In this audio message, Jason Dohm preaches from the book of 1 Thessalonians. He draws out four main points from chapter 2. The first one is that conduct lived out before the brethren. Our lives and words should be pointing other individuals to God.

Romans 12:1 (NKJV) - "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."

You still have your Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Follow along as I read verses 10 through 12, these last three verses. Paul writes, writes, You are witnesses in God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe, as you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom and glory. There's actually, this is Paul, this is the Epistles, and so this is not like a narrative where you could preach on half a chapter, he's so dense, There's so much content here. But I think what looms over all the content is the phrase, as a father does his own children.

It's really the character quality about how all the content comes together. So as I speak about this, I'm going to speak about this with a banner over it, and it is that phrase, as a father does his own children. Of course, In verse 7 he had just said, as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So he's already been a nursing mother in this text and now he's a father in the exhortations to his own children. And the overriding thought here is that of a good spiritual parent.

Paul and his brethren, Silvanus and Timothy, spent time there among these people and They were good spiritual parents to people who needed help growing in the faith. And this is what ministers are called to be. I'm going to draw out four very, very obvious things from the text. If you had 10 minutes in these verses before you later, you would recreate it because these are the things that really are just lying on the surface. The first is this.

Conduct lived out before the brethren. Paul talks about his life there when he was with them. Conduct lived out before the brethren. In 1 Corinthians 11, 1, Paul says, imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. This has already been spoken of, but I don't think we can speak of it too much to one another as we lead the Lord's people that our conduct lived out right in front of the brethren.

They really have a first-row seat to our lives makes the difference. Peter thought the same thing, 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 3, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. So Jesus and Paul and Peter all thought the same thing, that maybe even more importantly than the words that we say to them, the life that we live before them sets the tone for how we're good spiritual parents or lousy spiritual parents. I think we've all known parents that talk, talk, talk, talk, but the life they live in front of their natural children makes their children want to get away as far away and as fast as they can when the age of 18 comes. The same can be said of us, the same can be true of us.

We speak many words, we should speak many words, it's our job to speak many words. And yet the lives that we live out before the people that God has entrusted to our care will either validate or invalidate, make null everything that we're saying. Verse 10, Paul says, we live devoutly, justly, blamelessly among you. He could point to a pattern of life among these people that was devout and just and blameless to the point where he could reference it and dare them to contradict him. Isn't that sort of a daring them to contradict?

When you say this, that better be true. Better be true when you say things like this. Brothers, our conduct pulls the people. Our pattern of life pulls the people. It's already been said, I remember who said it, but The things that we do can give people a ready excuse for loose living, loose conduct.

We can actually give a license to unholiness in life by the way we conduct ourselves. It's just we've given the license because we are to be the example. We're to be the ones who have brought the Word of God to bear on our own lives and when our conduct doesn't match up with the words, we are handing out licenses. This is true. Or we can pull the people towards holiness and being sanctified, meaning just devoted to the Lord.

God, I'm yours. Everything about me is yours. Use me in any way that you want. When that seeps through in the pattern of our life, we are pulling the people towards holiness for being set apart to be the Lord's themselves. So, the first thing that is lying on the surface in these three verses is conduct lived out before the brethren.

Secondly, words spoken to the brethren. So one was conduct lived out before the brethren. Secondly is words spoken to the brethren. Verse 11, we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you. Exhorted?

Comforted? Charged? Now just consider the range there. Consider the range and now consider your own house-to-house ministry of the Word of God, do you have that range? Can you go from exhortation to comfort to a charge?

Sometimes you're exhorting, like the Lord would have this of us, let's obey him, let's grow in this together. Sometimes God has brought tragedy and discouragement to their doorstep and they need to be comforted. Sometimes you need to tell them under the authority of Jesus Christ, you must do this. I charge you before God to do that. Here's the question.

Are you a one-trick pony? You a one-trick pony? You know, the one-trick pony is the pony in the circus and you can count on him for one thing. You learned how to do the one thing. If you know something else, you're just going to get the one thing.

And for all of us, don't you have a sense that you have a predisposition to be dominant in exhortation or comfort or charging, like you're the exhortation guy at heart or you're the comfort guy at heart or you're the charge guy at heart. We have to be broader than that. We just have to be broader than that. Especially in the early years of our leading people, we can look back and say, I was charging and God had brought heartache to them and I should have been comforting. May the Lord grant that that would happen less and less, amen.

So first was conduct lived out before the brethren. Second is words spoken to the brethren, just thinking about the depth and breadth of that that we need to have. Thirdly, the familial disposition towards the brethren, like a father, family. This is what separates the Church of Jesus Christ from all the other organizations that have a mission. We are an organization that has a mission and it's a big mission.

Praise the Lord for the mission. We should be focused on the mission but not to the exclusion of people. The familial disposition towards the brethren. Again, I do believe this is the overriding consideration in the text. As a father does his own children.

In what way is a father different than the boss? That's a good question to ask of this text, okay? He wants us to lead the Lord's people as a father does his own children, okay? Now how is that different than the boss? Well, in diligence.

In diligence. Sometimes the boss mails it in. Because the boss can't prioritize you and your needs as someone who reports to him. And so as far as it concerns you, he mails it in. A good dad never mails it in.

He always is ready at hand to be diligent to help his children. How about affection? Have you been in the corporate world? You get a lot of affection from your boss. Those of you who have had good dads, has it ever, has what you've gotten in the workplace ever one day of your life measured up from what you got in your home with your dad.

These are the things the Apostle Paul is pointing to. And it's personalized. It's personalized. I student taught, my training as a gym teacher, I'm a gym teacher. So I student taught, I never actually went into the public school system and taught, but I was trained to do that.

And my student teaching, there is zero personalization. Like your first period and your second period and your third period and there's 30 of you at a time and I got an hour to spread across 30 people, you get nothing custom. You get nothing custom. Do your work and when the bell rings, go to your next class. This is not how a father deals with his children.

The institutional church cannot be institutional in that way. Fathers are diligent. Fathers are affectionate. Fathers personalize their care for their own children because they know this child needs to be comforted but this one needs a charge. Okay, a charge.

This should be the death of professionalism for us in the sense of being sterile and mechanical and distant. That's not the kind of work we're in. It's not sterile work. It's messy work. It's not mechanical work.

It's flesh work. It's not distant work. It's like get in close work. We are not just orators on Sunday mornings and then we go off and we don't see them again until the next week. That's not the kind of work Paul was in.

That's not the kind of work we're in. Third, the familial disposition towards the brethren. Finally, the objective, the objective of all this, that the brethren would walk worthy. Now, our walk is the display of our affections. Do I have to work to convince you of that?

Meaning, when you see a man's walk, you can tell what he loves. It's sort of the externalizing of that so that his walk, his pattern of life, is the billboard for the things that he loves. So this is an exhortation for us as men who are leading the Lord's people to lead them in a way that their billboard shows affection for Christ. This is what it means to walk worthy. It's actually grounded in the great worthiness of God.

Walking worthy is grounded in the worthiness of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. And this is a worthiness that should have captured the heart of all Christians, must capture the heart of all Christians so that it is our highest affection. And when people look at my walk or your walk or the people's walk that we're ministering to more week after week and month after month and year after year, we want the billboard of their life to say, God is worthy. God is worthy. We're to lead in holiness and we're to lead to holiness so that when when people see us, corporate us, local church like as a body us, they see Christ is worthy.

They see Christ is worthy. Let's pray. Father, how good it is to have your word. How good it is to have your word. How precious it is to hear brothers speak of it and to hear the affection for your word in their hearts just in the way they handle it.

How refreshed we are today. Thank you Lord for telling us how we ought to be, for putting your finger on our many sins and shortcomings. Have mercy God. Please forgive us and build us up in our most holy faith so we would serve your people well under Christ. We pray in His name.

Amen.