Sermon Tone Analysis

*Pleasing God*

*1 Thessalonians 4:1-12*

/You already know how to please God in your daily living, for you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself.

Now we beg you—yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus—that you live more and more closely to that ideal.

[1 Thessalonians 4:1-2,Living Bible]/

 

Intro:  Last weekend KC Royals baseball player, Geo.

Brett, was inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,NY.

A radio talk show discussing the event commented upon Brett’s speech in which he referred to his relationship with his father.

George Brett indicated that a big part of his motivation to succeed came from his desire to please his father.

Every single person who ever lives seeks affirmation in someone or something.

It is a part of human existence.

The absolute best affirmation possible is that which comes from our Creator God--our Heavenly Father.

Most people are greatly deficient in affirmation because they seek it in other places and ways which never can provide complete fulfillment.

They continue throughout life unsatisfied and incomplete.

Many Christians unnecessarily follow the same experience because of a lack of understanding or deception by our enemy.

We all seek to please someone--parent, spouse, friend, relative, boss, teacher, some person we consider significant or important--whether or not we’re even conscious of it.

Christians only need to please God.

When we do that all of the rest of our relationships will properly be taken care of.

In his letter to the young Christians in Thessalonica Paul reminds them of the instruction he had given them to live to please God.

Up to this point in his letter Paul has reinforced his relationship with them and his ministry to them by recounting what happened, and by expressing his concern for them.

At this point in is letter he gives instructions.

What is most important to young, nearly baby Christians?

In these first dozen verses of 1 Thess.

4, six times he refers to instructions already given.

Twice he said to do this more and more.

What the Thessalonians needed and what we also need as Christians is greater appreciation what is already known and greater application of it to a greater degree.

You don't need to know more to do better--to last longer as a Christian--to live better.

Do more of what you already know.

Mark Twain is quoted as having said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me.

It’s the parts that I do.”

For most of us, it’s not that we need to know so much more as it is that we need to do so much more of what we already know.

This is one of the major purposes of our cell groups.

To help each other put into practice what we have already been instructed in.

This encouragement is especially needed because of secondary responses as a Christian.

After our initial response to becoming a Christian, what do we do?

Some become faddists, cynics, or complacents.

Faddists follow the latest Christian emphasis.

[latest concepts of prophecy; Bible Code, teachings of a popular teacher~/preacher, one of them now is spiritual warfare and territorial spirits.]

Cynics say, “been there,” and are not enamored.

Complacents say, “I’ve taken care of all I need” and go on to occupy themselves with other things.

Even more than we need freshness and growth, we need to do these things for the sake of  “outsiders.”

“Win the respect of outsiders”[vs 12] -- not for our sakes, but for their salvation.

We need to live and act not our perfection but for their conversion.

That’s what Jesus lived for.

“He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

What is it that we need to do more and more of?

How can we live to please God?

He gives a simple code of conduct for Christian living:  holiness, love, responsibility--Live purely, Love brotherly, and Labor productively.

Most of the verses address the first issue and so will I.

 

  *I.

Live Purely*

Because  of human condition and the cultural context, the first concern our Father addresses through His apostle is the matter of living pure lives even in the midst of a sex-saturated society.

"God's plan is to make you holy, and that entails first of all a clean cut with sexual immorality" (1 Thessalonians 4:3, Phillips)

 

A.

Cultural background

            As difficult as it seems to live a pure life today, conditions were much worse for these brand new Christians in Thessalonica.

There was no generalized opinion that sexual promiscuity was wrong.

In fact, it was ritualized as part of popular religion.

Houses of prostitution were not in sleazy red light districts of town, but were included in the downtown temples of pagan gods.

The religions were man-made so they instituted rituals that pleased them.

Sex was part of their pagan religion.

There was no such thing as sexual morality.

Divorce was a matter of whim.

Seneca said, “Women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married.”

Juvenal quotes an instance of a woman who had eight husbands in five years.

Demosthenes of Greece said, “We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure; we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation; we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately, and of having a faithful guardian for all our household affairs.”

Greco-Roman ethics were based largely on the principles of self-interest and respect for another s property.

The individual was expected to do what was to one’s advantage, regardless of its effect on others, so long as one did not violate another person s property.

No action in itself was immoral, except for incest, cannibalism, and murder of a blood relative.

To this culture God says, “My plan for you is holiness.

Make a clean cut from sexual immorality.”

B.

What's the big deal with sex among Christians any way?

Why are we so hung up on preaching a certain morality on this subject?

We are told that we seem /uptight/ about it.

We are told that we are /phobic/ and a little unbalanced, mentally, about it.

We are told that we are /ill-informed/ about it and sadly backwards.

Why should we have a problem if a man (or woman) wants to arrange a sexual liaison with someone other than his (or her) spouse?

What’s the problem if a woman decides that she would rather explore and seek sexual intimacy with another woman rather than with a man?

If a guy wants to cruise around on the internet and find erotic pictures or even /subscribe/ to them and then look at them and do whatever "comes naturally," why should we have a problem with that?

Why should we judge it "wrong" if a person wants to copulate without commitment--becoming married?

Reasons:

1.

Why not?  “/you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself./”

Command.

God says, "No"   To reject God’s command is to reject God.

It’s saying, “I don’t want what you have for me.”

We don’t have eternal life if we don’t live the life of eternity.

When it comes to morality, philosophy, and spirituality people want to think they can believe whatever they want--that there are no absolutes.

Nothing in the experience of actual living on earth teaches this.

The only way we live on earth and grow and develop technology is because the universe is consistent.

Gravity doesn’t change because you want it to, or you move to another country, or because you are younger or older, or even because it’s the 90’s.

Neither does murder, and neither does morality--because that’s the way God created it.

Now we have the freedom to choose to ignore gravity and suffer the consequences and the same is true with morality.

Living to please God is to live a holy life and avoid sexual immorality.

2.

Rationale- “victimless crime” “consenting adults” “private matter”  [Disease, divorce, and addiction are results of such activities and involve other people.]

Someone always is hurt--future partners [unless this is a lifetime commitment to a monogamous relationship]--self too.

You may say, “I don’t care who gets hurt--not my problem” but you cannot say, “it doesn’t hurt anybody.”

"Do not defraud"  (take something that doesn’t belong to you--even if offered it doesn’t belong to you.

If I go into the store and another customer picks up an item from the shelf and hands it to me it doesn’t belong to me.