So let's stand for the reading of God's Holy Word. First Thessalonians chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. Paul writes, for you yourselves know, brothers, that are coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. So we speak not to please men, but to please God who test our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor would the pretext for greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 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. For you remember, brothers, out our labor and toil. We worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You were witnesses in God also. How holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how like a father with his children, 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. What a great passage in the Lord's timing and providence. And would come for these two men who are being ordained today. But again, a word for all of us, for those who are in Christ, we are the priesthood of all believers. So I want to begin today by talking about identity. Our identity in Christ is critical to the ministry that we are involved in. Paul here speaks about being approved and entrusted with the gospel. You see it in verse 4, look with me. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, this is a very important word that Paul is making. In almost every one of his letters, he begins the introduction by speaking about his calling. Paul, in a apostle of Christ Jesus, called by the will of God. Lee, that is an important thing to never forget. You, brother, have been called by God. Every Christian that's in this room today has been called by God first to salvation. That is the first calling. Before all eternity, God knew that you would be his. He called you to be his own. But as we progress in life, there comes times in certain people's lives where the calling becomes very specific towards the vocational ministry. For any man that comes to be ordained, two things happen. First, they have an internal call. They begin to sense in their life through the work of the Holy Spirit that the Lord is leading them on this direct path towards gospel ministry. And they begin to sense that. And Lee and Michelle, you guys have been in ministry a long time already. As it enters, serving here, Michelle and his church 11 years ago. And I got here, you were on the staff. It was an amazing thing to watch. And now over time, the Lord has made that internal call more specific. And he wants you to be a church planter. But that internal call is matched by an external call. And what that means is that other people who know Lee, who know Michelle, who have seen their life, who have heard the sense of their own calling internally, affirm the call externally. We say, yes, we believe that the Lord has called you first to himself, but then to this specific task of planting this church in Richardson, a multi-ethnic church for the sake of making known the name of Jesus. And we believe that when we stand behind you, making sure that you understand that. And the reason the calling is so specific is that Lee, like me, is a weak man, we're weak, just like all of you. Just like what Skip preached last week. We're weak. We stumble. We fall. We have profound limits. Sometimes you tell us of our limits. And when you tell us it hurts. And in those moments, when we feel like we're limited, Lee, brother, you're going to be tempted to wonder whether or not you're called. And there may be a time when you aren't called any longer to that specific work, but you're always called as his beloved son, always. There may be a time when he calls you to a different church plan, or to serve somewhere else. Don't worry about when, or if that will happen. For this moment, he's called you to this place, for this work. Just as he's called you to serve in all these different areas of influence that he has given you, you're his beloved child. You have a mission every one of us who are in Christ. But when you doubt the calling, because you're confronted with your lack of wisdom, you're confronted with your lack of gifts. You're confronted with your lack of knowledge. The Lord reminds you that his powers meet perfect in weakness. You are called. And so Paul speaks, not as one who simply had the internal call. I think I want to be an apostle, but one who was called specifically, and that call was matched. Lee, you're going to need daily to remember who you are. And as you seek to remember who you are, what's important is to remember who you are, that you are the beloved child of God. And you will struggle, I promise. When the Lord was calling me to this specific calling that I'm in right now, I asked my wife in the early days of that process, Christina, do you think my skin is thick enough for this church?
And she did not answer quickly. And then she said to me, no. And I said, that's what I thought. All these dynamic and driven and type A Christians, all with ideas about how the church should run even better than it's running, all who know Jesus is the head of the church, but kind of want you to be the head too, or know they don't. Oh, I agree, honey. There's no way my skin is thick enough. And I was ready to say, I'm out. But then she said, but my dear, you're never to live in your own skin. You're to live in the skin of Christ. Your skin isn't thick enough to be a pastor in any church. You must live covered in the righteous skin, the righteous robe of Christ. And Lee, you must, we must, we must, but here's something important to know. When the devil throws the arrows, when he shoots the arrows, they will come. And just because we're covered in the righteousness of Christ doesn't mean that the arrows don't penetrate, and they still deeply hurt, and when they deeply hurt your temptation is to doubt your call. But the Lord allows those to penetrate. Just as he allowed, the nails to penetrate his son. And as he does, he reminds you of the grief of Christ. He reminds you of the wondrous cross. He reminds you of what our Savior went through and bore for us that we might have life. And with that constant reminder of who you are in Jesus, who you are as his son, whether you are an ordained gospel minister, or you're ministering in business all over the city, you're covered by him. And with the Holy Spirit's time, your identity comes quickly to the surface again, that I am the beloved child of God. So don't forget your identity. Secondly, I want to talk about your preaching. Paul is really eloquent here, but he goes on to make sure we see that eloquence isn't the key. Lee, you have one message to preach every time you preach, and it's the gospel. Every time, no matter what text you're in, you preach the gospel. So it's important that you know the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, that all of mankind has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us, every person you're sitting next to in front of behind, we've all fallen short of the glory of God, but Jesus was sent by the Father. Jesus came and he walked on his earth and he died, and he died the death that we deserve to die. But he conquered death as Julian said, he's victorious and he's reigning as our king. And every time you preach, that's the message you preach. You must preach the gospel. The gospel is the deepest message you can ever preach, because it is the only message that has life for all eternity. There is nothing else. There's no other word that we can bring that has eternal life except the gospel. And so that is the message. And you see in this text, three times Paul speaks about preaching the gospel, bringing the gospel, declaring the gospel. But there is an important thing to remember. You must believe what you preach. You must believe that the extension of grace that you're promising to all the people that you're preaching to, that you are extending to yourself as well. So preach the gospel to yourself every day. Michelle, preach the gospel to yourself every day, and to your children every day. Remember who you are and remember the gospel in your life. And as you then go to preach to worshipers, some who may know Christ, some who may not, so they're not really worshipers yet, some who are in a good place with Christ, others who are really struggling and you never really know on a given Sunday. You have a choice to preach to please man or to preach to please God. And even good meaning Christians will often want you to preach to please them. And sometimes it won't be pleasing to God. This is important. Two things happen when man becomes our focus. First, we're tempted to compromise the truth in order to not offend man. We were willing to compromise the truth truth in order to not be offensive. And it's happening in our nation and in the world. People don't like it if we talk about this topic, even those scripture bears light on it. People don't like it if you say a certain thing because it's defensive. Lee, do not compromise the truth because you're afraid of offending people. Preach the truth as God declares it in this holy word and you will always be safe. Do not compromise the truth. Romans 122 says, do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world. But be transformed. It means continually by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good pleasing and perfect will. So don't preach to please man by compromising the truth in order to not offend. Secondly, though, and he speaks of this in his passage in verse 5, he says, for whenever came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with pretext of greed, we're not only tempted to compromise so as not to offend, we often are tempted to use words of flattery in order to impress the listener. And it's a wicked temptation that every preacher faces and you will face it, I promise. But don't surrender. Don't surrender to the temptation of flattery of man. Instead, make sure you preaching to please God. And Paul goes on to say it this way in verse 6, he says, nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others. You see so often churches put the minister or ministers on a pedestal. They will give you glory that you don't really want. We want Christ and you want Christ to be the only one to get the glory. And so my brother, aim at his glory. Always. Never aim at anything else. If you're in business, if you're in law, if you're in medicine, or education, or making a home, being a good neighbor, aim at the glory of Christ. Always. There's no other place to aim. That's what I loved about the Catechism question. We call and brought that to my attention. We're a great confession. We aim to please God. He also says that our preaching in this passage is to be bold. Verse 2, he says, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness. Lots of people like to be bold. But did you hear what Paul said? We had boldness in our God. So preach the gospel boldly, but boldly in Christ. Paul goes on to explain it. In verse 12, he says, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. Well, as you preach the gospel, that's what the gospel calls people to. Did you hear the choirs anthem near the end? Love so amazing, so divine. Demands what? My soul, my life, my all. That's the gospel. And the gospel for every Christian has been revealed in word, in power, and in the Holy Spirit, in full conviction. And that's the word my friend that you are to bring also. So how do you do it? Pray for his glory. Prep as you study for his glory and then preach boldly for his glory, constantly aiming at the cross. Last thing, your identity, your preaching, and now your presence. I love what Paul does here. In verse 7, he says, but we were gentle among you. So he's talked about this boldness in God. And then he goes and speaks of this gentleness. We were gentle among you like a nursing mother. What an amazing picture. The gentle care of a mother for their tender young child. That's the picture Paul has of his care for this young church. We were gentle among you like a nursing mother, taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, not only the preached word of God, not only the holy words of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us. We're in a denomination that puts preachy at a very, very high, and I believe appropriate place. But as I learned in seminary early, the ethos of the preacher, the ethos of the pastor, the person is what matters most. In the Puritan Robert Murray McShaney said it best, he said, what is it that my congregation needs most from me? He said what my congregation needs most from me is my personal holiness. What he meant by that was not that he had a perfect life, but that he was covered in the perfect holiness of Jesus. And what his congregation needed to see was that he had been impacted by the gospel. He had been so impacted by the gospel that he wanted to live a life that was worthy of the calling of God. And that's what this church new hope in Richardson, Texas is going to need most from you and the minister that follows you and the minister that follows you. It's what that church will always need. It's what this church will always need that we don't just preach, but we give our life away for the sake of the gospel. And so Paul says it. He said it though not because he was supposed to say it. He said it not because it was the right thing to say for an apostle. He said it because he believed it. He loved the people. I love you. You will love your church and they will love you. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love is powerful because there's no greater power than the love of God. The vertical love. So my friend, give your life away and love for the sake of Christ.
Lee, I want to invite you now to come and stand before me here in front. In our bulletin on page four, you're going to see the ordination questions. I want you brothers and sisters to listen to these as I ask our brother these very things. When we're finished, I'm going to ask that our elders would then come forward as we lay hands on our brother and pray for him.