Okay, we’re going to read some Scripture, this is from 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, the first seven verses, Paul writing to the church at Thessalonica. And you can follow along as I read, and then we’re going to jump into this in a little bit here. Paul says, as for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God.
As in fact, you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans who don’t know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins as we told you and warned you before. God did not call us to be impure, but to live.
A couple things before we get into 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, and I’m looking at these flowers here.
These don’t appear by accident, but Cindy Embry gets these from her garden and brings these beautiful arrangements every Sunday. So, thank you, Cindy, for doing that. Much appreciated.
Also, Lord willing, next Sunday when you come to church, there’s going to be a little different landscape out here. We’ve been working on three or four different projects, some of them more visible than others, but we voted in our business meeting to buy a big play structure for our kids in the church, our Awana kids, beyond Awana and the kids that attend here. So, there’s going to be an ark out here, and it’s going to be placed kind of between the youth barn, storage barn, and where the pavilion is.
There’s a little rise a little bit behind that, and that’s where this ark structure will go. And so next Sunday you can visit the ark, and hopefully that’ll be a great blessing to our kids. Well, we’ve been in the book of 1st Thessalonians, and the theme is be ready.
And what are we to be ready for? Well, we’re to be ready for the second coming, because it’s interesting that in all five chapters that, of course, we know Paul didn’t put these chapters in. These are man-made divisions, so we can find Scripture easily, but so at the end of every chapter, Paul talks about the second coming of Jesus. And next Sunday we’ll look at verses 13 through 18, the rapture passage, and dive into that.
So, the theme is to be ready, but this morning we’re going to look at the first 12 verses of 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, and the message is entitled, How to Please God. I hope that title piques your interest. How to Please God, because that’s what Paul talks about here in these opening verses.
It’s interesting that the Bible calls this to self-examination. 2nd Corinthians 13:5, let a man examine himself to make sure they’re in the faith, Paul writes. If there’s one area of life that you do not want to make a mistake on, you do not want to miss, it is your eternal destiny.
Matthew 7, Jesus talks about a narrow gate and a wide gate, a narrow road and a broad road. Many are on the broad road, it leads to destruction. There are few at the narrow gate and the narrow road that leads to eternal life.
And so, the Bible says you need to examine yourself, make sure that your faith is in Jesus, and Jesus alone, that we’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The communion passage, the Lord’s Table passage, also encourages us to examine ourselves, and this is in 1st Corinthians chapter 11, verse 28, everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Like, don’t come to the Lord’s Table without doing some serious inventory.
And so, this morning we’re just going to think about, what is the focus of our life? And who are we living our lives for? And Paul’s going to encourage us to live it for Christ. So, there’s a couple of choices when we think about life. By the way, there’s no mulligans in life.
You get one chance, one life to live. So, who are we living for? There are many people, and maybe we’d say most people in our American culture, and if we had a little box to check, they would say, maybe they wouldn’t admit it, but when you examine their life, they are living to please themselves. They are living for pleasure.
They are living for hedonism. Life is all about them. Life is all about what brings me pleasure.
In fact, the apostle Paul, when he writes to Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 3, and he’s talking about life in the last days, he says, people will be lovers of themselves. So, they live their daily lives, and certainly their weekends, and their weekends are lived for what? For pleasure. The problem is that’s a dead-end street.
King Solomon, read the book of Ecclesiastes, and King Solomon had endless resources, and he was looking for purpose and meaning in life, and he tried everything. He said, emptiness, meaningless, I cannot get satisfaction, because he was looking for satisfaction under the sun when he needed to look above the sun, satisfaction in a relationship with God. And we get to the end of the book, and he kind of comes to that conclusion.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments. Obey God.
Love him. This is the whole duty of me. So, there’s one box that many people would check and say, well, I live to please myself.
There’s another option. Option number two is to live to please others. Now, there’s something very subtle about that, and this one is a little bit of an easy trap to fall into, living to please others, because we want to please, if we’re married, our spouse.
We want to please our boss, our employer. We want to please other people, but living to please others ultimately leads to disappointment as well. The reason why is you cannot please everyone.
You can’t do it. I remember our three boys graduated from Lenawee Christian School a long, long time ago, and we did a lot of sporting events, and we’re down in Adrian, and we’re going to attend a sporting event that night for one of the boys, and we got about 45 minutes to eat dinner, three boys in the back. It’s got to be fast food.
Where do you want to eat? One boy says McDonald’s, one boy says Taco Bell, one boy says Kentucky Fried Chicken, and all of a sudden, the big argument breaks out because they don’t want to go to the other place, and finally, like, we’re done. I’ll make the choice. I remember 2020 and COVID when everything was shut down, and now a lot of churches are going back to in-person worship, and I remember we took a little survey about people’s feelings about coming back to in-person worship, and I remember going through those surveys, and this little one survey says, I’m willing to come back to worship as long as everyone wears a mask.
Okay, next survey. I’m willing to come back to worship as long as no one wears a mask. Okay, maybe we need to have a mask service and then the unmasked service.
You cannot please everybody, and it’s a trap to fall down into that area of life. Well, here’s the box we want to check, and that’s what we’re going to look at this morning. Not pleasing self, not living for others, but we want to check a box that says, my life is being lived to please God.
This is all through Scripture, and this is why we read the Scriptures, and this is how Paul starts this passage. As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God. So, Paul says, when I was in Thessalonica, I taught you and talked to you about living a life that is pleasing to God.
It’s all through the Bible, 2nd Corinthians 5:9. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, so we make it our goal, our aim, to please Him. And he writes to the Galatian believers in Galatians chapter 1, verse 10, that letter to the Galatian believers. He asks a couple questions.
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Now, the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes the letter to the Ephesian believers, this pagan culture where some of them came to know Christ. He says, you were once darkness, now you’re light in the Lord.
Live as children of light, that’s Ephesians 5:8, verse 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. Find out what pleases God. So, in our passage this morning, the apostle Paul tells us how to please God.
And again, we could go to many other portions of Scripture to find out what pleases God. Worship pleases God. That’s Psalm 69.
Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Putting your trust in God and His promises. But this morning, we want to think about three ways to please God.
Main thought – “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified” 1 thes. 4:3
So let me pick it up in verse 2. Paul says, you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus? Here it is. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. So, here’s the overall arch principle.
God’s will for us is to be sanctified. Three tenses of salvation. The first one is the past tense.
If you put your faith in Christ, Christ for your salvation, you could say, I have been saved. That’s justification. Your legal standing before Christ, when He looks at you, He sees you as in Christ.
The righteousness of Christ gets credited to your account. That’s salvation from the penalty of sin that we heard about this morning. Jesus took our place.
But then there’s sanctification. And that is, I am being saved. That’s the present.
I’m being saved from the power of sin. And so, as we grow in our walk with God, God wants us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ and have victory over sin. But there’s a third tense of our salvation.
That’s future. We could say, I will be saved. And that’s our glorification, when we’re in the presence of Christ and we’re with Him forever, and we will be like Him because we’ll see Him as He is.
a. set apart from sin
b. set apart to God
But we’re talking about the second aspect of salvation, of sanctification, of becoming more and more like Christ. And that’s where Paul focuses here. So, sanctification is being set apart from sin and being set apart to God.
You’ll notice the word holy is in our passage here a couple times. And live your lives, control your bodies in a holy and honorable way. God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life, to be set apart from sin and set apart to God.
i. Sexual purity pleases God
This is Romans 12:1 and 2, isn’t it? Paul says, after the first 11 chapters of Romans and all that God has done for us, then he says, I beseech you, brother, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies, what, as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your acceptable worship. And so how do we please God? Well, here’s the first of three ways we’re going to quickly look at this morning, and Paul addresses it right off the bat. Sexual purity pleases God.
Sexual purity pleases God. We already read the verses in our Scripture reading, but here it is. Paul’s very clear.
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified and that you should avoid sexual immorality. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, and here’s what part of sanctification is. You need to live a pure, sanctified life.
Do not get involved in sexual immorality. It is a huge problem in the world today. It is a huge problem in our culture today.
It is a huge problem in our churches today. Pornography is a huge problem. When I was growing up, I’d go to a convenience store, and they had the Playboy magazines behind the counter, and they had the brown paper covering the front of the cover.
Today, there are millions, millions of pornographic websites that are clicked on thousands of times every day. Sexual purity pleases God, and the Bible has one prescription when it comes to sexual temptation, and it’s quite a consistent. Here’s what the Bible says when it comes to sexual temptation.
Sex outside of the confines of marriage, it’s run, flee. Genesis chapter 39, you know the story of Joseph, and Joseph is in Potiphar’s household.
He’s Potiphar’s right-hand man, and Joseph is a good-looking, well-built, handsome man. This is Genesis 39:6. This is after a while, his master’s wife, Potiphar’s wife, took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me, but he refused. With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house.
No one is greater in this house than I. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph, day after day he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her, and then the story goes on. You know the story.
One day she sees Joseph, grabs him, and Joseph runs. He flees from Potiphar’s wife’s advances and leaves his coat. He lost his coat, but he kept his integrity.
The Bible’s consistent. Flee. 1st Corinthians 6:18 through 20.
Flee sexual immorality. 2nd Timothy 2:22. Flee youthful lust and pursue what? Righteousness, faith, love, and peace.
And so, Scriptures tell us that sexual purity pleases God. This is a huge battleground in our world today, our culture today. Proverbs 4:23 reminds us to guard our hearts.
I love Psalm 119. It gives us some good instructions here as far as purity. How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.
The psalmist says, I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
So, we need to be reminded that sex is a wonderful gift from God, but it is within the confines of marriage, Hebrews 13:4. The author of Hebrews makes this statement, marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually.
ii. loving others pleases God
So how do you please God? Live a life of purity. Live a life of sexual purity. There’s a second way to please God that’s in the text.
And it’s found in verses 9 and 10. Paul writes now about your love for one another. We do not need to write to you.
For you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, and by the way, Paul uses that phrase 15 times in his letter.
He calls them brothers and sisters, family of God. We urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more. So, what’s Paul encouraging him to do? To love other people.
What’s the greatest commandment the Pharisees asked Jesus? They were trying to trap him actually in Matthew chapter 22, and he basically said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love people. And so, Paul says loving other people pleases God.
And what’s the identifying mark of a follower of Jesus? It’s not whether you can quote all 66 books of the Bible. It’s not based on how much Bible knowledge you have or whether you do well at Bible trivia. Not how many times a week you attend a church.
Not following rules. The mark of the believer, John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35, by this will all men know that you are my disciples. If you love one another, and then Jesus raises the bar, love one another as I have loved sacrificial love.
Greater love hath no man than this. A man laid down his life for his friends and what Jesus did for us. First Peter 1:22, love one another deeply from the heart.
And so, Jesus has given His life for us. He’s given His life to purchase our salvation. God wants us to love God and love others.
It’s the greatest sacrifice that’s ever been made. Unfortunately, in the last couple of months there’s been some, you know, I watch the news like religiously because I like to kind of know what’s going on, but the news can be very, very depressing when you find out what’s going on in our world. A couple months ago there was a horrific shooting of two individuals in Minnesota that were in the state legislature.
Let me read this story here from CBS News amid the horror of the senseless violence in the shootings of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and Senator John Huffman and their spouses. The Huffman’s nephew shared that during the shooting, if you follow this on the news, this man came in with a mask and a gun and just began to fire a targeted shooting. Yvette Huffman jumped in front of their daughter Hope to shield her from the bullets.
Hope was unharmed while Yvette and her husband John were shot multiple times and the other couple that he shot lost their lives. July 4th, Kerr County, Texas, if you follow the stories of the horrific flooding that was down in Texas, as the stories began to come out, you hear story after story of counselors who risked their lives and ultimately gave their lives to save those campers that were camped down by the riverside there. Well, greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Because Jesus loved us, we need to love God in turn and love other people. What pleases God? Sexual purity pleases God. Loving others pleases God.
iii. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God
There’s a third mention in the text of what pleases God found in verses 11 and 12. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God.
Verse 11, Paul continues, after he encourages those brothers and sisters to love other believers more and more, then he says, to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life. You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. So, the Apostle Paul says living a life of honesty and integrity pleases.
Paul says live a quiet life. He’s not saying move out of the city and move to a rural area like where we live because it’s nice and quiet. The word quiet there really means to avoid unnecessary conflict.
The MacArthur Study Bible says this refers to one who does not present problems or generate conflict among people in their lives. Get along with others. Romans 14 says, as much as lies in you, live at peace with other people.
In Romans 16, he says, watch out for those who cause divisions. There’s some people that like to cause division and controversy wherever they go. Paul says, no, live a quiet life and make it your ambition to get along with people.
And then he says, mind your own business. Mind your own business. Focus on your life and you don’t need to be nosy.
The Bible has a lot to say about gossip. Sometimes when people, you know, sometimes press for information, you just have to say you’re on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know that. You’re not really involved in this problem.
And so, we need to guard ourselves. Proverbs 11, all through the book of Proverbs, talks about what gossip does. Proverbs 11:13, we read these words.
A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret. Proverbs 20, verse 19, there’s dozens of verses about this in Scripture. A gossip betrays a confidence, so avoid anyone who talks too much.
Proverbs 26:20, without wood, a fire goes out. Without a gossip, a quarrel dies down. And so, live a life of honesty, integrity, get along with people.
And he goes on to say, and work with your hands, just as we told you. There were some in Thessalonica that perhaps when Paul began to talk about the fact that Christ was coming again, they stopped working. And they were like the Millerites.
If you’re familiar with the Millerites, I think it was in the 1800s when they heard about the second coming of Christ, they sold their possessions, and they went up on a hill waiting for Christ to come back. And Paul says, no, no, you need to be busy. You need to work with your hands.
You need to be faithful in what I have called you to do as far as your job is concerned. In fact, in the second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he writes, we hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busy bodies.
And so, he encourages them to work. And in Ephesians 4, Paul, when he is in that section where he says, put off this and put on, he says, I want you to work with your hands so that you may have some extra to give to those in need. And so, Paul says, sexual purity pleases God.
Loving others in the body of Christ and not only believers but unbelievers pleases God. Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. In fact, verse 12, he says, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders, those are unbelievers, so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Application questions
Well, this morning, we’re just going to take a little inventory here as we conclude and ask some application questions as we think about pleasing God and the life that pleases God. And so, the first question is this simply, which of those three boxes and statements reflects my life?
1. Which statement reflects my life?
Am I living a life to please myself? Am I living my life to try to keep everybody happy and please others? Or am I living my life to please God? And of course, where do you find out? We just looked at a few verses this morning, but the entire scripture will tell us how to please. And so, first of all, do I know him as Savior? He said the one area that we don’t want to mess up on is our salvation.
1st John, the book of 1st John, is a great litmus test for whether someone really knows Jesus as their Savior. There’s three types of tests there. There’s a doctrinal test.
You need to know who Jesus is. If you don’t know who Christ is, you won’t come to salvation. That’s the doctrinal test.
There’s a social test. 1st John says if you truly know Jesus as your Savior, you’re going to love other believers. You’re going to love the brethren.
You’re going to love the family of God. There’s the moral test. There’s going to be a pattern and a desire of obedience in your life.
2. is there something in my life that I need to stop doing?
Not that we never sin, but there’s a pattern of wanting to please God and of obedience. And so, I hope that as we think about inventory in our lives that we can check that third box. Secondly, is there something in my life that I need to stop doing? Is there something in my life that maybe I take inventory this morning or this afternoon that I know is against Scripture and I need to stop doing? A great book that a fellow by the name of Carl Claussen wrote a couple years ago called Killing Sin.
We need to learn how to attack sin in our lives and get serious about sin and stopping sin in our life. So, maybe God’s bringing something to your mind this morning that, hey, I need to stop doing. And maybe you might need help with that.
3. is there something in my life I need to start doing?
And that’s what the body of Christ is here for. That’s what the church leadership is here for. Thirdly, is there something in my life I need to start doing? James 4:17 says, to the one who knows the good he should do and doesn’t do it, it is sin.
So, there’s two types of sin. There’s sins of commission. When we break God’s law and do something against God’s law, there’s sins of omission.
In other words, we know the right thing to do, but we don’t do it. 1st Samuel 12:25, Samuel confesses the sin of prayerlessness. He says, we need to pray.
4. Is my love for other people, Christians and non-Christians growing?
We can sin by just not doing what God wants us to do. Lastly, here’s the fourth application question. Is my love for other people and non-Christians growing? This is what Paul’s talking about here in verses 9 and 10.
Now, about your love for one another, you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. And in fact, you do love all of God’s people, yet we urge you to do so more and more. So, we need to think about, how can I demonstrate love to others? A love within our own church family, a love to our extended family, love to our neighbors, love loving people.
What can I do? How can I demonstrate? Well, three areas that pleases God. Sexual purity pleases God. Loving others pleases God.
Living a life of honesty and integrity pleases God. I trust that that’s the desire of your heart. We want to live a life, one life that God gives us, not for ourselves, not to try to get into the game of trying to please everybody else, but as we learn and grow in Scripture and know what it is to please God, that we’ll put it into practice and we’ll live a life of pleasing to Him.
Someday we’ll hear the words of our Savior, well done, good and faithful.