1 Thessalonians 2:1-6 - Stolen Packages and Speaking Truth

Welcome, it is a little bit of a rainy day kind of overcast when I'm recording this, and I hope that your day is going well so far.

We are walking through the letter to the Thessalonians, First Thessalonians, written by Paul and Silas and Timothy. And they wrote this book to this church because it was a brand new church.

And Paul and Silas and Timothy had gone from the city of Philippi, where Paul and Silas had been beaten, thrown in prison. God opened the prison doors through an earthquake.

They had a conversation with the jailer of that jail, and he received the Lord, his family received the Lord. They were able to go out, and they let the leaders, the officers, the law people of the city of Philippi know that they were Roman citizens.

And what they had done was deeply illegal in the Roman Empire. And so they tried to shuffle them out quickly. But Paul and Silas and Timothy, they spent a little bit of time with the believers there.

They built them up. But the next town that they went to was the town of Thessalonica. As I mentioned last time, it was a city of about 200,000 people during this time, port city on the Aegean Sea.

And they were there for about three weeks or so. Then there was kind of a riot that came up of people that did not like the gospel message. And so they tried to capture Paul and Silas.

And they did not find them. They did find some of the other new believers. And they ended up having to pay a fine.

And Paul and Silas were moved on to the next city of Berea. But Paul loved this little church, these brand new believers.

And so as they went to Berea, as he eventually got to Athens, he got so nervous about the state of this fledgling church that he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to encourage them and the Lord to hopefully give them some next steps that they needed

to take. And then Timothy reported back to Paul and gave a very encouraging report. And so then Paul writes this letter to them, letting them know, here's what God thinks of you. Here's how he views you.

Here's what his goals and his path is for your life. And it's just a wonderful book. So we looked at chapter one over the past couple of episodes.

Today, we're beginning in chapter two. He says, for you yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our visit with you was not without result. Something was accomplished when we were with you guys.

He says, on the contrary, after we had previously suffered and were treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, we were emboldened by our God to speak the Gospel of God to you in spite of great opposition.

He says, once those prison doors swing open at midnight as you're praying and praising the Lord and the person that had put you in the innermost prison and put you in the stocks, once he goes, hey, what do I need to do to be saved?

Once him and all of his household get baptized, man, that'll light a Holy Spirit fire under you. But they wouldn't have had that encouragement.

They wouldn't have had this boldness if they had not first been beaten, if they hadn't first been imprisoned, if they hadn't first been put into the stocks, if it hadn't been midnight and they were still awake, motivating them to sing and to pray to

the Lord. When you're going through bad times, realize that at least from how God talks about it in Scripture, 90% of the time, 95% of the time, God is preparing you for future actions to take.

He's preparing you for the ministry that you will have in the lives of other people.

And if at any point during that Philippian encounter, if Paul and Psius had just shut down and went, oh no, I'm not gonna believe in Jesus anymore, I'm not gonna talk about him, I'm not gonna sing about him, surely not at midnight in the middle of a

jail with other prisoners, man, then they wouldn't have had the amazing ministry and results that they were seeing. So Paul says, that gave us great boldness, so we preach the word to you all in spite of great opposition.

Verse number three, for our exhortation, our encouragement didn't come from error. He says, we weren't mistaken. He says, it didn't come from error or impurity or an intent to deceive.

So he says, we were right, we're correct in what we were saying. Paul obviously as an eyewitness of the risen Christ, as he experienced him on the road to Damascus, he knew that what he was saying was factual.

So he says, we didn't come just spin old wives tales. He says here, we didn't come out of impurity. We weren't looking to take advantage of people.

You're going to look at many of the cult leaders over the past several hundred years that amassed many wives, that amassed great wealth, and what they were doing was for the sake of impurity, something that Paul will address even in chapter four of

this book. So he says, we didn't come from error or from impurity or from an intent to deceive. He says, we were real with you guys. We told you the truth.

Verse four, instead, just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please people, but rather God, who examines our hearts.

Buddy of mine, Robert Elliott, the youth pastor at my old church in Washington, he doesn't love public preaching as much.

One of the world's best disciplers, like loves people, loves serving, doesn't totally love speaking in front of a whole congregation as much as he loves other aspects of the ministry. But he was going through very slowly.

He'd normally preach about once or twice a year in our main services.

And he had preached a few years before from First Thessalonians 1, and then a couple years later, once I had gotten there, he preached a message from First Thessalonians 2, and he called it this, entrusted. We were entrusted with the Gospel.

And what I think is so amazing here is that Paul says that we've been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel. If you're going to be given something valuable, someone has to trust you that you are going to take good care of it.

Now that my wife has received her birthday present, I had ordered a birthday present for her online. There was something that I knew, okay, there's something she likes. I've never gotten her before.

And so I'm going to buy it. And so I did. And it was coming in the mail.

And I was super excited. I was like, I think she's really going to love this. And I entrusted that precious gift to the mailman.

And the mailman left it not like in my mailbox or at my front door here at the apartment. He put it on top of the like communal mailbox slot thing. And it was stolen within 30 minutes of him dropping it off.

And I was like, oh no, I entrusted something valuable to him. And he didn't take care of it. We have been entrusted with something way more valuable than that birthday present.

We have been entrusted with the Gospel of Jesus, with the eternal souls of the ones that God loves. Man, we have been given that precious gift. We need to steward it well.

Don't leave it on top of the communal mailbox, so to speak. Give the Gospel to your friends. Give the Gospel to your loved ones.

Shine out Jesus. Sing about Jesus. Post things that talk about Jesus.

I've been so encouraged through seeing those even in our church family that have been going through just really attacks of world and flesh and devil, and yet in their suffering and in their trials that they're enduring right now, they are faithfully

every day posting about their love for Jesus. They're posting about a Bible verse that they read that morning that was an encouragement to them. It's not like a big long post. It's like the verse in a sentence, hey, thank you, Jesus, for this.

And man, what an encouragement that that has been to my heart, that I'm like, yes, the people of God, their testimony, that they're declaring Jesus to those around them. Let's do that.

God has given us an incredibly valuable gift in the gospel, and God has not just approved Paul and Silas and Timothy to be entrusted with the gospel.

If you have received the gospel, if you've received Jesus, you too have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. Here he says, as we have the gospel, we declare it and we are not doing it to make people happy. I've said it often on here.

As a pastor, I could be silent about a whole ton of things that maybe aren't popular, that people don't want to hear, that people wouldn't agree with me on. But I have a duty to declare what I believe the word of God to say.

And even if it's unpopular, even if it makes people mad at me, you know, even in a, you know, biggest, baddest sense, if it resulted in people leaving the church because they didn't like that I would bring it up, I have a duty to declare the whole

council of God. Because I'm not preaching to please people. I'm not preaching to put as many people in the seats of Tabernacle as I can. I'm not here to build a gigantic podcast audience.

I'm here to tell you guys what God's Word says, because I need it. I need God's Word to tell me where I'm wrong. I need God's Word to tell me where my thinking is off.

And I have a, I must please my Father in heaven who has approved me and who has given me this wonderful gospel. And it says, He examines our hearts. They say, we're doing this and we're doing it in front of God Almighty.

And so that brings a seriousness to every gospel proclamation, every Bible preaching thing that we do. Verse number five, he says, for we never used flattering speech, as you know, or had greedy motives.

God is our witness and we didn't seek glory from people. Either from you or from others. So here he does another set of three things.

First, he says, we never used flattering speech. There are people that can make you feel like you are a million bucks, but not in the way that God's word has you feeling like a million bucks.

God's word says, you are his child, you are chosen, you are entrusted, you are approved, you are forgiven, you are redeemed, you are part of his family. Like, that's a good building up. Flattery says, you are perfect.

Everything that you're doing is right. All of your enemies are God's enemies. All of the ways in which you interact with people, those are wonderful.

And so what you really need is you just need to receive more from God, because you're doing fantastic. Whereas, not using flattering words would say, yeah, the anger that you have towards this person. It's wrong.

And I know you feel like it's justified, but God's word says that it's not. I know you think that you participating in this action, you maybe imbibing this thing without any self-control. You just think it's a good time.

It's not hurting anyone. So who really cares? But God's word says that the fruit of the spirit is self-control.

It's temperance. It's bringing our body under subjection. We tell our bodies what to do in light of the fact that we belong to God.

We don't just do whatever feels good or whatever we feel like doing. So he says, we didn't use flattering speech. We just butter you guys up.

We told you the truth. He says, we did not have greedy motives. He says, God is our witness.

One of my big things that I want to constantly watch in my heart is, do I love money? I want to always make it so that I love what money can do for others. I love that money can provide food for my children.

I love that money can be given to my church, and it can support the lights being turned on. It can go to missionaries around the world. It can go to helping even in our local Baltimore Baptist Association.

It can go to help teens hear the gospel at our BBA student events. I want to love what money can do when it's given for the benefit of others, when it's being used to bless other people.

I don't want to love it for the sake of, okay, now I can get new, you know, new toys. I can get the best and brightest. I can have this or that.

And frankly, as a pastor, that can sometimes be a rough thing that I'm working through in my head, because there can be a natural thing of, you know, right now I'm on a third floor apartment.

And so it can be a little bit harder to host people than perhaps if I had just like a regular house. But the temptation would be, okay, as you think about getting a house, are you thinking about it?

Are you thinking about, you know, the payments or the whatever for, oh yes, now I can enjoy this thing. And now I can say that I'm a homeowner or something like that. Or am I saying, okay, this would benefit my wife and my children.

This would benefit me being able to have hospitality, that I could have people over and have meals and disciple people and share the gospel with my neighbors, like all of those things.

How am I thinking through the use of money in my life and my ministry? So there from Paul's words in verse five, having greedy motives, he says, God is our witness. God is the only one that can really, truly tell you if you're being greedy.

Sometimes there might be overtly clear things that everyone go, Oh yeah, no, that's definitely a greedy person. But greed is something that comes from the inside, that we ought to always guard our hearts against.

Thank you for all of you listening, just as I talk through things in my own heart and mind, that as I'm reading this passage, that God's speaking to my heart and going, Okay, how are you thinking about these things? So thank you for tuning in.

I hope that you would have some of those conversations with God, that when you hear His word, when you're reading, stuff would jump out at you and you would have that inner dialogue to go, Okay, God, how am I wrestling with this?

Or how am I just giving into it? So, flattering speech, greedy motives, verse six. We didn't seek glory from people, either from you or from others.

Paul says, I wasn't in it so that the people in Greece would talk about how great Paul was. As he would say in First Corinthians, he says like, we came in weakness to the city of Corinth. We were tired.

We were beat up. We were sad. And yet God and his spirit were the ones that worked powerfully.

And so it was obvious all of this is the power of Christ. It was my own power. We should not seek glory from other people, wanting other people to constantly tell us how great we are, wanting other people to affirm and uplift our noble positions.

We ought to have just a humility that says, I'm just a slave to Jesus and I am happy in that role. And if people show gratitude, wonderful, amazing. I'm so thankful for that.

But if they don't, it's OK, because I'm not in it for the accolades, I'm not in it for the praise, I'm not in it for the thanks, I'm in it for my Savior, and I want to live for His glory. I want Him to be glorified.

And if what I do is unseen and unappreciated and unnoticed, but the effects of my actions exalt Jesus, you know, perhaps I go through the auditorium on a Sunday morning and maybe I vacuum, or I see that, hey, there's this mess here in this room and

I'm going to clean it up, and nobody would know that I did it, but I know that it exalted Jesus. I know that it made worship time for other people happier than praise the Lord. That's what I live for. I live for His glory, not for my own.

Gonna stop there today and pick up in verse seven tomorrow. This is 1st Thessalonians 2, 1 through 6, that what we do for the Lord, it has an impact. We can be emboldened by God even in the middle of our struggles and temptations and trials.

He has given us the wonderful gift of the gospel that He's entrusted to us. He's approved us to be the carriers of it. So let's carry it faithfully.

Let's not be greedy. Let's not just use flattering speech, not just tell people what they want to hear. Let's tell people what they need to hear.

Let's search our hearts to have pure motives that serve God wanting to bring glory to Him. Thanks for tuning in.