First Thessalonians 4:1-3a_The_Worthy_Walk_General_Conduct
1 Thessalonians 4:1-3a · Roy Smith · Apr 25, 2021
Thessalonians, No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261922354651

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Today we're going into Lesson 13, as you see, and it's covering verses 1 through 3a of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Here's a small review. Tester McCulley wrote a commentary, and he wrote that 1 Thessalonians, well, I guess I'm having trouble saying it. The book can be divided into two parts, okay? how they received the word of God in Thessalonica, and second, how they must live the word of God in the second half of the chapter.

The first three chapters detail the exposition of the words, how you turn to God from idols to serve a living and true God. One of the most interesting things about this book is the way that God directed Paul to say that. He didn't say that they turned away from idols to turn to God. He said they turned to God from idols. Isn't that something? God was their impression that attracted them, and the idols were what was left behind once they found Him attractive.

Constable has written a commentary as well on 32nd Thessalonians, and he wrote that this half, the second half, is somewhat of a chiastic, a chiasm, if you will, a Hebrew form or structure. He says that the beginning of chapter 4 through verse 12 is Christian living. that the letter goes on talking about the rapture next, through verse 18.

And then the focus of the second half is personal watchfulness, chapter 5, 1 through 11. And a chiasm is a formation that repeats what has been covered going backwards. And so, coming backwards from chapter 5, 12-15, he talks about church life. And the last part is individual behavior. Chapter 5, 16-24. We're going to come back to this in a little bit. Let's read the text together.

I'm hoping that you brought your Bibles with you and that you'll open them with me. And look at this text, because I really sincerely believe it is looking at the words that the Holy Spirit speaks to each of us. I'm going to read first from the King James Version.

Furthermore, then, we beseech you, brethren, and it's your view by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us, how you ought to walk and to please God. so you would abound more and more for you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus for this is the will of God even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication that last phrase we're going to cover next week and onward Lord willing it is right there at sanctification that we're sort of ending our study this morning. I'd like now to look at the New American Standard Version, reading those same verses. Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort ye in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us instructions as to how you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immortality.

Anyway, I'm sorry. Let's look at the first part of the first verse. Finally, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus. The words here are a transition that begins with the urgency. It comes not just from Paul, but it comes also from the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what the ending of this verse has with the Lord Jesus.

He's doing this to them as brethren. He's requesting them. And indeed, he is urging them with the Lord Jesus. Notice here my personal translation. In addition, therefore, brethren, we are requesting you. Indeed, we are urging you with the Lord Jesus.

The second part is that as you receive from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and plead God, and that begins this phrase that just as in a life manner you receive from us the way, this is the manner that they were taught, the way of how they should walk. And notice the word is must here. This is appropriately a command, like giving an order to a military rank of soldier. And it's addressed to you that you be walking, that you be conducting, that you be managing your life. It is a step-by-step process. Indeed, I use the word indeed there because I think this is a sense of not just a conjunction that ties two things together, but this gives amplification to what he's talking about.

Our walk is to give pleasure to God. Isn't that something? I've spent a lot of time meditating on this, that I believe is the main emphasis here. That is his focus that he is being drawn to give to the Thessalonians from the Holy Spirit. My translation is that just as you receive from us the way that you must be walking, indeed be giving pleasure to God.

And now the last part of the verse, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more. This, just as, indeed, you are walking, is a phrase that's in the New American Standard Version. It's in the versions of North Africa, but it's not in the Texas Precepts, just so you know. But it's an amplification of this that says, this is the consideration that God has of the Thessalonians. that you are actually walking right now. And then it concludes with that you may be excelling more to a greater degree.

The emphasis here, I believe, is that Paul has a focus that our Christian walk is a step-by-step process that cannot end. There is no end. There is a greater degree always before us. In fact, there are passages that would indicate that in our eternity with our Lord, He's going to keep on revealing things to us about Himself. Isn't that something?

My literal here is just as indeed you are wanting that you may be excelling even more So he's requesting, he's exhorting you and the Lord Jesus, that just as they were instructed, and just as how you ought to walk is known, walk to please God, and that you excel still more.

In verse two, for you know what commandments we gave to you by the authority of the Lord begins with this phrase, you have come to know. This is knowledge based on fact, and it's perfect, active, which means you came to know in the past with abiding results. Four, two reasons are given for, and this is the what? Instructions or orders or pedagogical teaching, teaching that is beneficial we gave its factual this is a factual instruction teaching and it was to you personally and it was dia through or for the sake of or as the agent of another's authority and I'm using the phrase on behalf of the Lord Jesus they gave this instruction My literal rendering is, for you have come to know what instructions we gave to you on behalf of the Lord Jesus.

And now verse three. This is the will of God, your sanctification. That is, and this is the specific thing that he focuses on the next part of the verses, that you abstain from sexual immorality. for this expresses a cause or a reason. This is being the will of God. Notice the specificity. The God's will. This is His desire. This is His purpose. And then He... Oh. Okay. I guess I need to say I fell down this morning and it's bleeding here a little bit. I'm sorry folks. Going back to the verse.

This is the will or the design, the purpose of God, the sanctification. In blue I've put a sort of a summary here of what sanctification is. Sanctification carries the meaning of being set apart from evil or self-serving sin. with a focus on being set apart unto the purity of letting God reveal Himself through us.

And it is something that is personal. It is God's will that this is personal for each of us, just as it was for each of the Thessalonians, to be letting God reveal himself through us. And to be keeping away or abstaining from something, in this case, it is from sexual immorality. Every kind of extramarital or outside of God's design, sexually, of course. My literal rendering is, for this is being the will of God. the sanctification of you, that is, you to be keeping away from sexual immorality.

I'd like to look at this again from the angle here in a summary fashion of these three verses. I'm going to give you my literal translation here as well as, beginning here, the New American Standard, and finally, Weiss expanded translation in conclusion of this little review. I'm going to read Weiss.

Finally, therefore, brethren, I request you and I beg of you, please, in the Lord Jesus, and that even as you receive from us the particular way in which It is necessary in the nature of the case for you to be ordering your behavior and to be striving to please God, even as you also you are conducting yourselves, even as also you are conducting yourselves, that you superabound yet more and more. That's quite a word, superabound, isn't it? For you know with a positive assurance what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your being set apart from sin to holiness, that you should hold yourselves off from fornication.

There's a little review here that we got at the beginning. that Judd McCulley focused our attention on. The book is divided in two. First, how you have received the word of God up through the first three chapters. Second, how you must live the word of God in the second three chapters.

The worthy walk We are focusing on today the general conduct of it. Sexual conduct is our focus next week in verses 3b-8. Defectual conduct is verse 9-10. And social conduct is verse 11-12. All of that in chapter 4. focuses on the worthy walk that we must live, manifesting the true communication, the life of God himself. This is adapted from Jessica McCulley's commentary. Jessica McCulley gave us eight things to observe here in this audio.

Paul instructed these new believers in the Christian life immediately. As he received from us instruction, it says, in Acts 1-10, we noted it, and I won't go into the details here, but he was only there perhaps up to a month in length of time. So he delved right away into, once they believed, what the instructions were. on how to live the Christian life. The Christian life was presented not as an option, but as an imperative.

You must live this way. The word ought is a mandatory must, or an absolute necessity. And there's two references that he points to. First, in John 3, you must be born again, he said to Nicodemus. And in Galatians 5-16, it says, walk by the Spirit. and you won't fulfill the rest of the pledge. Both use the same word as is in our text here, indicating this is a mandatory imperative or command. God taught the how of Christian living, and he taught the how to do this right away.

He uses walking as a metaphor. This he uses to express how we are to live. And Jester gave us three other words that Paul uses when he writes about the Christian conduct and living. He uses standing as a metaphor of the believer's stability. Ephesians 6, 11 and following. Running for the believer's service.

1 Corinthians 9.26 and following, and seated for the believer's position in Christ, Ephesians 2 verses 4-7. I'll talk the proper motive for the Christian life, to please God, to give pleasure to God. The pleasure of God is the goal And in the text we saw that it is a direction that we give Him pleasure. That's His response. Wow! Paul taught the concept that this is an ever-increasing maturity, that you excel still more. You're doing well. I want you, and so does God, to excel Do more.

And the heart of this is Philippians 3.12 where he says, I press toward the mark of the calling of Christ Jesus.

He hasn't arrived there yet. But, isn't that something? Paul taught the Christian life in his unmistakable terms. He gave commands here. This is not an option. This is a must. And he taught the Christian life is what we are. We are the living representatives of Christ. It's not merely what we do. It's what God does for us.

Constable wrote this commentary and I'm going to go over it again because I think it has a key point for us to consider here. And I don't think I'm too far off in emphasizing this. I believe that God has given me this because it really blessed my heart and I'd like to share it with you.

There's Christian looming in evidence here in verses 1 through 12. There's the rapture in emphasis, the church being taken up into glory in verses 13 through 18. There's a personal watchfulness that characterizes us. And there's church life in chapter 5, 12 through 15. And then he goes right back to individual behavior, Christian living. in verses 16 through 24.

Only God can do this. Only He can put together an essay that reinforces itself with an emphasis on the personal watchfulness that He wants us to have as the center part of the second half of the letter to the Thessalonians. I just thought that was so magnificent I'm personally hearing that as a blessing that came to me and looking over this I am finding the more I read the epistles in their entirety before I teach the more I look up the words individually before I read a commentary the more the Holy Spirit opens my eyes now to see and also to be open to see what other men looking at those same things have seen.

One of the things that we already covered, I want to emphasize, this is the will of God, your sanctification. Notice the focus here, it's on God's will. This will is Philippians puts it in this way, He which has begun a good work with you will bring it to a conclusion. Isn't that something? It is our being the revealers of His glory that is being the focus here.

He sets us apart from or self-serving sin, to be his pure revelation of himself. I've grayed out the first verses here because we've covered this already, but I wanted you to see the six times in 1 Thessalonians, the hope on him and his coming. It concludes with this way in verse 23. Now may the God of Peace Himself sanctify you entirely, make you vessels that reveal Him, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus. How tightly has the Holy Spirit integrated into our focus on Him coming and our understanding that it is His life that He wills to reveal for us. Faithful, is verse 24, is He who calls you. This is what He has called you to. He also will bring them to pass. I reverberated over this, my own personal walk with the Lord, brought this question to my mind.

In these texts that we so far have been studying, what gave God's men here joy? What gave God's men here comfort? How did God minister both to them and through them? Well, I think first, the joy that the Thessalonians were showing God's life of purity. They were examples throughout the region. Second, that there's great comfort that God is or was coming again. These few verses teach us that it is God's will to reveal the glory of Himself through His creations, and we are part of His creation. We're His body, the truth, the called out from the world, called to reveal His perfection.

Folks, I don't have any more. That's it for today. I'm hoping that maybe we have some discussion or questions. It's a little early, but that's okay. So Roy, did you know the word sanctification? Uh-huh. I had looked through what McCauley talked about that. Did you notice his three aspects of that? Well, yes. There's the past aspect, and the present aspect, and the future aspect. Right.

He has set us apart in such a way that we are perfect in Him, complete. He is setting us aside from the world system to reveal Himself right now. And in glory, when He comes back, we will be perfect, we will be complete, because the sin nature in our bodies, tied to this old flesh, will be gone. And we'll have new bodies, absolutely pure, free from this invasion. So that we not only can enjoy Him, but we'll see Him as we are. We won't understand it, but also He will be totally enjoying us.

Isn't that something? Yeah. So, Roy, based on that, it's the middle one that he's addressing in verse 3, right? He's talking about our conditional sanctification. He's encouraging the Thessalonians to... Right. I didn't spend a lot of time talking about the word walk, but think with me on it a minute. Of all of the metaphors the Holy Spirit could have chosen, how does walk strike you?

Is it not a step-by-step process? We take one step by faith, and God reinforces what we experience through that, of Himself being revealed in that process. So that we have confidence to take another step in faith, in Him, in whatever He reveals through His Word. So He reveals Himself, not just through us, but to us. And we keep walking, ever excelling in the revelation as channels of blessing in this walk. I think, as a metaphor, walking is the perfect word to use, don't you? Yeah, Bob had a comment here. I can barely hear you, Bob, so speak up. Can you hear me now? Yeah, that's great.

OK, so when I was looking at this, the sanctification being in the will of God makes me think of kind of what is the will of God and the will of God, I think, is the conformist of the image of a son. Right. And so that sanctification process is working out that will. Right. I mean, and how does that happen?

It's not robotic. It's just not some mythical experience. It's in fact, by faith that we grow in grace and So I, you know, I don't think we, the will of God is, is clearly being conformed is consistent with being sanctified, set apart. And that's, that's a different life. So it's not what we do, it's who we are.

What are your thoughts about that comment? I think you just repeated what Joe McCauley sort of emphasized. Forgive my redundancy. That's all right. But if you remember, it is, he called the to be, not just to do. He called us to be His life before men, to be channels of blessing, so that He, when He speaks, could speak through us. But again, maybe we need to back off a minute.

This sanctification process is only part of His will. His will includes much more than that. Couldn't it say, His creation is vast? And we're going to get into that in the verses that come. I'm not delving into that with you this morning because these verses are focusing on His will for us as individuals.

And what an abundant blessing this is that He wants us to walk in this way one step at a time. But the bigger picture of sanctification, this bigger picture of His will, maybe better to say it that way, is that we be part of everyone responding to Him as being Supreme One, Master, Lord of all. And acknowledging Him for who He is, really. And in the process, magnifying Him so He receives glory from that too.

And the process will be after the millennium, a perfect world, a new world, in which perfection dwells, no more sin-making. And that's going to go on for a thousand generations! And then he's going to hand that perfection to the Father, and leave the administration of humanity, and join with the Father in deity-manifesting authority. I just, I can't I get prickly points when I think about those things, folks. I'm sorry if I bubble a little bit about that.

I'm not going to dwell on that because this passage is only a small part of that. But what a great part it is that we are His examples to the world of His creation, new and kind. We are His image on the earth now. Isn't that something? I'm sorry, folks, I just went on there a little bit. It's okay. I really get excited about this. Yeah. I want to say something, too, with your talking about the walking thing. Yeah. To me, that kind of speaks that it's a journey, too. It's not that you just walk somewhere and you stop and that's the end of it, but it's a continual journey that you're walking through.

And it's a process that is never going to end. It will go on and on and on into eternity. He will reveal Himself through us and to us. Looking forward to not having to send nature around to confuse us, right? Yeah, Roy, I think I've heard someone say it will take, since we have an infinite God, it will take an infinite time, if that makes any sense, to reveal himself. Right. It's not exactly, you know, totally logical, but anyway. Well, it does make sense. I mean, if we could only deal with, you know, parts at a time. You know, it's like with Moses and the in the burning bush, and it's like we couldn't deal with that. So, you know, he just shows us little pieces, you know, along the way.

If you overview read through the book, what gave Paul and Timothy and Silas joy? Two things. The believers were progressing. God was at work in their hearts. And they were responding positively to it. And two, they were, and so were the teachers here, comforted with joy that the Lord Jesus was coming back.

And he's going to get into that, okay? But he lays the foundation here, not with that he's coming back, but with his purpose to magnify himself, to reveal himself before humanity. That's his foundation. It goes on from that. Next week we're going to talk about the negative aspect, what we have been sanctified away from. Okay? We'll get into that. I'm looking forward to Andrew and Bob's teaching on the other aspects in the future too. I'm sorry about this old face of mine. I'd cut myself right here. I can't get up there with you this morning.

The thing that comforts us to some extent is that Paul, close to his death, writes that he's the greatest among sinners. So in a sense, you know, that view of what Christ has done and is in our lives really reflects on the flesh is not capable of being any better. It's in fact, a life led by the spirit. Again, I like to equate confirmation to the image with sanctification.

I think they're very similar. Okay? I 100% agree with you, Bob. I don't know how this works out in each of your thinking. I just know that it is God that does it and that He receives the glory from it. Isn't that wonderful? That's right. That's true. And it's a life. Yeah. I think it's about time maybe we close in prayer. Grateful to you, Lord, for the moments we've had together. Oh, how wonderful it's going to be to have eternity together. We thank you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.