Good morning. We are finishing up our time in 1 Thessalonians this morning. Next week, we’ll look at Psalm 67 as sort of a transition and introduction to the book of Acts, which we will begin on the 28th.
“Where do I belong?” is a basic question of human existence. That’s because, as we said last week, were were made to be a part of a community. Therefore many of the commands we are given are not things we need to do to be accepted, but things we ought to do to show love to others: both to help fellow believers feel accepted in the body of Christ and to offer non-believers a glimpse into what real community should look like. Patience goes a long way in helping someone feel welcome. Encouragement goes a long way in helping someone feel accepted. Our love for one another goes a long way in helping those outside the church desire what we know to be true.
And so God in his kindness gives us these ways of relating to one another that are good for us. That’s what we talked about last week. And I hope you were encouraged and challenged to begin thinking about how you do relate to others: Am I encouraging? Am I patient? Do I persevere? Am I willing to admonish a brother or sister in love? For however well we do these things, God desires that we continue to do them and continue to grow in how well we do them.
But that’s only half the story, isn’t it? For when we fail to do these things or struggle to do them well, we begin to ask another question: Am I really acceptable to God? That’s not a new question. In fact, God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments ask some version of this question.
David says in Psalm 15, “O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Or in Psalm 24, a different version of the same question: “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?”
Or in the New Testament, the crowds who were following Jesus in John 6 asked him, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God.” Or the crowds after Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 asked, “What shall we do to be saved?” Or even the crowds who came to hear John the Baptist in Luke 3, “What shall we do?”
God’s people are wanting to know what’s enough. The simple answer, of course, is repent and believe. We come to God with nothing to offer knowing that he has everything to give. And the commands that Paul gives us in this last section deal mainly with our response to God’s generosity. They are commands, not to gain God’s favor, but to respond to God’s favor.
And so these commands are a reminder that coming to God in humility, dying to self is not a one-time action. Baptism is our public statement that this is how we want to live going forward. Our sanctification is on-going and active. Again, these commands that we’ll look at this morning don’t make us accepted; they stem from our acceptance and are empowered by our acceptance. And thus they are God’s will for us. Specifically, we are going to look at our response to the circumstances God places us in and then our response to God’s communication to us. And then we’ll look briefly at Paul’s closing remarks.
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