June 15, 2023 | Be On Mission
Holy Life, Holy Death
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4(NIV)
1 As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
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.
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Devotional
Somebody recently told me that every person has two choices. You can live your life to build your résumé, or you can live your life to build your eulogy. In other words, you can spend your days trying to climb the ladder of success, or preparing to climb Jacob’s ladder into heaven. In this chapter, Paul reminds the Thessalonians, and us, that we are called to holiness in life and in death.
Paul says plainly, “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (v. 7). How we live matters. As a part of that, he warns them to avoid sexual immorality, something that was such a problem that it is mentioned thirty-five times in the New Testament alone. Paul addresses it in eight of his thirteen letters. And we thought we invented the sexual revolution. We will return to this topic in a few week when we look at 1 Corinthians.
Paul goes on to give some advice for how to live as God-honoring people in a self-gratifying culture: love others, be peaceful, mind your own business, put in a hard day’s work, earn your own way, stuff like that. How we live matters. Others are watching.
And God is watching. In the end, it is the Lord that we want to please with our lives. Either Jesus is coming to us (if He returns before we die), or we are coming to Him (if we die before He returns). And when that day comes, we will either belong to Christ or we won’t. There are no do-overs.
So, you can live your life to build your résumé, or you can live your life to build your eulogy. These days we might say you can live your life to build your social media presence, or you can live your life to build your Christian life presence. It’s up to you. When it’s all over, Jesus will either say, “Away from me you evildoer,” or “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
How is the Lord calling you to holiness in life and in death?
Poem
More And More
As you walk the pilgrim path
Casting off what trips you up
More and more God’s purity crave
Drink from holy cup
As you lean into God’s will
Mind transformed by renewal
More and more seek God’s control
Victor in mind’s duel
As you work salvation out
Straining in the racing
More and more God’s works in you
Lean into the training
As you love each other true
Aspiring to live humbly
More and more walk properly
Depend on God alone
As you think of those who’ve died
Ignorance be shirking
More and more remember Christ
Gaining resurrection
