Serving Well

Listen Online:

Transcript:

If you’ll remember back to the last Sunday night we were together, I started sharing with you some thoughts out of the book of 1 Thessalonians and told you that we were going to look at 1 and 2 Thessalonians both, keeping in mind this concept of finishing well. And as I’ve said repeatedly throughout this, the idea of finishing well is not something that we need to keep in mind just when we see the light at the end of the tunnel. When the doctor tells us we have six months left to live, or we realize there’s three months coming up before retirement, or we realize one specific door is about to close.

It’s not when we come to what we would see as the end or the end of a chapter that we need to start worrying about finishing well. But for the Christian, finishing well means the realization that we don’t know how much time God allots to each of us in life. We don’t know how much time God allots to us in each particular assignment he gives us, each particular ministry, each particular relationship.

We are never guaranteed tomorrow. And so the idea for us of finishing well is saying however much time I have in life, no matter how much time I have in this particular assignment, in this particular ministry, in this particular relationship, whatever it may be, I don’t know how much time I have. So I’m going to get up every day and use what time I do have available, whether it’s 15 minutes or whether it’s 50 years, I’m going to take that time and use what I have available in a way that really counts and really matters.

And what Paul specifically was talking about to the church at Thessalonica was them being able to use the time that they had remaining for the glory of Jesus Christ and the advancement of his kingdom. Because the church at Thessalonica was very concerned about the second coming, rightly so. I think if we thought more about the fact that Jesus is going to return someday and we don’t know when, if we lived like he was going to return tomorrow and could return tomorrow, we would live differently.

On one hand, they were appropriately concerned about his coming and about finishing well. A few within the church became troubled by this and went to some extremes because of their belief that he could return at any minute. And they didn’t finish well, or weren’t finishing well, I should say, because they had said, well, he’s coming back any moment, so let’s just not do anything.

Let’s sit around and wait for him, which is not what we’re supposed to do. And so as we see the Apostle Paul writing these letters to the church at Thessalonica, he talks a lot about the second coming, and he talks a lot about how we live in light of the fact that we don’t know when Jesus is coming back, either for all of us or for any of us. He could come back for all of us today, or it could be 200 years from now.

We don’t know. He could come back for any one of us tonight. Or we could all have years and years ahead of us.

We don’t know. And given that, what do we do with the time that we have remaining? I want to emphasize that understanding of finishing well because I don’t want anybody to think, well, I’m in great health.

I don’t see anything coming to an end anytime soon. I don’t need to worry about that yet. The sooner we start worrying about finishing well, the more beneficial we’ll be to the kingdom.

So we’re going to look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 tonight, the first 12 verses of it, and see the next thought that Paul had in sharing with this church. Starting in verse 1, he says, 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. He reminds them of the story that they had already heard. Some of these things they had actually even witnessed.

I shared with you last week, and we’ll look at it when we get to that part of the book. Paul went and ministered in Thessalonica, led people to Christ, started a church there, and he intended to stay there as long as he could and to invest in these people and to disciple them to help them to grow to maturity in Christ. But what happened was because of outside pressure, because of outside persecution of both him and the church, he was run out of Thessalonica, which the world probably thought, hey, we beat Paul, we ran him out of town, not realizing that that was God’s plan all along for Paul to move on and minister elsewhere. But his goal was to stay in Thessalonica, and yet the whole time he was there, there was conflict, there was suffering, not between him and the people, but between the community and the message of the gospel.

And so Paul, when he went to Thessalonica, you’d think, hey, he’s in the middle of God’s will, he’s doing what God wants him to, so it should just be a smooth, straight road. It should be easy for him. But what Paul realized or what Paul experienced was being in the center of God’s will did not exempt him from trouble, did not exempt him from conflict.

As a matter of fact, he said in verse 2, we suffered and we were spitefully treated even before they came to Thessalonica. And then things were no different when they got there. They faced the same challenges.

They faced the same opposition when they got to Thessalonica. But he says, nevertheless, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. Not meaning he brought conflict in preaching the gospel.

Not meaning that the gospel was about conflict. But meaning in the midst of the conflict, he continued to preach the gospel. He says, our exhortation did not come from error or uncleanness, nor was it in deceit.

He said, we didn’t go through the things that we went through because of what we were going to get out of it. and that’s one of the things that I’ve never understood about people, about some people who reject Christianity, some skeptics who say, well this was all just a fairy tale, the apostles made it up you know, they had a motive to invent the story of the resurrection, they had a motive to change the gospel, they had a motive to do this and that we look at the lives they lived and really there was no motive they thought we’re going to invent the story of the resurrection we’re going to preach the gospel and make all this up so that we can go and be horribly treated throughout our lives and eventually die destitute, die in hideous ways as martyrs, many of them, in the vain hope that maybe 2,000 years from now somebody will remember our name. Come on, nobody lives like that.

Nobody’s that farsighted in their dealings with things. The only motive that the apostles had to preach the resurrected Christ is because they knew it was true. And so Paul says we didn’t go preach the gospel.

We didn’t go preach about Jesus because of what was in it for us. There really wasn’t anything in it for us as far as material things or temporal things. He said we did this because this was the word of God.

We were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. We didn’t do it because it was wrong. We didn’t do it for impure motives.

we didn’t do it deceitfully. Verse 4, 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. He says here in verse 4 that as God entrusted them with the gospel, as God enabled them to go and preach the gospel and said, here’s my message, you go take this to the people.

He said, we came and preached to you and we preached to others what God told us to, recognizing that our whole job, our whole task was to please God, not to worry about who else we were pleasing. And sometimes people in ministry come under pressure from people in the pews to modify the message according to what people want to hear. I’m thankful I haven’t really experienced that here.

But, you know, there have been times. There was a man years ago who said, can you quit preaching the gospel on Sunday mornings? I thought, what?

That’s a bizarre request. But I tried to keep my poker face such as it is and just ask him, what do you mean by that? When inside I’m going, that’s insane. I just started asking him, what do you mean by that?

Well, can you quit focusing so much on what Jesus did for us? We know that. Tell us something else.

Okay, I would think you. . .

Sorry, the same guy, I thought, if I didn’t preach that way, if I didn’t preach like there might be lost people in the congregation, and usually there were, he’d probably get up at a business meeting and complain that I wasn’t being evangelistic enough. But from time to time, there’s pressure. Preach something else.

Same guy asked me one time, when are you going to stop preaching about prayer? I almost asked him, to give me a list of approved topics that he would permit me to preach on. But he asked me, when are you going to stop preaching about prayer?

Because at that point, I preached a 20-week series on prayer. And he said, when are you going to stop preaching about prayer and move on to something else? I said, when we start doing it right.

When we start doing the things the Bible says. When we start praying like we’re supposed to. Folks, there’s always pressure.

or there’s often pressure, I should say, on those who serve God. Whether it’s those who serve God in the pulpit, those who serve God sharing his word with their friends and neighbors, there’s often pressure to modify the message, to make it more palatable to people, to make it something that goes down a little more easier, to sugarcoat it. But Paul said we weren’t really worried about who else we pleased or displeased as long as we pleased God.

He said it’s God that’s approved us and God who’s entrusted us. with his gospel, so we speak the way God would want us to, not to please men, but to please God. Folks, this whole passage we’re looking at tonight is about the idea of serving.

That one of the ways we finish well is in serving well. And I’m going to go ahead and jump ahead of my notes a little bit and give you a point that if we’re serving God, we’ve got to keep in mind that we serve God at his pleasure, not the pleasure of other people. There will be all sorts of people who want to tell you how to do or not do or what to do or what not to do.

But it really doesn’t matter what anybody else’s opinion is as long as you’re being faithful to what God told you to do. And so he said, you know, we preached what God told us to. Verse 5, for neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, for a cloak, for covetousness, God is witness.

he said we didn’t come in and use flattering words to try to butter people up to try to get stuff out of them he said as a cloak of covetousness sometimes it can be tempting to tell people what they want to hear because then they want to listen to you, then they want to follow you they want to buy your tapes and your books, they want to give to your church because they like what you’ve got to say there’s a lot of money in ear tickling and he said we didn’t do that we didn’t come telling you just what you wanted to hear and use our supposedly our supposed message from God as a cover for our own greed again they were speaking the things that they spoke because it pleased God and not because of who it pleased or displeased among men nor did we seek glory from men verse 6 either from you or from others when we might have made demands as apostles of Christ as apostles they had authority and they had influence and they had standing and they could have come in and dealt with people in a much different way they could have demanded their rights as apostles they could have thrown their weight around they could have made the people listen but he said we didn’t do that we didn’t seek to be glorified we didn’t seek to be put on a pedestal above you we didn’t seek to throw our weight around he says in verse 7 but we were gentle among you just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.

We were gentle. We gave of ourselves to you. Carly Jo eats milk that Charla produces for her.

And this still just is bizarre to me. I get how it works and all that. But it’s still bizarre to me that a person in their body can produce food for another person.

Some of you all are looking at me funny. I’m not against breastfeeding. Not against that at all.

It just blows my mind that God designed people in such a way that they can nourish another human being. That we don’t have to go and milk a cow to feed a baby. We don’t have to go kill a cow to feed a baby.

God has designed the mother to do that. And honestly, it is a very selfless thing that Charla does because she has to stop and take long periods of time out of her day, not only to feed Carly Jo, but to pump also. And that’s on top of everything she does for everybody else.

But she takes that time not because Carly Jo does anything for her. Carly Jo doesn’t make anything for us except for dirty diapers. All right?

Charla’s not getting anything out of the deal at this point. But she’s investing that time and that effort and that lack of sleep. She’s putting herself into taking care of this infant.

Okay? It’s not by accident that Paul uses this picture of a nursing mother when he’s talking about his relationship and the relationship of those with him to the church at Thessalonica. He says we could have come in and thrown our weight around.

We could have demanded whatever we wanted because, hey, we’re the apostles of God. You’ve got to listen to us, put us on a pedestal, and do what we said. Instead, he said we took our time.

We invested our lives. We put our lives on hold to feed you and to nourish you. He says to the church, we took care of you in a spiritual sense, the way a mother takes care of an infant.

Now, why would a mother do that? It’s not because it’s the law. It’s the law we have to feed the baby.

But we could go get formula. As a matter of fact, we may have to switch to formula with everything going on. And the biggest challenge in that has been convincing Charla.

It doesn’t mean she’s a bad mother. It just means there are four children. And the stress of doing all this pumping and feeding and taking an hour every time you feed the baby is just wearing you out.

And so it doesn’t mean she loves her any less if we switch to formula. But the reason why she has been so committed to feeding her is because no other reason than she loves that little person. She loves her.

I love her too, but I can’t do this. I can’t show that in the way that Charlotte does. I just make funny faces at her.

She seems to like that. but why would you invest your life in somebody like that why would you take your time and and and pour so much of yourself into another person to nurture them to grow them spiritually to to help them come to a point of spiritual maturity for no other reason than because you love them as a matter of fact in verse 8 he says so affectionately longing for you we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but our own lives because you had become dear to us affectionately longing he said not only did we this idea of affectionately longing their feelings for the church at Thessalonica pulled at their hearts sort of like the few times I’ve ever been gone away from the children for more than a day or so. I guess it usually only happens when I go to the convention or when I went down to Louisiana for graduation.

I knew I was going to be gone a few days and saying goodbye to them I felt like somebody was pulling at my heart because I’m not normally away from my kids for very long. So he’s giving this idea, this affectionate longing that their thoughts and feelings toward the church at Thessalonica pulled at their hearts and he says because of this because of this bond to you in our hearts 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 he said we were willing to come and not just bring you the gospel but we were willing to come and pour our very lives into you see there’s one of our weaknesses in evangelism first of all is that we don’t do evangelism the way we’re supposed to. We don’t do it as often as we should.

We’re often negligent about telling people about Jesus. But beyond that, when we do evangelism, one of the biggest problems that our churches have in evangelism is the follow-up. That we sort of do drive-by evangelism a lot of times.

That we’re willing to slow down long enough to share the gospel with somebody, and maybe, Lord willing, see them get saved. But then going any further and imparting our lives, sharing our lives with them, getting involved in their lives which are messy in order to help them grow as disciples, now that’s a different story altogether. And what we do all too often in terms of evangelism is a lot like birthing a baby and then saying, see you, you’re on your own.

I mean, it’s amazing to me that God doesn’t have a spiritual DHS in heaven that gets called on us for these newborn babes in Christ that often get left to the side. We need to do a better job about discipleship. And that’s what he’s talking about here, that he didn’t just share the gospel with them.

And I don’t want to minimize the importance of that, But beyond that, he said he took the time to get involved with them, to share his life with them, to walk with them, to disciple them, so that they wouldn’t just remain babes in Christ, but they would grow up to maturity in Jesus Christ. And he said, I was willing to do that. It’s a big commitment to disciple somebody because people’s lives are messy. I know we don’t like to admit it when we come in here on Sunday, but our lives are a little messy sometimes too.

People out in the world, their lives are messy. Newborn Christians just coming in out of the world, their lives are messy. Paul said, I don’t care.

Because you’re dear to me. See, he loved them enough not to just drive by, preach the gospel, but also to share his own life with them. He said, for you remember, brethren, our labor and toil for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

We preached to you the gospel of God. Now, in other places in the New Testament, Paul talks about how the apostles, how the evangelist, how the preacher had the right to expect some compensation, to be supported so he could live and fulfill the ministry that God had called him to, that he was taking his time and his energy to go and minister to these people, that it was not wrong for him to accept some support in return. He said to the church at Thessalonica, he said, we wanted to make sure we were not a burden to you.

This particular church, I say church, when he went there, when he got started with them, there were people that they led to Christ who became the church. But there was something in their community, there was something with this particular group of people, Maybe they couldn’t afford it. He said, we didn’t want to be a burden to you.

And it reminds me of the evangelists who say, you know, we’ll come no matter how little money you can provide. And we’ll preach revival. We’ll do this and God will provide. That’s what Paul was saying.

We didn’t want to be a burden to you. We wanted to be able to minister to you whether you were able to support us or not. He said, so you saw how we worked day and night.

And Paul did work as a tent maker. making tents, selling tents, to earn the money to live, and that enabled him to minister to the people at Thessalonica and some other places for free when he needed to. He said, we didn’t get rich off of ministry.

And folks, anybody who’s getting rich off ministry is doing it wrong. Brother Forrest, amen? Anybody who’s getting rich at ministry is doing it wrong.

at least as far as I as far as I can see I can’t say that as a blanket statement but most of the most of the guys I know are not getting rich God takes care of us but we’re not getting rich he said we didn’t get we didn’t come and do ministry to you because we got rich off of it we didn’t come because we had some financial motive he said as a matter of fact we put our resources into ministering to you we didn’t take a dime from you we went out and we worked as tent makers in the daytime and we came and ministered to you at night just so that we could preach to you the gospel of God, that we might not be a burden to any of you. We preach to you the gospel of God. Verse 10, you are witnesses and God also how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe.

He said, when we were in your midst, you saw the way we lived our lives. You saw the way we conducted ourselves. You saw the way that we honored God through our lives.

Now anybody can come in and one day a week look godly. As a matter of fact, anybody can come in one time and look godly. But you start spending life together and quickly you see who a person really is.

You know, I’ve known Charla since the day she was born. I tell people that and they look at me funny. She’s not that much older than me.

I’m not that, that didn’t work. I’m not that much older than her, but our moms have been friends for a long time, and so I got to go see her the day after she was born in the hospital. I was probably about three years old, I think. I’ve known Charla for a long time, but I didn’t really know Charla until we got married and lived in the same house.

All right, you learn a lot about somebody when you spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with them. Okay? I think by now you all know me pretty well, but I don’t think you know me as well as you would if you came and lived at my house.

You might not like me as well if you lived at my house. Now, Paul was spending his time with these people, day in and day out, for how long a period, we’re not sure, but enough time for them to get to know him, enough time for them to see if he was not the real deal. But he said, you saw how we lived. You saw who we were.

You saw how careful we were to glorify God in the things that we do. You know the kind of men that we are. You’re witnesses, and so is God.

How devoutly and how justly and how blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believed. As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children. He said, we came in and we ministered to you, and we were gentle with you, and we were gracious with you.

He said, and the lives we lived backed up the things that we preached. We were very careful to make sure that consistently the life we lived backed up the things that we preached. That you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and his glory.

Now this is not, in these 12 verses, this is not Paul bragging and saying, look at how good we are. This is Paul reminding the church at Thessalonica of the things that they had seen during his time there, the things that they knew of him from before his time there, the things that they had heard of him since his time there, as a reminder to them of the things that they were supposed to do. And now Paul is known for telling the churches, follow me even as I follow Christ. All right?

I would not tell you, hey, do all the same things I do. You know why? Because I’m not perfect.

But when I’ve done something to glorify Christ, when there is something I’m doing well, there’s nothing wrong with saying, hey, this is what you need to be doing as well. And that’s what Paul was doing. Paul’s not claiming to be perfect.

Paul is saying, in this, look to our example. Look to our example. And the example he’s giving here is one of service.

that he was serving God, he was faithfully and consistently serving God, and part of the way he was faithfully and consistently serving God was by faithfully and consistently serving other people. This is so important for us as Christians to understand, especially for us as American Christians, because I know I’m so bad about this, I think everything should be the way I like it and the way I want it. I remember when I was a kid what a big deal it was that you could go to Burger King and you could have your burger exactly the way you like it.

And now everything’s that way. You can customize everything and get it exactly. And we feel like everything’s supposed to cater to us, that we’re supposed to be served.

And it’s particularly dangerous when that view comes into the church, that our ministry is about me, about what I can get, what I get out of it, what I feel, how I can be served, how my preferences can be met. Jesus said he didn’t come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. And he was the example for us because he said that the servant is not greater than the master, and if the master came to serve, then his servants ought also to serve.

One of my children, I won’t say which one, but one of my children is very competitive and takes after their father. I have always been very competitive. Y’all might say, I don’t see that in you because the Holy Spirit got a hold of me and I had to get it under control.

And so, you know, I feel like I do better at that than I used to. But it’s very competitive. This child does not want to participate in an activity if they cannot win.

And everything becomes a contest. From who gets done with breakfast first, to who gets buckled in in the truck first, to when we’re all here on Sunday mornings in two different cars, to whose car gets back to the house first, who gets done with their lessons first. I mean, every stinking thing is a competition. I get so sick of hearing it. they want to be the best. They want to be the smartest. You’ll probably guess which child I’m talking about, but I’m not going to name names this time.

And I think the reason this annoys me so much is because I see my own flaws in it. And I have told, I’d say all of my children, but only two understand what I’m talking about, and that’s only some of the time. I’ve told my older two children, you know, there’s nothing wrong with being the smartest person in the room.

There’s nothing wrong with being the prettiest or the best or the fastest or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do a good job. But I tell them this all the time.

If you want to be competitive, it’s not about being better than the person next to you. It’s about competing to be a better person than you were yesterday. And instead of focusing on being the fastest, instead of focusing on being the smartest, There are better things to focus on because no matter how smart you are, you can always go into a place where there’s going to be somebody smarter than you.

No matter how rich you are, there’s always going to be somebody richer than you. And you’ve lost. I said, what you need to compete about is not to be the smartest person in the room or the fastest in the room or the best in the room. Compete to be the kindest person in the room.

Compete to be the greatest servant in the room. And what I tell my kids is, you may find somebody who’s kinder than you are. And you might find somebody who serves more faithfully than you do.

But if we’re all competing to see how well we can serve one another and serve God, even if we’ve lost, we’ve won. Because we’re all better off. And we need to remember, I need to remember, that Jesus didn’t put me here to be served.

Jesus put me here to serve. If I want to finish well from where I am now to however long he leaves me on this earth, part of that finishing well is to take that time and serve well. That’s why Paul, throughout this portion of this chapter, lays out all the ways that he has served faithfully, even when it’s cost him some things.

Paul and his associates finished well because they used the time that they had left, however long it was, to serve God and to serve others for the glory of Christ and the advancement of his kingdom. Some of the things that we see in this passage about how he served. They served and they weren’t dissuaded from serving because of their suffering, we see in verses 1 and 2.

They suffered. They went through a lot, not just here, but read throughout Paul’s letters in the book of Acts. we see that Paul suffered a ton of things, and yet he continued to serve.

Following in the footsteps, following in the example of Jesus, who suffered even greater things and served in even greater ways. But they weren’t dissuaded by suffering. If we want to finish well, we need to get to the point where we are committed, we are going to serve God, and we’re going to serve people around us for the glory of God, even though it’s inconvenient sometimes, even though it’s unpleasant sometimes, even though, you know what, we might just suffer a little bit for doing the right thing.

We need to decide up front that we’re going to continue to serve and follow in their example, even if it involves suffering. We see in verses 3 and 4 that they serve for the glory of God. They kept the right perspective about this.

See, when we suffer, When we are wronged, when things go wrong for us, when it’s not fun anymore, when it becomes unpleasant, it’s easy to give up the service if we feel like, if we convince ourselves that we’re serving to get something out of it. Or we’re serving as long as other people appreciate it. Or we’re serving as long as we feel like it.

But if we’ve started out saying it doesn’t matter who’s pleased here, that we’re speaking the gospel as it says in verse 4, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. If we keep in perspective that we are serving because we serve God, we are serving because we seek to glorify God, then it becomes a lot harder to drop out of doing what we’re supposed to when times get difficult. We see in verses 5 and 6 that they served and they weren’t sidetracked seeking man’s approval. It’s easy to lose sight of what God has called us to do because God might have called us to do something that doesn’t get a lot of praise or attention, and yet we come over here and we see these things that people want us to do or get a lot of attention, or people say, oh, how great a servant they are.

They start praising this and that, and we can easily lose sight of what God’s called us to do in the deafening thunder of praise around us if we start to seek man’s approval. They weren’t sidetracked by seeking man’s approval. He said, we didn’t come here to flatter you. We didn’t come to get stuff out of you. We just came here to glorify God.

And I’ve told you before that I listened to something a few months ago that talked about before you prepare a