1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 - Showing Jesus To Everyone

Main Idea: Aspire to Jesus’ over-abounding love and unobtrusive diligence.

HOW TO SHARE JESUS’ LOVE WITH SPIRITUAL SIBLINGS

• Listen to the Holy Spirit through His Word, presence, & people.

• Choose to love other Christians beyond your comfort zone.

• Pursue ways to be even more loving to those around you.

HOW TO REPRESENT JESUS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD

• Make it your lofty goal to be peaceful, orderly, and humble.

• Don’t be a busybody in others’ lives.

• Embrace the work that allows you to bless, not burden, others.

SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)

First Thessalonians, Chapter 4. We're in a series entitled Finishing Touches. Paul and Silas and Timothy were a team of missionaries, and they were going through kind of what's modern day Turkey and Greece.

And they were planting churches, they were encouraging existing churches. And so as they were going around doing that, they came to the Macedonian city of Thessalonica.

It was a port city of about 200,000 people, very big for its particular time period. And they spent a little over three weeks there at that church before they were run out of town. Now, I don't know about you guys.

Three weeks is not a very long time. It is especially not a very long time to tell people everything there is to know about Jesus and his new way of living. And so Paul was very nervous for this group of believers.

And so he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to say like, hey, check on them, see how they're doing. Are they still even Christians? What's going on?

Timothy brings back wonderful news that they are walking with the Lord. And despite the persecution, they are still following what Paul and Silas and Timothy had taught them. The Holy Spirit is moving in and through their church.

But then Paul, after breathing, a giant sigh of relief goes, ooh, there's still some stuff that these guys need to know.

And so he writes this letter of 1 Thessalonians to this group of baby Christians to say, there are some things that you still need to know.

And so what we're going to read today is a much easier passage than last week, for those of you that were here last week. Today, we are in chapter 4 and verses 9 through 12.

And the main thought that we're going to see today is showing Jesus to everyone. Showing Jesus to everyone. I want you to realize this today, the Christian life is not about you.

I know, big shock. But many of us often act like it is. Like we come to church and maybe it's a pastor and he's like, yeah, this church is about me and getting some accolades and getting some big old amens and stuff.

And we've unfortunately seen the ones and Rolls Royces and they're like, no, I need a third private jet. It's for the Lord. Trust me.

Like we've seen those kinds of things where pastors think it's all about them. We've also seen when people inside of a church think that the church is all about them. And they're like, listen, I would prefer this service time.

I want programs for this and this and this for me. I want this for my kid. I want this so that I only have to see my husband like two days a week.

And I want my preferred tunes, you know, sung. And I want this and I want that. And we get kind of Burger King Christianity of have it your way.

We've all seen that happen in churches. But the truth is the Christian life is not about what I want or what you want or what anyone in this room wants. I would say anyone.

It is in fact what the Holy Spirit wants. It is what the Lord Jesus has commanded us to do and to practice and to believe together.

And so that's what we're going to see today is that we should aspire to Jesus' over abounding love and unobtrusive diligence. That here as Paul is talking to these believers, he says, in essence, two things.

You need to keep on showing Jesus' love to your spiritual siblings, and you need to be showing Jesus' love through a good work ethic to the watching world around you in your city so that the people of Thessalonica don't go, the Christians are a bunch

of bums. And that's in the original Greek. But here's what we're going to be pursuing today is not, how can we make us more like us, or how can we make other people more like us?

It's we are aspiring to follow Jesus' example, and as we do that, it's going to have ramifications for our relationships with one another within the body of Christ, and with the watching world all around us.

Let's pray together, dive into the passage and see what God has for us today. Dear Lord, thank you for just allowing us to be here. Lord, I'm so grateful for this church family, and Lord, for the joy that they are to be around.

Lord, we pray today that your presence would be known among us. God, we do not come just to hear the words of people. Lord, we love one another, but if all we hear are the words of Bryon, this is a pointless exercise.

God, we need to hear from you and your Spirit. God, I pray that you would speak to our hearts, you would convict us of the things that we're not currently walking with you in.

And Lord, as you speak to our hearts, Lord, may we put into practice what we have heard, that we wouldn't allow it to fall on deaf ears, but that hearing the words of eternal life, we would put them into practice and make them our foundation.

Lord, we love you, and we pray all of this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

5:09

Love for Siblings

Let's begin reading together in verse number nine. It says this, about brotherly love. So verses one through eight was about a kind of different kind of love.

We don't have to rehash last week. This week is about brotherly love. The word for this is Philadelphia.

Can everyone say Philadelphia? The city of brotherly love, which we're in the area. We know Philadelphia doesn't always act like a city of brotherly love, but it is named after this Greek word.

And it is the familial love that we have for one another. Raise your hand in the room if you have siblings. Now I know enough of you to know some of those sibling relationships are a little complicated.

However, the love that we have for our brothers and sisters is a totally unique kind of love. It is a, you get on my nerves more than any other person on earth. And yet, I love you with a commitment that doesn't rise and fall with my emotions.

It's just, you are my brother. I'm stuck with you. You are my flesh and blood.

And so I might think you're being real dumb, but I still love you because you are my spiritual sibling. And so this is the love that we are called to have as the family of God.

It is a love that says, and this doesn't happen, hopefully, Lord willing, doesn't happen. Even if I'm like, oh, Ron keeps ticking me off about this, that, or the other, that I go, but I love him to death because he is my spiritual brother in Christ.

And so it doesn't matter what ups and downs we have. There is this commitment of love because we have the same spiritual father. And so we are siblings together.

So it says, about brotherly love, you don't need me to write you because you yourselves are taught by, what's that word there? Taught by God to love one another. This was the promise of the Old Testament prophets.

That is, they saw the children of Israel who had the Old Testament laws, 613 of them together. And as they were given the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Moses and they still couldn't get it together.

And so what they recognized is that humanity doesn't just need a better list of rules. We need a new heart. We need someone on the inside of us to be able to tell us, don't do that.

Yes, you should do that. Pull back a little on that. And so God gave to us his Holy Spirit, his personal presence animating us and working in us in each and every moment.

It says, you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. Can I encourage you? We are humans.

As far as I'm aware, everyone that I see in the room is a human. We do not always act or feel in love towards one another. And for a lot of us, there can be animosity that we have towards other people in the room.

It might be towards your spouse. It might be towards another person that like, you've been going to the same church together for five years or for 50 years, and you're just tired of their stuff.

I want to encourage you that God has never and will never teach you to hate another person, will never teach you to hate another believer.

And so when you are walking in animosity, when every time that that person's name comes up, you automatically go, oh, I can't stand them. We are resisting the teaching of the Holy Spirit within our lives.

We're told in the fruit of the Spirit, the very first expression of the Spirit's fruit in our life is love. And so here Paul encourages them, I'm telling you, love one another as siblings. You are doing it.

You don't even really need me to write you about it because the Holy Spirit is teaching you to love one another. And he says, in fact, you are doing this, you are loving toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia.

Here Paul says, it would be great if you there in Thessalonica loved the brothers and sisters in Thessalonica. Man, that's awesome. I hope every church experiences that love together.

But he says it didn't stop there. It went out into the greater region. If you will, this is you guys loved the people in Maryland, Delaware, and sent them almost 500 bucks to help the people that are in need.

He says, but we encourage you brothers and sisters to do this even more. You have love. You're being taught by God to love.

You don't even need me to write you about the love, but do it some more. There are always more ways that we can show the love of God to those around us. May we always be pursuing what those additional ways can be.

10:10

Orderly Living

Then in verse number 11, he says this. So you love each other, do this even more. And then he says, to seek to lead a quiet life.

And then I love this phrase, to mind your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you. Here, to seek to lead a quiet life is not a prohibition on perhaps shouting now and then.

Or if you see a kid running into the street, you see a car come in, you'd be like, I'll have to lead a quiet life. I guess I can't shout to them to say, look out. Leading a quiet life is a peaceful, orderly life.

In your life, is it full of chaos and disorder where at any given moment in time, you have no idea what's going on and no one that knows you or lives with you or loves you has any idea what's going on either?

Here, Paul encourages these Thessalonian believers, I want you guys to get your act together a little bit. Like, calm down. I understand it's a new amazing existence.

We would read even some of this in Second Thessalonians.

You had believers that hearing about the fact that Jesus would one day return for his bride, the church, they actually stopped working and they were just bumming off of the other believers there in Thessalonica.

And as they were doing so, they were, you know, staying in their houses and eating all of their food.

And so Paul here, as he does in Second Thessalonians, says, I need you guys to be working, be orderly, be peaceful in the way that you are interacting. You can even think again of the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.

This peaceful quietness ought to be what typifies us as the people of God. That if you will, when people hear from you, if they get a phone call from Joyce, they know what they're going to get.

They're not going to get one day a like, oh hey, how you doing? And then the other day like, how dare you? And just shouting, yelling, anger.

May there be a quiet consistency in the lives of us as believers as we interact with others. He says, to mind your own business. If you will, each of us have been given a, as Paul would call it in Galatians 6, a burden by God.

This is our backpack. It is what we are called to walk through our life with. We have our path.

None of you are called to be the husband of Samantha. That's my lot in life. That's my business.

None of, you know, I'm not called to, Roy, I know you work at a very fancy place and you work with lots of spreadsheets. Not mine. I'm called to mind my own business.

That what God has given me to do, I'm going to accomplish it to the best of my ability. There's also there the indication, don't be a busybody. Don't spend all your time trying to run someone else's race.

We'll talk a little bit more about that at the conclusion of the sermon. And then he says, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you. In the Greek speaking world there in the first century, manual labor was pretty looked down on.

That was something that if you were rich enough or famous enough, you had slaves that would do manual labor for you.

The best thing that you could do was some sort of intellectual field like philosophy or politics, and those were the best of the best. However, what Paul tells the Thessalonikans is that working hard is not a bad thing.

It's not something to be looked down on. Instead, it's the thing that God commanded his people to do all throughout history. And so we'll look at that even a little bit at the end as well.

And he says, you do these things. You lead a quiet, peaceful life. You mind your own business, and you work with your own hands.

He says, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.

He says, there is a city all around you that already ran out, Paul and Silas and Timothy, and they are evaluating the truth of Christianity by the lives that you guys are living.

And so, will you allow Jesus' work ethic to live through you so that when people see you, they go, man, there is something about these Christians. They are not flying off the handle. They are kind.

They are not busy bodies. They are not meddling in the affairs of others.

They are just hard workers, and they keep loving each other, and they keep inviting us to know this God that they worship now, when they used to worship all the same idols as everyone else in this city. There is a new change.

So this is Paul's admonition. He says, I need you to show Jesus to everyone.

15:19

Love for Believers

Just have two main thoughts for today. The first of these is how to share Jesus' love with spiritual siblings. I want you to look around the room today.

I know that not every person in this room is the same age. I know we've got a couple of people in their 90s, some even with birthdays this week. So that's super cool.

And we have people in here in their 20s. We've got even baby Jack hanging out. And we have people of all different ages from all different walks of life.

But what we have here in this room are our spiritual brothers and sisters. I didn't see Ollie back there. I don't want you to think I'm neglecting Ollie.

What's up, big guy? Good to see you. As we look around this room, we have our spiritual brothers and sisters.

And as with physical brothers and sisters, sometimes we butt heads. Should we? No.

Do we? Yeah. So what does Jesus have to say to us about these?

Well, let me stop first. I know I'm mainly preaching to the choir here, but I do want to remind us of that gospel message that Jesus, 2,000 years ago, seeing our broken condition as humanity, that we were not in relationship with God.

From our oldest ancestors, Adam and Eve, all the way down to us today, we have walked away from God. We have not said or done or thought the things that are good.

Instead, we embraced sin, which is anti everything that God is in his character, in his nature, in his laws, in his word. And as a result of that, we were headed towards sin and destruction and death and hell.

But Jesus, loving us, came and he lived a perfect life. He died on the cross in our place, taking our punishment, the death that we deserved. He was buried.

Three days later, he rose again from the grave, and he calls on every person everywhere to repent of their sin and to believe in him alone for salvation.

As we do that, we get his perfect righteousness, that great track record that he had here on earth. He applies it to our, if you will, ledger before Almighty God.

And as a result of this, we are freely and totally forgiven forever, so that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

So Jesus taught us how to love one another by what he did, living and dying and raising for us, caring for us and forgiving us, and instructing us in the way that we should go. I don't want to ask you today.

I never want to assume, especially in a room of this size, that every person has called on Christ to be their Savior and their Lord. If that's not something that you have ever done, I would invite you, please talk to me after the service.

Would love to open the Word of God and show you how you can know that you have the love of Jesus secure forever. So how do we share that same love with our spiritual siblings?

First, we need to listen to the Holy Spirit through His Word, His presence, and His people.

Taking this thought from the phrase that Paul says, Thessalonians, you don't even really need me to teach you this because you are taught by God to love one another. And through the Holy Spirit, we learn how to love others.

God has not made it a mystery of what it means to love other people. However, if someone were to ask one of us, How have you shown love to Joyce or to Fay or to Mary this week?

How many of us would have an answer for the way that we expressed love to them? Love, contrary to the song, is not a second-hand emotion. It is an intentional action that erupts from a heart filled with Jesus' love.

Can I ask you today, what actions or words of love do you read in the Bible that you can give to others? The Word of God is the voice of the Spirit speaking through the apostles and prophets of old.

If you want to be taught by God, read through the scriptures. As you sit in these chairs today, what person is the Holy Spirit shouting into your soul that you need to love through your words or your actions this week?

The Spirit's presence in you can lead you in the way that you ought to go. And what needs are you hearing about in our church family that you are wanting to meet?

The Spirit, he speaks through his word, he speaks to your own soul as he lives inside of you, and the Holy Spirit speaks to us through his body, the church.

There are people that need meal trains, there are people that might need a ride, there are people that might need a lawn work or something done, even as fall approaches. In what ways are we listening to hear, how can we concretely love people?

Now, not all of us will be able to do everything for everyone. That's why we have to listen to the Spirit, because I could try and put a guilt trip on all of us to be like, okay, look around the room today. We got a whole lot of us in here right now.

You have to show God's love to every single person in this room this week. We would have no time for anything else, and I don't even know if we would get to everything.

But God doesn't say you have to show his love in full to every person all of the time. But there is at least a person that you and I are called to love this week. Who is it going to be?

How are you going to show them God's love? Secondly, today, we learn how to share Jesus' love with siblings, with our spiritual siblings, by choosing to love other Christians beyond our comfort zone.

I love that the Thessalonian believers, they didn't just love the people in Thessalonica, they loved the people in the entire region of Macedonia. I love this quote from Mark Howell that I read earlier this week.

Genuine love flows directly from a genuine relationship with God. A church might have all the necessary ingredients to do church, but if it lacks love, it is not being the church.

We cannot expect the people on the outside to come in if the people on the inside do not love each other in such a way that their faith shines out. It's all good, bud. I'm right there with you.

I'm tuckered out too. Start a fall. I get it.

For those of you that maybe have been here at Tabernacle for a long time, can I ask you, what new people at Tabernacle do you know that you have shared a meal with or that you pray for regularly?

For those that are new to our church, what people at Tabernacle that aren't new, that have been here for 10 or 20 or 40 years, have you invested in by caring for them and getting to learn their stories?

We won't all be able to know everyone at the same level, but we should always be trying to get to know or love someone new. Choose to love other Christians beyond your comfort zone.

I also think here as it extended from Thessalonica out to the greater region, Mark Howell again had a comment, our love for our church is not enough. We must love God's church.

Wanted to ask this, if Tabernacle is the only church family that you've ever been a part of, would you raise your hand? Yeah, so we have like five or six.

For most all of us, other churches, other pastors, other teachers have influenced us and brought us to the place where we are today. Are you grateful for those people and those ministries? Were those other churches perfect?

Certainly not. Are you and I perfect? Certainly not.

May we not only love the believers in Thessalonica, our home church of Tabernacle, but may we also love those churches in Macedonia, the churches all across Baltimore and Maryland, Delaware, and from wherever else we came from.

Love other Christians beyond your comfort zone. And third, pursue ways to be even more loving to those around you. Can I ask you, today, are you loving your spouse, your kids, your family, your church?

That all by itself is a very tall order. Yet what we're commanded to do is to be even more loving. How in the world could we manage that?

By the Holy Spirit's word, presence, and his people. Can I ask you, in what ways can you escalate your love and care for others this week? If you have been loving, tremendous.

What ways can you do that even more this week?

24:35

Witness to Outsiders

And secondly today, not only do we love our spiritual siblings, but then we represent Jesus to the outside world. And here we are told to make it our lofty goal.

It's to seek, it's make it your ambition, your lofty goal to be peaceful, orderly, and humble. We love the bombastic and the flashy, but God loves the simple and the ordinary. I want you to think about the fact that Eden was a garden.

It wasn't a giant city that God set up. It was a simple garden. When you have Jesus and his life here on earth, the vast majority of his life was not spent teaching and preaching and discipling.

Most of his life was spent as the son of the carpenter. He was a woodworker, and that's how he spent the majority of his life here on earth. Do we need to realize that the work that we do is not unimportant just because it's not flashy?

That everything that you do, even just in caretaking for your home, if you're retired, or loving your spouse, things like these are so important. I love one quote that I read this week.

Christianity should never be separated from daily routine and obligations. It finds its most eloquent expression in the common traffic of commerce, farming, nursing, construction, and all other forms of work.

Your walk with Jesus is meant to bleed into every other area of your life. God desires that we live a life that is so different from the chaotic, emotional whirlwind that we see every day in the world.

When we're chaotic and wild, we are not mirroring God and His work, the one who organized all creation in the cosmos in six days. When we choose to be peaceful and orderly, everyone in our lives benefits, including us.

I also loved this quote from the pastor. It is easy to get carried away in spiritual excitement and emotional issues, but we must purposefully aim toward balance and calm. When people have a conversation with you, is it peaceful?

Is there shouting or panic and fear or anger or rage? What would happen if every time that people interacted with you and I they found the peaceful presence of Jesus in every conversation?

Secondly, representing Jesus to the outside world, we make it our lofty goal to be peaceful, orderly, and humble, and we don't be a busybody in the lives of others. This is coming from the phrase, mind your own business.

Pastor Mark Howell said this, nothing is more disruptive to the unity of a church than a nosy individual who desires to know every detail of another person's life, and few things present a more distorted view of the Christian faith than a group of

Christians who make it their business to get in everyone else's business. I want to challenge us. If it doesn't change anything about our life, our finances, our health, may we not meddle in the lives of others. Being a busy body isn't discipleship.

It's gossip and trying to run someone else's race for them. Discipleship goes to a person with open transparency that you are inviting them into your life. Follow me as I follow Christ.

I want you to see me. Being a busy body attempts to control someone else's life without their request. So, how do we represent Jesus to the outside world?

We make it our lofty goal to be peaceful, orderly, and humble. We're not busy bodies in the lives of others. We mind our own business and the path that God has for us.

And then thirdly there, we embrace the work that allows us to bless, not burden others. The commentaries that I was looking at this week had just a wealth of quotations. So I'm going to mention a few of them to you guys here.

One pastor said, It is a mark of love to our neighbors, not to receive from them, but to impart to them. Ron Hutchcraft tells the story of meeting a woman from his church. Upon greeting her, he asked, What do you do for a living?

With a huge grin, she replied, Pastor, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ, cleverly disguised as a machine operator.

God gives us opportunities to work with our own hands, that we would not needlessly need to receive the kindness and generosity of others, but so that we can give kindness and generosity to others.

Pastor Albert Barnes in, I believe, the 1800s said this, There is enough in this world for everyone to do.

And the Savior set such an example of untiring industry in his vocation as to give each one of us occasion to doubt whether he be his true follower if he is not disposed to be employed.

If you will, Jesus was a hard worker, and we as the people of God who claim to follow him must also be hard workers as the Lord gives us the ability to do so. Another man said, If we are able to work, we are obligated to do so.

It is a Christian duty. Here is the rule. If we can't work, the Christian community is beholden to help us.

If we can work, we are beholden to help others.

Another statement was, if a man has no necessity to labor for himself and family, he should regard it as an inestimable privilege to be permitted to aid those who cannot work, the sick, the aged, and the disabled.

It's the duty of a Christian so to live as not to be dependent on others, unless he is made so by events of God's providence, which he can't foresee or control.

No man should be dependent on others as the result of idle habits, of excessive spending and lack of planning, of the neglect of his own work, and of wasting his time by meddling with the work of others.

If by age, losses, or sicknesses a man is made dependent, he cannot be blamed, and he should not be grieved at what God has given him.

I loved these thoughts because it reminded me of the fact that being able to work, being able to put effort into the places that God has placed me and my family, it is a wonderful privilege.

There are people all around this country, there are people even in our cities, that wish that they could have some of the opportunities that you and I have.

For those of you that are retired, be so grateful that the Lord has given you the ability to be there at that point in your life right now. I know many people, even some of my friends, that wish that they could be retired at this point in their life.

So receive it as a good gift from God.

But as you're retired, if you, you know, you might not have riches that you can give to benefit someone else, but if you have a home that you can have other people over, you can bless and benefit the lives of others through what you do have.

But whatever God has given us, whether in the ability to work, if we perhaps have a home, if we simply have kindness, or the ability to pray for others, whatever God has given us the ability to do, we have a responsibility to use it to the fullest.

Today, we are called to show Jesus to everyone. We show Jesus' love, his overabounding love to one another and to those that we interact with that maybe don't know Jesus yet.

It's not like, okay, we gotta really love Alex, and we gotta like hate the cashier that doesn't know Jesus yet and be like, oh, what's wrong with you?

No, no, we're to show Jesus' love, yes, especially to the household of faith, but then to all that we interact with just as Jesus modeled for us.

And as we are encountering a watching world, may we live a peaceful, calm, orderly life, that when people interact with us, it's interacting with the peace of Jesus, that we're minding our own business, staying in the lane that God has for us, and

that we work for as long as the Lord gives us the ability to do so. Today, however God's spoken to you, I hope that you would aspire to Jesus's example of over abounding love and unobtrusive diligence.