Modeling Generosity

The truth is, there’s a chance that somebody is always looking to you for clues about how to live their life. Consider that for a moment, and then ask yourself this question: How would you live differently if you believed that someone were, in fact, following your example?

Now consider this: They are! Someone is looking to you and imitating you. Maybe not your facial tic, if you have one, or any of your other mannerisms. But they are adopting your values. They are embracing your pattern of living. When they are trying to figure out what life might be saying to them about what’s important, YOU’RE THE MESSAGE. You’re the message.

You may or may not have heard of the Thessalonians, but in the first century their name was a household word -- especially among the Christians in the Roman Empire. In the passage we read earlier, Paul tells them ‘that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you? The word has gotten around,’ he says. ‘Your lives are echoing the Master's Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don't even have to say anything anymore—you're the message!’

In other words, the people of Thessalonica had become model believers. We might have expected something like that. If you were here last Sunday, we were talking about how generous the Macedonian Christians were, and Thessalonica was a city in Macedonia. These Thessalonians modeled generosity not only in their giving but also in their living. Together, they made up the kind of church that everybody wants to belong to. ‘All over...,’ Paul says, ‘believers look up to you?’ What was it that these Thessalonians were modeling? What was it that made others look up to them?

There were, in fact, three qualities that set them apart, and you can read about those three qualities in verse 3. There Paul speaks of ‘your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ....’

Three qualities, three characteristics. Faith, hope, and love. Not in that order, of course, but those are the qualities. The same qualities that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, ‘the Love Chapter,’ as it’s often called. There he says, ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love’ (NIV).

Now, if you go back to 1 Thessalonians and look again at chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, you’ll see that Paul mentions these three qualities yet again. He repeats them, only this time in a little different form. When he says to the Thessalonians, ‘You received us with open arms,’ he’s talking about their love. When he writes to them, ‘You deserted...dead idols...so you could embrace and serve...the true God,’ he’s talking about faith, or, more accurately, faithfulness. When he speaks in verse 10 of ‘how expectantly [they] await the arrival of [God’s] Son,’ he’s talking about what? Hope! Right?