Entrusted With the Gospel

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8

 

 

          I have a friend who is about to retire from many years as a Superior Court judge. Before that, he had a distinguished career as a trial lawyer. Even before that, he served in the Navy, where he was a Naval Courier. We have talked about it more than once, because he likes to talk about it. He is probably as proud of that job as he is of the career he has carved out as a lawyer and judge. I think I understand the reason. He had a job that involved the ultimate in discretion and trust. He was, in a sense, just a carrier of a message, and not the message itself. But in that job, he was entrusted to get the message from the source to its destination…to see to it that its intended audience received not only a message, but the true message. My friend is proud to this day of having been selected for that job, for he was trusted with the most important news of the day. It was his job to get it delivered.

          When the Apostle Paul and his friend Silas arrived in Thessalonica, a bustling Macedonian city of 100,000 people with a natural harbor on not only the busy east-west Egnatian Way, but also located on the north-south trade routes, he was in a good place to spread the gospel. But he was not in such good shape to spread it. He had come from Philippi, where he and Silas had been beaten and severely flogged.  They had rescued a Christian slave girl in the name of Jesus Christ. Their reward was to be unjustly arrested, stripped of their clothing and treated like dangerous fugitives. They were put in prison with their feet in stocks, those wooden contraptions with holes in them to hold one in captivity. All of these actions were in violation of Paul’s Roman citizenship, but that didn’t stop the locals at Philippi from mistreating him and Silas.

          So Paul and Silas turned eastward, following the Egnatian Way along the coast of the Aegean Sea for 160 kilometers, or about 100 miles, to Thessalonica. Today, that is estimated as a thirty two hour walk, or about four days and three nights. I expect it took longer in first century Macedonia. Think about it. You have just walked 100 miles while you are beat up and hurting. You have been thrown out of a city and now you find yourself in another city down the road. Wouldn’t you be likely to remember what got you thrown out of that first city? Wouldn’t you be likely you keep your mouth shut and just talk quietly about your mission? If you did, you would not last long with Paul. Paul was carrying the message and he intended to deliver it.  Deliver it they did, but it wasn’t long before they were thrown out of Thessalonica as well. They left behind both men and women converts and from that visit grew a church.

         Paul probably wrote 1 Thessalonians on his second missionary journey. He wanted to get there in person again, but he never made it. Silas and Timothy were with him when he sent the letter to the church as an encouragement and a warning. In the second chapter, Paul talked about the purity of the gospel and the difficulty with knowing whom its real messengers were.

          One of the reasons of Paul’s letter, apparently, was that there were those who were disparaging not only Paul but the message he brought. Most likely, at least some of them were Jews who were not satisfied with just throwing him out of town. We really don’t know their identity for sure, but Paul talks about conflict and error and even deception in his letter.  When he addresses the church there, he writes as a friend, gently and concerned. He addresses his audience as brothers and tells them that they are very dear to him. Then Paul does something that my friend the judge probably used to do as a courier. He authenticates himself. He aligns himself with his mission. He says this to the Thessalonians: “…Our appeal does not spring from impurity…just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God, who tests our hearts.”  Paul had a message for the church at Thessalonica. It was undiluted. It was pure. It was straight from the source. The message was approved by God and Paul had been entrusted with it. He was the courier, the mailman with the news that all the world needed to hear.

          Paul and Silas had suffered to get that news out. Paul says they were shamefully treated at Philippi, but they “had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.”

          In our denomination and in our nation and in our world, we are in a time of conflict. While those words would ring true in any time or place in history, they are nevertheless the truth today. What may be a bolder and higher truth is that the way in which we as a church, we as a denomination, we as individuals, choose to deal with and act upon that truth…will be the standard by which we are judged and, more importantly, that position which our posterity will inherit. There is much at stake.

          As in the time of Paul, nations, states and peoples stand looking for the truth. Our secular world, in an attempt to go along and get along, looks, as it should, to conflict resolution, to compromise. In the case of the Christian church and particularly in the Western nations, culture and traditional religious views have clashed in epic proportion the last several decades. Culture has succeeded, and rightly so, in reforming our view of some Biblical positions. Our time on this planet has yielded good fruit in many areas of Christian thought. For all this progress, the Bible never changed, nor did its message. What changed was our ability and discernment to see its message in a different and more Biblical light.

          But, as is the message of the Berenstein Bears of kids’ book fame, we can have “Too Much Birthday.” Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing. Sometimes too much interpretation is no interpretation at all, but rather imposition of the new upon the old. In some of life, this might be called progress. In the case of the Bible, it is error or deceit or just plain trampling upon the truth.

          The Christian church has been entrusted with the gospel. What will we do with that trust? We must first know what it is…and what it isn’t.  For that, we may look to God’s written Word. If the Bible clearly proscribes it, bans it, then we should not dilute that message with so-called interpretation. If the Bible seems vague, then we should look elsewhere in Scripture for Scripture to illumine itself. As Paul worried about his flock and the messages it received, he strove to present that with which he had been entrusted. The message came from God and Paul was the messenger.

          Today, we are constantly presented with mixed messages, even from those entrusted with church leadership. We must always look for the truth, for the true message. It is not embedded in some mysterious code. It is clean and clear and unambiguous. It is the gospel that Paul brought to the Thessalonians and Corinthians and Galatians. It is the gospel of Mathew and Mark and Luke and Peter. It is the written Word of God and we the church, the people of God, have been entrusted with it.

          The torch has been passed. You are the church. The church is Ekklesia, the “gathering” of God’s people. Will you be a messenger? Will you bring the truth of God and not some watered down politically correct version? Can you be entrusted with the true gospel? Just as he did for Paul, God will give you the boldness to declare it, even in the midst of conflict.  Be ready to share the gospel…and yourself.