Thessalonians, the second chapter. There are many concepts into the world as to what a
leader is. If you read General Douglas MacArthur or Lee Iacocca or Peter Drucker or Fred Smith
or any of the other people who write about leadership, you find different ideas and theories
regarding what leadership is and how it should function in a given group. The idea of leadership,
however, which Jesus taught, was truly revolutionary. Jesus taught that to be a leader in God's
kingdom means serving others. God's idea of a leader is not a cattle driver, but a shepherd
of sheep. We see that clearly expressed in one text in the Old Testament that talks about
God's key leader in Israel, that being David. It says regarding him, he chose David his
servant and took him from the sheepfolds, from the care of the ewes with suckling lambs
he brought him, to shepherd Jacob his people and Israel his inheritance. So David shepherded
them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them with his skillful hands. You'll
notice that leadership from God's perspective involves the heart as well as the hands. Leadership
involves not only skills which can be learned, but attitudes which need to be developed.
The Lord Jesus Christ talked about this with his disciples on numerous occasions. On one
particular one, not long after the transfiguration, the disciples were whispering heatedly behind
Jesus' back. The Scriptures tell us that when they arrived at the house in Capernaum
where they were staying, he asked them, what were you discussing on the way? There was
an awkward silence from the disciples because the topic which they had been discussing along
the way so heatedly was which of them was the greatest. So Jesus called the twelve to
him and said, if anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.
A dramatic explanation as to what Jesus expects of servants in his kingdom. We might think
the disciples had learned their lesson well over the two and a half or three years that
they walked with Jesus, but sadly at the Last Supper another dispute arose over which among
them was to be regarded as the greatest. And on that occasion Jesus repeated what he had
said many times before. The kings of the Gentiles, he said, lord it over them. And those who
have authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you, but let him who is the
greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as the servant. We can only
wonder if Jesus was performing that servant's role of washing their feet as he gave them
once more what leadership is all about in his kingdom. You boys and girls who are here
have probably heard of Charity Church Mouse from the Salty Kids Praise album number four.
On that particular album Christy wants to be a famous gospel singer. And the kids tell
Charity Church Mouse, if you want to be great in God's kingdom, what, you boys and girls
remember? I heard somebody say it I think. Learn to be the servant of all. If you want
to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all. Leadership is servan-ship.
And every one of us is called to exhibit that kind of leadership wherever God places us
in charge of or responsible for others. Whether that be in the context of a local church ministry
where we may be on the board of the church or the leader of a small church, a teacher
or worker with children in Sunday school, or as an usher. Wherever we are serving in
some way as being responsible for others, God wants us to exert servant leadership.
Only in the workplace, in the world, that kind of leadership is rare and stands out.
Within the family, in the roles of leadership that we have as husbands, as moms and dads,
God wants us to exert servant leadership. It may be on the campus where you attend or
in the factory where you work or the office where you're employed. Maybe it's a civic
organization where you are involved and have a role of leadership. Leadership, according
to Jesus, is servan-ship. What is it that makes leadership Christian? That is my theme
this morning on being a Christian leader. What makes leadership Christian? Well, I believe
that we learned the answer to that question as we read our text this morning. We begin
with verse 1 of 1 Thessalonians 2. For you yourselves know, brethren, that our coming
to you was not in vain. But after we had already suffered and had been mistreated in Philippi,
as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you, the gospel of God, amid much
opposition. For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit.
But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak,
not as pleasing men but God who examines our hearts. For we never came with flattering
speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness. Nor did we seek glory
from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might
have asserted our authority. Our text today arises out of a defense which Paul felt necessary
to make. For although he had only been gone for a few months from Thessalonica, there
were already some who were raising accusations and subtle insinuations against Paul and his
missionary team. These were undermining their credibility as leaders, thus endangering the
church's spiritual welfare. And so the apostle writes out of a note of self-defense, but
as he does so, he explains to us what Christian leadership is all about. If there is leadership,
that is going to be effective, it must have credibility and trust. And so we notice several
characteristics of a Christian leader. In verses 1 and 2 we see one who is a Christian
leader is one who has determined courage. We need to put into context, historically,
the ministry that Paul had in the church in Thessalonica. The best way to see that is
to remember that Paul had already ministered shortly before being in Thessalonica in a
city called Philippi. It was really there that the European ministry began. And as the
apostle Paul looks back upon that experience, he summarizes it this way in verse 2. He said,
we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi. The way that Paul expresses this,
he is talking about both physical suffering and mental, emotional suffering, two different
kinds of suffering involved in his experience at Philippi. Now they had been beaten and
flogged, they had been put into a jail, their feet being placed into stocks. They had been
publicly abused by a crowd in riot for freeing a slave girl from demon possession. They had
been insulted. Paul's rights as a Roman citizen had been violated, for which you may recall
he demanded restitution in that case. And after all of that pressure and experience,
the suffering that they endured at Philippi, they arrived in Thessalonica. Their backs were still sore
with the stripes that had been laid upon them. The emotional trauma was still very real to
this missionary team after what they had experienced in Philippi. The natural response as they
arrived in Thessalonica would have been caution, it would have been reticence, it would have
been apprehension, and all of that born out of fear because of what they had just experienced.
But I want you to notice that despite all of those pressures, the Apostle Paul was determined
in his courage. He came to preach Jesus Christ and was not about to be silent. He preached
Christ in Thessalonica despite fierce hostility that even erupted there. He mentions in verse
2, the much opposition that came to him in Thessalonica. The word there gives us our
English word agony, opposition, agony. It refers to a struggle that an athlete endures in a
contest. It points toward the intensity of the output of energy and the exhaustion that
comes as a result of that. So the Apostle says not only did we suffer in Philippi physically
and emotionally, when we got to Thessalonica we preached the Gospel and even there we had
agony. We really put out the spiritual energy because of the opposition that arose against
us. We need to be clear about something and that is that courage is not the absence of
fear. But courage is doing what is required despite the presence of fear. When you encounter
opposition in your Christian life or you encounter opposition in your leadership in whatever
realm that may be, what does opposition do to you? For all of us it creates a certain
amount of fear. We wonder if we're going to keep the loyalty of those working under us,
if we're going to keep our job, what's going to happen to our family. Opposition creates
fear. For one to be a Christian leader there must however be a determined courage in the
face of fear. Whatever the source of the opposition may be we need to remember that the resource
that we have in Jesus Christ is greater than the opposition. Opposition can create fear
that may cause us to be silent or not to do what we know we ought to do as Christian men
and women. And if we allow it to, it will absolutely stop us in our Christian leadership.
But we must press ahead in the face of opposition. For God is the superintendent of our circumstances.
God superintended the circumstances in Philippi and then again in Thessalonica. It was not
out of his control. We need to believe that God is superintending that opposition that
we face in whatever realm of leadership that we may be in. And God is bigger than that.
And we can ask him for renewed courage. If you are a Christian leader who is running
today, or if you are one who has as a Christian been silenced in your leadership in a certain
realm, let me exhort you today to get on your knees before God and say, Lord, give me courage.
Courage and determination to do what is right even in the face of fear. If we want to be
Christian leaders as men and women, it begins with a determined courage. But it continues
in verse 3. He gives us a second characteristic of a Christian leader. It is a transparent
integrity. A transparent integrity. There is an integrity crisis that exists as we enter
the 1990s in the church that claims the name of Jesus Christ. In his book called The Integrity
Crisis, Warren Wiersbe writes, integrity is to the personal or corporate character what
health is to the body, or 2020 vision is to the eyes. A person with integrity is not divided.
That's duplicity. Or merely pretending. That's hypocrisy. He or she is whole. Life is put
together and things are working harmoniously. People with integrity have nothing to hide
and nothing to fear. We are facing a crisis of integrity in the church of Jesus Christ.
It is easy to point to television evangelists and other noted leaders who have for one reason
or another fallen because of a lack of wholeness, of consistency and integrity in their lives.
But I want to submit to you this morning that the crisis of integrity goes all the way to
the back pew of the church. We are facing today, I was talking with a pastor friend
of mine out of state this week. He had been speaking with a man who is president of an
international ministry down in the Chicago area. And this man was relating to my pastor
friend who related to me that he sees the integrity crisis particularly in this generation.
That we are a generation of takers of ministry and we are not givers of ministry. That is
a lack of integrity. We want to trade with God. We will give to God if we get something
back from God that is worth it. That is a lack of integrity. It is a misunderstanding
of what ministry is all about. This Christian leader in Chicago was saying that a survey
recently disclosed that the average age of contributors to evangelical organizations
of ministry is now 57. That is the average age and it is going up every year. We have
to ask ourselves the question what is going to happen to the work of Jesus Christ in 20
years. What is going to happen to missions? What is going to happen to organizations that
now are effective on campuses? What is going to happen to local churches? As that age continues
to creep up and finally that generation that has learned stewardship dies. The future is
rather bleak unless we come to a new understanding of what integrity means. Integrity is wholeness.
It means that we have put it together in our lives. Paul was a servant leader who was whole.
There was not duplicity nor was there hypocrisy in his life. Duplicity may be defined as lying
to ourselves. Hypocrisy is lying to others. Neither was present in Paul. We dare not have
that in ourselves if we expect to be Christian leaders. We cannot lie to ourselves or lie
to others. Paul specifically points out three areas of his work that were transparent to
the Thessalonians. He calls upon them to bear witness to the fact that in the first place
his message was one of integrity. It did not originate in error. Rather it sprang from
divine truth. The Apostle Paul had an unshakable conviction that the Gospel he had preached
to the Thessalonians was the truth of God and it did not come out of some false system
of religion. But it came from the true and living God himself. His message was one of
integrity. Then he points to his own motives. He says,
our exhortation does not come from impurity. The Apostle Paul was not doing what he was
for the sake of less than pure motives. The word here literally means not sexually immoral.
It may be that there were some who were in fact accusing Paul of that sort of thing because
the pagan religions were so filled with it. And their traveling teachers who went from
place to place were deeply involved in the immorality of all of their religion. And there
may be some who were accusing Paul of a similar kind of lifestyle. The Apostle says, our lives
were pure. Our exhortation did not come out of impurity. We had no motives that were hidden
under the table. You know our hearts, he said. And then he points to his methods. He says,
our exhortation was not by way of deceit. The Apostle Paul did not use tricks to deceive
his audience in order to capture them. The picture he is using here is one of a fisherman
who puts bait on a hook and throws it out there for the fish to try to get that fish
to bite that hook. Ah, some of us can identify with that. But Paul says, we were not crafty
fisher persons. We were not manipulating methods in order to gain converts. You know our transparent
integrity. Living a lie robs of joy. It drains of energy from one's life. Therefore we need
to determine before God to be whole in every part of our lives. There is nothing that gives
greater credibility to a parent, a leader, than consistency between the public profession
and the private behavior. There is nothing that causes a child to respect mom or dad
more than seeing a certain consistency there. And while none of us are perfectly consistent,
when there is an obvious inconsistency, we need to note that and acknowledge it with
our children so that they understand we're not consciously trying to deceive. We're
not consciously living a lie. Whether you talk about an employer's honesty or a manager's
impurity, integrity is critical to leadership. We were all shocked and saddened to read about
the head of one of our state agencies recently in the newspaper who had a whole stream of
accusations against him of sexual harassment. What does that do to him as a leader? It thoroughly
shoots down any concept that he was a leader in any Christian context. Because a Christian
leader is one who has a transparent integrity. Shall we talk about a husband's truthfulness
to his wife? Whatever the leadership role we may illustrate, integrity is critical.
What are the characteristics of a Christian leader? It begins with a determined courage,
but it continues with transparent integrity. If you really stop to think about it, the
lack of integrity is one definition of sin. For sin is a lack of wholeness. And to some
degree, all of us are guilty of that, aren't we? There is not one of us who has it all
put together. And the wonderful thing about our God is that he specializes in making people
whole. It begins at the cross where the Lord Jesus died. For his saving work on the cross
makes the provision whereby God can intervene on a sinner's behalf and begin to make him
whole. And when a man or a woman or a boy or a girl bows the knee and submits to Jesus
Christ and receives him as Lord and Savior, it allows God at that moment to begin a work
of wholeness, putting that life together. But God doesn't stop there. That's the crisis
point. And God works to bring us to that crisis point. And there may be someone here this
morning who is at that crisis point. You feel a lack of integrity deep within you. And God
has brought that out perhaps in some way. And you've been exposed. And there's conviction.
And you feel deeply about what's happened. You can begin being put together today by
trusting Jesus Christ to have died for your sins and by receiving him into your life to
take control. But God doesn't stop there. That's the crisis. Following the crisis, there
is a process by which God works in our lives. God is continually working in the lives of
those of us who are his children to bring about a greater wholeness for us. What does
God do? Well, first of all, he uncovers the need. Oh, it would be wonderful if God didn't
have to do that. But he does. I went to the dentist this week. On my list of unfavorite
things to do, that ranks number one. It's not that dentists are bad people. They're
very wonderful people, many of them. But I do not like what they do to me. Several years
ago I had a crown put on a tooth. And my dentist uncovered a problem. There was some decay
because the last crown was not put on very well. In order to care for that decay, he
had to take the old crown off. And he didn't even give me any laughing gas to do it. No
novocaine. I'm making it sound pretty bad. I've had a root canal so it didn't hurt.
But I didn't like the sound of the instruments. You know that sounds like 500 mosquitoes flying
around your head. The drill and the sense of that pressure in your mouth and then that
sharp ice pick he uses to pry in there. And then those pliers he reaches in and pulls that
thing off your, you just feel like you're going to come out of the chair. It doesn't
really hurt. It's just that your nerves are all right there. All of them. Right there.
We don't like to have those kinds of things uncovered and dealt with. But God does the
same thing with us, doesn't he? He takes us through experiences that uncover our lack
of integrity. Now the reason he does that is because he wants to make us whole. His
end goal is not to embarrass us, it's not to make us feel guilty, but his end goal is
that he might heal us and put us together. And so he exposes the decay that's taken
place so that we can then repent of what he exposes. And then once we repent of it, God
is able to begin a correcting work in our lives, putting us together. In a couple of
weeks I'm going to get a brand new crown. I hope the price of gold stays down a little
lower for a while. And the decay is gone and I'll have a new crown on there and that tooth
is going to be whole once more. That's what God wants to do. He puts us through the trial,
the fire, that he might see the pure gold in our lives and all the impurities might
be drained off of them. Transparent integrity. I think this is a major theme of the apostle
in the book. In fact he closes the book in chapter 5 verses 23 and 24. You may want to
look at this because this is exactly what he prays at the end. He says, and may the
God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, make you whole. May God put you together,
he says, to make you a person of integrity. And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved
complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, faithful
is he who calls you and he also will bring it to pass. Despite the flinches on my face
the other day, my dentist kept at work in my mouth until he finished the job. Because
he is a faithful dentist and he was determined to see all of the decay removed. Likewise,
though God may see flinches from us now and then, he will persist until he has exposed
that lack of integrity and that decay and has dealt with it. And at the end of our lives
when we are caught up to be with Jesus Christ one day, we will be without any decay and
God will bring it to pass. We will continue next week what it means to be a Christian
leader but I think this is an appropriate point for us to bow in prayer and ask the
Spirit of God to search our hearts. Lord do that right now even as you have been for these
last minutes. We acknowledge to you that there are times when we are silent and we do not
press issues out of fear of opposition to our Christian conduct. Because they are antagonists
to our principles as Christians, we keep them hidden and we fail to be Christian leaders.
We acknowledge to you that there is decay present in the hearts of all of us. Our great
need is to be able to see it and to deal with it by repentance. Lord Jesus, right now put
your finger upon our lives and show us where we need to repent and give us the grace to
do that. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, will you talk to the Lord about that
area where he has just put his finger? Jesus, be the Lord of all the kingdoms of our hearts.
We, today, would renew the priority of your Lordship in our lives and we repent where
that has not been true. Do something fresh and anew in us today and this week and use
us as Christian leaders, as men and women, as servant leaders in those places where you
have given us the privilege to be responsible for others. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Let's stand together please. Being a Christian leader is a great privilege. It may be that
we don't have a position that somebody has voted on and therefore we serve in that office,
but all of us are leaders in some realm. May God help us to be men and women that are filled
with determined courage and transparent integrity, which God then can bless as he works through
us to touch the lives of other people. Bill, do you have a hymn for us? 451. Oh, that's
a good one. All to Jesus I surrender. Let's sing just a verse and a chorus of 451.