One of the things that I do when I visit churches is to collect bulletins. I have bulletins from various places in the country. I like to see how other churches are putting their bulletins together. What information do they put in? What information do they leave out? At College Church in Marion, IN, they would start the list of ministry personnel like this: All members of the congregation – ministers. From that point on they listed the various paid and unpaid ministry directors. I like that. As believers and as members of the body of Christ and His church, each of us are ministers. At times we may not feel like a minister, but no matter how you feel, that doesn’t change who you are. This morning as we look at 1 Thessalonians 2, we want to take a look at the qualifications of a minister.
1You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. 2We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. 3For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. 4On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. 5You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. 6We 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, 7but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. 8We 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. 9Surely 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.
10You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. 11For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, 12encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
13And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe. 14For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, 15who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men 16in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.
As we learned last week, Paul commended the church at Thessalonica in the way that they were imitators of him and of the Lord. Paul was a minister of the gospel or the Good News. If the church is going to be the church, each one of us from the youngest to the oldest need to consider ourselves a minister of the Good News. Paul gives us some great guidelines in what it means to be a minister of the Good News.
First, however, he wants his readers to know that the missionary team does not consider the first visit to Thessalonica a failure. Paul and the team had already had some difficulty in Philippi. If you been reading along with us in our readings, we’ve just read this week the account of Paul and his colleagues being thrown out of Thessalonica and Berea. Suffering for the cause of spreading the Good News was nothing new to the ministry team. Matter of fact, Paul was promised that by God after his conversion. Paul just counts is part of the process and knows that the gospel must be preached in spite of the opposition.
I hope that you have heard this before and I hope that it brings comfort to you and spurs you on to preach the Good News. Remember that when people reject the Good News that you spread, they’re not rejecting you, but the Christ you serve. Now, I know even that can be difficult. Most of us have a living, active relationship with the Christ we serve and it disappoints us when others reject Him. In times like these, we just need to remember that He has commanded us to spread the Good News and if people reject it, they are rejecting Christ, not us. Also when people reject the Good News, and us Paul writes, we should never consider it a failure on our part or Gods.
Verse 2 tells us that Paul’s message was the Good News or the gospel. Four of the books of the New Testament are considered the gospels. Those are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What are these four books about? They are about the story of Jesus. That is what Paul’s message was about. It was about the redeeming story of Jesus – how Jesus came to earth, paid the price for sinful man on the cross, died, was buried, and most importantly rose on the third day and forty days later returned to heaven where his is preparing a place for those who believe his message and he is coming back for to take us to that wonderful place. That is the gospel in miniature. It is what the apostles were preaching in the book of Acts that got them in trouble with the authorities.
What motivates Paul to preach the gospel? What should motivate us to preach the gospel? Well, Paul tell us that it’s not impure motives such as pleasing people, greed, or seeking praise from people. This is a strong checkpoint for all of us as ministers. What is our motive in preaching the gospel? Is it to tell the good news to those who desperately need it? Is it simply to get an “atta-boy” from others? Or is it to get you noticed? Or maybe you help preach the gospel because you think that’s what the pastor wants you to do. None of these are good motives for presenting the gospel. The only motive we should have in presenting the gospel is pleasing God. Paul says, “we speak as men approved by God…” He goes on to say, “We are not trying to please men, but God.” To take it one step further, we need to make sure that we are not playing the judge for how we perceive others attempts at sharing the gospel. In our humanness, it is difficult to determine what a person’s motives are. We need to let God take care of that. Remember what Paul says to the church at Philippi? Whether the gospel is preached from pure or impure motives, I rejoice that the gospel is being preached. Amen to that! This does not give us an excuse to preach and teach from impure motives, because it is very clear that Paul models preaching from pure motives and that motive is to please God.
So far we know that in order for someone to be a minister, his or her message must be the Good News of Jesus Christ and the motive must be to please God.
The third characteristic to be a minister of the gospel involves the manner in which the gospel is preached. Again, we are given some bad examples and then some good examples. Paul says that we are not trying to trick you. The Greek word for the word trick was originally used of a lure for catching fish, it became known for any sort of cunning used for profit.
This morning I don’t have to go into any detail in giving you bad examples of preaching the gospel for profit. It seems there is no limit to the lengths men AND women will go to to preach the gospel for their own financial benefit. (Even as I say that my own heart is judging their motives, again I don’t know that that is their motive, but everything I see in their ministry points that way.) Perhaps they are sincere, but when you take a Bible passages and twist it so that you ask people for a certain dollar amount so that God will bless them, that appears to be trickery.
Paul also says that they don’t use flattery. What is flattery? It is the process of complimenting excessively especially to gain the favor of someone. It also means to please or to gratify. Again, it wasn’t Paul’s intention to preach the gospel to “tickle” the ears of the hearers. We can look at many examples again of those who preach or teach the gospel to flatter the people. Sometimes as preachers and teacher of the gospel, we are going to have to present ungratifying things. Sometimes, people aren’t going to like what we have to say from God. This happens to laypeople and clergy alike. I’m sure, if it hasn’t happened yet, you may disagree with something I say. This is going to happen if the gospel is being presented correctly.
How should we present the gospel? We’ve sort of mentioned the first one. The gospel should be presented with courage. The message of the gospel is not always a popular message. We can see that in the gospels and the book of Acts. We must not back down. However, you’ll also notice that the gospel should be presented with gentleness. In verse 7 Paul writes, “we were gentle among you.” That almost seems like a oxymoron, to preach the gospel with courage and yet with gentleness. We are told to be ready to give an answer to the hope we have, but do it with gentleness and respect. In our pluralistic culture, we know that we have the answer, and yet we must communicate that answer with gentleness. We also need to present the gospel in love. Let me remind you again that I love each one of you. My desire continues to be that we can build the kingdom of God together. Again, there will be times when we will disagree. That happens, even among believers. We need to present the gospel in love. As I look at many of the students who show up here on Wednesday evening, I know that many don’t know what real love is. And that is our job in building the kingdom to show them the love of God and to present the gospel. One of the ways you did that this week is in the way you supported our teens in going to camp. First of all let me recognize Tommy. He volunteered last Sunday morning and make the appeal for the shortfall in cash. You responded wonderfully. That shows love and it is also part of the hard work or toil in building the kingdom, which is another characteristic of a minister. A minister is a hard worker and works to build the kingdom. Labor is hard work as we said last week. So we need to present the gospel with courage, gentleness, love, toil and holiness.
In verse 10 Paul writes, “You are witnesses and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you…” God has called us as ministers to be holy, to be separate, to be pure. Paul also uses the word righteous. He also mentions that the Thessalonians were witness to that. As presenters of the gospel, we need to have an impeccable witness.
In just 10 verses we covered a lot of territory this morning. God has called each one of his children to be ministers to this world. Let’s review
· Our message is the gospel of Jesus Christ
· Our motive is to please God, not men
· Our manner is not trickery or flattery, but courage, gentleness, love, toil, and holiness.
Perhaps you’ve never considered yourself of minister. If you are a child of God, you are a minister. Does your life line up with what Paul tells us a minister should be?
