Sermon Notes
The Gospel is the good news of what God has done through the person and work of Jesus Christ, especially what he accomplished through his death, burial and resurrection.
1 Thessalonians 2:8
We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Holiness--Christlikeness
If you never understand the Father’s love for you, then you will never comprehend what the Father asks of you.
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
Finally, brothers, 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. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified:
Sanctification—everything that God does in us to make us more like Christ.
Growth in sexual purity.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-12
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 his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God . . . For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
“We keep prostitutes for pleasure. Mistresses for the day to day needs of our lives. We keep wives for the begetting of children and the faithful guardianship of our home.”
—Demosthenes
Growth in how believers treat each other.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
Growth in the integrity of our lives.
(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, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Philippians 3:13–14
. . . I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
“You are a guardian of the human spirit. You have the power to manipulate and coerce if you want to. You can avoid and ignore if you choose. But you can also ennoble and inspire. You can lift up and appeal to all that is good and honorable and holy. You can remind fallible and finite people around you that they hold their lives and calling as a sacred trust, that their best efforts matter, that their worst failures will one day be redeemed.” This is all because of the crucified one who shoulders the burdens of the whole human race who rose again and will come back one day to honor all that is good and right all that has gone wrong."
--John Ortberg