Don't Stop Now

Notes
Transcript

Introduction

This morning we talked about how we, as Christians, are called to love other people. There must be brotherly love in the body of Christ and it must continue to exist both inside and outside our church.
Some people, wrongly, think that churches are places that only care about the people inside their walls. Sadly, there are some churches where this is the case. There are some churches that are full on Sunday but they do nothing in their community the rest of the week. They are alive but they are dead. As a church, we know that our responsibility is to share the Gospel and to love others. This has always been the responsibility of the church and it will remain to be our responsibility as well! Not only are we to talk about loving others, but our actions must back this up!
It is one thing to tell someone that you are a Christian, it is another to live that out in your life by your actions as James 2 talks about. We know that words matter but that actions speak even louder. It is a privilege to serve with a group of believers who understand that reality and desire to serve others! Truly, this is a great and beautiful thing. As we see in Scripture, the early church understood this to be their purpose. To love and serve others. This must be our purpose as well. Not that we would be “good” but that we would be Godly. God wants you and I to be like Him. This requires us to be sanctified and Sanctification requires us to get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit go to work!
As we do this, we begin to be changed from the inside out. This process starts the moment that you become a Christian and it will continue each and every day until you pass away and meet Jesus face to face. So, what will you do as you live in the time in between those two moments? Will you coast or will you continue the fight the good fight. Here at Morgan Baptist Church, as we continue our study of 1 Thessalonians, let’s commit to not stop loving our community and sharing the Gospel message.
1 Thessalonians 4:9–12 CSB
9 About brotherly love: You don’t need me to write you because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. 10 In fact, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, 11 to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, 12 so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.

Leave a Legacy of Love (9-10)

As we touched on this morning, there must be brotherly (Philadelphia) love in the church. In a world where people are, in general, unloving towards others and where many churches are more well-known for splits and fights, brotherly love is incredibly important for us to live out. There certainly are challenges to loving others because people are people! With that in mind, though, whenever we as Christians share the love of Christ with others, it shows and other people will reap its benefits.
In verse 9 we see that these believers don’t need Paul to write about the importance of brotherly love because they are taught by God to do this! What an interesting opening statement. What does this exactly mean? Consider what Warren Wiersbe says, “Fish don’t attend classes to learn how to swim. Birds by nature flap their wings in order to fly. It is nature that determines action. Because a Christian has God’s nature, he loves because God is love.” It is impossible to love unconditionally if you do not know the God of the Bible. You can love a lot, but God is the only teacher when it comes to love. Love would not exist without God! Because of this, until we come to know God and His love, we will never love as we are called to. Maybe you’re skeptical and wondering, “Are you saying that a non-Christian can’t love someone else?” Of course not. They can have an eros, storge or philadelphia love towards someone, but they cannot know and live out Biblical, unconditional love towards someone because they haven’t experienced that themselves because they have rejected God.
So, if we don’t learn how to love from a person, who do we learn it from? We learn this from God and as Christians, from the Holy Spirit who lives inside of us! The moment that we become a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us and convicts us and changes us. Because of this, we are literally taught by God how to love. So, whenever we think of loving people we would all agree that some people are easier to love and others are harder, would we not? I can think back to some people in my life who were easy to love. It’s easy to love friends and family. It’s easy to love people who think like I do. It’s harder to love people who don’t think like me or who are from a different city or who like different things than I do. In high school, it was easy to love people from Ozark and it was harder to love people from Nixa because that was a huge rivalry that I grew up in. As hard as I tried to, it was hard to love those people!
Maybe you’ve experienced this to be true as well. You try as hard as you possibly can but you just can’t get yourself to love someone or a group of people. If this is you, be encouraged but also be warned. You are not able to love everyone based on your own ability. It’s impossible. Try as hard as you might, but you can’t do it. So what do you have to do in order for this to happen? You must yield to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to take control! If we are not first filled by the Holy Spirit, we will undoubtedly fall short in loving others effectively.
So we must love others and we must follow the Holy Spirit’s guiding as we go about this process. Why does love matter so much, though? Have you been to a church where the preaching, music, and teaching were all solid but there just seemed to be something missing? As someone who traveled with my parents a lot as a child, we always went to church wherever we were vacationing or traveling to. This was an awesome experience for me because I have worshiped in just about every context that you can imagine! In visiting other churches, though, every church is a little different. What I remember from those churches, aside from the different preachers, was the congregation and how some were hospitable and loving and others were cold and unloving towards strangers. Friends, how we respond to others matters greatly! We must be loving and this love must be genuine as it flows directly from our relationship with God. Consider what Jesus talks about in John 15
John 15:5 CSB
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
If you are in Christ and abiding in Him, then you will bear fruit. In order for us to be the Church, we must be in Christ and we must love others.
What we see in verse 10 is that the reputation of this church extended far beyond Thessalonica as it extended throughout Macedonia! Their love was not just restricted for their local church, it extended to loving other congregations as well! I was reading a commentary earlier this week that asked a convicting question about this reality: Can we rejoice when the church down the street is experiencing revival and our church is not? We know that Christ is building His church and this extends to other congregations and countries besides our own local church. This was a church in Thessalonica that loved one another and also a congregation that loved other churches. Even though they were doing this, Paul comes alongside and says that he encourages them to do this even more!
Our application is simple: We must love those within our congregation and those outside of it. This includes those who attend other churches as we pray for them and we praise God whenever they experience revival and when the lost are coming to know Christ as Lord. Let us leave behind a legacy of love for our community and beyond!

Leave a Legacy of Work (11)

Many people in our world view work as something awful. Regardless of what their work looks like, work is looked at as a negative thing by many people. Some people live with the mindset that you don’t talk about work away from work. I’ve had interactions with many people like this! Likewise, I’ve also had conversations with people who view church in the same light. You do church at church and when you’re not at church, you don’t have to do church. Church is restricted or compartmentalized into an hour or two each Sunday and that’s it’s box. It doesn’t effect the other 166 hours in the week!
If this is how we live our lives, if church is a box that we only tap into 1-2 hours each week, what will that do to our witness? It will completely destroy it. We must let our faith in Christ shine through as we live our lives. Paul makes the point that our work is a place where we can do this as well. Did you know that your job is a wonderful place to share the Gospel? Think about whatever it is that you do. Either as a teacher, farmer, contractor or even as a retired person, you are not primarily that thing. Primarily you are a disciple of Jesus Christ! Therefore, whenever you live out your life in light of that reality, everything changes.
In context of 1 Thessalonians, there was a temptation for some people to stop working altogether because they were convinced that Jesus Christ was going to return. Paul talks about this reality in 1 Thess 4:13-5:11 and we know that the return of Christ is a great hope and comfort for us! However, there can also be a temptation with the return of Christ. The temptation for these believers was to stop working. Truly, some people as we will look at in 2 Thessalonians 3 in a few weeks, Lord willing, stopped working and were idle! You could say that they were coasting and being slothful as they awaited the Lord’s return. Some quit their jobs and were smooching off of other people in the congregation. That’s not how we are to operate! We are to work faithfully and hard with whatever occupation we have. You spend far more time at home or at work than you do at church. Because of this, you leave behind a legacy of hard work and you can share the love of Christ with what you do at home and at work!
We know that many people like getting into the business of other people and verse 11 also touches on this reality as Paul notes that believers should mind their own business. Does this mean that we shouldn’t check in on other people and help hold one another accountable to what the Bible shares? Obviously we should do those things! What is Paul addressing here? Don’t be like TMZ or whatever Gossip magazine is found at the check out lane in the local grocery store. Rather, lets be more concerned with how you and I steward what God has entrusted us with that we don’t have the time to be concerned with others. Don’t be lazy - work hard!

Fulfill your Purpose (12)

Finally, in verse 12 we see that we must behave properly. What does this mean? Does this mean that there is a way that Christians should behave? On one hand, yes! But it is even more than that. God never intended for His church to be isolated from the world, and God also never intended for His church to be dependent on the world. There is a balance to strike here. We must be in the world and we must be careful not to depend on it! What has Christ done for us
1 Peter 2:9 CSB
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
We are instructed to behave properly in the presence of outsiders and share the Gospel! To proclaim the praises of the one who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light! Friends, this is extremely important and this is at least a purpose for all of us - to share the Gospel message with those outside the church. We do this with words, certainly, but we also do this with actions!
Peter notes this a few verses later
1 Peter 2:12 CSB
12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.
We must share the good news and our lives must be conducted with honor and our actions should glorify God. Not only do we do this, but we also must be careful not to be dependent on anyone. Again, consider the context of this letter and this church. People were considering quitting their jobs in hopes of Christ coming back immediately. This is a great hope that we all should have in the back of our minds, but we also know that we are responsible to be hard-workers and not depend on others to do what we can do ourselves

Conclusion

There is a temptation in our text for some to stop working and to coast. Friends, this same temptation exists for us as well! We must not rest on our laurels and past accomplishments. We must continue to share the Gospel and tell others about the love of Christ while living a life that shares the love of Christ as well. Friends, if we belong to Christ, we must allow the Holy Spirit to rearrange our lives in such a way that allows us to not necessarily try harder but instead to yield to His plan and calling in our lives. Consider how you can do a better job of yielding to the Holy Spirit this week as you genuinely love on others and share the Gospel message with them in word and in deed!
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