We've turned in the scriptures
to 1 Thessalonians, we're in chapter 4, but it's good to not
lose sight of the context, and our chapter divisions are helpful,
and our chapter divisions sometimes can cause us to sort of see the
scriptures as blocks rather than as one cohesive whole. And so I'd just like to go back
and read again Paul's prayer in verse 80 says,
Now we live, seeing that you stand fast, if you stand fast
in the Lord. For what thanks can we render
to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for
your sakes before our God, night and day praying exceedingly that
we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking
in your faith. Now God Himself and our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ direct our way unto you. And the Lord make you increase
and abound in love toward one another and toward all men, even
as we do toward you. To the end He may establish your
hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father,
at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. Furthermore,
then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus,
that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and
to please God, so you would abound more and more. For you know the
commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will
of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from
fornication. that every one of you should
know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour
and not in the lust of concupiscence. That's a tricky word and it's
an extraordinary, it means in the lust of exceeding lust it
means, it means eagerly desiring, that's what the word means. And
it's one of the words in the King James where we do need to
explain it. I would rather, having studied
this book for so many years, I would rather explain the odd
difficult word and rather deal with the odd difficult sentence
structure in it than have to explain away what people say
about the Gospel in the other translations. One of the things
that was interesting is when I was in India and studying a
lot of Greek, I had a net Bible, an NET Bible, you can go to the
internet and freely download them and they were a thing put
together by scholars in America and I think it has 65,000 notes
on the bottom of the page. Some pages just have two or three
verses and the whole bottom of the page in tiny writing is an
explanation of all these things. I cannot count how many, but
it's innumerable times now when they actually sort of go to the
Hebrew and the Greek and actually give you a literal translation
of the Greek and Hebrew. It's what the King James says
almost every single time. I've hardly ever found one where
it's not. And so we actually have, I think
in the translation we're looking at, something that's accurate
and true. And we might have to deal with
words like that occasionally, but I'd rather deal with that
than have to explain away denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus
and denials again and again of the complete finished nature
of His work on behalf of His people. Let's read on. So it's not in the lust and eagerly
desiring lust, as it were, even as the Gentiles which know not
God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter,
because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have
forewarned you and testified. For God has not called us into
uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despises, despises
not man, but God, who has also given unto us His Holy Spirit.
But as touching brotherly love, you need not that I write unto
you, for you yourselves are taught of God, to love one another.
And indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all
Macedonia, that we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more
and more, and that you study to be quiet, and to do your own
business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you,
that you may walk honestly toward them that are without, to them
on the outside, and that you may have lack of nothing." So
here we come to one of those passages in scripture where there's
an exhortation from Paul to walking in a way and there are obviously
passages that cause consternation for some people and I'm hoping
the Lord will shed light on it this evening. One thing you need
to remember is that when these Thessalonians received this letter,
was there anything in it new for them? Paul again and again
says that I'm writing to you what I told you there, there's
nothing new. So he's not writing, he's writing
and reminding them of the Gospel that came amongst them and reminding
them of the life that he lived before them for those few short
weeks and reminding them again and again of the impact that
the Gospel had upon them. that they became followers of
us and of the Lord and they received the Word in much affliction with
joy of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel had come to them, not
only in Word but also in power and the Holy Spirit and in much
assurance. And so there is just this remarkable
testimony of the Lord's activities amongst them. When they received
this letter, Paul was writing to encourage them and to comfort
them. He was writing to remind them
of the Gospel, because ultimately it's the Gospel that gives comfort
to believers. And that's why the letter is
written to a particular group of people, isn't it? The letter
is written to the church, to the saints in the church, to
the church. And so he begins in this passage
of scripture in verse 1 saying, furthermore, we beseech you brethren,
the elect of God, my brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus
Christ. They, as I've just said, they
become... followers of Him. They'd become
followers of the Lord as He had followed the Lord. And he talks
about what they had accepted and received and how they'd received
it with much assurance. They were assured by God's opening
their eyes and giving them light and life to see the Gospel, to
see what He was saying was the truth about who the Lord Jesus
Christ is and what He did and what He achieved on the cross.
There was a reception, wasn't there? There was a reception
of the Gospel. There was a reception of Paul
and his followers like Timothy as men. There was a reception
of them as ambassadors of the Lord. There was obviously this
reception of the Gospel. Life was created and a new life. in the Gospel was created in
the hearts of these people. They were transformed. He says
that they turned to God from idols to serve the living and
true God. So that's what he keeps saying,
doesn't he? He says, you were followers of us in chapter 1
verse 6, having received the Word. And here he says, you have
received of us, in that verse. We exhort you in the Lord Jesus
as you received of us. In verse 2 he says, you know.
So there's nothing new, he's just reminding them, you know
what commandments we gave you. Verse 3, this is the will of
God. Verse 6, we have also forewarned
you and testified. Verse 11, as we commanded you,
as we told you when we were there. It's interesting these words
he uses, I love what lies behind these simple exhortations. He
says he beseeches them, it's to request or to appeal. And the next word is the word
that he's used, Previously in chapter 2 verse 3, our exhortation,
he says, our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness,
nor in guile. And I looked up what that word
exhortation meant again, and it's the word parakleo in Greek,
not that that means a heck of a lot to me, but the para word
means to be alongside, like a paramedic is alongside someone. and a parachute
is attached to someone, so it's something that actually means
to call to one's side. So there are these exhortations
and Paul's not sort of standing above them as a schoolmaster
with a whip. He's reminding them of the Gospel,
he's reminding them of the impact of the Gospel and he's walking
alongside them. He has as an apostle of Christ
the right to command all men. He speaks on God's behalf, and
if you don't listen to Him, you go to hell. It's as simple as
that. You either listen to the apostles
and follow the apostles in life and doctrine, Or, it is a very,
very sad end. But see, he's talking again about
them being his brethren, isn't he? He's walking alongside them. You remember that history, that
brief history. He came to them sent by God to
Macedonia. A man from Macedonia appeared
to him when he was in Turkey. calling on him to come over and
he came to them having been beaten and treated abusively and shamefully
in Philippi and he was forced from them. He didn't leave them,
he was forced from them and he sought again and again ways to
come back to them and he prayed night and day. that he might
be restored to them, and he acknowledges that Satan hindered him in returning
to them. The stirring of Satan in the
churches in Berea and Athens and Corinth has caused Paul to
be in such difficulty that he couldn't take the time out to
go back to Thessalonica. And then finally he sends Timothy,
and he sends Timothy to do what? To give them another bunch of
rules, he says he sends Timothy to establish you and to comfort
you in the Gospel. So that's why he asks, he requests,
but he calls to their side. He calls to encourage them. And that's what he says, isn't
he? See, Paul's saying these words, but they are by the Lord
Jesus and the word by there can easily be translated in the Lord
Jesus. He exhorts them in the Lord Jesus
or by the Lord Jesus. Verse 2, it's by the Lord Jesus
again, the commandments we gave you. Verse 3, the will of God
is for your sanctification. Verse 5, the church in Thessalonica
is the church that's in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And they are people that are
differing now from the Gentiles. They are people who know God.
The Gentiles know not God. And verse 8, God has given also
unto us His Holy Spirit. And you yourselves, verse 9,
are taught of God to love one another. And you're doing it. You're doing it. You're doing
it. you are taught. In fact in many
of the old translations, the old Greek manuscripts, in verse
1 where it talks about this exhortation that you ought to walk what to
walk and to please God so that you would abound more and more.
And then it says, and you are doing it, which is exactly why
he's written this letter. He's come back, he's had this
report from Timothy, and these people are doing these things. They are doing the things that
are stated there. The Word of God, verse 13, effectually
works in you that believe. And so the question naturally
is why then, if God is working in them, God is teaching them,
why do we need, why does he need to come alongside as it were
and put his arm around these people and remind them of these
things? There are lots of reasons and
you'll probably think of more as I relay some of the ones that
I've thought about. One is of course that the Lord
Jesus says that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak
and we know We know, all of us who know the Lord, we know as
life goes on, we know more and more of the weakness of our flesh,
and more and more we are inclined to say with Paul, not only are
we the chief of sinners, but whenever I would do anything,
sin is right there with me. And of course these people not
only had those internal trials that all of God's children have,
they had extraordinary external trials. And the people who persecuted
Paul and sent him away from Thessalonica and then followed him down to
Berea and would have caused more trouble, they came back and there
they were as this little group of believers, this church, and
there was another church running along right beside, weren't they?
Both of these churches were saying, we really are the true church. The synagogue, the people in
that synagogue would have been saying, we are the true church. Here's the scriptures, here's
Moses. they would have said that. And
so these people would have been like so many of us would have
been confronted by the fact that here they are as a group that's
been separated and there's this other big and successful organisation
and institution claiming to speak for God. The reality is that,
as I said, our flesh is weak and we can develop and we can
and do develop habits of ease and compromise and it's become
so much easier for us to make excuses. And as the Lord Jesus
warns the people in those letters to the churches in Revelation,
there is a sense in which, like the Ephesians, we can have so
many things right, but we can actually forget our first love.
And we can be like the Laodiceans, become lukewarm. And we can,
under the pressures of life and the pressures of the religious
world, we can lose sight of our hope and our promises. I don't
know if you've read Pilgrim's Progress, but it's extraordinary
the number of times Pilgrim falls into a place of despair after
he has been saved. You might remember if you've
read it when he spent that time in doubt in castle and he had
no way out and then finally he finds, what does he find? He
finds the Word of God and there's another time when he's fallen
asleep in Bypass Meadow and that beautiful place and while he's
fallen asleep he loses the Word of God and it rolls away from
him. And he gets up and just continues on his journey and
then it's later that he realises when he falls into strife that
he's actually forgotten the Word of God and he wasn't carrying
it with him. We can lose sight. We need the
Gospel continually. We need the fellowship of other
believers continually. We need to hear the Word of God. And of course we live in a world
that seems so successful. We see the people continuing
in their sins and they seem to have no trials or very few trials
compared to the people of God who seem to have trials on all
accounts. And we have trials that the unbelieving
world is not even aware of. We have trials over people that
we love and we care for and we're still walking contrary to the
Lord. And the Gospel, the Gospel is the only hope, isn't it? I
was talking to this fellow this afternoon and he has all these
other activities And there's one activity that matters, and
that's preaching the Gospel, preaching the Gospel to each
other. We just can become familiar with things that are unhelpful
to us. And so Paul was just reminding these people of the things that
he said in that brief time. And I think the other thing that
I wanted to say, and it seems very evident from those verses
that I've read out that it's by the Lord Jesus, in the Lord
Jesus, the will of God, God has called us not to uncleanness
but to holiness. It's again and again, it's an
issue between a person and the Lord, isn't it? The Gospel is
a personal thing. It ultimately is something that
is worked out between a believer and the Lord. That doesn't mean
that our activities with each other are insignificant, but
ultimately our walk is a walk of us with the Lord. And that's
why Paul says that he's called to one side as if he puts his
arms around them. He's not speaking, as I said
earlier, like one above them and flogging them. And the other
thing that's really important to note is in these verses that
so much of it relates to brotherly love. So much of it, if you read
it and you think about the things there and try and put a picture
on them, they are about how we care for each other. I'm often struck by how often
I will excuse things in my life which I think ultimately are
profoundly unhelpful because I've actually heard someone excuse
it in their own lives. So we are called to care for
each other and I think Paul, as we can well imagine from this
letter, is writing with a heart that's bursting with love and
joy and thankfulness to God for these people. And he's not selling
them anything that's new. So I was just going to look at
the first few verses just to lay that, having laid that background. He talks about walking. Walking
in the scriptures is just the manner and the direction of life. We are walking somewhere. We
are all travelling somewhere. The Lord Jesus says, I am the
light of the world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. And he continued
to talk about how people walk. And of course the Lord Jesus
walks right now according to Revelation chapter 2 verse 1. He's walking in the midst of
the candlestick. He came to this earth and he
lived a life. He actually walked. He set his
face like a flint and he walked to Calvary. And all of those
who oppose him, he walks straight, and he walks clear, and he walks
in the middle. The devil, of course, walks.
You can read about it in Job 1.7, 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter 5, verse
8. He walks to and fro, and he walks up and down, and that's
where he walks in a circular. Circular motion is deceitful,
isn't he? Every time you turn there's a
new face that you're seeing, rather than the simplicity that's
in Christ. He is one who masquerades as
an angel of light and he wears dozens of different faces. And
apostates, those who've rejected the Gospel, they run backwards
and they stumble and they fall, they fall backwards. And people
who are heretics and people in this world, they are double-minded,
aren't they? They're unstable in all their
ways. They run to the left and they
run to the right. And hypocrites walk. Hypocrites are those who
wear a mask. They are playing a part, aren't
they? They are acting, they are walking,
but it's deceitful. It's deceitful. It's done for
a show before men. But believers are led, they're
led by the law, they're led and guided by Him. You're taught
of God, taught of God to love one another. He says in Proverbs
4, he says, let thine eyes look right and let, look right on,
sorry, look right on, and let thine eye, Lord, look straight
before thee. As I quote that verse in Hebrews
12, fix your eyes on the Lord Jesus. Looking unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of faith, the path of the just, says Proverbs
4.18, is a shining light that shines more and more unto the
perfect day. And then he says these words,
doesn't he? He says, you are to walk and to please God. What a remarkable thing, isn't
it? That people like us can please God for a start is a remarkable
thing, isn't it? That we could walk in a way that
pleases God. You've got to remember that these
people are pleasing to God. They have been pleasing to God.
And Paul prays, doesn't he? He looks to God first. Before
he comes to talk to them, he's actually talked to them, talked
to God in prayer on their behalf. He's thanking God for them. He
says, how can I thank God enough? for believers. How can I thank
God enough for a response to the Gospel? How can I thank God
enough when I see the Lord Jesus victorious in the salvation of
His people?" And then he goes on to say, that he before God
has joy over these people, night and day, praying exceedingly
that we might see your face." And then he talks to God, doesn't
he? He prays and he says, God himself
and our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you
and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward
another. and toward all men even as we
do toward you. To the end, He may establish
your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father,
at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." It's the Gospel, isn't
it? He's praying the Gospel. How
on earth He, the chief of sinners, He who knows that sin is there
with Him all the time, how can He pray these things about people
being unblameable in holiness before God? The answer, of course,
is again and again in these verses. If you just look back in Chapter
3, it's their faith. He says, he wants to establish,
he sends Timothy to establish them concerning your faith. Verse 5, I sent to know your
faith and as I said a couple of weeks ago, this is a noun,
it's describing their reception of the truth about who the Lord
Jesus is and how he saves his people. is comforted in his distresses,
verse 7, and afflictions by your faith. Verse 10, he wants to
come and see them that he might perfect what is lacking in your
faith. God's children are walking, but
it's the walk in faith, isn't it? It's your faith and love,
verse 6 of chapter 3. And when they are standing fast,
he's talking about them standing fast as one, being as it were
soldiers standing together for the Gospel. And they walk. They
walk. There is an activity of them
caring for and supporting each other. Only the living are walking. The dead can float along. I love
what Spurgeon said, a dead dog can float along with the sewer
of this world. It's only living people that
are walking. It's only living people, given
life by God, who receive the apostles ambassadors, they received
them as ambassadors of Christ. They received the word, these
words that just an ordinary man like Paul spoke. I was really
intrigued to read the other day, it's fascinating isn't it, that
Paul in the Jewish world would have been one of the great scholars
of Judaism. Paul, if he'd been there in Jerusalem,
he could have argued with all the Pharisees and all the Sadducees
and he knew the Bible better than them. He knew the arguments
better than them. He could have had all that natural
talent that he'd earned in all of those years studying under
Gamaliel and living so righteously before them. He could have had
all that as his recommendation. Where does God send him? He sends
him to Turkey and to Greece where all of those things don't matter
a squirt. They mean nothing to these people. Isn't it wonderful? God emptied
him of himself and then made him useful. It's wonderful. God empties us. And that's why
Paul Like all of the saved people
had met the Lord, and all of a sudden the Word of God became
a completely new and transforming book, and all of what he thought
he knew was learning, he realised he didn't know a frazzling thing
about the Lord Jesus. He knew nothing about this book. Once he'd met the Lord Jesus,
all of a sudden everything changes. They had received the Word of
God. They'd received the men, the ambassadors of God. and the
Gospel had taken reception in their hearts. And they turned,
as we read earlier, they turned to God from idols and they turned
to serve the living and true God. And they'd done it standing
together in the face of intense opposition, but standing and
caring for each other. So Paul's encouraging them, isn't
he? All of this has happened. All
of this has happened. You are witnesses. I'm just telling
you what you've witnessed. And I'm encouraging you to abound
more and more as you are doing. And he says, as you know, as
you know the commandments of God, we gave you by the Lord
Jesus. The commandments given. They
weren't commandments of a man poor. They were commandments
that were given by the Lord Jesus. The commandments about their
sanctification and once again there was nothing new in this.
But this is the will of God. even your sanctification. This
is the will of God for them. God has promised to make them
holy. God's will for them is to be
holy. Paul's prayer for them is that they will be unblameable
in holiness. And Paul is encouraging them
in what they have done and what has happened in their lives.
And it's fascinating that word sanctification. It comes from
a word that was used to describe consecration. Consecration to
a god or a goddess. And the Greeks and the Romans
and all the other pagans had innumerable numbers of them.
And all throughout Israel's history they were drawn to serve and
worship Baal and Moloch and all the others. And they just had
different names for the same sort of gods in pagan religions. And they're all around today
becoming more and more popular. But they talked about, they used
this word in terms of consecration to these gods and goddesses,
but it was a consecration that didn't include any holiness of
life whatsoever. Pagan religion did not demand
sexual purity of its devotees. The gods and the goddesses are
grossly immoral. And what the scriptures say is
that you will be like the gods you worship. You will be like
them. And so the temples, the temples
were just temples which were like today's brothels, weren't
they? In the temples, you went along
to the temple and there were priestesses there for the service of the
men who came. Paul talks about another sanctification
altogether, isn't it? It's a sanctification by the
will of God. It's by the will of God and power
of God in the lives of his people. He's turned them from that. He's
turned them from that idea of consecration where holiness and
religion were completely separate things, where moral behaviour
and religion were completely separate things. We lived in
an incredibly religious country for five years, Lisa and I, and
it's amazing the devotion of these people. They had idols
in their houses, they had idols in their shops, they had idols
in their cars and their trucks. Everything they did was surrounded
by idols. You couldn't buy anything in
their shops, but they'd actually give thanks to the idol. And
at the same time, so many of them would lie and cheat and
carry on and the more flashy idols there were around the place,
the more deceitful the people were. There was just a disconnect
between what they called their consecration and what they called
their morality. as if their gods can't see and
can't hear and can't respond in any way. Their gods were servants
of them and they served these gods in ways which are abominable. But Paul says that this is from
the will of God. It's the will of God for your
consecration, even your sanctification. that you should abstain from
fornication, that those are the things that the pagans do in
their idolatry. And you are not to look, you
Thessalonian believers, not to look over the fence and see that
this is grass that is green. It is wicked and it's debauched
and it's a reflection of the salvation of His people, that
He's drawn them out of those things. They have been turned
by the grace of God. They have been turned by the
proclamation of the Gospel. God by His Spirit has come and
they've turned to God and turned from idols to serve the living
and true God. And I just want to close that
these things are about brotherly affection, aren't they? They're
about us caring for each other as brothers. As we go on through
the rest of these lists here, we'll see that it's about So
much of it is about us living in such a way that we can, like
Paul, we can put our arm around our brothers and we can call
to one side, as it were, our brothers and sisters. We can
be an encouragement. We can remind people of the Gospel. The one power of God unto salvation
is the declaration of the Gospel. May God cause us May He cause
us to be people who delight in the Gospel. May He draw us back
to our first love. May He remind us again and again
of the perfect and finished work of our Saviour. And may we encourage
our brothers and sisters in that. When we look around the circumstances
of life in this world and we see the trials that our brothers
and sisters are going through, there is just one thing, isn't
there? There's one hope. There's one hope for God's people.
That our Saviour sits on the throne of this universe. His
will is being done. All things are being made to
work together. for the good of those who are
loved, those who are called, called to Him, called out of
idolatry, called to Him by His Gospel. Let's pray.