, God is working that you might not be moved.
A parent’s love. A pastor’s reward. A painful trial. And a powerful enemy. Praise God for the very practical solution He has given us in the Gospel of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. May He bless His Word to our hearts so that when the tempter tempts us and afflictions come, we all might not be moved but stand firm. Let’s pray.
Father, we praise You for Your holy Word. We ask that the Gospel of grace might garrison and protect us against the assaults of the tempter. We pray that Your Word might never be hindered among us but might run and be glorified. O Lord, subdue our sin. Teach us to cling to Christ, and having clung to Him, find that we grow in grace and in likeness to Him. Make it so, we pray, for the sake and the honor of our great Savior name. Amen.