1 Thessalonians 5:12-13
Amen. You can be seated. Turn
in your copy of the scriptures to 1 Thessalonians 5. 1 Thessalonians
5 verses 12 and 13 will be our passage for today. We are getting
into the last sort of grab bag of verses in this letter. We’ll move next into 2 Thessalonians
and today we’ll look at a couple verses on how the Christian community
ought to live together in light of membership in church leadership. We’ll look at a couple other
passages and then get to the benediction in a few Sundays
and then move on to second Thessalonians and somewhere in the mix, we’ll
have a Thanksgiving psalm. And I believe during the Advent
season, we’ll be looking at the covenants that God has made with
man ultimately fulfilled in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And then on into the new year, which is scary to mention, we’ll
finish up second Thessalonians. So let’s give our attention now
to God’s word. First Thessalonians five, beginning
at 12. We ask you brothers to respect
those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and
admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of
their work. Be at peace among yourselves. Let’s do pray together. Father,
we ask that you would water the hearts of those who hear your
word so that The work of grace necessary in each heart might
be done. We pray that you would call to
yourself your people, that you would seal and edify those in
faith, and give eternal blessings to their souls. We ask, Lord,
that we would behold you in the light of faith, that you would
exalt yourself, that you would humble sinners, and that your
mighty will would be done in Christ’s great name, amen. I think y’all are well aware
of. all the cultural pressures that
are surrounding the church over the last many years, probably
since COVID, the church has noted several outside pressures that
have brought significant changes to the life of Jesus’ church.
One of the things that has been noted over the last decade or
so, particularly in the Southeastern United States, Rapid decline
in church membership. I think before COVID, church
membership, church attendance was declining about 7% per year. Of course, then COVID hit and
then in person, not in person, watching church on TV, that sort
of thing came about. But I think summer of 2020, we
saw a rapid change in our culture, a rapid change through the unrest,
the social unrest. rapid change through that year’s
election season. And then we have seen what some
might call a turbo charging of a not just a post Christian culture,
but really a post American culture. And so before our eyes, lots
has changed. Lots of significant things have
changed. In particular, one of the cultural
things that has shifted a good bit in our day is Sunday. Sunday is no longer a day of
rest and worship. It’s Saturday number two. What
you can’t finish on Saturday number one, you clean up on Saturday
number two. And other things like that have
popped up in our culture. I think one of the other great
issues of the church though is the church itself has cluttered
up its ministry. It has obscured worship and discipleship
and evangelism from its own mission and efforts. Something we heard
last week from our guest minister was a crystal clear clarification
of what is the Great Commission. We’re to go into the world and
we’re to make disciples and we make them by baptizing. We make
them by teaching them everything that Jesus has commanded. And so as the church fulfills
the Great Commission, and it does that and doesn’t matter
what’s going on in culture, it still does it no matter what. As the church does that, we’ll
still see a bright light. of God’s people in the midst
of a dark and dying world. And as we land on 1 Thessalonians
5 today, we find Paul doing exactly what we’re commanded to do today.
Doesn’t matter about Roman culture, doesn’t matter about Greek culture,
doesn’t matter what the culture and society is doing, doesn’t
matter if the statistics are up, down, good, bad. We find
Paul on mission in the life of the church. We find the great
apostle making his way through the Roman Empire, preaching through
Galatia, preaching through Asia Minor, preaching through Macedonia. He is the one set apart by God
through the calling of Jesus and sent as an apostle, they
sent one into the world to preach and to proclaim the gospel, the
good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so as we come to First Thessalonians
today, we find ourselves in the context of him reaching back
to the Thessalonian church, where he ministered for just a few
short weeks, was run off, had to flee for his life, flee for
his safety to another town, but he sent ministers back to check
on them. And so he is writing to them
to help tidy up some of the issues that are taking place in the
church there. So as the Apostle Paul. is writing
to them. I think the thing for us to remember
is in his short tenure, he did not get to establish the church.
He did not get to disciple them as fully as he wished. And so
this is a rather young church with probably, we just have to
guess, but probably rather new to the faith believers shepherding
this congregation. And so while this group of people
have been convinced of their sin and misery and converted
to salvation through faith in Jesus, their level of maturity
and ability to live together peacefully as a congregation
is not yet where it ought to be, not yet up to snuff. And
so Paul’s concern is that they be established by living at peace
with one another, that the church be established as they love and
respect one another, the congregation and their leaders. So one of
the things we’ll think about today is the relationship between
the congregation and its ministers. Now I’m gonna use the minister’s
word very generically. The way that Paul writes this
letter is he’s saying congregation, you need to acknowledge, you
need to honor, esteem, and you need to work well with those
who are over you. He’s not mentioning deacons or
elders or pastors. It’s just a very general kind
of pastoral notion to honor those who are over them. And so let’s
think for a few moments together about this passage. Let me just
give y’all a heads up. Those lights are like right in
my eyes. And when I look at them, I can’t see my notes. So if I
say anything incoherent, that is the reason. That is the reason
why. Let me see if I can get my bearings
here. Okay, let’s think about the passage for a moment together.
First Thessalonians, chapter five, Paul says, we ask you,
brothers, this is a, oh, how would you put it? A pastoral
charge, a pastoral question. We ask you, brothers, to do a
couple things. If you notice in following through
the passage, we ask you to respect your leaders. We ask you to esteem
them. We ask you to be, at peace. But it’s also implied that the
leaders, the servants of the church, will do a couple things.
They’re going to, number one, labor among you. They’re going to lead you and
they’re going to admonish you. Now, if you think through the
New Testament and all the places where Paul, say he speaks to
Timothy, he writes to Titus, he talks to the elders at Ephesus,
he visits from church to church, and he gives all the sort of
apostolic commands of this is how you do ministry, this is
how you serve the church. He only gives really a couple
here and so we want to think about just the few he gives in
light of the back and forth between the congregation and the people.
I want to speak though sort of generically just at the beginning
here of how about the nature of the church. Remember that
God has always had a people for himself. It began in the garden
with Adam. It carries on in the story of Abraham. And then there’s
Moses and David, the first king. There’s the prophets. Of course,
there’s Jesus and his disciples. There are the apostles like Paul.
And then as we zip through church history, we have the early church
fathers, and then we have a couple thousand years of ministers who
carry on the great apostolic tradition of preaching and teaching
God’s word to God’s disciples throughout all nations until
the end of the age when Jesus returns. And so in a great sense,
if you happen to serve the church in some way, shape or form as
a minister, as an elder, as a deacon, of course, as a church member,
we should pinch ourselves and say, what a sweet privilege it
is to be called out of the world and into a saving relationship
with Jesus Christ and into the family of God. And if you’re
a servant in the church, perhaps an elder, deacon, a minister,
there’s a sense where you should pinch yourself and say, what
a privilege it is to have that high calling from God to serve
his people. Now, from time to time, we have
a little joke around here that church ministry is wonderful,
and it’d be even more wonderful if it weren’t for The people,
yes, the same in being a police officer, isn’t it? I’m sure in
your profession, whatever it may be. Yeah, my job would be
great if it weren’t for the people. And what’s the nature of God’s
people? Well, he calls us sheep. Remember Psalm 23 a few moments
ago, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And we get
the picture in words of God caring for his people as they make their
life through the year round, through the different seasons
of being nomadic, suffering under the frustrations of life outside
as a shepherd with a flock. And so you get this picture of
the sheep and the shepherd and we get our picture of what God
means to tell us. Kind of offensive, isn’t it?
You know, we’re stubborn. We’re sheep. We stray. Each of us goes our own way.
We’re high maintenance, right? Sheep are high maintenance. And
so this picture of the sheep and the shepherd is a picture
of a burden. The shepherd is responsible for
the sheep. He has to sleep at night with
one eye open, lest an enemy come into the fold and steal the sheep.
Jesus speaks of his own ministry as the good shepherd, the good
shepherd. even lays down his life for the sheep. We think
of the burden it is to care for people. Perhaps you’re maybe
a supervisor, a boss, a business owner, a school teacher. Maybe
you’ve got kids, grandkids, and you feel the burden of caring
for others. And maybe you say the same, well,
it’d be great except for the people, right? Well, Moses even
got that way. Remember out in the wilderness,
a couple million people, they got a little testy. Are we there
yet? Right? That’s the proverbial
question that always gets asked in the car on a trip. Are we
there yet? But for the Israelites, they kept saying, when can we
go back? When can we go back to Egypt?
For there we had leeks and onions. We had garlic and we had fish. They had forgotten they had the
great burden of the taskmasters. who led for Pharaoh. And so this whole picture of
the congregation of God’s people, people called out of the world
to live for him, their shepherd and the sheep. And yes, there
are difficulties. know there’s going to be friction
anywhere there are people. That’s just the way it is. But
there’s two big things for us to think of the relationship
of the people to the ministers and the relationship of the ministers
to the people. And so just briefly think about
the command, the three of them in our passage to respect or
to esteem and to be at peace. Those come right out of verses
12 and 13. We ask you brothers to respect,
Then in verse 13, we ask you brothers to esteem. And then
at the end of verse 13, we ask you brothers, be at peace among
yourselves. So those are the responsibilities
of the sheep to the shepherds. Those are the responsibilities
of the congregation to the leaders. Respect, esteem, and be at peace. There ought to be peace in the
covenant community. We speak of the church as the
sanctuary. We speak of the church as the place where we come out
of the busyness of the world. We come out of the noisiness
of the world. We come out of the frustrations of the world,
and we ought to be able to come into the presence of God and
the presence of his people and have a place of sanctuary. That’s not always the way it
is, but that is what the sheep do. Well, they say, me first. What does sheep do? They say,
he did this, she did that. And, you know, there’s fighting
and there’s quarreling and there’s all kinds of things, usually
ever the color of the carpet or that sort of business. But what Paul is saying to the
Thessalonian church, he’s saying to us today, he’s saying there
should be no strife. in the household of faith. There
should be the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And how does that
come? Well, it comes through what we
might call a social glue. Think for just a moment outside
the church. God has ordained the family, he’s ordained the
state, and he’s also ordained the church. Those are the three
really big institutions God has ordained. at creation for us
to live among one another. And so the state, the king, the
president, whoever’s over us, they minister for Jesus and they
bear the sword. They bear the sword to punish
evil. But they also can commend what is good. And the same at
home, there’s parents and God has given them authority over
the home. And then in the church, you have the leaders, the ministers,
the shepherds. And so what happens when we don’t
live in our pecking orders, as it were. What happens when we
live in anarchy or rebellion? Well, the social glue that God
has given comes undone and we have chaos, we have disorder.
And you see that everywhere. You see it when there’s lawlessness.
We’ve seen it in recent years with the whole defund the police
movement. We’ve seen it in places where they’ve relaxed laws in
order to supposedly be nice to people, but it has brought chaos
in many other areas. And it’s the same, you see it
in the schools, you see it in all sorts of places where there
is no law, there is lawlessness. Where there is no order, there’s
disorder. And of course, as Christians, we understand chaos comes from
Satan. But order comes from the peace
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the call here is to respect
or esteem and be at peace as a congregation together. Now, I can’t stand it when you
hear a preacher start defining words like he’s reading a dictionary
to you. But here it may be a tad bit helpful because as Paul writes
these words, he’s very specific and I think it gives us a wonderful
picture of what he means. And so in the call in verse 12,
to respect those who labor among you, that word respect is a word
that can have a meaning of acknowledge or get to know. It can mean experience
or appreciate. Some of you who have studied
business management, you’ve heard the principle, management by
walking around. Perhaps you have worked your
way up in a field. You’ve done the lowly job. You’ve been the peon, as we say.
And you’ve worked your way up to a management position, and
you go out on the shop floor, or you go out in the workforce,
And people respect you because you’ve been there and you’ve
done the job they’re doing. And you can roll up your sleeves
and pick right back up and fill in a blank. Nowadays, you go
off to school and you get a master’s degree and you’ve never done
the job before, but you can sure go in and tell the workforce
how to do it. We find that doesn’t usually meet with respect because
those folks have not walked in your shoes. They just know how
to sharpen a pencil and open up a Microsoft spreadsheet is
probably about how it goes. But you get the idea in the congregation. When the ministers or the shepherds
walk with you and you walk with them, there’s a building of trust. There’s a building of relationship.
And so the respect comes from knowing the person, appreciating
them and experiencing them. And then the next idea, esteem. This person is esteemed not because
of who they are. And in fact, if the person knows
themselves and God defines them as a sinner, saved by grace,
that person will be humble and not lord their position over.
But why the esteeming? You esteem the office. Remember
when David became king, When David became king, Saul was still
finishing his term, as it were. And I don’t know if you remember
in the story of King David and King Saul, someone took Saul’s
life. And what did David say? Oh, good.
You know, ding dong, the king is gone, right? Did he sing that?
No, he was upset. And I think the person’s life
was taken. He said, you don’t touch the Lord’s. anointed. And I think one of the pictures
that Paul gives us here is in the pecking order of the church,
we do esteem the office. We esteem our elders. We esteem
our deacons. We esteem our ministers because
they’re placed there by God, not necessarily because of who
they are or what they bring to the table, but simply because
they hold that office. And that’s something that we
see in the scriptures from history past, even with prophets and
even with kings. And so there should be respect,
esteem, and it will bring peace in the congregation. Now, the
other side of the coin, you know, you could make this thing one-sided
and say, be nice to your preachers, be nice to your elders. You know,
don’t make it hard on them. Don’t make them moan like Moses.
You know, why did you leave me with these people out in the
middle of the wilderness, God? There’s an active side of the
shepherds as well. And there’s three words that
pop up. It’s labor, it’s lead, and it’s
admonish. And these are three very exhausting
words. The word labor, perhaps you’ve
heard it said of ministers, they should spend and be spent in
the ministry of the Lord. That’s an old phrase that you
hear in some old traditional church settings that ministers
should spend and be spent. They should exhaust themselves.
They should sweat as they persist in the ministry of the word.
I mentioned earlier some of the cultural changes that have put
pressure on the church. And yes, those outside pressures
have brought sad changes to the church or pressures have pushed
and forced things on the church that maybe they haven’t resisted.
And there’s some things inside the church too that have not
gone well. I look at ministers today. They rarely teach and preach
the word. Most ministers today, if they’re
hardworking, well, they preach maybe three Sundays a month.
That’s about it. Paul says they should labor in
the word. The elders should labor in the word as well. It’s their
job to present you to God sanctified and wedding ready at the second
coming. Several months ago, I went on
this trip through the Grand Canyon and we had a couple river guides.
And so when we left on a Friday and got off the river Saturday
a week later, we were their responsibility night and day. One of them generally
stayed sort of awake at night just to keep an eye on the camp.
If you got sick, it was their responsibility to get you well
or get you out of there by helicopter. It was their job to feed us.
It was their job to make sure we stayed hydrated. You think
about how overwhelming it was for them to say we’ve got 28
people and we’ve got to bring them home alive. We’ve got to
bring them back in one piece. And there’s a sense of that with
moms, with mothers. And there’s a sense of that with
the shepherds of the church. It’s an exhausting job if you
do it right. It’s an exhausting job if you
are attentive and see to the needs of the church. But isn’t it wonderful when the
church pitches in? It’s wonderful when they’re at
peace, when there’s respect and there’s esteem. And I’ll tell
you at the end of our river trip, the last night of our camp, we
all sat around the fire and I was on a group with Christians and
our river guides who were not believers, they said to us, we
have never had such an easy trip. They said, y’all pitched in,
you unloaded the boat, you set up the camp, you helped us, you
washed dishes at night. Usually they would stay up till
midnight or when taking care of the needs, but the Christian
group pitched in and did everything. And I think that’s the way life
works best. We all labor in our respective
areas. There’s sweat, there’s exhaustion,
yes. but there’s a sweet reward at the end. And so as your ministers
minister among you, even to the point of exhaustion, it’s their
privilege, but you, as the writer of Hebrew says, get to make it
easy on them by esteeming them and by being at peace and respecting.
Well, there’s a couple of additional words and maybe labor is the
overarching word here for those who minister, but they do two
things under that. They lead and they admonish. And you think
about Moses again, don’t you? He led the people from Egypt
through the wilderness to the edge of the promised land. And
that’s the job of your ministers, your shepherds among you. It’s
their job to lead you through the wilderness to the heavenly
city, to the heavenly gates. One of the things we’ll say from
time to time is we want to get you safely home. Every week when
we worship, every week when we make disciples, every week when
we do whatever it is we do in the life of the church. It’s
towards the goal of getting you safely home. to heaven and to
God’s glorious presence. And so, yes, there’s leadership.
Yes, there’s being out front. Yes, there’s carrying a staff. Yes, there’s making hard decisions.
There’s making unpopular decisions. It can be difficult. And then
there’s the admonish word. Now, we don’t like to be admonished.
It usually means we did something wrong or somebody doesn’t think
we did something right. But this is one of the most common
New Testament words. When we think of the word ministry,
God’s shepherds to God’s people, often admonished comes up. And
it’s a word that simply but powerfully is meant to encourage you, to
push you towards following Jesus. You know, we live in a day where
it’s, well, pretty please, or would you, could you, you know,
pretty please, sugar on top. And very often in the scriptures,
it’s more of a, because God commands it, it ought to be done. And we live in an era where we
don’t want to be, I don’t know, mean. We don’t want to be, you
know, judgy. We don’t want to be telling us
things. But how else will the people of God get to heaven safely
without leadership? Or how else will they get safely
through this world without admonishment? And so when God provides it,
it’s there for our good. It’s there for our instruction. It keeps us on the right path.
It keeps us in the way. One of the things I think is
helpful as we think about this passage is what Jesus did when
he rose again from the dead. You’ll remember that when he
went to the cross, he went to the grave, he rose from the dead,
he was with his disciples for 40 days. And he wasn’t just hanging
out with them. He wasn’t just saying, well,
you know, I’m gonna be gone in a few weeks, so let’s just spend
as much time together as we can. No, he was preparing them to
build his church. He was preparing them to go out
into the world and to make disciples and to spread the glory of God,
the knowledge of God to the ends of the earth. And so he was preparing
them for all the hard things that they would face. And one
of the things that Paul is gonna say in Ephesians four that is
so wonderful is when Jesus went back to heaven, he rose up into
heaven, he was the king victorious over sin and death and darkness.
and usually kings receive gifts. You know, hey, king, you’re wonderful.
You just fought the battle. So here’s a bunch of gold and
silver and spoils from the war. Well, Paul takes an old Testament
passage, Psalm 68, I believe, where the king would march back
to victory and get gifts. And he says, Jesus, on his victory
march to the heavenly home, his heavenly throne, gave gifts to
the church. And he gave some to be apostles.
He gave some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.
He gave us the shepherds of the church to do the work of the
ministry, which is leading, which is laboring, which is admonishing,
so that the church can be equipped, the church can be furnished.
You know, we’re probably all watching Sports, maybe not all
of us, but many of us watching sports. And you’re watching the
teams midway through the season now, some are still winning,
some are losing, they’re falling off. And what’s gonna be the
Monday morning coach’s speech? it’s gonna be admonishment. There’s
gonna be game film. Here’s where you screwed up,
right? Here’s where you missed the tackle. Here’s where you
missed a block. Here’s where you fumbled the football. And
there’s gonna be admonishment. This Saturday, don’t do that,
right? It’s all around us, the need
to be led, the need to be admonished. And so God gives us shepherds
to lead us, to coach us, to guide us. And one of the things you’ll
think of from Psalm 23, again, the ministry of Jesus, How does
God get us safely home? He does it through his shepherds,
ultimately the good shepherd Jesus, but also through his under
shepherds who serve faithfully in his name. Let’s look to God
now in prayer. Our Lord, we thank you for the
chance to think about our responsibility as ministers, as shepherds, and
even as sheep. And we pray that we would take
to heart the need for peace in the congregation, the need for
admonishment, the need for leading, the need for respect, and the
need for esteem. And we, most of all, thank you and give you
praise now for Jesus, our great shepherd, who gave his life for
us that we might be ransomed from sin and death and darkness.
Help us and bless us now as we go in your name today to serve
the world. It’s in Christ’s name we pray, amen.