our text this evening can be found on page 1173 we're reading we're going through first Thessalonians page 1173 will be in first Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 17 through 20 as you're turning there I must say that I found myself wrestling through this text for this evening, because I see both sides of the two main figures here in our text for this evening. It's kind of an interesting place to be in, but edifying for us as the church as well. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 17 through 20. Hear now the word of our God. But since we were torn away from you brothers for a short time in person not in heart we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face because we wanted to come to you I Paul again and again but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. and that concludes the reading of god's word for this evening it's good to be back with you all up here again if you recall during the summer i began working through first thessalonians whenever i was exhorting and by way of reminder we we looked at how this letter shows the power of the gospel and a culture of opposition and thus far as that is how far we've gotten through the letter, Paul has encouraged the Thessalonians. We've seen the power of the gospel in the way that they have been steadfast in the faith, how the Holy Spirit has held them up in the faith. And Paul has encouraged them, reminding them of that very fact. But Paul is also dealing with something else. There's an issue surrounding his relationship between him and the people. And this is an important aspect when it comes to matters of the gospel and a culture of opposition. It's important because we find that it's matters of issues of trust and love between the minister of Christ and the body of Christ. Now issues like this surrounding the pastor and his people, they're not unique to Paul and the Thessalonians. This has gone on throughout all the ages. It goes on today. It's a persistent issue that just always seems to come up. And a little bit later, we will see, in part, perhaps, why this always comes up. If we were to boil it down, as I mentioned earlier, the issues seem to surround themselves between trust and love. That is, the trust of the people to their ministers and the trust that their ministers love them. What happens, though, is when these two issues are called into question or there's any sort of doubt regarding them, what we find is then that cynicism enters into the life of the church, or cynicism at least in attitude towards the church. Now, certainly, we can acknowledge that there are multiple factors for this. There's been a perfect storm, if you will, for this. That perfect storm being modern and post-modern thought, which has led to individualism or stressing the importance of the individual and independent thinking. But on the other hand, we also see that there's more and more instances of pastoral abuse that are being reported. more and more people are becoming bold and sharing these instances of abuse that they are experiencing. And put together, again, this is a perfect storm where the cynical view as it pertains towards the church can seep in. Now, much of the cynicism is directed towards those in leadership. Questions can arise, like, does my pastor really care about my soul? Do my elders really care for me? Do they really love me? or is their leadership merely a way for them to experience power esteem and in some cases financial gain and again implicit in these questions are the issues of love and trust and if we're honest in the current social climate we live in these are two virtues that we find lacking while cynicism on the other hand has found a place of prominence and sadly this is not exclusive to just outside of the church this is also creeping into the life of the church paul then is not not for paul it's not something that is just unique to him he has this in common with us or we have this in common with what he experienced and what he saw he's having to address these types of issues and thoughts amongst the Thessalonians. And in addressing these things, the words that we read tonight, they serve all of us. They teach all of us, officers and laymen alike, about Christ's church. While at first glance this passage may seem to be purely an apologetic for the ministry, it also helps to bring out a bigger point. It's not just that the ministers, elders, and deacons should be trusted because they've been called by God and that God has ordered His church in a certain way. It's not just that, but this passage also shows how precious God's people are to Him. And from this passage then, we learn that the glory and the joy of a gospel ministry is a people living faithfully in Jesus Christ. It's not the ministers, but the people. To see this from the text this evening, we're going to consider the three points, the minister's heart, the hindrance of Satan, and the people. So we pick up in verse 17, and we find Paul has been narrowing his focus from the wider scope to now he's narrowing it down to the issues particularly pertaining between he and them. What he has been doing so far is talking about overall how they conducted themselves when they were in Thessalonica but he's not there anymore he's writing now in the present that is as he's writing this letter he's writing in the present for he's been away for some time and yet there seems to be some doubt about him Silas timothy and their genuine care and love for the people in thessalonica so paul says to them but since we were torn away from you brothers for a short time in person not in heart we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face because we wanted to come to you i paul again and again in this paul is stressing how greatly he along with Timothy and Silas wanted to see the people. And he uses very strong language to indicate his heart behind this. Now the ESV translates the first part as Paul saying that they were torn away from the people of Thessalonica. This is a passive type of thing. It's something that was done to them. It wasn't their own volition that they left. They didn't deliberately decide they were going to leave. If you recall, they were forced out because of a mob that stirred up and claimed that they were trying to cause revolution, trying to cause a revolt in Thessalonica. Now, the language of torn away, we can picture that in our minds in English. We can picture one person clinging to another person and being torn away from that person. But the Greek language is actually even stronger literally translated it is but since we were orphaned from you the greek word there is actually the verb for to be orphaned now this word was not just used in regards to a child losing their parent this word was also used to speak of a parent who lost their child and so it's this strong language that paul is using and if you recall in verses 7 and 11 he used parental metaphors one of how they showed motherly care and love and how they showed a fatherly heart towards the people and teaching them this parental language and now he's shifting to saying just as we were parents towards you that's how we loved you this is how it felt not being with you and having to leave against our wills but this was only physical in nature now the mob may have forced them to leave but they couldn't take the Thessalonian people from the hearts of Paul Silas and Timothy in their hearts their care and concern for the people continued on and because of the great desire for them they stressed that they made attempts repeatedly to try and get back to them they tried to get back to Thessalonica. Now, anyone who's been a parent or a child, they can certainly think about the struggle that Paul is conveying here. They can understand the language that he's using, literally, when we think of the idea of losing a child or losing a parent, if you are a child. I remember, for me personally, I've had that fear throughout my life at various points. I remember being a child, and I was so scared of my parents being taken from me that it would show up in random places, and the fear would just overwhelm me. One instance would be whenever I watched the movie Lion King, when Mufasa, the father of the main character Simba, whenever he died, I would have to leave. I would have to leave because it started getting me to think about what it would be like to lose my parents. That's how much it shook me. It gripped me. And ironically, I was reminded of this this week as my son Sam was actually watching Lion King. And in that same scene, he asked me to turn it off because it scared him. And it jogged my memory in a way then that I also began to think about how I have that fear now, even as a parent. That fear of having Sam, Machen, or a child I've yet to meet, having them taken from me. It's a heavy, heavy feeling. And again, everyone, to some extent, understands that feeling. But I also know that if they were to be taken from me, that my care and my love for them would still go on. They would still be in my heart. And it's this strong language, this extent to which Paul is speaking, that he is trying to convey to them for how much he truly loved them. How much they truly meant to him, Silas and Timothy. It was not as if when they went to Thessalonica, they were a means to an end. It was not as if they were just there until they could go to the next group of people, a better group of people, say the people in Rome. it was not as if they were there just to gain some money. It is not as if they were there just to get famous. They weren't trying to get attention. No, they were there because of their calling. And their care for the people of Thessalonica was not a pandering care. It was pastoral love for them. Now another thing here to observe is Paul's stressing of the attempts that he and Silas and Timothy made to try and get back. And the stressing of wanting to see them should not be missed by us either. Travel in those days was long and arduous. It was difficult. It was not as if they could go hop on a plane and be in Thessalonica within a day. No, it took time. It was a difficult journey. There would have been planning. There would have been a lot of self-determination to make that journey happen. And yet the people mattered that much that they made these attempts, that they had this desire. It wasn't a fleeting thought or feeling of, hey, we should go see the people in Thessalonica. It was, we sincerely tried to get to see you. Now these struggles should cause us to pause and consider those in ministry now and what they go through. Have we really taken time to think about this? Have we remembered that God called them to the ministry and that they followed in obedience? Are we aware just what those who are in ministry, whether it be the ministers themselves, elders or deacons, anyone in church leadership, are we aware of what they have undertaken in these callings? If you cannot ask them directly, ask their wives even about the tasks that they have undertaken. For these men, you, us, the congregation, are on their minds far more often than you realize. Far more often. Do you realize how often that they pray for you by name? They might not visit you as much as they would like to, but they still care. They're still praying for you. and for the ministers of the word it goes a step further they're constantly thinking about the messages that they will preach but how they're going to edify how they're going to strengthen the body but they're also doing so while trying to balance faithfulness to god's word and god alone so as to not stray away from what the text says just to make the people happy there's much time and energy that are given but it goes unseen but they do this not for the sake of esteem not for themselves but for the love of us the congregation the love of you the congregation yet why did paul have to stress this why is he going to such great lengths to try to tell these people in thessalonica about how much he loves them the efforts that he has tried to undertake to see them, the things that he has suffered. Why is it good for us to pause and think about our ministers and those in church leadership and what they're going through? For Paul, he understood how pervasive and poisonous the cynicism towards the church and towards the gospel could be. Earlier in the letter, he laid out the purity of their message and the purity of their motives. He called to mind their conduct amongst the Thessalonians. And he did this because there were those people out there who were false teachers, who were going around with impure motives. And he did this because there were those who carried and taught false teachings as well in the pagan side of things. And there were philosophers that were going around. And because of the circumstances that Paul found himself in, He had to go to great efforts to make sure that they were above reproach and make quite clear to the people that they were ministers of God, ministers of the gospel. The people, they had seen the fake teachers. They'd seen the false teachings and how those who taught them carried themselves. They'd perhaps even found themselves being victims of those teachers. What those teachers would do is they would come into town for a time, and after having collected some money from the people while giving their teachings, after taking advantage of the people, maybe making a name for themselves, they would move on, and they would never be seen from or heard from again. This was in the background of what was going on here. This was the fear that the people may have had regarding Paul and his co-workers. But this was different. They genuinely loved the people. And so Paul continues to stress the different ways that they loved them to the point that they wanted to see them, to the point that they were ripped away from them. Now here in the 21st century, the abuses by false teachers and the moral failings of those in the ministry It's only fed to the same cynicism that existed back then that paul was dealing with And the price Of that is huge the consequences of those things are huge because not only Does it cause individuals to leave the church, but it even caused them causes them to leave the faith But those in ministry who are faithful to christ their calling can be known by the heart that they have for the people and so paul in using the strong language of being a parent trying to get back to his children who have been he's been ripped away from it reveals this he loved the people and thankfully as a fellow congregant i can say we can say that or see that in our own congregation. We have ministers who are faithful to God and his word. We have ministers who love the people here. We have elders who check in with us and visit us and make sure we are doing well. Elders who ask the uncomfortable question of how is your devotional life going? How's your prayer life going? Not because they're trying to lord it over you or snoop in on your lives, but they care about your souls. They care about your well-being. We have deacons who are good stewards of the money and the resources of the church. Those things are not being wasted, but are used wisely. Now certainly, no church on earth is perfect. But we are truly blessed here to be able to see that there is a care for the people amongst those who are in leadership. And beloved, let me tell you, this is not to be taken for granted because this does not go on in every church. There are churches where visitation only happens by a single minister. And because it falls to only one man, people fall through the cracks. Regardless of how long they've been members or how long they've been attenders of a church. There are churches where the elders are not visible. The only time anything is seen with the elders is their names are in a bulletin or they come up front for communion to serve it. But otherwise, they're never heard from. Have you ever stopped to think about how even the fact that our elders greet us on the way out, how that is actually a simple but small way of showing their love and care for the people here. But even for those who are in ministry and truly love the people, and even for those churches that are blessed in that case. There's still something that everyone needs to be aware of when it comes to the relationship of those in ministry and the people of God. And this leads us to our second point this evening regarding the hindrances of Satan. Now Paul states to the Thessalonians that the reason he had not been able to make it back to Thessalonica is because they had been hindered by Satan. He says that explicitly here. Now it's important not to get lost in the weeds. And try to think about what all that meant. Paul doesn't tell us. He simply says that they were hindered by Satan. And for us to understand, we are simply just to understand that Satan was behind prohibiting them from returning. They were simply to understand that Satan was behind keeping them from returning to them. But it leads us to the question of why would Satan hinder Paul? Why would Satan hinder the co-workers? Now, Paul speaks elsewhere of being hindered. But in those cases, he's generally pretty ambiguous about the hindrance. We can maybe find contextual clues. In other cases, he even sees that God's hand has been right behind it. In the case of him being in Thessalonica, that's actually how he ended up there. If you recall in Acts, we're told that the Holy Spirit blocked them from going where they wanted to go. And so they had to go into Macedonia. And why was this going on? In those cases, Paul shares it's because he was to go proclaim the gospel elsewhere. But obviously, Satan wasn't doing that here. He wasn't trying to prohibit Paul and his co-workers from returning so they could share the gospel elsewhere. There was something else that was going on in this hindrance. Here, the hindrance of Satan was done to affect the church. It was to affect the Thessalonians. Recall, Paul and his co-workers, again, they had to leave very abruptly. It wasn't a planned out exit. They had to just pick up their things and get out. This would have left a young, fledgling church in a very precarious spot. And because Paul understood that, he was very concerned about the well-being of the people. We find out, actually, in the next few verses, they are finally able to get Timothy to be able to go back. And the reason they send him is because of how great the fear they had that, and Paul says this, somehow the tempter had tempted them. In other words, the fear that in their absence, Satan was coming in and also attacking them. Now, the potential result of Satan's hindrance, it would be to wreck that church. And this could have been manifested in multiple ways. One way would be that the church, in distrusting Paul because he hasn't come back, would then find distrust in the teaching that he had. They would distrust the gospel and they would give it up. But another way that this destruction could have happened would have been the disruption of the peace and the unity amongst the people in Thessalonica and the church. That this peace would have been disrupted while Paul, Silas, and Timothy, whether just one of them or all of them, were gone. And this is an important thing for us to remember today as well. We must be aware of Satan's hindrances in the relationship between a minister and the people. Satan's attempts to thwart, they're not always direct though. I don't know what it is, But we seem to always, when we think of Satan working against Christians, we always seem to think of it as a direct assault. He's directly assaulting me, or he's directly assaulting a certain group. But we often find that what he actually does is an indirect assault. For those in the military, he flanks. He indirectly works to affect a people. In this case, the attempt to destroy the faith of the Thessalonians was an indirect work, at least at the very beginning. It was indirect in that the way he was going to try to destroy the faith of the Thessalonians was not by necessarily going after them right away, but by hindering their teachers, whom they had trusted for teaching the truth, from not being able to come back. Only after that could he then try to come in and maybe create seeds of disunity. or call them to question their faith. And this ties in, again, with what we talked about earlier when it comes to cynicism towards the ministry from people. Satan understands what a minister has been called to do. He understands that people look to those in ministry. They trust them. They look to them for their edification of their souls, for teaching them in the way of faith. He knows that they're trusted. And to disrupt that trust and unity, is to potentially destroy the faith of an individual. Does that not sound like much of what Satan is doing today? Now don't get me wrong. We don't want to overstate what things are because of Satan. There's a danger in that. And there are certainly natural, ordinary things simply because of being in a fallen world that go on that create hindrances along the way and there's even times where it's actually God who's behind the circumstances that lead to whatever the result may be but we cannot lose sight of the fact that Satan does want to destroy the church one of the most notable things that we see in our day and age is the tempting of a minister or those in church leadership to fall into sin. And it is those situations then that create this distrust between the ministry and the people. And while these relationships, they're horizontal in nature, and the distrust may be from person to person, the consequences happen to sometimes fall vertically. That becomes a distrust in the gospel because of the distrust in those who are in ministry. When this happens, it causes thoughts like if this person is in ministry and they they sin and they fail and this way or that way are the teachings they taught really true and thus we see an indirect assault on a person because satan didn't necessarily go at them directly right away but he brought down a leader who then opened up the way for the questions to begin in the life of the believer and why Why? Why does this happen? It's because of the state of the souls of the believers. That's what's at stake. Christ loves his body. He's given people in ministry to serve that body as his under shepherds. And those under shepherds love and care for the souls of the people. but Satan's also after the same people. It's the people of God who are the focus in all of this. Paul says, For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at His coming? This is the question that He puts before the people. It's here where He effectively makes clear that this is not about Him. It's not about the ministers. It's not about the other apostles. It's not about anyone who's teaching the gospel. The attention's not on them. The focus is not on them. It would have been very easy for Paul to talk about his own experience. And in other places, he does. But here, he's not doing that. He's not saying, Satan hindered me from being the best pastor to you ever. It's not about him. Satan hindered them to try and go after the people in Thessalonica. It was about the people. Paul, Silas, and Timothy, these men, they were seeking and following Christ. And Christ in turn had called them to serve His people as He Himself loves His people. And He's called these men to love the people that Christ loved and to guide them. So when Paul then asks this rhetorical question about for what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting? He's not just asking a question. He's actually calling the people these very things. He's saying, you are our hope. You are our joy. You are our crown of boasting before Jesus that is coming. It was the people in whom they found their pride. That was their source of pride. It's not in their accomplishments. It's not in how well they were known, the fame that they had. It's not in how holy they were in the process of their personal sanctifications. Their source of pride was in seeing what God had done using them. It was their pride in seeing how faithful God was to the promises He had made when He called them. When He called them to proclaim the gospel. That a harvest would indeed happen. That's why they were the cause for joy, for glory, for the apostles. Thinking back to the parental metaphors can help us to understand this a little bit more. A Christian parent who's proud of their child in the faith is not proud because of themselves. They're proud of how God has worked in that child's life. They're proud of how, what the parent did at least in catechizing the child, and praying for the child, and loving the child, and how that was not for nothing. How that was not all in vain. They were proud in seeing the faithfulness of God towards their child, and how their child had trusted that faithfulness in God. It's not about the parent himself. And this is how it is for our ministers and church leadership. In the life of the faith, It is the spiritual welfare of the people of God that becomes the source of glory, joy, and pride for those in ministry. Now, our culture, it praises self-glorification. It praises fame when it comes to people who have a title or who are in some sort of leadership. It seems to be the norm. But when it comes to the ministry, that's not the case. It's the exact opposite. It's those who are under the people in ministry. They're the source of pride. That's where their fame comes from. And so it brings us back then to considering how we see those in ministry and their relationship with the people. Perhaps other questions may be good to ask here. Do you trust that God has called the men who care for your souls? Do you trust that he has called them to the positions that they have? Do you trust that those charged with caring for you love you and care about you? Have you considered what these men go through in light of their call? Have you considered that there is a battle over your souls, and that's where they, in part, come into play? And have you realized, dear believer, that you are their source of pride and joy? As you think on these things, may it draw all of us, actually, myself included, to a place of thankfulness to God. For He's not left us to fend for ourselves and to figure out this Christian life on our own, but He's given us various resources. He's given us His Holy Spirit. He's given us His Word. But He's also given us ministers. And it is those men who are called to shepherd and guide us out of a love for Christ and a love for us. That's a resource that we should be thankful for. When it comes to the ministry, it's not about the ministers. But it's about the people of Christ and the work that Christ is doing. Let's pray. Father God, something like this can oftentimes seem maybe simple and sometimes something like this can even seem like something we oversee or don't realize how important it is. So Lord, I ask that you would help us to have a heart of thankfulness for the fact that you haven't left us to our own devices, That You've given us various resources such as Your ministers along with Your Holy Word and Your Holy Spirit. And we pray for those who minister to us, whether it be the ministers of the Word or our elders or our deacons. We pray for those in ministry and we ask that You would protect them. We ask that You would encourage them. But Lord, we also thank You for the fact that we are so precious to You that you have given resources to take care of us. You have, in essence, tried to make things so sure for us to walk in our life of faith. And we thank you for that. Lord, as we go forth this week, help us to remember these things. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.