Elements City Church
Living Hope week 5 - Live to Please God
Join us Sundays this Fall 2022 as we walk through a powerful couple books of the Bible that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church he planted in Thessaloniki. In these works, he inspires a people that are living in uncertainty, to keep living by a dynamic faith in Christ and to persevere with hope, even as they were facing opposition and pressure from a culture that didn't believe or so much care for their beliefs. Followers of Jesus Christ should live with one foot in this world and the other in the world to come. We should be fully engaged with this life AND we should also live with an awareness of eternity. Having this double perspective - gives us wisdom for our 'here and now'. It shapes our priorities, impacts our schedules, influences our dreams and our decisions. It fuels our hearts for the gospel and for people around us to know and experience Jesus.
Locations & Times
Elements City Church
1825 N Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA
Sunday 5:35 PM
Thanks for being with us...
Whether you're on-site or online, we are praying that tonight will be an encouragement to your soul. May God whisper to you and help you in taking your next steps in a journey with Him. If you're new, we'd love to have you fill out our connection card.
https://connect-card.com/yr4Y0g8VLBSqzKXeubjbFollowers of Jesus Christ should live with one foot in this world and the other in the world to come. We should be fully engaged with this life. But we should also live with an awareness of eternity.
Having that double perspective of this world and the world to come can grow us in living wisely for God…
Having that double perspective of this world and the world to come can grow us in living wisely for God…
Quote:
Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please God.
-Brother Lawrence
Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please God.
-Brother Lawrence
Please God > Please Me
In our culture - we have a growing norm to seek what pleases me at all costs. It’s the chief aim of so many of our decisions, pursuits and goals in life.
Now, it’s not wrong to do some things for yourself. Or as Donna (from Parks and Rec) says: Treat Yo-Self from time to time…
Friends: healthy self-care, is not selfish…
But if we flip all the way over to living solely to please ourselves and fulfill our desires then we can not say we’re living for God who rescued us and is calling us to ‘follow him’…
In our culture - we have a growing norm to seek what pleases me at all costs. It’s the chief aim of so many of our decisions, pursuits and goals in life.
Now, it’s not wrong to do some things for yourself. Or as Donna (from Parks and Rec) says: Treat Yo-Self from time to time…
Friends: healthy self-care, is not selfish…
But if we flip all the way over to living solely to please ourselves and fulfill our desires then we can not say we’re living for God who rescued us and is calling us to ‘follow him’…
Chapter 4 begins a new section in which Paul gives directions to the Thessalonian converts in 3 very practical areas of living: he shows how Christians are supposed to live distinctively in the area of sexuality, in the area of work and making money, and thirdly, in the area of attitude toward death and dying.
One of the earliest writings we have after the Bible, the letter to Diognetus, has a very interesting and famous phrase in it -- basically says about Christians, “We share our table with all but not our bed with all.”
The pagan approach to money and sex (sharing your sex with everybody but sharing your money with nobody) ultimately destroyed that society. Eventually, people saw the wisdom and the joy and the wholesomeness of the Christian approach.
READ - 1 Thessalonians 4:1-5
Throughout history, there have always been two basic approaches to sex that religions or philosophies or cultures have taken. Sometimes these two approaches are battling inside of culture - like in ours.
-Deify sex
-Degrade sex
-The Scriptures do neither...
The gospel first demystifies sex and then re-mystifies it.
Paul says sex has a context: marriage
(understanding the pagan backdrop of the 1st century was not that)
The biblical sex ethic: You must not separate soul and body.
==Whole body commitment has to go along with whole life commitment
The pagan approach to money and sex (sharing your sex with everybody but sharing your money with nobody) ultimately destroyed that society. Eventually, people saw the wisdom and the joy and the wholesomeness of the Christian approach.
READ - 1 Thessalonians 4:1-5
Throughout history, there have always been two basic approaches to sex that religions or philosophies or cultures have taken. Sometimes these two approaches are battling inside of culture - like in ours.
-Deify sex
-Degrade sex
-The Scriptures do neither...
The gospel first demystifies sex and then re-mystifies it.
Paul says sex has a context: marriage
(understanding the pagan backdrop of the 1st century was not that)
The biblical sex ethic: You must not separate soul and body.
==Whole body commitment has to go along with whole life commitment
Paul says whole body commitment, that kind of intimacy, must go along with whole life commitment. Why? Because that’s how God does it.
The one thing you will learn with God is: if you have intimacy, you have commitment.
Quote:
If the heathen behave as they do because they do not know God, Christians must behave in a completely different way because we do know God, because he is a holy God, because he is our God, and because we want to please him. -John Stott
The one thing you will learn with God is: if you have intimacy, you have commitment.
Quote:
If the heathen behave as they do because they do not know God, Christians must behave in a completely different way because we do know God, because he is a holy God, because he is our God, and because we want to please him. -John Stott
Quote:
We need to remind ourselves that the entire biblical sexual ethic is deeply counter-intuitive. All human beings some of the time, and some human beings most of the time, have deep heartfelt longings for kinds of sexual intimacy or gratification which do not reflect the creator's best intentions for his human creatures…
Sexual restraint is mandatory for all, difficult for most, extremely challenging for some. God is gracious and merciful but this never means that his creational standards don't really matter after all.
—N.T. Wright (New Testament Scholar)
We need to remind ourselves that the entire biblical sexual ethic is deeply counter-intuitive. All human beings some of the time, and some human beings most of the time, have deep heartfelt longings for kinds of sexual intimacy or gratification which do not reflect the creator's best intentions for his human creatures…
Sexual restraint is mandatory for all, difficult for most, extremely challenging for some. God is gracious and merciful but this never means that his creational standards don't really matter after all.
—N.T. Wright (New Testament Scholar)
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Now Paul turns to WORK (and it's not a four letter word)
Biblical understanding of work is: “work is the gracious expression of creative energy in the service of others.” (Dorothy Sayers)
Work is an expression of love.
We're encouraged to be an investor the common good, not a drain upon the common good of the community.
Paul is instructing them (in their sexuality and in their work life) == live in order to please God, it means live for the sheer pleasure of giving pleasure to God in all areas of life.
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Now Paul turns to WORK (and it's not a four letter word)
Biblical understanding of work is: “work is the gracious expression of creative energy in the service of others.” (Dorothy Sayers)
Work is an expression of love.
We're encouraged to be an investor the common good, not a drain upon the common good of the community.
Paul is instructing them (in their sexuality and in their work life) == live in order to please God, it means live for the sheer pleasure of giving pleasure to God in all areas of life.
Thanks for partnering with us...
Thank you for enabling us to be the Church in our city! Your gifts help fuel the mission of Elements City Church, as well as our capacity to share His love with as many as we can. You help us bring the HOPE and LIGHT of Jesus to our city! You can give online at the link below or through the Elements app.
http://elementscitychurch.org/giveWhether you joined us on-site or online, thanks for being with us tonight!
Join us next Sunday as we continue our series and for our AFTER PARTY with food trucks, jumping castles, football and fun! Wear your favorite jersey NEXT WEEK!
Join us next Sunday as we continue our series and for our AFTER PARTY with food trucks, jumping castles, football and fun! Wear your favorite jersey NEXT WEEK!