1Th 4:9-12 “9 Now about brotherly love 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 the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more. 11 Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to 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.”

God’s will for you is your sanctification. God wants you to be set apart, holy, different for him. The apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians to encourage them to please God. What pleases God? Abstaining from immorality. What pleases God? This morning we are going to see two more practices that please God.

In the text, the apostle Paul puts these two at the end of his discussion. We are going to work backward. We will see what pleases God and then look at his specific illustration.

So what are the two practices that please God? 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

God is pleased when your daily life wins the respect of outsiders. By outsiders, Paul is referencing people who are not believers in Jesus Christ, people who do not trust Christ, people who do not follow Christ.

God would like all outsiders to become insiders. The Bible tells us that “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” There are some who teach that God only chose some to be believers, he only gave faith to some, he only wanted some to come to repentance. But the Bible says that that is wrong. God wants all to come to repentance.

How does this happen? How do unbelievers come to believe? It starts when outsiders see our lives and grudgingly or otherwise end up respecting us. Do people who are not Christians respect you? Are you a person worthy of respect? That is what God wants you to be: someone whose daily life will win the respect of those who are outside.

The second practice that pleases God is when Christians are people who don’t depend on others. This practice is tied to the first. There is a kind of dependence that garners respect and a kind of dependence that doesn’t. When a person is a baby, dependence is expected. When a person is hurt in an accident, dependence is expected. When a person is old and feeble, a degree of dependence is expected. But when unbelievers see Christians who won’t work, who live off from others, who take advantage of the system, they lose respect.

So what gives believers respect and what causes us to be independent as a focus? We gain respect and foster independence when we are people who love.

This was true of the Thessalonians. “9 Now about brotherly love 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 the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.

Think about this. When unbelievers see Christians who care for others, who reach out to others, who help people in need, they look at you and respect you for the kind of person you are.

This kind of love is meant to be a core value in the church.

Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.”

The book of Acts shows that the church preached the gospel and people who believed ate together, prayed together, sang together and shared in the financial needs of those in the congregation. People sold homes and land. They helped one another and the church grew. One of Paul’s major missionary journeys was to go to churches he had established throughout Asia Minor and Europe and take a collection to help the church in Jerusalem. The love that these early Christians had was real and it was practical.

The apostle John writes, 1John 3:18 “18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

James writes, James 2:8 -9 “8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as law-breakers.”

When you are not looking to get what you can from the system, when you are not trying to live off others, God is pleased, outsiders notice and you will also find greater joy in your life. Carolyn Ballantyne told me a story about her father, John Tibbets. He used to own a store in Windsor and lost it during the depression. A number of years later a man came with some money to pay a bill that his mother had incurred years before. John didn’t want to take it, but the man said to him, “I don’t dare go home to my mother with this money.” This man and his mother had real needs, but had an attitude of independence. What effect did this have on Mr. Tibbets? Both the man and his mother gained real respect in his eyes. And they felt better having paid a debt they owed.

So what pleases God is that we love others in such a way that we gain respect with those outside the church and that we do not steal from others, but pay our own way as much as we are able.

What was the situation that Paul saw in 1 Thessalonians 4? He saw a people who were loving, but their love needed to grow. There was something that was missing, something that some were doing that could cause the world around to lose respect for them as people and for Christians as a group.

This part of love that was missing in found in verse 11 Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you,

First, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.

The opposite of a quiet life is a life of strife. The apostle Paul said in Romans, “as much as it lies with you, live at peace with all men.” Christians should not go looking for trouble. We should not look to promote strife.

Bullying is one way that this is done. There are people who will find someone’s weakness and hammer away at it. I am not talking about good-natured fun, I am talking about bringing someone to tears, bringing them hurt at the expense of your own laughter.

Some people are agitators. The Jewish leaders sought to create trouble for Paul in Thessalonica and then made a special trip to Berea to cause them more trouble. The great temptation for the church would be to return evil for evil, pain for pain, trouble for trouble. God does not want people to be agitators because agitating others is not an act of love. It does not please God, it does not set well with those who are not Christians, and it doesn’t help us any either.

The situation that seemed to be most in Paul’s mind, however, was that people were sticking their noses into other peoples business. It is such a brief statement that we cannot be sure if someone in the church was micromanaging someone else’s business, bringing up to others in the church how sloppy their work was, how poor their business decisions or whatever. Or it may have been that some people were criticizing other Christians for the Christian work they were doing. They were telling them how it should be done and finding fault with others.

What would you say to someone like that if they interfered in your life? “Mind your own business.” You might not have the courage to say it, but Paul did. He tells them to mind their own business. Take care of yourselves.

It appears that whoever in the church was doing this agitation, they were people who were not paying much attention to their own business because Paul says, “work with your hands, just as we told you.” This had started when Paul was in Thessalonica for he must have addressed this problem there already. Now that Timothy has returned, he may have heard that this agitation was still going on in the church.

How bad was it? It was so bad that unbelievers, those outside the church, those who might have been attracted to the gospel, heard what was happening, the strife that was stirred up and said, “I don’t want any part of that.” Secondly, it was so bad that these people who were telling other people how to run their businesses were coming to the church and asking for help for themselves. Why else would Paul say, “so that you will not be dependant on anyone?”

So Paul tells the people, you love one another. But your love has to grow. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, one that does not unnecessarily bring strife to others. Mind your own business, work with your hands. This love will bring respect from outsiders and you will not have to depend on others.

So now its time to ask the question: How strong is your love? Do you have the respect of people both inside and outside the church? Is it time to cut some strings of dependence from your folks, from your neighbors, from the government? Friends share things, but are people saying, “You never return what you borrow, you never give, you only take.”

I have heard people talking and bragging about how much they can make from the government. “Why work if they will give it for free?” That may be the attitude of some in the world around us, but for the Christian who wants to please God, it’s time to change. It is the will of God that we be sanctified, that we be holy, that we be different.

I have thought about this a lot. I have hurt people because I have not been willing to receive gifts they have wanted to give. Somewhere in this is a balance, a balance between being willing to be blessed or to receive help when it is needed and a willingness to be independent, to earn what we get and to live within our means.

I have found a way to take the first step in resolving the issue. This step is to ask the question, “Am I pleasing God in what I am doing?” This works for sexual choices, it works for the way we treat those outside and it works for the question of independence. “Am I pleasing God in what I am doing?”