Sermon Transcript
Well, let’s take our Bibles out this morning and look again at a study we’ve been doing through the book of 1 Thessalonians. And if you haven’t been with us, we’re in chapter 4 now. Last week, Dan did an outstanding job of helping us understand the importance of sexual morality, sexual purity. I so appreciate what he shared last week, and I was so encouraged by it as I watched it through last night, able to go online and just enjoy everything that he taught there. But today we’re in chapter 4, verses 9 through 12, and I just want to encourage you to open up a Bible or use the message notes or the Bible in front of you or your app or whatever you’re going to use to follow along this morning.
This is another study in the book of 1 Thessalonians on the subject of love. This is about the 5th time this subject comes up, which is fascinating because you think, you know, well, didn’t you already talk about this a couple other times, and so shouldn’t that already be enough? But he obviously feels otherwise, that it was necessary for him again to come back to the subject of love, and this one regards brotherly love, as you’re gonna see there in chapter 4, verse 9, brotherly love, which is the love that we share. So I’d like you to think about this from the perspective of the love that you would have as family members. So your family, think about your family.
Maybe you have various brothers and sisters. I don’t know how many are in your family. Mom, dad, whatever your family structure is right now or has been in the past, you can look at the home life that you grew up in and recognize that it was imperfect. Every one of our homes is imperfect. We aren’t perfect in love and loving each other.
We are love-challenged. Sometimes there’s a member or 2, or maybe it’s all the family, I don’t know, that are just hard to love, you know, hard to get along with. And so the parents are constantly saying, you need to learn how to live with your brother. You need to learn how to work things out. You need to learn how to share the things that you’ve been given.
So all of that oftentimes is a part of the family structure, right? And sometimes there’s an individual in a family who is just constantly a problem. Let’s call him Peter, okay? There’s a Peter kind of person in the family who is constantly spouting off what he thinks, is disagreeable, is opinionated, whatever you want to say, kind of like Peter the Apostle. Now, if you know the story of Peter the Apostle, you know that Jesus chose Peter to be among his apostles and to be in his family, in his family, his forever family.
Peter was not perfect, we know that. We know that Peter had an opinion about a thing or two, that he oftentimes shoved his opinion into circumstances that even conflicted with Jesus. You might remember on One occasion Jesus was talking about his coming death and the suffering that he was going to go through, and Peter took Jesus aside and tried to straighten him out. If you remember the account, he basically told him, Lord, that can’t happen. You got to understand, you know, this is not the kind of thing that should happen to somebody like you.
And you may remember that Peter straightened— excuse me, Jesus straightened Peter out and told him, get thee behind me, Satan. So it was a strong correction. You may remember on another occasion where Jesus was talking about the death that Peter would ultimately face, a martyr’s death. He didn’t like that, so he turned around, kind of like, you know, the father telling his son what was going to come in the future, and the son didn’t like what it was that he heard and felt justice should be done for the other family members. And so you say, so what about John?
What about him? And that was exactly what Peter said. Well, what about John, one of the other apostles? And Jesus said, you know what, Peter, that’s none of your business. It really is none of your business.
What I’m concerned about is that you continue to love me regardless of what happens in your future. That was Peter. Peter was just a challenge in God’s family, but there’s always a Peter. It seems like, and if it’s not in your family, there’s always a Peter in the church, or there’s always a doubting Thomas in the church, or there’s always a James and John. You know what those guys were called?
The sons of thunder. They were the guys, you know, they were sent into a city to share the gospel with them. The people rejected them. They came back and said, Lord, you know what you need to do because they’ve rejected the gospel is you need to call down fire out of heaven on them. Wouldn’t you say those guys had the missionary heart?
Not exactly, right? But they were a part of the team. They were a part of Jesus’ family. They were a part of his forever family. They were a part of ultimately what would be the church.
And so in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, we come to this interesting passage where again Paul talks about the need for the love that we have for each other, the need for that love to grow. More and more. So this is what he says, and as we read through this, don’t let this just sit in, you know, Thessalonica and say, yeah, that would have been something really good for them. But look at what is said here and consider this in light of your relationship with other members of God’s family, other members of the church family, and whether or not these qualities that he’s driving toward are playing out in your life and in my life as well. So, this is what Paul says, now about brotherly love, and just to understand, when he uses the terms here, brotherly love, he’s talking about Philadelphia, or you get— remember the city of Philadelphia.
Phileo is the Greek term that’s used here. So, what you have here is a description of the love that this family, this church family, would share with each other. So he says, now about brotherly love, and he’s just finished talking about sexual purity. He moves from that subject then to this one. So he’s gonna move from, if we’re talking about sexual purity, we’re talking about eros kind of love, and where does that land, and our perspective on all of that.
That was the subject last week. But now about brotherly love, about filial love, this love relationship that we have for each other. There’s something that needs to be said about it, he says. He says, we don’t need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And the second love there, that word to love each other is another term, it’s the word agape.
So he’s saying that this brotherly love that you share with each other should result in agape love toward each other, agape being a sacrificial love. So he’s already used 2 different terms here, and basically this follows what he talked about last week with regard to the other term, eros, Erotic love. So he goes on and he says, and in fact you do love, agape, all the brothers throughout Macedonia, yet we urge you brothers to do so more and more. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. Now obviously what Paul is saying here is that I don’t really even need to write to you and talk to you about this because you’re not ignorant on the subject of love.
You already know that God wants you to love each other. As family members, you already know that God wants you to love each other because he himself has taught you. You see it there? They’ve been taught by God to love one another. You say, how would that happen?
Well, the scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures constantly talk about a relationship of love. Among God’s people. Secondly, as Dan again helped us last week seeing the passage before this passage, if you go back to verse 8, as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we should long to live lives of moral purity, but as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit, we should also long to live lives that are loving toward each other. So God teaches us, in fact, if you know that the Christian life is a life that we can’t live alone, having begun by the Spirit, do we think we’re gonna be perfected by the flesh? We can’t live this life alone.
We need the word of God and the work of God to work in us and change us. And so he’s recognizing the fact that God has been working in them to change them into being people of love in greater ways than they are right now. The fruit of the Spirit is what? It’s, what’s the first virtue there? The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace, and there are 9 virtues that are found there.
So the Holy Spirit, the work of God in people, is going to draw us to love each other in greater ways than we love each other right now. So Paul is just recognizing, you know what, I don’t even have to tell you this because you already know this, and not only do you already know this, you’re actually practicing this. And you notice where they’re practicing this kind of love? They’re practicing it with the brothers throughout Macedonia. So they’re practicing this Christian love in this relational way toward other Christians that are living all throughout Macedonia.
So not just in Thessalonica were they experiencing this kind of love, but it was being practiced through this region, or we might say, you know, it was not only happening at the church here at Bridges Community Church in Los Altos, but it was happening throughout the state of California, that our love was going out and impacting the state of California. So all of that is to say, hey listen, you guys already know about this love, You’re already practicing this love, it’s making an impact on others, but I’m gonna urge you to love even in greater ways than you’re loving right now. Now, before we get to that, just first understand that this singular command that he’s focused on here, this one command to love each other, is obviously a command that was central in Jesus’ teaching. John chapter 14, verse 12, my command is this, that you should love each other as I’ve loved you. This is my command, love each other.
It was not only central in Jesus’ teaching, it was also central in his disciples’ teaching, such as John wrote himself, 1 John 3:11, this is the message that you’ve heard from the beginning, that we should love each other. So we need to be people who love each other, and when that love is happening in the lives of people, one of the best things we can do is just commend it in others, we see it in you, and we can celebrate that. Before Paul gets to a charge here, an additional charge to grow in love, I just want you to see that he’s commending them for the love that’s already existent in their lives. He’s celebrating that, and I think that’s really important to see the sequencing of this because sometimes when we have something we wanna help a person grow in, we could just jump to the area that we wanna help them grow in without celebrating the good things that are already happening. Hey, you’re doing great in school, you really are.
I could see some really wonderful things happening. There are good things that you are doing that are making a difference in your GPA or whatever it is. I could just, in other words, we celebrate that before we get to the, but you could do better. Do you see it here? This is a way to be able to say, you know, there are great things happening, and instead of just jumping over here to, but there are better things that could happen, it’s let’s stop and commend those that are making progress in areas.
Let’s stop and commend them for the progress that they’re already making. So for instance, I got an email this week from Alba, and I didn’t really see it till yesterday because I was pretty much off email all week. Bernice and I were away, but I looked at this email and it said to those who had participated in the ministry of Family Fun Night, those who had helped with Family Fun Night, she just said, hey, I think it would be great if we would just celebrate some of the things that God did at Family Fun Night, and so would you just take some time, she encouraged everybody on this email, She encouraged them, would you just take some time and write down a few things, and if you want, you can actually come to the church in the lobby, and maybe you guys have seen that board out there, and it has some notes on it and other things. You could come to the church lobby, and you could just put ’em up there, or you could send those celebrative things to me, and I’ll make sure to get ’em on notes, and we’re just, let’s just celebrate, let’s just celebrate the good things that God did at Family Fun Night. Now is that a good thing to do?
Absolutely, are you kidding? I mean, what gets celebrated makes a difference in the lives of people and in churches. And so she’s doing something that can be so good for us to just take a moment and stop and say, what happened there? Well, I know one thing that happened, and now this is from the top of my list that I sent back to her, is that it didn’t rain. It didn’t rain during the event, right?
I mean, it’s like raining all around the event and all so forth, but it didn’t rain, thank God. God, he did it again, you know, and of course, why would we not think that he’s gonna do it again whenever way he wants to do it, right? I mean, it was an amazing night, and I wrote down on my list, and it was just fun, you know, Family Fun Night lived up to its name. It was fun, it was a fun event. People were laughing, and we were all having a good time.
Now, she could have written a note that said, you know what, there were a couple good things that happened, and let’s just talk about the things we’re gonna fix for next year. But she didn’t do that. And I just want you to notice that with regard to what Paul is trying to say here is that yes, we want to be a church and you need to be a church where I urge you to love each other more and more. But let’s don’t miss the fact God’s already doing something great. He’s doing something great in our midst and we celebrate that.
So having pointed that out, then he moves into 3 practices, 3 practices that evidently were areas of weakness in the church, and he urges them in these 3 areas to grow, to have more and more love toward each other, to be more loving and to be more lovable in these 3 areas. In fact, do you notice in verse 11 he says make it your ambition? I mean, it ought to be our ambition, it ought to be your ambition to put some effort and some energy into these 3 areas. And here are the 3 practices. Number 1, live a quiet life.
Live a quiet life. Don’t be a person who is loud and obnoxious. You know, consider other people. Be considerate of others who are around you, so don’t Don’t be that person who walks into a room and all of a sudden you take over in the room and you’re spouting off your opinions and, you know, you want people to listen to what it is that you have to say. This is just the opposite of that.
Be a person who’s considerate of others, who’s listening more to others, who’s talking less, who doesn’t need to show off, who doesn’t need to make a name for themself, who’s happy being behind the scenes. Now, some of us that are sitting here this morning, they just say, well, that’s just me. Good, you’re doing well, you know, continue to excel in that. But there are others that are here this morning like, this is a challenge for me, especially in the area of laughter. I love to laugh, and there’s a considerate way to laugh in public settings, and then there’s an inconsiderate way to laugh in public settings.
And Bernice, for 40 years, has been trying to point this out to me, and I think I’ve made a little bit of progress, but I wanna tell ya, It still is, it’s a challenge just like other areas in my life are a challenge. I was sitting in a movie theater a couple years ago and the movie had started and there were some scenes that just were so, so funny and so I’m trying to, you know, tone it down, rhythm kind of thing. I’m just trying to keep my laughter not too crazy so that it’s inconsiderate of other people around me but there’s a lady that’s sitting 2 down from me and her laugh was so loud it was driving me nuts. I mean, it was really driving me nuts, that kind of a loud, loud, loud, loud laugh. And I remember after that went on for a little bit, I remember thinking, wait a minute, that must be how I sound.
That must be what Bernice has been trying to help me understand. That’s how I sound. It’s just so annoying. It’s just annoying. And I sat through that entire movie.
I don’t even know if I got much out of the movie. I got more out of her laughter, which was driving me crazy, in that it just revealed an area of weakness in my life. Do you see the point here? It doesn’t mean you can’t laugh, and it doesn’t mean you can’t express your opinion, and it doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion. It just is a, be considerate of other people.
Live a quiet life.
By the way, can I just point one thing out there?
Yesterday I’m in the airport and there’s this woman a table away. I don’t know why, you know, God just does these things so that I get these lessons. But anyway, there’s a woman a table away and she’s on a phone call, but she’s not really on the phone call alone, you know what I mean? She’s on the phone call for everybody who’s right there in that general area to hear the phone call. In other words, she wasn’t living a quiet life.
She was taking the phone call on speakerphone without any headphones, okay? On speakerphone, so every one of us in that general vicinity were a part of this conversation, even though we did not want to be a part of the conversation. And you just want to say, could you just consider others, please?
Live a quiet life. He secondly says, mind your own business. Now that’s fascinating. Why are you sticking your nose into other people’s business? Why are you a busy, what do we call this?
A busybody, yeah. Why are you a snoop? Why are you always asking intrusive questions? Why are you so controlling? Why do you have to know everything?
What did you do then? And what did you do then? And then after that, what did you do? And then what did you do? And what did they say?
And do you ever have this problem when somebody gets a text message and you just are dying to know what it is, but it has nothing to do with you, it has nothing to do with your business, you know what I’m saying? But you wanna know what it is, so you say what? So I see you got a text message. Who just sent you a text message? Well, what did they say?
And I think at this point in time, you know, this might be a helpful passage for some of us who have a problem with this. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 11. You can just say that to your friend. 1 Thessalonians 4:11, mind your own business. You know, stay out of my business right now.
You know, some of us as parents are gonna really struggle with this one. There is an appropriate place for being informed, but there’s not an appropriate place for being intrusive. And there’s an appropriate place for caring, but there’s not an appropriate place for controlling.
And that’s what he’s getting at here. You know, if we’re gonna experience more love in our relationships, part of that is minding our own business, and the third thing here is working for a living. This is addressed to people who are lazy and people who are unproductive and irresponsible and they’re unwilling to get out and do the job, whatever the job is. And of course at that time it was all about manual labor, working with your hands, working with some effort and just giving your best. And evidently in this church there were people that were just sitting around.
I mean, it could be in our culture today, they just sit around all day and they play video games Or they sit around all day and they watch soap operas and eat bonbons and whatever it is, they just don’t do anything. You know, he’s saying, no, you need to take the life that God has given you and be productive with it and do the very best that you can through your labor. Become a person who is responsible. Now, why would Paul focus on those 3 practices? Any idea?
It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? It’s because it was a problem in the church. It was a problem in this family, this church family. And so he’s saying, listen, you know, you need to quit being so obnoxious with each other. You need to quit being intrusive into each other’s lives.
You need to quit living unproductive lives. Now can you imagine what good would come out of this? Just take the quiet one. All right, live a quiet life. Can you imagine the good that would come out of this if they or we were to take that charge and take it into our home, a home where we build a quiet life?
I mean, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun and laughter and all those sorts of things, but it’s just a picture of consideration of others, a place of refuge, a place of strength, of refreshment. You could come to this home and you wanna be there because it’s just a refueling place. In fact, when you think about going home, you’re thinking, man, I can hardly wait to get home because I just love the environment there. But in some cases, some people when they think about going home, they’re thinking about, I don’t really wanna go home right now because it’s just gonna be a lot of bickering and a lot of fighting and I just don’t wanna be there. And so they try to find some other things to do to occupy their time.
The Apostle Paul is hopeful that this church can experience a better relationship with each other in the future than the relationship that they had at that moment in time, and he gives them 2 incentives. You notice the so that’s in verse 12? He says, so that, now if you will grow in these ways in love, there are 2 so that’s there, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. What are those incentives? One, that you’ll have positive impact, so that your life will have a positive impact on people who are outside the faith.
Paul often talks about those who are outside of God’s family as outsiders. Not everybody who lives is a member of God’s family. There are those who are members of his family and there are those who are outsiders. He longs for these outsiders to become members of his family, and we get to participate in how that can happen by winning the respect of outsiders. And so hopefully the way that we live and the way that we love each other will win the respect of outsiders so that they will see that this Christianity thing really does work.
It is something that they want to know something more about. Hopefully they’ll come to a place where they’ll hear the gospel that Christ died on the cross for our sins, that our sins have separated us from God, that he longs to have relationship with us, and they come to receive the message that we have received, and part of the reason they receive the message is because they respect us as people. You see what he’s saying here? Outsiders might come to respect you and they might be won to Christ, they might be won to the faith. I had a conversation all week long with an individual who I asked early in the week to tell me a little bit about his spiritual beliefs.
That’s, as many of you know, that’s one of my favorite questions to ask somebody that I’m just getting to know. And so he had shared a little bit about his life and I said, well, tell me a little bit about your spiritual beliefs. He said, well, it’s not much of a story, it goes back to high school, and in high school I met a person who absolutely, it just blew me away from God. I wanted nothing to do with this person and I wanted nothing to do with God. And so since that time, I’ve had nothing to do with God.
Well, that’s just the exact opposite of what he’s talking about here, isn’t it? A person who evidently in no way won his respect because of his Christian life. In fact, if it was a Christian life or just a religious life or whatever it was. I asked this guy this week, Gary, I asked him later in the week, I said, you know, let’s go back and talk a little bit about God. Do you believe in God?
He said, I don’t know if I do or not. The fact of the matter is I don’t really care. And then he went off on track on some other things and he never came back to it again, and there was never another open door to talk about this with him this week, all because of an incident that happened in high school that pushed him away from God. And Paul is saying, we wanna win the respect of others, and one of the ways that we win the respect of others is by having a genuine love among us, a love that demonstrates itself in a quiet life and minding our own business, and a love that works for a living. Not only that, the second so that here is personal independence.
Again, comes back to that matter of not having to be dependent upon other people for support. See, it’s God’s desire that we grow up and we become independent in certain areas. You know, often we talk about the importance of dependence on God, But this is an area where there needs to be independence. We need to get to a place where we work for a living and we’re able to provide for ourselves. Now, I know that there are extenuating circumstances and other matters that oftentimes come into this whole problem, but the basic idea here nonetheless stands.
God has given us skills and he’s given us passions, he’s given us abilities, And he longs to see us be productive with the lives that he’s given us so that we don’t have to be dependent upon other people for support. And in being a person who uses those skills wisely, who does something with our life, then that has an impact on others as well. So Paul is saying here to the church at Thessalonica that has within it, you know, people that are difficult to love and hopefully others who are easy to love. He’s saying to this church, whatever, you know, the people are that are a part of this family, you just need to learn to love each other even more than you’re loving each other right now. Now, is that a fair charge?
Absolutely. Any of you feel like in your home you guys have got the love thing figured out, that hey man, we arrived, we’re there? No, probably not one of us. We all feel like, yeah, there’s room for improvement. So you can understand why Paul again, about the 5th time in this book, comes back to the whole matter of love to say we gotta continue to do all that we can to see God’s love grow within us, because if God’s love is growing within us, it’s going to have a greater impact, a greater impact among us.
This past week I heard about the death of a person who had a positive impact in my life when I was in high school. It’s just the opposite of this person that had this negative impact in the life of this person I met this week. This person who had a positive impact in my life was Etzel Cole. And Etzel Cole here just died a couple weeks ago. He lived a full life.
Wonderful man of God, but he was kind of like in your ministries, in the student ministries, he was one of those sponsors. He was one of those adults that came and he just loved on us, and his wife Connie Cole, she just loved on us. Edsel didn’t have biblical training, you know, he wasn’t like a seminary-trained person. He was just somebody who was there and he loved us and he taught us the Bible. I could still remember sitting in the high school youth room.
We had a high school youth room that wasn’t as good as that room, I’ll tell you that. It was a room where, you know, it was just a little square room and had dark paneled walls and we wanted to fix it up so we went down to the carpet store and got a bunch of carpet scraps and glued ’em on the floor. That’s the kind of thing you did back then. So anyway, we sat on our own seats scrap piece of carpet, and that was our youth room. But I remember that Etzel Cole used to sit against a wall because we all sat on the floor.
We thought that was cool to sit on the floor, but I remember Etzel used to sit on the wall and he would teach us from God’s Word. And it was during, I believe, my junior year of high school that my life finally got going in the right direction with God. And Etzel Cole was one of the reasons that that happened. It’s because of how God used him in my life because of the love that came through this man. His love for God and his love for others.
And so this past week, once word got out that he had died, there were a number of people who had been impacted by his life that were writing in Facebook, you know, just, memories of the way that he impacted his life, and I added mine. I think that’s, that’s what Paul’s going after here, don’t you? I think he’s going after a love in this family that ultimately impacts people in such positive ways that it impacts, it impacts the world. And you could be that Etzel Kolb.
You really could. You could be that to somebody that’s a part of your life right now. Might be somebody in your home. Certainly could be somebody in this church. Certainly could be somebody in this world.
Let’s pray together. Lord, thanks for this passage of scripture that again comes in this wonderful book where Paul’s trying to help these new believers grow in their faith. And certainly one of the areas that you long to see us grow in is the love that we have for each other. And so we pray that as we continue to contemplate that and we think about this amazing family that you’ve put together, none of us who deserve to be in this family and none of us who even in the family are perfect, far from it, who can be challenging to love, who oftentimes are just doing anything but minding our own business, doing anything but living a quiet life. And yes, even times we’re just lazy, we’re just flat-out lazy.
And so, Lord, we pray that as we think about the matters that were of concern for the church at Thessalonica and areas that they needed to grow in, that we might not only learn from those areas, but we might also be led by you to see other areas in our life where there are weakness and that we could grow in. We thank you for the progress that is being made even now in love with each other and with you. Lord, we celebrate that, but we don’t want to be satisfied with where we are. We long to grow to become more and more like Jesus Christ. And so we pray that you would allow that to happen in us and through us, and, and this church would be a magnet.
It would be a place where people come and they see Christ in and through us. They’re drawn to Jesus because of the relationships that we share. And Lord, I pray for anybody who’s here that doesn’t have a relationship with you, that even even today would be the day that they would say yes to a relationship with you. They would receive you as their Savior. If that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that.
Bible says if you’ll confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you’ll be saved.
Salvation is the result of coming to recognize we need a Savior. And receiving Jesus as your Savior, trusting him for salvation. We’d love to help you know more about that. Talk to us after the service. Lord, thank you that you hear us where we are in our relationship with you, and may you work in each one of us to draw us close to you.
Help us go out this week and live in ways that honor you. We pray that we would honor you through the election Pray, Lord, that you would lead each one of us to vote as we should in the sense that it would please you, whatever that means. God, may your will be done in this country. And we again thank you for our veterans. We honor them.
And we thank you, Lord, for what they have done to allow— to make it possible for us to have freedoms. And we rejoice in those freedoms. Lord, for all of this and more, we give you thanks today in Jesus’ name. Everybody said amen.
