1 Thessalonians 4:1-2
Please be seated. Turn in your
copy of the scriptures to the book of First Thessalonians.
First Thessalonians 4, 1 and 2 will be our passage today.
4, 1 through 12 is a kind of a bigger picture of what we’ll
be looking at today and in the next two weeks. Paul is going
to encourage the Thessalonians to live a life pleasing to God.
Next week and the week after, he’s going to give two specific
areas how they can do that. But today we, in general, want
to think about the subject of pleasing God. Before we read,
let’s ask for God’s grace to hear his word. Pray with me.
Lord, we thank you that you have spoken and that the words of
holy men of old have been put down on the pages of the scriptures
that are in our hands, and we pray that we would not hear today
the word of men, but the very word of God. Do comfort and build
up your saints in our most holy faith, and do convince and convert
sinners out of ungodliness and into salvation. Hear us and help
us, we pray in Christ’s mighty name, amen. This is God’s word,
1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1 and 2. Finally, therefore, brothers,
we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you receive from
us how you ought to walk to please God, just as you are doing, that
you do so more and more. For you know what instructions
we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of
God, your sanctification. Amen. God’s word for us. I just realized as we were reading
the scripture that my little quiz questions here might, um,
I might’ve messed myself up, but we’ll see how good of listeners
you are, or you were. Who is the oldest man in the
scriptures? Methuselah, 969 years. Who was his father? Enoch. Man, I thought I was gonna trip
y’all up, but that’s what we get for reading the Bible. Enoch. Enoch
was 65 years of age, and then he fathered Methuselah. And the scripture says that he
walked with God 300 more years after that. And then we have the strange
phrase, and then he was not for God took him. The book of Hebrews
tells us he was not found. You can imagine the great consternation.
You know, this was way before the whole, you know, left behind
series, you know, the movies where, you know, if you’re into
that sort of thing, that’s good. Presbyterians were, you know,
we think a little differently about the end times, but you
know, the whole deal of, You know, you get left behind, the
rapture happens, and there you are still at the meal wheel or
something like that. What did Enoch’s family think? You know, is he still on the
milk jug in ancient Israel? Who knows? But it’s a rather
strange occurrence, isn’t it? He was not, for God took him. He was missing Enoch. And then
there was Elijah. God took him as well. We know
how he went. It was in a chariot. and at least
one person was watching as he went. Well, what else do we know
about Enoch? What else does the scripture
tell us? Genesis is very basic. Jude gives us some more information.
Hebrews 11 gives us a great deal, but he’s mentioned maybe in Chronicles
and Luke. What else do we know of this
great man? Well, we know that he prophesied.
The book of Jude tells us that he prophesied about two things,
the coming of the Lord Jesus as a judge, And that as the Lord
Jesus came and judged, second thing was that he would convict
the ungodly of all their unrighteousness. Listen to this description from
Jude. It says of Jude, the preacher of righteousness that he preached,
that Jesus would come and convict all the ungodly of all their
deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in an ungodly
way. You start to hear a pattern there, don’t you? Ungodly. ungodly,
ungodly, and all the harsh things the ungodly sinners have spoken
of Almighty God. He was a preacher, a bold preacher
of righteousness in a very godless age. So in addition to being
a preacher of righteousness, we’re also told that he walked
with God. Now, you’ve read your New Testament enough, your Pauline
epistles enough to know that Paul likes to use the walk word. Walk this way. Walk in a manner
worthy of the gospel. Walk in a manner worthy of pleasing
God. Walking is simply a word, a mind
picture, a picture of what it means to live day by day, moment
by moment, hour by hour, the Christian life. And for Enoch,
he walked with God when others did not. And I don’t mean in
the Christ-haunted South way, though that’s getting to be more
and more not the case, not just because northerners have moved
down and brought their godlessness, but… I’m glad y’all laughed. But because the nominalism of
the South is really on the way out. We can name people we know
that go to church, and they go because it’s respectable. They
go because it’s, you know, it’s what’s done if you’re a decent
person. That’s kind of on the way out
now. Enoch did not live in the Christ-haunted
land of promise or the pre-promised land. No, he lived in the pre-flood
generation. Where the scriptures describe
before God determines to flood the earth with a universal, catastrophic,
life-taking, earth-shattering flood, it says that the people
only did evil all the time. That’s the generation that Enoch
was preaching and proclaiming to. Now, there’s two Enochs in
the book of Genesis. There’s our Enoch, Enoch who
is seventh from Adam, He would have been of the line of Seth.
Seth, remember, was born after Cain killed Abel. Abel was the
child of hope. He was killed. And so Seth was
the line of promise, the promise of the Messiah. But there was
wicked Cain. And third from Adam, so I suppose
it would have been Adam and Cain and then one other one. And then
there’s other Enoch, bad Enoch. He would have been this flood
generation Enoch. There was a city named after him. They were those
who did not walk with God. They did not acknowledge God
or worship Him or give Him the honor and glory that is due as
Paul would write in Romans chapter one. This would have been the
flood generation Enoch. And so you’ve got two lines of
people, those who walk with God, those who please God, and those
who do not. Those who live to please themselves,
those who live to please their own wicked desires. And so our
Enoch, seventh from Adam, gives us a great example of how to
follow Paul’s admonition to walk with God, to please God in our
lives. And perhaps we can glean a few
things from Jude. We can glean a few things from
Hebrews and from Genesis, and then we can take the whole rest
of the Bible and we can pick up on what it looks like to please
God. Uh, it’s a daily thing. It’s
not just a Sunday thing. It’s a day by day, moment by
moment, hour by hour. This week I was thinking about
him that we sing from time to time. I need the every hour.
And I was speaking with somebody and I said, really, shouldn’t
it be? We need the every moment. We need the every second. We
need the every millisecond. Uh, the, the, the millisecond
we get away from God, we, we, we start going this way and that
way. But our lives, lived for God
to please God. It’s an all the time daily thing.
I love the old book title on the Psalms of Ascent, Eugene
Peterson’s title called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It’s one of those books, you
don’t have to read it if you just get the title, right? And that’s
the Christian life, isn’t it? It has a beginning and it’s a
long obedience in the same direction. We are pilgrims who travel on
a narrow path But we are fraught with all kinds of dangers, and
toils, and snares, and peaks, and valleys, and enemies, and
losses, and crosses, and triumphs, and joys. We can be tempted to
go off to vanity fair, like Pilgrim’s Progress tells us. We can be
tempted to be bogged down in the slew of despond and all the
rest. But a life pleasing to God is
a daily life. A daily life, live step by step,
day by day with heaven, on the horizon. And like the book of
Hebrews tells us in chapter 12, we are to long for heaven, but
look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. And so
living a life that pleases God is a daily thing. It’s also a
life of faith. We’ve just read in Hebrews chapter
11 about Enoch that he pleased God. And it says right after,
if you want to please God, you have to have faith. You have
to have belief in God himself. You have to have faith that he
is God, that his law is perfect, that his ways are right, that
his provision in Jesus is perfect and sufficient and the only way
to be reconciled to God from a life of sin and wickedness.
And we live a life of faith, believing that what God says,
what he requires and what he provides is enough. Now, we live
in a day of plenty. We live in a time where our checkbooks
can be full, our schedules can be busy. We can have successes
and we hang those successes on the wall and we glory in them. And a life of faith. puts all
that aside and says, I live by faith in the son of God who loved
me and gave himself up for me. There is zero self-sufficiency
in the life of faith. We know that every moment, every
second, every millisecond, we need Christ. Salvation is all
of Christ and he gives us all that we need. And so a guy like
Enoch, people like us, we live a daily life of faith before
almighty God. It said of Enoch that he pleased
God. You know, we maybe are planning our funerals. We plan, you know,
go to the funeral home and, you know, pick out this box and that
thing. And we go out to the cemetery
and we pick this plot under the tree or we get the stone made,
we etch our name on it. And if we’re bold, we may put
our own epitaph, a swell guy, you know. God wrote Enoch’s epitaph. It’s in the scripture. Holy men
of old who were carried along by the Holy Spirit gave us the
scripture and Moses gave us Genesis. Now, don’t forget, Moses wrote
of himself. He was the meekest guy on the
face of the earth. So I don’t know. But what did Moses, through
God, write about Enoch? He pleased God. He walked with
God. What did the writer of Hebrews,
that strange unknown author, at least to most of us, what
did the writer of Hebrews write that he was a man who pleased
God. He walked with God. He obeyed
God. That’s his epitaph. And if we’re to live a daily
life of faith before God, what might he write on our tombstone?
What might he write at the end of our lives? Or what might the
people after us write? I think of that great epitaph
in Revelation, are the dead who die in the Lord, their deeds.
Follow them, deeds that please God. Deeds that meant something
of a life of faith, a life of living for almighty God. And
so this Enoch, third from Adam, he lived for God day by day by
faith. He pleased God and God gave him
his stamp of approval. This was a man who loved God’s
word. He saw the beginnings of God’s kingdom. He knew what was
righteous and what was unrighteous. And he proclaimed the Holy God
who would come and who would judge and who would convict of
sin. And so how does this help us
today, especially in light of what Paul writes to the Thessalonians?
Paul writes to the Thessalonians who he ministered to for a couple
of weeks. He got run out of town. And so
a little later he sends Timothy. Timothy goes and has a ministry
of encouragement. Timothy comes back with a great
glowing report. So Paul at Athens, jots off first
Thessalonians and sends it back to the church. And so in chapters
one, two, and three, he said, Hey, I’m thankful for you. I
pray for you. I miss you. I want to get there, but God
hasn’t let me come. Satan’s hindered. And so now
he ends all that and he begins in chapter four and it ends in
chapter five, a section of exhortation. If all these things are true
about your faith in Jesus, then these things ought to be true
about your life. And so Christians who have faith in Jesus, Christians,
you who have been washed in the blood of Jesus, you have been
removed from Satan’s dominion and power, you’ve had your sins
forgiven, how ought you live? And he says, I ask you, I urge
you, I exhort you in the Lord Jesus. That’s his apostolic authority. Isn’t Paul saying it? It’s his
mouth, his lips, but it’s Jesus who sent him just as you received
from us, how you ought to walk to please God. And as you’re
currently doing, keep on doing, doing it more and more and more. Isn’t this a message we need
as believers? You know, you read about Enoch,
the good Enoch. He had a kid at 65, and then
for 300 years, he walked with God. You all know how hard it
is to be a Christian. Whoever preaches, come to Jesus
and all your problems go away, has not lived the Christian life.
Oh, it’s wonderful to be forgiven. It’s great to be in God’s church
family, but oh, isn’t it hard in our struggle with the devil
and with the temptations of the world and even our remnant sin,
our own flesh that wreaks havoc in our lives? Don’t we need to
be urged daily, moment by moment, Sunday by Sunday, by our church
family, by one another in the Christian faith? Don’t we need
to be urged to walk more and more in a godly way that pleases
God and is good in His sight? You know, we always begin well,
you know, it’s this way January 1st, I’m gonna lose weight, right?
It’s this way January 1st, I’m gonna eat less. It’s this way,
January 1st, I’m gonna get on the treadmill. And by the end
of January, you got the treadmill on Craigslist, right? Your diet’s
busted. And you begin to rationalize,
well, I need to have the calories cuz I need my energy, right? And on and on, I’m gonna get
on the budget, I’m gonna, you fill in the blank. We always
begin well. And I think sadly it’s that way
with the Christian life. We come to faith in Jesus and we eat
up our Bibles. We come to faith in Jesus and
we’re at prayer meeting. We come to faith in Jesus and
we are Sabbath-keeping, Bible-toting, tithe-giving, evangelistic, Jesus-telling
people. And we do that for a time and
then it wears off. Maybe you think of the parable
of the soils and some falls and the seed is in the rocks and
it has no root or it grows among the thorns and it gets choked
or even Satan snatches it away or perhaps it produces fruit
for a while. And I encourage you at this very
moment, especially as we come to the Lord’s table, think, let
the Holy Spirit speak to you and say, Lord, where have I,
Where have I gotten weak-kneed? Where have I grown weary in well-doing?
Where have I succumbed to the world and all that it offers?
Where have I, you know, I flip on the TV instead of open my
scripture. I don’t start the day anymore
with coffee and Jesus. I start it with coffee and whoever,
morning whoever, hopefully not a few of them. But where have
you slumped or slacked or began to grow faint in your Christian
faith? jotted down a list of things
that are helpful, I think, in the Christian life and want to
just run through them with you in hopes that these will encourage
you. If you want to walk in a way
that’s pleasing to God, if you want to walk in a manner worthy
of the gospel, if you want to live a life that pleases God,
you first must have faith in Jesus. Without faith, the book
of Hebrews tells us, it is impossible to please God. You must believe
what the scripture says of you, that you are a sinner. You must
believe what the scripture says about God, that he is a judge. And as Enoch preached in his
day, as Noah preached in his day, as Jesus preached in his
day, and Paul in his, and we today in your hearing preach,
God is coming and he will judge the earth in righteousness. And
without faith, it is impossible to please God. And so we must
have faith in Christ alone, For our salvation, we believe that
we are sinners. We believe that God is a just
judge and he’s coming to punish sin. And we believe that Jesus
died in our place, taking our sin and giving us his righteousness. And it’s from that position of
righteousness in Jesus that we can then live a life pleasing
in God’s sight. And so we need faith. We need
righteousness, and God offers it freely in Jesus and in Jesus
alone. I think a second thing we ought
to remember, and this ought to both sober and encourage us in
the Christian life, when we are righteous in God’s sight by faith,
we still, though our sin is pardoned, though we have an everlasting
position of righteousness in God’s sight, we still have remnants
of our corruption in us. Paul calls it the flesh. And if you read Romans chapter
seven or Galatians chapter five, or you just live about a week
as a Christian, you know, that wonderful Latin phrase that Luther
and others gave us, the symbol justus et peccator. At the same
time, we are just and sinners. And so every day we live out
of the strength of our righteousness in Jesus. But our remnant sin
rears up its ugly head. The devil comes knocking and
tempting and the world comes creeping in. And you live in
this great tension of being just in God’s sight, but having remaining
sin and the influence of the devil in the world. And it is
a Christian life fight. And that’s what I mean by whoever
says, come to Jesus and all your problems go away. Now you come
to Jesus and you’re not oblivious to them anymore. You are aware
of spiritual realities. You are aware of the remaining
sin in you and what it will do and how fast it can wreak havoc
in your life. And so we must struggle. We must fight. We must battle.
We must lean into our growth in grace. And that leads us to
a third thing. Yes, we need faith in Jesus.
Yes, we need to realize that Christian life is a struggle
until we’re called home and we are glorified and made perfect.
But a third thing is we live life and God is ever present everywhere. You know, I know some of y’all
are cat people and that’s okay, but you know what a cat will
do. Now we know who you are. A cat will stick its head under
something, a piece of furniture, and three-fourths of it’s still
sticking out in the tail wagon. And what does the cat think?
If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. And I think we live the
Christian life that way. We think God is not watching.
We think maybe we need to be on our best behavior on Sunday,
but what about every moment of every day? You think of that
little kiddie song, be careful little eyes what you see, be
careful little lips what you, Say, hands what you do because
our God up above is looking down in love. Be careful. And we need
to not forget that reality. I heard somebody say some years
ago, you know, if you’re messing around and God were to show up,
what would he think? And it also almost seems to say,
don’t get caught when God comes. But he’s everywhere present.
Right? He’s the Omnigod. He’s everywhere. He’s all able to do everything. And we live life, at least we
should be, in the reality that we struggle with sin, but with
the reality that God is everywhere present. He knows our every thought.
He knows our every inclination. He knows our every deed. He knows
our every desire. And so we need to be fully aware
of the struggle, fully aware of our God, and fully aware of
our faith. We need to lean into our sanctification.
That’s the fourth thing of all this. We need to lean into our
growth in grace. That’s what Paul was saying to
the Thessalonians. I cheated and stuck a little
bit of verse three onto our passage today. It simply says at the
beginning of verse three, the will of God is what? It’s your
sanctification. It’s your holiness. It’s your
growth in grace. And I love the little catechism
definition of sanctification. Sanctification is a work. So
it’s a progressive work of God’s free grace, whereby he enables
us by his word, by his spirit, by his power. He enables us day
by day to die to sin, to put to death what is earthly in us.
And he enables us not only to die to sin, but to live to righteousness.
You know, you read the book of Colossians, it talks about putting
off what is sinful and putting on the new man. The Christian
life is a busy life, and it’s not going to church and being
on committees and doing this. I mean, sometimes churches do
that, but it’s worshiping, it’s learning, it’s being discipled,
it’s improving your baptism, it’s taking the Lord’s Supper,
it’s praying with and for other Christians, and it’s daily leaning
into, which is a really hard thing because we’re not a thoughtful
people. The Christian life has been at least in my lifetime,
it’s been told us it’s necessary to have a quiet time. And it
is very true. We need time to read the word
and meditate on the word and to reflect in our lives where
we don’t conform to it or where we transgress it. And then we
need to ask God, the Holy Spirit, help me to live a life like Enoch
and like other holy men of old that pleases you. Now we’re still
gonna sin, we’re still gonna fall short, we’re still gonna
be tugged by the world. We’re still going to be laid
into by Satan and his temptations. And yes, God, sometimes in his
providence, lets us drag bottom. That can be a difficult spot
to be in as a Christian. He may be dragging you through
the bottom, but it’s so that you’ll look at Jesus. It’s so
that you will not trust in yourself. It’s so that you will depend
on him every moment, every millisecond. The Christian life, our holiness
is something to be cultivated. And it’s not just being book
smart as a Christian. You can memorize verses, you
can know your catechism, you can know the hymns, you can sound
really pious among other believers and they can say, oh, what a
real deal you are. But when you have been sanctified
by God, you’re generally singed by the fires, the purifying fires,
the hard things of life. And so sanctification is so important. Let me say something about church.
There was an old theologian who said something like this. We
can’t have God as our father without the church as our mother. And when God sent his son into
this world to form a people for himself, a bride for his own,
his own coming, a second coming. He didn’t say, you know, I know
y’all are going to be rugged individualists. Just figure it
out. Do what you need. Just, you know, get your little
devotional book and stay home on Sundays. No, he gave us the
church. He gave us the apostles. The
apostles gave us ministers. The church has the sacraments.
The church is the place where we have elders who look in on
our spiritual needs. The church is the place where
the word of God is read and preached and proclaimed. And yes, we are
living in a day of churchless Christianity, which is really
an oxymoron. We’re actually living in a day
of Christless Christianity. Churches, as has been said, is
now moralistic, therapeutic deism, be good, feel good, and God is
there if you really get in a pinch. And that’s not at all what Jesus
intended when he gave us his church. His church will endure
in this life, but his church will be the people he gathers
to himself in the heavenly Jerusalem and will be his eternal congregation.
And so it’s good for us to be encouraged now. to be part of
the body of Jesus Christ, to be part of the bride of Jesus,
and to be washed and sanctified by the ministry of the word in
such a way that when Jesus comes, we are wedding ready. We are a bride ready and adorned
for the coming of our great and grand groom. And so I can’t encourage
you more. Be part of the church of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And one final thing, all of this,
pleasing God business comes from a transformed heart. Again, I’ll
say you can be book smart as a Christian. You can know your
theological P’s and Q’s and dots and all the rest. But if it hasn’t sunk into here,
you will not please God. There’ll be outward conformity.
And you remember what Jesus said about the Pharisees? He said,
you’re whitewashed tombs. You’re dead on the inside and
you’ve put a little whitewash on the outside. That’s not what
we want to be. We need to have hearts that are
transformed by the Holy Spirit, by the word, by the sanctifying
ministry of Jesus through his church, through the washing and
the ministry of the word and even today, the sacraments. And
so what will be on your tombstone? What will be on your epitaph?
I don’t think about what you would put, you know, best Tar
Heel fan or loving whatever your nickname is to your grandkids.
I mean, that’s all sweet. What would God put on your tombstone? Thankfully, it’s this righteous
in my sight, but lean into your Christian life. Don’t get weak-kneed
and weary and quit. Step it up, up your game, show
the world what living for Jesus looks like. Ask God by his word,
by his spirit to help you do just that. Let’s do pray to him
now. Lord, help us to think about how we can live, not for ourselves,
but for you. Give us the strength to think
on it, to meditate on it, to pray over it and give us not
only the thoughts and the desire, but give us the energy, give
us the zeal, give us the fuel to do just that, so that we can
be shining examples like Enoch in the world, what righteousness
looks like, so that the world may know that Jesus is a mighty
savior and can do mighty and transforming works. Hear us and
help us and bless us now, especially as we come to your table. We
want to serve you all the days of our life. So help us in Christ’s
mighty name. Amen.