1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on November 5, 2017.

Two potential sermons jump out of this text.  The first is the power of the Gospel to bring life into focus by revealing sin and empowering us.  The second is wrapped up in the feminine analogy of a nursing mother.  Here we are given the rare occasion to consider the joy of motherhood alongside the gentle work of discipleship.  Both sermon paths provide ample opportunity to reveal the character of God either in a story of powerfully overcoming the world or a story of compassionate nurturing.

The Gospel incredibly empowers us by bringing life into focus.  Verse 1 ends with a specific refocusing, “our coming to you was not in vain.”  By worldly standards, their coming would have been in vain.  Seemingly everywhere Paul went great opposition encircled him and chased him out of town. Just before visiting Thessalonica, Paul and Silas preached in Philippi.  There they were dragged before the authorities, beaten by an angry mob, thrown into prison, and bound in stocks.  The pain of Acts 16 looks like a failure but, Paul kept preaching the Gospel even though he was forced out of Thessalonica in the same way.  For others, that looks like failure, a coming in vain, but not for those empowered by the Gospel.  Being chased out of town was not a mark of failure, rather Paul saw all those men and women hearing the Gospel and knew that was success.  When God empowers us through the Gospel our hope in life changes and refocuses, what success looks like for ourselves and the church.  Verse 1 is an opportunity for the preacher to reconsider what Gospel success looks like for their role as pastor, the church’s role in the community, and the individual’s role in the Kingdom of God.  Too often, our vision of success looks too much like the world’s instead of the Gospel’s.  If like Paul, we can take hold of God’s vision of success we will know the same kind of Gospel empowerment.

Similarly, as the Gospel refocuses success, it refocuses our motives.  Paul’s ministry looked different from other teachers because Gospel motives are free of sinful influence.  Worldly teachers will always prove to be:  erroneous, impure, deceitful, speaking to flatter, greedy, seeking honor, and/or authoritative (verses 3-6).  Without the Gospel, sin births all these motives within teachers and anyone who hears them are dragged further into sin.  At this point, the preacher could consider all the impure motives that seep into the church (e.g., making the church look better than the church down the street, increasing numbers of the budget and people, business connections, title).  Impure motives constantly hinder the church if we do not name them, and move away from them as fast as we can.  We will end up like the worldly teachers when we drift away from the truth of the Gospel.  As we repent of a false sense of success and false motives, our churches will be transformed.

A second potential sermon lies in the unique feminine analogy found in verse 7.  Here Paul compares his relationship with the church at Thessalonica with the tenderness of a nursing mother.  It is a reminder of the softer side of our God, like when Jesus compared his own work to a mother hen gathering all her chicks under her wing (Matthew 23:37).  God has a genuinely sweet care for us that is unequaled in this world and potentially lost in the typical masculine descriptors.  In 1 Thessalonians, Paul exemplifies this same tender care in his relationship with the church.  His teaching was not coarse, but he maintained a gentle demeanor as a mentor.

It would be remarkable if we were all able to have someone to disciple in the same tender way Paul mentions here. However, we will never be able to lovingly disciple until we learn to love one another in the church as a nursing mother.  Too often our definition of love is simply not being mean.  You would never say a mother is tender to her infant if she is not being mean.  A good mother will carefully coddle her baby and nurse the child no matter how the child is behaving.  There is an unconditional love that will support that frail life regardless of the circumstances.  This is exactly how God treats us in our sinfulness unable to comprehend His goodness.

This is critical for the church.  Since God is tender as a nursing mother toward us, we must be as tender as a nursing mother toward our fellow church members.  We cannot simply live with each other in the church, we must love each other with an unconditional love that will nurture through any difficulty.  The preacher could carefully lay out opportunities for this kind of love within the church.  There are examples of sweet love to be found within the church that should multiply (e.g., Bible study members tending to one of their own, a person discipling another, offering an umbrella on a rainy Sunday, giving someone a ride to church).  There is a great opportunity here to show the softer side of God, and the difference between loving someone like an acquaintance and loving someone like a nursing mother.

 

 

Chris Johnson
Co-Pastor
First Baptist Church San Antonio
cjohnson@fbcsa.org

 

 

 

Tags: Gospel, Empowerment, Success, Nursing Mother, Feminine

 

 

 

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