Let's turn in our Bibles to 1
Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians 4. We'll take a few verses at a
time here. I'm going to go down to verse
12, but we'll just go a little at
a time. 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 1. Paul says, 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 what
commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. Our subject is live
to please God. He said there, as you've received
of us how you ought to walk and to please God. That sums up this
whole passage. It is believer, live to please
God. Live to please God. Now, first
of all, this is written to the church, born again of God. To the church, it's born again
of God. He says in verse one, furthermore then, we beseech
you, brethren, he's writing to brethren, we exhort you by the
Lord Jesus, that as you've received thus how you ought to walk and
to please God, so you would abound more and more. It's only through
faith that any sinner can please God. We have to be born again
of God, we have to be given faith to believe the Lord Jesus or
we can't please God whatsoever. Scripture tells us by faith,
Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was
not found because God had translated him for before his translation
he had this testimony that he pleased God. He pleased God,
but without faith, it's impossible to please him. He that comes
to God must believe that he is, and he's the rewarder of them
that diligently seek him. You take a car headlight that's
dirty, and you can wash the outside of that car headlight and get
it just clean as can be, but if there's no bulb in that headlight,
the whole way is gonna be darkness. And you take a sinner, if he's
not been born of Christ and have the light of Christ within him,
then he can have all the outward cleanliness and all the outward
morality he wants, but he's still in darkness. And in fact, by
thinking his morality is light, as Christ said, it's greater
darkness. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. So those that are in the flesh
cannot please God, must be born again, must be born of the Spirit
of God. Paul had prayed, you remember in chapter 3 at the
end, he had prayed that God our Father and Christ Jesus would
establish our hearts unblameable in holiness. This has to be done
in the heart by God. God has to establish us on Christ
alone. He has to make us know that Christ
has reconciled us to God so that we have peace with God and that'll
never be undone. And we know that. We have the
assurance that God receives us now. And these promises and this
grace he's given us is a sure and certain thing, ordered and
sure in all things by the Lord Jesus. That's the only way we
can live under God. You can't live under God while
you're still under the burden of the law or fearful that, you
know, I messed up today and I'm going to fall away. You can't
serve God that way. That's living to self. That rich
young ruler, the whole time he thought he was keeping the law
of God, he wasn't living to God. He was living to himself. We
have to be born again and made to see that Christ has fulfilled
the law and is the righteousness of the law for us, then we can
begin to live under God. Now notice also the spirit of
grace and love that Paul used here. He said, furthermore then,
we beseech you, brethren. That word is we beg you. We beg
you, we entreat you, and we exhort you. That's compounded from two
words. It means to call to one side
and teach in comfort. That's what the word means. Call
to one side, comfort them, teach them with this gospel. You remember
Caiaphas, the high priest, he questioned our Lord, and the
Lord held his peace, didn't say anything. And the priest answered
and said to him, I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell
us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. That word adjure
means I force you to tell me. Now, Paul had authority as an
apostle But he writes in the spirit of grace and the spirit
of love because this is not law, this is grace. We're talking
about grace here. We beseech you brethren, we beg
of you brethren. Now these commandments are the
commandments of our Lord Jesus. When the Lord saves us, he brings
us out from under the bondage of the law, and we become, by
his grace, by the Spirit of God, he makes you willing, and we
become willing bond servants. You remember the story of the
willing bond servant. He had his ear bored. His master
was so good, he was free to go, but he didn't want to go. He
wanted to stay with his master, because he had a good master.
That's the picture of a believer saved by grace. We're made willing
by our Lord Jesus. So by the Spirit of the Lord,
he makes you willing. Paul knew that Christ is the
prophet, priest, and king of his people. That's what he knew.
Paul knew himself to be a sinner, saved by grace, who was continually
receiving mercy and grace from the Lord. He knew that, and he
knew that Christ is the master. who is the only one who can make
his people stand. Paul was just a messenger. He
was sent to declare the word of the Lord Jesus. And so he
didn't force and constrain. He used one motive, the love
of our Lord, the love of Christ Jesus. That's the motive he's
using here. That one who put away our sin
and made us the righteousness of God in him. And by that grace
and mercy, we want to walk and we want to live our lives and
do all things in a manner pleasing to God. You remember when David
sinned with Uriah and Bathsheba, that which David did displeased
God. It displeased God. And we don't
want to displease God. Now, if your child sins or disobeys
you, they don't stop being your child. And when one of his children
disobeys our Lord, we don't stop being his child. But he will
correct us. He corrected David's sore and
taught him. And it's those mercies of God
that keeps teaching you, keeps correcting you, keeps showing
you mercy for Christ's sake that makes you want to please him
more. Makes you want to please him more. Now secondly, He was
exhorted here to live unto God in sanctification, in holiness,
because it is God's will. He said in verse 3, for this
is the will of God, your sanctification, your holiness. That's what the
word means. Sanctification, holiness, is
being set apart and made holy by God for God. Set apart by
God, made holy by God, so that we live unto God. So that we
live unto God. God the Father sanctified his
people when he chose us in Christ before the world was made. Jude
wrote, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved
in Jesus Christ and called. God the Father sanctified us
in divine election. Aaron and his sons, the tribe
of Levi, they were set apart by God ceremonially to be his
priests. That's an illustration of God
the Father choosing his people and setting us apart to be his
priests, to be priests under God. And then Christ Jesus sanctified
his people when he perfected us by his one offering on the
cross. Hebrews 10, let's go there, and I'm gonna read a couple of
things out of this. Hebrews 10, verse seven. Hebrews 10, 7, this is the Lord
speaking, then said I, lo, I come, in the volume of the book it's
written of me, to do thy will, O God. Verse 10 says, by the
witch will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ one time. He says down there in verse 14,
for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. That word perfected is what Colossians
2.10 says, you're complete in Christ, complete in Christ. Both he that sanctifies and they
who are sanctified are all of one for which cause he's not
ashamed to call us brethren. What he did, we did in him. And
so we're completing him. Now God the Holy Spirit sanctified
us in the new birth. He sanctified us in the new birth.
Keep your place there in Hebrews. You know those vessels that God
separated, they were his vessels. They were to be used in his service. And the priests that he separated,
Aaron and his sons, they were gods. They were to be used in
his service to work, live unto God. But when they were separated,
they were sanctified. They took a lamb and they threw
that lamb, and they took the blood of that lamb and they sprinkled
it on all those vessels, on the priests, on everything that had
been separated by God for His holy use. And that was to purify
and make them holy, to make them clean everywhere. If you look
back at Hebrews 9, it says, Verse 21, Moses took, he said, this
is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined to you,
and he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels
of the ministry, and almost all things are by the law purged
with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission. It
was necessary that the patterns, those things that were pictures
and types, should be purified with these, with the blood of
rams, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices
than these. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself
came. Now, back there in Hebrews 10,
somebody asked me, did I get anything out of the messages
this weekend, and here's one thing that just jumped out like
a bolt of lightning to me. Whenever verse 14 says, by what
offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, and
then we heard this the other night, verse 15, whereof the
Holy Ghost also is a witness to us. in our hearts, for after
they had said before, this is the covenant I will make with
them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws
into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and
their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where
remission of these is, there's no more offering for sin. Now
by this, by the Lord doing that, what Christ, God the Father put
us in Christ, Christ perfected us forever, and by the Spirit
of God sprinkling the blood of Christ in our hearts and making
this effectual to us, look down at verse 22. He says, let us
draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having,
this is what's accomplished by that new birth, having our hearts
sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure
water. That's what's accomplished when
the Spirit of God makes us affectionate in our heart. Our hearts are
sprinkled, they're purified, there's a new holy man, and a
new man that's holy within you. And our bodies are washed so
we can come to God. And we're still coming through
the blood of the Lamb. We're still coming through our great
high priest, the Lord Jesus. So, this being the case, who
do we give thanks to? God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit made us holy. Who do we give thanks
to? Go back to 2 Thessalonians and look at 2.13. 2 Thessalonians
2.13. Paul said we are bound to give
thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord,
because God has from the beginning chosen you. That's what we saw. He chose us. He put us in Christ.
He sanctified us in Christ. He chose you to salvation. through
sanctification of the Spirit, there's the Spirit of God, and
belief of the truth, whereunto he called you by our gospel.
The Spirit did this work in you, and what did you do? You obtained
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's all three persons in
the Godhead. and we give thanks to for this
work of sanctification. Therefore, brethren, stand fast
and hold the traditions which you've been taught, whether by
word or epistle. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ himself
and God, even our Father, which has loved us and has given us
everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your
hearts and establish you in every good word and work. Now we're
made free from sin and we become the servants to God and you have
your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. This
is the work of God. Now, back at our text in 1 Thessalonians
4, So having been sanctified, having been made holy, this is
what Paul was praying that our hearts would be established to
know this is accomplished by God. It's the only way you'll
be found unapprovable and unblameable if you solely trust in Christ
that this is so and it's accomplished for you. And it's the only way
you can serve God. But having this done for us, it's the will
of God that we live unto God in holiness. In this state of
holiness, we live in holiness and in honor. Look now back at
1 Thessalonians 4, 3. He said, this is the will of
God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication,
that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel,
his body, in sanctification and honor, in holiness and honor,
not in the lust of concupiscence, not living after the lust of
our sin nature, even as the Gentiles, which know not God, as unbelievers
do, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter,
because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also
have forewarned you and testified. For God had not called us unto
uncleanness, but unto holiness." Now, all of this is dealing with
the sin of fornication, and it includes every sin. We're to
not live unto uncleanness, but to holiness. But let's talk about
fornication, since that's what he speaks about. It includes
all sexual sins and all lusts. Adultery, incest, sodomy, homosexuality,
lusting after another's spouse. stealing another spouse, even
flirting and dressing immodestly, without modesty, in order to
entice in that way. That's all defrauding. That's
robbing a brother, and God's the avenger of all such. Now,
the Lord has By putting us in Christ and Christ bearing the
wrath of God for his people, just like Paul said, the Lord
comforts your hearts and establishes you in every good word and work,
and he will do that for his children. Fornication was just like it
is in our day. In that day, it was just like
it is in our day. You see it advertised. You see it everywhere
you look. You see it on television. It
was everywhere. And it was so common among them,
they didn't even consider it a sin. In fact, it was common
in some idolatrous religious practices. And it's this bad
in our day as well. God made a man and a woman. He made Adam and Eve for one
purpose, for them to multiply. For them to multiply. And it
was to typify Christ and his church. We fell in sin and we
became defiled. We became impure. But Christ
perfected us. And when you're born of the Holy
Spirit, You're his church and each saint is a chaste virgin
espoused to Christ. This is why false religion's
called the harlot. And this is why if we turn to
trusting in our works and trusting that we have some part in this
sanctification rather than giving God all the glory, we're committing
spiritual fornication. Look over at 2 Corinthians 11.
2 Corinthians 11, verse 2. Paul said, I'm jealous over you
with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his solitude, so your minds should
be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he
that cometh preaches another Jesus whom we've not preached,
or if you receive another spirit whom you've not received, or
another gospel which you've not accepted, you might well bear
with him. I suppose I was not a whip behind the very chiefest
apostles, but though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge.
But we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things.
Have I committed an offense in abasing myself that you might
be exalted, because I preached to you the gospel of God freely?
I robbed other churches, taking wages of them to do you service.
And when I was with you and I had need, I was chargeable to no
man for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came
from Macedonia supplied. In all things I've kept myself
from being burdensome to you, and so will I keep myself." Why
did he do this? because he wanted them to hear
the gospel. He wanted them to hear Christ. He wanted them to
continue looking only to Christ, the simplicity of Christ, looking
nowhere but to the Lord Jesus Christ alone. In Revelation 14,
John beheld the 144,000. It's a picture of the church. He beheld the church. And the
scripture says, Revelation 14, 4, these are they which are not
defiled with women. That is not with the harlot Babylon,
not with false religion. For they are virgins. These are
they which follow the Lamb whethersoever he goeth. These were redeemed
from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb. And
in their mouth was found no God, for they were without fault before
the throne of God. These two things is what God's
done in you that he sanctified before God. In Christ, you have
no fault. You have no thought. And in the
new man there is no guile. That's all that's in our sinful
flesh. But when you have a new man in whom is no guile, that's
when you'll be honest and say, I can't sanctify myself. Because
there's an old man of sin with me and I'm no match for him.
And I'm no match for the devil. That's when you start giving
God the glory and depending on God and looking to Christ and
following the lamb. Looking to him only. So being
one with Christ our husband, and being without fault before
God, and having this new holy man created within us, Paul says
God's not called us to uncleanness. He's not called us to live in
uncleanness, but in holiness unto Christ. Let's look at 1
Corinthians 6 verse 13. I know that it's common nowadays
that anybody that, you know, same-sex marriage and anybody
that claims to be a sodomite, homosexual, that you're just
praised by people. And people act like you're something
special because of that. But God's word is this right
here. Look what he says in 1 Corinthians
6.13. Now the body's not for fornication,
but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God has both
raised up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power.
Know ye not that your bodies are members, the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members
of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. What,
know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body?
For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that's joined unto
the Lord's one Spirit, flee fornication and flee all sin, flee all sin. And like I said before, we're
not gonna cease being the child of God, our Father, by our sin,
thankfully. But God will chasten us. And like he said, if we would
judge ourselves, we wouldn't be judged. But when we are chastened
of the Lord, it's so that we won't be destroyed by this world.
So it's better just to flee from it. But if you know anything
at all about your sin, you know that you have to look to Christ
and you have to depend on Christ to give you the spirit to mortify
the flesh. And he says, every sin that a
man doeth is without the body. but he that commit fornication
sinneth against his own body. Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have
of God, and you're not your own? For you're bought with a price,
what a great price, the precious blood of Christ. Therefore glorify
God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Now
this is the word of God. Go back to 1 Thessalonians. This
is the word of God. And you know, He says, verse
8, he therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who
hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit. God's people hear this
word, and when the Lord blesses it to your heart, you don't despise
this word. This is safe. This is what is
safe for us. And this is what you want to
do because he's made you willing. He's made you willing. Now thirdly,
let's look here in our text, we're exhorted to brotherly love.
This is how Paul began this exhortation. I beseech you, brethren. I beseech
you, brethren. I call you to myself and comfort
you and teach you by the Lord Jesus. And so now he says, verse
nine, but as touching brotherly love, you need not that I write
unto you, for you yourselves are taught of God to love one
another. Now, they needed to be taught again concerning fornication. It was all around them just like
it's all around us. And there was obviously, Paul
detected some problem there. So he taught them again this.
But they didn't need to be taught, they didn't have to be taught
again to love because God had taught them to love. And he said,
and indeed, you do it toward all the brethren which are in
all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brethren,
that you increase more and more. Paul commends them for loving
one another. He commends them for loving one another. And he
gives God the glory for working this in them, teaching them to
do so. Any good we do, any good we do,
it's by God teaching us. And God must have the glory.
He alone gets the glory for it. We can't glory in it. And the
problem is you hear these exhortations, and I'll give you a warning.
The devil, an unbeliever is under the power of the devil. The devil
can take some of his power off and let a man become religious
and let a man put away some of his outward sin, but he'll replace
it with self-righteousness. And he'll think he did that himself
and go around boasting about his sanctification. But if you're
truly sanctified by God, He's going to make certain that you
understand and you'll find it over and over in your life that
you don't have the power to modify your sin yourself. Because He's
going to keep you knowing He did it. And He's going to keep
you glorying in Him only. And so He calls on to increase
more and more in love as well as all grace. God's saints never
get to a place where we thank ourselves to have arrived. When
it comes to, you know, it's a different spirit. This is the difference,
really. People, you can hear it in preaching. People who think they are sanctifying
themselves preach boastfully. And there's a boasting there
of how they have mortified themselves and how, you know, they think
they're doing a good job. When God's people hear exhortations
like this, what do you feel? What do you think in your heart
when you hear something like this? If you're a child of God, I know
what you think. You think, Lord, I have come short. I have not
arrived. Lord, increase me. Give me grace. That's a different spirit between
a child of God and a child of the devil. It's a totally different
spirit. But what do we do? We forget
the things that are behind. By His grace, we forget the things
that are behind, and we keep pressing toward Christ today.
Keep pressing toward Him today, and He'll grow you. He'll grow
you. He'll grow you. And we trust God to teach us
each personally, and we trust Him to teach one another. Then
Paul beseeches us to study, to be quiet, and to mind our own
business. Verse 11, he says, 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 and that you may have lack of
nothing. We're to study to live a quiet, simple life. A quiet, simple life. Not chasing
after the world, not being ambitious for the world's promotions and
all of that. The world that you see all about
us today, and it just seems like it's gone this way by leaps and
bounds in the past four or five years, maybe 10, but is a world
living for pleasure, the love of pleasure more than the love
of God. Everything is about pleasure. We're to live a simple, quiet
life. Be content with the things God's given you. That doesn't
mean you don't work. You do work, and you do a good
job, best job you can do, but you're content with what God's
given you. And as we do these things, we're to mind our own
matters, our own matters, mind our own business. Now, we ought
to put our brethren first, and we're to provide for one another.
Paul said in Philippians 2, verse 4, look not every man on his
own things, but every man also on the things of others. but
we're never to be busybodies meddling in other people's personal
matters. We're never to do that. And that's
a good thing to remember in this whole passage and in an exhortation
like this, because by the Spirit of God, by Him renewing our minds,
using only the Word of God, not the precepts of man, not the
ideas of man, We use the Word of God, and each child of God
is to personally prove our own selves. We're to try our own
selves by the Word of God. This is what Paul said in Galatians
6, 4, let every man prove his own work. That means you personally
try your own work by the Word of God. What does that mean?
It means you just go to the Word of God and read it, and if there's
something in here that you're not doing that God says do, do
what he says do. And if you're doing something
he says don't do, stop it. That's easy to say, but God will
help you. He'll give you grace. But you
prove your own work, and then you'll have rejoicing in yourself
alone and not in another. Paul said, let a man examine
himself. This is part of minding our own
business. Examine yourselves, whether you
be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know you're
not your own selves, have that Jesus Christ is in you, except
you be reprobate. And God will... He'll give you the grace to read
the Word and try your own self by it. And you may not even be
intending to do that. You may just pick up the book
to read it, and the Spirit of God will make something jump
out at you and show you, just like He did David. Just like
He did David. You're the man. And what'll happen
when the Spirit of God works that? You'll go to God and confess
your wrong, And you ask mercy, and you ask forgiveness for Christ's
sake. And you ask for grace to help.
And by God's grace, you forsake the wrong and cleave to that
which is good, that God says is good. And then he says here,
now concerning our income, we're to work with our own hands. We're
to provide our own income by honest work. And all of this
is so that we might live peaceably, one with another, and even toward
them that are without. And to be motivated in this,
in all of this, you remember this, our Lord Jesus took on
him the form of a servant. He took the form of a servant.
He worked as a carpenter when he walked this earth. And he
didn't entangle himself with the affairs of this world. He
didn't get involved in the in the politics of this world or
concern himself about any of that. Every moment, what he did
was working toward the salvation of his people and the glory of
God. That was his, that was his every moment. That's what he
was doing. And concerning the work the father sent me to do,
this was his spirit. He said, I must be about my father's
business. And nobody could turn him from
it. I must be about my father's business. And he finished it.
He accomplished it. He said it is finished. He completely,
totally redeemed his people. And by his blood, his people
are righteous. He made us holy. He perfected
forever them that are sanctified. And so Paul said to the Romans,
by the mercies of God, by the mercies of God, don't you think
this is reasonable? This is reasonable. by the mercies
of God. And I pray God to give us grace
to live to please God our Father and not be conformed to this
world. And that's what God will do for
you. What if I fall? It's not a what if, it's when. When. He'll keep you knowing
He's your Father and you're His child and He'll keep you coming
to His throne of grace And by His forgiveness, and by Him teaching
you, and instructing you, and making His Word effective in
you, it'll make you desire more to please Him. To please Him. Because He saved you, and you're
perfect in Christ, and you just want to please Him. Don't you
want to please your earthly father? Children want to please their
father, and father and mother love it when their children want
to please them. And God's children want to please our Heavenly Father.
We want to please Him. I pray God will bless that. Let's
go to Him. Our great God and our Father, how we do thank You, Lord, for
Your tender mercies. How we do thank You, Lord, that
You have sanctified and made Your people holy. We praise our triune God for this. Lord,
we thank you that you haven't let us go, that you've kept us,
that you keep teaching us, keep showing us mercy, keep growing
us in this from babes in Christ up to grown men in this state
of holiness that you've put us in. And we pray, Lord, you continue
to grow us in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
Keep us looking only to him. Keep us living unto you. Lord,
we trust as you've shown us in his word that you work this from
the inside out. And we pray, Lord, you would
keep our heart established on the Lord Jesus so that we hear
your word clearly that we are complete in Christ, unblameable,
unreprovable, so that we can live unto you rather than trying
to do a work to think we're going to have to do something or boast
in something we've done. Keep us humble knowing, Lord,
you've done it all. And Lord, help us to trust one
another to you. Give us the spirit with which
Paul wrote this, beseeching and entreating, comforting one another. Lord, you've not given us the
spirit of bondage again to fear. We thank you, you save us from
that. And you don't use that spirit
upon us. By your goodness, you continue
to lead us. And we thank you for that. Lord, make us to be
so, make us do the same. And Lord, we need forgiveness.
We need mercy continually. And we thank you for mercy in
Christ. In the name of our Lord and Savior,
our holiness and our righteousness, we pray. Amen.