TOPIC:‌"The Charge To a Minister"

                  (Installation of a Minister)

                by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌I Thessalonians 2:1-12

 

"We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us" (2:8, NIV).

 

‌In the verses before us here in First Thessalonians chapter 2 the Apostle Paul is presenting a self-portrait of himself. It is as though he was saying to the members of this congregation that while he was with them life was an open book. He held back nothing.

 

‌This truth is made clear by the repeated words Paul uses in the first eleven verses of this chapter. In verse 1: "You know." In verse 2: "as you know." In verse 5: "You know." In verse 10: "You are witnesses." And then in verse 11: "For you know." Here Paul is saying, "You know the kind of man I am. You know how I preached and how I lived before you. You now my motives were pure as I presented the Gospel to you. My whole life has been exposed to you. You know!"

 

‌Now what kind of image did the Apostle Paul, the greatest of pastors, disclose before them? There are four images in these verses that I want to call to your attention.

 

I

 

‌First of all, there is the image of a LOYAL STEWARD. Paul writes in verse 4: "We speak as men approved by God" and then he adds: "to be entrusted with the Gospel." Here Paul saw himself as a steward entrusted by God to carry His message of salvation to lost mankind.

 

‌Now a steward is one who administers and manages the property of another. He doesn't own anything. He doesn't own the business, but he is responsible for it. And one day he will be accountable for the kind of stewardship he administered. Here Paul realized that one day he must stand before the Lord of the Church to give account of what he did with that trust given to him by God.

 

‌I want to remind ______________________  ___________________ that you have been entrusted with the preaching of the Word, the caring of the flock, and the administering of the ordinances. One day you will be accountable to your Lord as to how faithful you have been to that trust. There you have the role of a loyal steward entrusted with the Gospel. The Gospel being that Christ lived sinlessly, died vicariously, rose again triumphantly, lives eternally, and one day will return personally . . .