Good Christmas Eve morning! Boys and girls, one more sleep until Christmas morning! Hopefully everyone has their shopping done, presents wrapped, stockings hung, cookies baked, and plans made.
And I hope those plans include coming back this evening for our Christmas Eve service. It’s going to be a special time of praise and worship.
As you think about all the gifts you’ve bought and who you bought them for, let me ask you a question: What kind of a giver are you?
Several years ago a psychologist was on one of the morning talk shows discussing the three types of Christmas gift givers. First, there’s the OBLIGATED Gift Giver. This person has an obligation to give a gift--it really doesn’t matter what it is just so it will serve the purpose. Your heart is not really into choosing “the right” gift or the “perfect gift” or “even something that the person will like”--just something--ANYTHING will do. Think gift cards for the mailman, or your child’s teacher.
The second kind of giver is the APPROPRIATE Gift Giver. They always choose something “acceptable” to give. Sometimes that’s based on what they gave you last year, so it’s based on price range. Sometimes the price range is set for you, like the gift exchange at the annual office Christmas party. Sometimes you know it has to be a gag gift because that’s what people give, or sometimes it has to be something spiritual because it’s a Sunday school Christmas party. So it’s acceptable, appropriate. It might be a book for the coffee table--always “acceptable” but hardly “Personal” gift. It is a Nice--Acceptable--Appropriate gift that never goes over budget.
Finally, there is the PASSIONATE Gift Giver. This giver can’t wait to shop for the people that matter to them. They ENTHUSIASTICALLY looks for just the Right Gift and knows the person well enough to say, “I know that this is something he needs or this is what she has been wanting.” The giver knows the right color, the right size, and doesn’t mind going over budget if need be. They know the recipient so well that they know they’ll love it, because it meets the need, it satisfies a want, it communicates how much you care for them. And you can’t wait to see them open it.
So what kind of giver are you? Most of us would say it depends on the person we are shopping for. There’s a difference between whoever picks your gift at the Christmas party, your server at Chappy’s and your son or daughter, right?
But then a second question: what kind of giver is Jesus? How did He demonstrate it? And if you are a Christian and seek to represent Christ on earth, what kind of gift giver are you?
Please open your copy of God’s Word to the first letter of Paul to the Christians living in Thessalonica. You may be scratching your head, thinking, “Do you mean 1 Thessalonians?” Yes, I do. “Then why not just say “Turn to 1 Thessalonians” like a normal person?”
Well, it’s just because a lot of times we lose sight of the fact that the letters of Paul weren’t written to be doctrinal treatises. They weren’t meant to be impersonal explanations of complicated theology. Before they were anything else, they were personal letters.
And I’m calling this message “To Thessalonians, With Love” to remind us that Paul is writing to a group of people he loves dearly. Some of whom he might have led to Jesus in the first place. Others had partnered with him in ministry. Most of them had dealt with or were dealing with persecution.
So, I invite you to turn to the second chapter of the first letter of Paul to the believers in Thessalonica, beginning with verse 7
7 But we were gentle[c] among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
Skip down to verse 11:
11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
May God bless the reading of His word. Let’s pray:
Before we dive in to this letter, let’s do a little background on Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians.
Paul and Silas got to Thessalonica around AD 50. They had just come from Philippi about 100 miles up the road, where, according to verses 22-24, they were beaten with rods, flogged with whips, and then thrown into prison (See Acts 16:22-24).
Now, let’s be honest. If you had just been beaten with rods, flogged with whips, and thrown into prison for preaching the gospel, how many of you would just go home and lay low, at least until you recovered? Nobody could blame Paul for doing the same thing, right?
But this is Paul we are talking about. And Paul walks 100 miles to Thessalonica to bring the good news to the Thessalonians.
That’s the perfect description of a PASSIONATE gift-giver, isn’t it? But before Paul became passionate about the people, he was passionate about the gospel. It was a passion for the gift itself that made Paul passionate about sharing the gift with everyone else.
Whenever Paul came to a new city, his pattern was to go to the synagogue first and reason from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah. Look at Acts 17:2-3:
2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”
See, even in this tiny little snippet, you’ve got the essential truth of the gospel. The Scriptures reveal that Jesus was born in the flesh, was crucified, rose from the dead, and is the Messiah who can save us from our sins.
According to verse 4, as a result of this proclamation, a large number of God fearing Greeks and a number of influential women were persuaded to surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus.
And now, two thousand years later, the gospel message hasn’t changed. At Christmas we celebrate Jesus birth. At Easter we remember His resurrection. And we respond to the gospel by trusting that Jesus is the Messiah who can save us from our sins.
Here's what I love about 1 Thessalonians. Even though Paul was only in the city for three weeks, he fell in love with the people there. A couple of weeks ago, when we were reading through 1 Thessalonians in our Bible reading plan, I started highlighting every verse where Paul expressed his love for the believers there:
• He compares himself to a nursing mother (2:7), gentle and wanting to see his spiritual children be nurtured in the faith.
• He compares himself to an encouraging father in verse 11 who teaches his children what it means to live a life pleasing to God.
• In 2:17, Paul writes, But as for us, brothers and sisters, after we were forced to leave you[a] for a short time (in person, not in heart), we greatly desired and made every effort to return and see you face to face.
On the surface, Paul sounds like a lovestruck schoolboy, doesn’t he? But notice the little footnote after the phrase “forced to leave you.” The Greek word there is aporphanizo. It’s the verb form of the adjective orphanos, where we get our word “orphan.” This is so much stronger than “forced to leave you.” The English Standard Version comes close with “we were torn away from you,” but it literally means “we were temporarily orphaned from you.”
So in just a few verses, Paul says he loves the Thessalonians like a gentle mother, an encouraging father, and an orphaned child who longs for his parents.
Remember our three types of gift givers? Who are the people that you are passionate about giving gifts to? It’s your own family, right? When you are shopping for your family, it’s not out of obligation or duty. It’s out of passion and delight. Go back to our key verse in 2:8:
8 We cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.
In just three short weeks of being with these people, Paul could say that he cared so much for them that he was pleased not just to share the gospel with them, but his very life, because they had become dear to him.
You see, the gospel changes how you see people. Proclaiming the gospel begins with an obligation. Paul says in Romans 1:14-16 that he is obligated to share the gospel with both Jews and Greeks, because it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
In 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul says that he is under compulsion to preach the gospel. He says, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.”
And if your starting point for sharing the gospel is obligation, there’s nothing wrong with that. We have a Great Commission, not a great suggestion. You don’t get to wait until you feel like sharing the gospel. You don’t have to wait until you hear God calling you to share the gospel with the nations. He already has!
But what starts with an obligation shouldn’t end there. If Christ is in you, then you should find yourself becoming passionate for the people, not just obligated to the proclamation!
Because that’s how God felt about us when he sent Jesus.
What does John 3:16 say? “For God felt so responsible for the world that he gave his one and only son?” NO!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
What does Hebrews 12 say? “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who grudgingly out of obligation endured the cross?” NO! It says we
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Why was Paul delighted to share his very life for the Thessalonians? Because Jesus was delighted to give His life for us.
Jesus a Passionate Giver. He didn’t give the least that he could get by with. John 15:13 says,
“Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down His life for His friends.”
In 1925, the city of Nome, Alaska was hit with a deadly diptheria outbreak. Nome is in the far northern part of Alaska, on the Bering Sea. From September to May, the average high temperature is 31 degrees. The average low is 14 degrees. In early fall, the steamships stopped running, and the Alaskan railroad terminated nearly seven hundred miles away. The only way to get to Nome was by sled dog, a journey that normally took 30 days.
Over a million doses of diptheria serum were shipped by rail from Seattle Washington to Nenana Alaska, where the rail line ended. The serum had a shelf life of about six days.
So multiple teams of sled dogs and their drivers were organized into a relay to get the lifesaving serum to the people who needed it. And in spite of nightime temperatures of -40 to -62 degrees (wind chill -85), the relay made it to Nome in 127.5 hours-- just over five days--without a single dose broken or unusable. Nearly all of the drivers suffered severe frostbite, and many of the dogs died. But the drivers knew they were carrying cargo that would save lives, and they were willing to do whatever it took to share it with people who would die without it.
Beloved, this is the gospel. Because of the love Jesus had for Paul, this was the love Paul had for the Thessalonians.
Jesus has the same love for us. He was delighted to share his very life with us, because we are dear to him.
One of the trends we started hearing about in recent years is “Re-gifting.” That’s where, if you get a gift you don’t like or can’t use you pass it along to someone else.
But what if it wasn’t about passing along something you didn’t treasure, but something you treasured so much you want to share it with everyone you meet?
Invitation
