Immanuel Sermon Audio
Knowing God's Will (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8)
here for worship today. It's a good way to begin a new year. We missed meeting together last week because of weather. So it seems like it's been a long time since we have gathered for worship. We're gonna go in a new direction this morning. Last week, we were supposed to finish up our series that talked about missions. And instead of sort of bumping everything back one week, we're just gonna move on to our new series. If you're dying to know how the mission ends, then all I can say too is read Revelation four and five. That's how it ends. That's the passage we were gonna look at last week. And if you wanna know some of the things that we would have talked about, I've posted them online and you can get on our church Facebook page and find that this week so you can finish the mission in that way. But this morning we're gonna move in a new direction. And if you have a Bible I want you to find in the New Testament. First Thessalonians five, excuse me, first Thessalonians four, fives up on the top of my page. There is an outline if you wanna follow along on the outline. First Thessalonians four, we're gonna talk for a month at the beginning of 2016 about how you can know what God's will for your life is. What is God's will? How can we know God's will? And so we're gonna talk over the next four weeks about this. And before we jump in this morning and before we start this series, I want us just to have a moment of honesty about this idea that we can somehow know God's will and how we sometimes talk about that in church. Usually when we say, I want to know what God's will is. What we're saying is I have a decision to make and giving us the benefit of the doubt, what we mean is I wanna honor God in that decision. I wanna make the right decision, whatever it may be, this decision coming up, I have to make a choice and I wanna honor God in that. I want to know what God wants me to do. I wanna know what God's will is. And so for most of us, this starts somewhere maybe in high school. And you're in high school and you say to yourself, I need to know what God's will is for what I should do after high school. Should I go to work? Should I go to school? Where should I work or where should I go to school? You make a decision. Let's say you go to college and you're in college and you begin to say, if you're a believer, what is God's will for my life? What should I study? What should my major be? And you start praying about this and talking to your friends about it. You sort of know what God's will is. And then you get out of college with whatever degree you've chosen. And you say, where should I work? Where should I live? I wanna know what God's will is for my life. And then you say, who should I marry? Is this God's will that I marry this person? Is it God's will that I move into this new house? And all the way through life, we have these decisions come up. And genuinely, I think most of us want to honor God. And so, what we end up saying is, I wanna know what God's will is for my life. Now, truth be told, what we're doing a lot of the time is we're using God as cover for our decisions. We say, well, I'm praying about this. I'm trying to discern what God's will is in this situation. And a lot of times, what we end up doing, and I'm not going to say there's anything necessarily wrong with this, but we just, we make a decision. Here's where the problem comes in. When we turn back around and we begin to use God as cover for the decision that we've made. And let me just begin with confession and say, pastors are the world's worst about this. The absolute world's worst. Have you ever heard of pastor stand up in front of his church and say, you people are driving me crazy? And I have a chance to go to another church and they seem less crazy than you. So I'm leaving you crazy people, and I'm going to some people who seem to be a little bit less crazy. Anybody ever heard of pastor stand up and say that? I have never heard that. Here's what pastors do. Well, I've spent a lot of time in prayer lately. (congregation laughing) Been trying to discern God's will for my life. And we genuinely, truly believe that God is leading us away from this place to a new place. And we believe this is God's will. How are you going to argue with that? Pretty hard to argue with that, right? I'm just telling you, I eat with those same pastors. We have lunch together. They send me text messages. And a lot of the lunch conversations and text messages are a lot less trying to discern God's will and a lot more of my people are crazy. (congregation laughing) I got to get out of here and find something else. So I'm just telling you, pastors do this. That may be a big let down for you, but it's reality. Pastors sometimes make a decision, and then, if I can use this word this way, they blame God for it. Well, I just think that this is God's will for my life. So pastors do it, but let's be honest, you do it too, right? Let's say you're in a Sunday school class, and your teacher's going to be gone in a couple of weeks, and your teacher comes to you and says, hey, I'm going to be gone in a couple of weeks. Would you be able to fill in for me? What do you say? I'm going to have to pray about that. (congregation laughing) You've been sitting in that Sunday school class for 15 years. You've been coming to church all of your life. You're asked to fill in for one week, and your response is, I'm going to have to pray about that. Or let's say Terri Everett catches you in the hallway. And she says, oh my goodness, did you see how many babies we have in the nursery today? Please, can you come help me in the nursery? And you say, well, I'm not sure nursery's my spiritual gift. (congregation laughing) I don't know that I feel called to the nursery. Could you give me a couple of weeks to discern God's will on this matter? You don't go to that extent, but you know what I'm talking about. Pastors do this. Church members do this. We use God's will as a cover. Here's another funny thing about God's will. Most of us seem to be pretty confused about what God's will is in our life. We seem to sort of be wrestling with it and trying to discern it and figure it out. But most of us are pretty good at looking at other people's lives and figuring out what God's will is for their life. And here's how we do it most of the time. Not indirectly saying this is God's will for your life, but we look at other people and we say, what do you think they're going out together? Why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense to me, I don't understand that. Did you hear the job that he took? He quit that job to take that different job? Why would he do that? That doesn't make any sense. Say, did you see the house they bought? Can you believe they bought that house? Why would somebody buy that house? I don't understand why they would do that. You're not openly saying, I know what God's will is for your life, but what you're really saying is, what you just did is not God's will for your life. And if you would just listen to me, I could straighten it all out for you. So we've got other people figured out pretty good. Part of the problem is when we talk about God's will this way, we make it sound like God's up in heaven trying to hide it from us. Like he's got this secret master plan, and I believe that he does have a master plan, but we sort of talk about it like it's this secret thing and he doesn't want anybody to know and he's trying to keep it from us, and we're like mission impossible trying to figure it out. We're like a covert secret agent. Well, I'm gonna spend a lot of time in prayer, or I'm gonna seek some wise counsel, or I'm gonna do this, and I'm trying to just decode the mystery. God's trying to keep it from me, and I'm trying to figure it out. Now again, you say, well, I would never say it that way, but look, when you pray about what God's will is for a decision month after month after month, and you never make a decision, do you really believe the God of the Bible as we read about him? The God who was so kind and gracious to send his son, Luke 19, 10, to seek and to save the lost. Do you really believe that a God that kind and that gracious is up in heaven saying, I just don't want him to figure it out. I just want him to be in suspense a little bit longer. I'm just gonna make him pray two more hours. Then I'm gonna tell him what my will is. Just doesn't seem to be the character of the God of the Bible, but a lot of times we talk about him trying to figure out God's will as if we're trying to decode some kind of strange mystery and God is keeping it from us. I'll just be honest with you, part of the problem, in fact, the biggest part of this problem is that we just don't listen to the Bible. We have the Bible, we carry it around and we bring it to church with us, and we open it up when I tell you to open up to First Thessalonians four or five, either one, and you open it up in your Sunday school class and you study it, but then during the week when it comes time to make decisions, we don't open it. Now I'm not telling you that I'm gonna show you all the places you can turn that tell you what house to buy and who to marry and this and that and that. But I am telling you that there are passages in the Bible that very plainly, very directly, it's not hidden, it's not in code, it's not a secret. They just say, this is God's will for you. This is what he wants in your life. This is what he wants you to do. And over the next four weeks, as we talk about all these things and we put all of these pieces together, my hope is that at the end of this month, in February, you're sort of freed from this idea of I'm trying to figure out God's secret will. And I don't exactly know how to figure it out and how to make this decision. I hope the things that we talk about just sort of set you free to say, now I know what God's will is for my life. And I'll have to agonize and worry and fret over every decision that needs to be made because I know what God's will is for my life. So we're gonna look at a couple of passages in Thessalonians and we're gonna look at a couple of passages in 1 Peter. Here's the first answer. This is up on the top of your outline. You say, what is God's will for my life? Here's the first answer. God's will for your life involves sanctification. Sanctification. I don't care who you are. I don't care how old you are. I don't care how much money you have or don't have. I don't care what socioeconomic class you're in. I don't care which side of Odessa you live in. I don't care how long you've been coming to church or maybe this is the very first Sunday you ever set foot in a church. What we're gonna see this morning in this passage from scripture is that God's will for your life, regardless of who you are or where you're at in life is your sanctification. We're gonna unpack that a little bit. As you look over in first Thessalonians four, we're gonna read verse one all the way to verse eight. But let me just start by telling you a little bit about Thessalonica. I'm gonna just make an assumption and say that even though we were snowed in last week and we didn't have church, I bet you did not get your Bible out and study the maps in the back last Sunday morning. Maybe you got it out and read something but you probably didn't look at the maps. So I'm gonna put a map up on the screen. This is where Thessalonica is. It's located in what we know as Greece in the Mediterranean world. And you can see a line going around here. This is one of the missionary trips that Paul took. And Paul, the apostles, started the church in Thessalonica. He rolls into town, he finds the Jewish synagogue, he goes straight there and he says to all the Jews in Thessalonica, "Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, he's the Christ." Some of those Jews in that synagogue believed Paul and embraced Jesus Christ. Others did not. In particular, the leaders of that synagogue did not believe the truth about Jesus. So Paul takes this group of Jews and then he goes to the non-Jews, the Gentiles in Thessalonica and he starts to tell them, "Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, he's the Christ." And he didn't just come for Jews but he also came for Gentiles. And all these people in Thessalonica start believing about Jesus. That was great for this new church. It was bad if you were the leader of the synagogue. They're just sort of left out here hanging and all the excitement and all the buzz is going to Paul in this Jesus guy. So the leaders of the synagogue did something that happened a lot to Paul. They started a riot and they ran him out of town. Literally a riot and literally forced him to leave in danger of his life. So Paul leaves and he leaves behind this church in Thessalonica. These are people he saw come to faith in Jesus, people that he may be baptized, people that he was discipling, people that he was sort of trying to figure out who should be the leaders in this church and help everybody get up on their feet spiritually. And all of a sudden he just has to leave. And so out of concern for this church, he writes these letters. First Thessalonians and second Thessalonians. And if you look at first Thessalonians 4, Paul says something pretty amazing about God's will for their life and it's equally true for our lives today. So look at first Thessalonians 4 beginning in verse one. He says, "Finally then brothers, we ask and urge you "in the Lord Jesus that as you received from us "how you ought to live and 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. Here it is, your sanctification. That you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body and holiness and honor, not in the passion of lusts like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgressing wrong his brother in this matter because the Lord is an avenger in all these things. As we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you, for God has not called us for impurity but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. This is the word of God, let's pray together. Father, we come humbly and we come sincerely asking for grace, for conviction, for your spirit to work in our hearts, and for your spirit to open our minds to the truth of this passage. Help us to understand these words that are very simple and Father help us to apply them to our life this morning. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Some of you may know that Great Britain, the nation, United Kingdom, used to send convicts to the island of Australia. This is a long time ago and they would just sort of round up all their bad guys, put them on a boat, send them over to Australia and the poor folks who lived in Australia didn't ask for these people to come over but they came over. Bunch of rotten guys on a boat. You may not know that the United States received the same sort of treatment. Most of the English convicts got sent to Australia and most of the Irish convicts got sent to the United States. The difference is important. In the United States there was a lot of other people coming to the United States and so these Irish convicts were never a majority of the population. In Australia it was different. There wasn't a whole lot of folks flooding to Australia at the time. It was just the folks who were there originally and then all of a sudden you've got all these criminals flooding the nation. It didn't take very long before the criminals were the majority of the population. Now somewhere around the 1850s there was a gold rush and that brought some new blood and some new faces and some new people to Australia but they still didn't dominate the population. These criminals were basically the core of who was living and who was running in Australia and so about 1900 King Edward VII of England, of Great Britain, he decided look, it's time these people in Australia sort of stand up on their own two feet now. There's a lot of folks down there and in British culture and society, he said one of the things they need is a coat of arms and this is what he came up with. That's the official coat of arms for Australia. So you've got Australia at the bottom, you've got some nice designs, you've got a little star up at the top, you've got the little crest in the middle and two animals, a kangaroo and an emu. Not an ostrich, I have different numbers of toes. This is an emu. I don't want a second guess, King Edward, but if I'm coming up with a coat of arms for a new country and the kangaroo and the emu are on the list and you're talking about Australia, I'm gonna put one vote in for crocodiles. Put a crocodile up there, big teeth, long tail, scary looking guy, way more intimidating or if you don't want to go with intimidating and you want to go with cute and fuzzy, how about the koala bear? Everybody likes a koala bear, they're cute and they just sit there and eat leaves all day long, they're so sweet. And instead he goes with the kangaroo and the emu. Why? Neither animal can move backwards. Kangaroos are great at going forwards, they're lousy at going backwards, their tail gets in the way. Emus can go sideways, front ways, diagonal ways, always, but they can't go backwards because of the way they're foot structured, it just really doesn't work right for them. And King Edward was making a point when he came up with this coat of arms to the people of Australia and the point is you need to move forward. Don't go backward to what's behind you. What's behind you is worthless. Leave it in the past. You need to move forward. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty good definition, a pretty good picture of sanctification, of God coming to his people and saying, move forward. Don't go backward to what I saved you from. Don't go back to what got you in trouble in the first place. Move forward. If you want a more theological definition of moving forward in your faith and you want to talk about sanctification, you say it's the process of becoming more holy. It's the process of becoming more Christ-like. And God does some of this work in you and you do some of this work yourself and you over time become more like Christ. You become more holy. And look what Paul says right here in verse three. This is so plain. You want to know what God's will is for your life. Here it is. This is the will of God. Your sanctification. He wants you to be more like Jesus. He wants you to be more holy. He wants you to grow in your faith. He wants you to move forward. He describes it up in verse one. He says, look, you received from us how you ought to live. We told you what God expects for you in your life. And he says right after that, you're doing it. Good. We told you what to do and you're doing it and what is his instruction. Keep doing it more and more. Move forward. Don't go backwards to who you used to be. Don't go backwards to the filth you used to live in. Move forward, become more like Christ. Grow in holiness. Paul takes that general statement in verse three and look how he applies it in verse five. He says, I don't want you to live in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. The specific situation he has in mind is sexual immorality in Thessalonica. And he says, you need to watch out for this. God wants you to move forward in sanctification. That is his will for your life. And he applies it specifically to sexual immorality. And then verse five is key. He says, don't live like the Gentiles who don't know God. That's a pretty good test for your sanctification. Do you live just like people who don't know Jesus Christ? And the application ought to be really simple in your life. You just stop for a minute and you say, do I live like people who don't know God? And I want you to just in your mind, don't say this person's name out loud, but I just want you to think about somebody maybe that you know, maybe who lives down the street from you, maybe they work with you, maybe they go to school with you, they don't know Jesus. Don't think about the drug addict strung out laying in the gutter. I'm not talking about him. Don't talk about the delinquent who got locked up this last weekend. I'm not talking about him. I'm just talking about somebody, about the same socioeconomic status of you, maybe they live in the same neighborhood, but you know, they don't know Jesus. And think about your life and their life. And you just start to ask yourself, are our lives the same? Do we maintain the same sort of schedule? Do we go the same sort of places? Do we say the same sort of things? Do we watch on television or to music, the same sort of stuff that they listen to? Do we use our money just like they use their money? Is there any difference? Are the things that are most important to us, the exact same things that are most important to them? When we get on social media, do our posts look exactly like theirs? Paul says, you want to know if you're growing in sanctification more and more? You just step back and you say, are you living just like the Gentiles who don't know God? Is there anything different about your life because of the fact that you know Jesus Christ? Or when you compare your life to the folks around you, do you say, you know, I just sort of look like normal, middle class, Odessa folks. I don't know that there's anything outstanding or different or spectacular about my life because of the fact that I know Jesus. You say, well, I'm here on a Sunday morning, I'm here at church, maybe that's one thing. I'll give you that, but outside of this building is anything different. Verse five, do not live in the passions of lust like the Gentiles who don't know God. Paul gives us some reasons to pursue sanctification. I'm gonna give these to you quickly. Why pursue sanctification? Number one, you don't want to sin against other believers. That's verse six. We don't want anyone to transgress or wrong as brother. And if you say, do you write that word in and fill in that blank? You say, you know, I don't know that I really care a whole lot about my relationship with other believers to the point that it would motivate me to be sanctified, then maybe you need to reevaluate whether or not you know Jesus in the first place. Jesus said, if you love me, you love my brothers. If you love me, you're part of my church, part of my family, and you're concerned for other believers ought to be so great that it moves you to become more like Jesus. Number two, why pursue sanctification? Do it because you know God will avenge all things. God will avenge all things. I know some of our Sunday school classes who are studying the gospel project are in different places, but in my class this morning, we talked about the Passover. And we talked about God bringing justice on the Egyptians and the death of the first one. And one of the applications we took away from that in my class is, you should fear God. He's serious. Don't mess around. The things that he talked about in Exodus 11 and 12 are serious and weighty, and they just, they shock you. And Paul, with that sort of thing in his mind, says, look, we know that God is going to avenge all things. Second part of verse six, why pursue sanctification? You have been called for holiness. God's called you to holiness, not in purity. Number four, pursue sanctification because you've been given the Holy Spirit. This is Paul's line of reasoning when he talks to the Corinthians and he says, look, you as an individual and you as a church, you're the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. Don't do things in your life as an individual or your things corporately that would dishonor the Holy Spirit, you're not called to impurity, but you're called to holiness. How do you do it? How do you pursue sanctification? Paul doesn't detail it here, but I'm gonna give you a few suggestions. This is not rocket science. This is very basic stuff. But if you wanna know what God's will is, I'm laying out the roadmap for you. Number one, submit yourself to the authority of Scripture. How do you do that? Well, you come to church and you listen to sermons. You don't just come, fill in the blanks and forget about it, but you genuinely think about it. You listen prayerfully asking God to convict you, whether you're in this room listening to the Bible being taught or you're in your Sunday school class, listening to the Bible being taught, submitting to the authority of Scripture. It means that the only time you crack open a Bible isn't when I tell you to open it. During the week, you're reading, you're studying, you're digging into God's word. You submit your life to the authority of Scripture. How do you pursue sanctification? Number two, commit yourself to regular prayer. What I don't mean specifically here is that you get a long list of sick people and you pray for them every day. That's okay to do that. That's a good thing. Get your list of people, pray for them. But I'll tell you, when you go through the New Testament and you listen to how Paul prayed for the different churches that he wrote letters to, church in Philippi, church in Ephesus, church in Colossae, he didn't mention sick people. What he prayed is, I'm praying for this church that they would know Jesus Christ better, that they would love him more and that they would obey him faithfully. That's what Paul prayed. So when I say to you, commit yourself to regular prayer, we're not just talking like a catalog of sick people, I'm not just saying spend more time telling God what you want, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this. I'm saying you spend time in prayer saying God, I need you to convict me of sin. I need you to give me a passion for holiness. I need you to give me a heart that loves you more than anything else that this world has to offer. That's the kind of prayer that we're talking about. Number three, how do you pursue sanctification? You involve yourself in a local church. And let me just mention a couple of things on that statement, that seems like a very basic statement, involve yourself in a local church. What I don't mean is attend a local church. You can attend a local church all you want, it's not gonna help you grow in sanctification, period. Involve yourself in a local church. And when I say involve yourself in a local church, that doesn't just mean go to Martels and get a Bible study book and read it every day. That doesn't mean get on the iTunes and find your favorite preacher and listen to a podcast once a week. That doesn't mean flip on the TV, set your DVR and record your favorite church in town so you can watch it at home every week. That means actually being involved with living, breathing, flesh and blood people at a local church. We had a wedding in here last night and one of the things Corey mentioned as he was performing this ceremony is that when God brings together a husband and a wife, one of the reasons he brings them together is for their sanctification. And if you're married, you know as well as I do that your spouse can help you see all of the areas where you are not very sanctified. It works fantastically. It's amazing. And what the New Testament is telling us is that the same thing is true in our church family. Look, when you sit at home in your recliner and you read your Martel Bible study and you watch your favorite guy on TV or you listen to him on your iPod, you can leave that and you can feel pretty good about yourself. But when you come with real living, flesh and blood people and you sort of do life with them and you build relationships with them and you spend time with them and you serve them and you invest in them and they sin against you and they hurt you or you begin to understand how much we need each other for this thing called sanctification. You cannot do it on your own. You can't be sanctified without a church family, period. That means if God's will is your sanctification, you will never be fulfilling God's will for your life if you're not involved in a local church. You won't be. God's will for your life involves sanctification, submitting to scripture, committing to prayer, being involved in a local church. I wish I could give you a shortcut. I wish I could say, memorize this one verse and then you're sanctified. Here's this one prayer you repeat it every day and you become sanctified. Read this one book. When you're done with this book, then you're a sanctified person. It just doesn't work that way. It's a process of becoming more and more like Jesus over time. It's a process where you say, "Man, I took a step back this week. "Now I need to take two steps forward. "I'm not going back to what's behind me. "I'm moving forward and pressing on towards Jesus Christ." I hope that when you see this and you get this down in your gut, you realize I don't need to agonize over every little decision in life or over every big decision in life. I just need to worry about becoming more like Jesus. And if I worry about becoming more like Jesus and I'm listening to the word, I'm submitting to it and I'm faithful in prayer and I'm involved in a local church, are you ready for this? You can do whatever you want. You just do what you want. Make a decision, you say, "Well, where am I supposed to go to college? "Any place where you can pursue Jesus Christ?" That's where you go. Who do you marry? Any person who will help you grow more like Jesus Christ. What house do I buy? What car do I buy? How do I make this decision? You just make whatever decision will help you grow closer to Jesus Christ. And you put that as your focus and then you just do whatever you want. I'll end with a quote. This is from a pastor named Kevin DeYoung. He's a pastor up in Michigan and he wrote a book called "Just Do Something," not just so something, that's my typo. Just do something. And in the book, he's talking to people who just sort of get paralyzed because they say, "I just don't know what God's will is. "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do here." And this is how he sums up the book. He says, "Live for God, obey the Scriptures. "Think of others before yourself. "Be holy." That's our verse this morning. Your sanctification, growing and holiness. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you will be walking in the will of God. It's really simple. God's will for your life involves sanctification. Some of you may be sitting here this morning and you may say, "I have never started moving forward. "I'm still moving backwards or I'm still stuck in neutral." What the Bible would say to you is you need to meet Jesus Christ. You need to put your faith in him. You need to turn from your sin and follow Jesus. For the very first time, you need to begin moving forward. Most of you are somewhere in the process of following Jesus. And God's will for your life. Regardless of who you are, how many kids you have, if you're married, you're not married, how much money you have or don't have, is that you be sanctified. You grow and holiness. You move forward and you become more like Jesus. Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for your word and we pray for forgiveness when we complicate things that are not complicated. Father, forgive us when we come to you as if you're some sort of fortune teller who's gonna predict our future and lay out a roadmap for us. Never in the Bible do we read you described in that way. Father, forgive us when we worry and we fret about decisions and specifics and situations more than we worry about following Jesus. And our prayer this morning at the beginning of a new year is that we would spend 2016 following Jesus, chasing Jesus, pursuing Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, serving Jesus, worshiping Jesus, telling people about Jesus that you by your grace would help us to grow and holiness. And Father, that is that is the focus in the center of our life that all the details would fall into place. Father, I pray for the folks who are here and I pray for those who maybe need to move forward in following Jesus for the very first time. I pray that you would open their hearts to their need for Jesus and to the truth that he came to seek them and to save them. Father, be honored in our worship as we spend these last moments in our service, worshiping and lifting our voices together. Father, we never want this ending time to be just a wrap up, just a conclusion, but we want it to be a time where we respond to you and to your word. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen.