Consider all the trouble these Macedonian Christians had from the very beginning of their faith. You would think that if anyone were going to fall away from Christ as the result of the actions of others, it would have been them. A lot of people today fall away under far less difficult circumstances. But these people thrived!

"The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His." - 2 Chronicles 16:9

I want to begin a new series this morning that I’m going to call "The Character of the Committed."

A committed believer is one who has made a conscious decision to entrust his or her life, past, present, and future, to the God of the Bible. He or she is then faithful to that decision. The fickle nature of those who place comfort and convenience in front of faithfulness – those who must play at their religion and work at their play in order to maintain an interest – is not prominent in the nature of the committed. When the going gets tough, the committed stay faithful, even when there is a price to pay.

Committed people are very concerned about character. Their word is their bond. What they promise they will deliver.

Committed people are not the norm across this land – as you probably realize. They are often only a minority, a remnant among multitudes of those whose devotion is shallow and changeable.

In the coming weeks I would like to bring before your mind a series of short looks into the lives and characters of some of the committed people described by the Bible. The study will include individuals from different walks of life, from both sexes, and even from different nationalities. The people we will consider will bear little resemblance to each another except for the common thread of their commitment to God and its resultant effect upon their character.

In this message I want to look at The Macedonians who First Gave Themselves to God.

Our text is 2 Corinthians 8:1-5. Please follow along as I read it.

Paul here commends "the churches of Macedonia." Since some of us might not be immediately familiar with who the apostle was referring to, let me tell you the story of those churches. It is an account that takes us back in time to the ancient mountainous region of Achaia, to a country in the Balkan Peninsula called Macedonia in a time when there were not Christians there.

The Apostle Paul was traveling in an area over 600 miles southeast of Macedonia as the Bible describes it. He and his traveling evangelist partner, Silas, were preaching in to a group of churches founded previously on Paul’s first missionary journey. Along with their preaching, they were also delivering the results of the Jerusalem conference described in Acts 15 that took care of some of the controversies that existed in that day between Jew and Gentile Christians. It was Paul’s second missionary journey and he had just left the cities of Lystra and Iconium, where they picked up a young man named Timothy to be a part of their team. As they continued, apparently their plans were to push westward with the gospel along a path that was peppered with cities containing the synagogues where Paul liked to begin his preaching. That’s just what they would have done too, had not some very strange things begun to happen.

Normally Paul and Silas preached in every city they passed through that had a synagogue. For some reason, though, unknown to them at the time, the Holy Spirit suddenly forbade them to speak in the regions of Phrygia and Galatia. Wondering, I’m sure, what must have been the reason for this out-of-the-ordinary prohibition, they obediently passed through these areas without uttering a word for Jesus. From there they headed north and came to Mysia and were trying to go into Bithynia to preach, but once again the message from the Holy Spirit came to them. They were not speak in these areas. So they passed though Mysia without speaking a word for Christ. There was no way left to go but west, which they did. By the time they came to the seaport city of Troas, Paul, Silas, and Timothy must have been three very puzzled men.

The mystery wasn’t to last much longer, however. As they bedded down for the night, Paul had a vision. In this vision was a man from Macedonia. The man was standing up and pleading with Paul, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."(1) Was this a citizen of Macedonia? Was it an angel? We aren’t told. The very next morning though, Paul and his companions, joined by Luke, were up and out, purchasing tickets for the next boat leaving for Macedonia. They set sail westward, traversed the Aegean Sea, and landed two days later at Neapolis. From there they made their way on foot up to Philippi, the leading city of Macedonia, excited and wondering, I’m sure, what must be waiting in store for them in this place that would bring them so far in such a short time. There must not have been a synagogue in Philippi as Paul and Silas waited a few days for the Sabbath, then joined in worship with a group of Jewish women who were praying near a river.(2) (This account, by the way, is contained in Acts 16 and 17.)(3)

Out of the women Paul, Silas, and Timothy met with there by the river in Philippi, a small group was baptized into Christ as a result of their teaching. Among these women was Lydia, a businesswoman who sold purple fabrics. Lydia invited the evangelists to stay with her at her home. Then one day as they were traveling down to the river to the special place of prayer, Paul cast a demon out of a slave girl who was being exploited by her owners. These vile men had been making a profit from the demon within her who apparently gave her a special ability in fortunetelling. When her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace before the legal authorities on a bunch of trumped up charges. They stirred up the multitudes with their accusations to the extent that it started a riot in which the two evangelists, without a trial, were beaten, jailed, and locked in stocks for the night. An earthquake rocked the jail at midnight and in the end, by God’s power, Paul and Silas were released through a series of circumstances that ended in the baptism of the jailer and his entire household.

Leaving Luke in Philippi, Paul, Silas, and Timothy went from Philippi to another Macedonian city, Thessalonica. There they entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and began preaching Jesus. Some of the Jews there were persuaded to become Christians, along with a good number of the God fearing Greeks and leading women. Others among the Jews, though, objected to Paul’s teaching and enlisted a group of malcontents from the marketplace to form a mob. These men came to the house of one of the new converts - a man named Jason, and demanded that Paul, Silas, and Timothy be brought out to them. When they discovered that the evangelists were not there, they dragged Jason out of his home instead, along with some of the other new Christians and took them before the authorities, again with trumped up charges. After posting a bond, Jason and the others were released. Paul, Silas, and Timothy were slipped quietly out of the city at night by the brethren. From there they went to Berea, the third Macedonian city and undoubtedly the third part of the earlier "Macedonian Call."

The evangelists found the Jews in the synagogue at Berea to be much more open to their teaching and especially willing to examine the scriptures daily to see whether the things that Paul and Silas were teaching them were true.(4) A large number of Jews in Berea, after examining the Old Testament Scriptures to test the message of Paul and Silas, accepted Jesus as the Messiah and obeyed the gospel, along with many Greek men and women who were also attached to the synagogue. Perhaps things would have continued on this positive note had not some of the antagonistic Jews who had given the evangelists so much trouble at Thessalonica heard about the favorable reception they had received from the synagogue at Berea. A group of them came down from Thessalonica and began to agitate the same way they had done in their city. As the crowds of opposition built, the brethren smuggled Paul out to the seashore and away to Athens, about 250 miles southeast. Silas and Timothy remained in Macedonia for a time, and then joined Paul later at Corinth.

Three key churches were established in Macedonia as the result of this series of events. One was at Philippi, (to which we have a letter written by Paul, the book of Philippians in your Bible) one was at Thessalonica, (to which we have two letters written by Paul, 1 & 2 Thessalonians in our Bibles) and one was at Berea (for which we have only a brief reference in Acts.) These congregations were established amid tremendous persecution and trouble – the kind of opposition that one might think would snuff out the spiritual lives of tender new believers. The Jews set themselves in opposition against these new Christians. The hostility continued even after Paul left. Yet remarkably, not only did their faith survive - it thrived to the extent that we find Paul in our text citing the example of the Macedonians as something worth imitation.

Sometime after the events that I’ve described, Paul was taking up a collection of money for the relief of needy Christians in Judea. We’re not sure of the exact circumstances of the need. Some suggest that it may have been for assistance in a famine that a prophet named Agabus was predicting to hit the region of Judea.(5) Others think that maybe the need was there because of the severe persecution that the Christians in Judea were receiving from the Jews living in such close proximity of the center of Judaism.(6)

Whatever the exact circumstances, Paul had put his request for financial help in the matter to the Christians in the churches of Macedonia who had been converted amid such violent opposition. Many of them were poor. The gospel was often more widely accepted by the poor and every church probably had many in its membership who were limited in this world’s goods. It may also have been that some of them had their goods confiscated in the strong opposition toward the churches that we’ve been talking about. Anyway, Paul put the needs of the Judean Christians before the Christians of Macedonia, apparently not expecting too much from them due to their own intense troubles. It is their response to this need that he writes about in our text.

With a better background of these events, let’s read it again in 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 and see what we might learn…

I see at least three characteristics of these Macedonian Christians that suggest character traits of committed people.

The fact that Paul could even mention the faithful testimony of the churches of Macedonia in a positive light shows us that they not only had survived the opposition and persecution directed against them from the beginning – they had grown to the point that Paul could cite them as a positive example before the Christians at Corinth.

I have seen many people come to Christ in the years I’ve been a Christian. Some have stayed with their commitment. Sadly, others have not. Opposition and pressure tends to weed out those who don’t mean business in their faith. It's easy to maintain a "faith" in God when things are running smoothly. People who are willing to say "praise the Lord" under favorable circumstances are numerous. But when the dark clouds of trouble begin to appear many drop out.

This is a troubling thing. It troubles me. It troubles other church leaders. Some of you have expressed the same concern. When we witness the conversion of a new believer we have such great hopes for them. We look forward to their growing and serving God. We open up our hearts to them. We welcome them as a part of God's family. To see some of them fall away and desert the faith then is terribly disappointing and disheartening. But lest we become too discouraged about such things, we need to look at what God’s word says about the issue.

The apostle John dealt with the problem of why people fall away from Christ and return to the world in 1 John 2:19. It’s a passage we need to be aware of. He was speaking of people who go through all the motions of becoming Christians. But then after awhile, they’re gone. They no longer walk among believers.

Here is what John said:

Our tendency when people desert the Lord and the church is to ask, "Why did this happen? What did we do wrong? Are we to blame for their departure? Could we have done anything differently?" Our tendency is to think that since they started out so well, we must be the ones who failed. And, since it’s impossible to cover every contingency, it’s easy to entertain such ideas and feel guilty - or make others in the church feel guilty. If only we had provided better teaching, or more fellowship, or more fun, or more… something. But before we get too deep into self condemnation, we would do well to listen to John's words. He places the blame elsewhere. He tells us that the real issue is that such people were never really of us. They were never really converted. While we may not have seen it, in their heart of hearts, they didn’t fully commit. Their departure is proof of this verdict.

Consider all the trouble these Macedonian Christians had from the very beginning of their faith. You would think that if anyone were going to fall away from Christ as the result of the actions of others, it would have been them. A lot of people today fall away under far less difficult circumstances. But these people thrived! My friends, if we are faithful to teach and nurture new believers and they still fall away, for the sake of the sanity of those of us who care, I must say it’s not our fault! Actually, I don't have to say it. John says it here. And the faithfulness of the Macedonian Christians says it, too. People who truly commit themselves stay with Christ.

Paul said something significant in our text that I read right over at first. Maybe you did, too. In verse 4 he said that the Macedonians were "…begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints…." The Macedonians really wanted to help! Then look at what Paul adds: "…and this, not as we had expected…." Paul didn’t expect such a response from these suffering people.

Think about it. You don’t typically expect people who are up to their necks in their own problems to respond generously and compassionately to the needs of others who have problems.

There is something special that happens to the character of a committed Christian in time that just isn’t what you would expect. Such a one begins to focus on the needs of other people instead of just himself.

We've already seen that one of the churches of Macedonia was Philippi. Some years later than these events I’ve described, when Paul was imprisoned and awaiting his trial in Rome, he wrote these words to the faithful Philippians:

The Philippians seem to have understood this from early on. No wonder the Holy Spirit brought Paul and Silas away from their planned itinerary to a place over 600 miles away with orders not to preach in certain places and then gave them that special "Macedonian Call" to prompt them to come to these people!

Look at Paul's words in verse 5: "…and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God."

That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? When we talk about those first things, faith in God through Christ, confession of Jesus as the Christ, the decision to turn away from sin, baptism into Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and the life of faithfulness that follows, all of it must be motivated by one’s decision to give himself or herself to God. That’s why conversion is more than a formula. It’s more than a "five finger exercise" or a dip in the water (though these are necessary.) All the things that follow in the life of a committed believer that build the kind of character we’re talking about – the character of the committed - come in the wake of that initial decision to give ourselves to God.

I was over at Sankey Park a few of years ago with two of our grandsons. I had taken Gavin and Matthew (they were a bit younger than they are now) to play on the swings. While they were playing (with Grandpa sitting on one of the park benches enjoying the sunshine!) I overheard a couple of the other children arguing. One of them wanted to go home. The other didn’t. They were really arguing and it didn’t appear that either one of them was going to give in. Finally one of them said in exasperation, "Well I don’t care what you want! You’re not the boss of me!"

I have heard versions of those same words on the lips of people who have decided to depart from the Lord. "You’re not the boss of me!" "You're not going to tell me what to do." Such people, unless there is a fundamental change in their outlook, will never develop the character of the committed. They will never see the inside of the pearly gates of heaven.

When the going gets tough, or uncomfortable, or unpopular, or unflattering, or unfair, or un-enjoyable, or unbelievable, or unrewarding, or unattractive, or un-anything else that is difficult, who is the boss of you?

The United States Marine Corps has a recruiting slogan. I'm sure you've heard it: "The few. The Proud. The Marines." The Macedonians and those like them today with the character of the committed could have a similar slogan: The few. The humble. The Committed.

The Marines also have a slogan that identifies them as Marines to other Marines. They say, "Semper Fi," which is a shortened version of the Latin phrase, "Semper Fidelis." It means, "Always Faithful."

The few, the humble, the committed. The always faithful. These are all part of the character of the committed.

Footnotes: Please use your back button to return to your place.

1. Acts 16:9
2. Acts 16:1-13
3. Acts 16:1-17:14
4. Acts 17:11
5. Acts 11:28
6. Presumably the book of Hebrews was written to encourage Judean Christians under persecution.
7. Philippians 2:3-7

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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