The Thessalonian Story Part 2 – The Birth of the Thessalonian Church

So, they begin cleaning out the mess. And they hang up a curtain under the air, and he says, I’ve got to find something to repair and hang here so people can tell what I do. And then Silas says, How are you going to get into business? And Paul responds, I don’t have any idea. How long is it going to take? I don’t have the slightest notion how long it’s going to take before we get business, but we start right now.

And this is what Paul does. And I wish you’d love him for it. I want you to see this little fellow, and another door opens to the life of this man we’ve never seen before. Paul of Tarsus, who has been a tentmaker his whole life and has held on to this business of not charging a church for bringing it into existence, starts down that street of the marketplace, and suddenly, he truly is an oriental, and he is. He’s an Easterner. And he’s plying his trade. And he’s doing what anyone else does. He’s going to hawk his wares.

And so he starts down the street. And he begins crying out in this almost monotone, staccato voice. Tentmaker! Sicilian tentmaker! I make good tents. I repair tents. I repair horses’ harnesses. I repair all leather goods. Cilician tentmaker, I can repair your goods. I am from Cilicia. I’m from Tarsus, where we make tents. We’re the best of the tentmakers. Come and have your tents repaired and made. Good, black, goat hair. I use the best material.

Silas can’t believe it. Here’s a man who’s sat under Gamaliel. Here’s a man who’s known all over Judea and hated everywhere he’s ever been. He has just become a common laborer so that he can preach the gospel without charge, without offense, and without accusation.

And throughout all the messages that I have brought up until this very instant, I have tried not to insert my own personal life here, but I have something to say. Paul of Tarsus made the statement, ‘I boast in the fact that I did not ever charge anyone for the gospel, but I paid my way. And when I went to people’s homes, I actually would not go there unless they let me pay for my meal.’

About 25 years ago, I was first a pastor and then I became an evangelist, and the Lord was good to me. I became well known very quickly, all over America. I held citywide crusades. One day, I decided it was more important that I’d be a Christian than I’d be a Christian leader, and I pulled away from what is called the professional ministry. I also, even then, was an author, and I was well known; actually, I wasn’t famous, I mean world famous, I wasn’t here, I was down here somewhere, but wasn’t way, way, way down here, an anonymous person either. And I had spent a large part of the last year studying the life of this man. I’m now telling you now, I became a schoolteacher; that is something to boast in, but I never gave up the gospel, and I raised up churches, and I went on speaking engagements and my name was known in bookstores and in journals and books across this country, and I think I was probably the only well-known minister in America, well known, and with all due respect to the rural pastor who is also a farmer, I’m talking about a nationally known Christian figure who did not allow anyone to give him money for the preaching of the gospel.

I worked with these two hands. And I continued to do that until just a few years ago when my health broke. I cannot any longer tell you that I’m like Paul of Tarsus, because I will let people pay my expenses, especially my airplane ticket or my gasoline there and back. But I have raised the testimony in this day that it is possible to work full-time and still preach the gospel full-time and never take a red cent for it. I don’t know anybody else who would make that statement, especially who does the business of raising up fellowships. And of course, as you know, the groups that I affect are Christians who meet in homes. They don’t own church buildings. They don’t own anything.

The reason I’m telling you this is because money is still dangerous. It’s years later, and it’s still dangerous. Very dangerous. And I would to God, I would to God that there were more men called the Lord who would lay down receiving income who were in the business of planting churches; I’m not talking about the fellow who’s fooling around preaching every once in a while, I’m not talking about the man who stays in one place his whole life and preaches to a little group of people; I am speaking of men who are utterly possessed, totally consumed with the Lord Jesus Christ who are willing to raise the testimony that Paul of Tarsus so clearly raised in Thessalonica.

We all love the man; we all respect him, but we’re like Peter: we all preach the gospel and receive finances from it. Paul of Tarsus, without a Scripture in the Old Testament, set a new standard nobody else had ever set. He literally would take no money from anybody for anything, and he was even a little bit more than that; in fact, the man was crazy in this area. If you invited Paul of Tarsus, if we are to believe what he has written, if you were to invite Paul of Tarsus to your home, he would come, only with the understanding that he would pay for his meal. Now that is a brother fighting hard to make sure he is not corrupted by anything. Can you imagine saying, I would love to invite Paul over to our house, but we can’t because it is so embarrassing to take money from him. Or could you perhaps even hear a husband and wife laughingly say, Well, we’ve got a problem to discuss; let’s invite Paul over. Besides, we need the money. He was an incredible man.