The Importance of Gospel Living

Introduction

Some things in life can just feel impossible to accomplish. Getting into the Christmas season, as a child it might feel impossible to survive from now until Christmas day without sneaking a peak into mom and dad’s room to see what they got you for Christmas. In a technological day and age, maybe the prospect of downloading our church app and using our online church directory seems like an impossible task for you (we have some amazing, incredible, wonderful, gifted secretaries who are skilled at helping you out). There are some things that just seem impossible - some of them little and others big. In some respects this is a good and healthy thing, in fact! Understanding our shortcomings and weaknesses is a necessary thing as Christians. One Sunday, some 150 years ago, Charles Spurgeon was walking to the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London and he was overheard saying, “O God, help!” Spurgeon, as gifted and strong a preacher as he was, knew that he was insufficient for the task before him: Preaching the Gospel, unless God helped him.

This is where we need to be today, church. We must always rely on God’s power and trust in His presence to help us accomplish His will. There are things that we will face that are impossible for us to accomplish by our own power and strength. One of those things that we see tonight in our text in 1 Thessalonians 4 is our sanctification. Sanctification is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. This requires us to deny ourselves pick up our cross and follow our Christ. We can’t do this ourselves! We require God’s help. This isn’t a passive thing that we just watch happen - we are to take an active part in this sanctification process by doing what the Lord wants us to do and not doing what the Lord says not to do. This isn’t easy - but it is necessary as a genuine faith makes a genuine difference in how we live. Let’s see the importance of Gospel living tonight!

1 Thessalonians 4:1–8 CSB

1 Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God—as you are doing—do this even more. 2 For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality, 4 that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not with lustful passions, like the Gentiles, who don’t know God. 6 This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you. 7 For God has not called us to impurity but to live in holiness. 8 Consequently, anyone who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Tonight we’ll see 3 ways that we can grow in our sanctification process and live out the truth of the Gospel in our day in day out life.

Be a Doer of the Word (1-2)

Paul opens up this text by saying that these believers have received instruction on how they should live. Do we like people telling us what we can and can’t do? Generally speaking, no, we don’t! However, these believers obeyed Paul and Timothy’s guidance because what they instructed them to do was in accordance with God’s Word as verse 2 shares with us. In the book of James, likely the first Christian book, we see in verses 22-27 of chapter 1 that Christians are supposed to be doers of the Word rather than just being hearers of the Word. A question for us: Is hearing the Word of God important? I’m not talking about a supernatural moment where someone claims to have a vision or something like that. I’m talking about reading and hearing someone explain God’s Word. Is this important? Certainly it is! Romans 10 says so

Romans 10:17 NASB95

17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Hearing the Word of God is vitally important! However, if we just hear the Word and do nothing with it, are we doing anything productive? No, we’re not. As followers of Christ, we must hear the Word but whenever we hear the Word, we should be motivated to transition to do something about what we have heard. We are to be a doer of the Word. To live a life that is pleasing to our Father and acceptable in His eyes. This is the recurring theme in both Old and New Testaments! We see this in Romans 12:1-2

Romans 12:1–2 CSB

1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

We also see this in Psalm 19:14

Psalm 19:14 CSB

14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

How do we please God? Through our words and actions. This requires us to live out the Word, not to just know the Word. Further, Paul calls on them to live this new lifestyle and to please the Lord more and more. This means that a follower of Jesus Christ should live a life that looks more and more like Jesus Christ by the day. In other words, they have done a good job starting out - keep on growing and keep on doing what the Word of God says! This is important for us today to remember that regardless of how long we have been a Christian or however much good we have done, there is always more room for us to grow in pleasing God and doing what He would have us do. As John Stott once said, “Pleasing God is the foundation on which Christian ethical behavior is built.” Every day of our life whenever we are faced with a situation or decision, this is the question that we must ask: Will my action please God? This question will work wonders in our lives individually and the life of this church in the years to come!

How can we be a doer of the Word? First, we must understand what God’s Word says! Satan knows Scripture too. We see this to be the case time and time again, but he twists Scripture. Sadly many people in our world do this very same thing. Because of this, we must do a good job of studying Scripture and applying it to our daily lives. Consider someone who you think to be a great Bible teacher or preacher - for some you would say that person was an Adrian Rogers or Billy Graham. Others would look further back to a Charles Spurgeon or Jonathan Edwards. Whoever that person is for you, think about the person teaching these Thessalonian believers: None other than the apostle Paul who many believe to be one of the greatest Bible teachers in the history of the church. This church had a great teacher to learn from and their teachers taught them both foundational and deep theological principles, but when push came to shove, who was responsible for their spiritual walk with the Lord? Paul? Timothy? Apollos? No. Themselves.

They are responsible for what they do with the instruction that they have received - Paul notes that they are doing this presently, however there is a long ways to go. There is an echo here to what the preacher of Hebrews has told his congregation as well as they must continue to grow and persevere. Friends, we must do the same and be doers of the Word. Consider how you can better obey what Scripture says this week. It’s one thing to read the Word, but it’s another to do it - think of it like eating food. Whenever you sit down for Thanksgiving lunch or dinner, you see all that food sitting in front of you and it looks delicious! But if you stare at the food instead of chewing and swallowing it, what will happen to you over a period of time? You’ll starve! The same applies to God’s Word. If we set our Bible up and we look at it occasionally, but we don’t eat it or apply it, spiritually speaking we will starve. We must be doers of the Word.

Understand God’s Will (3-7)

As we study Scripture and try to apply it to our daily lives and live it out, a natural question will arise: What is God’s will for my life? This is a deep question, is it not? Many people want to know what God’s will is for their life and they pray and pray for God to divinely reveal this to them. Sometimes this happens in a miraculous way but often times it is something revealed over time. We don’t always do well in the waiting process, though. Because of this, it helps to understand what the Bible says about God’s will for His followers as there are several basic things that God wants from His people:

God wants you to come to know Christ as Lord (1 Tim 2:4), lived a transformed life (Romans 12:2), share the Gospel with others (Matthew 28:18-20), be thankful (Hebrews 12:28-29), make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) and be willing to suffer for your faith (1 Peter 3:17-18).

This is a solid list of things for us to see and help us out as we go throughout our lives. Ultimately, God wants us to be sanctified and to grow in holiness! The situation that Paul is addressing for these Thessalonians specifically is the area of sexual immorality. If you want to be a doer of the Word, you must know what God’s Word says about sexual immorality. It is very clear: abstain from it!

We know that this is true in our world today, but we also know that our society is enamored with sexual immorality. It is praised and promoted left and right. Just as our world views sex as a casual thing to be done whenever and wherever, the ancient world, especially Thessalonica viewed sex the same way.

Why does Paul begin this discussion by addressing sexual immorality? Because this congregation, even though they have responded to the Gospel and were growing to be like Christ, they were still tempted by things in their community. In our world people are tempted to do all sorts of things. Today people are tempted to treat Sunday as though it is just another day. We are tempted to treat church as though it is optional. Certainly we know that we can worship anywhere and we worship other days than just on Sunday, but the fact remains that we are called to gather and praise God. Likewise, even though these believers knew what the Word said, they were tempted to do things that go against the Word of God. This is similar to what we saw in Hebrews 13 as the preacher of Hebrews spent 12 chapters diving into deep theological doctrine and in the final chapter he notes that Christians are to live out what the Word of God says, specifically in the area of lust and sexual immorality. There were some people who were coming to this church, regardless of when they began they were new to Christian doctrine, and there would have been a societal temptation to take advantage of others in this regard.

Whenever you become a follower of Christ, you are called to live according to a new set of standards. These new standards include to stop doing things that go against God’s Word. I know that some of you don’t care too much about baseball but other’s do a little bit. Did you know that the New York Yankees have a very unique team rule? The Yankees have the most world series championships in Major League history (27) but they are also different from the rest of the league by having a rule that says that no player on the team can have facial hair. Last year there was a very good pitcher who signed as a free agent with the Yankees and he joked and said that it was unfortunate, but that he would comply and shave off his beard to abide with his new team’s rules. Likewise, whenever we become a part of the Kingdom of God, we have to shave our facial hair… Just kidding! But we do have to live differently because there are some new rules for us.

Because God’s will for us is to be sanctified, part of our responsibility is to surrender to His plan and avoid doing certain things that we used to do. There are some things that we used to do that we no longer can do as a follower of Jesus Christ. The thing mentioned in our text is sexual immorality. There are no excuses, what ifs or gray area, we must flee from it!

Why is sexual immorality so bad? Our world certainly doesn’t view it as a bad thing - in fact our world doesn’t even know what sexual immorality is. Sexual immorality can be defined as any sexual activity contrary to Biblical commands. This includes actions and even thoughts as Jesus reminds us in the Sermon on the Mount

Matthew 5:28 CSB

28 But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Further, it means that it must be within the confines of marriage as we looked at a couple of weeks ago in Hebrews 13

Hebrews 13:4 CSB

4 Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

Consider a person living in a city like Thessalonica. Perhaps they would have been participating in sexual immorality because it was something accepted by their society just as it is accepted by many in our society. They are living and doing things that seem fine to them but then they meet Paul and they hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In time, they come to accept Jesus as their Lord. Praise God for this development and we know that many people in Thessalonica experienced this very thing. With that said, they weren’t a finished product. They had to grow and surrender certain areas to the cross of Christ and stop living according to their former lustful passions.

Consider your life before Christ and contrast it to your life now. If you have basically been a Christian your entire life then consider some areas where you struggle sometimes. Just as sexual sin was prevalent in Thessalonica, we know that it is also prevalent in our world today - even in the church! Sometimes people weigh sins on a scale and say that some are worse than others. In Baptist life, we often hear sermons on alcoholism, adultery and abuse. Those 3 things are bad but we’ll let other things slide by (gluttony, gossip, and greed). The fact remains that even if you don’t struggle with sexual immorality, we all struggle with certain sins. As we grow to be more like Christ and accomplish His will for our lives, we must strive to surrender those things and pursue holiness and purity!

Looking specifically at sexual immorality in verses 6 and 7, we see a severe warning towards these believers who practiced or were tempted to continue practicing this behavior. If you do, you are transgressing against a brother or sister. As humans, we like pushing boundaries. Kids like doing this especially! Because of this, we must realize that our actions have severe consequences because sexual immorality affects not only our walk with the Lord but also our relationship with others. Mark Howell puts it well when he says this, “Sexual sin is saying to God, “I don’t care if I sin against You, and I also don’t care if I cause this other person to sin against You.”

To a person who see’s no problem with this type of behavior, Jesus issued a stern warning in Matthew 18

Matthew 18:6 CSB

6 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea.

Friends, all sin is serious and sexual sin is serious as well. Even if someone or some people think that they are going to get away with their action, verse 6 states that God is an avenger of all - He see’s all, even things done in secret.

Because of this, rather than living a double life, the Christian is to stop living in impurity and to instead live a life of holiness.

Again, we all have areas where we fall short - we must repent and strive to live a life of holiness. This is where Christian community is a beautiful thing as we have people to encourage us and hold us accountable just as Paul and Timothy were there to assist these believers in Thessalonica.

Follow God’s Guidance (8)

Our final verse gives us a warning and a piece of application. If you reject this command and continue to live in sin, especially in the realm of sexual immorality or any action that society says is ok but that goes against God’s Word, not only are you rejecting man but you are ultimately rejecting God. Because of who God is, we strive to obey Him, not to receive wealth or health, but because we know that He knows best. Therefore, we seek His will and strive to do that. The Psalmist talks about this very thing

Psalm 1:1–2 CSB

1 How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! 2 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.

Is your delight on the Lord’s instruction? Are you following God’s guidance in your life today? Are you meditating on His Word day and night or is it more of a thing that you only look at when you’re really struggling? Friends, consider the second half of this verse and think of the power that lives in us. God doesn’t leave us to do this on our own, He gives us the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood member of the Trinity in our day and age in church life. Many people misunderstand Jesus as they wrongly believe that He’s just a man and not God… Others wrongly think that Jesus never suffered or struggled in His life because He knew the end was going to all be ok. Both of these are wrong - Jesus is fully God and fully man. He suffered greatly and it was to accomplish our Salvation. Within the church we largely understand the importance of Jesus and what the Bible teaches about Him… but inside the church there are all sorts of ideas about the Holy Spirit. Some treat the Holy Spirit like a force that can provide power kind of like the “force” in star wars as some “ministers” move their hand and get people to fall over left and right. Others think that the Holy Spirit leads them to jump up and down like dogs and convulse on the floor. On the converse side, some seem to think the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist at least in the way that they speak and act. There’s a sweet middle ground between the cold-hearted legalist and the undiscerning person who thinks that there are angels and demons underneath every rock they pick up! What does the Holy Spirit do?

He convicts us of our sin (John 16:8)

He helps us pray when we don’t know what to say (Romans 8:27)

He helps us live a life that pleases God (Galatians 5:16)

He confirms our salvation as He lives within us (1 John 4:13)

Consider if you have the Holy Spirit today. If you do, ask yourself how you can do a better job of following His guidance on a daily basis. As followers of God we must understand this truth that DA Carson once shared, “People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.” It takes intentionality and effort to pursue God’s will in our life. Our God has saved us, He has changed us, we actively pursue Him and part of following God means that we obey His instruction. Just as Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God, we see in our text tonight that without holiness it is also impossible to please God. The Gospel that saved us is the Gospel that must change us to look more like Jesus each day of our lives!

Conclusion

We have freedom as human beings - freedom is a great thing! However, we must be careful in how we use our freedom. Consider if you are using your freedom to push the boundary and get as close to the line as you can or if you are striving to live as a new creation? Many people want to see gray whenever the Bible paints a picture as being black and white. Many people want to do the bare minimum nowadays with their work and sadly that same mentality carries over into their walk with the Lord. Friends, may we not see our Spiritual life in that regard. There is work to be done. We must not think that we have done enough. We have room to grow. We must not grow complacent and use our passions and freedom to please ourselves, rather as we grow in our understanding of Scripture, we strive to fulfill God’s will for our lives and we live to please Him in all things.

Consider what you can do this week to practice purity and how you can encourage others to do the same and not see things as areas of freedom but rather as things that we are commanded to not do as followers of Jesus Christ. Practice purity this week.