Let's turn again this morning
to Paul's first letter to the church at Thessalonica, 1 Thessalonians. As we continue our studies now
in chapter 2, I sought to get to you last week
in introducing the main theme of Chapter 2, verses 2 through
12, some understanding of the relationship between the main
thrust of Chapter 1 and the main substance of this first part
of Chapter 2, and I believe it is this. In chapter one, as Paul
thanks God for what transpired at Thessalonica in the calling
out of a people to the Lord and into the fellowship of the church,
He does so in terms of the mighty activity of God. As he remembers
the work of faith and the labor of love and the patience and
hope of the Thessalonians, he attributes this to nothing less
than the mighty, sovereign working of God. In verse 4, he enroutes
it in God's eternal purposes of election, knowing, brethren
beloved of God, your election. And then in the mighty, efficacious
call of God by the Spirit, for our gospel came not unto you
in word only, but in power and in the Holy Ghost, and everything
that follows, Paul acknowledges to be the result of the mighty
working of God. Now that principle must be understood,
must be held to tenaciously, that no individual is saved,
no church is born, no work of God goes forward except God by
His sovereign and eternal purposes and by the power of the Spirit
is pleased to do it. Now as he comes to chapter 2,
He brings another set of truths into focus, namely, that though
God works sovereignly and by the power of the Spirit, He works
through human instruments. and that from the human standpoint,
the instrument is vital in the accomplishment of God's purpose. So therefore, Paul is going to
vindicate the kind of ministry that he and his companions had,
and is going to show that the kind of ministers they were was
directly related to the effectiveness of the ministry which they had. And we must cling to that aspect
of truth with as much tenacity as we cling to the former aspect
of truth. And so as we study verses 2 through
12 of chapter 2, we are doing so under the general theme of
the marks of a true minister and a true ministry. Referring
the minister and ministry not only to one who stands in the
pulpit or goes out as a missionary or an apostle, as did Paul, But
whether that ministry is found in the home as a parent, a neighbor
to your neighbors, one in a place of employment, to your work associates,
a student, to your fellow students, wherever the Christian is, he
is not only there as a Christian, but as a minister, as an ambassador
of Jesus Christ. Therefore, what was true of Paul
as a minister should be true of us. What was true of his ministry,
by the grace of God, should be true of ours. Now last week in
studying verse 2 we discovered that the first two marks of a
true minister and a true ministry are opposition leading to suffering
and boldness leading to a full disclosure of the truth of God. But even after that we had suffered
before and were shamefully treated, as you know at Philippi, we were
bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much
contention. Opposition is the mark of a true
ministry. Take heart, parents, if you're
getting a little opposition, that's the mark of being a true
parent. Take heart if you're getting some pressure from your
neighbors. Opposition leading to suffering and to abuse is
the mark of a true ministry. But in the midst of that, boldness,
fully disclosing the mind of God, a boldness rooted not in
personality or in experience, but in our relationship to God.
We were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel. That's the
mark of a true ministry. Now, beginning with verse 3,
the apostle lays out some more of these marks of the true ministry
in a series of negatives and positives. He'll say, our message
and ministry was not this, but it was this. It was not that,
but it was this. And this morning, as time permits,
we shall study verses 3 and 4 as the first series of negatives
and a positive. Notice verse 3, For our exhortation
was not of deceit, better translated, not of error, nor of uncleanness,
nor in guile," that's the negative, now the positive, verse 4, but,
"...as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel,
even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, who trieth our
hearts." Now let's go through in detail, seeking to understand
what the apostle is saying. The first series of negatives
begins in verse 3 with these words, Our exhortation was not
this, this, or that. Paul summarizes his whole ministry
as an apostle under the descriptive word, our exhortation. And this is a very broad word.
Sometimes it means instruction. Sometimes it means rebuke. Sometimes
it means comfort. Sometimes it means entreaty.
Sometimes it takes in all of these things. So Paul describes
the whole discharge of his ministry under the heading, exhortation,
because it's a very flexible term. Now he says, our exhortation,
that is, the whole substance of our ministry was not of error. That's a better translation than
the word deceit. It's a word which in its root
means to wander away from the proper path. In Matthew 18, verses
12 and 13, it's used of the sheep that goes astray. Now when a
sheep goes astray, what does he do? Well, he moves out of
the path marked out for him by his shepherd. Now the root of
the word then has that concept of leaving the beaten track. leaving the proper path. And then when it's transferred
into the realm that Paul is using it, it's used as the exact opposite
of truth. First John 4 and verse 6, John
says, Hereby know ye the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. That's the same word used. So
what's the opposite of truth? Error. Now, Paul says, Our exhortation
then was not of Now, why does he bring this in at this point?
Well, for the simple reason that suffering and boldness are not
of themselves sufficient marks of a true minister of a true
ministry. Joseph Smith suffered great opposition. That's the
leader of Mormonism. He was martyred, and he certainly
was very bold. He would pass the first two marks
of a true minister. He was bold, he suffered opposition. Judge Rutherford and Charles
Taze Russell, the founders of the Jehovah's Witnesses, they
certainly were bold. And the Jehovah's Witness movement
to this day bears the shadow and the imprint of the brazen
boldness of its founders. Why, they were just common agitators.
They made some of our political agitators look like cream puffs. These men were bold, and they
suffered opposition. So if the only two marks of a
true minister in a true ministry are opposition and boldness,
these men would qualify. But now we move into verse 3,
and we immediately confront this third mark of a true minister
in a true ministry, namely, that his ministry is rooted not in
error, but in objective truth. So the apostle declares of himself,
our exhortation was not in, rooted in, drawn out from, a source
that was wrong. It was not a ministry framed
by leaving the beaten path of revealed truth, but everything
we preached. Every appeal we made, everything
we delivered was found to be right smack dead center in the
path of the truth that God revealed in the Holy Scriptures and consistent
with the mind of the Holy Spirit. So then we're confronted with
this third mark of a true ministry, namely its content is one characterized
by truth. Now we live in a day that likes
to downplay any concept of objective, revealed, definable truth. We live in a day where the whole
thrust is we've got to love one another, we've got to be kind,
we've got to be concerned about life and practice and activity,
but with the mess the world's in, we've got no time to sit
around and debate whether a certain statement is right or wrong,
true or false, let's put all of that behind us. The Apostle
Paul would say no. for the simple reason that what
you believe may damn your soul if you believe error. This is
why in 2 Thessalonians 2.11 Paul says, for this cause God shall
send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie that they all might be damned
who receive not the love of the truth. So then the mark of a
true minister is that he is committed to that pathway of truth which
is the Holy Scriptures. Thy word is truth. The mark of
a true parent discharging his ministry as a parent is that
he discharges it within the framework of the truth of God. The mark
of a true witness as he stands in his neighborhood seeking to
be a witness and a minister to his neighbors is that he does
so within the framework of revealed truth. Now, if that's to be true of
you and me, then a tremendous responsibility lies upon us that
we know what the beaten path is. How are you going to tell
if somebody's ministering to you outside the beaten path if
you don't know what the beaten path is? The only sure way to
preserve the truth of God in the church is by the grace of
God to make theologians out of everybody sitting in the pew.
Not theologians in the sense that they could move into Westminster
Seminary next week or into some other seminary and take over
the chair of theology. I don't mean theologians in the
sense that they understand all of the technical terms and all
the refined aspects of theology But when they hear a statement
like justification, they know what it means. And if someone
stands up and says, well, justification has to do with a just life, they'll
immediately say, no, no, that's heresy. Justification has nothing
to do with how you live. Justification has to do with
something God declares to be true of men in the courts of
heaven when they believe in his son, and they be able to know
the difference between justification and sanctification. Yet knowing
the difference, if someone should say, well, it's perfectly possible
for a person to be justified and have a right standing in
heaven, but not be sanctified and be living like the devil,
they be able to say, no, that's out of the beaten path. For though
justification has to do with the court of heaven, sanctification
has to do with the heart of a man, the two are never divorced, they're
always joined. That's what I mean by making
theologians out of people in the pew. So that if someone comes
and says, well you know really, maybe you people have been told
that we need to be faithful to the very words of scripture,
but certainly you realize it's not the words that's important,
it's the thought behind them. You'd be able to see right through
that and say, wait a minute, no, no, that's impossible. Because
thoughts are framed by words. And if you change the words,
you change the thought. Do you know that whole denominations
have gone down the drain of liberalism and this very morning are putting
lies in the hands of people in the name of truth and people
are taking it, assimilating it into their very bloodstream and
are being damned and poisoned with lies. Why? Because people
who sat in the pew Figured, well, only the preacher needs to know
theological distinction. Not important for me. Beloved,
it is important, for if you're to know the difference between
a true ministry and a false ministry, you've got to know what the beaten
path is before you can discern when someone's gone out of that
path. This is why I am committed in the ministry that God has
called me to, in the midst of this assembly, to seeking under
God to have a people who understand that if this is so, this is not
so, and if this is not so, this cannot be so. Why? That you might
know the marks of a true ministry. in order that you might never
receive anything other than a true ministry, in order that you might
encourage nothing else other than a true ministry. So the Apostle declares our ministry,
our exhortation was not of error, but by contrast, it was one of
truth. Then he says in the second place,
the second negative, it was not of uncleanness, Now, this word
for uncleanness in almost every instance in the New Testament
is used in the connotation of sexual impurity. In Romans chapter
1, in that terrible list of perversions, it's mentioned in verse 24, in
Ephesians 5, 3, it speaks of the unclean person along with
the whoremonger who shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now, why would Paul ever use such a word as this? Our exhortation,
our preaching, our message was not of error nor of uncleanness. What meaning would this have
to the Thessalonians? Well, it would have a very real
meaning to them, for remember, many of them had been idol worshippers. Paul spoke of their turning to
God from idols. They were idol worshippers. And
one of the marks of many of the heathen idols in the day in which
Paul lived in the Roman government, under Roman rule, In these heathen
temples, the deities, the gods who were worshipped, were notorious
for their sexual exescapades. In fact, many of the gods had
little gods by illicit relationship with other goddesses. And it
was not uncommon for heathen temples to be filled with prostitutes,
and to have immoral acts as a very part of the worship of the heathen
deities. For it's only logical that if
your God's like that, the ultimate is to be like your God. Therefore,
unclean gods produce unclean worshipers. So Paul, by contrast,
says our exhortation was not of error nor of uncleanness. This would have real meaning
to these people. The opposite, of course, of uncleanness
is purity or holiness, and the two things are used as opposites
in chapter 4, where the Apostle Paul says in verse 7, God hath
not called us to—here's the word—to uncleanness, but unto holiness. Our message? Rooted in truth. our motive under God to see purity
and holiness produced in the hearts and lives of men. The Apostle Paul recognized,
as we must recognize, that the fourth mark of a true ministry
is this. It will not only be a proclamation
of truth, but a proclamation of truth which leads to purity
and godliness of life. In one place he uses the term,
the truth, which is according to godliness. Truth and holiness
are always joined, and conversely, error and uncleanness are generally
joined together. Listen as I read several passages
that show the relationship between error and uncleanness. In the second chapter of the
book of the Revelation, chapter 2 and in verse 20 the Lord Jesus
says to the church at Thyatira nevertheless or notwithstanding
I have a few things against thee because thou sufferest that woman
Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess see she claimed
to be speaking truth in the name of God she claimed to be speaking
inspired truth a prophet was one who spoke as the mouthpiece
of God And God says to this church, you've allowed that woman who
calls herself a prophetess to make deliverances, so-called
truth in the name of God. But what was the result? What
was the practical outworking? Here it is. She calls herself
a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication. and to eat things sacrificed
unto idols. You see, the error proclaimed
was inseparably joined to uncleanness of life, which followed an embrace
of the error. In the book of Jude, the last
book before the Revelation, you have the same thought. The theme
of this chapter, of course, is dealing with false teachers and
their influence notice what he says about them in verses 10
to 13 but these speak evil of the things that they know not
but what they know naturally as brute beast in those things
they corrupt themselves woe unto them for they've gone in the
way of Cain and ran greedily after the Arab Balaam for reward
and have perished in the game saying of Corrie These are spots
in your feast of charity. These people actually joined
in the love feast of the Christians. When they feast with you, feeding
themselves without fear, clouds that are without water, carried
about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice
dead, plucked up by the roots. Drop down to verse 16. These
are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts. Down to verse 19, these they
be who separate themselves, sensual, giving themselves over to the
passions and appetites of the flesh, having not the spirit. So you see that there is connected
with false teaching, false unclean, immoral living. So the Apostle
Paul vindicates his ministry by saying that his message was
not only rooted in truth, but the whole motivation in the proclamation
of that message was that it might produce purity and holiness of
heart and of life. Now notice how history bears
out this principle. Joseph Smith claimed to be a
prophet, didn't he? And he claimed to have special
gifts to interpret and to read these golden plates that were
buried up there near Palmyra. But wonder of wonders, when he
reads these plates, he finds that it's all right for a man
to have a bunch of wives. Oh, of course he's got to do
this in the name of God. What was he doing? Finding justification
for giving himself over to the flesh. See? The uncleanness of
the flesh was inseparably joined to the error that he proclaimed.
Now, more recently, in the name of truth and in the name of Christianity,
some smart young so-called theologians—I wouldn't give them the privilege
of calling them that, I call them philosophers if they even
deserve that term—have come up and said, well, you know, the
Church has been laboring for too long under this rigid set
of rules. expressed in the Ten Commandments
and other moral codes, and we have come in the name of truth
and godliness to liberate this generation from all the mores
and standards and restrictions of past generations. And so they've
come up with what's called the new morality. This has not been
spawned on this society by what we would call unreligious people.
This has been spawned by religious leaders. But what's it lead to?
It leads to young men and women taking liberties in premarital
and extramarital sexual experience. All kinds of deviation from the
clear teaching of scripture with regard to respect for and subjection
to human government. All of these things are the fruit
of what? They are the fruit of error. Error leads to uncleanness,
always. Always. And so the Apostle Paul,
in vindicating his own ministry and in giving the marks of a
true minister, says that our exhortation was not in its content
of error or in its motive of uncleanness, nor, in the third
place, was it in guile. Now the word guile is a difficult
word to define. It means crafty or deceitful
talk or conduct. Maybe I can best illustrate it
with a little story. There was a little fox, and foxes
are known for their wily, dialy ways, and he sneaked into Mrs. Jones' chicken coop one night
by a little hole that he just about barely could squeeze himself
through in the corner of the chicken coop. Well, he got in,
he just had him the best feast on chicken, nice plump chicken,
and when he was all done, he was so stuffed and his side so
swollen that he couldn't get out the hole. So he said to himself,
my, my, I'm in a fix. Mrs. Joan comes out to the poop
in the morning to check for the eggs, and she finds me in here,
I'm going to have it. And so this has really been my
last meal before my... and that's it. So the fox figured,
well, what will I do? And he had a plan. So that morning,
while he was looking out the chicken coop, he could see through
the little hole, though he couldn't squeeze through it, he saw Mrs.
Jones coming. So amidst all the feathers that
had been flying around, and the chickens there and now inside
his tummy, and the others huddled over in the corner, scared, as
she drew near the chicken coop, he laid down right in the middle
of it and played dead. And so when Mrs. Jones came in and saw
that fox lying there looking dead, and saw the evidence of
what he had done in her anger, she picked it up by the tail
and threw what she thought was a dead carcass out the front
door of the chicken coop, and no sooner had she done that than
little Wiley Fox He just ran away with his full tummy. Well
you see, he caught Mrs. Jones with guile. He deceived
her. He was sly, we say, as a fox. He was being true to his fox
nature. Now that's the thought of guile.
That which is deliberate, planned, deceit, craftiness. Now the Apostle
Paul says, my ministry, my preaching was not In its content of error,
my message was true. Nor was my motive to produce
uncleanness, but conversely holiness. Now he seems to touch not so
much on the message, Not so much on the motive, but on his methods.
He says, it was not in guile. And he uses a different preposition
here. He had said, it was not of, or out of, literally, out
of a source of error, or out of motives of uncleanness, but
in the context of honesty and openness. There was no guile.
There was no craftiness in my ministry. And as I mentioned,
it seems that Paul is here referring to his method. Now notice the
relationship. When he came with a message that
was rooted in objective, revealed truth, with a motive that God
would so work as to produce holiness, he didn't have to use tricks. He didn't have to be underhanded.
He didn't have to be sneaky. He could come right into the
synagogue and open up the scriptures and proclaim that Jesus was the
Christ. And if people say, what are you
doing here? What do you want? He could say, as we'll study
later on, I don't want anything from you. I've come to do nothing
but give the message of life to you. No tricks, no gimmicks,
none of the arts and crafts of the false teacher. When you read
in 2 Corinthians 11 about false teachers, and this very word
is used about the false teachers, that they are marked by their
cunning craftiness and by their guile and their deceit. This
is the mark of the Jehovah's Witness who comes to your door
spouting scripture verses like a machine gun spitting out bullets. But what's behind it? His whole
method is one of craftiness and deceit and guile. He doesn't
come with any real longing to declare to you the truth of scripture. He comes to give the impression
that he's declaring the truth of scripture when underneath
all he wants to do is get you to believe his pernicious lies. This is true of the so-called
religious teachers who stand in the name of Christ in truth,
will give things that are not in the beaten path of the revealed
will of God. Now, frankly, dear ones, this
is what greatly concerns me with so much of the methods of modern
evangelism. For they are marked by the craftiness
and wiliness of the false teacher. The modern gospel invitation,
much of it is psychological craftiness. I have been in meetings, as no
doubt you have been. Or the evangelist would say,
now we don't want to embarrass anyone, we don't want to put
anyone to shame. Well, every head is bowed and every eye closed
in the absolute privacy of this meeting. We want you to raise
your hand if you want to accept Christ. So the person says, well
that's pretty good, and obviously they raise their hand. And later
on they'd say, now it's obvious we can't know who you are and
we've got to have an opportunity to talk to you. So we're going
to ask you while we sing a few numbers to come out. But we're
not going to keep you now, we just want to be able to shake
your hand, give you a piece of literature. And then after they get him down
the front, then it's sneak them off. You see, this whole idea
of using psychological pressure and gimmicks and the tricks of
the sales world to somehow get a response out of people. This
is entirely foreign to the ministry of the Apostle Paul. He said
that my ministry, my exhortation was not of guile. I stood among
you and my motives and my message and method were all above board
and were disciplined by the word of God. Now God grant that if
you and I can say that as parents, as witnesses to our neighbors,
what a tremendous thing to lay upon your bed in the hour of
death and say, well, in spite of all my failures, in spite
of all my shortcomings, by the grace of God, What I sought to
tell my neighbors and tell my children and tell the people
to whom I ministered was rooted in the truth of scripture, had
as its motive the producing of purity, and was carried out in
the realm of absolute honesty and openness. There was no doubt. That's the negative. Now he turns
in verse 4 to the positive. And the reason why verse 3 is
true is because of verse 4. What keeps a man sticking to
the beaten path of the Word of God? What keeps a man in his
motive pure, longing to see the truth produce purity? What keeps
a man from tricks and gimmicks and guile in his witness and
in his ministry? Verse 4 is the answer. But, as
we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel,
even so we speak not as pleasing men, but God. who triumph our
hearts. There are several key words here.
But as we were allowed of God, better translated, as we were
approved of God, to be put in trust with the gospel, even so
we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who triumphs our hearts.
Here's the first positive statement. Paul says, I speak as a man who's
been approved and appointed of God. Why don't I swerve from
the truth? Why I dare not, because the God
of truth has appointed me to proclaim his truth. Why will
I not swerve in the discharge of my duty and responsibility
in the ministry of parenthood, in the ministry as a witness?
Why? Because I have been appointed,
approved of God. Notice a larger statement of
this in 1 Timothy chapter 1, allowing Scripture to interpret
Scripture. 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 11
through 14. According to the glorious gospel
of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. We'll
take up that thought in a moment, this whole idea of a trust. And
I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who enabled me, for that he counted
me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before
a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained
mercy, because I did it ignorantly and unbelieving. And the grace
of our Lord Jesus, the grace of our Lord, was exceeding abundantly
with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. God has counted
me faithful, putting me into the ministry. Now the question
arises, is Paul saying that God looked down, as it were, and
watched his conduct for a period of time and says, well, you know,
by the way you're living and acting, you qualify, therefore
I'll put you into the ministry? No. That appointment came by
an act of divine sovereignty in the context of mercy and of
grace. Notice this so clearly stated
in Acts 9. But the Lord said unto him, Go
thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before
the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. A literal
translation would be, He is a vessel of election unto me. He is a
vessel of election unto me. I have chosen to lay hold of
him and to make him a minister to the Gentiles. Paul understood
this, for he says in 1 Corinthians 7.25 Now concerning virgins, I have
no commandment of the Lord, yet I give my judgment as one that
hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. His mercy is
what makes me faithful. And then 2 Corinthians 3, 5,
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as
of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God who hath made us able
ministers of the new covenant. So Paul then recognizes, I have
been set upon by God. God has laid hold of me. He has
appointed me to this responsibility as a minister. Therefore, I dare
not do anything other than speak the right message from a right
motive and use a right method. God has laid hold of me. God has appointed and approved
me. Secondly, he says, I have been
given a trust. We were approved of God to be
put in trust with the gospel. Now, when you are made a trustee
of something, you have two basic responsibilities. You're first
of all to preserve that which is put into your trust, and then
you are to rightly administer that trust. Now Paul had a tremendous
sense of this concept. I have been entrusted with the
gospel. We read about it in 1 Timothy
chapter 1. I have been allowed of God to
be put in trust with the gospel. Something has been committed
to me that I might first of all preserve it in its entirety and
that I might administer it the way God wants it to be administered.
Oh dear ones, if God could burn this into our hearts, then a
sense of responsibility to stick by the direction of the Word
of God would grip our hearts in every area of our ministry.
As you're a parent, and you think of your responsibility, how are
you going to discharge it? If you're worthy of the name
of parent, you're going to discharge your parental responsibility
conscious of these two things. I've been appointed of God. He
has given me the privilege of parenthood. He has put in my
trust this responsibility. I am not to determine how it
should be administered. I am not to determine how I should
discharge the trust. I'm to come to the Scriptures.
I'm to glean from the Word of God. all of the principles involved
in the administration of the trust, and then I am to preserve
it, and I am to discharge it in its entirety, without any
reference to the smiles or frowns of my children, or society, or
the church, or the world about me. I'm put in this neighborhood,
there by the appointment of God as his child and as his witness.
How am I to discharge my trust? I'm to discover from the scripture
what that trust is, how to discharge it, and then discharge it without
any reference to the smiles or the frowns of those about me. Paul could speak as a man conscious
that he was chosen by God. given a trust from God, and then
notice this third principle that comes into the text, even so
we speak not as pleasing men but God who trieth our hearts. I've been appointed by God, I've
been given a trust from God, I am a servant accountable to
God. And when you get those three
things together in the heart of a man or woman, he's immovable. She's immovable. You can't budge
them. They become filled with a sanctified
stubbornness and immovability. God has laid his hand upon me. God has given something to me. And I shall stand before that
God. Now Paul recognizes, you see,
that much of what he has been given as a trust in the gospel
is not pleasing to men. That's why he says, even so we
speak, not as pleasing men. He has charged me to proclaim
to men what the Bible says about them. that they're dead, blind,
rebel sinners who deserve the wrath and curse of God. I've
been charged to proclaim to them the gospel that says the only
hope of sinners is in the cruel, bloody Roman cross upon which
the Son of God died and shed his blood. I'm to declare to
men that unless they are holy, they have no grounds to claim
they are Christians. I'm to proclaim all of these
truths, every one of which is disgusting and distasteful to
the natural heart. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. So Paul says, if as I take this
trust, the gospel committed to me, And as I begin to administer
it, I check my Harris ratings, he said, something's going to
happen. I'm going to find that I'm going to begin to alter the
message. I'm going to begin to somehow
change not only the message, but ultimately my methods in
order to suit the desires of people but he says I dare not
do that because I've been appointed of God given a trust from God
and I will stand before God accountable to him therefore only his smile
only his frown is what matters I say to anyone of you contemplating
the Christian ministry there is nothing that will keep you
faithful to your trust, except these things being burnt into
your heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. When you stand before
men as I stand before you men and women this morning, conscious
that I stand here not because my folks had ambitions that I
be a preacher, or one day sitting around somewhere I thought, well,
that'd be a nice thing to do, and you've got the gift of gab,
so why don't you preach? No. When you stand conscious,
I have been appointed of God. And you realize that what you've
been appointed to do is to discharge and preserve a trust. He has
committed to you His holy word, the whole counsel of His truth,
to be proclaimed the bitter and the sweet, the promises as well
as the threatenings, the commands, the exhortations. The truth of
human responsibility, the truth of absolute and divine sovereignty,
the truth of man's ruin in the fall and redemption by Christ.
This is the awesome trust committed, and it must be preserved, and
it must be discharged. And then the recognition that
in the discharge of that trust, I stand before God who tries
my heart. As I preach to you, your eyes
don't matter, it's His eye that counts. It's in the present tense.
We speak not as pleasing men, but God, who proveth, who tries,
who discerns our hearts. His eye is upon me. And so if
there's the look of anger in the eyes of those to whom you
minister, that doesn't matter if you know that the look of
delight is in the eye of your God. And if there's the look
of smile and delight in the eyes of your hearers, that doesn't
satisfy if you're not sure there's the glint of delight in the eye
of God. That's the thing that shapes
and molds and disciplines a preacher to be bold in the spirit. That's
what will make you a true Sunday school teacher. You know, that's
what will make you a true parent. I guess I'm sort of on a crusade
against sentimentality. If there's anything I hate with
a holy hatred and what they say is a purple passion, it's sentiment. It's sentiment. You know what
sentiment is? It's gushy, unprincipled, selfish affection. Love is a
deep, principled affection. Sentiment blown about by every
wind, every smile, every frown, every whine, every whimper, every
fuss of a child. Sentimental parents, the bane
of the Christian Church. Raising a generation of kids
who can't make their way through life. At the first difficulty,
they turn around. At the first obstacle, they falter
and they flop. Why? Because they were never
brought up in a context where they learned that you move on
the basis of principle and right and truth, and you move in that
direction, sink or swim, live or die, uncommitted to the truth
and to the will and the law of God. All for parents of that
kind of principle. My son came home recently, telling
one of the kids in the neighborhood, wanted something, and his parents
said no, and he says, I know if I holler loud enough and long
enough, I'll get it. It's a matter of me just battering
down their resistance with my whimpers. Did your children say
that of you? You parents who are here, if
they whimper loud enough and long enough, they'll get it.
God have mercy on you. God have mercy on you, if that's
true. For you see, you're not discharging
your trust under the sense, God, prove it in my heart. But you're
discharging it looking at the eye of your son or daughter.
Miserable, miserable state to be in as a parent. In the discharge of your responsibility
to neighbors, to friends, as a witness, as a testimony, all
this sense that being accountable to God is what will keep you
from ever tampering with his truth, your message will be pure.
From ever moving aside from the right motive, it will be a motive
of holiness. And from moving aside from a
right method, it will not be in guile, but in honesty and
in openness. So we have in these verses the
next, what we call, three or four marks of a true minister.
We found in verse two that he will be marked as one who suffers
opposition. who's marked by boldness. Verse 3, the negative, his message
will not be of error, but of truth, not of uncleanness, but
of purity, not in guile, but in honesty and openness. And
he will discharge that ministry, conscious that he's been chosen
by God, been given a trust from God, and stands accountable to
God. Now, will that make a man harsh?
Will that make a woman harsh? Will that make a parent unfeeling
and unbending? No, for you find a wonderful
contrast as he goes on to develop this thought in verse 7, But
we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherished her children. No, this doesn't lead to harshness.
there is then a love and a gentleness that is a holy love and a holy
gentleness because it is framed and shaped and molded by principle
and the gentleness of verse 7 follows the concepts of verses 3 and
4 and the Lord willing we shall develop those next week but in
closing this morning may I ask you a couple of very personal
and I hope searching questions The ministry God's given to you
and he's given a ministry to every one of us who are his children.
Of that ministry can you say my exhortation was not in error
or out of error? Do you know that what you're
saying to your neighbors is truth because you've searched it out?
Do you know that what you're saying to that Sunday school
class is truth because you've searched it out? Do you know
that what you're doing as a parent is in the context of truth because
you've searched it out? Is it of uncleanness? Does it
have as its motive that it shall produce holiness of life? And
is it being done in guile or in honesty? Do you have a consciousness
in the discharge of your ministry this morning? You stand ministering
as one chosen by God, given a trust from God, and that you're discharging
it. under the eye of God. Oh, for
such a God consciousness to grip our hearts. And then we shall
be true ministers in all of these areas that we've touched on this
morning. Let us unite in prayer.