Live to Please God

How can I please God more than I do now?

 

Determine to Please God more

1 Thessalonians

 

4:1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.   The word, “walk”, or in the Greek “peripateo”, is translated as “walk” 93 times in the New Testament, once as “walk about”, once as “go”, and once “to be occupied”. It is literally about making one’s way and one’s progress. For example, in the Old Testament, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” from Amos 3:3. Or from Genesis 6:9, “…and Noah walked with God.” Read Galatians 5:16 confirmed doctrinally by Romans 8:9. Every Christian lives in the spirit, but do we walk in the spirit? Is our life in agreement with God’s will? Paul wishes that all of his converts stand “…complete in all the will of God” (Colossians 4:12) so he commands every Christian to understand “what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17). Christians should be “filled with the knowledge of his will” (Colossians 1:9) so they can do “the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6)

4:2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.   This isn’t rocket science. Christ was very clear about how he wanted his people to live. I don’t think we need to go into his statements about lying, loving money, and loving anything more than Him. The Old Testament is replete with admonitions on how the people of God are supposed to live and think, as in Proverbs 11:30.   Live in personal holiness

4:3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:

 

Fornication covers the whole gamut of sexual immorality from sex outside of or before marriage to even your thought life (Matthew 5:28; Job 31:1; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Jeremiah 17:9). Men, you don’t cheat on your wife or sleep with your girlfriend, but do you watch ‘Baywatch’? Do you look at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? Do you watch sitcoms or TV shows with scantily clad young women bouncing around? I made a

 

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commitment publicly to a newspaper reporter recently to never attend another amateur boxing match with round card girls or where alcohol was served. There are things a Christian can’t justify. Ladies, do you read romance novels or magazines or even Cosmo’? If we have this garbage in our homes; so-called soft pornography on our television and in our reading material, worldly music that violates everything the Bible teaches about personal conduct under the guise of love or the “youthful lusts” of 2 Timothy 2:22 which we are told to FLEE how can we not expect our children to turn to wickedness in their lives? How blessed we are when our children turn out Godly in spite of our best efforts to corrupt them by our acquiescence to the world’s demands for bringing them into captivity to it like many of us might already be.

 

4:4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;

 

This seems to be an issue that troubles both men and women at all times and in all cultures and its nothing new (1 Corinthians 10:13).

 

4:5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:

The older English of this verse can easily be handled by writing “depraved, passionate lusts” in the margin without destroying the text. Do you have any sexual fantasies you haven’t dealt with regarding someone other than your husband or wife? Or if you aren’t married and committed to someone for life in Christ do you imagine things that aren’t yours to imagine?

 

4:6 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.

From a sexual standpoint this would apply to 1 Corinthians 7:5. To defraud someone simply means to not give them the proper attention, honor, or money they deserve. Mark 10:19 is definitive as is 1 Samuel 12:3. If the matters discussed are sexual matters then if you have committed adultery with someone’s wife you have defrauded HIM. Hebrews 13:4 is the forewarning.

 

4:7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.

This should be self-explanatory as in “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16; Leviticus 19:2).

 

4:8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.

If you despise the warning you are not just defrauding your brother, you are showing your contempt for God and rejection of Him as the sovereign Lord over every aspect of your life as in 1 Samuel 8:7 & John 19:15.

 

 

 

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Demonstrate Exemplary Character

 

4:9 But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.

Verse 9 is very clear. Read Romans 13:8-10 & 1 John 4:7,21.

4:10 And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;

This also seems clear.

4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;

Paul worked with his hands (Acts 18:3). “to be quiet” means that you are not to be “slothful in business” (Romans 12:11). You are to be so busy around the plant, or shop, or office that you don’t have time to gossip or stick your nose in everyone’s personal business. Read 2 Thessalonians 3:11-12.

4:12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.

In this verse, that pesky word, walk, shows up again. Every time it shows up it shows how a Christian is to live. Here, his walk is to be an honest walk. When you go to work and if you are not on salary but punch a clock, how much of your employer’s money do you steal by reading the newspaper and whether you are on salary or not, how many pens and other office supplies do you steal from him or her? A Christian can not participate in office gossip, office politics, or office anarchy. I was going to make some comments about working on Sunday and attending sporting events and other entertainment on Sunday and going out to eat on Sunday or making others work on Sunday but since Sunday wasn’t a day off from work for the first three centuries of Christianity and I’m a big believer in trying to emulate a New Testament church I guess I better shut up about it. I’ll only say that what you CHOOSE to do on Sunday morning rather than meet for corporate worship says a great deal about what is important in your life. Christians NEED to get together with other Christians. We NEED to be accountable to each other and to worship individually but as a group (Hebrews 10:25) but that is a subject for another time.