turn with me in your copies of Scripture to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, we're going to be looking at verses 9 through 12, continuing through our series. It was nice getting to preach last week in the morning, but there's something so right about being in the evening, so I'm glad to be back in 1 Thessalonians with you. This is the word of our God. Let's give it our full attention. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed. so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. So far, the reading of God's word. Let's ask this blessing on us now. Our Lord, as we approach your word, Lord, we confess that these are the words of life. These can bring our souls closer to you, Lord, in grace, and we pray, Lord, that you, by your Spirit, would apply this word to our hearts and to our minds, to our lives, Lord, that we would reflect our Savior, Jesus, more and more. We ask these things in his name, amen. Last time we were in the book of 1 Thessalonians, We had pivoted from Paul's thanksgiving that he had been giving in the first three chapters to considering some practical exhortations, some questions that this church had for him. Topics that were important about the Christian life, and so he wanted to press into them some important truths. Paul called on believers to walk in a manner that is pleasing to God by pursuing holiness in the area of sexual integrity. Paul tonight continues on to a second topic that he has in mind. Maybe this was something that they had asked him about, but more than likely this is something that was on his heart and mind because we see this as a topic that comes up in many of his letters. The subject of brotherly love. And by brotherly love, he doesn't have in mind the love that we have for our family members. Specifically, at least our blood relations, but rather the family of God. Again and again throughout the New Testament, we see references to the reality that the church is a family, that we've been adopted in Christ, and that we belong together. That's why we see again and again, Paul refers to these believers as brothers. And here he's not excluding the ladies, it's brothers and sisters that belong to the Lord. We see in other places he talks about us relating to one another, that we relate to older men as fathers, and older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, and younger women as sisters. We are a family united together by the blood of Christ, and the blood of Christ is thicker than the blood of family, at least earthly family. People can be messy though. The unity that we have in Christ that doesn't solve all of the relational problems that we tend to observe in our own families. People are messy, unhelpful, and downright challenging to get along with. They say insensitive things. They pry into your life about things that you don't want to talk about. The church can be a hard place to be. Paul's words here challenged believers throughout the generations to consider our love for the church. And it challenges us to reexamine its importance in our desire. Do we desire to live well with one another as we live before God? So the key idea tonight that I think the summary statement that we could take away from this is that by abounding in love for the church, we can walk in a way that is pleasing to God, our teacher. By abounding in love for the church, we can walk in a way that is pleasing to God, our teacher. We'll do this by considering the way that Paul talks about the love of this church. And he begins by commending their love in verses nine and 10. He says, now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. That's a funny way to start this. I have no need to write anything to you. And yet he does. This softens the punch of what he's going to say later, that he's trying to give attention to something that he already sees that they're doing really well. He's commending them. This is not something that is foreign to them. It's something that they're already doing. He wants to commend them before he challenges them, and that's oftentimes the best way to bring about some news that you would have for somebody, some note of correction, is to consider how might you commend them and then challenge them. Paul's a master here. And he has two reasons he wants to commend them, two things that are true. This isn't just him just puffing them up. He genuinely wants them to see the good that's going on amongst them. And so first he says that God has taught them. You have been taught by God to love one another. That sounds good, but what does that mean to be taught by God exactly? We should note briefly that in the Greek here, Paul is coining a new word. It's not a word that's been before taught by God as one compound word, but he seems to be reflecting on several Old Testament passages, and this is when he tends to coin new words. At least that's what a number of the commentators noted, is you see these places where a word has never been used in Greek before. It's Paul taking Old Testament and putting things together. And he seems to be reflecting on passages like Isaiah 54, where it tells us, all your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. The sense is that in a coming day, when the Lord restores Israel, that He will teach Israel His ways, and there will be peace. We see that there will be rest. There will be righteousness. These things all characterize the teaching of the Lord, that they would have taken the lesson and put it into implementation, and that there would be peace among God's people. Likewise, is probably a more well-known passage from Jeremiah 31, where God says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And then what does he say? And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. The day in which God will write his law on his people, they will know him and walk in his ways. And by coining this term, Paul is indicating that this end time reality, this promise that was found in Isaiah and Jeremiah and a number of the other prophets, is already breaking into the lives of these believers in Thessalonica. They're already participating in the final days. Not fully and finally, but in part. They are taught by God to love one another. That's the lesson that he taught them, is how they are to love one another, how they are to belong to each other. And it's fitting that this lesson would be to love one another, because as Paul says in Romans, love is the fulfilling of the law. As he has inscribed the law on their hearts, they begin to love each other. As these believers have been suffering so greatly, they have been bound together and are caring for one another in love. As tremendous as this is, there's more. Paul has a second reason to commend them as well. He says, for that is indeed what you're doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. We see that the brotherly love that they have extends not just to their local instance of the church, but throughout the region. We might say churches in their presbytery, the Macedonian presbytery. I'm reading this back in a little bit, but these are sister believers in close-by churches. that they're doing well. And he's not specific about what this expression of brotherly love is, but we get a hint of it in 2 Corinthians 8, where he says to the Corinthians, we want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty has overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part It's likely that this Thessalonian church is a part of the generosity, that they are tangibly caring for other churches that are in need and other believers. I like the way that the NASB puts it whenever it says that they were practicing this brotherly love. This is not just a one-time gift. This isn't just a, hey, hello, how are you? This is a walking alongside. It's a practicing, a continuous idea. Where these believers find other believers, their hearts are knit to them, and they have concern. As one part of the body suffers, they all suffer. This describes the way that they're responding in love, that Paul would commend them. for this brotherly love that they're showing. They're participating in this new creation reality. That they know God. And that they love one another. And that they love the church wherever they see the church. This is brotherly love put on display and it's worthy of commending. And even though that Paul has so much to commend to these believers, he does not intend that they would be content with what they've done, that they would look back on their activity and say, we really have it together. Look at what we did. Aren't we such a nice group of people? Aren't we such a good church because we did all of these things? but rather he challenges them to advance in their love. We see this challenge to advance in verses 10 through 12. This takes more of the force here. It says, but we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more. This gentle challenge echoes what he said back in verse one, where he says, finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. The idea is that we are not to grow content with where we are at. but a desire to grow and develop in these ways. The Christian life is not one of remaining static. We never reach a point where we've mastered it. We're a 10 out of 10 on the Christian virtue list. There's no room for us to grow. We might as well move on to a different virtue. We never reach a point where our love is perfect in this life. And so there is always room to grow, to pursue, to become more and more in our love. And Paul has a specific challenge to their growth in 1 Thessalonians, but also in 2 Thessalonians. A challenge to this church. He gives us a couple commands in quick succession. Aspire to a quiet life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. Now this might feel like a bit of a curve ball. We were just talking about brotherly love and now you're talking about working with your hands, Paul? Talking about mind your own business, Paul? What does this have to do with brotherly love? Apparently there is a problem with idleness in the Thessalonian church because Paul will return to this specific issue in 2 Thessalonians with an even sharper rebuke. By challenging them to aspire to a quiet life, he is not encouraging them to a kind of faith where they don't share who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Rather, he is calling out those who are causing problems for their neighbors, who are being noisy. You know, the noisy neighbor around you who's maybe causing all sorts of problems. That's not who we're supposed to be as Christians. He says, mind your own affairs. We're not to be busybodies. We're to see to our own life, to see to our own logs and our own eyes. We're not really called to be concerned about the parenting style of our neighbor. We're not really called to be concerned with whether our neighbor is doing better than us in their life. Rather, we're to be concerned about our own lives. We're to be concerned with pursuing righteousness and holiness and not judging our neighbor, but pursuing after a more pleasing walk to the Lord. His last command is perhaps the strongest, work with your own hands. This isn't condemning those of you who are information workers or those of you who don't own your own farm. There appears to be some who are acting as a mooch. We might even put it a little more harshly, a parasite on this church's brotherly love. And he's not naming any names, but it should be clear who he's talking about to those who would be hearing this. That they're not working with their hands. They're not providing for the body. Rather, they are taking. The relationship that they have to the church is unhealthy. And that particularly strikes at why he's calling them to advance. Not to be a taker from the brotherly love, you're to be a contributor to the brotherly love. He challenges them to advance. It is meant to lead to a life that is dignified before those outside. Now that sounds maybe preposterous to you, but that would have been preposterous to them as well, that they would find your life, as one translation says, respectable. But that's who we're called to be as Christians, even though our neighbors may not agree with our faith and some of the morals that we share. they should still be able to look at our lives and say, well, he is working to provide. He is seeking to honor his brothers and sisters in the church. He's seeking to love well, and I can at least commend him for that. Paul even says that we would be appropriately self-sufficient, that we would be dependent on no one. And here, Paul is not encouraging a kind of unbiblical self-sufficiency where we would trust in ourselves for our salvation or trust in our own strength to grow in grace. Rather, what he has in mind is that we would seek to live in a way that we contribute to the body. That we contribute to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And that we would not live in a way, if we are at all able, that we would take I want to offer a word of caution here because even as I read these words this week and I was studying this passage, this is not meant to be discouraging to those who genuinely have need to seek it out. The family of God is meant to care for one another. And if you need assistance, God has united us together that we might extend brotherly love to each other. What Paul is challenging here is a spirit that undermines brotherly love and hinders our ability to witness well. Christ says outsiders will know us by our love for one another, but those who take advantage of the church's goodwill do not make us look like loving body, but like fools who are deceived. We're a bunch of rubes helping out those who are taking advantage of us. By considering Paul's words here, I think it should be clear that by abounding in love for the church, we can live in a way that is pleasing to God. So that leads us to consider how we ourselves can advance in love for the church. How can we pursue greater exercising love for the body? That's the question we should be walking away with. We should pursue answers in line with what this passage is speaking to. We first need to be aware and give thanks for our brotherly love. The love displayed in the church is supernatural in character. It is the product of the work of the Spirit. In some respect, it is natural to love those who are like us. That sociologically makes a kind of sense. But we are not merely a gathering of like-minded people. We are a family from every tongue and tribe and nation, of every socioeconomic status, of every sort of vocation and interest. The love we experience for others in the church is a part of the Spirit's work in conforming us to Christ. That Christ loves His bride. And so we love His bride. We need to be aware of the love that we have for one another and give thanks to the Lord because that even is a gift that He gives us. It's something that He works within us. He writes it on our heart by His Spirit. That we would walk in a way that is pleasing to Him. But we should ask the Lord to teach us, to teach us how we might love more. The Lord is our teacher. He can show us what love really looks like. We should be growing in our ability to love others in the church. That's a class that we never graduate from. We don't make profession of faith and then say, well, I've got that down. Or even getting ordained. Getting ordained does not mean that we are masters of brotherly love. Rather, we are called to be pursuing, to be about the more and more of brotherly love. Andrew Young in his Let's Study 1 Thessalonians commentary gives some helpful directions, different ways we can think about brotherly love and seek for the Lord to teach us. Brotherly love may grow in breadth as it reaches out to embrace more of our fellow believers. We can ask the Lord to open our eyes to those who are around us who we don't yet know and seek to know them better. that we might be able to express gratitude for them and to them, and that we might care well for them. I'm sure in a body of believers as large as this, we don't know everyone well. So asking for the Lord that He would teach us to love one another, to love more at a greater breadth. But brotherly love might also grow in depth as it enters more deeply into the hurts and joys of others. We can ask God to help us to go deeper into people's lives so that we might more fully rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Brotherly love can also grow in length as it forbears more patiently and forgives more heartily. We can ask our Father to give us the kind of patience and long-suffering that He has so that we might continue to grow and develop good relationships in the church. Because as I've emphasized a few times now, we are not perfect people. We're sinners saved by grace. We need patience for each other and with ourselves. So we should ask the Lord to teach us how our love might advance, how it might abound. But we should also ask the Lord to teach us how we might have a spirit that is disrupting brotherly love, or even actions, words that disrupt our brotherly love. The greatest threat to our communion as a church is the sin inside of each of us that turns us away from others and turns us in on ourselves. That leads us to prefer our own good instead of the good of our brothers and sisters. We can turn the church into a place where we take and consume rather than contribute and build up. We might not struggle with mooching off the church financially like those Thessalonians were, but we can make the church a place where it's all about our benefit. It's all about our good. Our passage pegs those who are under-participating in the life and the family of God. But over-participating can be an issue as well, as we create in the church a kind of codependence such that if we are not at the center of what is happening all the time, something feels off. If people are not looking to us to solve their problems, then something's not right. We can be self-centered in so many ways. The greatest antidote to self-centeredness is to see how much has been given to us already in Christ. He gave Himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. It might be hard work, but we should go to the Lord and ask Him. to reveal any logs in our own eye that keep us from contributing and loving the brothers. So brothers and sisters in Christ, let's commit ourselves to the instruction of our God. If we are His, and He is ours, let us love one another with genuine, tangible love. Let us love our neighbors as ourselves and that we might reflect the One who loved us so greatly that He died in our place. Jesus Christ is our faithful older brother who sought us and bought us with His precious blood. Let us love greatly because of that great love that we have received in Him. Wherever we see the church, both near and far, let's commit ourselves to seeking out brotherly love that brings Him glory and Him honor. Amen. Let's go to Him now.