1 Thessalonians 2:1-13
Several years ago Joel Osteen appeared on Larry King and was asked a straight-forward question about the necessity of believing in Jesus to be saved and he could not bring himself to say that it was only through faith in Jesus that there is hope of eternal life. Several weeks ago Pat Robertson was asked on his program what a man whose wife had dementia ought to do about his sexual attraction to another woman. Robertson said that the man should divorce his wife who wasn’t really there anyways.
I don’t know what you expect out of preachers-- but at the very least shouldn’t they be able to call sin, sin and point people to Jesus Christ as their Savior?!
This is the 19th Sunday after Pentecost—not “Bash TV Preacher Sunday”—but on this day we ARE led by God’s Word to think about what we ought to expect from those who are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ-- and to guide our meditation on God’s Word we have the example of Paul, preaching at Thessalonica. He wrote:
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 God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. Since that appearance on Larry King, Joel Osteen has appeared on the show many times. When asked about abortion—he said, “You know Larry, I don’t really go there.” When asked about using the word “sinner” he said: “I don’t use it.” When asked about homosexuality he tried everything to keep from answering the question. And watching him, what you yearn for is boldness to clearly say: Jesus Christ is the way to salvation and sin is sin.
This guy has every God-given gift and ability in the world and yet he cannot bring himself to BOLDLY declare the truth of God’s Word without excuse or equivocation and that is really too bad because boldness is a necessary quality in a preacher. Paul had it.
Despite being beaten and cursed and shouted down—ridiculed by the intellectuals of the day—and ostracized by his own people—Paul preached the Gospel with boldness. He knew personally the consequences of a life apart from God and he knew the joy of having his sins forgiven and not for one minute was he going to “hem and haw” when it came to the truth of God’s Word—because the salvation of souls was at stake.
Boldness in preaching is especially needed in our world today. We live in a culture where you are free to believe whatever you want so long as you never say anyone else is wrong. It takes boldness and courage to take a stand on the Word of God and preach the Gospel unashamedly. But where does that boldness come from? Paul wrote:
Our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed— God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. A couple of weeks ago at the Values Voters Summit, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas Texas told the assembled crowd that they ought to vote for Rick Perry rather than Mitt Romney because Perry is a Christian and Romney is a Mormon. From the uproar that ensued, Jeffress was invited to appear on all of the national news shows to defend his statement.
Now I have no doubt that Jeffress is a very fine pastor and a very fine preacher—First Baptist—Dallas is one of the most prominent pulpits in the United States—but in that moment and the interviews that followed—he missed a God-given opportunity to tell a national audience about Jesus --which is the one thing God has called him to do.
This upcoming election is important—I hope all of you do your Christian duty and vote—I hope your values as Christians inform your vote—but this election IS NOT more important than preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the very thing that Pastor Jeffress and every other Christian pastor has been called to do, as Paul says: approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel.
Out of all of the billions of people on the face of the earth, Christian preachers are called by God to do one thing: and that is to call sinners to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That message has been entrusted to preachers and they should remember—that having called them to that singular task upon which the salvation of the world depends—God then looks on as they conduct their ministry.
God is a witness to their preaching and so Paul says that the Christian preacher makes it his aim to please God rather than men. This is where boldness in preaching comes from—the recognition that Almighty God has entrusted preachers with the message of salvation through which people can come to faith and be saved and his sole duty is to please God in carrying out that ministry by preaching the Gospel boldly.
Preachers lose this boldness when their gaze becomes fixed on pleasing their hearers rather than pleasing God.
They do it because they fear their members—they do it because they want their approval—they do it because they don’t want to offend anyone—they do it so they don’t lose their income. But no matter what the reason, to preach for the approval of men rather than the glory of God destroys everything that the ministry stands for—and that is the salvation of souls through faith in Jesus. Paul wrote:
We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. In today’s Gospel lesson, the Pharisees came to Jesus with—what they thought—was an academic question about the Law. But Jesus wasn’t content to leave it at that—he wasn’t sent by the Father to engage in philosophical discussions—he was sent to proclaim the truth of salvation-- and so he didn’t let their question remain at academic arms’ length-- but brought it back to himself as the Savior of the world and their personal need for salvation.
To become a pastor in our church is an arduous academic path. It takes years and years of study and the mastery of modern and ancient languages and history and philosophy and theology. There is an intellectual component to the preaching ministry and always has been-- but the preaching task is not a disengaged philosophical exercise but is an impassioned call from one dying man to others to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. It is not a job or a profession—it is a calling—and the stakes are life itself.
Paul used the example of a nursing mother who gives of herself for the life of her child. She shares herself for the sake of her child. That’s the way Paul preached. He shared his life. He didn’t hide that he had been a persecutor of the church. He didn’t hide the love that was in his heart on account of Christ. He didn’t keep those around him at arm’s length, maintaining a detached, emotional distance. He loved them and wanted them to be saved.
The preacher must be a man who understands the depth of his sin and the height of God’s love in a deeply personal way in his own life so that he can share that same love with others. He must understand that time is short and eternity is long and every person must know Jesus Christ if they are to be saved.
That’s what was at stake for the Thessalonians and having been given the gift of life by the living Christ, Paul wanted to share that with others. And so there was no detached indifference to the lives of others, but Paul poured his life into his ministry for their sake.
The preacher’s own life ought to be the template for the greatness of God’s love that embraces even the worst of sinners and every preacher ought to claim that title for himself as Paul did so that others can see that there is room in God’s family for them too no matter how badly they have failed.
But the preacher also needs to point people to a new and better life than what they have lived in the past—just like Paul did—a life worthy of God. He wrote:
Like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. On November 2, 2003 something happened in the Christian church that had never happened before. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man with a publicly identified male partner, was consecrated a bishop in the Episcopal Church.
His solemn task as a preacher of the Gospel-- to exhort and encourage his flock to live their lives in a manner worthy of God was abandoned—not just because his life was a repudiation of it—but because his public teaching no longer affirmed it as the moral will of God for mankind.
You should be perfectly clear about this in your own minds—there is a wholesale attack upon biblical morality taking place WITHIN the Christian church. Those who are preachers of the Gospel- and have a responsibility to call their flock to holy living—have, in many places abandoned the biblical standard of morality and followed the example of the world. While our church and preachers have largely been immune to this temptation, the challenge also lies before us.
It does us no good to rail against homosexuality if we ignore couples who live together outside of marriage or make excuses for those getting an unscriptural divorce or if we are using pornography. It is pious lie if we denounce abortion and yet fail to support groups who work to oppose abortion. We are simply fooling ourselves if we express concern about the values of the world while we live lives that are not very different than our unbelieving neighbors.
The Holy Spirit has called us into God’s kingdom by the Gospel and prepared us for eternal glory by the shed blood of his Son and a necessary part of the preaching task is to call Christians to holiness of life—to “go from preachin to meddlin”-- and call sin, sin and exhort and encourage Christians to live lives that are worthy of God.
There is only one way to do that and that is to insist that our preachers proclaim the whole counsel of God—when it suits us and when it doesn’t-so that there can be no doubt on Sunday morning that we have heard the voice of the living God because we have heard his Word preached. Paul wrote:
We thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
On October 19, 1999 Benny Hinn prophesied that in the upcoming year, people around the world, rather than burying their dead, would place their caskets in front of the TV, turn on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, lift their hands to the TV and they would be raised from the dead. So far, not so much. Harold Camping prophesied that on May 21, 2011 the world would end- and when that day came and went -he prophesied that God told him the world would really, really end this last Friday. Whoops!
We have spent our time meditating on what the Holy Spirit has to say about preachers. But now Paul goes to those who are hearers and he says that we have every right to expect—and in fact, we must insist, that what we hear preached on Sunday morning IS NOT the word of men—but the Word of God.
What the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets and apostles and caused to be written in the pages of Holy Scripture is what must be clearly preached on Sunday morning without excuse or equivocation—that sin is called sin and Jesus Christ is identified as the one Savior of the world and hope of mankind—and we must come to church with hearts ready to hear what our Savior has to say to us about the faith and life of a child of God—believing that what we hear preached from the pages of the Bible is God’s Word to us.
In Romans Chapter 10 the Bible says that faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ. Preaching is the means by which the Holy Spirit works to bring people to saving faith in Jesus Christ. It is serious business for the one who preaches and for those who listen and I pray that God would richly bless the preaching of his Word in this place and throughout his church and continue to raise up men who will speak the Gospel entrusted to them. Amen.
