Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.Ps. 107:3

We have been working our way through 1 Thessalonians. Back in Chapter 2 Paul and Silas recalled how their desire to please God while in Thessalonika is what God used to gather and grow the church there. He builds on the memory of how they showed them by example and taught them with patient instruction what it means to live a life pleasing to God. And the list is surprisingly similar to what I think of when I think of middle class stability. How do you live a life pleasing to God? First, control your body, control your sexuality, take a wife and take care of her.Second, have Christian friends and spend time with them and build relationships that are more than superficial with them. Third, get a job, preferably working with your hands, and make yourself useful to your family and to those in need. And Finally do not live in fear of death but in hope of the resurrection. That’s what is at the core of living a life pleasing to God.

Learn to control your own body, Paul begins with. Do not be caught up in lusts the way the pagans are. Do not spend your time leering at the objects of your desire. Do not spend your money on religious prostitutes. Do not spend your time trying to seduce or take advantage of others for sexual gratification. This is not the way to please God. You are not to be raging with burning. Take and learn to live with a wife. Do not pursue a partner for pleasure but to build a life together, to build a home together that might give blessings to those beyond the home. Learning to live with a wife, with a husband, will force you to recognize things that for politeness sake others may let remain hidden. Marriage will force you to contend with your selfishness, your laziness, your reactiveness, your carelessness, or other sins that you may not otherwise find yourself facing. They will reveal your sin to you and you will reveal their sin to them and with grace and the power of the Spirit working in you you will be made holier, more virtuous, more truly showing forth the image of God. This pleases him.

Spend time with other believers, working together, encouraging eachother, helping eachother, loving each other. Paul says this should be your ambition. Not fame, not success, but a quiet life spent living together with friends, with brothers and sisters in Christ. This way you may sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron. This way the world may know you are Christ’s disciples, for you love one another. Have Christian friends. This pleases God.

“You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you”. This is so important to learn a skill, a trade, some way you can work to bless others materially and be about that business. Do not be a busy body, an activist, a troublemaker, an intellectual, but be a productive member of the community in which you live. In this way you will live a quiet life as much as possible. Let troubles and persecutions find you, do not go out looking for them. When you have a skill, a job where you work with your hands you are able to serve very real needs which is a kind of love. When you work you are able to provide for and care for your family. Paul and Silas make a special note that it is important because then you are not dependent on unbelievers. You are also able to be charitable in the sense of being generous with your talents, not just with your treasure. In my experience this is something God often uses to make his ways known. In another epistle Paul says he who does not work does not eat. We ought to be encouraging the young people in our congregations to learn skills that can help others. If we lack such skills we ought to be going out of our way to obtain them. Work hard, not with ambition but with industry. This pleases God.

Finally do not mourn as others mourn. Here Paul and Silas turn to one of the questions brought to them by Timothy from the congregation in Thessalonika, a question about Christ’s return. The people in Thessalonika were expecting Jesus’s return. It could have happened any day. It could still happen any day. In the persecution some of their brothers and sisters had died. They were worried that meant they would not participate in the coming kingdom of Jesus. Paul tells them that they can mourn, but not to mourn as those without hope. Paul instructs them that when Jesus comes again he will come together with those who have died together with him because they have died in him. Paul is explaining here that there will be a resurrection from the dead when Jesus returns. He goes further to say that those who die in some way go ahead of us. We will not enter Christ’s kingdom before those who have died before us.

Then Paul gives them a vision of what Jesus’s return will look like. Jesus will descend from heaven in the same way he ascended beyond the clouds at the ascension. This matches what the men in white robes tell the Apostles in Acts 1. The voice of an archangel will speak a loud command from God. We aren’t told what that command will be. Then angelic trumpets will blast. And the faithful dead will be raised up from the grave and from the sea and from old dry bones and given a second life. And they will meet Christ in the air. And then those who remain in earth will be lifted up and meet Christ in the air. And then we will be with our king for ever.

So be encouraged. Give thanks to God for those who have died and gone before us. Trust that they go ahead of you to be with the Lord and that you will be united with them at his coming again. Do not mourn with anger or bitterness for those you have lost for they go ahead of you to where your hope is. They are where your hope is. The grave is not a place of defeat but of victory for Christ was risen from the grave.

How do you please God? Not in agony but in hope that is bold in the face of loss. Get married and learn to be faithful to your spouse. Have Christian friends. Get a job where you can work with your hands and serve others. Live a quiet life and when your friends, and your spouse, and your children, and your co-workers die mourn with hope. And live in hope.

Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.-Ps 107:43