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Now we're going to read from
the scriptures. This morning we're reading from First Thessalonians
chapter two, verses one through eight. For you yourselves know, brethren,
that our coming to you was not in vain. But even after we had
suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know,
we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much
conflict For our exhortation did not come from error or uncleanness,
nor was it in deceit. But as we have been approved
by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not
as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. For neither
at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak
for covetousness. God is witness. nor did we seek
glory from men, either from you or from others, when we might
have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle
among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So affectionately longing for
you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel
of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to
us. This is the word of the Lord. Today I wanna look at how through
the gospel, we become mothers. Do you remember that old children's
book, Are You My Mother? In that book, there's this hatchling
baby bird. The baby bird emerges from an
egg, but when the egg hatches, the mother is not there, the
mother's away. And so the baby bird is searching
for his mother. He wonders if a dog, if that's
his mother. He wanders further, he wonders
if a cow is his mother. He wanders more and he wonders
if a steam shovel is his mother. He is looking for the only one,
the only one who is suitable and capable of giving him a mother's
care. Now in this passage, in verse
six, the members of that congregation, they've been following the example
of their spiritual parents, of Paul, of Silas, and now, Paul
is expanding on the example that they've been following. Paul
says to this newly planted Thessalonian congregation, he says, now you've
been imitating me. He says, imitate, imitate us
even further. We became mothers to you. We became as mothers to you.
Follow this example. Now you be mothers to one another. as you deploy the gospel. So we see three things. We see
a mother's sweetness, a mother's sweetness. And then secondly,
we see a mother's motives, and then we see a mother's donation. A mother's sweetness, a mother's
motives, and a mother's donation. First of all, a mother's sweetness,
this is in verses one and two. In verses one and two, you see
this sweetness emerging out of suffering, a sweetness out of
suffering. Verse one, he says, remember,
when we first came to you, something real, something substantial happened
between us, but then Paul reminds them of the condition in which
he and Silas arrived at Thessalonica. Verse two, he says, we had suffered
before. Before we got to you, we had
suffered before, and we were spitefully treated at the previous
place, at Philippi. So before coming to them, before
coming to Thessalonica, Paul and Silas brought the message
of Jesus. They had brought it to Philippi,
and at Philippi, They had great success, but they also endured
great suffering. They endured spiteful, vicious
treatment. You can read about it in Acts
16. In Philippi, some of the people, in Philippi, they beat
Paul and Silas with rods. They imprisoned Paul and Silas. They put them in stocks. They
put them in stress position shackles. And all of that was in Philippi
before they came to Thessalonica. And Paul highlights the difficulty
of ministry. Paul highlights the pain of ministry. Ministry was hard. Ministry was
resisted. And Paul says, that was the condition. That was the condition that we
were in when we came to you. We were stressed. We were beaten. We were publicly misrepresented. Out of all of that suffering,
you see a sweetness and you see a boldness. Verse two, Paul writes,
even after we had suffered before, as you know, we were bold in
our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. And
then later, more of the sweetness, verse seven, we were gentle. We were gentle among you, just
as a nursing mother cherishes her own children, we affectionately
longed for you. So in spite of terrible treatment
in Philippi, in the previous city, Paul and Silas came to
Thessalonica with gentleness, with affection, cherishing the
people like a mother cherishes her nursing children. It was
like honey out of the rock of suffering. Now think about that. When you endure, when you endure
your own suffering and you are under all kinds of stress, does
sweetness come out of you? Maybe someone sends you a nasty
note. Maybe someone disrespects you
when you're in traffic. Maybe you get criticism at school
or criticism at work and people just dump more work on you, dump
more projects on you, and you come home How do you feel when
you come home? How do you come home? Do you
come home grumpy about all of that? Do you come home short-tempered
and self-pitying because of all the suffering and stress that
you've been put through? Or does sweetness come out? Do you have
sweetness and gentleness for the kids who may run up to you
with all their questions at the end of the day and all the words
that they want to tell you and demand that you listen to? Do
you have compassion and care for the other people around you,
the people whom you live with when you return, even if your
day was lousy? For Paul and Silas, and it wasn't
that his, you know, he was a small business owner. It wasn't, for
Paul and Silas, it wasn't that his small business was hard,
that people, you know, he was making tents to support his ministry.
It wasn't that Paul had underquoted, underbid a tent project and now
he realized, I'm having to eat all this financial loss. And
it wasn't that he had had an overly demanding tent customer
who was just driving him up the wall and he's coming home all
pressurized because of that. Paul and Silas received terrible
treatment in the course of ministry, in doing work to build up the
church, the afflictions and stress that accompanied gospel ministry,
that's the kind of That's the flavor of the suffering and affliction
that they arrived in Thessalonica bearing. In ministry, that's
what happens. There are afflictions, there
is stress in gospel ministry. People will complain. People
will complain about your attempts to do good, to build up and to
bless the body of Christ. People will attack. out of jealousy
when you attempt to use your abilities and your God-given
gifts to serve the Lord. Ministry is costly. Ministry
will attract complaints. People will resist ministry.
People will even bite at you as you try to fulfill your ministry. When that happens, when you suffer,
do you turn sour? or when you suffer, will sweetness
flow out of you? To some extent, mothers are fabulous
examples of this showing sweetness in spite of their suffering.
Mothers endure long hours with little sleep. Mothers serve and
dress the children and feed, and more often than not, mothers
receive just as much grumbling as gratitude, maybe they receive
more grumbling than gratitude. The Bible tells us that Mary,
the mother of Jesus, Mary, her motherhood ultimately would end
up being like having a sword run through her. Now imagine
that, Mary, the mother of the perfect child, and even for her,
the experience would still entail terrible suffering. How much
more? How much more for mothers whose
children are not sinless? How much more? You will find
that along the course of being a mother, you sometimes get knifed
by your child's cutting words or by your child's heartbreaking
needs. But isn't it the case that mothers,
in spite of all that suffering, they still show more sweetness,
more forbearance than everyone else in the room? Well, the context
here for Thessalonians, the context is the community life in the
church. It's the community life in the church. And so church,
do you have a sweetness and a kind affection for one another? And even if you have your own
suffering, and maybe it's a silent suffering, it's a private suffering,
do you have a gentle love for the people in this place? Do
you have a nurturing concern for fellow members here? And
in the places where you do serve, where you're serving, doing ministry,
whether it's with children, whether it's in trying to help people
who are in need, some of the outward facing ministries of
the church, the places where you serve, do you have a soft
heart? Do you have a compassion for
the people whom you are trying to serve? Now some of you here
are carrying incredible weight on your shoulders. You've got
crushing pressures in your own personal situation. Is it possible? Can you show goodness to rude
people? Can you show goodness to ungrateful
people who receive your ministry, who receive your food, who receive
your help, and they've got nothing but more demands and more complaints,
no thanks? To someone, if the Lord has put you in ministry,
maybe in this community, and he's put you in company with
someone who is entirely self-regarding, in company with someone who is
self-regarding and sulky, can you still speak to them with
sincere kindness? Years ago, I knew a pastor who
was undergoing intense pressures. And at that time, there was a
group of people who had joined together and they were attacking
him. They were accusing him, attacking his character. And
in those days of his suffering, I was present and I was there. in an unrelated matter, I was
there when someone had a complaint about something that he said
in a sermon. It wasn't related to this group of people that
were piling on him. I was there when someone brought
a complaint to him about something that he said in a sermon. And
if you know anything about pastors, we live and die on the sword
of our own sermons. We will cut ourselves up for
stupid things we said if someone compliment something, it can
just make our day, or if they point out something that we did
wrong, we just fall through the ground in shame. I don't remember
the details, but in this particular case, the listener contacted
him and said, you made a mistake in that sermon. You said something
that seemed theologically incorrect. How did he respond? I was surprised
at how he responded. Under all of the other stress,
all the other pressures with the pylon from this other group
of people, that pastor responded to the sermon complainer, you're
right, I misspoke, I'm sorry, please pray for me. I will try
to be better in the future. It was a soft word that turns
aside anger, sweetness out of suffering. We've looked at a
mother's sweetness. Next, let's look at a mother's
motives, verses three through six. In his letter to the Thessalonians,
Paul rehearses his example, and it's his example for their Paul
went out and he went out and served under affliction. The
Thessalonians go out, they go out, and they serve in their
own affliction. Now, Paul is going to go a little
bit under the surface and reveal what his motives were, what his
approach was, both negatively and positively. So negatively,
verses three through six, Paul enumerates several bad ministry
motives, several incorrect approaches. the wrong reasons to be serving,
the wrong ways to be engaging with people. Now, this is a big
concern that we all have. Even if you're just looking at
our political leaders, sometimes we look at our political leaders
and we suspect that they're not doing what they do. They're not
serving for the common good. Instead, we suspect that they're
using their position to increase their own estate. We suspect
that they're trying to fulfill maybe some kind of narcissistic
hunger. It can be the same with church
leaders though. We can look at church leaders. How many of us,
how many people suspect that church leaders, the reason they're
doing what they do is that they're pursuing an agenda of sorts,
a personal agenda for greed, for sex, or for power. Paul says,
in life you are surrounded by many voices and you wonder if
you can trust the people who are speaking and the people who
are in leadership. So here's one bad ministry motive,
serving for personal gain, verse five. Paul says, we came, we
planted a church, and then here's his motive. not as a cover for
covetousness, God is witness, nor did we seek glory from men. So one bad ministry motive, serving
for personal gain. Paul says we weren't doing that.
We didn't come because secretly we were coveting what you had.
We didn't come because we were trying to get glory from people.
He said we work and we spread the message of Jesus, not for
covetous, not out of covetous, not because we want your stuff. Not so that we can get into your
will as beneficiaries. Not so that you will pay me money
for trips and for a comfortable house. Not so that we could use
your platform to promote our identities and our agenda. Not
using others to advance ourselves. In other words, he's saying,
don't come to church to get more clients. And not for glory from
men. Not serving in church opportunities
Not serving in church so that I get respect, so that I gain
more credibility in this little community. Not to build for myself
a group of admirers. It's not, he says, it's not for
personal gain. Now isn't that true for, isn't
that true about mothers, what you see in mothers? Mothers do
not serve. for personal gain. A mother does
not care for her child for her own personal gain. A mother does
not care for her child in order to get money from the child,
to get praise or thanks from the child. Isn't it the case
that mothers serve their children expecting nothing? Isn't the
case that mothers serve their children expecting no gain for
themselves, no salary, no respect. A mother serves for the well-being
of the child, not for her own well-being. Paul says the same
must be true for you. The same must be true for you
and how you volunteer in the ministries of the church, for
how you participate in relationships with one another in the church,
not for personal gain, not to build a circle of fans and supporters,
not to have something that you can push out on social media
to publicize your own good deeds, not to promote yourself, and
not primarily to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You come into
ministry not as a taker, but as a giver. Not as a taker, but
as a giver. When you participate in the relationships
in this community, are you taking or are you giving? When you serve
in the volunteer opportunities, whether it's with food preparation
or whether it's with cleaning up after the food, whether it's
with evangelism or missions, are you giving or are you taking? Is it about benefiting yourself
or is it about building others up and promoting the name of
Jesus? If you come as a taker, if you
come as a taker and not as a giver, you will always have complaints
about the people in the congregation. You will always have complaints
about the ministries of the congregation. These people here, They just
don't understand me. They don't get me. These people
do not take enough interest in my opinions, my thoughts, and
my agenda. This church does not do music
or worship or prayer the way that I prefer. These people are
too happy. These people are too depressive.
These people are too clumsy. These people are too polished.
These people are too immature. These people are way too serious.
The church will The truth is the church will always be full
of people who are spiritually young, spiritually young, personally
broken, weak, in process of the sanctification that Christ has
started. But when you are a taker and not a giver, you become impatient
with that perpetual presence of spiritually young people.
When you're a taker, not a giver, you become intolerant. of those
who are spiritually young. Now, another bad ministry approach,
serving from error, serving from deceit or flattery. Verse three,
Paul says, our exhortation, he says, our public teaching, our
exhortation did not come from error or uncleanness, nor was
it in deceit. Verse five, it was not with flattering
words. And here we return to the nursing
mother analogy. Paul has been using this. Verse
seven, he says, instead we came as a nursing mother. Now what
does a nursing mother feed her child? The nursing mother feeds
her child the pure, wholesome, unpolluted mother's milk. There
is nothing safer to drink than that. Paul says, I brought you
truth. not error. And we can do that. We can do that when we tell one
another the truth in love. Lies, deceit, they are out of
the question, right? And especially especially if
and when we bring the words that are absolutely without error,
the scriptures, when we are able to make the effort to bring Bible
to find and to share with each other, there is nothing that's
more true, nothing more wholesome to give each other. I mean, it
needs to be rightly applied, it needs to be timely, in season,
but there's nothing more true that we can give to one another.
Now, in addition, Paul says, what I spoke to you, it was sincere,
it was not flattery. It was sincere, it was genuine.
And so the question for us is, are you sincere in your communication? When you speak to one another,
when you transact words and messages, are you trying to manipulate
people? Are you trying to craft and control how they will draw
an image of you in their minds? Do you give praise to people,
and do you give genuine praise? Genuine and sincere encouragement
to build each other up. Like, can you honestly say to
another person, I like being with you. Your attempts to serve here have
added something to this community. Or can you sincerely say to someone,
when they open up a little bit, about some of the things that
they face. Your struggles are hard, your
struggles are complex, and they are beyond me. So Paul here,
he goes over some of these bad motives, some of these approaches
that are unmotherly. If you're a person who takes
any kind of lead, if you're a person who takes any kind of lead at
home, or in some kind of task, maybe in the congregation, this
is a call to check your motives, to check your approach. Is it
for God or is it for personal gain? Now, what are some of the
good motives? What are some of the good approaches
that should fuel our participation and our ministry? Well, first
of all, it needs to be for God. It needs to be for God. Verses
one through five, there's this very strong God focus in the
text. Six times, Paul mentions God
as the focus. So for instance, verse two, he
says, we do ministry, we were bold in our God. We do ministry, we were bold
in our God. He's saying we play, just a part
in God's goals. We have a place in God's goals. That's why we're serving. Verse
two, he says, we speak the gospel of God. It's his message. It's his grace. It's his mercy. on people that we're promoting
and talking about. Then verse four, he says, we
are approved by God. The work has been entrusted to
us by God. I do what I do because God has
required it of me. God has told me. I serve where
I serve because God tells me. God tells me to spread the gospel,
to serve here. It's the will of God. that I
enter into depth relationships with the people in this community. Then verse four, he says, God
tests our hearts. Verse five, he says, God is witness. We're not serving to please people,
but to please God who tests even our innermost motives. Whatever
people say, about the things that you have tried to do in
love and in serving people, whatever people say about your efforts,
whether they praise you or whether they complain about every little
thing you say or do, you do what you do for God's opinion. And even if you get no gratitude
from people, no mentions from people, if God is pleased, that's
enough. You may spend your days investing
in maybe just what seems like the smallest, most insignificant
place in the life of the community. You may spend your days investing
in just a few people in the church or in the community. It's like
maybe two people, maybe three people. And you'd say, well,
how does that matter? That's hardly a movement. But
you open your life. You open your life to someone.
You share your struggles, your own struggles that you have with
God. You share that with other people. You share your victories
over the flesh with other people. And you willingly take on your
own shoulders their burdens. You give your time. You pray
for them. And then you wonder, did any
of that matter? God sees and God is so pleased. Think of Jeremiah 45 verse five. Do you seek great things for
yourself? Do you seek great things for
yourself? Do not seek them. And isn't that
so much of being a mother? The day in, day out little things. Finding the next size of shoes. Finding space for late night
listening to your kid when you can barely keep your eyes open.
Maybe deferring a personal purchase for yourself in order to improve
your kid's childhood. Did any of that matter? Of course it did. We've looked
at a mother's sweetness, a mother's motives. Finally, a mother's
donation. And this is in verses seven and
eight. Verse seven says, but we were gentle among you, just
as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. Verse eight
says, we affectionately longed for you. We loved you so much,
you became very dear to us. So implicit here, there's this
call to get outside of ourselves. There's a call to look outward,
to love outward, to look outside of ourselves and our self-preoccupation,
to look outside of our self-interest, outside of our self-love. Paul,
like a mother who is holding the baby that she loves, she
has a tenderness. She has a tenderness for these
people. And so the question I have for
you, church, is this. Who is dear to you? Who is dear to you? Who here
in this little community, this congregation, who is dear to
you? When you look at the people here,
are you becoming fond of them? Is your heart growing more tender
towards them? Are you moved by the things that
move them? their fears, whether it's about
their bills or about their immigration status, their fears, you fear
for them. Or their sorrows, their sorrows
over a wandering child, their sorrows, your heart is heavy
for them. And their joys and their successes,
they're your joys, you rejoice with them. Paul says, you became
so precious to us. We shared the gospel of God with
you. And not only that, he says, we
shared our lives as well. He says, we gave you the gospel
and we gave you ourselves. Isn't that what mothers do? They
hold that baby, and as they hold that baby and they feed that
infant, the mother looks into the infant's eyes, and implicitly,
the mother says, I'm giving you this milk, and I am giving my
whole life for you, little one. It's the self-donating love of
a mother. Paul says, I love you people
so much, we gave you the gospel, and we donate ourselves to you. Brothers and sisters, this is
how the world will know that we are Jesus' disciples, that
we love one another. So two closing questions. First
question, well how do we get, how do we get this self-donating
love for one another? In the gospel, Jesus donated
himself for us. It was his life for ours. Our
sins donated to him, his life for us. His righteousness donated
to us. It was all our bad, we gave it
to him. And all his good, he gave it
to us. And so you could say that the
cross in some ways is a double cross donation. We did nothing
to earn it. We were like infants who contributed
nothing yet to the household, and yet the mother gives her
whole life for that little child. When you embrace the gospel,
or maybe it'd be better to say when the gospel embraces you,
you realize at depth, he must really love me like a mother
donating himself for me. And only then, only then can
you truly love. We love because he first loved
us. And if you don't know his love,
your own efforts to love a difficult person, if you don't know his
love, your own attempts to love a difficult person, they will
be cut short. They will ultimately be shallow. The second question. Well, what
do we do when we run out of love for the other person? What do
we do when our love tank is drained to the bottom and we've run out
of love for the other person? These are hard words, but I think
they're true. The way that you love God is the way that you will love
people. The way that you love God is
the way that you will love people. As your love for God, so your
love for people. For instance, if you are suspicious
of God, ultimately, you will be suspicious of people and how
you view them and interpret them. If you ignore God, you will ignore
people. And if you give little thanks
to God, you will give little thanks to people if you have
little love for God. You will have little love for
people. And this is what the scriptures teach us. How can
you love your brother whom you can see if you do not love God
whom you can't see? But love will drain you. And sometimes you're gonna encounter,
you will encounter people, someone who wants more love from you
than you could possibly give. They want more love. They might
demand more love from you, but you're just tapped out after
a time. You're just empty. Sometimes
you encounter people whose need and their hunger for love is
so great and you may pour into them and still they need more.
still they want even more. It's not enough. Sometimes you
can encounter people who have a suffocating neediness. And you realize after enough
time with them, you realize you will never, you will never be
able to satisfy that need and that hunger in another person.
But Jesus can. Jesus is the one. who says, feed
on me. No mere person can ever satisfy
another person's suffocating neediness, only Jesus. And Jesus
is the one who says, take, eat, drink. Only Jesus can feed 5,000
people and still have surplus. When you understand that it's
Jesus, not I, who supplies a person's need and hunger, then then you
can love, then you can help without taking on yourself the impossible
demand of filling a cavernous neediness. And you can pour a
cup, like the cup of water, in Jesus' name, but know that Jesus
is the stream, Jesus is the well of living water. Jesus is that
rock. in the wilderness which Moses
struck. It was symbolic of Christ's death.
Jesus is the rock in the wilderness that Moses struck and from that
rock, water gushed forth enough to quench the thirst of two million
men and women. I want to close by reading a
quote. It's a slightly longer quote.
It comes from the Trinity Journal somewhere in the 1990s. It's
written by Dr. Jeffrey Boyd. He's a psychiatrist.
He was the chairman of the psychiatry department of Waterbury Hospital
affiliated with Yale Medical School. This was written in the
1990s. It's the story of Leslie Dickerson. Leslie Dickerson.
Leslie Dickerson had a devastating childhood. She felt unloved and
unlovable as far back as she could remember. Emptiness, inner
deadness, lack of self-worth, and painful rejection. These
were the feelings she experienced in her soul at the deepest level.
She suffered rejection by her parents as well, and their rejection
was the picture of them that she carried within her soul.
As she grew up, she began to attempt suicide and to abuse
alcohol and drugs, She was torn by rage, depression, and anxiety. Eventually, Leslie fell into
the mental health treatment system, and she failed to improve with
every known treatment. Long-term intensive psychotherapy,
family therapy, every known medication, an electric shock treatment.
She suffered from the most untreatable of psychiatric conditions, borderline
personality disorder. For a decade, she was in and
out of psychiatric hospitals. One time, she spent three years
continuously in a state mental hospital, misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. Her therapists all gave up on
her as untreatable. One day she gave birth to a daughter
and suddenly knew that she had a choice of either changing her
life or losing the baby. If she didn't reorder her life,
the state social workers would intervene. The dilemma motivated
her to search more desperately than ever for a solution to her
problems. Finally, she turned to Jesus
Christ for the first time in her life and prayed for forgiveness. And for the first time ever,
she felt accepted, she felt lovable, and peace such as she never had
experienced, and it flooded her heart. From that day forward,
Leslie never again attempted suicide. And as she took root
in this new soil, a profound psychological reorganization
occurred. It was based on the experience
of feeling forgiven and accepted at her core. As bad as she thought
she was, it had all been overcome at Calvary. Her badness, she
said, had been washed away by the blood of the Lamb. Leslie
has now been happy and free of psychiatrists for 10 years. She
works as a transcriptionist and is devoted to her two children
and to her church. Leslie speaks of inviting Jesus
into her heart. for more than an hour every morning. Before her children wake up,
she sits alone in a room and talks with Jesus, whom she calls
her best friend. The conversation, she says, goes
both ways. She prays something, and a specific
Bible verse then occurs to her. Reading this verse, she interprets
it to be Jesus' reply to her prayer. I asked Leslie how she
can tell that a certain idea is what Jesus wants her to do
rather than her own thought. She said there are three criteria.
The idea is consistent with what the Bible says. The idea fits
her life circumstances. Peace and tranquility come into
her life after the decision is made. Leslie speaks of taking
Jesus into her heart so that he dwells inside her. Jesus brought
Leslie such a feeling of being accepted that she finally relaxed. Jesus, she claims, also healed
her self-esteem. I used to be a mouse, she says.
Now I roar like a lion. In all my years as a psychiatrist,
I have met only one person who ever truly recovered from borderline
personality disorder. Her name is Leslie Dickerson.
Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you have come to
us. You have loved us as a mother. You have donated yourself as
our savior. We pray, Lord, that we would
know the love of God in Christ and that we would be givers of
the love of God in Christ. Would you satisfy us? Would you
secure us? We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Becoming Mothers
Series 1 Thessalonians
| Sermon ID | 1262518854826 |
| Duration | 40:31 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 |
| Language | English |
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