Randall Caselman
Bella Vista Church of Christ
9/19/99 pm
Living To Please God – Part 2
Reading — 1 Thessalonians 4. 1-12
Learning to live, pleasing to God. We are all interested in today’s subject... If not we would not be here tonight... RIGHT?
No, we are not as mature, not as grown-up spiritually as we want to be, and ought to be, so we keep studying, learning, trying, struggling with spiritual maturity... Growing-up in Jesus.
Now the first point that I want to make is that God desires us to grow, to mature in our living to please Him. Do you see that in verse three?... It is the will of God, even your sanctification...
The bottom line of our living to please Him is our own cleansing, made possible by the blood of Jesus... If we walk in the light as He is in the light, the blood of Christ makes you clean and you fellowship with God and with one another.
You see, pleasing God is walking in the light... That makes us holy... 1 John 1.7.
Titus 2.14 tell us that Jesus came to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager... Zealous to grow up, zealous to do what is good. Then notice verse seven, not only is it God’s will that we mature, grow-up, God calls us to do so.
1 Peter 2.9 says that God has called us to be WHAT?... A chosen people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and a peculiar, different, called out people.
He has called us, set us apart to be His ecclesia, his church, His assembly. God wants us to belong to Him... And we do that church, by:
- Learning to live pleasing to Him.
- By being distinctively His,
- By being set apart from the world
Then, when you put verses 1, 2 and 10 together, we hear Paul saying that, God commands that we ought to grow in our being pleasing to Him, and that we ought to do this more and more.
You see, living to please God is a continual process. We never will reach the goal, but we must not stop trying... RIGHT?
The Hebrews’ writer says, At this point you ought to be grown-up, you ought to be teachers, but instead, you need someone to teach you again the first principles, the elementary truths of God all over again. You need milk, not meat... WHY?... Because you haven’t used what you know to live for God, and as a result you have lost your ability to distinguish good from evil, right form wrong.
Ever know someone who was a real student of the Word, knew their Bible inside-out, from cover to cover, but let the focus of their life be so narrowed by Satan that they lost the ability to discern right from wrong? They have lost sight of what is important and what is trivial in the kingdom. Instead of growing and growing and growing more, more and more, they begin riding a hobby and become ineffective in the kingdom. And even though they have been in the church twenty or thirty years, they need someone to teach them first principles again.
The Hebrews’ writer pleads, therefore, let us leave these elementary teaching, these first principles and go on to genuine Christian maturity, by learning to live pleasing to God.
Now with these thoughts in mind, what is it that God wants us to do more and more and more in order to please Him?
FIRST TONIGHT, LIVE MORALLY PURE LIVES... TO AVOID SEXUAL IMMORALITY.
Abstain from fornication in verse three. Why do you suppose Paul would name this first in his instructions to a church in a lesson on how to live pleasing to God? Because they were living in a time when sexual promiscuity was just a way of life.
Sound familiar?... Does this admonishment apply to us today? I ask you, is the Bible continually relevant to our day and situation?
William Barclay in his book, “Flesh and Spirit” quoted Seneca, the Roman Poet, saying that Roman women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married. And that some of them distinguished the years of their lives, not by the names of the Emperors, but by the names of their husbands.
Seneca said, immorality had gotten so bad that women of Rome dated events by the names of their current spouse instead of by the rulers. Seneca went on to say that sexual immorality was so bad in those days, chastity was simply a proof of ugliness. If anybody who was not sexually active, it was just because they were so ugly that nobody would have them.
Listen to these other historical facts on sexual immorality of Paul’s day:
- It was said of the wife of Claudius, that she would slip out of the Emperor’s Palace at night to join the public brothel, public prostitution for her own pleasure.
- History tells us that Caligula lived, cohabited with his own sister Drusilla.
- You will recall that Bernice lived with her own brother Herod Agrippa, to whom Paul preached in Acts 26. This was only after being married to her uncle. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, she later became the mistress of both Emperor Vespasian and Titus. In fact she became so bad in reputation that the people demanded her exile.
- Nero’s lust we are told didn’t even avoid his own mother.
- We are told that, of the first 15 Roman Emperors, only Claudius was not guilty of homosexuality activities.
You see, this is the environment that this church in Thessalonica live in. There was in Thessalonica a temple to Dionysus... DIO-Niss-us... The Roman god of fertility and wine. The people came to Thessalonica and worship her by public drunkenness and sexual orgies. This is the background against which Paul writes to this church. Is the Bible relevant? Does this New Testament letter have anything to say to us in our culture?
No, we don’t have a temple out on the hill that practices such sins in our community? We have brought the temple into our own living room in the form of a television set. We have actually set the temple in our laps, with computers. We let this temple, and its pornographic activities, entertain both us and our children.
Randall, it sounds to me that you are against TV and the internet... That’s right I am, if they are not used properly. There is no telling how many souls they have and are damning to an eternal hell daily. Some of us, and many of our children, are not living lives pleasing to God because we are worshipping at this temple.
Folk, many, many more of us are being led astray by this temple than by drugs and alcohol. Few of us have considered the consequences of sexual immorality on television and the internet. Go home and watch TV for three hours any night this week and count the elicit sex scenes and innuendoes, and then tell me that God wants our children worshipping at this temple.
Church, this text is as relevant as tomorrow’s TV Guide.
Randall,
- Why are you preaching this lesson here in Bella Vista?
- Do you think some of us need this lesson?... I do!!!... I do!!
Am I the only one who needs to confess my fault and ask you to pray for strength to live pleasing to God in this area of sexual lust?
Our King James says, abstain from fornication. The modern speech translation reads, avoid sexual immorality.
- What are we talking about here?... What is fornication.
- What constitutes sexual immorality?
Let’s define some Biblical terms: The word fornication in the Greek is POR-NI-AH... It means anything that is unlawful in the area, in the realm of sexuality. It literally means unlawful sex... unlawful by God’s definition.
Now, I need to point out here that God gave us sex and our sexuality. So, sex is not bad, dirty, evil, or sinful. However, sex and our sex drive is:
- So powerful,
- So beautiful,
- So good,
- So great,
- So useful in life to the human race, that God placed a framework of laws around it so that people would not misuse it to their own harm and destruction.
You see water is good, useful and necessary to life, but we cannot misuse it or we’ll drown. God placed sex in the place where it is most useful and enjoyable... IN MARRIAGE. It is there that it enriches, deepens, expresses love in a unique way.
So, what is fornication... What is unlawful sex? We still need some definitions:
ADULTERY IS UNLAWFUL SEX.
- Exodus 20.14,
- Romans 13.9,
- James 2.11 plainly state, “Thou shall not commit adultery.” That is pretty clear... Right? Adultery occurs when a married partner has sexual relations with one that is not his spouse. Adultery occurs when someone adulterates, messes up, intervenes in a marriage. I know marriage counselors who encourage such activities, but God said, NO... If you live to please Me, you will abstain from adultery.
HOMOSEXUALITY IS UNLAWFUL SEX.
- Now I know what the politicians are saying.
- I know what our congress think and promotes.
- And I know what our Supreme Court stands for...
That homosexuality is an OK alternate lifestyle. Here it is church, you don’t define truth by taking a poll in political circles... in any circle. Truth is not defined by political correctness, but by God in His word. Truth is not a result of the democratic process, but by the voice of God.
We, in the church need to understand this today. A time has come in our country when sin is no longer defined by the Bible, but by our government. Who do we stand with church?... God... Bible... or Government? The New Testament church at Thessalonica had to choose... And we have to make a choice. The Bible speaks plainly on homosexual activity.
- Leviticus 18.22 says, You shall not sleep... KJ says, lie... You shall not have sexual relations with a man as you do with a woman... It is an abomination... detestable to God.
- Romans 1.24-27 reads, Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is for ever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Church, sexual activities, man to man, woman to woman is fornication... Unlawful before God. And our text says, must be avoided if we are going to be pleasing to God.
EXTRA-MARITAL... PRE-MARITAL... AFTER MARITAL SEX IS UNLAWFUL.
We’re talking about sex between partners when nether one is married, not married to one another or to any others. Sex before marriage, and after a divorce or loss of a spouse, is being promoted today for a number of reasons ranging from compatibility to promoting self-esteem.
THIS IS NOT BIBLE. And if we are engaged in such activity, we are sinning and need to stop.
Let me say this, I have never met an active, maturing, devoted Christian who had practiced pre, outside or after marriage sex with others that did not regret it and advise against such activity. This includes some in this audience.
Listen to 1 Corinthians 6.18-19 and 7.1-2, Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body... It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
You see, sexual relations outside of marriage is:
• Biblically forbidden...
• It is unlawful sex...
• Fornication...
• And is unpleasing to God.
LUST.
Listen as I read from the words of Jesus in Matthew 5.27-28, You have heard that it was said, `Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Lust here is defined as,
- An evil desire,
- An unlawful desire...
- A driving desire that leads us to an unlawful act... a sinful act.
Now folk, Jesus didn’t say, lust leads to sin.... He said lust is sin. Mental adultery is sin... The Bible say it is. Sexual fancies that include partners outside of our own marriage is mental adultery. Now there is a difference between seeing a woman and being tempted, and dwelling on that temptation in our head. When that temptation turns to lust... Thinking about sexual activities of any kind with him or her, we have involved ourselves in what Jesus is calling:
- Adultery of the heart...
- Adultery of the mind.
It is a sin!... Unlawful sex. And if we are going to live pleasing to God, we must make an honest prayerful effort to stop practicing any form of sexual lust.
THEN THERE IS LASCIVIOUSNESS... UNCLEANNESS... IMPURITY... REVELING... WANTONNESS... LOOSE LIVING... LOOSE LIVING ACTIVITIES.
It is evident by what Jesus said, that unlawful sex is not restricted to the sex act... intercourse itself. Listen as I read Ephesians 5.3-7 and Galatians 5.19.
“Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no-one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, (fornication in the K.J.) impurity and debauchery.”
Church, there is no doubt that lasciviousness, uncleanliness, impurity, wantonness and reveling includes such things as:
- mental adultery,
- pornography,
- fondling,
- petting,
- dancing,
- teasing,
- off-color sexually explicit stories
- etc.
You don’t have to have intercourse to be involved in unlawful sexual activities.
Wait a moment Randall, did you mean to include dancing in there?... I did!! I’ll ask you the same question that I said to the teenagers at Green Valley this summer:
- Can you hold a woman, not your wife, next to your body and move to music for 4 to 10 minutes and have no thoughts of a lustful nature?
- Can you watch a well built girl or mature woman move to the music of modern dance and not be sexually aroused?
If you say you can, then your are lying or your sexual orientation is askew.
When you put 1 Corinthians 6.12-20 and our text tonight together you find that living to please God is:
- Being holy,
- Allowing God’s Spirit to live in us.
But when we run our bodies through an unlawful sexual activity:
- We become unholy,
- We reject His Spirit,
- And we join the body of Christ to a prostitute.
- And verse six of our test says, we bring on the judgment of God.
So, Paul admonishes us in 2 Timothy 6.21-22,
- Flee fornication,
- Flee unlawful sex,
- Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart... If a man cleanses himself from these, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.
WELL, IF SEXUAL IMMORALITY DISPLEASES GOD, WHAT PLEASES HIM?... BROTHERLY LOVE.
And Paul says, do it more, and more and more.
Audience, I find it intriguing that the Holy Spirit places brotherly love in the same context with sexual sins.
Is the Spirit saying that not loving one another is just as bad as these sexual sins that we have been discussing? Perhaps that is exactly what He is saying. Some of us would never think of committing adultery will:
- Gossip,
- Carp,
- Hurt,
- Criticize,
- Judge,
- And hinder a brother.... RIGHT?
John puts this thought in these words, We become liars when we say, we love God, but can’t get along with our brother. John 4.7-21. And he says, God does not live in those who act this way.
- You see, Paul tells us in Corinthians that our bodies are the temple of God and that He will not live in a temple that practices sexual immorality
- John says, God will not live in one who does not love and mistreats a brother.
LOVING GOD IS EQUATED WITH LOVING ONE ANOTHER.
Folk, we need to understand this. How we treat one another in the church is how we treat God... How we treat Jesus. If the church is the body of Christ, and it is, and if Jesus is head of the body and He is, then how we treat one another is how we are treating Jesus. We can’t treat the head one way and the body another... We need to understand this tonight if we are going to live pleasing to God... RIGHT?
Well, what does it mean to love with a brotherly love?
I don’t know a better way to define what our actions should be in this thing called love than to just read from 1 Corinthians 13... Listen!!
- Love is patient.
- Love is kind.
- Love does not envy.
- Love does not exalt itself through pride.
- Love does not boast or brag.
- Love is not rude.
- Love is never self-seeking.
- Love is not easily angered.
- Love never keeps a record of wrongs, but forgives.
- Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
- Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
- Love never fails.
Pleasing God is loving one another with this kind of Biblical love.
THEN FINALLY, TONIGHT, PAUL SAYS, LIVE HONESTLY AMONG OTHERS.
Paul seems to break this thought down into three areas... Do you see this in verse eleven?
FIRST, LIVE A QUIET LIFE.
Folk, pleasing God is living a quiet life.
The world says:
- Make as much noise in life as you can...
- Grab all the gusto....
- Demand all the attention you can...
- Go for popularity...
- Go for all the notoriety possible.
But this is not what pleases God.
Folk, God blesses humility... God blesses humility... It pleases Him
SECONDLY, THE SPIRIT LED PAUL TO SAY, GOD IS PLEASED WHEN WE MIND OUR OWN BUSINESS.
Any of us need to listen on this subject tonight? Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, mind you own business... work with your hands...
WHY?... So that your daily lives may win others, that you are dependent on no man for your living.
Some of us in the church need to come to grips with this thing of minding our own business. We say, it is none of my business, but.... This attitude of meddling in the business of others for the sake of gossip and idle conversation is out of place and does not please God.
Just how important is this concept of minding our own business?
Well, in his instructions to Timothy about how to care for widows in the church, Paul says, when a widow is a gossip, a busy body, going house to house saying things she should not, she is not to be placed on the role of those to be cared for by the congregation.
Why is it that we feel more qualified to run somebody else’s life more than our own? I know of those who can’t get along with their spouse, who try to tell other how to have a happy marriage.
Men who are not qualified to serve as Elders want to tell the Eldership how to oversee the body of Christ. You see, if God didn’t think we are qualified, who are we to say we are? Here it is audience, if a man is not qualified to serve as an Elder, Shepherd, Overseer, Bishop inside the Eldership, he is certainly not qualified to run the church from outside the Eldership.
God is never pleased when we cause hurt and disunity by our not minding our own business. In fact Jesus said, Blessed... Happy is the peace maker... That dear individual that binds up the wounds of hurt and division. God help us to learn to please Him in this respect.
THIRDLY, GOD IS PLEASED WHEN WE WORK WITH OUR OWN HANDS.
Paul told Timothy in 5.8 of his first letter, If anyone does not provide for his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel, an unbeliever.
I didn’t say this, God did. God is pleased when we work to support ourselves, when we learn to do for ourselves.
Now, the reason this is in our text to the church at Thessalonica is that they had so misunderstood the second coming, that many had quit their jobs, and as a result had nothing to do, so they did what was natural... When you have nothing to do... some became busy bodies and loafers.
Is this text relevant to the Bella Vista community? Is it possible that in our retirement that we have nothing to do, so we become busy bodies and loafers?
- I am not pointing my finger at you,
- I am not preaching to you,
Well yes I am, but only, only to the extent that God speaks to you through His word.
If we are guilty of not pleasing God because we have nothing to do, then let me encourage you to find a job in the church and labor in it. That’s what we need to do... isn’t it??
Well, we want to please God or we wouldn’t be here tonight.
- God expects us,
- God calls us,
- God commands, that we grow-up, mature spiritually.
That we live lives pleasing to Him. The truth is where each of us is in our maturity level is OK and good. What is not OK and good is if we stay here. We must move on to higher ground. God calls us to:
- Upward movement,
- To greater heights of COMMITMENT... MATURITY... AND LABOR FOR OUR LORD.
I hope these two lessons have touched our lives in some way that will cause us to become more and more and more pleasing to God in the way we live.
- If you’re here tonight and need to confess your faults and ask for the prayers of the church... Come... Answer this invitation song.
- If you would like to be born again by faith, repentance and New Testament baptism, immersion in water for the forgiveness of your sins, come now as we stand and sing.
Will you come?
