Those in spiritual leadership are not to view the church with the indifference and with the independence that surrogate caretakers view little children in a daycare center. The church is to be a family. And just like a family has to have a mother and a father to have the perfect balance of leadership, so spiritual leaders in the church must mother and father the church. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's been said that an ounce of mother is often worth more than a ton of clergy. Certainly no one will spend more time with the next generation and influence it more than mothers. So how can moms make sure that they're leading their children spiritually? And what might men learn from women about spiritual leadership? Find out today as John MacArthur helps you see how men, believe it or not, men have a motherly role to play. It's a message called Parental Pictures of Spiritual Leadership, and it's part of John's current study, Leading the Charge. So whether you're a father teaching your boys how to be men, or a mother keeping up with a couple of toddlers running through your home, or even a manager in charge of dozens of employees on the job, you'll appreciate the spiritual leadership principles that John helps you apply from today's lesson.
And so with that, here is John MacArthur. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2, we come upon a new portion of scripture, verses 7 through 12. We've entitled this section Parental Pictures of a Spiritual Leader, and at first that title might appear a bit obscure.
It will lose that obscurity in a matter of moments. And if you are concerned about why we are addressing the subject of spiritual leadership when not all of you are spiritual leaders, let me just remind you, first of all, that the Spirit of God desires to speak to the leadership as well as the people. Secondly, this is where we are in our study of Thessalonians. Thirdly, I believe it is imperative that you as a people hold leaders accountable to be the leaders that God has called them to be. And so this bears great importance upon us.
During the week, at any given point in the week, I have occasion to be reading many, many different kinds of materials related to the study of God's Word, and sometimes reading articles of curiosity that are of interest to me. I picked one up this week on the subject of daycare centers, which at first might not appear to be relevant to the subject at hand, but was in fact a good analogy as I read through it. In a daycare center, basically, people are hired to become substitute mothers for children. The current assessment of daycare is that it is for the children generally debilitating mentally, socially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Workers are usually instructed not to pick up crying babies, because if you pick up a crying baby, then the baby will cry to be picked up, and so will all the other babies, and that's an impossibility.
Not to give undue attention to a crying child, or you will have all the children crying and be unable to give them all due attention. Furthermore, in daycare centers, not only is there a lack of affection, a lack of tender, loving care for each child, but there is a changing cast of characters. These substitute caretaking would-be mothers come and go, so that the little child, about the time he or she has made some kind of significant attachment to one or another, finds that person immediately out of their life forever.
Only to have the place taken by a stranger, and the process repeated. The turnover in employees is very high, and so it is very common for little children to learn that relationships are very short and end totally, and you never see the person again. And so there is a potential fear factor in even building a relationship, being instilled in them at a very early age. Generally, the best worker to children ratio is five children for one worker, and that's for the very smallest children, and it gets even further apart as they grow older.
They are conducted in groups and little herds or flocks, whichever you desire, so that there is not a full attention given to any individual as such. The children are often unhappy and lonely. And when you think about the fact that a tiny baby is helpless, lonely, confused, vulnerable, life exposed potentially to hunger, thirst, fear, needing constant love and care, direction, instruction for survival and growth, the potential for a debilitating kind of experience is very high. That is simply why God created a family, and that's why God designed a mother.
And there is no substitute for that. It is essential to the well-being of children that there be a mother. It is also God's perfect plan and design that there be a father. And there is in that the perfect balance of gentle, nurturing care and loving example and authority. Mothering and fathering is God's design for the raising of children. And I believe when God created the church, He created the church very much like a family. And the church is not to be taken care of by surrogate mothers and fathers. Those in spiritual leadership are not to view the church with the indifference and with the independence that surrogate caretakers view little children in a daycare center. They are not to deal with those in the church as if they were groups, but they are to love them as individuals. They are not only to herd them around, but they are to love them and nurture them personally. They are not just to command them, but also to disciple them.
The church is to be a family. And just like a family has to have a mother and a father to have the perfect balance of leadership, so spiritual leaders in the church must mother and father the church. That is precisely what is on the heart of the Apostle Paul in our passage. In verse 7 he says to the Thessalonians, we were among you as a nursing mother. In verse 11 he says, we were imploring each one of you as a father.
We treated you like a mother treats her children and we treated you like a father treats his children. And he gives us then the parental pictures of spiritual leadership. Now remember that Paul was the model for all spiritual leaders, both by his precepts, principles, and the patterns of his life. He set leadership as a pattern for us to follow.
And with this rich chapter before us, we are gaining insights into why he was such an effective leader. In chapter 1 you remember we saw him spell out the great quality of the Thessalonian church. It was a church that was in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, truly regenerated. It was a church for which he could give thanks in verse 2 for every person in that church. It was a church manifesting its true salvation by a work of faith, a labor of love, and a steadfastness of hope in verse 3.
Now in verse 4 he says, I know you're brethren and I know you're beloved by God and I know you're the elect. It was a church in verse 6 that became imitators of the apostles and of the Lord. It was a church in verse 7 that was an example to all other churches. It was a church in verse 8 that was evangelistic, trumpeting out the gospel. It was a church in verse 9 that had been totally transformed from serving idols to serving the true God. It was a church in verse 10 looking for the return of Jesus Christ. This was a great church. It was a great church because of the power of God through a remarkable leader. And so in chapter 2 after describing the character of the church in chapter 1, he describes the character of his leadership in chapter 2. And this then is for us instruction about what kind of leader it takes to produce that kind of church. If we want a church like the Thessalonian church, we need spiritual leaders like Paul, like Timothy, like Silas. Chapter 2 then he spells out for us and for the Thessalonians how he approached the responsibility of spiritual leadership. We looked at the first six verses of chapter 2 and that was an x-ray. That was the inside of the leader. And we said on the inside he was marked by tenacity, integrity, authority, accountability, and humility.
Those were virtues in his life. That was the inside view, the x-ray view. But now in verses 7 to 12 we get the outside.
This is a photograph, not an x-ray. And he says if you want to see what the image looks like, what the picture looks like of a true spiritual leader, you need a picture of a mother and a picture of a father. For we in the role of spiritual leadership must be mothers and fathers. And thus he establishes the parental pictures of spiritual leadership.
Now there are many pictures that he might have chosen. There are many. In fact the New Testament gives us a number of metaphors for spiritual leaders. In 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 1 to 4 spiritual leaders are called shepherds who have the responsibility to feed the flock of God and take the oversight of the flock. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 1 and 2 spiritual leaders are called stewards.
Household managers who manage resources and assets to care for a household under the direction of the owner. And as those who are spiritual leaders we take the resources that belong to God and we disperse them to his household. So we are stewards. In 1 Timothy 2 to 7 Paul says that the spiritual leader is a herald.
To put it in a little more contemporary historical term, we are town criers. We are proclaimers of the king's message. In 2 Timothy 2 to 2 we are teachers.
We have a didactic responsibility to impart truth to our people. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 we are slaves. Now all of those metaphors are loaded with meaning. We could talk about the spiritual leader as a shepherd, the spiritual leader as a steward, as a herald, as a teacher, as a slave.
And they're all replete with significance. But here in this text Paul moves to a more intimate and more compelling metaphor to illustrate the picture of spiritual leadership, that of a mother and a father. This because he wants to emphasize intimacy.
He wants to emphasize primary care. Now obviously some people were attacking Paul. They were attacking his credibility. They were attacking his sincerity.
They were attacking his integrity. They were accusing him to the Thessalonian church, these detractors were, of being just another religious charlatan. They hated the gospel. They resented Jesus Christ. They resented Paul and what he had done and so they decided to attack him. We don't know the specifics of the attack, but there's a polemic or a defensive style to Paul's writing which tells us he must have been dealing with an issue.
And so no doubt they had come to the Thessalonians and said, That man Paul who brought you that message, he was no different than the rest of the spiritual phonies in our world. He spoke his own philosophical theology. He was motivated like all the rest. By greed he wanted your money. By sex he wanted your physical sexual favors. By power he wanted to control you. By popularity he wanted to become somebody to satisfy his own ego.
He was like all the rest of the false teachers. Now remember the Greek world was filled with these. Spiritual fakers were on every corner espousing their theories. Every marketplace was their platform and they were there to capture the bodies and the minds and the money and the possessions of the gullible public. They were emissaries of Satan who is disguised as an angel of light and his emissaries are disguised as angels of light.
They were there to pluck off the easy prey. And so it was easy for those who hated the gospel and hated Christ to see Paul as just another one of those. And to begin to make an effort to depreciate him in the minds of the Thessalonian Christians.
And to assign him the identity as another religious fraud which was so common in their time. And so in chapter 2 he needs to defend himself and he does it by calling them to remember. In verse 1 he says, for you yourselves know. In verse 2, as you know. In verse 5, as you know. In verse 9, for you recall. In verse 10, you are witnesses. In verse 11, just as you know. And he calls them to reach back to what they know about him. He was there. They don't need second hand testimony.
They should never listen to detractors. They were the living testimony of Paul's credibility and effectiveness as God's man. They were in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They were producing a faith that works, a love that labors, a hope that endures. They were imitators of the Lord.
They were all they needed to look at to see the validity of his ministry. But nonetheless, he gives them a look at himself. And in effect he says, let me give you the x-ray view. Let me let you see me on the inside. And then he says, now let me give you a picture of the outside.
And as we come to that picture, I think we're going to be greatly enriched. These are not new metaphors for Paul. Back in Galatians and in chapter 4 and verse 19, Paul says to the Galatians, my children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you. And there again he pictures himself as a mother. He was once in labor to give them birth and now he is almost in labor again to bring them to spiritual maturity. And there he views himself as a mother. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 15 he says, For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus I became your father. And there he views himself as a father. So these are familiar metaphors for spiritual leadership.
Let me reduce it to a very simple concept. A mother illustrates gentle care and a father illustrates strong authority. And that is the balance of spiritual leadership.
The tenderness and the gentleness of the motherly care. The strength and the fortitude and the courage and the leadership of fatherly care. That is the balance to spiritual leadership. And that balance has to be there for us to be what God wants us to be as spiritual leaders. Let's look first then this morning at the spiritual leader as a mother, verses 7 through 9. Verse 7 begins with a very important word, but.
But. It's been used already three times in this brief chapter. It's a series of not this but this, not this but this, not this but this. So it's used as what we call an adversative.
It flips it over, not this but on the other hand this. What is he saying? Far from being a greedy, licentious, sexually motivated, self-styled, flatterer, given over to self-aggrandizement, power, control, manipulation and abuse. Rather than that, verse 7, we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Far cry from that, he's saying. We didn't come to you as the typical charlatan and fraud.
We didn't even come to you as a hired part-time daycare child watcher. We proved to be, literally we became, gentle among you. That's a marvelous word. Among you is in the midst of you and it talks about the fact that he was really involved with his people. We were in the midst of you, gentle. Gentle is a beautiful word. Apias used here in 2 Timothy 2, 24 only in the New Testament. It simply means to be kind to someone.
To be kind to someone. And Paul says, as we moved among you, we were kind to you. We didn't come to abuse you. We didn't come to take from you. We didn't come to exploit you.
We didn't come to manipulate you. We moved among you with kindness. This is the spiritual leader caring for his people. Being concerned about their well-being. Sensitive to their personal needs. It implies acceptance of all of them. It implies respect. It implies compassion. It implies tolerance of imperfections. It implies patience. It implies tender heartedness.
It implies loyalty. We weren't abusive to you. We weren't domineering over you. We were gentle. We were kind to you. How gentle?
I love the metaphor he selects. We proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. The term here definitely refers to a nursing mother. Because of the phrase her own children. This is no surrogate here.
This is no daycare worker. He says we were to you as a nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children. And the metaphor is marvelous. Absolutely marvelous. He picks out of all the human realm the most intimate, tender, cherishing human relationship. There is none to match it. There is no human relationship that is as tender, gentle as the nursing mother and the infant child. The tenderest relationship in all of human life.
And it illustrates the personal care that he gave to the church. There's no authority in that metaphor. The mother doesn't hold the little one in her breast with any authority. There's no dominance there.
There's no prominence on her part. There's no seeking of honor. There's only the simple giving of life, that's all. It's a spending of oneself for the child. It is the love that spares nothing.
The nursing mother. The verb tenderly cares. Literally means to warm with body heat. Sometimes translated cherish. To warm with body heat.
How graphic. As the mother takes the little one in her arms and warms the little life with her own body heat. And passes on her life to that life.
The intimacy of that, the beauty of that, the tenderness of that has no equal. So Paul says in verse 6, look, we might have asserted our authority. We might have been nothing more than a father.
But we weren't. We might have come in and laid down on you the responsibility that you had as those who speak with the authority of Christ. But our ministry wasn't just that. On the other hand, we proved to be as gentle with you as a nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children. So Paul says in spite of the legitimate claim to apostolic authority, we use another approach.
And his authority was balanced with tenderness. From the opening picture here in verse 7, then Paul proceeds into verses 8 and 9 where he unfolds the role of mother. In the beauty of its metaphorical meaning. I hope you can grasp this.
Verse 8 says this. Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives. Because you had become very dear to us. And now we're going deeper into this metaphor. The word thus or so is the connector. So or thus means as a nursing mother and thus he extends the metaphor into verse 8. Having a fond affection for you. Certainly this is true of a nursing mother. And we would say that a mother who doesn't have this kind of affection, a mother who doesn't see this as the sweetest moments of life for her to be nursing that little child has somehow lost touch with the intention of God's design for normal motherly love.
That's what Paul was saying that in the end times when he wrote to Timothy he said people will lose their family love, their normal natural affection for one another in family. But a mother with a little child in her arms has a fond affection. That's normal. That's very natural. That's God given. And that's what motivates her nursing, her gentle care. And as every mother knows there's no kudos for this. There are no laurels.
There's no awards for mothering. All you get is crying babies, dirty diapers, sleepless nights, runny noses, illnesses. It's hard.
It's consistent. Endless watchful care. I talk to grandparents now that I'm one. And they always say, oh, we love our grandchildren so much. And often they'll say, and the best part is they leave with their parents or when it becomes fussy time we hand them over. Well, that's simply a reflection of the hard part of parenting. And it's also a reflection of the fact that as much as we love our grandchildren, there is a bonding that occurs with our own children that makes that less than duty, that makes it supreme joy. And even though we love our grandchildren, they're one step removed from that intimate bonding.
A mother does what she does because she has a fond affection. And Paul is saying that's a picture of a spiritual leader's responsibility to have a longing for a tender relationship with his people. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study here on Grace to You is titled Leading the Charge. Well, friend, as John taught today, if there is anywhere that godly leadership is important, it's in the home. And that's particularly true for men as husbands and as fathers. Scripture is clear that fathers are to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, and fathers need to model that fear in their own lives. To help you with that, let me recommend John's book called Brave Dad, subtitled Raising Your Kids to Love and Follow God. It explains what a man must do and what he must not do to be a godly father. It's a great book for dads of kids of any age and even for grandfathers.
And it's also practical reading for men who hope to be fathers one day. To pick up a copy of Brave Dad for yourself or for a father in your life, get in touch today. Our phone number is 800-55-GRACE and our web address, gty.org.
Brave Dad costs $11 and shipping is free. Again, to order Brave Dad, Raising Your Kids to Love and Follow God, call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And thanks for remembering that Grace To You is listener supported. The partnership of friends like you ensures that this broadcast can have a spiritual impact on many people around the world, including a listener we recently heard from named Condra. She told us how John's teaching has helped her to leave a church that's steeped in error and how to cultivate a vibrant relationship with Christ. Friend, by partnering with us, you can minister to people like Condra. And as a result, you actually take part in strengthening the local churches that they belong to. To send a gift, visit gty.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today and be back tomorrow as John continues unpacking the leadership roles that God has carved out for women. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on the next Grace To You.
