Sermon Tone Analysis

Rights and Responsibilities

! 1 Thessalonians 2:6b-9

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/As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.

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.

Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you./

 

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t must have been great to be an Apostle of Christ!

Everyone loved them.

They had exceptional rights as Apostles of Christ, enjoyed deference from everyone and lived a life filled only with the absolute best of everything.

*Not*!

In actual fact what was permissible and what was experienced are two separate issues, the former predicated on rights and the other being dependent upon responsibilities.

Life is not defined solely by rights, though that may possibly appear to be the situation in this day.

Life is a delicate balance between responsibilities and rights.

Paul's service in Thessalonica demonstrates this delicate balance.

Each of us as Christians will benefit by adopting a similar balance between rights and responsibility in our lives.

Rights in Christian Thought [*v 6b*] –* *The issue of *rights* is tremendously important to each of us.

As Canadians we are quick to assert our *rights* and to resist any intrusion upon those rights.

Virtually any newscast on any day presents what has become a familiar scene as those watching or listening witness a demonstration of another special interest group demanding its *rights*.

With an evident and rapid increase in emphasis upon the differences between members of our society have come increasing demands for *rights* for those identified (willingly or otherwise) as different.

The greater our pride in what makes us different from one another, the more strident seem the demands for individual rights at the expense of the remainder of society.

The concept of collective rights was a major motive force in the development of and in the application of Canadian social consciousness.

The greatest good for the greatest number of people was the determining force in the creation of and in the recognition of rights.

The social stresses arising from the post World War II era witnessed a shift in emphasis.

At first subtle and then ever more blatant, individual rights assumed exaggerated importance.

Few of us can remember a time when individual rights were restricted by the broader requirement to satisfy the whole of society’s needs.

Though individual rights appear to be favoured now, it is evident that earlier national leaders never meant that individual rights should supersede collective rights.

Furthermore, the concept of collective rights was not restricted to Canadian social thought, but the concept of collective rights was pre-eminent in the thinking of virtually all western democracies being an essential component of British parliamentarianism.

I do not for a moment imagine that I am about to change society’s thinking; I cannot imagine that the world is greatly concerned with what I think.

Neither do I imagine that I am able to long stand in the social arena doing combat with modern social engineers.

I do, however, have a mandate to address those Christians whom God has placed under my charge to challenge them to think Christianly while resisting the pressures of the world around them.

I am responsible to lead you to resist that which is not pleasing to God.

In this context of Christian rights I remind you that Christians hold as their right that which has not always been officially recognised as legitimate throughout the long march of history.

The right to worship God according to the dictates of the heart was deemed a tenuous right throughout the history of the Church; even in Christian lands that right has not always been recognised.

Baptists were persecuted relentlessly and vigorously in Virginia and in Massachusetts and in England because of their insistence upon freedom of conscience and because they would not support the concept of a state church.

When Roger Williams established Rhode Island Colony he included a provision granting a right to any man to worship as he saw fit.

The idea at that time was radical … a threat to the established religions of other colonies.

The right to assemble as Christians, the right to witness to our faith, the right to pray, the right to read the Bible in our mother tongue, have all been assailed at various times throughout history and even to this day are such rights subject to assault.

I well remember speaking at length with a man named Marcos Busios, the only Baptist pastor in the Greek city of Athens at the time we met.

At that time, some twenty-five years past, he related that the church was not permitted to meet in a building marked as a church.

His sermons were to be presented to the chief of police one week before they were delivered and an uniformed officer was required to be present during any service to insure that he did not deviate from the printed text.

Should any of the congregation speak to another concerning their faith they would be liable to arrest for the crime of proselytising.

If the one they spoke to was under the age of sixteen, they would likely be imprisoned.

If the one they spoke to was over the age of sixteen, they could be sued and in all likelihood lose the suit.

Rights we assume to be universal were absent from their service to God.

Unquestionably Paul could have demanded rights beyond those of any other person.

Writing the Corinthians he asserted that he had the *right* to provision from the churches among whom he ministered.

He had the *right* to support from those same churches.

He had the *right* to have a wife accompany him and to expect that she would likewise be provided for by those same churches [see *1 Corinthians 9:3-12a*].

Therefore, his assertion that the missionaries /could have been a burden/ was not mere hyperbole.

Paul could have demanded the *rights* we hold to be the due of every Christian as well as *rights* which were his as an Apostle of Christ the Lord.

At any time any of us who call ourselves Christian can demand our *rights*, both within the Church and in society.

There is no doubt a time when we are obligated to stand firm in our insistence that our *rights* be recognised.

Especially is this true when we speak broadly for the welfare of the whole of the Faith or when we resist secular encroachment into the precincts of the Church or when we uphold the dignity of Christian service.

But I would contend that these times are exceptions and not the rule.

More frequently we need to be reminded that we bear responsibilities far outweighing any rights we may hold.

Christian Responsibilities Are Demonstrated In Service [*vv 7-9*] – I find it fascinating to see the manner in which the Apostle dismisses his rights in order to emphasise responsibility for the welfare of the church.

/But we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.

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.

Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you/ [*verses 7-9*].

In this, Paul was emulating His Lord, /Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross/ [*Philippians 2:6-8*]!

In the second Corinthian letter the Apostle wrote: /You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich/ [*2 Corinthians 8:9*].

He employs the imagery of a mother caring for her children.

He affirms love as a motivating power for the missionaries in sharing their lives.

He reminds the Thessalonians of the toil and hardship the missionaries experienced in order to avoid being burdensome to the fledgling church.

It is not that the Apostle did not have rights; it is rather that the Apostle recognised that responsibilities far outweighed his rights.

He clearly sensed his responsibility to the Thessalonians, the people whom he came to serve, and he felt a deep sense of responsibility to the Lord Who appointed Him to this service as an Apostle.

Love for God who appoints us to service imposes responsibilities great and weighty upon us as Christians.

Compassion for those we are called to serve imposes great and weighty responsibilities upon us as Christians.

Previously Paul had spoken of His love for God.

He asserted that the missionaries spoke /as men approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel/, and they therefore dared not distort the message nor employ it to their advantage.

He further assured his readers that the missionaries were/ trying to please … God/.

Throughout this previous portion of the letter he made repeated appeal to /God [as] our witness/.

Warming to the theme of their love for the Thessalonians the Apostle reminds them of that love.

The world around us will not long remember our words.

What we say is of small moment; but what we do can have lasting impact in the lives of those who witness our actions.

The world takes note of what we do and the manner in which we do it.

It is precisely here that the concept of Christian responsibility intersects our world.

What better picture could be employed of love than that of a mother for her children?

Instead of demanding his rights, the Apostle fulfilled his responsibilities just as a mother would for her little children.

Permit me to read that *seventh verse* from another, somewhat more literal, translation.

/We proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children/ [*NASV*].

I suggest that this translation imparts a fuller picture to the words employed.

Paul stated that the missionaries were gentle.

Can any picture convey more powerfully or more appropriately the thought of gentleness than that of a nursing mother?

I watched with deep satisfaction as my wife tended each of our children, gently encouraging them when they were yet infants.

All these memories have returned in the past several years as I have watched my eldest daughter care for our grandchildren.

A nursing mother imparts her own life to the child and in the process of nursing the mother speaks a tender, childish language to her child as the infant nurses.

There is something about a little baby which effects the speech of otherwise normal adults.

Our language degenerates into a strange lisp as we prattle on to the wee bairn.

Nowhere is this more evident than when cuddling that infant to our breast and no one has a more intimate relationship with the infant than the nursing mother does.

I rather suppose that all mothers found their language reduced to this strange prattle as they cared for their children.

Our three children are grown now, but I still remember the demands each made upon us as parents.

They required, and in to some degree still require, a great deal of patience or gentleness.

That is all right, however, since Lynda and I required a great deal of patience from our parents.

Children do not grow up instantly; rather they move fitfully through the various stages of life until they attain maturity.

Tenderness is a word which perhaps best describes a mother nursing her children, and it is a most fitting description of the missionaries service in Thessalonica.

/Love is patient, love is kind/ [*1 Corinthians **13:4a*].

I make another observation concerning motherhood – it is not easy to be a /nursing mother/.

Incredible demands are made upon a mother.