Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text for today is found in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. We’ll be reading verses 7-13. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. And the title of the sermon, the subject is pastors as mothers and fathers.

Verse seven: But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives because you had become dear to us.

For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil for laboring night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. We preach to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses and God also how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe. As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing because when you received the word of God which you heard from us. You welcomed it not as the word of men but as it is in truth the word of God which also effectively works in you who believe.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your spirit and we pray that spirit would indeed make your word to us today effective. May we bear fruit as your new creation from the implantation of your word in our hearts and souls. Transform us Lord God, by the power of your word and your spirit, we pray this for the continuing manifestation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated. Jesus sent forth at his ascension the spirit of justice. The spirit that would recreate the world through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does life in the spirit look like? What does it look like? Today’s text will help us to see how the spirit empowers people in the context of the church of Jesus Christ.

How is the great commission which we heard preached on a couple of weeks ago by Reverend Phelps? How is the great commission fulfilled? What does it significant way to accomplish the great commission that has been given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, today’s message will help us to answer that question. What kind of fruit does the pruning that Beumu talked to us about a couple of weeks ago? What kind of fruit is produced by the pruning?

And again, today I think we look at a text that’ll show us the sort of fruit that comes from that and when that processional of life meets the processional of death as Reverend Stu preached about last week and life overcomes death and brings people to a position of being commanded to stop sobbing and indeed to arise into resurrection life. What does that resurrection life look like? What does it look like?

Yes, Jesus has conquered life defeats death. Wonderful imagery. And what does it look like? And today text again I think will help us to see the implications of what life is in the context of overcoming death.

This text is given in the context of much affliction. This is one of the earliest epistles of Paul and in 1 and 2 Thessalonians there are references to the coming day of judgment Jerusalem in AD 70. So there were times of difficulty both in the birthing of this church at Thessalonica and there would be greater times of difficulty to come as well.

How do you live through periods of judgment? How do you live through a period of time when trials and tribulations and declension of the faith where you’re not the majority in the context of where God has planted you and where tremendous upheavals may occur. We don’t know for certain, but there are tremendous problems that are looking us in the face that could result in some fairly significant financial and societal and communal difficulties.

What kind of capital does Paul encourage the Thessalonians with to build for the coming tribulation? What sort of capital are we investing in to prepare for our continuing times of trials and tribulations in America that may get yet much worse? What sort of capital do we build up?

And again, I think today’s text has some very significant things to say about where we look for our capital reserves as it were, the things that’ll assist us in getting through times of troubles. There’s really not that much new in this epistle. Paul says over and over again in this epistle and its companion that, you know, you know, you know, you saw us, you know this, you know that. But he sees it prudent and good for them to be reminded of some very basic truths that demonstrate the resurrection life, the power of the Holy Spirit, what the community of Jesus Christ is to look like what sort of capital, spiritual capital they’re supposed to build up for the difficult times in which they live and which will get yet more difficult in rather very serious ways as the eras change in AD 70.

These things aren’t new. What does it mean for this church that the elders have adopted this growth initiative? What does that mean? What can we do about it? What are the steps and again I think this particular text is a quite significant one to think about in terms of how we will build this church and how the community of Jesus Christ at Reformation Covenant Church will grow.

This is a text about moms and dads. But the moms and dads here is the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul describes himself as a mother and he describes himself as a father. But he doesn’t just say him. He says, “We were like mothers to you. We were like fathers.” And so he includes in this his ministerial team, we could say, the people that were with him in planting the church and ministering to it, people like Timothy and Silas and others.

And so the application of this text goes beyond the apostle. It really extends out into pastors. And so that’s why I’m looking at this text as a description of pastors as mothers and fathers. But its application, of course, goes far broader because what Paul does here is he also tells us what good moms and dads are like, right? I mean, he’s not going to give us a picture of mother and father that he’s fulfilling for the church that isn’t aligned with the fruit of the Holy Spirit and what the spirit does to rebuild families.

So along the way here, we’re going to see what moms and dads are supposed to be like, and we’re going to see what children are supposed to be like as well in terms of humility and receiving these gifts from parents and what they’re supposed to do, which is to mature. So this text will affect those roles but ultimately then whether it’s in the context of church or in the context of the family really this sermon is very relevant to any condition where people are helping another group of people and so you know these examples of moms and dads and the specific characteristics of them are quite useful to us in our lives to remember so I would encourage you as we go through this text to think that way about it.

Don’t think about somebody else, the pastors or a mom or a dad. Think about yourself and how this impacts you both as a child in the context of this relationship. That’s what these were full grown adults that he’s writing to, but they were young Christians and your relationship to people that you’re helping to train and develop and ultimately, as I said, to the kind of people that come into this church.

You know, we’ve had a handful of I guess what the world would call new converts. People that are getting serious about a relationship with Christ and his church in the last year or two come to this church. You might want to spend a little bit of time as we go through this thinking about those people. And if you don’t know who those people are, well, that’s step one. That’s step one.

You know, if we’re going to grow in the way that this text tells us to by loving people, step one is noticing who comes in that door. What they need. What they need is they’re trying to reunite their lives to Jesus Christ.

Now, there’s no outline, but really the text itself is the outline. We’re going to go through seven characteristics of pastors as mothers quickly, and then we’ll look at three separate points about pastors as dads, but really it’s just going through the text. So, it’s quite simple. So, you might want to keep your Bibles open.

And in verse 7, we’ll just start by going through how the apostle describes himself and those who minister to the Thessalonians. So in verse 7 he says, “We were gentle among you just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.” So he’s gentle. He nourishes as a nursing mother, not just as a mom, but as a mom who is nursing. So the apostle nurses the Thessalonians and he cherishes them. So those will be the first three things that we talked about.

First of all, in the context here these first few verses talk about him as a mother and then we’ll talk about dad. But in terms of the mother, that’s what he’s talking about here.

Now Paul has described himself as a mother in other places in the scriptures. It’s interesting that in the Old Testament, Moses, you know, says to God, did I birth these people? Do I got to take care of these people? I didn’t give them birth. But Paul says, actually, I did give you birth through the implantation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He says this in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.” So this image of you know a guy as a mom is shouldn’t offend us. It’s common. Jesus Christ described himself right as and in language that’s similar to this language as wanting to gather the chicks under him as the mother hen. Yet they would have none of it.

So you know these are verses that tell us what good moms are like, but also what good pastors are like and what good people are like in helping other people. And the first characteristic of this is gentleness. Gentleness. Now, there’s a verse that we can see gentleness contrasted to harshness in 2 Timothy 2:24. He says, “And as the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, apt to teach and patient.” So, the contrast with gentleness, what we’re not supposed to be, is harsh. We’re not supposed to quarrel. We’re supposed to be gentle. Okay? And that this text from Timothy tells us that’s what the meaning of this word is the opposite of being quarrelsome and contentious and a brawler. So Paul says that the first characteristic he gives to us is this gentleness.

Now F.F. Bruce in his commentary on this text talked about the fact that there were these itinerant cynic philosophers that would go around and they would beat their students up. I mean, not literally, but with words. They were quarrelsome. It was their method. And, you know, people sort of like that, by the way. You know, people like it if you really hammer them on sin. I’m not saying you shouldn’t hammer them on sin, but the cynics, they had no, they didn’t distinguish, they didn’t deliver the message with grace. It was always kind of a mean, abusive sort of thing that went on.

In contrast to the cynics, the records, the historical records tells us of a man named Credo who quoting now rebuked not with harshness but with grace. So to rebuke yes rebuke has to happen but to do it with grace with what Paul refers to as gentleness. For years the phrase I’ve used to try to remind myself and help train other people with is to be firm with a smile. Gentleness doesn’t mean you’re not being firm at times, but it does mean you’re being firm with a smile with an evident love and concern for the people that you’re dealing with. So, gentleness is this first characteristic and it’s contrasted with harshness.

Now, it’s also contrasted with the couple of verses that have just happened. The two verses that lead up to this verse are verses five and six. And Paul says, “Neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, as a cloak for covetousness. God is our witness. Nor did we seek glory from men either from you or from others when we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.” So this harshness, gentleness is absolutely a good way to understand gentleness. But what Paul directly is contrasting himself with are people that would use flattery.

So gentleness is contrasted to manipulation of people through flattery. The one that’s being gentle isn’t manipulating them. They’re telling him the truth. They’re at times, if need be, they’re rebuking him, but they’re doing it with an overall spirit of gentleness. I think this gentleness word is kind of a header for the way moms are supposed to be and dads because, you know, Paul’s a man here. And so, real men have gentleness to them. And it’s contrasted not just with harshness, but it’s also contrasted with flattery, which means manipulation of people. And it’s also contrasted with seeking the apostle’s own glory. It’s the opposite of that. Gentleness is seeking the well-being of the one we’re being gentle toward not seeking glory or making demands upon that person for ourselves.

God wants us to have glory. Glory is not bad to want. But glory is ministered to us in the same way it was given to Jesus Christ as he served. Glory became more and more manifest in him. And so as we serve, as we’re gentle and not demanding, so glory will come to us. But glory properly ministered through the Lord Jesus Christ, not sought after by us. So gentleness and gentleness is contrasted with harshness. It’s contrasted with manipulative flattery and it’s contrasted with this idea of self-seeking and wanting our own glory. Yeah, you can do that. You can kind of make yourself seem overly friendly because you want glory from folks and all those things is not what this is.

Gentleness finally is a fruit of the spirit. We said what does life in the spirit look like now that Jesus has sent the spirit to renew the face of the earth? New creation life is budding out. What does it mean in the context of one’s life? And here in the list of characteristics of how we help other people, Paul puts at the head of the list, gentleness, which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Those are several of those attributes flesh out gentleness.

And so you can’t do it on your own. If you try to do it on your own, it’s going to be fake. People will see the insincerity of it. It’s really a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Fruit, right? Creation. Remember, the spirit brings fruit in the first seven days of creation. The spirit’s been given to make you a new creation in Christ. And fruit, it should in your mind when you read this now in the New Testament, you should connect it up with the spirit’s work of regeneration, regenerating things, bringing them into fruitfulness.

And so, what is life in the spirit? The new creation look like? It looks like gentleness as a header of what Paul describes himself as and in pastors as doing.

Secondly, pastors nourish, right? So verse seven, we were gentle among you just as a nurturing a nursing mom. So he doesn’t say just as a mom. He says specifically as a mom who is nursing her child. Okay, it’s interesting. I just heard some research the other day that this oxytocin chemical that produces is like a bonding chemical, right? Produces a strong relationship connection. And the two places apparently where it is most being released into women’s minds or bodies is in relationship with their husbands, sexual intimacy and also in nursing. It’s a bonding sort of chemical that God seems to use to bring people together.

So this nursing mom, you know, is this picture of what pastors are supposed to be like bound in covenant relationship to people, but specifically it’s nursing. And so in fact, you could actually make the case that this phrase would include wet nurses, not just mom. That’s the phrase is more emphasizing the nursing aspect. Well, what that tells us is that the pastors are nursing up the people who have been brought into the church. What’s the relationship we have to people reconnecting to Jesus in the church when they come through that door? The pastor’s job, and I would suggest all of our jobs, is to nourish them.

Nurse means to feed and it kind of has this literal connotation of stiffening a body up. You know, it kind of starts off all soft and unformed and you make it stiffer and it grows up and it’s got muscles and stuff, right? So, that’s nurturing. You’re stiffening a person up. You’re maturing them in a very gentle way and significant way, but nurturing is what it’s all about.

And of course, ultimately, the way we nourish people in the new creation, the way we cause them to grow and mature and have, you know, strong bones and good muscles is through the milk that is God’s word, right? The wonderful truth of God’s word is what we’re ultimately feeding people with to cause them to grow and to stiffen. And so, this is our responsibility. And when people come in the door, if we’re not doing that, we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

There’s a next characteristic that kind of goes along with this, right? He says, “Well, I was as a nursing mother who cherishes her own children.” Now, the word cherish here is a very unusual, not very unusual, but it’s only used twice in the New Testament. It’s used once in the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, it’s used from a passage from the book of Job where Job says that this bird, ostrich, whatever it is, it leaves its egg in the dust of the earth to be warmed and then it gets destroyed. But the idea is to be warmed is translated in the Septuagint with this Greek word that we translate as cherish.

And so it means to protect the egg. And the stupid bird in the desert doesn’t do it. And so as a result, the egg is crushed. But the idea is to protect, to cherish, to warm, but specifically to protect from the elements. And the stupid bird doesn’t do that because it just leaves it laying there on the sand exposed.

The only other place, the only other occurrence in the New Testament is in Ephesians 5 where it’s talking about the relationship of husbands and wives. So verse 28 says, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” So this is the great command to husbands to love their wives. Right? And then he goes on to explain what this means in terms of the imagery of our own bodies. “No one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church.” Okay, so there it is.

Love consists of nourishing, feeding, stiffening up into maturity, and cherishing. What does that mean? Well, the word, as I said, means this egg that’s protected by the mother hen, protected by the wings, protected in some way from elements. It means to guard, basically. And each of us, you got up today and you fed yourself, you nourished yourself, and you clothed yourself, and you put some shoes on. Now, part of that’s glory. We’re trying to look nice, but part of that’s protection from the elements.

If it’s raining outside, you wear a hat, umbrella, something, or have a lot of big hair to protect yourself. But you do something to protect yourself from the element. That’s what Paul’s saying here. Your health is in relationship to feeding yourself and nourishing yourself and guarding your body, cherishing it. Okay? And that’s what we’re supposed to do for our wives is what he’s saying. You love your wife by nourishing her with your love and by cherishing her, protecting her. Your love should cause you to protect your wife as well.

And then he says, just as the Lord does the church. And that’s what’s going on here. The Lord is nourishing and cherishing, feeding and guarding the church at Thessalonica through the ministers that Paul is working with that planted this church and now are maturing it.

So the basic role of a mom is to feed and guard. Now, it’s interesting because this is absolutely essential. It’s of the nature of who we are as men and women. Adam was given a garden. What two things did he do for the garden? He did those two things. He was specifically, God said, told to exercise dominion over the world. And then he had this part of the world that he was supposed to grow up to make more beautiful. He was supposed to do some transplanting and nurturing and pruning to make the garden more beautiful. That was the first task he had.

But God also told Adam that he was to guard that garden from sources that would seek to hurt it or that might hurt it whether they sought to or not. Adam had two responsibilities. This is what God told him his calling as man was to nurture the world to bring it more and more beauty. God wanted the garden imagery extended out. But part of that task is to guard his work and to guard the garden from exterior conditions that would be difficult and bad for it.

So it’s nurturing and it’s guarding the essence of man’s work. Now Adam had a little garden, his wife referred to as a garden in the Song of Songs. And he was supposed to do the same thing for her. He was supposed to help her, build her up, encourage her, make her, you know, have confidence through his love and to assist her growth in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he was to protect her from attack. And of course, that’s what he didn’t do.

The essence of the fall is Adam’s failure to do this very thing. Failure to cherish. He was like the stupid bird that left the wife out there unguarded as the serpent comes along and tries to deceive her right in Adam’s presence. So these are this is like this is meta-narrative, if maybe that’s the word, maybe it isn’t. This is one of the big deals in the Bible and one of the things you should always be thinking about in your life.

You should be nurturing other people by building them up and you should be cherishing them, which means to guard them from harmful influences. Whether it’s your kids, wives, I think, have the same responsibility toward the husbands. The husbands have it overtly stated, but I think the wives by implication do here. It’s a woman, it’s a nursing mom, it’s mom that has this responsibility toward kids. This is of the essence of being human. It was the essence of the fall and the essence of life in the new creation.

What it looks like is properly helping each other grow and helping each other be guarded from their own sinfulness from others outside attacks etc. So this is you know the big picture this verse these first three characteristics of gentleness is an overall header on how you do it and then some specific actions helping people grow and protecting them, cherishing them enough, loving them enough to protect them from their own sin if necessary. That’s what’s going on.

Remember that today we’ll have a brief announcement for the members of the church at the end of our worship service. We’ll ask the visitors to step out. But this is what’s going on. Are if we love each other, we’re going to love each other. Not just in nurturing and feeding each other, but also in helping each other be guarded from negative influences.

So, that’s life in the new creation. That’s what we’re supposed to do. And I could go on and on about this. You know, the temple, the ministers in the temple, they did those two things with the instruments of the temple. It says specifically, they were to guard them from becoming polluted or unclean. And when they used them, this same word that Adam had to nurture up the garden is the word that’s used in the temple services. It’s an odd way to think of it, but really not so much because the temple’s a picture of the body of Christ and ultimately of the church.

And so, these are two very specific tasks we have in the church of God and the new life. When we enter into that life processional, this is what it’s supposed to look like. Gentleness, nurturing, guarding as moms do. Okay.

The next thing is quite important. If you look at verse 8: “So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives because you had become dear to us.”

So if you look at that there’s kind of a little chiastic structure, right? Affectionately longing for you and you know dear to us at the end of it in the middle is what Paul is actually saying they did. They laid down their lives. They gave not just the gospel but they gave their own lives self-sacrificially for the Thessalonians. And he’s going to explain how that works in the next verse. He’s going to say, “You remember therefore, brethren, our labor and toil, laboring night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. We preach to you the gospel of God.”

So what he says, he worked two jobs. He was planting the church and then he worked another full-time job to provide support. He didn’t need to do that. He should have been supported by it, but he did it self-sacrificially. He did it. He was giving of himself to these new converts to Jesus Christ. And it was interrupting his normal lifestyle. Okay? He was laying down his life self-sacrificially for these folks. And why?

Well, because he says, “We were affectionately longing for you. You had become dear to us.” This pretty significant stuff, I think.

So, the fourth characteristic of pastors here are that they are endeared to their the ones they minister to. Remember I talked about little Tommy here? You know, it’s an endearment thing. We look at a little baby, right? Well, Paul had that same thing going on. He had this affectionate longing. This word that’s used here is the only place where it’s used in the Septuagint. Again, it is used in Job 3:21. It’s used for people that longed for death because their lives were so horrible and they couldn’t achieve it, but they wanted so badly to die.

You see, so that’s a negative example, but just an example of the intensity of what’s going on. And so Paul has this deep intense longing and love for those he ministered to. He was endeared to them. And this isn’t just some kind of little, it’s not even like the thing we feel about, you know, baby Tommy this morning. It goes much deeper than that. It’s the sort of endearment that aunty and Silas have for Tommy. And you know, it goes beyond just, oh, isn’t that cute? Isn’t that nice? We like babies. It’s a great desire to love that person, to assist that person in whatever way possible.

And that great desire leads to self-sacrifice, right? That’s the only way babies are born is through self-sacrifice. And it begins with mom, right? I mean, they’re the ones going through the labor problems, labor pains, and that’s just the beginning. I’ve raised five kids. Don’t really want to do it anymore. It’s hard work. I mean, I never did want to do it, but but God puts in the hearts of parents this great longing to lay down your life for these kids. They don’t appreciate it. And you know, it’s funny because unlike probably the Thessalonians who are adults, our kids, they got no idea what you’re doing. You know, even when they get into their teenagers are starting to figure it out a little bit, but you’re laying down your life self-sacrificially in all kinds of ways that are never appreciated by anybody. And you know what it’s like. You all know what that’s like.

And it’s hard work. Paul will talk about that in a minute. But you do it because of the tremendous endearment, the great affectionate longing you have for that child that God has given to you.

Now, that’s what we have to have for people that get to their adult life and want to hook up with Jesus Christ in his church for whatever reason, whether they’re born again, whether they’re returning to the faith. We’ve had both. You know, a handful of people have come through that door. This is what our attitude has to be if our growth initiative is going to work. And forget the growth initiative. If we’re going to be the church of Jesus Christ, honestly, folks, if we’re going to be the church of Jesus Christ, if we do not develop and self-consciously work to develop an affectionate longing for people that come through that door, we’re dead. It’s over.

Oh, we can play the game and it might be okay, right? I mean, we’ll do some things, okay? It’ll be helpful for the people that are here and that are like us. But honestly, if we’re going to be the church of Jesus Christ, this is what Paul says you got to do. You got to become affectionately longing for the people that come into the body of Christ. And you got to you have to have enough love for people coming through that door to where you disrupt your life for them.

That’s what Paul did. That’s the example he gives to us. And you know why did he do it for the Thessalonians? Because he was he was cherishing them. He was guarding them. They were tempted to think the guy just wants our money or he just wants our lives or he just wants this that or the other thing Paul said, well, I could have demanded, you know, pay for what I did. He tells other churches, pay your pastors. He’s not against that. But he wanted with this particular group not to put a stumbling block in front of them.

Now, listen, our culture is highly suspicious of the church of Jesus Christ. We are mocked in many TV shows and movies. We are ascribed improper motives. You know, that’s mostly unfair but that’s what’s taught. So when people come through the door, we’re going to have to work even harder than normal to be self-sacrificial to them so that they won’t stumble as they come through the door. And the only way we’re going to do that, we’re not going to do that through force of will. Well, maybe you can, but Paul says he did it because he was so strongly, affectionately desirous of them. He wanted their well-being so much. He loved them so much right that he did it.

So the characteristic of the pastor here as mother is strong desire for those that are birthed into the faith. And then the next characteristic is this self-sacrificial life that Paul lived in terms of them. He wasn’t willing just to give him the gospel. He gave him his life. And he gave him his life so much that he bleeds as it were for them.

You know, it’s interesting. I talked to a guy this week and he said, “Yeah, RCC I hear that I’ve heard a couple of times over the years that’s the church where if you go to Starbucks on Sunday, they’ll actually excommunicate you.” There’s another stumbling block for people coming through the door. And if all we talk about in terms of the Lord’s day is Starbucks or not, we’ve really messed up.

Isaiah 58:10 says this in the context of the great chapter on the Lord’s day of the Sabbath in the Old Testament: “If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noon day.” If you extend your soul, if you care more about the people coming through that door than you do your own life, then light will shine. Then you’ll be successful. Then the church of Jesus Christ will grow.

2 Corinthians 5:8, Paul said, “We are confident, yet well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” He greatly desired to be absent from the body to be with Jesus. It wasn’t, in case you’re missing the verse, that’s what he’s saying. That’s the same kind of words that are used here. We have to be greatly desirous endeared toward people and a willingness as a result of that to give all that we have, all that we have, to be transparent to people, to be real in our lives, to not pretend, to not be hypocrites, to not put on a face.

Listen, if we can’t have that attitude in the officers of the church and in the members of this church, as I said, it isn’t going to fly. And it isn’t going to fly with most people these days, particularly with young people. They can see right through our hypocrisies. We have to be those who are self-sacrificial because people are dear to us. We are strongly desirous of their well-being.

And then he labors, right? So I’ve already mentioned this, but the next verse says that he engages in labor and toil, laboring night and day. And so the end result of that kind of affection is to work and to work hard.

Kopos is the first of these two words. And I think the original idea was from the original root is to cut. And so it means to labor in such a way that in a sense you know your life forces drain from you. It’s to be tremendously fatigued through labor. That’s what Paul says moms do for their kids. And you know it’s true. And that’s what Paul says pastors and ministers to people coming into the church. That’s the way they should be too.

You know there’s a saying in the news media, “if it bleeds, it leads,” right? So, you know, if it bleeds, it gets the lead on the newspaper. Well, in the same way, with a little bit different use of lead, it’s the same thing here. Those who bleed for people have the right and authority to lead those people. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Right? He died for you while you were yet his enemy. And as a result of that demonstration of self-sacrificial love and desire for you, then you find Follow him and he leads you.

What bleeds leads. And the church that’s not willing to bleed for people and to lay down things and to put up with a lot of stuff from people coming in who are diamonds in the rough. It we won’t it won’t be effective the work of growing the church. So that next point is this great labor.

And then finally the pastor’s goal is the Thessalonians’ guarding or well-being in verse 9 as a mother. Verse 9, “You remember brethren, our labor for laboring night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you” as I said. So the idea is the goal of the mom is the well-being of the child and the well-being of the child in in context of Paul’s words here was to not give them a stumbling block. So his goal is their well-being. The purpose of all these actions of the mother is so the child to be matured and built up in the Lord Jesus Christ.

All right, let’s go quickly through what the apostle says about the apostle as father. Verse 10: “You are witnesses and God also how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe as you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children.”

So I take that to be the break. I take the tripling up in verse 10. You know, they’re devout, just, blameless. And then the tripling up in verse 11, we exhorted, comforted, charged as linking those verses. And verse 11 specifically said that he does this as the father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of the God who calls you into his kingdom and glory. So there’s the father’s job. There’s the pastors as fathers.

There’s the other side of what we do with people. And here there’s kind of a transition, right? It’s like the child is getting a little older. And now Paul puts forth first the example of who he is before the people that he’s going to do things with. These are adverbs in verse 10. They’re action words. Right? Devoutly, justly, and blamelessly we behaved. Right? So now it’s switching to the actions of what the father does. And his action, how he behaves toward his kids is characterized by three particular characteristics that he has.

So this is what we’re supposed to have. We’re supposed to be devout, just, and blameless. Devout, what does it mean? It’s not the normal word for holiness, set apart to God. No, it’s a word that’s better translated is having piety properly pious right which means having a heart for God. We don’t we jettison pietism that you know would say we shouldn’t have this which is a good blessing from God. We jettison that but what we may not jettison is a proper sense of piety a love for God that desires not to offend him or those he’s put into our path. A true sense of love for God in the context of our souls that causes us to want to do things that don’t offend him or other people. It’s a love for God that’s evident from the actions we involve ourselves in.

And so here the translation New King James is devoutly. So, so if we’re going to minister to people as fathers, Paul says that ministers, church officers and actually the congregation as it ministers to people coming in the door are to have these three characteristics. A true sense of piety. A true sense of piety.

Secondly, justice, conformity to a standard, to God’s law, doing justice is what it’s all about. God is birthing justice, right? He’s bringing justice to victory. And so, the center of these three characteristics of our behavior, our walk as dads, is to have justice evident in our being. People can see that we’re pious. People can see that we’re just.

And finally, people can see that we’re blameless. Now, blameless means not having a charge that will stick to us. Right? It doesn’t mean somebody’s not going to accuse us of being those folks that excommunicate people going to Starbucks. But the charges they bring shouldn’t be able to stick. And so we what this means is it’s possible to have walks that are blameless where people aren’t looking at you. They’re not reading your credit report. They’re not doing searches on Facebook or what you tweeted. They’re not finding things out with police reports on you with charges that’ll stick to you.

How about you? How about me? What would our credit report, a police report, our Facebook posts, emails, whatever it is, what would it reveal about us? Are we blameless? We ought to be. Paul says, “This is what you’re supposed to do.” That’s what he did. Not just as an apostle. Silas does it. Timothy does it. This is a common characteristic he said of who fathers are supposed to be like to their kids. This is supposed to be doable stuff, folks. We’re supposed to have true godly piety. We’re supposed to have lives essentially of justice as defined by the standard of God’s law. And we’re supposed to live lives that are pretty blameless without having charges against us.

Somehow sometimes we get so much into the grace agenda that we forget that what we’re supposed to be doing is having lives that are, you know, marked by blamelessness. God says this is what the father is supposed to be like.

So, these three things describe the characteristics of the father. And then in verse 11 now he talks about the actions toward the Thessalonians. So he’s talking about what can be seen in his behavior and then what a father does to his kids. And he says we exhorted and comforted you and charged you every one of you as a father does his own children. Three things, three actions that are going on there.

First we exhorted you. We came alongside of you. We encouraged you in a particular path. Okay? So it means to call along come alongside and call to someone. Children have to be exhorted in particular directions. It’s to take the instruction that you give and bring it down into a person’s heart to bring it into their heart to exhort somebody.

And then secondly, we’re to comfort people in the context of that. Again, see it’s the thing I said earlier, you know, firmness with the smile, gentle is the header at the beginning of this section and gentleness is part of this exhortation. We’re to exhort each other in gentleness and in a way that comforts people, right? That doesn’t beat them over the head, that isn’t bombastic, that isn’t, you know, cruel somehow. Our exhortations of people are connected to our comforting them.

But we also move to charge them when necessary. This word charge is a legal term to adjure somebody, to call the witness of God to bear. What you’re doing is wrong and sinful. I declare in the name of Christ that God’s witness to you is you must stop this behavior. Okay? To adjure somebody is what this means here to charge them seriously and strenuously.

I adjure us to have this love I talked about earlier. Tim Keller in his new book on marriage says there’s two kinds of friends. You know, you got friends that are like you, common interests. common age, things you like to do. We both like to go play tennis or whatever it is. Nothing wrong with that. That’s all good. And in a way, people can refer to that as a clique, right? So, cliques are okay, groups of special interest friends. But if a church has nothing but those, somehow we’ve missed the mark because Keller says your best friend should be your spouse.

And you may find out as you go along in life that spouse doesn’t have a whole lot in common interest. But what you do have in common is the covenant you’ve made before God, with God, and before God, between yourselves to seek Jesus Christ in your marriage. That’s the basis for the best friendship you’ll ever have, your spouse. That’s the basis and that’s the basis for the kind of love that is put into action in the context of a church. This church, I believe, needs to be exhorted to have that kind of friendship as evident as the sort of natural friendships that we have.

So that when people come through that door, no matter how, you know, they may be standoffish or whatever, why wouldn’t they be coming into a church for the first time in a number of years? They know that we’re friends with them because we have a shared goal and passion. The Lord Jesus Christ, his church, his people, his kingdom outside of the church, we have that passion. Together, what greater bond is there between friends? So if we don’t have that kind of love and friendship and demonstrated to people coming through that door, we’re going to fail.

And so I adjure you and myself. I exhort you and myself. I do it to comfort us to know this is what God is birthing in this church to be able to embrace people that you have no common interests in that aren’t a part of your age group that aren’t part of your special interest that you’re into. All that’s fine. But go understand that when we embrace people coming into the church, we do it because of the shared basis we have of serving Jesus in one body.

And I exhort you. I’m comforting you because I know this is what God wants for us. I know it’s going to make your life richer to do this. And I adjure you that if we do not do this thing, you know, we won’t be experiencing life in the Holy Spirit, the kind of new creation life to its fullest. We won’t be living out that life processional as it conquers the death processional at Nain, right? We won’t be bearing the fruit that God’s pruning is intended to cause us to have. We won’t be we’ll have some fruit, great fruit, but we got more fruit.

And the way to get there, I think, is understanding what this text tells us about new creation life in the body of Christ. How to minister to people the way moms and dads do every day to their own children. How to do that? I exhort first of all the officers of the first of all the pastors and then secondly you know the deacons and then third the whole congregation.

Pastors have to lead by example in this. Deacons should lead by example in this. You know gentleness, love, consideration not apart from exhortation and adjuring when necessary but having that central attribute of comfort in there. You know, when John told that story last week about the two processionals meeting and life conquering death, wonderful picture, but I kept thinking, what does Nain mean? What does Nain mean? That’s the city where this happened. And do you know what it means? Means beauty. Isn’t that great?

When life conquers death, it happens in the context and demonstrates beauty to the world. We want to be beautiful. I want this church to be beautiful. I want my life to be more beautiful. I want us all to exhibit the beauty of Nain by life conquering death. And I think that this text today is a central one and telling us how to do that particularly in terms of the fact that these are new converts.

Paul’s exhorting them. And as a mother and a dad, he’s telling us how to deal with new converts. God in his providence has brought us to this place as a church where we want to embrace new converts, people returning to church. He’s already brought us a few people and what’s the report card so far and what we’ve done over the last year or two. I’m not sure it’s that great. I know my report card doesn’t look that great.

I want us to do better. Not because, you know, I want to, you know, rail about things, but because the end result of life conquering death is beauty. Beauty.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we do want beauty. We thank you that you put that as in our hearts. We want to see life conquer death in our own hearts. We want to see ourselves grow in grace, grow in new creation life. May we, Lord God, take seriously these few little verses in the short little epistle to a small group of people who had converted to faith in Christ. To take these things seriously, to think about this week how we’re doing in each of these particular areas that demonstrate godly motherhood and fatherhood and beyond that godly life in the body of Jesus Christ. Make us beautiful in Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Amen.