1 Thessalonians 4 Pleasing God
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
Paul has commended the Thessalonians for their faith and witness, he has defended his own conduct and ministry, explained his absence, and has rejoiced in Timothy’s report.
Paul now turns to consider a few specific pastoral issues, beginning with holiness, love, and work .
The Big Picture
In 1 Thessalonians 4:1–12 we see how we as individuals and as a church can please God with our lives after coming to faith in Christ. We see that pleasing God has both moral and social dimensions, characterized by holiness and love.
If you want t please God with your life as Christians… this is how you are to behave privately and publically.
Take a moment to think about what it means to “please God.” Do you want to please Him dear friend… dear brother or sister?
A Christian’s desire is to please the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We desire God. We desire to please God with our lives.
If you do not desire God. If you do not desire to please God… You are not a Christian.
And from what we see in the text is that we can please God with our lives… and we can displease God with our lives as Christians...
Maybe we are confused about the will of God. Maybe we do not know the will of God for our lives.
These texts make it very clear God’s will for you and me. This is how you are to walk, how you are to live out a lifestyle that is pleasing to the Lord Almighty...
Have you ever wanted to know the will of God for your life? The whole Bible will reveal the will of God, but here is a clear text:
Verse 3 - This is the will of God, your sanctification: That you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of us should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor...
Listen: You are set apart by God and for God. It is God’s will that you be set apart and that you look set apart. It is God’s will that you look more and more like Christ.
What is needed? We need a Master. We need His grace. We need self-control as we look to Him.
It is not God’s will that you look like our sexualized culture and it is not God’s will to give ourselves to whatever and whomever we want.
This is not God’s will.
We find ourselves in this sexual revolution, in America. And these words: “abstain” (1 Thess. 4:3) and “control/possess” (1 Thess. 4:4) in reference to sexual expression sounds ridiculous to many.
Many people are rejecting God today because of this. They want to do what they want without God telling them otherwise. They want to pursue pleasures without commitments and covenants. They desire sex without any restraints...
Self-declaring atheists and agnostics will take this position, but self-declaring Christians will also take this position.
They say, “My sexuality has nothing to do with my Christianity. I am not under any laws. I can do whatever I want. The heart wants… what it wants...”
Jer. 17:9 - Hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately sick… who can know it?”
1 Corinthians 7:2 - Because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband… and those two shall give their bodies to one another...
Just those two, and no more. Male and female, husband and wife… And verse 5 - And we do not deprive one another.
This is God’s way. This is God’s will.
Has anything changed? Can culture change God’s mind? No. Can your desires be greater and more authoritative than God’s will? No.
If Paul were writing to the church today, what do you think he would say regarding sexuality? Anything different?
Get this: According to 1 Thessalonians 4:5, the “passion of lust” marks those who “do not know God.”
In other words: If you are mastered by your lusts, you are not mastered by Jesus. If you are living a lifestyle of you doing whatever you want to do, outside of God’s revealed will, it is clear that you do not know God and He does not know you in an intimate salvific way...
What does it mean “to know God?”
It’s more than knowing about God. The Devil knows more about God than you do, but he hates what he knows.
Biblically, knowing God refers to a personal, intimate union—more like spouse knowledge than stranger knowledge.
Knowing God through Christ is the essence of eternal life. “This is eternal life,” Jesus explains, “that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
So, knowing God requires knowledge of God, but it leads to communion, to relationship, to intimacy, to worship and obedience.
What matters most is not whether you claim to know God, but whether God knows you. As Paul makes clear to the Galatians, “You have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Gal. 4:9).
Someone may be asking, “How could God not know me?” Matthew 7:23 - Jesus will say so those individuals who called Him “Lord,” “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
In other words, many ministers with wonderful ministry résumés will hear, “I knew all of that, and all about you... but I never knew you. Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity.”
Their lifestyles will communicate that Jesus is not their Master. That they did whatever they wanted to do; they did not please God with their actions.
“But I made a profession of faith!” Yes, but, you are still living like a functional atheist.
Don’t say that you know God, love God, and that Jesus is Lord over your life… If you do not practice what He says as a lifestyle. This is a contradiction.
Now you can understand all the texts of Scripture that claim that those who practice these lifestyles, will never inherit the Kingdom of God: Romans 1; Galatians 5:21; Revelations 22:15; 1 John; and 1 Cor. 6:9-10 - Those who practice sexual immorality will not inherit the kingdom of God...
The actions/lifestyle reveals the heart, and the Master of it.
Verse 11 - And such were… were… were... some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
You have a different heart and a different Master now.
Getting back to 1 Thessalonians 4:6-12:
-Do not take advantage of one another. Do not defraud your brother. Do not wrong them or transgress.
Do not trick or deceive your brother or sister for your personal gain.
*Be warned: The Lord will avenge these. The Lord will step in. The Lord will handle you.
Remember how He sees His people: “When you do this good for them, you do it to Me. When you do this bad to them, you do it to Me.”
When Jesus was talking with Saul, who will become the Apostle Paul, Jesus says, “Why are you persecuting Me.”
Jesus is intimately connected to His people. You hurt one of them… And He is coming to discipline you in some way. Be warned all of you. Jesus really cares for His people.
Here, in the context, it is quite possible that he is referring to those who will defraud another Christian by sexual sins.
Is sexual sin serious to Jesus? Yes. You will be held accountable for sexual sins. To live a lifestyle of sexual sin, it is clear that we do not know Him and He does not know you.
A sexual transgression against one’s brother is a form of theft: You are taking something that does not belong to you. The body belongs to God and it belongs to the spouse.
To commit sexual sin is to sin against God, it is to sin against your own body, and it is to sin against your future spouse. And we are not talking about homosexuality, bestiality, incest, or other sexual sins.
We are talking about heterosexuality sins here.
God calls us to holiness and purity. To participate in sexual immorality is to defy God and to be impure and unholy.
As Christians, we cannot and will not please God in doing this. Paul told the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 6:18) to flee sexual immorality and he told Timothy that he was to flee from youthful lusts, to run away from it (2 Timothy 2:22).
There some things we fight against. We are even called to wrestle against forces of darkness. We are called to run from these things.
Hebrews 13:4 - Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
Ephesians 5:3 - Do not let this sin be named among the saints.
Outsiders should not hear this about us. We are to show them purity and holiness through our lives, and point them to God through our words and actions.
Their lifestyles should not be our lifestyles. We are set apart.
Let them see our love for God, for one another, and for them. Let them see a reflection of Christ-likeness. Let them see hard working saints who are above reproach.
In other words - There is no shame or disgrace in the Christian’s life. There is no lifestyle of sin. There are no charges or accusations brought against them. They have a good character. They have a reputation for being a man or woman of their word.
They are honest. They are hard working. They are humble. They are loving, kind, and gracious. They mind their own business, tend to their own work, not seeking to take advantage of anyone. They are level headed, self-controlled, of good behavior, not violent, or mastered by alcohol or any drug, not greedy, and not looking for a fight.
How do you think unbelieving “outsiders” view you and your local church today? How do you think “outsiders” in your own life—whether family or friends or neighbors or coworkers—view you?
What do they see in your life?
God is calling us to holiness and purity. And we have the Person of Christ to look to today. We have the Holy Spirit Who will help us today.
We have the will of God before us and we see what we must do to please God with our Christian walk.
To reject this is to reject God.