Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: And so Paul warns us, as he warns these folks, listen, this is what I want you to excel at. This is where you maybe need to take a next step, being personally responsible for your life, taking care of your own affairs, providing for yourself, working hard, being a person of consistency and integrity, being personally responsible.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University.

Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Devotion. Let's listen as JP gives us part one of Take The Next Step.

JP Jones: If you've got your Bibles, would you open to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. We're going to continue in our study of this book, one of Paul's first letters written to a young church, a brand new church, and these words are timely for us today. And in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul is encouraging us, he's exhorting us, to take our next step as followers of Jesus Christ, wherever we might be in our spiritual journey.

This is what it says, 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1-12. "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how you ought to live in order to please God, as in fact you're living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. It is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that's holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God.

And in this matter, no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit. Now about brotherly love, we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love 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 own hands, just as we've told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody." Here in this passage, the Apostle Paul is addressing several issues, but the overarching theme is that we might excel more and more, that we might grow more and more, that we might continue to live out our faith more and more, that we might take our next step as followers of Jesus Christ.

Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you may be here this morning and you're curious, you're full of questions. The possibility and the opportunity of faith is intriguing to you, but you're not really sure what step you should make. On the other hand, you may be someone who's been a follower of Christ for years and you are deep in your conviction and your love for God. Wherever you may be, God has a next step for you. And God wants you to grow and to excel and to move towards Christ more and more and more.

Paul says in this passage that he's writing us about pleasing God. It says, "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God." Do you know that's the goal of life? The goal of life is to please God. Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that we make it our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. God desires that we live a life that pleases him, that we experience a marriage that pleases him, that our family pleases him, that our church pleases him.

And so he's writing in this book and in this letter truths, commandments, principles that will lead us to live a life that pleases God, to take our orientation off ourselves onto God and how to actually live and make decisions and pursue a life that brings God glory and brings God pleasure. Because the bottom line for me and the bottom line for you, for all of us, is this: Who or what is going to have authority in our lives?

Paul says this in verse 2: "For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus." Let me ask you a question. I don't anticipate a response, but I want you to think about it. Could you say with personal sincerity that you're living under the authority of Jesus Christ? You see, here's a picture I want us to understand. Let's assume that we were all in a dark cave; it was pitch black. And in this cave, there were holes that were like bottomless pits and there were jagged outcroppings of rocks that would cut and tear at us, and there were even creatures that would attack us in this cave.

But it's pitch black and we can't see anything. But someone on the other end of the cave has night vision goggles, and they can see everything. They can see where all the holes are, they can see where all the jagged rocks are, they can see where all the creatures are, and they're standing at the other end of the cave and they're giving us instruction. And they're telling us how to walk and where to step and when to turn to the right and when to turn to the left and when to stop and when to back up and when to go around something.

If we were in that scenario, we'd have a choice to make. And the choice would be: would we listen to the person who's giving us instruction or would we do our own thing? You see, if we were to do our own thing, we might have two responses. One might be that we're paralyzed by fear. The possibility of stepping into a hole, the possibility of running into a jagged rock, the possibility of encountering some kind of creature in that cave might be so terrifying that we would just be paralyzed with fear.

The other scenario might be that we think we know what's best for our lives, so we do our thing rather than the instructions of the person who has the night vision goggles. Do you realize that Jesus Christ knows why he created us? Jesus Christ knows what the best course of action is in life. Jesus Christ has a plan for our lives to bless us, and he gives us instructions and he gives us commandments, and we have a choice. Do we follow his authority or do we do our own thing?

Here in 1 Thessalonians, Paul is saying, "I'm speaking to you about life, about a life that pleases God, and I'm giving you commands, but they're not mine. They're commands that come under the authority of Jesus Christ." And if we want to live a life that pleases God, then we will excel more and we'll take our next step as followers of Christ. Now in this passage, in the first 12 verses, Paul addresses three areas in particular where he calls us to take a next step.

He calls us to take a next step in terms of personal holiness, he calls us to take a next step in terms of our love for one another, and he calls us to take a next step in terms of living a life of personal responsibility. I want to look at these areas and then look at some other scriptures that add some additional choices that God puts before us in terms of what our next step might be. And I believe this morning, wherever we are, we have a next step in our relationship with God.

Here's the first area: it's taking a next step in personal holiness. Paul says this, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8: "It is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that's holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God. And that in this matter, no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we've already told you and warned you, for God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life.

Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit." Notice the emphasis in this passage: being sanctified, living a holy life, being pure. God's call on our lives is a call to personal holiness. Now the word holiness is a great word in the Bible, here in the New Testament, it's the word hagios, to be holy, and it has both a positive and a negative idea.

Negatively, holiness means to be set apart from sin, set apart from the world, set apart from the old lifestyle. Positively, it means to be set apart to God, set apart to God's call on your life, set apart to God's plan for your life. You see, some of us come from backgrounds and traditions, or some of us superimpose an idea upon God that's all negative; it's all about don'ts. Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that.

So when we think about the idea of holiness, it's really a negative idea; it's just what are the things I gotta stop doing. Do you know God's call for you for holiness may not have anything to do with things you need to stop doing? It may be entirely positive, things you need to start doing to engage in a positive love relationship with Jesus Christ, things that you need to do to step into the good plan that God has for you, the positive call that God has on your life.

Holiness is about becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. Jesus is the most holy person who ever lived, and God has a strategy to make us holy. It's found in the person of the Holy Spirit. If you think about it, there are numerous titles in the Bible for God's Spirit. He's called the Spirit of life, he's the Spirit of grace, he's the Spirit of truth, he's the Spirit of forgiveness, he's the Spirit of hope. But do you know what title is used more than any other title in the New Testament for the Spirit? Holy Spirit.

It's actually a title because it is the job of God's Spirit to make us holy because that is his nature and his character. And God's intention in our lives as followers of Jesus Christ is that when we step over the line and surrender to Christ in salvation, he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and his job is to make us holy. He releases his life within us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And the sum total of the Spirit's life is holiness.

You've heard me talk about the fizzy principle. If you're around my age, you know what a fizzy is. Fizzy is a little tablet like an Alka-Seltzer tablet. It's flavored; comes root beer, cola, cherry, grape, strawberry. You drop it into water, just like an Alka-Seltzer tablet, it starts that amazing chemical process, fizzing, I think that's what they call it. Fizzing. What happens is what's in the tablet becomes released into the water because there's something about the nature of the tablet that just causes itself to release its properties in the water.

So if you drop a root beer fizzy in a glass of water, you can watch it fizz and all of a sudden it tastes like root beer. You can drop a cherry fizzy into a glass of water, it starts to fizz and it tastes like cherry. It releases its life properties into the water, and that's what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit like a fizzy has come into our lives to release his life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

So Paul says here in 1 Thessalonians 4, "If you reject this, you're not rejecting man, you're rejecting God, who gives you his Holy Spirit." Why? To make you holy. So what's your next step in holiness? It may be a step of being set apart from something, but it could be to be set apart to something. God's Spirit wants to be working in your life to lead you to take a next step to become more and more like Jesus Christ.

Take the next step in personal holiness. Here's the second observation from the passage as to how we ought to take next steps in our relationship with God: it's a next step in brotherly love. 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 says this: "Now about brotherly love, we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more."

There it is. Paul is commending these believers, he's saying God is at work in your life and in fact it's evident because the love that you have for one another, and you don't even need to be taught about this importance of loving one another, but do it more and more. Do it more and more. Do you know we could have a fun time here at our church trying to nominate and vote for the most loving person in our congregation?

I shared with the first service that one of my neighbors who's attended services here at Crossline told me just yesterday, he said, "You know what? I've been to a lot of churches in my life, but I have to tell you, Crossline's the friendliest church I have ever been to." That was great to hear. But you know what God would say? "You are a friendly church. Be friendlier." Not in a negative way, not in a condemning way, but like a coach encouraging us to experience our full potential for what he's created us to.

We could nominate among ourselves those people in our body that we perceive to be the most loving people, and then we could talk about how they demonstrate their love with their words of encouragement and their acts of service and their sacrificial involvement in our lives and their gifts and time spent and all the love languages that are spoken. And we could find the person that is the most loving person in our body and Jesus would say, "You are doing well in the way you love. Love more. Love more. Love more."

Jesus said in John chapter 13, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, my followers, by the love that you have for one another. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you." God says there is a next step that we are to take in our love for one another. And it's a step of action, by the way. Because love isn't basically a feeling. There are feelings of love, don't get me wrong.

But if you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the chapter on love, it says there, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong, I'm a clanging cymbal. If I give everything that I own and even surrender my life to be burned but have not love, it's nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love does not brag, it doesn't boast." All these characteristics in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

Every one of those words—this was an interesting discovery I had when I was in seminary and studying New Testament Greek and reading this passage in the original language—every one of these statements about love (love is patient, love is kind, love doesn't brag, love isn't easily provoked, and all those things), those are all verbs. Action. Love is not primarily some thing like a deposit of something that you have. It is action; it's how you live.

And that's why John wrote in 1 John 2, "Don't just love in word, love in deed and truth." So the question is this: If God is speaking to you about next steps and next steps in loving one another, he's saying, "These are the actions I want you to take in love towards others." Remember, we're all on this journey, and we may be doing well and God encourages us for how we're doing, but he also says, "Take the next step."

A next step in personal holiness, a next step in loving one another. Here's a third observation from the text: we're to take a next step in living with personal responsibility. We're to take a next step in living with personal responsibility. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 says this: "Make it your ambition"—that's a strong word, your goal, your focus, what you bring your energies to bear upon—"make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, just as we've told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

Now I don't know about you, but that's a funny Bible verse to me. That doesn't seem to be spiritual. In fact, it doesn't even seem to be novel. Lead a quiet life, mind your own business, work with your hands, just kind of plod along. Why in the world in the midst of this book where Paul is giving these very strong spiritual teachings and spiritual commands, and he's about to give this unbelievable teaching about the second coming of Jesus Christ, would he say something that seems so ordinary?

And I think that's it; it's based on what he's about to say. And I believe that is the key for understanding this command, especially this command as it relates to taking next steps about leading a quiet life and being personally responsible and taking care of your own affairs. You know, if you were to study in history the impact that the teaching of the end times and the teaching of the second coming has on Christian groups, it's kind of interesting. It's not that impressive, however.

You see, we today are prone to be just like the people 2,000 years ago when they heard this teaching about the fact that, you know what, Jesus could come back at any moment. And the whole world order is going to be reworked. And these are some of the signs that indicate his coming and this is going to be the reality of his coming. You see, some people take that truth and they want to sell everything they own, buy a bunch of guns, and move to Utah.

Which, by the way, leads me to one of my JP-isms. This isn't in the Bible, this is 1 JP. You know what happens when a wacky person becomes a Christian? They become a wacky Christian. And there are wacky Christians out there. There are wacky Christians who would tell us, "Jesus is coming back, let's sell everything, buy some guns, and move to Utah and just kind of hold the fort until he comes." No, Paul says, "No, you know what? Don't do that. Lead a quiet life, be responsible, take care of your own affairs. Let people see by the way you live that you're a follower of Christ."

You see, there are other people when they hear this teaching, whether they live today in the 21st century or whether they lived in the 1st century like the folks at Thessalonica, there are other people who become so excited about this, they are so heavenly minded they're no earthly good. They lose all touch of living in the real world as a follower of Jesus Christ.

And so Paul warns us, as he warns these folks, "Listen, this is what I want you to excel at. This is where you maybe need to take a next step: being personally responsible for your life, taking care of your own affairs, providing for yourself, working hard, being a person of consistency and integrity, being personally responsible." Because when you live like that, other people will look at you and they will respect you, and you will provide a platform for your witness of Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653.

Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com.

We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. Did you know that God has a next step for you in your walk with Jesus Christ? 1 Thessalonians 4:1 says this: "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God. As in fact you're living, now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more." You see, it's that more and more command that God has for us.

Wherever we are in our spiritual journey, whether we're just beginners, whether we've just taken our first step, or whether we've been walking with the Lord for a long time, there is a more and more part to experiencing Jesus Christ. That's the next step that God wants to take us in our journey, in our spiritual journey. In writing to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul tells them about how to live a life that pleases God, how to live a life that bears fruit for God, how to live a life that is an influence for Jesus Christ.

And yet he says, even though you're doing that, I want you to excel more and more. There is a next step for every one of us in our experience with Jesus Christ, and God wants to lead you into that next step. And it is always a step towards Jesus, and it is always a step in expressing his love to the world. God has a plan for your life, and it's a good plan.

In fact, it's a great plan. It's a plan to use you for his kingdom purposes. And wherever you are in your spiritual journey, God has a next step for you today. Would you like to know what that next step is? Why don't you just ask God? Why don't you just say, "God, show me the steps that you have for me, show me the plan for me, and I will walk in the steps that you have"? If that's your desire, I invite you to pray with me right now.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you have a plan for my life. Thank you that you've called me to this spiritual journey of following Jesus Christ. And thank you that you have a next step for me right now. Show me the steps you want me to make, and I will follow you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250.

On the internet, you'll find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.