Sincere Ministry

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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So we've been going through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, which are about waiting for the return of Christ.

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Paul has been talking to the Thessalonians who have, when he visited them, had a transformation so that they were changed to begin waiting for the return of Christ, and he's trying to encourage them to continue on that path.

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And he's—and part of the way he's doing that is by recalling the reality and emphasizing the reality of God's work in that congregation.

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And so chapter 1 was talking about the reality of God's work as seen in the in the response of the

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Thessalonians, and chapter 2 is about the reality of God's work as seen in the in the—in

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Paul's actual delivery of the gospel. And here we are in chapter 2, and in this particular section, we're going to look at Paul's sincerity and how that evidences the reality of God's work in the

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Thessalonian congregation. So I'm going to read verses 1 to 12, but we'll be talking about today in particular verses 9 through 12.

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So please stand if you are able for the reading of God's Word. For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you is not in vain.

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But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our

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God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please

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God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with pretext for greed

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God is witness, nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others.

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Though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

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So being 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.

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For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil. We worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaim to you the gospel of God.

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You are witnesses, and God also. How holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.

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For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you, and encouraged you, and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

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Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that this morning as we consider this passage that you would help us to see the importance of sincerity, how sincerity might be accomplished in our own lives, and I pray that in everything we would turn to your

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Son and his gospel, and by this good news that we would have new life. In Jesus' name.

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Amen. In 2007, I was a senior at Virginia Tech, and if any of you remember the headlines from that year, on April 16th, there was a gunman who went into a couple of different buildings and ended up killing 32 students and faculty.

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Now as you can imagine, this brought a lot of suffering, a lot of heartache for people.

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A lot of people were touched very closely. I myself lost two friends, and I know many of my friends lost other friends.

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And so people were asking themselves hard questions about about life and God. People were asking the question of theodicy.

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You know, if God is all -powerful and all -good, why is there evil in the world? And at that time, there was an apologist who decided he was going to drop everything and come out to Virginia Tech and speak to us about this matter.

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And so he stopped everything, came out, spoke to us, and I remember this speech.

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The auditorium was fairly full, and I don't remember the talk exactly, but I do remember that I very much appreciated the fact that he was willing to come out and speak to us.

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About ten years later, in 2017, I had the chance to speak to this man in person.

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I was—he came out to Google to speak, and I was invited to a group lunch and was able to sit down and speak with him.

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And once again, I don't remember the contents of the talk exactly, but I did appreciate that he was willing to come out, speak with us, and even to have lunch with me.

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Well, a year ago, this man died, and two weeks ago, this man became very prominent in headlines, more than he had in his entire life, because an investigation revealed that, with much documentation and evidence, that he had engaged in sexual misconduct that has called into question

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Ravi Zacharias's entire ministry and his entire profession of faith.

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And this has made many people question and think about the importance of sincerity.

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Here is this man who, like I said, I don't remember the nature of his talks, but I was willing to listen and respected him because I thought he really cared.

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But now people are wondering, why did he do the things that he did? Was it just to have fame and glory?

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Was it just to have access to people who are vulnerable? What was it with him if he wasn't really sincere?

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And so if you don't have sincerity, you aren't going to have respect. Your legacy is not going to be meaningful.

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There are few virtues that are nearly as important as being sincere.

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Look at any kids movie made in the past 20 years, and what is the moral of the story at the end of all of them?

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It's something like, follow your passions. Right? Not because that's particularly good advice. It's not particularly good advice.

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But the truth behind it is that there's few things people value as much in a person as that they really care about something, and they value it, and they are sincere.

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Sincerity commands respect. If you are around a sincere person, you feel secure.

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And if you have sincerity, you feel that you have much meaning because you very much care about the thing that you are working toward.

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Paul addresses that problem of sincerity and insincerity right here in this passage. He's going to point out how important sincerity is, that it really demonstrates that God is at work.

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And this is such an important theme to Paul. It's not the main thing in this letter, but it is the main thing in 2

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Corinthians, and it appears in many of his letters. And it has so struck me how much Paul cares about sincerity that one of my daughters is named

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Sincerity. This is the reason. And so as we look at this passage,

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I want us to see a few things about sincerity. A sincere person is one who is willing to do hard things and to say hard things.

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But most importantly, I want us to see that the most sincere people—if you want to be a sincere person—the most sincere people are motivated by and empowered by the gospel of Jesus Christ, his good news.

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And so as we begin to come and look at this passage, I'd like to start off by reading the preceding verse because it provides some important context.

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Verse 8. So being 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.

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So he's saying that he was willing to give his own self to the Thessalonians. And now in verse 9 and the rest of the passage we're looking at, he's going to be basically giving an explanation of what that means.

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What did it mean that he was willing to give his own self? And here he explains. For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil, we work night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.

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So here it is. This is his willing to give his own self. He was willing to work night and day so that he wouldn't be a burden.

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Now, I think this is mostly fairly clear on the face of it. In order to not be a burden on the

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Thessalonians and in order to not take money from them, he went and he worked. This is also addressed with a little more detail in 2

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Thessalonians, so I'd like to turn over there very quickly to 2 Thessalonians 3 .7

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and speak to you from that passage as well. 2 Thessalonians 3 .7

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says, For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil, we work night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.

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It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you and ourselves an example to imitate.

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Okay, so Paul is saying that he has the right to receive money in connection with his preaching of the gospel, but he abstained from—there's another word

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I'm looking—waved. He waived that right. And for the sake of the Thessalonians, because he cares about them more than himself.

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Now, there's a very common way of looking at this that I'd like to guard against, and that is that Paul— some people take this and say, well,

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Paul's saying that he has this right, so he would be committing no sin if he were to take money from the

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Thessalonians. I don't think that that's the right way of reading it. First of all, Paul here in 1

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Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians 9, many other passages where he talks about not receiving money from people, and his insistence on doing it, it is very clear that Paul thinks that there would be something very wrong if he were to take money from the

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Thessalonians. And in 2 Thessalonians, when it talks about being an example to imitate of hard work, you would have to be saying, if you're saying that it would be fine for him not to, you'd have to be saying that his example of working hard, ministering the gospel, would not really be hard work.

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But he's saying that there would be something deficient about that. There would be something wrong if he were to just receive money from them.

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And then lastly, and there are many other reasons to question this interpretation, that he's just saying he could take money and there'd be no problem with that, he explains what he means by the word burden in 1

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Corinthians 11. Now, this is a different—it's a different Greek word, but it's the same idea. That's why the English translation says burden both times.

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In 1 Corinthians— excuse me, 2

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Corinthians 11. That's what I meant to say. In 2 Corinthians 11, verse 7, he speaks once again of his refusal to receive money from this congregation.

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Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge?

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I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when

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I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need.

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So I refrain from, and will refrain from, burdening you in any way. So here he's using—he's speaking of burdening.

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Now, by all accounts, the Macedonian church was poorer than the church in Corinth. So when he uses that word burden, he's not talking about imposing financial difficulty.

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You look at Paul's request for money and his willingness to come to people in order to be financially supported along his way—1

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Corinthians 16, 2 Corinthians 1. Look at his calls for money for the

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Jerusalem collection. Paul is willing to impose difficult financial requests on the different congregation he goes to.

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What he is not willing to do is to impose it at a personal level where it's from them to him.

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A simple way of putting this is that ministry should be supported and not sold. It is a problem to exchange the gospel for money, and in this context where he's initially coming to a church like he was in Thessalonica, like he was talking about, if he were to take money from this congregation who are his—who are becoming his converts, he would be essentially exchanging the gospel for money.

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And so while he has a right to receive money in connection with the gospel, the problem would be if he did that, he would not be reflecting the sincerity of the gospel because God offers the gospel freely, without pay.

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And Paul, likewise, must offer the gospel freely, without pay, though he has a right as a laborer to receive receive funding.

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And he says this very clearly in 2 Corinthians 2 17, So this is what sincerity means to Paul, that he does not peddle

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God's Word. He does not exchange it for money. He has a right to support, but not in exchanging money for the gospel with his converts.

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And so being committed to this, being sincere, he refuses to take money. Now it is the case that sincere people do hard things.

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Paul, you know, if you go look at— there's a couple of times when he lists his various hardships in his ministry, and you know, on top of beatings and being shipwrecked, he always lists his toil and his labor, right?

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So here he is talking about his tent making, you know, his willingness to work in order to support himself, right along with those other, you know, near -death experiences.

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The people who are the most sincere are the most willing to do hard things.

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I'll tell you another story from when I was in college. There was a group project, and as you know, on group projects oftentimes there's people who aren't really pitching in, and there's other people who are doing all the work to make sure they get a decent grade.

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And on this project, there were, you know, people all over that spectrum, and there was one person on it who did more work than anyone else.

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I don't think he was the smartest of us, but he was very dedicated, a very sincere man, and most of us were in our late teens, early 20s.

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This person was in his late 30s, early 40s, and speaking to him,

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I found out that he had this dream of becoming an engineer but was never able to because different life decisions he had made.

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However, it just so happened in God's providence that he was able to receive a full -paid scholarship so he could quit his menial job that he didn't like and be able to pursue this.

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And so all his hard work and effort were a reflection of the sincerity with which he appreciated the opportunity he had.

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All the other students, including myself, would have said that we were sincere about wanting to do this work and get this degree, etc.

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But you could look at the fruit, you could look at the results and tell, you know, this guy, he was really sincere.

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He really appreciated this opportunity he had in a way the others of us weren't capable of doing.

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Sincere people are willing to do hard things for the thing they care about. And in part, as we read this, this is a way to test ministers.

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You can see is this minister sincere? Is he like Paul in that he is willing to do hard things for the thing he cares about?

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Is he willing to forego rights that he has and things that he deserves in one sense or another?

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But more importantly, it is a way for us to test ourselves, to test our own sincerity.

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You know, everybody claims to be a sincere person. Everybody claims to care about virtues, to care about righteousness, to care about justice.

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But then you can ask yourself, are you willing to do hard things for those virtues? Are you doing hard things for those virtues?

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And you quickly find out just how little inconvenience is necessary to keep someone from doing hard things for the thing they claim to care about.

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Examine your own life. And if you are one who claims Christ as most of us here do, and you claim to be sincere about this faith, ask yourself, how sincere are you about the faith?

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Are you willing to do hard things? There are so many people who claim the name of Christ and don't even bother joining together with a church for worship.

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They want to follow God on their own and don't even actually follow his commands.

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So you have to ask yourself. You know, I can't give a blanket statement of this is what that sincerity looks like for every person.

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Each person has their own strengths. Each person has their own gifts and their own resources. However, you know, you know how much

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God has gifted you with. You know your abilities. Are you sincerely following after Christ?

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Are you sincerely pursuing the virtues you claim to care about or not?

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And if we're honest, I think we'll all realize that there is a lack of sincerity where there ought to be.

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And so if you're wondering, you know, how can I be a more sincere person? The answer is found, as I said, in the gospel.

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The most sincere people are motivated by and empowered by the gospel. And we see this in the second half of this verse.

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Excuse me. For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil.

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We work night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaim to you the gospel of God. You see,

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Paul was motivated by the gospel. The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, it grants eternal life, is something that is far more important than anything else.

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It's something that has eternal value. It has an eternal end. Other things that we do in this life, they evaporate eventually, and they will not lead to the greatest sincerity because they only have limited temporal meaning.

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The gospel, on the other hand, has eternal meaning because its end is eternal life.

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However, I don't just want to talk about being motivated by the gospel. And this is not something Paul explicitly says, but I believe it's definitely implied, is that he is also empowered by the gospel.

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That the gospel is not just drawing him from ahead, but it's pushing him from behind.

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That the way his life has been changed by the gospel is what is leading him to do this. The fact that he has received eternal life from Jesus Christ is what leads him to be willing to do hard things, to be as sincere as he is.

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And so how does the gospel do this? How does it empower us? Well, first of all, it forgives us for insincerity.

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We are an insincere people. We are people who claim to care about things, but when it comes down to it, we end up caring about ourselves more than other things.

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This is just the way humanity works. The closest thing you have to yourself is yourself, and you care about yourself from a natural standpoint more than anything else.

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And so there is a need for forgiveness because God does not like insincerity.

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He hates insincerity. The wages of insincerity is death. But Jesus Christ, a perfect, sincere man, not one hint of guile in him, came to die on behalf of those who are insincere so that we might be forgiven of our insincerity.

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And what's more than that? For those who trust him. For those who trust him, not only are they forgiven of their insincerity, but because he has removed this problem of insincerity, because he has, because he has removed this problem of death since we were are doomed to die, but will be raised again in new life with Christ, because he has taken that away, he's removed the motivations we have for self -preservation.

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You see, the reason why—the reason why people act insincerely, the reason why they're consumed by selfish motivations that keep them from pursuing this other thing that they care about is because they have to worry about themselves.

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If death is a certainty for every one of us, and if eternal death is something that stands over us as a curse apart from Christ, then we always have that hanging over our head.

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We always have to worry about our self -preservation above other things. But, but if Jesus forgives us and removes that from us, no longer is self -preservation a necessary thing we have to worry about.

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He has already guaranteed we will persevere. He has already guaranteed we will have eternal—we do have eternal life, and that we will have a new life with him with a resurrected body.

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If that is the case, all that reason for self -preservation gets removed aside, enabling us to be perfectly sincere with one another.

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Perhaps not perfectly sincere in this life, but growing in sincerity the more and more we look to Christ and we recognize that having eternal life means that we have the freedom to leave behind these selfish ambitions.

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This is how the gospel empowers people to be sincere.

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So we're going to move on and we're going to keep working through this passage, but keep this in mind because this is really the key.

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The key to being a sincere person is the gospel. If you want to be the most sincere that you can be, you need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Otherwise, you will always be plagued with the need for self -preservation, the need to serve yourself.

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But if all your needs are met by him, that evaporates. And this issue of sincerity is also important because people are watching.

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People are watching and God is watching. Verse 10. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct towards you believers.

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You know, in this threefold list of holy and righteous and blameless, these are all rough synonyms for each other, trying to emphasize how blameless he was.

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There are some slight differences. You know, holy— he's talking about being set apart. So not like other teachers.

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Remember that quote from 2 Corinthians, right? Not like others who are peddlers of God's word. Paul is separate from them.

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He is holy. He is righteous. He's following God's law and acting the way he acts and refusing to receive payment.

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It was Jesus himself who commanded the disciples when they went out to share the gospel that they need to give without pay because they received without paying.

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That was in Matthew 10 that he said that about the gospel. So Paul is acting righteously and he is acting blamelessly.

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He's removing any room that people have to accuse him of having ulterior motives. It says you are witnesses and God also.

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People were watching, Paul. People are watching us. You know, if we— sincerity is a difficult—one of the most difficult of virtues because it's so internal, right?

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Sincerity talks about really meaning what you are doing on the inside, what you are doing on the outside, what you are saying on the outside.

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And so it can be very easy to mask. However, people will always find out.

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They will always find out one way or another. Consider that instance of Ravi.

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People will find out if you are insincere. And so you, who is watching you?

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If you're an older person in this church, is it the younger people who are watching you? If you are a younger person in this church, is it the children who are watching you?

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If you are insincere, it will be found out. If not in this life, then in the next life because God is watching.

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He is watching and he will reveal all things. He will reveal all things.

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He will expose all sin. He will expose all insincerity. And there are people who say when their insincerity is exposed, well,

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God knows my heart. That's the problem. Yes, he does. He does know your heart and he has said much in his word about what the heart of man contains.

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And so if we want to be spared on the day of judgment, the mechanism for that is not self -defense.

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It is coming to Christ and receiving the forgiveness that he has so that when the world is watching, we will be able to point to Christ and say he is the one who has forgiven me for my sin.

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To be able to grow in sincerity with the world watching and with God watching.

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God, who at the end of this passage calls us into his own kingdom and glory, calls us to become holy like his

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Son. At this point in 1

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Thessalonians, Paul transitions to using an analogy of a father. He says, For you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you.

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So Paul compares himself to a father. He's a spiritual father in that speaking to his converts, you know, they've been born again.

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He's growing them to maturity. There are a lot of things that are very much like a father.

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And this is also this is also the reason why he's not willing to take money from them. He explains this once again in 2

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Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 12, 14 says,

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Herefore the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours, but you.

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For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. So he's alluding to, you know, why he is unwilling to take money from the

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Corinthians in exchange for the gospel. And the answer is because part of the answer is in this analogy of a father, if he's a father, a father saves up for his children.

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It's not the other way around. And so Paul, expressing his sincerity, uses this analogy of a father.

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And really, is there anything more sincere in the world, a better example of sincerity than with parenthood?

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You see this in the in the narrative of Solomon and the two mothers.

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Right? If you don't know the story, two mothers come with a single child arguing about which one the child really belongs to.

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And Solomon says, well, let's cut the baby in half and you can just each have half. And the woman who who the child isn't really—it isn't really hers.

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She says, well, yes, go ahead. Do that. The woman who is the actual mother, she says, no, just give the child to the other woman.

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The real mother was the one who was willing to give up her own desires because she loved her child, because she really cared about her child.

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And I think it's very common in the world. It's very easy to see that most parents would be willing to give their life for the children.

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Now, Paul is not talking here about mothers. He talked about that earlier. He mentioned in verse seven, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

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Here he's pairing that with father. Before he said, I'm like a mother, gentle. Now, he's like a father, firm.

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He has this sincerity of a parent. Now, why is it that parents are so willing, or are so sincere, are so willing to give up their own lives for their children?

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Because though there is this problem with insincerity and self -preservation that plagues mankind, this desire for selfishness, the reason why you see that so heavily mitigated in familial relationships is because the bond of flesh and blood breaks down that problem of identity.

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Because if I care about me, right, and I've got to worry about me, that begins to to make a little less sense when we're talking about my own flesh and blood.

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You care about your own flesh and blood because you have a shared identity with them, and there is a sense of self -preservation that is going on when you are caring about your own children.

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And you see it in the wild, too. You know, that someone runs across a baby bear, doesn't think much of it, but then realizes, oh,

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I've made a big mistake because mama bear comes. Right? There is this self -preservation that is brought up in parenthood that makes this analogy so appropriate.

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However, it's still lacking in what the gospel provides because in the gospel you have a spiritual family that's created.

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Now, maybe you don't have converts, so you're not a spiritual father like Paul, but that's not the only relationship he lists.

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He also lists mother, and he lists brother. If you have become a part of this family, you have brothers and sisters.

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You have this familial relationship with bonds stronger than flesh and blood so that we all are united under Christ, under one head.

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And that problem of self -preservation is once again dealt with here in a new way where our identity, not being just found in ourselves, but being found in Christ, is shared with brothers and sisters so that we can care about them as parts of our own body.

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You know, that analogy of a body who, if they were about to be hit with something in the eye, wouldn't hold up their hand and sacrifice their hand to save their eye.

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Right? The hand does not mind sacrificing itself for the eye. That is how we can be in the body of Christ, even more so than with raw familial relationships.

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Now, you might say, well, I don't know if that resonates with my experience. I've seen some pretty petty behavior in churches and not that much care for each other.

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Well, it is true that in this world you always find—you will always find sinful people. You will always find sin.

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That's true in spiritual family. It's also true in biological families.

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However, there is a way that God is growing us to be more and more united, that as we look to our head,

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Jesus Christ, and our members of his body, that we more and more recognize our shared identity and are able to sincerely love each other and care about each other in a way that the bonds present in this world can't offer.

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To be sincere is not just to be willing to do hard things. It is also to be willing to say hard things.

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And that's what Paul continues on here with. He said, Okay, so these words, once again, he has this list, exhorted, encouraged, and charged.

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Once again, these are all rough synonyms. He's listing three things to make emphasis, and it pairs with his emphasis before where he said holy, righteous, and blameless, encouraged, charged, exhorted.

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So he's saying, I was like a father. I was willing to tell you the hard things. You know, and I think about my own experience as a father and my willingness to day after day encourage children toward the virtues that they need to pursue or to correct them in very— in ways that I would not be willing to correct others.

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Right? If I see my children picking their noses, you know, I'm willing to tell them straightly that this is, you know, this is foolish behavior.

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You know, it looks poorly, etc. If I caught somebody else, you know, engaging in the same behavior around here,

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I would not feel as open and direct to address it.

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That's what Paul's getting at. Like a father with his children, he was able to directly correct, directly exhort, directly rebuke, and he was willing to to care for them with his encouragement.

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He was telling them that they need to walk worthy of God. Because he cared about them entering

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God's kingdom and entering God's glory, he cared about them enough to tell them these hard things because he was so focused on their maturity.

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Now, someone who is insincere is not going to be willing to call people to obedience because that puts their own relationship with that person on the line.

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They don't want to feel uncomfortable, and so they often do not do that. Or if they are willing to, you know, tell it like it is, then they're not willing to do the follow -up of encouraging that person toward whatever it is that they had corrected them on.

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Consider, you know, any charlatan on TV that you might see.

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Something that repeats itself in this pattern is an unwillingness to talk about sin, to really call people to hard things, to hard repentance.

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Paul was willing to not just do hard things, but to say hard things. And once again, this is not just for ministers.

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This is also for ourselves to consider whether or not we're willing to say hard things. Are you willing to say hard things to other people?

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Whether it be sharing the gospel with unbelievers or whether it be with each other. If you are talking to each other, are you willing to correct sin or do you rather just pass it by because you care about your own preservation of comfort more than you care about that person's growth in Christ?

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Now, I'm not saying every little issue needs to be nitpicked, but you should know when someone could benefit from hearing these things addressed.

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And I think this is an area where I have seen growth in my life and been pleased to see

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God be faithful when I've been more willing to say hard things or to to be transparent and encourage people repeatedly.

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Certainly not something I'm perfect at, but I think this is a way that you can examine someone and tell if they're sincere.

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Are they willing to do hard things? Are they willing to say hard things, both in correcting and encouraging? That shows that they are truly sincere.

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And the reason why, the reason why that's the case, especially within the church and especially within the this kingdom of Christ, is because when one has been touched by Christ, when one has received his salvation, they are so filled with blessing and their needs are met that, once again, they don't need to look to their own selfish needs.

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They don't need to worry about self -preservation. But overflowing, the natural thing for them to do is to share this with others.

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This is why you see this with Paul. He knows his needs are met. He knows that he will be with Christ one day. He is willing to give up his own self for others.

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If you want to have that kind of sincerity, the way to do that is by recognizing your salvation and contemplating your salvation.

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Speaking with God, reading his word, these are ways you can remind yourself of this truth.

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And the more you appreciate the salvation, the more sincere you will become as your needs for to pursue your own selfish desires fade away.

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He finishes here saying, You see,

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Paul's call for them to enter God's kingdom and glory is a reflection of God's call.

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Paul is repeating God's message. He is doing it with the same disposition with which

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God would do it because God cares about these people, wanting them to come into his kingdom and glory.

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Paul cares about them, giving them these same exhortations, telling them the same word of God.

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God so sincerely loved the world that he was willing to send his own son. Christ so sincerely loved his church that he was willing to give up his own life.

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Paul so sincerely loved the Thessalonians. He was willing to give up his own self.

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And this is not just about Paul. If you look through this, you see a couple of times in this epistle where he calls them to imitate him.

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That was in the previous chapter. It's in this chapter, and I apologize for not having verse offhand to point it to—oh, verse 14 is one of them.

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"'For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God.'" And then in verse 6 of the previous chapter, "'And you became imitators of us.'"

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Paul is calling these—he's reflecting on the fact that they imitated him, and he's continuing to call them to imitate him.

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So as Paul has loved the Thessalonians so much, he's willing to give up his own self, we ought to be as sincere, willing to give up our own selves for each other.

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Christ is building this kingdom of sincere people made up of naturally insincere people.

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He's taking them, transforming them, taking away their needs, granting them eternal life so that they might pursue this kingdom sincerely.

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He's building up that kingdom. It says, "'He calls you into his own kingdom in glory.'"

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So kingdom being this group of people, the church, glory, talking about that resurrection.

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Resurrection of the dead is probably the most precise and focused way to talk about this removal of need.

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If we have eternal life now, and we have a guarantee that we will be raised from the dead in the future, it is this pursuit of glory that not only motivates

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Paul, but also empowers us. Imagine two people.

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Two people, one does not know that there is eternal life, is not focused on that, is worried about his own self, and another who knows that no matter what happens to him in this life, that he will live again.

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Who's going to be the willing to take the most risks? Who's going to be willing to do the most sacrifice? It's this one.

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It's the one who knows that there is glory. It's the one who has been called into glory. This is not—it's not just a way to test ministers.

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This is a way to test yourself. And so I'd ask you to consider, to consider your own sincerity.

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These things I've been talking about, how well or not well they are reflected in your own life.

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And ask yourself, and if you want to be a sincere person, the way to do that is not by adding more oomph.

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Adding more oomph does not make you more sincere. The only way to do this is by looking to Christ.

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He grows us in sincerity. He does this not only by forgiving us for our insincerity, but by making us more sincere, by transforming us by his

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Spirit, by taking away our needs so that we might be focused on this resurrection instead of on our own needs here and now, by knitting us together into a spiritual family, and by motivating us for something that has an eternal end and not a temporal end.

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If you don't have this, you need this. You need Jesus Christ. There's no way that you can have a true and perfect sincerity apart from it.

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And apart from perfect sincerity, you are not right with God. If this is something that has—if this is a topic that is interesting you,

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I would highly encourage you to read 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians is a book that from front to back is all about sincerity, and it's basically this little paragraph expanded to talk about Paul's ministry, you know, for a whole epistle.

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And I would recommend, if you either have a cheap Bible or you just print it out, go through it and highlight everything that has to do with sincerity.

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You might not find a lot of things on the first pass. You know, these books, they're not that long. You could do this in a single setting fairly easily.

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But on a second pass or a third pass, I think you'll see a lot and you'll learn a lot. And that's really what has—going through 2

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Corinthians, along with these other passages like 1 Thessalonians 9 through 12, is what's really helped me to understand and appreciate this.

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So if you do not have sincerity, you need Jesus Christ. It's not enough just to try harder.

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But for those of us who already have him, if you are part of this church or part of the church at large,

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I'll tell you what we'll do. We will do hard things and we'll say hard things. We'll say hard things to each other.

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We'll confront sin. We'll encourage each other week after week. I think of our prayer meetings where we're praying for the same items week after week, encouraging each other until those prayer requests get answered.

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And we will say hard things to the world. We'll give them the good news of the gospel, even though they are increasingly hostile toward Christ.

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You know, there are pastors being imprisoned for worshiping God the way they feel is necessary right now.

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And it is a difficult time for churches, but we will do hard things and we will say hard things to the world, though they threaten us.

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And we will do this because we have a great gospel and we have been empowered to be sincere by a perfectly sincere

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Savior. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, there's nothing quite like the virtue of sincerity.

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And apart from your work in us, we are powerless to accomplish it. I ask that by the sacrifice of your

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Son and by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would make us a sincere people, that we would love each other as Christ loved us, and that in all that we've set our hands to do, that we would do it as unto you.

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God, I pray that you would save us from our sins, that you would release us from temptations, and that you would deliver us from evil, so that though temptations to insincerity abound, though it's easy to hide and mask this deception, that you would set us free, that you would draw us out of darkness and into the light.