FirstThessalonians, 2:1-8
Bradley W. Maston · Oct 21, 2007
1 Thessalonians, No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926042236257

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So thank you. For some reason, I always run three copies. I guess I'm always afraid that one of them is going to fall. But I figure if I'm holding them, do you guys want these too? I figure if I drop one, I'd probably drop them all, wouldn't I then? Did I leave my coffee in the car? Oh, just a trick. No, no, I'm quite alright. No, no, thank you so much. I'll be just fine. But I appreciate it very much. Alright, so.

This week we get to discuss the manner in which the gospel came, or that Paul and Timothy and Silas delivered the gospel. to the Thessalonians, which is really exciting to me. Just to get us started, since we're dealing with such a large chunk, maybe I'll just read the whole thing to you if you want to follow along in the overhead or in your Bible. That'll be great.

It says, For you yourselves know, brethren, that our coming to you is not in vain. But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition. For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts. We never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor a pretext or greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority.

But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection 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 very dear to us."

So, obviously here, Paul includes a bit of a defense of his actions, which we will talk about at great length. But I really like to think of this, as Peter said on the opening day, that this is an amazing love letter. And this is, to me, him recounting the romance between himself and Paul and Timothy, or Silas and Timothy, and the church at Thessalonica. We'll talk about how. Talk about how maybe specific that is to Paul and the church at Thessalonica.

Because I honestly read this the first time, and as I was studying it, I thought, wow, Paul really did love those Thessalonican believers. Paul really did absolutely think they were, he was just nuts for them. And you know, this huge, this huge, that we're only actually getting halfway through this huge exposition that he's letting down to remind them how much he loved them and how much, how blameless their contact or conduct was among them. is just amazing and what occurred to me as I got towards the end was the realization that that's not only Paul's love for Thessalonica. It's not like Paul really loved the church at Thessalonica and really didn't care for the church at Corinth.

But really this is the love that comes between believers. This is the love that the Lord places in the hearts that comes from being in Christ for those who minister to the people he ministers. So this isn't limited in its scope to just the Thessalonian believers. And this doesn't just tell us about Paul's feelings for for the Thessalonican believers, but actually the Thessalonian believers, actually tells us about the love of every truly, every minister who's truly abiding in Christ.

Everyone spreading the gospel, everyone who, and oh by the way, as you go out, as we go out into our day to day world, amongst all the non-believers and we are sharing the gospel and sharing our lives as well, this is, something that is by no means limited to someone with the title of elder or someone with the title of missionary or someone with the title of... but actually is amazingly inspirational and powerful for us as well. So I hope you'll all forgive me.

I generally... I'm more of a writer. I just have to write things. I can't think in terms of bullets. So my handouts are usually more narrative in format. Exactly. Every time I do bullets, they just wind up all sorts of crazy. So we'll this the PowerPoint presentation is really not must be the wrong button. I love technology. It doesn't work. Turn it on. It's so simple. Alright. So, Paul starts off today with, for you yourselves, which is of course an emphatic personal pronoun. So he's appealing to them specifically, not just a general you, but you specifically, you yourselves.

And then when he gets to the word know, this word is not as well as to know by perception, to know by seeing. So in other words, you yourselves, you know, you being the people who saw it, know that this is the way it was. So he's not telling him something new, and he's not telling him to go ask someone else. He's not saying, hey, go ask the believers in Berea, of course they went afterwards, but still, or Philippi, go ask the believers in Philippi how we conducted ourselves. He's saying, no, you yourselves are the first witness here. You yourselves are who we're appealing to, to remember what our coming to you is like. So that's who he's appealing to. He's just trying to get that memory going, get that memory jogged.

Because I don't know about you, as a human, I feel like I'm incredibly fickle. You ever sit in a room with someone and think, oh, that's the best person in the world, and da-da-da-da, and then you get away from them, and someone maybe tells you something that's less flattering, and you think, well, maybe I misjudged them. Maybe they're actually not that well-intentioned. And just because you're chronologically further away from that instance where you met them and enjoyed them and liked them, you can develop a new opinion that's not based on your experience with them at all. Am I the only one that's that fickle as a human?

Okay, that's good. I think that's what he's appealing to. Once again, he knows and he's very certain about the truth of what he claims here. And there's no question. And yet at the same time, it seems to be this sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind that either someone was following him around and saying, hey, Paul isn't really that great a guy. Did you hear what he did?

Before he was killing Christians and now he's trying to paint everything in the worst light possible. And they might not even tell untruths about him. They probably would. the danger that it would mar the image, and what Paul's really concerned about is marring the gospel, marring the message. That they would quit abiding in Christ, I guess you'd say. So, not in vain.

This word, vain, translated means empty or hollow. So, this is referring back to 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 5. Does anyone have their Bible open? Can we read 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 5? So it's not in vain. It didn't come in emptiness or hollowness. It didn't come in fruitlessness, but rather it came with a demonstration of the Holy Spirit, the Lord's power, which obviously was such a powerful thing that we see Simon the Sorcerer asking to buy the ability to impart the Holy Spirit to people. It was that much of an evident occurrence in a new believer's life, as I'm sure we all remember back to our day of coming to the Lord and accepting and believing on Him and being indwelled by the Holy Spirit and sealed by the Holy Spirit. There's a difference. You wake up the next morning and there's a difference. And this same difference was there with them.

It wasn't vain. And Paul's going to be constantly on the rebuke of these people who are going around preaching a vain message, usually for money. Maybe for power, maybe for influence. But oftentimes just for money. Because just as much as it is today, it was out there then. There were false teachers just running about trying to preach for their own gain.

Any questions about verse 1 before I move forward? All right. Cool. 1 Thessalonians 2.2 says, But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you in the gospel of God amid much opposition.

So Acts 16.16-40 gives us the account of this mistreatment in Philippi. You want to open to there? You can. And if you pretty much think you can remember some of what happened, go ahead. Let's just recount that. Recount some of the occurrences. What happened in Philippi? What was the grounds for the shameful treatment in Philippi? What happened?

Huh? That's fine. That's absolutely fine. So Paul was walking through the streets of Philippi and all of a sudden there was this girl falling around behind him, who was a slave girl, right? What was she doing? Yeah. And that's what they were saying, these are bond servants of the Most High God who are proclaiming the way of salvation. I mean, this is something that, honestly, the first 15, 16 times I read it, I thought, that's just bizarre. They've got this girl following around behind us, who's basically doing their advertising work for them, free of charge. And then Paul eventually gets distressed, turns around, and rebukes the spirit, casts out the spirit that's causing her to have this power of prophecy. And, you know, she goes along her way. Why in the world would he do that? I mean, he's got this girl who is known to be supernaturally connected, testifying about the truth of who they are and their message. Why in the world would he do that? Yeah.

And just like Christ, Paul didn't want the testimony of demons. Even if what they're saying is 100% true. He didn't want the testimony of the dark powers, if you like. So, far rather rough it out and deal with it on his own, or their own, I should say, and actually make the gospel be the meat of it than have this supernatural sign behind him.

So anyway, casts out this demon from this girl. Yeah, and also I just think it was a matter of mercy. I mean, Paul cast this demon out, I mean, this demon, this poor, tortured, demon-possessed soul. And, you know, he sees that she's not, she's afflicted with it.

I know that in Korea, fortune-telling is a big deal. To go to a fortune-teller, I mean, it's, if you just get engaged and you want to decide what day you're going to get married, you go to a fortune-teller. And the fortune teller decides. And this is a real deal of spirituality to them.

And there's a number of them who missionaries will come to their door. because they usually work out of their apartment. Missionaries will come to their door, Christian missionaries, and say, hey, I want to share the gospel with you. They say, no, I can't. I'm a slave to this. I won't have anything to make bread. And a lot of times they come to the Lord and they lose all that prophetic power, that demonic prophetic power that's in them.

So it's real deal stuff and it's seriously still happening today. I'd say it's definitely the exception, not the rule, all the people on TV. Probably not genuine phenomena. But at the same time, this is real stuff. And I tell you, the missionaries, the daughter of missionaries in Korea, many of them have a story about sharing the gospel with someone and seeing that drive out this power of darkness and them being freed from the bondage to this awful, awful, awful life that they've got for themselves.

Brad? Yes. Verse 19 indicates that her masters were getting money from her. And that's... For wrong reasons. Yeah, exactly. That becomes the real thing here, as to why they become... Because if they would have just cast this demon out of this girl, no one would have been upset at all. I mean, probably within reason, they'd be very little upset. But her masters saw that they were going to lose all this money. I mean, that's a pretty lucrative commodity to have lying around. Just a little fortune teller that you don't have to pay anything but maybe food.

No job after that, so it was a serious thing to her. Yeah, well, sure. So it was definitely serious all around. So what happened after that? What did the slave masters do? What chapter are you in? We are in Acts chapter 16, everyone. Yep, 16 through 40. Just recounting the mistreatment and shameful or shameful mistreatment of Philippi. What happened as a result? What did the slave masters do?

They saw that their chance for opportunity was done so they immediately got a crowd, got a mob, which seems to be the thing to do back then if you were mad at Paul and Silas. You get a mob of people together and then go. Seized them and took them before the magistrates and then he said to the magistrates, he didn't even say These guys took away something that was giving us a lot of money. They said, oh no, these guys are advocating foreign gods and it's not legal for us Romans to... So they tried to make their claim pious and everything. But really, their true motivation was great. Their true motivation was money. So that is shameful. I mean, here Paul has liberated this girl from bondage to this evil spirit. And they are worried about what happens to their pocketbook as a result. It's just, it is shameful.

And as a result, they take him and drag him before it. Of course they put them in stocks and in prison. That's where we get the story of the Philippian jailer coming out of. But the stocks, well actually first they were beaten without any manner of trial, right? Which was illegal. And then they threw them in the stocks. Now we've seen, I'm sure you've seen pictures somewhere along the line of what the stocks were.

It was basically a hole in the wall in the very bottom of the thing. And you'd go in and your arms and legs would stick out. And they didn't have bathroom breaks. And they didn't have 10 minute stretching periods. So it was just a miserable, awful physical experience on top of the fact that you've just been beaten, you know, with a rod by someone who does it professionally. So someone is pretty hard into it, you know, when your mom or your dad spanks you or whatever. They don't do it professionally, so there's kind of like a sense that they're going to hold back. But this guy knows exactly how hard he can hit you before you break. So they were not in any good place. It was an absolute shameful treatment. And yet they sat there or they sat there in that miserable position where by all rights, they could say, this just stinks.

What's going on? And they sang hymns. They rejoiced and sang hymns. Obviously, there was the miracle with the Philippian jailer there. And then when the When the people, when the magistrates, when the rulers found out that they were Roman citizens, they kind of wanted to shuffle them off as quick as they could. And of course, Paul, being Paul, said, no, I kind of want you to come here and escort us out. That'd be fun for us. And they did. And said, OK, now will you please leave our city? We don't want you here anymore.

So it's pretty amazing to think that Paul is definitely practicing what he preaches in a big way. He'd later write to the believers who were in Corinth, Can anybody, that's bizarre, can anybody read that? All right, go ahead. Oh, up there, can I read it from my book? You are most certainly welcome. It is 24 through what? Oh, actually it's 2 Corinthians 11, 24 through 30. Oh, I'll read it from there.

Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, denied in my day, and spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from mobs, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the oceans, dangers in the sea, dangers among false brethren. I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, apart from such extreme External things, there is the daily pressure of me, of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being? Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern? If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. You're amazing! I mean, that's not a miracle.

I was holding those circuits together until... Last word. Okay, we can let it go. All right. And we get the added joy of hearing that fan and not having that. Well, rest assured, there's nothing all that special on there. If you've got your Bible open, you've got the information. And we'll fly forward.

It just blows my mind to think that Paul is teaching the truth of the gospel to this world and doesn't brag about being blessed physically or being blessed and having all these things, but rather he's boasting about his troubles, his trials, his difficulties. I wonder if I can't turn it off altogether and just call it good. Just because that's on a snowy day no less just a shock so good not a problem at all all right so anyway um the reality is is that we've got it a bit today and they had it a bit or quite a bit then if you were in God's will in a Jewish mind stick where would what would happen to you would you suffer No, you'd prosper, right? God's going to prosper the ones that he loves. None of the Pharisees and the Sadducees were living a really tough life, right?

There was lots of money. When they said to Jesus, should we pay taxes to Caesar? He said, should we pay taxes to Caesar? He had to ask them to give them a denarius, because he didn't have one. But they did. In fact, maybe more than one. This is a big coin in a heavily taxed area.

So, the Jewish mindset at the time was that if you're doing the right thing, if you're where God wants you to be, He's going to bless you physically. It was a Roman thing too. You go to the gods in order to get blessing. You go to the gods in order to get them to treat you well.

And here's Paul saying, I've been beat, I've been shipwrecked, I've been, I mean, all these horrible, horrible, difficult things. And yet, that's what I boast in. I boast in that. So whereas the other guys would come to town and give like a... Health and wealth gospel. Yeah, health and wealth, exactly. And being really no gospel at all. But would come out and give them this whole, you know, song and dance about how God's prospered them.

I mean, don't you see that in... Has anybody seen the Joel Osteen book at Walmart? What a loaded tripe! I mean, seriously, I actually... They're teaching it at another church that I work at, and so I had to jump on the wagon and try to actually, you know, take it apart, page by page, and make sure that they know how dangerous it is. But the reality is, here's this guy, I mean... You see him at 60 Minutes? Oh no, what happened?

There was this whole thing about giving him a lesson. But it shows how corrupt he is. This prosperity thing, that's what he teaches. There's no biblical basis behind it. Wow, that's awesome. And the way that he used scripture in that book, like I say, It's mind-blowing. Like, you know, he talks about Colossians.

He goes, set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. He actually distorts the translation of it to say, keep your mind on higher things. In other words, keep dreaming that God will give you the next best thing. God's going to give you a beamer. See, keep your mind on higher things. That's what he's talking about. Like, did you take hermeneutics from a six-year-old? Good heavens. He needs to go down and take Verne's Basic Bible interpretation class. Yeah, how to study the Bible.

So anyway, but leaving that where it is, that's the thing that appeals to the world. That's the stuff that appeals. And those people were out there then just as they're out there now. And here's Paul saying, hey, you knew that we were whipped in Philippi. You knew that we were treated shamefully. We told you about it. You might have even heard about it from your cousin and friends. And you know that the first thing we did, we came in, saw who our opposition was going to be, and preached boldly anyway.

It's amazing. It is amazing that Paul's mindset was so correct, he was so consistently abiding in Christ that he could say, beat me, whatever, throw me in jail, I don't care if I'm shipwrecked or anything, because if I die, that's just game to me. Live as Christ. So Paul is the example of one who would practice as they say what he preaches it's it's just such an amazing thing okay so as we move on to first Thessalonians 2 3 we see for our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit So, Paul has defended themselves and what they have done and their conduct, kind of on a more personal level, and now he's going to start talking about the exhortation.

So, this exhortation is a combination of two words, or a compound word, para, meaning with or alongside, and kaleo, which means to call, right? We've seen this word quite a bit in scripture, and I think there's a good reason for that. We don't see the apostles doing a whole lot of commanding, and they're not giving a whole lot of law. In fact, they're not giving any law. And yet, they do do a lot of this exhorting, or this calling alongside, saying, hey, I'm walking with Jesus. I'm walking towards Jesus. You walk beside me. This is what I'm doing. Why don't you do it too? Why don't we do it together? So, Paul's exhortation. Paul's call alongside to the Thessalonian believers.

And now he's going to start talking about the source. This from is ek, which we know, the Greek word, I'm sorry, is ek, which we know is out of or coming from. And then I believe Thayer has defined it as a primary preposition denoting origin, the point whence action or motion proceeds from, out, of place, time, or cause, literal or figurative. So Paul's defending the origin of their message and exhortation. He starts by telling them what were not the sources of the gospel.

And actually, we talked about how this is a part one, and Roger will do part two next week. This is like, to me, the long and difficult road up to the top and the zenith of this peak that we're climbing is not this way, not that way, it's not like these people, it's not like those people. And then he gets to the top and he says, but rather we were gentle like a nursing mother. So this is doing the groundwork, reminding them what they weren't to get up to what they were, to get up to the love and tender compassion that they conducted themselves with. So this is what it's not sourced from. The first thing he says is not sourced from his error.

The Greek word here is meaning to stray or wander about. So the gospel is not just kind of randomly, hey, you know, just go this way and eventually you'll find some truth for yourself. It's not just wandering about. And furthermore, he's not leading people astray. They're not out to find the Jews in the community and lead them away from the true God or lead them towards idolatry or lead them in any way astray, but rather Well, he doesn't give us the vote rather here. But he does tell us that it's not error. That it's not based in this going astray. Furthermore, it's not based in impurity.

Just like our English words, we have unclean or impure. We take the negative particle un and put it before the word clean. Or im and put it before the word pure. And I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to know what the origin of the two particles un and im are. But I am smart enough to read a book that tells me that the negative particle A or alpha before a word is a negative particle as well, just the same way. So this is unpure, impure, quite literally.

So Paul would have to distinguish that, or actually rather, we know, and Vern has alluded to a number of them in the main service and probably in other classes, there were sex cults all over the ancient world. I mean, just times haven't really changed that much, have they? There were plenty of people, and it's so funny as Americans, we just think free love was invented in the 60s. And the reality of the matter is that even these pagan gods that had their own temples all over the world had these temple prostitutes and shrine prostitutes. Essentially, many of the little cults were just based around sex. based around being able to do what you want, when you want, at some level.

So Paul, as he goes around, knows that these people are seeing him and hearing his gospel. And last week, they were walking down the marketplace and heard this other people talking about the sex cult of Aphrodite. So once again, he feels like he has to define himself against every single one of these things. He has to defend his message against every single one of these things.

Because the other sad reality is And maybe this is evidence a little bit in Corinth, is people love to compromise. People love to make compromises. People would love to say, well, if sin increases, grace increases, well, let's just sin all the more, right? Isn't that fun? Isn't that fair logic? And Paul says, of course not. Definitely not. And so he has to continually remind that this has not come out of impurity. This has not come out of sexual impurity.

This is different than these other things that you've heard. And finally, deceit. This word has the idea of deceit or craftiness. As we talked about Earlier there's just dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of these people would come through a given city in a while. And Thessalonica, as we talked about, is a big Roman colony. It's a big city. And so there's probably a fair amount of money there.

If there's a fair amount of money there, there's going to be a fair amount of religious racketeers around. So, I mean, they didn't have television. They didn't have televangelists. But they did have people who were going around and essentially selling religion for money. And maybe they had a Christian twinge.

We have a record of dozens of mystery cults, as Vernis talked about. You pay a little bit of money, you get in, you get up a level, and then they swear you to secrecy, unpaid of death. And then you go up a level, and they swear you to secrecy, unpaid of death. There's a lot of money changing hands to get you up those steps.

I mean, it's not as if the people who are doing it were doing it out of the goodness of their heart in any way, shape, or form. So Paul is saying, we are not these crafty people. We are not these tricky people. We came to you in honesty. We were proclaiming to you the truth.

And once again, evidenced again and again by the fact that why would anybody do this? in order to get beaten and thrown out of town at every turn. What's the motivation? So, he nails it down, we're not sourced out of evil, we're not sourced out of error, we're not sourced out of impurity, and we're not sourced out of deceit.

Alright, so... Oh, sorry, 1 Thessalonians 2,4 as we move on. Does anybody have any questions? I usually sit down and write out a bunch of questions to ask, and this time I didn't get the chance. So if you have questions or if you have comments, please feel free to interject. I might say your point about compromise, I think that's Satan's favorite tool. Amen. Where do we see that? Everywhere you look. Isn't that it? And I think we're actually going to hit this a little bit more later, but man, oh man. There's this definite sense of the end justifies the means, isn't there?

In Christian culture. Well, yeah, we've got the band that they play music that definitely doesn't sound like it's glorifying God, but if you can understand the words, boy, they're great. And that brings lots of people, so what difference does it make? If it brings lots of people, it's good. It's like, now wait a minute.

The end justifies the means, right? And all that matters is getting people in front of the Word. Okay, we're going to have a bikini contest. And every single one is going to read a passage of scripture. And then at the end, I mean, we'll have people there by droves.

But somehow, somehow the message is in the means of communication. Somehow the Lord doesn't want us to cut corners like that. And obviously that's, you know, kind of a duh example. But at the same time we're doing that all the time in Christianity. I think that a lot of churches will try to throw an event to get people in and make it sound, oh, it's just going to be fun. It's just going to be this. It's just going to be that. And then everyone walks in and we start to have fun and close the doors, lock them. Got it.

OK, now we're going to give you the gospel. You can't trick people into accepting Christ. That's ridiculous. You can give the gospel. Yeah, exactly. Let me tell you about church Then we're going to talk about Thailand. No. But the reality is that you can't water down the gospel. You can't trick someone into Christ.

I think I come from a background working in young life and the pitfall that we would commonly, commonly follow into this. I actually heard this on a popular Christian radio station. I threw up in my mouth a little bit. And I was driving, so it was bad. But it says, life is good. With God, it's better. Right? Isn't this the most horrible thing you've ever heard? Life without God is not life!

It's just fake life. It's an illusion. It's a lie. It's a facade. And with Christ is the life. That's it. There's no life is good and with God it's better. That's ridiculous. So we wind up selling Christ to kids saying, how good your life is going to be. Then we'd stand people up and say, my folks were divorced and I got into drinking and drugs and then I met Jesus and now everything's just perfect. I'm a 4.0 student. I'm going to Harvard. Jesus gave me Harvard. Isn't that what we have a tendency to do? Like, Jesus is going to make you a better person. Isn't that great? Or this Joel Osteen book, Jesus is going to get you a lemur. You know?

And all this earthly focus that's just ridiculous. And I have to believe, based on what's in here, that the means does not justify the end. If we con someone into becoming a Christian based on the fact that we're promising them some sort of blessing, earthly, or your life's going to get better. One, it'll be a question as to whether or not they really received the gospel. If they really ever got to know Christ. being the initial danger.

And I think oftentimes we placate our consciences by saying, well, you know, they're in the door. Now they'll find out. Now they'll find it. Now they'll find him. That's not our job, is not to just kind of go, hey, we got you in the right building. Now see if you can find the right room. So anyway, we'll move forward on that. But yeah, compromise is definitely Satan's favorite tool. And I think that's why Satan is really comfortable with a lot of what is being done in the name of churches here in America.

1 Thessalonians 2.4 says, But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, who examines our hearts. So, having discussed the source of the gospel, or rather what it's not sourced in, Paul moves to their approval as messengers.

This word examined, It happens quite consistently in scripture. I just grabbed two verses out just to see it's the italicized word in these two. Did I say examine? I apologize. What I meant to say is because here it's approved. This word approved also appears in 1 Corinthians 3.13.

It says, each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire. And the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. So what is the role of the fires revealing? that work? How is that related to the approval? What is it doing? Yeah.

It's a testing. With a view to approval. Absolutely, with a view to approval. And you know the funny thing is that I half expected this to be the same word that was in that was in 1 Peter, when we studied 1 Peter, we talked about how God tests us as a fire refines gold and tests it, you know, the person who's refining the gold is hoping to get as much true gold, pure gold out of it as he can, testing it with a view to approval. But this is actually a different word, even than that. It is definitely tested with a view to approval, but he's laying out the fact that God is the one who examined their hearts. And this is actually in the past perfect sense.

He's saying, God knew us, made us, formed us, and he's the one who chose me. And it just brings to mind to me the chapter in Acts when Ananias is being told by God to go to Paul. And he says, oh, but this guy's bad news. And God says to him, I'm going to show him how much he has to suffer for my sake.

I've approved him for this. So anyway, there's this sense of testing and examination and approval. Not just like, I think when I think of approval, I think of unjustified or undue approval. Just approved, approved. You know what I mean? Like a loan application or something.

But what this is talking about is an examination. And the fact that it's in the past perfect, he said it's that we pass the examination. So, do you have a... I like the perfect test because it says it was true in the past but abiding in the present. So he's still approved. I mean, it didn't end. He was approved in the past and it continues on. Yeah. So that's what it, you know. And also it's a passive.

It's so cool. And then when you get further, and I wasn't sure exactly how to do this, because he uses this word again in this sentence. I wasn't sure how to do it. I didn't know if you fire through the sentence and then hit it again, or if we just do it all at once. But I think in the study, I did it all at once. So he says, just as we have been approved, this past perfect, by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak as pleasing men, but God who examines, here it is, in the present continuous sense, so he's still examining us. And what really just blows my mind is, here's Paul.

He's an apostle. He spent a great amount of time with the incarnate Christ in the desert. I mean, he's had all these spiritual experiences that give him the ability to speak with incredible authority. And yet he never sits around and says, well, I could never get off track.

I know it needs to test me. I've been approved before and it has lasting effects in the future. He says, you know what? He's still testing me. And if I got off track, God would still correct me. I mean, and that's one of the things that, once again, I love about Holly Hills, whenever the elders speak, they'll be more than happy. And please check my work.

The reality that if you go up to Vern or Roger or any of the elders after they've taught and say, hey, I have a question about this. This doesn't seem to quite line up. You're not going to get blown off. You're not going to get a, well, come on. I went to seminary. And I took the Greek class. And let me tell you, I'm smarter than you. Go away. Like, you're not going to get that! You're never going to get that. And you wouldn't have got it from Paul either, I guess is where I'm getting at, is that that humility was found in Paul as much as it's found in our elders here and every true elder in the faith.

And I just love to see that, that he didn't He didn't just stand on past events, but he says, you know what, God is continually examining my heart. God is continually examining, I should say, our hearts. I just thought that was absolutely magnificent. That God cares enough to be continually examining our hearts. And there's a huge, obviously, movement towards self-inspection, self-examining your own heart, and trying to figure out, and trying to figure out, and trying to figure out. And I really do feel convicted that that's really something that the Lord needs to be doing. That we don't need to spend five hours looking at our lives, or looking at our sin, or looking at everything that we do wrong, and trying to fix it. We really need to spend that time just beholding the Lord Jesus. He's examining your heart. He's going to show you. He will. He absolutely will. As you're beholding Him.

So it's just much like the people who are trained to find bad money, false money. They don't train them by showing them all the different fakes that have been done over the years. They train them by showing them a real bill, feeling it, touching it, just touching bill after bill after bill after bill, looking at it so that when something's not there, you see it immediately.

You know, same thing with us. We don't need to examine the falseness of our life and touch it and touch it and feel it and feel it and know that it's bad and know that it's awful and then mourn over it or whatever's going on. We just need to touch the truth. We just need to experience Christ and behold Him. And He'll do the examining. He'll bring it to us.

So, any other comments about 4 before we move on? We got the most fun verses ahead in 15 minutes, or 10 minutes, if that. Does anybody have any other questions or comments? We never came with flattering speech as you know, nor with a pretext for greed.

God is witness. Obviously there once again, he's once again, I mean like I say, I almost felt like I was reading the same sentence over and over again. Because he continually is saying, we're not like these false teachers, and we're not like these false teachers, and we're not like these false teachers, and we're not like these religious peddlers, and we're not like these prosperity gospel folks. Like he's just, you get a very clear idea I mean, that he knows what he's not. That they know what they're not. And they want them to remember, want the Thessalonians to remember what they're not.

So here he's saying, we never came with flattering speech. Obviously, flattering, not obviously, I'm sorry. Flattering speech was one of the most disdained and kind of obnoxious things in the ancient world. You know, someone who would kind of sneak up behind a patriarch's ear or something and whisper flattering words in order to get his way was just as much despised then, if not more so, than it is now. I mean, I guess really there was no place in history for the brown nosers.

They continue to keep going. But he's saying that we didn't come with flattering speech. We didn't come telling you how great you were and how fantastic you were. And in fact, if anything, they came in with a message of their sinfulness. I mean, Romans 1 through 3, not a real go-humanity. Like, yay! You're so great! Let me tell you about how great you are. And that's the other thing about the Joel Osteen prosperity gospel stuff. I mean, you read about it, and you've got to presume at least one non-Christian is going to go about it.

Christ doesn't even get mentioned. Nor does the gospel. So in other words, he's telling anyone that they're, you know, you're in God's blessing, you're this, you're that, God wants to bless, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And it's like, you don't even know if your readers know the gospel. And you're pretty much operating without that presupposition.

So it's like, yeah, it's just tragic. Flattering people, telling them, hey, you just gotta think you're the best thing. Your self-esteem is the most important thing. And he's saying, nope, we weren't like that. This, as you know, is once again a reminder. Hey, you know it. Know by perception. Perfect tense. You know by perception. You saw it. You were with us. So just reminding him where there is.

And not with a pretext for greed. Pretext is a word that I don't ever use. So in looking it up, found out it's the actual motive. It's the heartfelt motive. Motivation for what Paul's doing. It's not about greed. It's not about money, as the claim could not be made for most. And then he appeals to God as his witness, which is obviously something that God wasn't likely to come down and say, he's telling the truth.

But I think the best commentators I read said that said that he's referring to the Bema Judgment. At the Bema Judgment, all the motives will be made plain before all people. And if the Thessalonians had any doubt, they know now that Paul's motivation was right. So there is a future vindication for us as believers. Yeah, I'm sure in a lot of those situations. Comments, questions? Verse 2-6.

Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. So, he continually, he's saying, okay, we didn't do it for money, we didn't do it for power, we didn't do it for this, we didn't do it for that, and now we didn't do it for the glory of men. We didn't do it so that people would look up for up to us.

And once again, if you take it in light of his experience back in, what he said back in verse 2, it'd be ridiculous. I mean, here they are going from town to town and preaching this message and they're getting beat up, thrown into prison, whipped, and all this stuff. If they're after money, it's time to change the message, because the one they've got obviously isn't working. It would be ridiculous if that's what they were seeking. If they're seeking glory from men, they're not the place to be.

If they're seeking glory from others, no. So he's saying, ultimately, It's as if someone's getting the Congressional Medal of Honor from the President, and the whole time they just can't enjoy it because they're thinking, my second grade teachers never really liked me that much. Who cares? You're getting the Congressional Medal of Honor from the President. You can live and, you know, enjoy that a little bit in spite of what your second grade teachers, not to, you know, to grade second grade teachers at all.

I think they're all great. But the point is that they, They are only concerned with their relationship with God. They're only concerned with their identity in Christ. And what everyone else could think about it, they couldn't care less. And I just think that that's something they constantly pin on home that's just beautiful. Okay, moving forward. Because this is the part that I love. This is the part that I live for. And I almost just stopped, didn't teach anything else but this. Because this is more fun.

He says, but we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. So he describes his conduct as gentle and this was not the common conduct of a Roman authority figure at all. You'd say, oh he was gentle with us. No. He's talking about in Christ they were operating on a completely different view of what it was to have authority and what it meant to love each other. John 15. Christ says, greater love is no man than this that he laid down his life for his friends. And that's what they were doing. It goes on further to say, we share our lives with you as well. And I love this image of a nursing mother because I actually live with someone who was up until a couple weeks ago a nursing mother.

And you know, it's wild because the baby needs to be fed. It needs it. It loves to be fed. Cadence would immediately go into a contented slumber that would otherwise never have happened if she got milk. Right? She loves it. But also, the mother loves to give that. It's filled with joy to give it.

It's not like, you know, hey, you are our servants and we kind of paid you because we had to at the end of the day. No. As a nursing mother, you needed the nourishment, you wanted the nourishment, you loved to receive it, and you loved to give it. And the other powerful thing is that I think he didn't just say as carefully as a mother tends for her children, but as a nursing mother. Even then, they knew.

April, being a much stronger and better person than I will ever be, was able to give up caffeine, onions, garlic, what else? I mean, and you think about everything, onions, salsa, tomatoes. I mean, she lived on white bread and water for almost a full year. And she never complained about it. I said about 50 times until she just got mad at me and told me to stop saying it. What's the first thing you're going to eat when you stop nursing? I don't care. She didn't even think about it.

It was amazing. So it's a wonderful thing. So I guess that's the image I want to leave you. There's definitely more. But as far as you are a minister to the people around you and the Lord has placed himself in you, to all the people around you, We need to consider our spiritual diet and Philippians 489 which we'll close with It says finally brethren, whatever is true. Whatever is honorable. Whatever is right.

Whatever is pure Whatever is lovely what is a good repute if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise dwell on these things The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things And the God of peace will be with you Heavenly Father we praise you for the wonderful gift of your word and Lord the wonderful love that you put between your messengers and between us and between the apostles and the people of Thessalonica and you put between us here as a body of believers. We praise you that the love that Paul shared with the Thessalonian believers was not unique. to him and the Thessalonians. It had nothing to do with what the Thessalonians did or what Paul did, but had everything to do with the love that you've given us in Christ.

Lord, I pray that this day and this week and this year, we more and more love each other with the love that you provide as we abide in you. And Lord, let the world see the way that we love each other, and the way that you love us through one another. And Lord, be drawn to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.