To Start
Are you the sort of person who follows instructions carefully or do you “wing it” from time to time?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of your approach?
Paul makes it really clear at the start of 1 Thessalonians 4 that despite having not asserted authority in the past (see 1 Thess 2:6), he is now urging them with authority to follow his instructions to live to please God. All his instructions here relate to two forms of love.
Read
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
Living to Please God
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.
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What has stuck with you from the passage or the sermon on Sunday?
Discuss
Look carefully through the passage and see where the authority and motivation for both kinds of “good love” comes from.
How does this also tie into Paul’s previous comments about his words and God’s Word?
Sermon Extra
How can we show love for one another more and more?
Perhaps begin by focussing on your Growth Group and how you can show love for each other then how your growth group could show love to other believers!
Share Life
“So that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders…” — 1 Thessalonians 4:12
Is your entire lifestyle winning or losing the respect of outsiders?
Go
Use the Go Journal this week to think carefully about all the people you interact with who are “outsiders” to christianity.
Build a long list of names of people you could pray for and seek to positively influence.
To Close
Paul appears pleased with the progress that the Thessalonians are making as they seek to live in order to please God. Timothy’s report (3:6) has been as pleasant to him as he was to them! But he also recognises that no Christian can ever sit back satisfied with the progress they have made and say, “I am done with that!”
As long as we live in the body, there will be work to do and Paul’s tenderness and urgency are coupled here in a way that encourages us on towards love and good deeds.
Why not pray that we don’t wing it in the way we want, but walk in the way God wants, honouring him!
Pray
That each of your may live holy lives that please God.
Praise God for the progress he has made in each one of us to do this by the power of his Spirit through his Word.
That the love that flows inside our church may overflow outside our church to the praise of God.