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Carla is doing everything left-handed today, so we don't want to rush anything. Thank you. Paul defends his ministry. Have you ever done very serious ministry to someone, ministry that was very personally costly to you, and you knew that you were doing it with the right motives, But people find a way to tear your ministry apart. They accuse you of bad motives. They accuse you of ineffective methods. Basically, they try to rip your ministry that was very costly to you to shreds. How should we handle that? Well, that is what Paul is facing this morning in our text. So we can follow his lead. The situation is that Paul has reached Corinth after a stint of persecution, first at Philippi, then Thessalonica, and then Berea, and then, in effectiveness, possibly at Athens. And then he was alone at Corinth, and he was waiting for his team to get back to him before Paul started to minister again. The news about Thessalonica reached him at a point that he seemed to be having second thoughts about his ministry. But then he found out that the Thessalonians were doing way better than he expected. So he was thrilled about that. At the same time, he must have heard about all the criticisms of Paul's ministry, his message, and his person. Now, given the evidence of the whole letter to the Thessalonians and the loyalty of the church people toward Paul at Thessalonica, this attack that he's responding to must have been largely from outside the church. The attacks were probably from the Judaizers who followed Paul from Philippi to Thessalonica. I don't know about you, but I think it's often much better when the attacks come from outside the church than when they come from inside the church. We can back our way into the accusations being railed against Paul by the defenses that he gives for his ministry in our text. Brad touched on that in the introduction. We can assume that he didn't pick these topics out of a hat. It was more likely that Timothy had made some notes from his visit with the Thessalonians, basically saying, they're saying this about you, Paul. They're saying this about you, Paul. They're saying this about you, Paul. And Paul is probably going through those notes, or at least that list, and he's responding point by point to prove them wrong. Now, we might think, Well, this isn't very godly. Christ was silent before his accusers. Shouldn't we be silent as well? And well, it depends. We have no need to fight evil with evil. So if people are just saying things about us because we're Christians, we can turn the other cheek. We should not allow our pride to drive our defense. We need to consider other factors, though, too. Like, who is being harmed by this attack on me? Or what harm will happen to onlookers if the onlookers believe these accusations? This text is not about Paul trying to make himself look good. He was trying to affirm the truth about his ministry that the Thessalonians probably already believed about Paul. and he wanted them to keep believing it. He didn't want that doubt to grow, and you know how doubt is. He is affirming his ministry to them, so they'll not doubt or distrust, and they'll not allow that to distract them from their love and faithfulness to Paul and what Paul had taught them. Sometimes we need to respond to the accusations of our enemies for the sake of our friends. for the sake of those who depend upon us and trust us. It's not always bad to give a defense. I think that's the case here. Verse 1, for you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. Paul had just gotten done telling the Thessalonians how pleased he was that they were following Christ and growing in Christ and doing all the right things. They had believed the gospel that Paul preached and it made a huge difference. We talked about this last week, a core difference in their lives. It changed their object of worship. They dropped their idols and followed the one true God. That's what true faith in Christ does. So now Paul moves on to his defense against his accusers. The accusations would have been something like this. And you can just imagine somebody fomenting this stuff in the background. This guy, Paul, he's a jailbird. He already did time in Philippi. That doesn't happen to good people. No, maybe he's as dumb as a hoe handles. He sure doesn't handle the Old Testament like all the experts do. Or maybe it is he's not making a mistake. It's probably true that this Paul fellow, he has an angle. He's working on an angle here. There's something in it for him that he's hiding from you guys. He probably wants to hit on the women, or maybe his angle is money. If not, for sure, it's power. Because money, sex, or power drive everything in men like Paul. For sure he isn't speaking for God. If he were, he'd be telling you to become Jewish to get right with God. Anybody knows that. I can assure you the Jerusalem high priest didn't authorize this man coming out to preach to you. No, he's a fly-by-night, self-appointed charlatan. He's just trying to use you. He wants to take advantage of you. He'll tell you what you want to hear so he can get something from you. You just watch. When he's done taking from you, he's going to hit the road with what he wants. You wait. Aren't you even a little suspicious that he left town so soon? Come on now, this man is not to be trusted. He's the kind of guy who comes into town, doesn't do an honest day's work, and leaves with your money. That must have been the kind of things that Paul's enemies were saying because the defense that Paul gave covered all those kinds of issues. When our ministries get criticized, we have to remember that better ministries were criticized in worse ways than ours. The criticism doesn't prove anything one way or another all by itself. The thing we need to make sure is that any valid criticisms are untrue. After that, we need to choose the next faithful thing to do. Paul appeals to the Thessalonians first off to remember what they know. Remember what they know. We do well to begin our thinking about each other and about those who we trust to minister to us with what we know to be true. We might be wrong, but often we have seen enough to figure out some things before people have a chance to trick us. Have you ever had somebody lay suspicions in your mind about somebody, and when you look back, you think, I knew better. I knew better than to believe that stuff. So start by thinking about what you know about the person in question. For instance, if you heard a rumor about Mark, that when he was younger, he made a whole bunch of money ripping people off on Wall Street. We would all know to start with what we know of Mark. And while Mark is plenty smart enough to do such a thing, we all know that is not the kind of crime that Mark would do or even be tempted to do. We know Mark and we start there. We start with our knowledge of him. Paul says, you know that our coming to you was not in vain. Now that could mean, you could take that one or two ways. That could mean that we didn't come to you with vanity as our motive. Or it could mean that our coming to you didn't come and serve no purpose. It wasn't in vain, it served a purpose. It could go either way. Now I think Paul just got done telling them how well they were doing, so I think it's probably the later. It's not like we came to you and nothing happened, is what he's saying. Paul's accusers might say that he's completely ineffective. He probably was only there for three weeks or not much longer. But Paul says, no, uh-uh. A lot of really important things happened in that short time I was there. You are evidence of it. Does the accuser of your soul ever tell you that all your ministry is in vain, that nothing is happening? Don't believe him. If you're presenting God's word in day-to-day conversations, If you're submitting your will to God's will daily, God is doing something. Just because we can't always see it does not mean that God's word is returning void. God promises that his word will not return void. According to his word, it can't. So Paul argues that his ministry was not ineffective like they were saying about him. No, he said it was effective. Verse two, 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. Next, Paul says, we suffered before we got to you, we suffered when we got to you, we continually face conflict, we always have a force against us that we need to contend with. Paul's laying it out in that framework. And how did we act in face of all that, in face of knowing that by giving you the gospel, we were gonna get a tougher time for it? Well, this is how we did it. We boldly declared the gospel to you. What an example to follow here. Paul is conveying that his team would not have done the things they were doing if their motive was to take advantage of the Thessalonians. Who chooses to suffer this way? And far from earning them money or power, what they earned was abuse because of the message that they were conveying. Now, if they were staying in luxury hotels and feasting on caviar, one might be able to accuse them possibly of evil motives. But Paul's team was getting beat up and slandered, not exactly incentive for their trouble. Clearly, the gospel of God was more important to Paul and his team than their very lives were, certainly more than their comfort. Now, someone might still think that Paul's message was wrong. They might think it's false, but you could not accuse them of having any other motive than the one they said they had. They were sincere, and they were doing it for the right motives. When you're bold to speak a message for which you will only suffer, You prove your sincerity. You prove that you believe the message that you are speaking. Verse three, for the appeal, our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempts to deceive. Now, when you read the word appeal there, you can take that wrong. The word appeal here has the same root as Pericle, which is used for the Holy Spirit. It's coming alongside to help. That's what the Holy Spirit does. That's what we as Christians are to do. We come alongside. So Paul's not saying we are so appealing and that attractiveness does not spring out of these things. No. It's an appeal, a persuasive message to get people to make a change. That kind of appeal. It's like when you disagree with a verdict that a court hands down and you make an appeal. A reasoned, impassioned argument is what he's talking about. Paul is saying that his gospel presentation doesn't spring from any of these three things. The first refers to inaccuracy of the message. The second refers to sexual motives of the speaker. The third refers to the method of presentation of the message. So we start with error. Remember that Paul is talking to Gentiles. The Jews in the town might easily think that Paul is out of his mind. What Paul was saying would have been out in left field for a person who was raised Jewish. It should not have been. They should have been reading their Bibles instead of attending lectures. The establishment had it wrong. They misunderstood the purpose of the Messiah. So Paul was not in error, even though that was the most common accusation railed against him. Paul also had no sexual motives. We know that because first he says so, and second, he lives a life where nothing like that ever surfaced. This was just projection by the religious crowd. They probably had impure motives that they worked hard to keep at bay. So that's what they would naturally assume about Paul, even without evidence. Now, keep in mind, these same kinds of things can happen to any one of us. Our enemies rarely fight fair. They're not limited by truth. A lie is as good as the truth to them, because it gets the job done. That's how their father the devil handles things. That's how they're going to handle things. Paul also had no motives to use deception in his message. To get them to believe, say that God's desire is that all Christians should be rich so he can trick you into making him rich, which is a pretty common lie, deception. No, all Paul got for his message was multiple bruises. He had no fleshly motives for preaching a message for which he gained nothing personally by, at least nothing fleshly. Verse four, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts. Paul argues here about the source of his authority to preach. The Jews may be saying, hey, no one in our clan gave Paul the authority to speak for God. He doesn't have our credentials. But here Paul says, whoa, you guys have humans to approve you. You could say, I went over your heads in the chain of command. God is the one who approved my ministry and entrusted me with a specific message to a specific group of people. But don't worry, my audience really aren't the kind of people that you would have wanted anyway, at least not on equal footing. So Paul's saying his authority is higher than theirs. And just as he was given this authority by God, it's God who has to please. God's his boss. He does not need to please the religious big shots in the powerhouses. It's no concern of his if they don't like his message at all. He could care less. because God gave him this message to preach, and that's all he cares about. Jesus dealt with the same issues when the religious leaders kept pressing Christ about what power structures assigned him his permission to preach. In Matthew 21, 23, and then 42 through 43, it says, and he entered the temple, and chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, by what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority? Jesus didn't answer him, but he asked him a question. Who gave John the Baptist authority? Uh-oh. They weren't too slow to realize that's a trap they didn't want to get caught in. They were too political to answer the question. And then Jesus told a couple of parables, and then he said this. Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit." Basically, the religious leaders think of themselves as the builders. They see themselves as, yeah, we're the builders. We're the people to make the Jewish nation what it is. But they're not going by the plan of the owner. The builders are assigning rocks to spaces in the building, and the religious leaders assign authority to people in their religion, but they're not going by the master's plan. These Jews should have reasoned with Paul and scoured the Old Testament for truth, but they didn't. They didn't feel like they had to. They were already the experts. They didn't need to please their father. They just had to please the big shots and hold the party line to maintain their power. Then he goes on, so we speak not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts. Well, Paul let them know that it's not the religious leaders who test our hearts. It's not them to whom we give our final account. And this judgment is not the kind of external judgment. It's not external tests. Those are the tests that legalists love, the external tests. No, this can be a heart judgment. So even the stuff we never do but want to do will be found out. All our secret envies and lusts and worries, everything will be seen by this judge. So the message to his accusers is that you may want to rethink your plan. It's flawed. You'll not be judged by only what you do. You'll be judged by why you do what you do in your heart of hearts. And if you hope to escape judgment, you better think twice, religious leaders, because it's coming. Paul's heart of heart, his motive, what he was shooting for is clear. Paul wants to please the God who knows everything. Paul wants to please the God who knows everything. That's where our goals should be also. Our goal should be to please the God who knows everything, to walk in his presence daily, to follow his spirit, to exhibit his fruit. It doesn't matter what the rest of the church knows about you. What matters is what God knows about you. Live to please him, and confess and repent of your failures when they come to your mind, and they will, because we will. That's the Christian life. That's the Christian walk. We are continually applying the good news of the gospel to the intermittent news of our lives. And we find that when we're faithful, our Lord is truly pleased. I find trouble believing that sometimes. But it's true. He keeps saying it. It has to be true. When we are faithful, our God is pleased. What a wonderful thing. Paul's telling the truth from his heart of hearts here. It doesn't matter what he's being accused of. He knows it's not true. Paul knows his motives. Do you have any memories of discussions you've had with, say, a spouse early in your marriage or some early relationship? This person would do something and you got all worked up about it? I'll bet that never happened. Because you assume that they did the thing for the same reason that you would have done the thing. And then you find out that their motives were completely different than what you assumed. They might have been worse. They might have been better. But they were completely different. You read it all wrong. They weren't thinking anything like what you suspected them of. We're often like that. We can never know another person's motives like another person can know them. Oh, if we get to know them real well, we might be able to guess a little more accurately, but it's important that we really know our own motives. We can't really know someone else's, but it's important that we really know ours. Paul is talking about his motives here, and he better get it right. I suspect that more lying is done between believers about what our motives really are than anything else. That's just a guess. I don't have a scripture for that. Because it's a lie that we can always get away with. If you lie about your motives, nobody can ever prove you wrong. It's a lie that can get us instantly out of trouble. And when we present a theory about why we did something instead of a reason for why we did it, now we've deceived two people. We've deceived ourselves and we've deceived our brother or sister. Paul knew his motives. He was certain of his motives. His motive was not to flatter anyone so that he could get them to do what he wanted them to do. Although this may have not taken a whole lot of introspection, I think he was fully aware of a lot of things about himself. The true Christian gospel is about the least flattering message that there is. If you want to flatter a person, don't tell them the gospel. You're lost. Why? Because of you. You can be made right with God. How? By coming to God with your sin and receiving a gift of salvation that Christ provided. So what can I do to get it? Well, you can receive it. Can I do something to earn it? Just a little bit? No, no, you can't. All you bring into your relationship with God is sin and your need for God. Not very flattering, is it? About all I can say is, yeah, I sinned really good. I'm good at sinning. That's what I'm bringing into this relationship. I'm good at sinning. Hard to squeeze flattery into that message. Now, greed for a minister could be a motive. Even now it's possible to be a very good preacher, but to be a hireling at the same time. The motives for why a person might do both could be mixed. But a preacher could hide a greed motive. I suspect a lot do. But Paul's motive was clear because even when he had the right to money, he didn't take any. He could have, but by not taking it, he proved his motives. Verse six, nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. Paul was even sure about his power motives. Again, he could look at the evidences of the decisions that he made and why he made them. If he had made demands, and some of them he may have had a right to make, that would have been okay. But by not making the demands that would have benefited him, Paul knew he was doing the right thing for the right reason. He didn't have any bad reason to do it for. He left reason for no one, not even himself, to doubt his pure motives. Jesus taught us that our motives are least open to suspicion when we remove any possibility of fleshly benefit. Among other things, Christ told us to pray, to fast, and to give money in secret. Then we can know that there's only one reason that we're doing it, because there's only one person who sees it. Now consider just for a second how you might act if you were an apostle. Imagine how you would act if you were an apostle. You're one of very few, 12 or 13, I've never really been able to figure that one exactly out, but you're one of these, and you're the top dog in the church. They have pillars in a new temple. If anyone could have been a big shot, they could have been a big shot. But you would have never ever guessed that Paul had that position in the body of Christ by the way Paul acted. You might guess quicker he was a janitor. He was a workhorse of a man and never used his position to make his life any easier for himself. He was not one to boss people around, although when he had ministry partners, they were gonna do what he told them to do, because he was in authority. But sometimes he had to use his position to make his life livable, but he never abused his privilege. He never made his life sweet at the expense of somebody else. Are we ever upset that people don't glorify our ministries or make more of them? Maybe we would be helped by going to the school of Paul. He was remarkable in that regard. Verse seven, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. Paul gives more evidence that evil motives were not the driving force in his ministry. Power-hungry people are not known for their gentleness toward others. People demanding attention and benefit are not normally the kindest of people. They're often abrasive and confrontive and demanding. Not Paul. He described his ministry with feminine characteristics. He was fostering to these people. He was tender while meeting their needs. They're precious to him. They're not things to be used. They are precious lambs to be loved, precious children to be nourished. Let me ask you, what does a mother gain when she gives up sleep every night, when she's concerned about any twist and turn in the child's health, when she gives up those things she wants so the child can best have what they need? What does she gain from that? We could go on and on. Susan's probably going to wish she didn't miss this. She doesn't do those things for the best mom medal or for the privilege of being promoted to some head honcho of the household. No, there's no upward mobility there. There's no different motive like that. It's love. It's love. That's why Paul describes his ministry this way. No one mistakes those motives. A mother who's doing a motherly duty the way that mothers so frequently do are doing it only for the best interest of those children. Verse eight, so being affectionately desirous of you, I love that, 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. Paul makes a very persuasive point, so there's no doubt. Why did we do what we did? Well, first, because we answer for you. But in the process, we became affectionately desirous of you people who live there in Thessalonica, who we met and we ministered to, and you ministered to us. Isn't that a great pastoral trait? I don't think I've ever seen that in a job description for a pastor. Maybe it should be. To be hired as the Ferndale preacher, you must be able to preach, teach, and be affectionately desirous of us. That's a wonderful thing. That's what Paul was. Now, it appears not every church got this kind of review. He didn't exactly say the same things to the people in Corinth, but Paul adds a because. Because you had become very dear to us. How do you think you become dear to someone? When I hear the word dear, I always think that's a Ruth word. Ruth word uses the word dear a lot. How do you think you become dear to someone? Well, what people are dear to you? Why are they that way to you? That might be worth thinking about. What makes others dear to you? Who do I want to be dear to? What do I need to change? How can I do that better? What makes others dear to us is what makes us dear to them. It's not hard to figure out. I often say that if I would think like you think, I would feel like you feel. And there's a lot of truth to that. It's not an absolute given our dispositions, but it's largely true. I say that to make the point that we're not victims of our feelings nearly as much as we might think we are. We often create them by what we think. Well, at the same time, the same thing is true in how people receive us generally. If I think that people respond to me in a certain way because my name is John Ziegler, and I look a certain way, and I sound a certain way, I am largely mistaken about that. It is very rare that a person singles me out to reject me based on who I am. It's what I say and do that normally creates that effect. If you treated people like I treat people, they would largely respond to you in the same way they respond to me, whether good or bad. The opposite is true as well. If I treated people like you treat people, they would respond to me the same way as they respond to you. If you don't like how people respond to you, instead of first blaming them for how they respond, take a look at yourself and ask, What am I doing to cause this behavior? Much more is gained by changing how we treat people than blaming them for how they treat us. We have the power to change ourselves. We have no power to change others. The other thing to look for, too, is what's the repeating pattern I see in how people regard me? Well, guess what? We created that. If everybody sees us the same way or treats us the same way, we are doing something to invite that behavior. It's worthy of thinking. It helps me to clarify, I have ways that I can change that will benefit my relationships with others. And again, none of this is universal. None of this is always true. Some people hate you because you're a Christian, and that's worthy of being hated for. but whatever the case. These people in Thessalonica had weaseled their way into Paul's heart in just a few weeks. They became dear for a reason. They must have been some exceptional people. And look at Paul's heart toward them. This wasn't just a job of sharing the gospel and mechanically discipling these people. No, he loved them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to share his life with them. He was just glad to be around them. It's so good when church is like that. It's so good when the distinction between the leaders and the rest of the members is so small because the distinction is so rarely needed. That's a wonderful thing. It's so good when our common love for Christ removes so many obstacles to our fellowship. It's so good when sharing our time and money and life with each other is not so much of an obligation as a privilege. I think that's what Paul is describing here. He loved these people and they loved him. For an application in closing, maybe we can ask ourselves a few questions. If my ministry is attacked or unappreciated by those around me, how can I respond like Paul did? If motives are so important, should we not spend the time it takes to be sure of ours before we affirm to people that they're good? And the third thing, what simple things do people do that make them dear to me? What would change in my relationships if I chose to do those same things to others? And maybe the Lord laid a different application on you as well. Go with it. Whatever it is. Let's close in prayer. Lord, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for Paul. Lord, he seems like the kind of guy would have been hard to hang out with because he would have worked you to death.
Paul defends his ministry
Serie 1 Thessalonians
Predigt-ID | 33242047241405 |
Dauer | 35:23 |
Datum | |
Kategorie | Sonntagsgottesdienst |
Bibeltext | 1. Thessalonicher 2,1-8 |
Sprache | Englisch |
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