Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Christian Ministry A
Sunday, 08 October 2006
Part of the abiding value of 1 Thessalonians Ch’s 2 and 3 is the insight it gives us into Paul's pastoral heart. In these chapters, more perhaps than anywhere else in his letters, the Apostle Paul discloses his mind, expresses his emotions and bares his soul. No-one who is engaged in any form of pastoral ministry, whether it be ordained or lay, can fail to be touched and challenged by what Paul writes here.
True, Paul was an apostle and we are not. That is, we have neither seen the risen Lord, nor been commissioned to be his eye-witnesses, nor received a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit to teach with authority or contribute to the New Testament - which were some of the distinctive privileges of the apostles of Christ, especially the Twelve and Paul. Nevertheless, other aspects of the apostles' ministry were not unique to them, for example their pastoral concern and care, of which they provide an excellent model for us to copy, not least in these two chapters of 1 Thessalonians.
Before we look at how we might apply these insights today, we need to recall their historical background. Paul’s brief mission in Thessalonica which you can read about in Acts 17:1-15 had been brought to an ignominious end. The public riot and the legal charges against the missionaries were so serious that they were persuaded to make a humiliating night flight from the city. Paul's critics took full advantage of his sudden disappearance. In order to undermine his authority and his gospel, they determined to discredit him. So they launched a malicious smear campaign. By studying Paul's self-defense it is possible for us to reconstruct their slanders. ‘He ran away', they sneered, 'and hasn't been seen or heard of since. Obviously he's insincere, impelled by the basest motives. He's just one more of those many phony teachers who tramp up and down the Egnatian Way. In a word, he's a charlatan. He's in his job only for what he can get out of it in terms of sex, money, prestige or power. So when opposition arose, and he found himself in personal danger, he took to his heels and ran! He doesn't care about you Thessalonian disciples of his; he has abandoned you! He's much more concerned about his own skin than your welfare.'
It seems likely that some of the Thessalonians were being carried away by this torrent of abuse. The facts of Paul's abrupt departure and failure to return seemed to fit the accusations being made against him. His critics' case sounded pretty plausible. So Paul must have found this personal attack extremely painful. Perhaps he drew comfort from his knowledge that Jesus had himself been misrepresented as being a glutton and a wine-bibber, a law-breaker, in league with the devil, and even mad. Paul also determined to reply to the charges which were being leveled at him, not out of pique or vanity, but because the truth of the gospel and the future of the church were at stake. Chapters two and three of 1 Thessalonians are, in fact, his apologia. First, in 2:1-16 he defends his conduct when he was in Thessalonica, which is the passage we’re looking at today. Then in 2:17 - 3:13 he explains his involuntary departure from the city, his subsequent inability to go back and his determination to visit them again as soon as he can , which is what we’ll look at next week.
Before we are ready to consider his case, however, we need to note two general and preliminary points which he makes, namely the openness of his ministry and his willingness to suffer.
In spite of being run out of town, Paul doesn’t see his time at Thessalonica as a failure, He says ‘With the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel.’ Paul's ministry in Thessalonica had been public. It was exercised in the open before God and human beings, for he had nothing whatever to hide.
Before reaching Thessalonica Paul had suffered both injury and insult in Philippi. He and Silas had been stripped, beaten, thrown into prison, and their feet fastened in the stocks. It had not only been an extremely painful experience, but humiliating as well, since they were flogged naked in public, without trial, and in spite of their Roman citizenship. In Thessalonica too Paul had met strong opposition. Yet these afflictions did not deter him. On the contrary, God gave him courage to go on preaching the gospel, whatever the consequences might be. This, then, was the second evidence of Paul's genuineness. People are prepared to suffer only for what they believe in. Thus Paul appeals both to his openness and to his sufferings as tokens of his sincerity, contrary to the slander against him.
Now let’s have a closer look at Paul's defense.
As he recalls his visit to Thessalonica, he seems to depict it by four metaphors, likening himself to a steward, a mother, a father, and a herald.
a. A steward (2:3-4)
The word 'steward' doesn’t actually occur in the text. But the concept of stewardship is implicit in the phrase ‘entrusted with the gospel’ in v.4. God had entrusted the gospel to Paul, as a householder entrusts his property to his steward. The apostle reverts a number of times to this concept when he wishes to express either his sense of privilege in having had the gospel committed to him, or his sense of responsibility to be faithful to his stewardship.
As a minister I feel wonderfully privileged in being charged to lead and teach the people in this church and I also feel that awesome responsibility of ensuring people are taught fully and well.
However before Paul develops his positive ministry of trusteeship, his sense of accountability to God for the gospel, he has some negative disclaimers to make in verse 3. His appeal, he maintains, did not and does not spring from error, since his message - the gospel of God - was true. Nor was it due to impure motives. Thirdly, the missionaries' appeal was not made with guile. ‘nor are we trying to trick you,’ he says. That is, there was nothing devious about their methods. They made no attempt to induce conversions, for example, either by concealing the cost of discipleship or by offering fraudulent blessings.
So then, here is a tremendous threefold claim. Paul insists that his message was true, his motives were pure and his methods were open and above-board. In these three areas his conscience was entirely clear. In what he said, and in why and how he said it, he was free from anything underhand.
It is over against the false claims of error, impurity and guile that Paul develops the stewardship metaphor: ‘On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.’. His emphasis is on God as the person to whom he was responsible. God had approved him, God had entrusted him with the gospel, and God was the person he was trying to please, not men, and it is God who tests our hearts.
There is no aspect of Christian ministry that is more important than its fundamental God-centeredness. The stewards of the gospel are primarily responsible neither to the church, nor to its synods or leaders or councils, but to God himself. On the one hand, this is a sobering fact and even a terrible burden, because God scrutinizes our hearts and our secrets, and God's standards are very high. On the other hand, it is marvelously liberating, since God is a more knowledgeable, impartial and merciful judge than any human being or ecclesiastical court or committee. To be accountable to God and God only is to be delivered from the tyranny of human criticism.
In verse 5-8 the Apostle likens himself and his companions to a mother. Again he begins negatively. He is about to declare his mother-like love for the Thessalonians as his motivation in serving them, but before this he repeats his claim to be free of unworthy motives. In verse 5 ‘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’. All three evils (the flattery, the mask and the hunger for compliments) are illicit ways of using others to build up ourselves and all too often we see ministers who seem more intent on the acclaim from men rather than seeking to serve God..
Paul then mentions another trap which he and his companions avoided, which they could have fallen into as apostles of Christ. What they might have done as apostles was to be a burden to the Thessalonians, either by standing on their dignity and issuing orders, or by insisting on being paid. Instead, they were gentle like a mother caring for her little children.
Paul adds that he was not only as gentle as a mother with them, but as affectionate and sacrificial too: ‘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’. Far from using them to minister to himself, he gave himself to minister to them. It is a lovely thing that a man as tough and masculine as the apostle Paul should have used this feminine metaphor. Some Christian leaders become both self-centered and autocratic. The more their authority is challenged, the more they assert it. We all need to cultivate more, in our pastoral ministry, the gentleness, love and self-sacrifice of a mother.
Just so you don’t think of Paul as a sissy he next compares himself to a father.
Again he begins negatively. He reverts to the fact, already mentioned in verse 6, that he had not been a burden to anyone in Thessalonica, even while he preached the gospel of God to them. Indeed, it was in order deliberately to avoid being dependent on them financially that he and his companions had worked night and day. Probably they preached by day and laboured by night. For Paul anyway his work was tent-making, by which he earned his living and presumably paid for his board and lodging. The Thessalonians would surely remember his toil and hardship. Although we know that some gifts were sent to Paul and his companions from the Philippian church, even while he was in Thessalonica, these were evidently inadequate for his needs. Paul could have made himself a burden to the Thessalonian Christians by asking them for money, but he determined not to do so.
Instead of being a burden to them, he had been like a father to them, by both his example and his instruction. Paul evidently saw his example as part of his paternal duty, ‘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.’
Paul seems to be thinking specially of the educational role of fathers, who, in addition to setting their children a consistent example (10), should also encourage, comfort and exhort them. In the apostle's case, he found himself urging the Thessalonians to live worthily of God and his kingdom, and even 'insisting'17 on it. Since it was part of his teaching that the kingdom of God has both a present manifestation and a future glory, we may assume that he appealed to the Thessalonians to live a life worthy both of their dignity now and of their destiny at the end.
The next metaphor Paul uses is that of a herald.
The New Testament Greek word for preaching is literally means ‘to act like a herald’ and make a public proclamation. The message came from God through the apostle to the Thessalonians and was changing them. There is an unambiguous assertion by Paul that the gospel he preached was the word of God. We are familiar with the claims of the Old Testament prophets that they were bearers of the word of God, for they introduced their oracles with formulas like 'the word of the Lord came to me', 'listen to the word of the Lord', and 'thus says the Lord'. But here in verse 13 is a comparable claim by a New Testament apostle. Paul does not rebuke the Thessalonians for regarding his message too highly. On the contrary, he commends them for having recognized it as what it truly is, that is God's word, and for having accepted it as such. More than that, he actually thanks God constantly that they have done so, and adds that the gospel authenticates its divine origin by its transforming power in their lives. This is a clear indication of Paul's self-conscious apostolic authority. He knew that he was an apostle of Christ and he knew that his message was the word of God. And he praises God that the Thessalonians knew these things as well.
The efficacy of the gospel in the Thessalonian believers was seen in the fact that they became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus. The Judean churches are probably singled out for mention because they were the first to be planted. And the 'imitation' of them by the Thessalonians was an unwitting rather than a deliberate one. All true churches, which belong to God and live in Christ, are bound on that account, in spite of cultural differences, to display a certain similarity to one another. This similarity was seen not only in their receiving the word, but also in their suffering for it: You (Thessalonians, mostly of Gentile stock) have suffered from your own countrymen the same things those (Judean) churches suffered from the Jews.
Paul’s statement about the opposition of the Jews to the gospel and God's judgement on them, while true and appropriate in this context is not the Apostle Paul’s only statement about the Jews and needs to be balanced by what he says about them in Romans 11 for example.
So Paul has stated that while he was in Thessalonica he had been like a mother, a father and a herald. A mother giving gentle care; a father giving encouragement, comfort and the challenge to follow his example in following the Lord; and a herald who boldly proclaims the word of God.
When our nominators choose the new minister for this church they could do far worse than choosing someone who showed these three characteristics, mother, father and herald.
Let us pray.