1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5 The Joy and Pain of Ministry

Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series Hope Rising from the Book of First Thessalonians. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, 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 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.

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. We exist as a church to worship God together and to find more worshipers for his name, 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. Those of you that are aware of it, it is an acronym for our core values, and every time I say that, I contemplate and consider what it is that we exist and really drives us in the sense of our purposes as a church together.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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 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. 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.

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. I think a lot of times a church closes their doors and people are like, there's a church there?

I didn't even know that. We want to be a church that actually is indeed blessing our communities. The A stands for authenticity. We want to be a church where we can be ourselves, that you don't need to put a mask on or dress yourself.

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.

We want to be a church where we mourn with those who are mourning and we celebrate with those who are celebrating. 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.

We want you to have the free time and the energy and the opportunity to engage your neighbors, your co-workers, to invite people that are outside of this church gathering into your home to do life with them and share the truth.

And that is the T in recast stands for truth. And that simply means that we believe God's word is true and we seek to follow it wherever it may lead us. And sometimes the word of God honestly leads us into uncomfortable things, right?

Like you have you identified that in your life? Sometimes what you believe is over and what the Bible says is over here and to take this requires you to shed some things that have given you comfort over the years.

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 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.

The church in Thessalonica where he left a very, very young church and he's dealing with them. 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.

Our modern conception of church ought to be shaped by what scripture says about church. To be quite honest, I think many have fallen prey to a lax and sometimes faulty understanding of what the church is.

Many in our culture see church as a presentation to attend on Sunday morning like we're doing right now. 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 Tina Turner who echoes what our lives will communicate if we just merely attend church.

If it's a show to take in, then our lives will echo her famous phrase, what's love got to do with it? Some of you even know what I'm talking about. Others of you are younger going, what's that got to do with that?

What does that have to do with anything, really? But throughout the first two chapters of 1 Thessalonians, Paul has expressed deep love, deep affection and love for a small group of new Christians there in Thessalonica.

He's 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. They're only a few weeks in and their 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.

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. You see, here are the two things. To invest in genuine relationships with others is the pathway to deep joy and glory.

Let me say that again. To invest in genuine relationships with others is the pathway to deep joy and glory. But over and against that is a second point that we see in this text. To invest in genuine relationships with others is to risk, fear and disappointment.

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?

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.

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. 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?

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. 1 Thessalonians 2 .17 is where we're going to be, but we are going to read over into chapter three.

So it's 2 .17 through chapter three, verse five. Occasionally, I don't do this very often, but occasionally the guy in the 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 two over into chapter three, right where we're looking at. So again, 1 Thessalonians 2 .17, and we have some Bibles.

If anybody doesn't have a Bible, you can just raise your hand, and Eric's got some back here. He'll bring you a copy of God's Word so you can follow along. And 1 Thessalonians 2 .17 through three, verse five, recasts this as God's Word to us.

This is what he desires for you and I to hear from him today. But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, again and again.

But Satan hindered us, for what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 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 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.

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. 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.

The Joy and Glory of Relational Ministry

Let's pray before we come to the Lord and 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. And Father, without persecution, without the threat of outside forces coming in and telling us we can't gather here right now, Father, we live in a very privileged time and a very privileged place.

And Father, I pray that you would give us a boldness and a passion for ministry to one another, to ministry to our community. And Father, that we would risk, we would take risks in ministry to each other.

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.

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, Father, that we would raise our voices now together as one family and one body in praise and worship to you, 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 just one voice that we're taking in as a concert, but Father, it is 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 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. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated and I encourage you to get comfortable, just like normal.

If you need more coffee, more juice, or donuts, or if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, use the restrooms. The men's turn, go out the door, down the hallway, upstairs for the men's room, downstairs for the women's, use the restrooms on this end.

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 and you're tuned into 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 17 through chapter 3 verse 5, what we read earlier.

Some of you have walked in since then, and so I'll just get you oriented to the right page there and figure out where we're at. That way you can see that the things that I'm saying are kind of structured and ordered according to this text.

I think we probably all heard the adage, to kind of introduce this message, that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. How many of you have heard that before? You've heard that phrase.

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 quip or phrase is usually applied to romantic love in our culture, I would suggest that the Christian must have this heart that is willing to apply this principle to their lives.

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. Think about that. 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 great risk in relationships.

This, of course, becomes more and more challenging. I think some of you can testify, and I can as well. The older that I get, the more challenging it becomes to invest in others. The more I live, the more I accumulate heartache and pain from broken relationships, and some of you could testify about that.

You've been around enough to actually have hurt some and to have been hurt as well as to hurt others, and you recognize that relationships get messy and sticky. 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, the rest of you. Wow. Congratulations. Let me know what your secret is. Maybe you're the ones that are not risking. I don't know. I don't know. 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.

I don't know. And yes, I do, but I don't know how to stop. It's just kind of a habit. Ask for participation or something. But yeah, I think all of us, to some degree, if you've been alive, then you've been hurt at some point in relationships.

You recognize that there's brokenness in these things. And so what's your, what is your tendency when you experience pain? Well, there's a God-given reflex when the stove is too hot, or you touch the touch the wrong end of the pot, and you go to pull it out of there, and you don't have the, what do you call it, the hot pad in the right place.

Have you ever burned your hand in the oven? And what's your first response? I hope it's not to say bad words, but it's to recoil, right? 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.

We often, even when we experience emotional pain or relational pain, we recoil, we withdraw, we retreat. Some of us, some of you don't relate to that because you're like, no, that's not my tendency. I usually attack.

And you recognize that usually that, 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? Do you know what I'm talking about?

And sometimes both can happen within the same argument. Have you been there? 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.

But 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.

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. 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. And we have different capacities, right? Some of you in the room are introverts, and you have a lower threshold for relationship.

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? 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? 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. 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.

It is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being that is being redeemed by our Lord and Savior. So verse 17 sets up the stage once again for us. It feels like Paul, when he's writing the 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 Thessalonians, explaining what's going on inside of him. We're getting a little glimpse of the heart of the Apostle Paul here. And even in this, Paul is modeling what it means to be in relationship with others.

He is letting the Thessalonians and even us here in Matawan in 2017, he's letting us see some of his own heart. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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. Here is the good news about relationships. There is indeed great joy and glory in ministry and in relational ministry.

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.

But let me be careful, carefully explain what I mean by ministry. So we're all on the same page remembering what 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.

To many of us, it sounds like a very formal word. I'm a pastor, so I do ministry, 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.

Of course, all of us do ministry. So ministry is a formal volunteering relationship with the church or with some organization. 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.

Maybe you, 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 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. 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.

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. You think about most of you punch a clock or work for someone out there in in some kind of an employment.

Do you think of that as ministry? Do you consider that that's ministry? Or is ministry some kind of a formal thing or is it 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?

All of these different things that come together and is it is that ministry? I would suggest to you, yes, that it ought to be. 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 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 I mean there's something to that as well because sometimes that's ministry to your family, right? Like that's still ministry.

But there's something about doing that as a ministry unto God that is available to all of us if we would just kind of tweak our our thoughts about it for a moment and really render it to God as service to Him.

In verse 17, Paul expresses very strong relational ties to a group that he spent very little time with. He had no formal ministry relationship with them. He didn't sign up on a volunteer sheet to plan a church in Thessalonica.

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. 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.

Like that's kind of what happened is he went into the community and shared the gospel. People believed and began to follow him 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. In place of the formal professionalism that we often imagine around the ministry, Paul uses strong terms of relationship in these first four verses. He says things like, I was torn away from you.

It's not like, well, 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.

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? It'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.

They were separated by physical persecution and Paul was pushed out of Thessalonica by the fledgling church. 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.

So Paul calls them brothers in our text, emphasizing the fraternal bond that he felt to that new church. And by the way, the term that I said was very strong, the term used for torn away is an actual family word.

It's a familial word in the Greek language. It 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. 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, torn away from their presence, but not in heart, only in face-to-face presence. 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. All kinds of words of yearning and longing and love for these people that he ministered to. Paul loved the church, which isn't some organization, but it's people.

He loved the people. He wanted to go back and visit them, but he was prevented, he says, and even our whole team wanted to come to you, he says, to the Thessalonians, but he says, my whole team wanted to come to you, but even I, again and again, 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?

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. 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, 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. 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. I have a hunch that this prevention of Paul's team being able to get back to Thessalonica was probably a very practical thing. They were down in Athens. They wanted to trek up north again to see the Thessalonians, and they weren't able.

We do know for some reason Timothy wasn't prevented. One of them was able to get through. One of them was to break free, was able to break free, and so Timothy, we see that in verses one through five that Timothy wasn't prevented, but Paul was.

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.

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.

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.

When we invest ourselves in others, we find our glory and joy. When we invest in others, we find our glory and joy, and the glory and joy, hear me carefully, is not in ourselves. It's not in ourselves.

When you invest in others, it is not about you. It's not our giftedness that moves us. 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.

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 tank? Do you know what I'm talking about? When your attitude, and it doesn't bring glory and joy when you try to glorify yourself and bring joy to yourself.

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. That's where joy and glory comes from.

A genuine heart, heartless, selfless, not heartless, selfless service to others. Counterintuitive, right? Like one of the great paradoxes of life is when I pursue joy and try to get it for myself, I can't find it, but the moment that I forsake that pursuit and seek to bring joy to others, that's when I find my joy.

That's when I find Christ glorified in me. When I'm genuinely serving others, not for what I can get back, not for them to say, good job, Don, but for them to say, glory to God, glory to God. I think that there's a reality of that difficulty in our lives, trying to find the glory for ourselves.

The glory and joy of ministry is never truly found in our own capacity. Think about it this way. It's never found in our own capacity any more that the glory of your house or any house is in the hardness and flatness of the hammer that built it.

Is that where the glory of a house lies? How awesome tools were used to build it? No, the beauty is in the house, right? Like all the different rooms and structures and the way that it was put together and crafted well and all that, that's the cool part.

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? This is amazing. The glory and joy we find in investing in others, by the way, is in the others.

They will prove to be our glory and joy. Look at verse 19. What does 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 Lord and King?

And what will he rejoice? It's people. It's people. It is the glory of changed and transformed lives. 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.

He tells the Thessalonians, is it not you? They are his glory and joy. 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.

But I think this crown of boasting here is instead the idea that the Thessalonians will be there when Christ returns. 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.

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. When you think about standing before King Jesus in the end, what will be your hope?

What will be your joy? What will be your crown of boasting to offer to Jesus? 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?

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.

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.

I just, the kids ministry, we have so many volunteers that work with our kids all the way through. 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, I go through the litany of people that are serving.

I feel like we do fairly good at this and at the same time, I recognize that that's not all of us. 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, 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.

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, find that God-given area. 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.

What will be your glory and joy in regard to service to Jesus? What are you currently doing? 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.

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?

Do you do it out of love? Paul modeled a sacrificial love for the church, 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. Genuine ministry requires that we love others and serve one another and Paul had a deep longing for the people he ministered to. 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. We have to look at the other side of the equation. There is risk and fear involved in genuine ministry. 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.