Modeling the Mission

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Don Filcek; 1 Thess 2:1-8 Modeling the Mission

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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. Good morning,
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Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to welcome you to this Sunday morning gathering, this worship gathering here at Recast in Matawan, Michigan.
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Glad that you're here. At Recast Church, we believe that our primary mission is to worship
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God and to find more worshipers for his name. That is our stated mission, our stated goal, the reason we are a church, and that is written in our bylaws, that two -part, really one mission, to worship him and to find more worshipers for his name.
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And I think it's a good idea for us to take a moment from time to time and consider how those two halves of our mission come together to form one consistent goal for us as a church, especially as we come to a text like we're looking at this morning.
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We are called to worship him. Think about that. That's not just in song. That's not just singing. That's not just on Sunday morning.
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But worship is a lifestyle of giving honor and glory to God in all that we say and do.
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So we are called to worship him. We are called together to worship him. That's why we're here. That's why
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I hope that you're here this morning. But then the second part of that is we are also sent out to find more worshipers.
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This simple statement is meant to draw our attention to the reason why we gather together. I hope that you are here to worship our great
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God together this morning. But when we come together, we interact with each other.
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We sing some praise songs together. We hear from God's Word together. We believe it. We trust it.
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We, again, have all kinds of different interactions. But this is not the end of our mission.
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This is not the end of what we exist to do, is to put together a great Sunday morning gathering.
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That's not the extent of it. The goal is that we would draw strength together in our gathering here this morning, and then we are equipped to go out and to reach out to more, to find more to worship our great
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God together. Growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, the simple plan that we have here and have set forward many times for you should be moving us toward sharing ourselves and sharing the gospel message with others.
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And in our text this morning, Paul is going to hold up his life and ministry among the
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Thessalonians as a model for the way that we, each as individuals, ought to interact with the world around us as part of God's church, part of the global thing that God is doing, part of the local thing that God is doing here around us.
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Everyone in this room who has been saved by faith in Jesus Christ has been entrusted with significant and powerful good news to spread to others around us.
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You see, Paul was a model for a fearless faith that proclaimed the gospel at great personal risk to him.
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And this morning, I'm glad that we get the chance to dive in and learn from the guy that I would consider to be a master evangelist, the apostle
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Paul himself. And Paul, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will be our guide in a thoroughly biblical class in evangelism this morning.
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So maybe you didn't think you were signing up for an evangelism class, but this morning is one of those that comes straight from the text of scripture.
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Really no way to avoid talking about that and digging into how we should be sharing our faith with others.
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So let's open our Bibles, if you haven't already, to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, and we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 8.
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And if you don't have a Bible on your lap or a device that has a Bible app on it that you can navigate to 1
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Thessalonians, then if you could do me a favor and just raise your hand. It's not to call you out, it's to get a Bible into your hands.
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Mike has some there, and he's got them already open to the passage we're going to be looking at. So if you raise your hand, he'll bring you one, and you can follow along and read this together.
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And I love it when I hear shuffling pages, when I see people scrolling through and getting to the scripture, that we can read this and take it in together.
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Because at the end of the day, if there is anything that is valuable in our gathering that we do, it is to take in God's word.
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This is probably the most valuable thing that we do, is reading this together. Because when we're reading this, when
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I'm about to read this, we are going to hear from God himself. This is what God has desired to communicate to us this morning,
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Recast Church, a word from him. So listen in, listen up. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1 through 8.
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For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our
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God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive.
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But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak. Not to please man, but to please
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God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with the pretext for greed,
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God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others.
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Though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.
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So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves.
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Because you had become very dear to us. Let's pray.
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Father, in this text we get a model, we get an example of what evangelism looked like between Paul and his team and the
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Thessalonians. And although that can just seem like a lot of theory and some history woven into that, and it can seem at first glance kind of distant from our own lives, but as we pick this apart and as we see all that this text communicates to us about the gospel.
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Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts to to reignite a passion and a desire for the lost people that are around us, that we interact with in our culture, in our society, in our neighborhoods, in our workplace, in our family.
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And Father, that this would not at all be a message of guilt to anybody sitting here. That nobody would walk away from this place with a sense of, oh
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I didn't share it with this person, or I didn't do this, or I dropped the ball on that, or but at the end of the day, Father, that you would do business in our hearts, giving us a fresh vision for what you have entrusted us with.
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Father, the gospel is the power of salvation. It is a glorious and beautiful message that you have given to us, that it is our, our salvation comes to us through this message, and then we are entrusted with it to share it with others.
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And Father, this, this gospel message is simply Jesus Christ dying for us, paying the penalty for our sins, and rising again that by faith and trust in his sacrifice for us, we can be set free.
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So Father, I pray that you would not just merely set our hearts free, that you would not just merely set us free from sin, but you would even set our tongues free to worship you in song this morning.
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Father, that we would, we would praise you together in this gathering and in these songs because of the great freedom we have in Jesus Christ, your son, and it's in his name that I pray.
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Amen. Amen. You can go to be seated, and I just want to say thanks to Dave and the team for their willingness to sacrifice their time and energy to lead us in worship.
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I'm just grateful for the gifts and skills that God has given to them, and I've said this many times, but I'm going to say it again, you wouldn't want me to be the one leading worship, so just very thankful for them.
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I want to encourage you to get comfortable. Remember that there's more coffee and juice and donuts while supplies last, so you can get up and take advantage of that at any time.
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If the seat that you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, just last night I was in this room sitting in one of those chairs for about an hour, hour and a half, and I was like, oh, so that's what it feels like.
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So I got a taste of where you guys are at. So I mean it sincerely, if you need to get up and stand in the back and stretch out, whatever, the goal of this next half an hour or so is to keep our focus on God's word, and I recognize there's all kinds of things that could distract you from that, so let's try to remove those as much as possible.
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And I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1 through 8. We're going to walk through that text, and you're going to see there's going to be some structure and some organization, but we're going to march through those verses, and so it's beneficial for you to be able to reference them and see and check up on me and make sure the things
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I'm saying you're seeing there, they're not my words of wisdom, not my thoughts, but they're coming out of God's word.
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So start off with a question. When you find out that the sermon this morning is about evangelism, what comes to your mind?
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I want you to kind of think that through. What comes to your mind? How does that hit you? How does that strike you? Do you get a sense of guilt that washes over you, like so many will?
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Somebody will feel that sense of guilt that comes to your mind. Maybe a flood of previous sermons that you've heard about evangelism comes to mind, or there's all kinds of things that you could be experiencing in your heart.
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You could even be thinking in terms of lost opportunities, or missed chances, or thanksgivings, or Christmases where you just didn't have the guts to share that with your aunt, or you didn't say this to someone, or whatever, and so there's all kinds of thoughts that could be rummaging around in your mind, or is
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Don going to hit me with a two by four and make me feel guilty about not sharing my faith with others enough?
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Is that what we're going to do this morning? There's always more we could be doing. Would you agree with me on that?
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Is that true? Raise your hand if you think that's true. There's always more that we could be doing, and so that's a reality in our hearts.
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That's a reality of life in a fallen planet. There's always more we could be doing about anything. You have your causes.
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You have things that you believe in, and so you're trying to get other people into that, and there's all different kinds of things that we could be doing with our time, and I think we know in our minds that evangelism should be one of those things, but you can even just kind of say, well,
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I'm not an evangelist, but I know that I'm called to do that sometimes, and I'm not doing a great job, or whatever, but our text this morning is not here to make you feel guilty.
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It's not God's purpose in writing this. It's not why God holds Paul up as an example to us.
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It's not why Paul is explaining the way that he ministered the gospel in the city of Thessalonica.
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It is here to give you a model and some practical instruction, so let's take it with that attitude. Let's take it with a, why should we do evangelism, and let's just learn as we go through this text together this morning.
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Scripture does indeed want to motivate you. Did you realize that when you come encounter God's word, it's trying to motivate you.
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It's trying to correct you, but it doesn't want you to just rush off into blind action.
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Like, so often we could just take one verse and just jump on that verse and run off and try to apply it without instruction, and as a church we need to all be on the same page regarding our calling and mission, but we also need to be on the same page regarding our motivations and attitude toward that mission.
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Why do these things? What, and then how to do these things is kind of after that, but why, why should we be sharing our faith with others, and and what does that look like?
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And so in verses one and two, Paul draws the church's attention to his church planning team as a model for the church to follow.
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He says, kind of see, I want to show you the way that we did this when we came among you, and remember he's writing to the
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Thessalonians, and in verse one he begins by appealing to the success of their efforts there in that city.
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The Thessalonians were well aware that Paul, Silas, and Timothy came to them and brought the gospel, and it came down on them with power and conviction, and they, many of their lives were changed as a result of encountering the gospel message through Paul.
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But the message they brought, he says in verse one, was not in vain. It wasn't empty. The gospel was, it didn't fail in that community, but it powerfully transformed many people's lives there in Thessalonica.
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And all throughout our text, Paul makes it clear that he's drawing his audience's, their attention to the things that they already know.
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He says, as you already know, multiple times, and this is why I'm saying that Paul is holding himself up as a model or an example.
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Why do you, why would you ever tell people something that they already know? Why would you rehearse the history? Why would you rehearse things over and over again?
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And I would suggest to you, it's often because you want them to, you want it to sink in. You want them to follow that. You want them to take that on as teaching and to be changed by it.
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I mean, some of you have raised children or are in the process of various stages of raising children, and I am like a broken record to my kids.
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I don't know, anybody feel like you're a broken record to your kids? Like maybe you're in that stage, maybe you've been there, maybe you have been a kid and you felt like your parents were a broken record to you, but repeating things that they have heard time and time again, they sometimes even draw my attention to it.
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Dad, don't you, don't you have anything else to say? Like if we could, you say the same things over and over again, like get a job or something like that.
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I don't know, but, but the fact of the matter is we repeat ourselves because we want the truth to sink in and change them, right?
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Like that's why we keep doing that. And then, and that's what Paul is doing here, he's repeating himself. So let me structure our text this morning.
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This is, this is going to blow you guys away for just a second, but hang with me. We've got some time here and we're going to, we're going to work through this, but I have, are you ready for 18 points to this message?
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Did anybody just get overwhelmed a little bit? So those of you that are taking notes, write small. Okay, write small, especially if you're going to use the back of that sheet that you have there.
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But those of you who've been around here for a while, you've probably figured out that I like variety a little bit. I like to do things a little bit differently.
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I'm not married to the three -point sermon, and as a matter of fact, sometimes I'm sure you've experienced that my, sometimes my sermons are just kind of a running commentary with some applications at the end.
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But this is a new one for me, so sit tight. I don't think I've ever got to utter that phrase. We're going to have eight, an 18 -point sermon this morning.
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So it, really the text gives us 18 points or lessons about evangelism that the
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Apostle Paul models for us here, that he modeled in the way that he interacted with the Thessalonians. He models it in his teaching, the things that he says, and so these are, again, 18 lessons about evangelism.
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By the way, I think that if you're really looking at the text as I'm going through these 18, you could probably even find a couple more.
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I've combined a couple of things here and there. It originally was 22, so we're down to 18. So sit tight.
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Let's dive in the deep end and see what God has for us. The first thing that we identify here in the text is boldness.
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No surprises there that when Paul talks about evangelism, he addresses the issue of boldness.
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Remember, evangelism is just the sharing of the good news that Jesus came to save us. Let's make sure that we're on the same page with what we're talking about.
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We're talking about lessons of evangelism. We're talking about lessons of telling others the good news that Jesus Christ came to pay the price for them.
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And in boldness, we already knew that it takes boldness for you to share your faith with others and to explain the gospel.
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Did you already know that? You already had some sense of that because you probably at some point in your life felt some kind of tension, maybe even potentially fear over an opportunity to convey the truth about the good news to others.
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But I mean, honestly, we live in a culture that is radically opposed to the gospel, right? People are becoming more and more closed off to the belief that they're sinners and that they need a savior.
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We live in a culture that might even laugh at us for sharing the gospel. They might mock us.
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They might even stop liking us if they knew that we believe that they need
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Jesus Christ to save them. You might have caught a little bit of sarcasm in that paragraph.
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They might even laugh at us. Because in verse 2, Paul reminds the Thessalonians that he had just come from suffering and shame in Philippi before he walked into Thessalonica.
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Before he came among them, he had just left suffering and shame in another city for the cause of the gospel.
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He had shared the gospel, and it's not that they laughed at him. It's not that they mocked him.
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It's not that they kind of gave him a hard time at work from that point on or, you know, it kind of got a little awkward around Thanksgiving when they got together as a family.
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They stripped his clothes off his back and beat him with sticks and imprisoned him because he shared the gospel.
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How many of you might have second thoughts about sharing that message ever again if that was your experience?
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You go into town. You think you're sharing good news with them. You think you're telling them the way of salvation. You believe it.
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You trust it. You know it to be true, and you go and you share it with them, and they beat you for it and put you in prison.
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And I mean, he's injured. Like this is not a, you know, not a little, you know, slap on the wrist kind of thing.
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A significant abuse, and then you feel called to move on and do that again.
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Like, does that seem bold? Does that seem like a strong confidence that Paul had in this good news?
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I believe that by the time he gets to Thessalonica, the wounds on his back were not even fully healed from his abuse in Philippi.
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And he says, I came among you and boldly with boldness declared the gospel to you.
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He was bold in the face of beatings, bold in the face of imprisonment, bold in the face of torture.
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And so I don't think I need to express too much what Paul might think of us when we fear someone mocking us because of our faith.
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I think Paul might well use the snowflakes for those of us who are afraid of getting hurt by a harsh glance from someone.
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Oh, they might look at me wrong. They might not like me anymore. They might not listen to me anymore. Paul modeled boldness that should inform the way that we carry this glorious message to others.
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The second thing, Paul's boldness, he says, my boldness in sharing the gospel comes from God. He didn't muster internal courage.
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He wasn't a glutton for punishment. He didn't even enter the town of Thessalonica with a misplaced trust that lightning certainly can't strike in the same place twice.
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I mean, you know, I was just beaten in Philippi, so what are the chances they're gonna beat me in Thessalonica? Not very good.
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I mean, what are the chances I'm gonna get a two for two on this one? Because boldness, it says right in the text, was in our
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God. That's where his boldness came from. In other words, Paul shared the gospel because he knew it was
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God who was calling him to it. Paul knew that the calling of God is the motivation to declare the gospel, and Paul modeled what it looks like to share it for God.
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He was sharing it for him. It was his service rendered to God. Third, Paul understood that the gospel is
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God's gospel. In verse two, that is exactly what he calls it. He says it's the gospel of God.
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The good news is a story of God's plan to redeem humanity and to reconcile anyone who would believe and trust in him.
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Paul understood it was good news that God had made a way for us to be forgiven and brought together with him, and that it was
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God's message that he carried. It belonged to God. It was his. It is his.
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So Paul modeled a hard attitude that this message we bring is not our message.
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It's something we've invented, not something that mankind has come up with. It's God's message that we're entrusted with, and that should inform the way we think about our calling to spread it to others.
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What are we spreading to others? A message from God. What does that make us when we convey the gospel? A very messenger for the
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Almighty, right? Isn't that an amazing thing when you think about it?
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Fourth, Paul acknowledged that the countercultural message of the gospel often comes with conflict. Of course, he already mentioned that he had to come with boldness.
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Boldness, why? Because it often does bring conflict. He was not only shamed and persecuted in Philippi, but there was also much conflict in Thessalonica when he declared the gospel among them.
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Some received it, and even in Thessalonica others violently rejected it. The gospel message,
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I don't know if you've noticed this, the gospel moves people to radical extremes. Have you noticed that? When conveyed accurately and correctly, when the implications of it are fully measured out to a human, it causes a response, and it's often a radical response.
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The one who brings the message to some is the bringer of life, and to others they are the lightning rod of conflict, right?
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It seems like people respond in very hostile ways or in joyful ways to the gospel, and it seems like there's very little in the middle if it's presented in the way that we'll see in these 18 points.
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Paul modeled a reasonable attitude toward conflict and expected it as a messenger for God, and that should inform our expectations as we go out to declare the good news.
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We shouldn't be surprised when some don't like the message that we have to bring. That shouldn't surprise us. Fifth, in verse 3,
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Paul calls the gospel an appeal, an interesting word for the gospel, and one that informs us about what we should be conveying to others.
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The definition of the word appeal is a serious or urgent request, a serious or urgent request, and this ought to remind us that the gospel is more than just conveying facts.
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I think a lot of times we think we've had a gospel conversation when we've shared facts with somebody. Jesus died on the cross.
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Jesus rose again. We've shared some facts with them. Now we've shared the gospel with them, but sharing the gospel is an appeal that is a serious or urgent request to them.
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You should always have an urgent request with it. Jesus died for you, and you should respond by faith and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.
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It's a request. It requires some action. Paul modeled a gospel presentation that made his listeners aware that he was asking from them an urgent response.
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When we leave the gospel at the realm of facts, we leave people room to say what we often so often hear in our culture.
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That's good for you. It's good for you. You need that. You seem to believe that you need that, and that's fine.
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Okay, good for you. It's just not my gig. I got my own stuff. I've got my own ways to process it.
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I, you know, I light some candles. I do some yoga. I do some things that provide me some inner peace from time to time, and just try to get a little quiet time in the car on the way or whatever, you know, and I do my thing.
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You do the gospel thing. I do my thing. Great, and that's what happens when we only leave it at the realm of facts.
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Why do we like to leave it at the realm of facts? That avoids conflict, right? Why don't we experience more conflict?
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Why are we sitting here going, Don, I don't really know what you're talking about, because when I've shared the gospel, it's not been much conflict, and I think in part because we don't personalize it.
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People are fine believing that you think you need a savior. Did you know that?
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Almost everybody in your life is fine. Almost every human that you've ever met is okay with you thinking you need a savior.
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Where do the gloves come off when you tell them they need one too? That's, and that's, that's a necessary component of conveying the gospel.
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Listen, I'm not talking about myself. I'm already in with Christ. I'm talking about you. You need Jesus. There is no hope aside from him.
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They should understand that clearly when you finish. If you're, if you're sharing the gospel with somebody, there should be a full understanding that you think it's not going to go well for them if they don't embrace this.
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There's an urgency. There's an appeal that is going on here that is significant.
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People tend to get more offended when you tell them you think they need a savior.
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You ever experienced that in your life? You know what I'm talking about? The sixth thing,
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Paul trusted in the true gospel. He was confident that his message was without error because he received it from God, and we also have received the gospel from God in a different way than Paul even did.
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We've received it in writing. The glory of the way that we come to understand the gospel now in the privileged age that we've been raised in where we live today is that you can study it.
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You can read it over and over and over again. You don't need to receive the gospel secondhand at all.
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You can pick up a bible and read it for yourself, and you can receive it firsthand from the revelation of God.
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Paul modeled trust in the good news of Jesus Christ, and we can also trust it as we share it with others.
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Seventh, Paul presented the pure gospel, the true gospel. Sixth, the seventh, the pure gospel.
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He acknowledged that the message has no impurity in it, but it is indeed a pure revelation from God.
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Some even today will accuse Christians of having a faith that encourages sin. Well, if it's just by grace, if that's all that it is and you don't have to work for it and it doesn't depend on you at all, then at the end of the day, can't you just go ahead and live the way that you want?
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If it's really by grace, you can do whatever you want and just be okay. But this gospel of grace is the pure good news, and I would suggest to you that it takes faith to trust that the love of God expressed in the gospel of grace is a better motivation to a changed life than the law.
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Now, that seems kind of complicated, but the thing is often what we want to do is we want to sprinkle some add -ons in there to make it a little bit more palatable to people or just to even, like, it kind of in a way demonstrates our lack of trust in it by heaping on other things.
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We'll do this and this and then you can be saved. Do this and then do this. Make sure you attend the right church.
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Make sure you read the right books. Make sure you have the right amount of quiet time. Make sure that you give to the church.
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And all of these things that we could add on ultimately demonstrate our lack of trust in the gospel as pure, that that's all you need.
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We tend to often, if we're honest in our own hearts, sometimes we even second -guess that ourselves, right? Sometimes we're like, or at least our lifestyle shows something that we're really trusting in something else.
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The gospel is pure. Do you trust that the gospel is enough or are you tempted to add more to it?
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Paul trusted the pure gospel. Eighth, Paul modeled sharing the gospel without a mask of deception.
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Many false teachers in the world present a false gospel that has a deception at its core. Paul expressed a pure conscience as he brought a true and pure gospel to the world around him.
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Paul modeled a motivation to spread the gospel that was absent of any deceptions. He wanted to bring the truth to people around him.
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Ninth, you guys were halfway there. Do you think we're gonna make it? Are you hanging in there? Okay, all right.
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We're gonna make it. We're gonna get through these. Paul had a strong sense that he had been entrusted with the gospel.
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It's a trust. We may be tempted to think that this approval and entrusting in verse four was unique to him.
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Oh sure, Paul was entrusted with the gospel. He was an apostle. Of course, he had to do that.
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And that's just talking about his personal calling. But we see clearly throughout the
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New Testament that gospel ministry, this thing that we're calling evangelism, the sharing of the good news, is for all who are called
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Christians. Did you know that that's a part of your calling? A significant part of your calling? To share the gospel with others.
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It's not just Paul's work. It wasn't just the apostle's work. It's not just pastor's work. It's not just professional evangelists.
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It's not just Bill Smith with Youth for Christ or Nathan with Young Life or me with Recast. It's all of us.
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We can't do that. We can't. There's people that you can reach. Did you know there's people you can reach that I can't?
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There's people that you're in an association. I mean, if you take, and I said this many times, but if you were to take the sphere of influence, if you were just to take even just your top 20 in your relationships, do you realize how far -reaching it would be in a room like this?
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And how little, how surprisingly little, there'd be a lot of overlap, right? Like you know somebody that I know, and you can kind of see that on Facebook.
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And have you ever had that happen, like on social media, where you're like, how do you know this person? Because I know that person from here.
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And you're like, no way, we were college buddies. Oh my goodness, no way, I worked with him for a while or whatever. You ever have that happen? There'd be some overlap, but I think we'd be shocked to see how far -reaching if everybody just wrote down the top 20 people that come to mind as far as contacts or relationships.
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And it's broad, and there are people that God has placed in your life to reach out to that I'll never meet.
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I won't get that opportunity. So a significant part of Paul's motivation for speaking the gospel came from his calling.
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And let this moment right now serve as your calling. You are called. You are called to share the gospel with others.
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And his calling, by the way, was nothing less than the Almighty trusting him to proclaim it.
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Paul's understanding of the gospel as a trust from God should inform our attitude towards bringing this message to those around us.
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God is trusting you with this message to proclaim to others. God has entrusted you with the very message of reconciliation in life.
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He thinks pretty highly of you to do that, right? He's trusting in us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
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I mean, he could have come up with all different kinds of ways to convey the gospel. Every, you know, on the last day of every month, it could be written in the sky, right?
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Everybody, come on out, come on out and see the message is coming, whatever. I mean, he could have come up with any host of ways, but instead what does he choose?
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Relationship. People who are redeemed by him to convey that glorious, joy -giving message in life, not only with words, but in relationship with others.
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We're going to see that as we move down through this list. Some of these are extremely relational in the way that they impact the way that we convey the gospel and what the gospel should be.
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God is trusting you to proclaim his truth. Tenth, it's a spoken word. The gospel must be spoken.
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We talk about living the gospel. Sure, live well in front of people, do good, but the gospel is not building wells in Africa.
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It's not giving five bucks to the guy holding up the cardboard sign on the off -ramp at Westnidge. It's not doing a super good job with a super good attitude for your boss.
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It's not even just merely smiling at everyone on Monday morning as you come into the office. Good luck with that.
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The gospel requires the verbal communication that Jesus died and rose again.
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There's no other way around it. It is hard to mime the gospel. In the middle of verse 4,
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Paul declares that it was a spoken word. Eleventh, we're going to really take 11 through 14 together in that they all express a common, the common ground is that they're all wrong motives for sharing the gospel, wrong reasons to share the gospel.
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Well, I think commonly most all of us need is a positive motivation to share the gospel, but these would be some faulty motives that people down through the ages and down through the history have proclaimed
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God's word for bad or ill motives. And to be quite honest, all these are probably best applied in your analysis to those in leadership.
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And I say that only because it's unlikely that you would be motivated to share the message out of greed, out of flattery, or for your own glory, because those are not likely things that are coming to you if you share the gospel.
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And I want to just confess directly that these are things that are the struggle of a pastor.
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These are my struggles. That's the struggle of the professional minister or pastor. Why am
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I doing what I'm doing? Why am I standing up here conveying the word week in and week out? So in these four,
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I'm placing my life on display for all of you. I'm opening up to the critical eye here to say, am
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I doing these things? Which is honestly, quite honestly, a routine terror on the shoulders of every pastor is being in the spotlight.
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We are on display, and the text of scripture occasionally, intentionally shines a spotlight on the leader and says, not for glory, but for analysis.
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Make sure that your leaders are doing things well. And I would be wise to not shrink back from preaching texts like this, even though it just seems kind of weird to be standing up here saying, check me how to make sure
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I'm doing okay. As you consider these things, please be mindful of your own hearts as you consider how well
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I'm doing with these things. I am called to not speak the good news, to not stand up and declare
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God's word in order to please people. Now that seems kind of weird, right?
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Like, I mean, you're supposed to analyze how much I'm trying to please you, by the way. That's kind of convoluted, and at the same time, it's what the text is indicating for us.
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I am not to speak God's words in flattery, or with greed, or for my own glory.
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There's a way to preach to try to get likes. There's a way to preach and to soften things to try to get you guys to be more comfortable with me.
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I wouldn't really ever push your buttons. I'd never rub you the wrong way. I would never rebuke you. I would never correct you.
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I would just make you feel like it's your best life now. I would just try to make it clear that everything was all for you and not against you, and just make you walk out of here feeling good about yourself every
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Sunday. Could we grow a church like that? There's a few empty seats over here. Could we fill some of these empty seats with that message?
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What do you think? Do you think we could? I really do. I think that we could. I think we could grow a church on that basis.
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I think just, if we could just get everybody feeling super great about themselves, and word spreads, and everybody's like, oh, you want to feel good on Sunday morning?
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Come over here. He's just, he's kind of funny. I mean, boy, wouldn't it be great if I was just a stand -up comic, and I could just make everybody laugh at, you know, just like that, and all of that kind of stuff.
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And some of you are like, yeah, why don't you do that? But I believe that these four things in number 11 through number 14 are four significant issues in the church at large today.
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All of these are temptations for church leaders and for preachers. Pleasing people and speaking words of flattery to make them like the speaker is a reality in many pulpits.
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And I'm going to be honest. I work hard to try to preach the truth of God's word, even at the risk of offending.
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Some of you maybe have been on the receiving end of that offense. I don't, I don't know. I don't get a lot of responses,
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I think, when somebody's offended. You probably go and end up talking to somebody else about it. I don't know. But I remind myself in the last moments before I step up here every week that I'm coming up here to serve my
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King. I am not even here first to please you, to make you laugh, or even to give you spiritual nuggets of goodness.
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I am here under the compulsion of the God who has called me to preach. Equally, I'm not to be motivated by greed or glory.
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The good thing in the way that the modern church works is my salary is set, so I don't make more money if I do a really good job on Sunday.
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But I do, I don't know how that works. That might be the opposite, right? You want to give some incentive there,
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I don't know. But I do think that the temptation still exists in America and that, simply this, I've never met a pastor.
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And I'm saying this, maybe some of you could come up and correct me. Maybe you could give me a great illustration that would encourage my soul. I have yet to meet a pastor who moved from a church to pastor another church.
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He was called, you know, he was preaching in a church and he was called to go somewhere else and that place paid him less.
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I haven't heard that. I don't know that man. The man who the Holy Spirit has said, you know, I need you to go from this church to this church and this church wasn't bigger.
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Do you know what I'm saying? And I see that a lot and I see that in my colleagues and I see that in other pastors and I could see the tendency in my own heart.
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I mean, would I leave here to go for a smaller church? How does that work and all that? And at the same time, you might ask yourself this question.
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If the Holy Spirit is the one who is really calling, then that ought to happen from time to time, right?
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We ought to be aware of that more often because it's not about the money, it's not about the pay, but it's about the
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Spirit moving people where they need to go. And of course, glory is always a temptation. I have the blessing and benefit of not particularly enjoying my own preaching, so I'm not that prideful about it, but I always need to be vigilant to make sure that I am proclaiming
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God's Word for His glory and never for my own. Paul modeled gospel ministry in a way that showed that we need to please
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God and not people. Paul avoided words of flattery, telling people what they wanted to hear, and he avoided ministering for greed.
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And lastly, he did not seek, 14, he did not seek the glory for himself. At the end of verse 6, he even identifies it as an apostle.
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He could have made demands, but he chose not to so that that wouldn't interfere with the message.
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The 15th, and as we go from 15, go 15 through 18, really these 18 truths about evangelism crescendo here at the end from verse 15 on, and really 15 through 18 ought to begin to crash in our ears with conviction as we begin to see
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Paul's, the core of his heart in love for the lost. Our 15th point, and just that I'm saying the phrase 15th point shows that I'm not organizing this message to please you guys, but Paul modeled gentleness.
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Despite his reputation as a hard and tough individual, some of you maybe have even, those of you who have maybe kicked it around in Christian circles for a while have heard it said that Paul was a pretty rough and tumble individual, was very exacting and very direct with people.
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And as you study, you do get a feel for him, and so really understanding that he reveals himself here and refers to himself as gentle among the
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Thessalonians is a pretty telling thing, a pretty big deal, because I don't think that was natural to his personality.
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As you study him, as you read him, as you read the things that he wrote, he was a very confident individual.
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No question in my mind that he would have been very up there as a type A personality, a go -getter, who probably had to struggle with a tendency in his own life to run over people in ministry.
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And that he identifies himself here as gentle among them, and then he uses his model, the model for gospel ministry among the
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Thessalonians was a nursing mother with her child. He was cautious, careful, and tender with them.
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And I just want to ask you, I want you to really answer this question in your mind. How would people who know you best, people in your workplace, people in your neighborhood, but people who see you out and around that are not believers, your extended family, your neighborhood, how would they characterize your attitude regarding spiritual things?
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I've met people who are a pleasure to be around until you begin to speak about spiritual things, and then they come off as arrogant, belligerent, stubborn, close -minded, callous.
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The words could go on, and I'm talking about people who refer to themselves as Christians. I'm talking about people who would identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ.
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Many people think, and here's part of it, I think that this does creep in, and we've got to be careful about the way we think about things. I think many people in the church think so much about this life as spiritual war.
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They've heard it before. How many of you know that this life is spiritual war? Have you ever heard that before? And it is, it is.
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There is a genuine enemy, but how often do we think of this life as spiritual war, and we forget that our battle is not against flesh and blood?
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Our enemy is not the unbeliever. It never has been, never should be, never will be.
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Whether we think it is or not, our enemy is not the unbeliever. Our enemy is the of darkness that hold unbelievers in bondage.
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There are prisoners entrapped by the evil one. Paul was gentle.
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Hear me carefully. Paul was gentle among unbelievers, gentle among them.
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As a matter of fact, the most angry we ever see Jesus get, Jesus, as Paul's model,
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Paul's example, as all of our example, the most angry we ever see Jesus get is toward self -righteous religious jerks.
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It's the most angry he ever gets. You don't see him getting up in the face of prostitutes, turncoat tax collectors, getting up and shouting down adulterers.
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Instead, you see him seeking to rescue them from the clutches of darkness. Paul modeled a gentleness toward unbelievers.
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Sixteen, Paul modeled a very strong phrase in verse eight that really moved me in my heart this week, because I had to assess this for myself and really think through this phrase.
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This is a powerful phrase that if you don't get anything else out of this message, grab a hold of this expression that he uses.
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He expressed more than just gentleness towards these idolatrous pagans. Remember, these are people who literally bow down to idols.
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The most loathsome of things that you could do to a person raised and trained in Judaism, like Paul was, was to worship an idol, to worship the pagan gods, and that's who these people are.
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And he says in verse eight that he had an affectionate desire for them.
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This is a word about appetite. This is a word about hunger. This is like a drive in Paul, an affectionate, loving hunger to see them in the kingdom.
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Think about that phrase, affectionate desire. What does that figure into your view of the lost around you?
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Does that describe your relationship with anyone else in your life that is not a believer? Regarding evangelism, who are you affectionately desirous toward?
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Who do you desperately and lovingly hunger to see in the kingdom of God? Since we started
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Recast, there's always been someone on my prayer list that I'm lovingly hungry to see come to faith in Christ.
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It's been a joy to see some of those people move off of that list into the realm of believer, and then
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I can add them to another list where I pray for their spiritual growth, and many of you in this room are on that list.
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I'm praying for you for your spiritual growth, but it's been helpful to have a list of people I'm regularly praying for.
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That I increasingly, as I pray for them, I find a longing in my heart, an appetite, a hunger, a desire, an affectionate desire for them to see them in the kingdom.
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Paul had a hunger to see the Thessalonians come into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Who are you desperately longing to take with you to eternal glory?
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17th and the homestretch now, Paul didn't only share the gospel with them.
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Part of sharing the gospel is sharing yourself. They gave of themselves, Paul and his missionary team gave of themselves in genuine relationship to the
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Thessalonians. When we first started Recast Church, and it was just a small core group of us at that back in that stage,
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I came across a word in one of the books that we read about church planning, and it's a phrase that stuck with me.
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It's refrigerator rights. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of refrigerator rights. Have any idea what refrigerator rights are? The basic premise of refrigerator rights is that all close friendships cross a significant bridge at some point, and if they're really progressing, there comes a celebrated point when you have the right to each other's refrigerator.
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You have the right to each other. Do you know what I'm talking about? Now, if some of you in the room, if you were inviting me over to your house, and I just like kind of rummaged through your fridge, you'd be like, bro, you're my pastor, but you're weird, right?
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You know what I'm talking about, but think about people in your life who have refrigerator rights.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And you wouldn't think twice about them helping themselves to a pop in your fridge, right?
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It wouldn't even cross your mind if they walked in, check out the fridge, what you got? You'd be like, cool, let's have something, right?
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And there's a line that you cross there, a significant awesome bridge, right?
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And the challenging question I was posed with early on as a church planner, I pose to you now, how many unbelievers in your life have refrigerator rights?
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How many unbelievers in your life have refrigerator rights in your home?
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Who are you doing life with in a way that they are close to you, even though they don't believe what you believe?
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But you're doing life together, you're working together, you're pushing towards something together, towards understanding and towards the conveyance of good things.
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And that leads to our final point, a loud, simple, powerful point.
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Love them first. Love them first.
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The love for the Thessalonians made it much easier for Paul to share the gospel. He loved them before they gave their life to Jesus.
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And I think this is in part because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd. And the hunger to see them come to faith made it all the more easy to share the gospel when the time came.
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This has genuinely happened to me within the past couple of months. Now, two times, it happened the day that I was sitting in the coffee shop, writing this very sermon.
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I wrapped up this sermon, I had already written this paragraph, and then it happened again, sitting at the coffee shop.
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I've been praying, I have a list of people, I mentioned that before, I pray for people that are lost.
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I pray for them by name. I was praying for someone that morning, two times this happened,
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I'm praying for them in the morning, they walk into the coffee shop that exact same day. This time, they sat down with me.
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They literally said, is there anybody sitting here? I'm getting ready to send out my sermon, I've got it. Then I send it out to the elders and the staff for their review and different things.
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And so I'm getting ready to send it out. And before I even had a chance to send it out, they said, can I sit here with you? For an hour, we talked about the gospel.
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For an hour, they initiated the questions, they had the questions, they literally sat down and said, I've just been really stressed and working through some things, and I was just wondering,
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I just don't have peace, I just don't have hope. Like, wow. And in part, I was ready for that opportunity because I was already affectionately desirous for them.
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I was already praying for them. I was ready to share the gospel because they were already in my heart, they were already on my mind.
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Who are you praying for? That they would come to understand the salvation that is available to them in Jesus.
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So there's been a lot in here. And if I were you, I'd be overwhelmed. Go ahead and feel free. Raise your hand if you're a little bit overwhelmed by 18 points.
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Be honest. Okay, really? Really? I was kind of expecting a little bit more than that. There is, there's a ton here.
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And so what we've done is we've actually printed these 18 points that you can take with you, and kind of, my goal, by the way, is not that you would just like, just hit all 18 of these.
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It's that you would synthesize these in your own life. That you would actually be able to look down that list and just kind of take assessment of where you're at and the evangelism and the sharing the gospel with others.
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If you'd benefit from that, they're available at the welcome table on your way out. If we run out of those, then you can just email me and I can forward them on to you, or email the office, and we can get that.
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But putting these 18 points together in our minds and hearts should result, and this is the application, this is the point, it's not to just take each one of these 18.
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I'm not looking for you to walk out here with 18 points of application. This is your application. Should result in a loving, affectionate desire to see people around us come to faith in Christ.
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And the one primary application for all of these points is to boldly go out and share the gospel from a place of love, humility, and correct motives.
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That's the point of this text. The heart of our message is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And so we come to communion this morning, and if you're in with Christ, then I encourage you to come to one of these tables and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for you.
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You deserved eternal punishment. The eternal Son of God took that on himself, dying and paying the price for you.
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Take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed in your place. And that's why we come to this table, that's why we do this, is for those who have asked
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Jesus Christ to be your Savior. This is for you. If you're here and you're not quite sure about that, then what you would be doing is coming to the table, and if you take that without being a believer, you're basically testifying to something that isn't true of you.
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And that's why we just ask that you would just sit back, take in the song, but don't feel like you just everybody else is getting up, so you get up and go too.
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Because at the end of the day, this is a testimony. The person who goes up and takes the cracker and takes the juice says, this is reflective of what has happened to me.
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If you don't believe that that's true, then it's not reflective of you. So that's why we ask for you to just sit and take in the song and just think about these things.
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If you're here and you're not a believer, I'd encourage you to come and talk with me afterwards, especially if you have questions about the gospel and how you can be brought into a right relationship and reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.
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But I'd also encourage all of you, if you're in with Christ, come to the table with resolve to not let the blessing stop with you.
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Pass it along, applying these principles we have studied this morning about evangelism and testifying of the goodness of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that you have entrusted this to us.
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This is a glorious and beautiful message of salvation and hope. Not everybody will receive it that way, but Father, it is good news one way or the other, and to those who would receive it as bad news, our only prayer is that you would change them, that you would transform them, that you would be moving in people's hearts and minds to draw them to the
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Savior Jesus Christ. Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity to take the cracker and the juice to remember the body and blood of Jesus shed for us.
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Father, I pray that you would move us to joy in this, and Father, that you would displace any guilt that people would feel in this room with love for you, that the motivation for going out from here and sharing faith with others would not be a shred of guilt or a shred of fear, but would all be motivated by love for you and love for others, because we recognize that the only hope for the world is the cross of Jesus Christ, and that is what we celebrate as we come to communion this morning.