The Joy and Pain of Ministry

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Don Filcek; 1 Thess 2:17-3:5 The Joy and Pain of Ministry

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series,
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Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,
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Recast Church. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor. And thanks for coming out to worship
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God as a gathering of His people on this Sunday morning. I hope that our gathering this morning proves to be a chance for you to grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service.
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That's kind of our simple plan for everybody that calls this their church, is that we would grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service.
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We exist as a church to worship God together and to find more worshipers for His name.
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And so that's the stated purpose of the church. And our name is unique, but it hopefully serves as a reminder to everybody of our core values.
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Those of you that are aware of it, it is an acronym for our core values. And every time I say that,
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I contemplate and consider what it is that we exist and really drives us in the sense of our purposes as a church together.
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And so let me go over those real quick. I want to do this from time to time for us to remind us of what the values are of the church.
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The R and the E stand for replicating. We want to see faith replicated in the lives of people around us and in our own hearts.
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And then as a church, it's in our heart also to plant other churches that are like us in our vision and in our passion.
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And we're looking for opportunities and constantly as a leadership team, looking for chances to identify those who might be called out to plant churches and also like seeking to find out where God would have us do that.
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And so again, we've been doing this for eight years and we haven't planted a church yet. And yet we are constantly in prayer about that and seeing what
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God has for us in that. The C stands for community. We want to be a genuine blessing to the place where God has planted us.
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That is thinking in terms of you as individuals, us, the people being the church, where he has us in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces.
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And then specifically as a church here in Matawan, we want to be a blessing in this community in a way that if, if Recast Church no longer existed, that the community would be disappointed in that.
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I think a lot of times a church closes their doors and people are like, there was a church there? I didn't even know that.
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We want to be a church that actually is indeed blessing our communities. The A stands for authenticity.
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We want to be a church where we can be ourselves, that you don't need to put a mask on or dress yourself.
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There's the outside, right? Dress up to go to church. But then some of us actually have an emotional dress up that we wear when we come to church, where you've had a really rough week, but you put on a mask that smiles a lot and looks like you've had a great week.
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We want to be a church where we mourn with those who are mourning and we celebrate with those who are celebrating.
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The S stands for simplicity. We intentionally limit our weekly programming so that church programming is removed as an excuse for us to avoid reaching out to our neighbors with the good news.
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We want you to have the free time and the energy and the opportunity to engage your neighbors, your coworkers, to invite people that are outside of this church gathering into your home to do life with them and share the truth.
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And that is the T in recast stands for truth. And that simply means that we believe
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God's word is true and we seek to follow it wherever it may lead us.
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And sometimes the word of God honestly leads us into uncomfortable things, right? Like, have you identified that in your life? Sometimes what you believe is over here and what the
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Bible says is over here and to take this requires you to shed some things that have given you comfort over the years.
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And that's where we want to take God's word as truth. But I'm saying all of that not totally unintentionally because we're talking, going through the book of 1
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Thessalonians and we're thinking about church and we're talking just a lot about church because Paul is writing this to a fledgling church and he's helping them to get off the ground as a church.
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The church in Thessalonica where he left a very, very young church and he's dealing with them.
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And I just think there's some parallels and some thoughts of things that we need to take on and it's very good that God has revealed this to us so that we can take it on.
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Our modern conception of church ought to be shaped by what scripture says about church.
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To be quite honest, I think many have fallen prey to a lax and sometimes faulty understanding of what the church is.
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Many in our culture see church as a presentation to attend on Sunday morning like we're doing right now.
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And if we truly believe in our hearts that church is just something that we attend, it's just a gathering that we go to or just a show that we take in, then we're probably going to find our lives modeled after that famous theologian,
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Tina Turner, who echoes what our lives will communicate if we just merely attend church.
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If it's a show to take in, then our lives will echo her famous phrase, what's love got to do, got to do with it, right?
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Yeah. You know, some of you even know what I'm talking about. Others of you are younger going, what is, what's that got to do with that?
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What does that have to do with anything, really? But throughout the first two chapters of 1
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Thessalonians, Paul has expressed deep love, deep affection and love for a small group of new
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Christians there in Thessalonica. He has been tenderly offering hope to these people who are beset by persecution and are obviously, quite frankly, tempted to give up on the whole thing.
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They're only a few weeks in and they're, people are dying and they're being persecuted and they're being dragged out into the streets and things aren't going well for that little church.
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And in our text this morning, we're going to see two primary movements that will apply in very practical ways to our life together as a church here at Recast.
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You see, here are the two things. To invest in genuine relationships with others is the pathway to deep joy and glory.
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Let me say that again. To invest in genuine relationships with others is the pathway to deep joy and glory.
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But over and against that is a second point that we we see in this text. To invest in genuine relationships with others is to risk fear and disappointment.
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How many of you know that there's those two sides to any relationship, right? There's great risk involved in genuine love and ministry and connection with others, but there's also the potential for great glory and joy, right?
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And you see that in marriages, you see that in relationships with fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, all of those family relationships, but you see that as well in the relationships within the church and the relationships out in the community and the relationships that we have to share the good news with others.
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Paul loved those he invested in and this led him to declare that his joy and glory was wrapped up in God's work in these people.
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But equally, Paul was moved to serious concern, bordering on anxiety for those that he had ministered to that he was now physically separated from and had distanced from, and he was beside himself going, are they okay?
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Are they okay? Because he loved them. So let's open our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians. If you're not already there, a little bit tricky in what we're reading this morning.
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1 Thessalonians 2 .17 is where we're going to be, but we are going to read over into chapter 3, so it's 2 .17
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through chapter 3, verse 5. Occasionally, I don't do this very often, but occasionally the guy in the
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Middle Ages who sat down to separate this into verses and chapters and verses, that's not inspired, it wasn't in the original writing, and occasionally he kind of cuts off a thought and so you can see that the paragraph flow continues and the thoughts continue to flow from chapter 2 over into chapter 3, right where we're looking at.
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So again, 1 Thessalonians 2 .17, and we have some Bibles. If anybody doesn't have a Bible, you could just raise your hand and Eric's got some back here.
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He'll bring you a copy of God's Word so you can follow along in 1 Thessalonians 2 .17
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through 3, verse 5. Recast this as God's Word to us. This is what
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He desires for you and I to hear from Him today. Is it not you?
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For you are our glory and joy. Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone and we sent
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Timothy, our brother and God's co -worker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith that no one be moved by these afflictions.
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For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction just as it has come to pass and just as you know.
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For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.
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Let's pray before we come to the Lord in worship through song this morning. Father, I thank you so much for the opportunity that we have to be in this place together and to worship you.
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Father, without persecution, without the threat of outside forces coming in and telling us we can't gather here right now.
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Father, we live in a very privileged time and a very privileged place. Father, I pray that you would give us a boldness and a passion for ministry to one another, to ministry to our community.
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Father, that we would risk, we would take risks in ministry to each other.
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Father, that we would open up our hearts and genuinely engage in authentic real relationships even as our core values propose that we would be authentic, that we would come in and share the heartaches with each other and we would share the joys with one another, that we would do life as your family here in Matawan.
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So Father, I pray that from a place of recognizing that we've been put in this family together first and foremost by the blood of Jesus Christ and by his sacrifice for us.
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Father, that we would raise our voices now together as one family and one body in praise and worship to you.
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That Father, there would be something awesome in our minds and in the way that you work in us and through us in that we are singing together, that it's not my voice, it's not the professional voice, it's not, uh, it's not just one voice that we're taking in as a concert, but Father, it is a a work that you are doing in all of our hearts to reflect the beauty of who you are and what you have done for us in your
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Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for his cross, thank you for his sacrifice, and may our hearts be set free and therefore our tongues be set free to worship you in these songs this morning in Jesus' name, amen.
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Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated and I encourage you to get comfortable, uh, just like normal. Uh, if you need more coffee, more juice, or donuts, uh, or if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, uh, use the restrooms, the men's turn, go out the door, down the hallway, upstairs, uh, for the men's room, downstairs for the women's, use the restrooms on this end.
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Um, but really the goal over our next half an hour or so is to keep our focus on God's word, and so if you can make sure your Bibles are open, um, and you're tuned into, uh, 1
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Thessalonians 2, um, verse, uh, verse 17 through chapter 3, verse 5, uh, what we read earlier.
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Some of you have, uh, walked in since then, and so I'll just get you oriented to the right page there and figure out where we're at, um, that way you can see that the things that I'm saying are kind of, uh, structured and ordered according to this text.
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Um, I think we probably all heard the adage, uh, to kind of introduce this message, um, that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
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How many of you have heard that before? You've heard that phrase? Um, I think the Apostle Paul lived his life in a way according to that adage, and I would suggest to you that although that adage or that, that quip or phrase is usually applied to romantic love in our culture,
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I would suggest that the Christian must have this heart that is willing to apply this principle to their lives.
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It is better to risk and to have been burned. That's another way of saying it. It is better to have risked and been burned than to have never risked at all.
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Think about that. Um, in other words, the life of the Christian is not to be one of guarded fearfulness of the risks of relationship, but instead is to be one that is invested deeply at the, at the, at great risk in relationships.
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This, of course, becomes more and more challenging. I think, uh, some of you can testify, and I can as well. The older that I get, the more challenging it becomes to, um, invest in others.
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The, the more I live, the more I accumulate heartache and pain from broken relationships, and some of you could testify about that.
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You've, you've, you've been around, uh, around enough to actually have hurt some, uh, to have been hurt as well as to hurt others, and you recognize that relationships get messy and sticky.
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How many of you would just raise your hand and testify that you've experienced kind of the raw end of the deal in some relationships? Some of us.
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The rest of you. Wow. Congratulations. Um, let me know what your secret is. Uh, maybe you're the ones that are not risking.
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I don't know. I don't know. Um, or maybe you're just not quite awake yet, or you just didn't feel like raising your hand because you're like, Don, you do that all the time, and it annoys me.
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I don't know. Um, and yes, I do, but I don't know how to stop. It's just kind of a habit. Ask, ask for participation or something.
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Um, but yeah, I think all, all of us to some degree, if you, if you've been alive, then you've been hurt at some point in relationships.
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You recognize that there's brokenness in these things, and so what's your, what is your tendency when you experience pain?
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Well, there's a God -given reflex when, uh, the stove is too hot, or you touch the, touch the wrong end of the, of the pot, uh, and you go to pull it out of there, and you don't have the, the, um, what do you call it, the hot pad in the right place.
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Any of you ever burn your hand in the oven, and what's your first response? Well, I hope it's not to say bad words, but, um, it's to recoil, right?
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The first thing that you do is you withdraw. Your hand moves reflexively away from the source of pain, and that is a pretty routine thing in our lives.
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We often, even when we experience emotional pain or relational pain, we recoil, we withdraw, we retreat.
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Some of us, uh, some of you don't relate to that because you're like, no, that's not my tendency. I usually attack, and, uh, you recognize that usually that,
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I mean, there's a variety of different responses on a whole spectrum of completely shut the other person out and ice them to light them on fire, right?
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And sometimes both can happen within the same argument. Have you been there?
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You're lighting them up, and you're giving them the silent treatment at the same time, or, you know, you're just trying your best to navigate this thing and not get hurt yourself.
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But any of these, any of these responses, any and all of these responses, I would suggest to you will interfere with the glorious and majestic calling that God has placed on each and every one of us in this room, calling us into relationship with others.
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Well, if our end game is to withdraw, if our end game is to protect ourselves, if our end game is to never be hurt, then we will lose opportunities to be useful to God in His kingdom.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? You guys get that? We're made relationally, and our ministry is meant to be relational in the context of all of these whole hosts.
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And we have different capacities, right? Some of you in the room are introverts, and you have a lower threshold for relationship.
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You have a little bit less capacity in that realm, but did you know that you still need to be ministering in relationships even as an introvert?
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It's probably going to be with fewer people. It's going to be closer. It's going to be a little bit deeper, but it's still a relational ministry that we're called to do, right?
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And some of you are extroverted, and you've got a whole broad smattering of relationships across a lot of different people in a lot of different places, and you just move and thrive in the realm of party and enjoyment of relationships, but it might not go as deep, but you're still to minister within the way that God has designed you in relationships.
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We are to love others with the love that Christ has lavished on us. We are called to enter into genuine relationships with others for the cause of Christ.
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It is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being that is being redeemed by our
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Lord and Savior. So verse 17 sets up the stage once again for us. It feels like Paul, when he's writing the
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Thessalonians, it's very, very vital and important that we understand some of the context here and understand what's going on. And our entire text is an introspective monologue from Paul to the
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Thessalonians explaining what's going on inside of him. We're getting a little glimpse of the heart of the
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Apostle Paul here. And even in this, Paul is modeling what it means to be in relationship with others.
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He is letting the Thessalonians and even us here in Matawan in 2017, he's letting us see some of his own heart.
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He's letting us inside to see how he feels about the church. And I would suggest to you that relationships always require some level of letting others inside, letting others see what's going on in here.
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And that is, of course, as all of you know, where the risk begins. The risk starts with letting people see something that is true in your heart about what's going on in here.
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But I'm going to give us a very simple two -point outline for our text this morning. I see these two points kind of stand out to me.
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And as I studied it and worked through it, I think it fits nicely with the text. The first is the joy and glory of ministry, the joy and glory of ministry.
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That's verses 17 through 20 of chapter 2. And then over in chapter 3, we see the risk and fear of ministry in verses 1 through 5.
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So it's the joy and glory of ministry and then the fear and risk of ministry, if you're taking notes, and it breaks down into the two sections that we have here.
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So let's start with the good news first. That's what Paul does. He begins with the good news about relationships, ministry, all of that.
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Here is the good news about relationships. There is indeed great joy and glory in ministry and in relational ministry.
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And it might not be found where and when you expect it, but there is indeed great joy and glory to be had in relating to others and loving others and ministering to the needs of others in our community.
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But let me be careful, carefully explain what I mean by ministry. So we're all on the same page remembering what
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Paul is experiencing and trying, what he's trying to communicate to us. You see, to many ears, you might not even see ministry in here at first because when you read it, you don't, you think a different thing when you hear the word ministry.
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To many of us, it sounds like a very formal word. I'm a pastor, so I do ministry.
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Or the elders lead the church, so they do ministry. Or some people might just take it down a notch, and it's not quite that intense.
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Of course, all of us do ministry. So ministry is a formal volunteering relationship with the church or with some organization.
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Maybe you consider your ministry to be making the coffee on Sunday mornings or setting up chairs or playing in the praise band or teaching kids or leading a community group or doing evangelism out in the community, and all of those are great.
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Maybe you're the kind of person, though, that reserves the word ministry for only formally paid positions like pastors or missionaries or like Nathan Douglas with Young Life or Bill Smith with Youth for Christ or Zach and Lee Lloyd who are serving
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Christ and ministering to the people of Indonesia right now or something like that. But I would like to break through all of that formality surrounding the word ministry and suggest to you that ministry has already happened here this morning before anybody got up.
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As you greeted others during connection time, ministry happened as you shared some of yourself with others and listened as they shared something of themselves with you.
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Ministry is much more organic and fluid than the formal arrangements that we often have in our minds about what our ministry and calling is.
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You think about most of you punch a clock or work for someone out there in some kind of an employment.
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Do you think of that as ministry? Do you consider that that's ministry? Or is ministry some kind of a formal thing?
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Or is it possible to deliver packages as a part of your ministry or to teach kids as part of your ministry or work in IT as part of your ministry?
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All of these different things that come together, and is that ministry? I would suggest to you, yes, that it ought to be.
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It should be. And part of that is in the, of course, the heart and the way that you do it. And who are you doing it for?
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And are you doing it just merely for a paycheck? Because honestly, many of us can be guilty of just doing it for a paycheck. And there's something to that as well, because sometimes that's ministry to your family, right?
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Like that's still ministry. But there's something about doing that as a ministry unto God that is available to all of us.
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If we would just kind of tweak our thoughts about it for a moment and really render it to God as service to him.
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In verse 17, Paul expresses very strong relational ties to a group that he spent very little time with.
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He had no formal ministry relationship with them. He didn't sign up on a volunteer sheet to plan a church in Thessalonica.
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He wasn't voted in. He wasn't hired by the Thessalonians to be their pastor. He never even filled out an application for the position.
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Instead, what we see back in Acts chapter 17 is that Paul had gone into this community and shared the gospel and found himself the pastor of a church.
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Like that's kind of what happened, is he went into the community and shared the gospel. People believed and began to follow him.
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And he began to break the word open to them and shared and shared and shared over the course of a few weeks. There was no formality in that relationship.
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In place of the formal professionalism that we often imagine around the ministry, Paul uses strong terms of relationship in these first four verses.
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He says things like, I was torn away from you. It's not like, well,
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I got a different calling and there was a better job offer so I went over here or I went over there or I did this or that happened and yeah there's a bigger church and they called me and I wanted to preach to more or something.
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He says, I was torn from you. Do you see right in that phrase alone the love and longing that he had for the people of Thessalonica?
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That's a strong phrase, I was torn from you. They were separated by the way in the context of history and what actually happened there again back in Acts 17.
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They were separated by physical persecution and Paul was pushed out of Thessalonica by the fledgling church.
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They told him to flee for his life. They pushed him out to save him from the mobs that were seeking to kill him there in Thessalonica.
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So Paul calls them brothers in our text, emphasizing the fraternal bond that he felt to that new church.
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And by the way, the term that I said was very strong, the term used for torn away is an actual family word.
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It's a familial word in the Greek language that was used all throughout the Roman Empire. It's on all kinds of documents and things, but it directly in Greek means this, to make an orphan.
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That's the literal translation of the word that he uses there, to be torn away. Paul says he was made an orphan from them.
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Torn away from their presence, but not in heart, only in face -to -face presence.
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He says, I was torn from you in presence, but my heart is still with you guys. He endeavors more eagerly with great desire, the text says, to be with them face -to -face.
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All kinds of words of yearning and longing and love for these people that he ministered to.
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Paul loved the church, which isn't some organization, but it's people.
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He loved the people. He wanted to go back and visit them, but he was prevented, he says to the
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Thessalonians, but he says my whole team wanted to come to you, but even I, again and again,
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I was constantly trying to figure out how can we get back to Thessalonica, how can we get back to loving on this church, how can we get back to the place where we can show them the love of Christ and check up on them and make sure that things are going well and encourage their hearts and help them to endure this persecution.
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But he identifies in the text that somehow, and we don't know all the details, but Satan hindered his posse, and it's unclear what that might have looked like.
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I think a lot of times when we see Satan interjected into a text, we can probably tend to think all kinds of supernatural things, but I think in quite honest terms,
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I think it's sometimes quite practical things that Satan uses to thwart the plans of God. Very common practical things like weather or health or all kinds of things that he can influence, and we see that from the book of Job.
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You can go there and check and see if you're doubting me that Satan is able to influence these kinds of things. Scripture is clear that he can.
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I have a hunch that this prevention of Paul's team being able to get back to Thessalonica was probably a very practical thing.
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They were down in Athens. They wanted to trek up north again to see the Thessalonians, and they weren't able.
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We do know for some reason Timothy wasn't prevented. One of them was able to get through.
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One of them was able to break free, and so Timothy, we see that in verses 1 through 5 that Timothy wasn't prevented, but Paul was.
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Paul was not able, and some have speculated that this might have something to do with his thorn in the flesh. Some of you are aware of the text that talks about Paul having a thorn in the flesh that he speaks about.
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Maybe he had some kind of physical ailment that prevented him from traveling back to Thessalonica during this time, but in these first two verses, we see the seeds of the second point, and that is that there is fear and risk in genuine ministry.
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Paul is expressing some of that second point that we're going to get to here in a moment, but these two verses serve to set up what we see in verses 19 through 20 as this first point about relational ministry.
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When we invest ourselves in others, we find our glory and joy.
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When we invest in others, we find our glory and joy, and the glory and joy, hear me carefully, is not in ourselves.
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It's not in ourselves. When you invest in others, it is not about you. It's not our giftedness that moves us.
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Oh, wow, I really, I'm really, I've really got it locked down, and I'm just able to help everybody. You know, that's pat yourself on the back.
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Wow, I'm so impressed with this guy. Do you know what I'm talking about? I mean, have you ever moved into ministry with that attitude and watched it tank?
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Do you know what I'm talking about? When your, when your attitude, and it doesn't bring glory and joy when you try to glorify yourself and bring joy to yourself.
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Have you ever noticed that? The very thing that you set out to pursue is elusive to you when you try to pursue it, but it comes to you when you let go of it and serve others.
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That's where joy and glory comes from. A genuine heart, heartless, selfless, not heartless, selfless service to others.
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Counterintuitive, right? Like one of the great paradoxes of life is when I pursue joy and try to get it for myself,
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I can't find it. But the moment that I forsake that pursuit and seek to bring joy to others, that's when
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I find my joy. That's when I find Christ glorified in me, when I'm genuinely serving others, not for what
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I can get back, not for them to say, good job, Don, but for them to say, glory to God, glory to God.
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I think that that's, there's a, there's a reality of that difficulty in our lives, trying to find the glory for ourselves.
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The glory and joy of ministry is never truly found in our own capacity. Think about it this way.
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It's never found in our own capacity any more that the glory, any more that the glory of your house or any house is in the hardness and flatness of the hammer that built it.
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Is that where the glory of a house lies? How, what awesome tools were used to build it? No, the beauty is in the house, right?
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Like all the, all the different rooms and structures and the way that it was put together and crafted well and all that, that's the, that's the cool part.
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It's not the hammer that built it that you're like, wow, look at this house. Can you imagine what tools were used in this?
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This is amazing. The glory and joy we find in investing in others, by the way, is in the others.
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They will prove to be our glory and joy. Look at verse 19. What does
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Paul hope to have to offer to Jesus Christ when he returns for Paul, when he returns for all of us, when he stands before his
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Lord and King? And what will he rejoice? It's people.
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It's people. It is the glory of changed and transformed lives.
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Paul says his hope, joy, he uses a strange phrase, crown of boasting, but his hope, joy, and crown of boasting in ministry is only in the people that God is transforming.
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He tells the Thessalonians, is it not you? They are his glory and joy.
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I spent a little time wrestling with this notion of Paul boasting here because in other places he's quite clear that he will boast in nothing but Jesus Christ and says as much.
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But I think this crown of boasting here is instead the idea that the Thessalonians will be there when Christ returns.
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That in itself is the crown and this will be glory and joy and their very presence will be like a crown for Paul on that day.
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And I think that rather than wait until the end, I'd like you to, I'd really like to drive this application home right now.
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When you think about standing before King Jesus in the end, what will be your hope?
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What will be your joy? What will be your crown of boasting to offer to Jesus?
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What will be your glory and joy? Will you have invested in loving others? Will you have invested in the body of Christ and the bride that he died for and loves dearly?
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Consider whatever you do in service to Jesus. By the way, sometimes passages feel like they're preaching to the choir and I know that they're preaching to someone and they can either impact us for encouragement or for challenge.
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I feel like our church does an amazing job. You know, I'm a pastor and I talk with other pastors and I get a chance to go to a conference last week in Chicago and interact with others and stuff and I just feel like we are a church that serves one another.
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The kids ministry, we have so many volunteers that work with our kids all the way through.
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We have people that serve us through practicing songs to lead us and we have people that are standing at the door greeting us and making coffee and setting up chairs and we just go through the litany of people that are serving.
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I feel like we do fairly good at this and at the same time I recognize that that's not all of us.
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There's always more that we can be doing and the problem with that is that the people who are already doing something hear that and go, yeah,
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I should be doing more. You know, the people who already have three or four responsibilities are the ones who usually pick up the next one and I want to caution you about that and I want to encourage you towards the areas of God's gifting in your life and to really do what you do with passion and with zeal.
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Of course, there's seasons in life where you can just pitch in and that's there's a need that you fill but find that God -given area.
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None of this is in my notes by the way, it's all a little side note but yeah, we've got to think in terms of the way that we serve one another.
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What will be your glory and joy in regard to service to Jesus? What are you currently doing?
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What are you currently doing in service to Christ? Some of you, just to be flat out honest, you're at a stage of life where just raising kids is like your job.
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That's a job and that can be a pretty serious job to do. So in whatever area of ministry, some of you, your ministry is to a secular employer who makes widgets and makes stuff and you're doing some service in that and so the question is, do you do it out of service to Jesus?
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Do you do it out of love? Paul modeled a sacrificial love for the church.
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Whether it's rocking kids in the nursery, rocking out on the stage, rocking the coffee maker, rocking the gospel at your workplace, seek to connect that service to love for God and love for others.
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Genuine ministry requires that we love others and serve one another and Paul had a deep longing for the people he ministered to.
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So that concludes the first point. There is joy and glory in ministry to others but that has to be offset by the second point.
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We have to look at the other side of the equation. There is risk and fear involved in genuine ministry.
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I would even suggest to you that if there's not risk involved in it, then I'm not sure that you can quite call it ministry.
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I'm not sure how engaged your heart is if there's not some kind of potential to kind of get crushed in it because you're not, you're not, your heart's not in it.
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Your heart's not engaged in it. Only when your heart is in it and you're genuinely expressing yourself to others is there risk.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? So in verses, verse one of chapter three, Paul speaks in angsty terms about being able to bear the silence no longer.
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I haven't heard from you and I don't really know what's going on and I don't know if you're growing and I don't know if what we did was in vain, if it's empty, if it's not having any fruit in your lives and I want to know.
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The words used here imply that he came to the breaking point of his nerves and when the cup of his concern overflowed, he worked a way out to send
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Timothy to help them be strengthened and exhorted in the right direction. And he speaks very highly of Timothy in our text.
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By the way, one of the highest things that's said of an individual besides Jesus in scripture is said of Timothy here.
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There's a very high commendation. In order to really give the Thessalonians a good reason to pay attention to this young man, he's a young minister.
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He's not old and he's actually later, years down the road, Paul still says to him, don't let people despise you for your youth,
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Timothy. And that's later. That's not this early. So he's a brother in the faith,
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Paul says, which is a good commendation. But he's also God's co -worker in the gospel.
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Now that phrase, God's co -worker in the gospel, is a phrase that's so strong that many scholars have literally tried to water it down over the years.
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But the picture is really powerful and the Greek is pretty solid on what this phrase is stating.
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When we minister the gospel to others, God is enfolding us into his work.
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He's bringing us in alongside of what he is accomplishing and doing. And God uses little us alongside of himself to accomplish his grand plans.
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It's a pretty cool thought, isn't it? It's a possibility for our lives if we'll line up with him.
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Paul's passion was to see people growing in faith. He wanted to see them trusting God more and more.
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And so the commission of Timothy was simply to establish them in their faith and exhort them to live out of that faith.
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That's part of that relational ministry that he's accomplishing there and seeking to see continued on in the
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Thessalonians. To establish them in their faith and exhort them, pointing in the right direction, for them to live out that faith.
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Now consider the simplicity of that calling on anyone who is a co -worker of God. Help others trust
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God more and more and point them to the pathway of drawing closer to God through his son
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Jesus Christ. Can you connect working in the nursery to that calling?
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Can you connect working with VBS this summer to that? Can you see the connection point between picking up the donuts on Sunday morning and that?
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Can you see how inviting your neighbor to church connects with this calling of helping others trust
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God more and more and pointing them to the pathway of drawing closer to God through Jesus Christ? I think all of these things connect to that and sometimes when we're doing ministry, it's just doing a job that we've been asked to do, but do you connect it to the greater, higher things that God is trying to accomplish in his church and in his people?
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Sometimes I mean, I think that, you know, rocking babies in the nursery. Well, what are you actually accomplishing?
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They're not going to say thanks, but you're giving a break to some parents who can sit in here and be encouraged and be refreshed, right?
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Do you connect it there or is it just, I mean, you could ask people back there, what are you doing?
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I'm rocking a baby in a nursery, in a rocker, trying to keep them from crying too loud, you know, or is it
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I'm freeing somebody up to grow in faith and to be encouraged and be strengthened?
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See how those things, I mean, it's a matter of connecting these things. All ministry can be connected to establishing and exhorting others in the faith, but if we come to church to serve ourselves, think about the opposite of that.
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If we come to church to serve ourselves, if we see it as a show that we take in to feed ourselves, to merely get our fix or to get our spiritual infusion for the week, we risk losing the whole point of what the church exists to do.
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My hope is that all of us are growing in this gathering, even this morning that we're growing, that we all grow in faith, but that we also grow in community, connection and relationships to others, and we also grow in service because God has saved all of us in this room for a purpose.
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He saved us to be a service to each other, to the world around us, so if we only come here to grow in our faith, we are at risk of becoming bloated and puffed up and the spiritual knowledge without an outlet of ministry.
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But in the context of 1 Thessalonians, they were enduring persecution, and Paul was concerned and fearful that the church might turn away from their faith when the going got tough.
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He had warned the Thessalonians that persecution and affliction were coming, and then they did.
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But in verse 5, he outright declares that he feared. Paul feared. Do you think that seemed like a strange sentence to you in what you understand of Paul from the
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Bible, or what you even understand about fear and relationship to God and different things?
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Paul feared. That's the right translation. He feared that the tempter would come along and entice them to forsake the truth, making all the work and love that he had lavished on them in vain and empty.
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Once again, the relational overtones have turned from joy and glory of their first point to affliction, fear, and temptation in the second.
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So please don't lose sight of the very important fact that all of these words describe and define the exact same relationships.
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Paul is not saying, well, the church in Corinth, the church in Corinth gives me joy, but the church in Thessalonica, well, that one gives me fear and concern.
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He's not saying, this church, yes, I'm totally on fire about them. This church, I'm a little sketchy and scared for them.
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He's talking about the same church with these words. What are the words that he uses?
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The relationship with the Thessalonian church gave joy, gave Paul joy, hope, glory, fear, anguish, and anxious anticipation that made him declare this sentence, when we could bear it no longer, when we couldn't handle it anymore,
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I sent to learn about your faith. I just had to know how is it going with you.
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You have conversations like that in church? Probably not with those words, but we ought to.
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Even if you're an introvert, I mean, just pick one person to invest in then. I mean, just one, just one person to make it your point to ask them, how is it with you?
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It's been a week, and I'm longing to know, how did that job interview go? How did that situation with your family work out?
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How did this go with you? I've been longing to know. Of course, we can text now, right?
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But I mean, text that then. Text that to them in the middle of the week. I'm praying for you, and thinking about you, and wondering, how is it going with you?
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You see how Paul's doing that here? He's doing it by letter sent by Timothy over miles and weeks in the traveling, and all of this stuff.
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But we can do it pretty quick with an email, or a text, or a Facebook message, or whatever, Snapchat, I don't know.
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But you can do, you can pretty quickly check in on each other, and have those people that you're,
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I just want to know, how is it going with your faith? I know you're going through a tough time right now.
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When we could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith. How are you doing, bro? So let me just hit these application points briefly before we close this morning.
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You need connection in the body. You need connection in service to others, and you need to allow others to serve you.
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And that sounds really weird, but some of us, quite honestly, the hardest thing is to ask for help. We love it when others ask us for help, because it kind of stokes our pride.
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Somebody needs me. You know what I mean? I have a feeling that people are chuckling because they get that.
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I don't know if you understand, but I'm important because you need me. But to actually allow others to meet our gaps, guess what?
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Implies first that you know you have gaps. You have a lack, and you need help.
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To a person in this room, there's one thing that I know is consistent. You need help. Every single one of you.
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I do too. We need each other, and so it's only pride that keeps us from engaging in these relationships.
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At the end of the day, it's mostly pride, right? It keeps us holding people at arm's length, putting on the mask faithfully every
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Sunday or every church gathering to make it look like everything's rosy. I've got it all together. I am king of everything right now.
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I've got it all sewed up. Fact is, we kind of really are playing a game that we're not winning because we all know we don't have it together.
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Guess what? We can read about each other in here. We can read what this says, and it says we're all jacked up.
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So we can get past all of the fakeness and start really doing life together, really sharing what's going on in our hearts so that others will text us in the middle of the week and say, how's it going?
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How's it going? I need that. We all need this, and so you need connection in the body, and we speak of connection a lot of times as like a plug -and -play word, like connection like you plug in something to an outlet and the energy just flows.
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Is it that kind of thing? Well, not exactly. Connection in relationships requires effort.
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Have you noticed that? Especially in our very... Our culture is just completely hither, thither, and yon.
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I mean, we are just connected in so many different ways and so many different... It's confusing sometimes, and we're going every which way.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And there's so many things that are vying for our attention and grabbing for us.
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It takes effort. It takes risk. It takes sharing, and it takes time to develop these kinds of relationships, but we need to risk by entering into ministry for the love of others.
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Paul was obviously deeply invested in these relationships despite being with the Thessalonians for only a brief time.
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The second application, consider what gift God has given you in order to draw others closer to Christ in faith.
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I believe that this is not always a particularly static thing. As many will tell you, you've got a spiritual gift run with that, and that's it.
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Find out what your spiritual gift is. How many of you, by the way, just have a feel like you have a pretty good handle on what your gift is?
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You feel like you have a pretty good handle on that? I'd like to even ask the question in a different way, and probably the same number of people that raised their hand, but how many of you know what your spiritual gift is now?
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I'd like you to think in terms of it now, right? Like what is the calling of God on my life now?
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And I've seen it for me shift and morph over time, and I think the Spirit gives you what you need for the time and the era where you are.
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I think we've thought inappropriately about this, is it just being a static one time, I've got the gift of administration, that's the only way
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I could serve God. Or the gift of teaching, that's the only thing I can do. So don't ask me to work with, you know, this, that, or the other, because I'm a teacher.
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I don't think that that's the right way. God has given me seasons of greater influence among unbelievers in my life, and my role has morphed into, quite naturally, evangelism in those times.
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There are seasons in life where ministry takes the shape of helping out in the kids program for a season. For this season of our church's history, a handful of men have chosen to serve us all by showing up early and setting up the church on Sunday mornings.
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It's been a season of setting up and tearing down every Sunday. But whatever your current avenue of serving looks like, please connect it to the glory and joy that is serving the needs of others.
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Remember that our reward is not now, but it is when we get to lay this crown of boasting before our
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King with joy and with hope. What has been done in the service of Christ will be rewarded.
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Scripture says that, and you can take that to the bank. Lastly, the last application before we close is consider what does risk look like for you in the genuine ministry and love of others.
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Risk is not a natural thing for us to seek out, right? Most of us reflexively, as I said, avoid risk.
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Got a little mouse there ready to go for it. So let me offer an application to the many in this room.
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Many of you are in the room and you've been burned, quite frankly, by Christians. Some of you are in the room and you've been burned by a church.
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Some of you've been burned even, unfortunately, by a minister that you trusted. So you approach life a little jaded.
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Reasonably, you're a little withdrawn. Reasonably, you're like, I touched that and it hurt last time and I don't want to touch that again.
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I'm not going to put my neck out on that chopping block because I've seen the blade fall.
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I just simply encourage you with these words, don't give up on him. Don't give up on him, okay?
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Because of the messes you see in the lives of people who are going through a process.
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It's like all of us of trying to honor him and trying to do the best that we can and not everybody is in that boat and not everybody is with him that says that they're with him.
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And don't give up on him. His bride, his bride can be an ugly mess.
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But he loves her warts and all and he's washing her. He's cleansing her and he's giving her a new heart.
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Don't stop loving. Don't allow cynicism to win. Don't allow your heart to become callous and jaded.
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Continue to serve the Lord by serving his bride. He risked it all and now calls us to risk in love and service for others.
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And as we come to communion this morning, I want you to think in terms of this great love that has been poured out on you.
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It's been poured out by Jesus on his bride. He willingly laid down his life for the church.
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He died so that we might live for him. And if you've acknowledged Jesus as your king and you've asked him to save you from your sins, then come to one of the tables and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for you.
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And come and take a cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for you. We love.
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We risk because he loved and he risked for us.
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We will not disengage if we are following our Lord and Savior who refused to give up on us all the way to the cross.
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All the way to the cross. Let's love each other well here at Recast Church because of his great love given to us.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your love.
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I'm so unworthy of it. I've made messes. I've sinned.
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I've broken relationships and I've recoiled and I've been jaded and I've gone through seasons of cynicism and doubt and frustration with the church and frustration with people.
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Father, I pray that you would help us. You would help none of us in this room to lose sight of you.
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That it really is all about you and it's about your great love and transforming and changing us all one person at a time.
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Thank you that you brought us together into this church where we can be sharpened and refined. Where we can use our gifts and we can find that great joy and glory that is available to us in serving you through serving others.
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Where we can express your greatest commandment to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
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Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts to serve you with motives that are loving others and genuinely moved by the love that you've expressed for us.
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Thank you for the cross. Thank you that we can come to these tables and remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us.
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That it's only in his sacrifice that we can be made whole in Jesus' name. Amen.