A Life Pleasing to God: The Art of Becoming More Like Jesus

Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28. Discussion points: God’s peace is wholeness rather than a lack of conflict, sanctification is is long-term process rather than an instant change of our character, we cannot sanctify ourselves but it is God who sanctifies us.

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  Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 5:23-28] Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He, he who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us, greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Pastor: My name is Fletcher. I am the bass player here, for today. Lead pastor of the church, I don't do that very often. So, over the past several months we've been going through the book of First Thessalonians, and it has been a joy for us to work through this book, and I've really enjoyed, walking through it and learning from it and being able to teach it to you all, and today we get to finish the book of First Thessalonians, which is great, and Paul ends it just with a wonderful blessing for us that we might experience the presence of the Lord and become more like Jesus.

  To give you a little bit of a heads up on where we're going after this, after this we're going to be doing two different series kind of concurrently. It's the summer, so a lot of people are traveling. I'm traveling some different people are preaching, different things are happening. So we'll do some Psalms, which a psalm is always great because you, you know, you don't have to hear, read the one before to read the next one. It's just whichever one is up. So we'll be doing the Psalms and then we're also going to be doing a series on theology, the science of knowing God. And the idea with this is one, like there's a lot of people who are scientists around here and would like to dive deeper into who God is and look at the theology behind who God is, but I just have a vision one day maybe we'll see if this actually comes to fruition. I would love to work through an entire like systematic theology over the course of like 4 or 5 years at our church just throughout the summers do a few sermons on on theology. And particularly this year I would love to dig into the doctrine of God and understanding who he is and I think that really suits us well with where we're at as a church right now. So yeah, we're gonna be bouncing between those some upcoming. I just wanna give you a little bit of a knowledge of where we're going after this.

  But today's passage is the conclusion of First Thessalonians, and in many ways it summarizes the entire message of First Thessalonians, because this passage is about the art of becoming like Jesus. The art of becoming like Jesus. Isn't that what it means to be a Christian in many ways, that we are people who represent and become like Jesus. A good question to ask ourselves this morning. Maybe we have two questions. So just think about how you're being shaped, how you're being formed, and if you're becoming like Jesus or not.

  The first question is, look at the past 6 months to a year of your life. And ask yourself, who am I becoming? Are you becoming A more patient, loving, kind, respectful, honorable person. Or are you becoming more self-consumed, numb, tribalistic. Whatever it might be, who are you becoming? And another way for you to think about this question is If you continued living the way you are living, For the next 20 years, if you just look at the past week of your life and said, I'm gonna do that every week for the next 20 years, where would that leave you? Would you be a burnt mess on the side of the road? And I think that many of us in our 20s and 30s especially. Would be, we would be toast if we lived that way.

  And so, I think that to live like Jesus means that we accept the gentle yoke of Christ, the easy way of following after him. And that our lives become shaped more and more like Jesus week after week. And if you're not becoming more like Jesus each and every week, I hope that this passage would sink in. And if you are becoming more like Jesus, it's because of what he's teaching in this passage has sunk in. And so it's a wonderful place for us to meditate upon this morning.

  Friends, I just want you to know this. That no matter how you feel, whether you have a great deal of peace in your soul, I don't know if many of us would describe ourselves as people with peace in our soul, but you're someone who has a great deal of peace in your soul, or you're constantly living that conflict with yourself, and maybe conflict with God, conflict with others, if you just feel a lack of peace, the the reality is that God wants you to have an ever increasing measure of peace in your life. And that is what it means to be like Christ. That Jesus was the most peaceful person who ever lived, though he did not shy away from conflict from time to time. He was also someone who is at peace with God and at peace with himself, at peace with others, and God wants that for you. It's part of the art of becoming more like Jesus.

  And so today, I have 3 points for us as we look at this passage, the final passage of 1 Thessalonians, and the first point is that our God is a God of peace. Our God is a God of peace. Verse 23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. Let me just describe this a little bit more with a couple of specific things.

  First, it says, may the God of peace, and when we talk about peace, what are we talking about? Often times when we think about peace, we think about the absence of conflict. That is what it means to have peace. It's like the absence of conflict. It's kind of like, in many ways there's lots of things that you can talk about that are just like not that. It's like, what is the color black? was the absence of color in many ways or it's all of them put together, however you want to think about that whether we're talking about light or hues, but. Peace we often understand as the absence of conflict, but to an ancient Jewish mind it was absolutely more than that. It was more than the absence of conflict.

  You had this ancient idea and current in some cultures of shalom, and shalom is this state of wholeness. Now, how does that feel? As opposed to the absence of conflict, it's a state of wholeness. The absence of conflict makes us think that something is missing, but this idea of peace is that you are made complete. You are whole. There's nothing lacking in God Himself. He is a God of absolute wholeness and absolute peace among himself. God's peace does not depend upon anything outside of himself. He is fully satisfied in his own infinite glory. And God is the true source of peace for all of humanity.

  This morning, if you're feeling a lack of peace, what you are feeling is a lack of God. And if you are feeling or experiencing some sort of peace, you are experiencing a part of what it means to be who God is, a part of his nature being shared with you, that God's peace is not just a balm on our womb, but it's him sharing who he actually is. And that is what he wants for us to share his peace with us.

  Now this passage says, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you. We don't spend enough time thinking about that, that God, the God of the universe, who created everything, who sustains it, who spoke it into being, who reigns supreme over it all. I mean, have you seen a planetarium show lately with all the expanses of the universe, that God Himself is getting involved in your sanctification. I have a friend who used to work for Amazon. And he told me this story that one time he was consulting on something big enough to where Jeff Bezos himself had to weigh in on what he was working on. Whoa, that's a big deal that, that the Bez, the Bezos, you know, he, he has to step in there and, and give his opinion on what my friend is working on.

  How much more should it amaze us that God sees our souls and our sanctification as his individual contributor work. That he cares for us in that type of deeply intimate way. It's truly amazing that the God of peace would care for us in that way. Now, of course, he uses a team, but he's concerned about your maturation, your sanctification. Our God is the God of peace. John, just a couple of verses here to to show this.

  John 14:27. I'll throw them on the screen for you. Peace I leave you. I leave with you. My peace I give you, this is Jesus speaking. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And then Philippians 4, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Have you experienced that kind of peace, the kind of peace that surpasses understanding where you're facing terrible things, but yet, the God of peace comes and works in your soul to bring sanctification, to bring maturity to you.

  Now the second point that we're going to talk about today. First, God, our God is the God of peace. Second is that God wants you to have an ever increasing measure of His peace. God wants you, church, to have an ever increasing measure of His peace. And how does he do this? But through a process. That we call sanctification, sanctification.

  Verse 23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. And so, this passage, just 3 things about sanctification in this point here, subpoints 1, 2, and 3. The verse teaches us that God sanctifies us progressively, completely, and holistically. Progressively, completely, and holistically. Let's break down each of these.

  First, God's sanctification is progressive. During Jesus' ministry, we see Jesus do all kinds of amazing things. Walk on water. You saw him heal people that had no hope, the disabled, the blind, people that had no doctor to help them with that. You saw Jesus speak to the weather, and the weather listened and obeyed. It's not just listening, it's obeying also, children. It's Family worship Sunday. They listen the weather, listen and obey, but the one thing that you never see Jesus do, and it's, it kind of astounds me when you think about this. You see lots of people encounter Jesus, and then their lives change forever, but Jesus never zaps anyone's character. He never takes them from being a terrible person to being fully sanctified with the snap of a finger.

  You look at someone who followed Jesus closely like Peter. And at every turn, Peter is doing something dumb. He's always doing dumb things. He never, and it's like he's one of Jesus' closest companions. He's following Jesus, he sees Jesus up close, yet Jesus doesn't see it necessary to zap his character, cause that is not the way that Jesus works. He does not zap our character. Our sanctification is progressive.

  Now, there's 3 words that we generally kind of get mixed up in in the Bible and in our Christian theology, and it's justification, sanctification, and glorification. I think they're all tied together and they're all In this verse, I'm gonna run through them very quickly. If you're not into the theology, just hang with me, OK? Justification is this legal declaration that you were made innocent before God, that you trust Jesus, He has saved you from your sin, and in God's eyes, you are made like Jesus. Although you don't act like him all the time. Sanctification is this process of becoming, this art of becoming more and more like Jesus, and glorification is this day when either you are united with Him in heaven or he returns to earth, and you were made like Jesus. You're still you, but you're made holy as Christ is holy.

  To give you an illustration, let's just show it like this, there's a recent movie I actually haven't seen the movie. I want to see it. My wife watched it without me on an airplane, but A Complete Unknown by Bob Dylan, not Bob about Bob Dylan, about Bob Dylan, and, Timothee Chalamet plays Bob Dylan and when they first cast Timothee Chalamet to play Bob Dylan, I was suspicious. Very he's just this little wiry guy and I best know him from SNL where he's just going like skeet yeah and so like I, I just didn't think he could pull it off, and but at that moment when he was declared Bob Dylan when he was cast into the role, that's like his justification, like whether I like it or not, whether I think he can pull it off or not, whether he's ready for it or not, he is Bob Dylan. Done, it's done. He's got the money. He's he's Bob Dylan.

  But then the process that it took him to become Bob Dylan, all the training that he had to go through, that's his sanctification process, OK? So he did, he, when he was first, I read a Rolling Stone article about this, when he was first cast as Bob Dylan, he was supposed to have 4 months to prepare to play Bob Dylan, but it was during COVID and the writers strike, and so those 4 months became 5 years. So no wonder he got nominated for an Academy Award. He had a lot of time to get ready to play Bob Dylan, so he went hard. He took guitar lessons. He had a vocal coach, he had a dialect coach, he had a harmonica coach. He took movement lessons in how to make himself that weird cool Bob Dylan, that I don't have any of. He, he actually filled his life completely with Bob Dylan. He, he flew to Minnesota and visited Bob's childhood home. He visited Bob's high school where he first rocked the stage, and it all culminated into this wonderful performance. So you see the process was gradual. This is his sanctification, and we see it in the glorification, which is Timothee Chalamet on screen. He is Bob Dylan. Well, I guess it's true. He became Bob, that's the moment of glorification when we see him on the screen.

  And so, it would be easy for me at this point though, to make this point, that only if Christians would take their sanctification half as seriously as Timothee Chalamet takes being Bob Dylan. Then we would see a lot of changes in the world. If we wanted to be Jesus as much as he wanted to be Bob Dylan. It would be be a big deal. But that's not the point in the passage. It might be somewhat true, but that's not what the passage is saying, because what does it say? That the God of peace himself, he will sanctify you. It's not about how hard you try, but it's about living in communion with Christ, and then as you commune with Him, your soul is sanctified, transformed, you're made more like Him, you see yourself as he sees you, which is sinful and flawed, but loved and cherished beyond all comprehension.

  And when you understand that loving kindness of God for you, it shapes you into the image of Jesus. It is the art of becoming like Christ. Sanctification is progressive, but it's also complete.

  Verse 23 again. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord. Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it. This means that God is not going to give up. On what he begins. That all of us from the newest, weakest Christian in the faith to the strongest, most mature, have the same destiny when it comes to sanctification. That he is going to do it completely. He's going to take us all the way there.

  This is referring to the eventual reality of glorification. That Jesus will return. It mentions that here that, that he will do, he will return, that he will, in the next verse, oh no, it's right there in verse 23, that may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the glorification moment when Jesus returns and makes us whole. And thirdly, sanctification is progressive, it's also complete, but it's finally holistic. And this idea that God is going to holistically save us, it it says that our body, our soul, and our spirit are going to be made whole with God. I wrote a newsletter article about this. I think that he's just emphatically saying your whole being, that he's not trying to make a statement on human nature, but all of who you are is going to be made whole at his coming.

  And I think we think about it often times like, our souls will be renewed with God, but how often do we think about the fact that our bodies will be renewed with God? But all you need to do is talk to someone whose life has been touched by a debilitating disease. And you will see someone who is longing for a holistic sanctification, a holistic redemption. Even as we get older and the bodies aching, hurt. We long for a holistic redemption. I hiked a really hard hike the other day. My, I felt like my knees were going to fall off. I need a holistic sanctification, and I long for the day. I was just quoting in my mind as we were doing that crazy hike, Isaiah 40:31, "But they who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, and they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." But that is true for the saints who are in their 80s and 90s, who, walking and leaping, are no longer on the menu. And when that is true, we can long for the day when Jesus returns, and you'll see Nana running again. Or you'll see your friends who've lost some type of health being made right again. It's a beautiful reality of what we get.

  Third point, and then finally, is this idea that because we have, our God is the God of peace, who desires for us to have an ever increasing measure of peace, that this peace spills out between us in the church. Verse verse 25, he just kind of lands the plane, kind of abruptly, and I think there's a reason for that. Verse 25, he says, brothers, pray for us. And it's like kind of a, we got short sentences, he's he's going like, shorter. More succinct in what he's saying right now. And the reason why that is most scholars believe that Paul actually used a scribe to write almost all of his letters, if not all of them. And then at the end of his letters, he would write kind of the last little bit. And so if that's true, then this is probably the last little bit that Paul wrote in a different form of handwriting. And so you see that it's changed, you see that it's Paul's own hand as he's writing these things.

  Verse 26, it says this. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. Now, I know a lot of y'all hate the passing of the peace, but what if I took this literally? The holy kiss suggests a symbolic expression of a condition of peace among God's people. It's meant to be, basically what he's saying is Christians are meant to have a demonstratively, demonstratingly. Warm affection for one another. And in some cultures it looks different. In some cultures it looks like a bow where you don't even touch. In some cultures you might shake hands, but you might give it that extra hardy handshake and some cultures you might dap them up in some cultures, you might, you might hug in some cultures, you know, different things in different places.

  Some places do still kiss. The French still kiss. The, the Spaniards for the most part I believe still kiss and it's like the pecks on the cheek. Sorry, I didn't mean to hit my microphone there, um. And I, I have even found that some families kiss. You really have two types of families. You have the kissy families and the non-kissy families. Anybody from a kissy family, you might be more demonstrably, yeah, there's some kissy families out there. I come from a family that I was never kissed as a child. That is not something we do among family, and then I married into a. Family that also similarly did not kiss until I met my my father-in-laws. OK, so like my my wife's immediate family does not kiss, but her aunts and and uncles and grandmother, they'll lay a kiss on you and I was taken aback the first time I was kissed by one of them like what just landed on my cheek? It was your lips. Did you mean to do that? I think you did. But I've always felt quite loved at the same time when I received that. I don't know if it's the old country Ireland coming out. They're like Sullivans, like very Irish, like not that far back. Maybe that's coming through, but.

  It's, it's a warm thing and so at our church we do something every week called the passing of the peace and this isn't the only way that we do this when you see each other, this is just simple when you see each other out in the wild, OK? And I know you do, we should be people that demonstratingly warm when we see one another. So, I got no problem if I see someone walking down the street and I start honking my horn and saying hello, OK? Also, I have no problem honking my horn in general, because I'm from Boston. I, I honk all the time. so whether I'm yelling at someone or waving, it's the same thing. Also, like if you just see someone, it's a warm, it's a warmth, and that's why we continue to do this practice in the peace thing where we take a moment to greet one another and in many church communities they say peace be with you and also with you or peace be with your spirit and also with yours, whatever it might be.

  Now studies say that that part of the service is the most hated part for for the majority like if you want to like rank the the order of service from most favorite to least favorite, that would be the bottom of the list every time because there are these people and I, if you're an extrovert, this might be news to you, but there's people that don't like to talk to strangers or to do small talk, OK? They're called introverts and it's like 50% of us, OK? They're way better, get this, this whole idea of solitude in scripture where Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray, introverts really good at that. Extroverts sometimes it's like ugh, feels uncomfortable, but the one's not better than the other, but I know that it presses you and because I think that you can make one or two mistakes with the passing of the peace.

  Sorry, we're just talking about church service at the moment, but I'm just gonna make a defense for it. You can make the, the one mistake to where you don't, you, you might be new and you don't get greeted, and that stinks. That's not fun. If you're new here, I'm sorry. I wish someone had talked to you if they didn't. I think our church is generally good at introducing people, but if you've been here more than a month, you're not new anymore, and now it's your job to make other people feel welcome, OK? We just have to see it that way because our church, you know, we have people come and go from time to time.

  And so we want to make people feel welcome, but then sometimes also the passing of the piece can be a little bit too intense, right? So we have to like walk this line because sometimes it's like, hi, welcome, this is your first time? OK, why don't you join my group every week from now until eternity? You wanna sign up to work with children? Wait 6 months and then you can come and work with children. But I'm gonna follow up with you and make that happen. And it's like, it's a little more than what I was going for here. So we had to figure out the best way to walk the line. All that is aside, and we're just really saying that the peace that God has given to us, it overflows into love for one another.

  Paul ends his letter with two simple thoughts. First, he says, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all of the brothers. In an ancient society, not everyone could could read. In fact, in many places in the world, not everyone could read. And for years and years, until really more modern times, past 500 years, people did not get, did not have their own copy of the Bible. All that changed like around Gutenberg, you know, 1500, 1600s when Bibles became more well printed. And even at that time, it was rare that you had your own version. Your family might have a Bible that you could read from time to time. And so what did people do? They went to church and they heard the word of God, and it was taught.

  And so I think that we can have some real chronological snobbery sometimes and and even like cultural snobbery where literacy is expected of all people, but we need to sit under the teaching and what a joy it is that we get to read our Bibles for ourselves. It's just more opportunity for that. People also went to church more often back then though. They would go each day, to go in here. And so, we are people of the book, we want to read the Bible, we believe in what it has to say, and the letter is helpful for us.

  And then verse 28, he says this, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. It's just a blessing. That's how he ends it with just this blessing. May the grace be addiction. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. And as we close today. We're going to have an opportunity to practice a sacred meal. And I want to encourage you to use this time as an opportunity to evaluate yourself. And to ask yourself the question, who am I becoming? As I continue for the next 20 years, am I allowing the God of peace himself to sanctify me? Am I receptive to the God of peace, to sanctify me?

  And if you're not, may your heart change in posture this morning. Would you come to the table saying, I want to hear God, what you have for me? If I continued for the next 20 years, just as I am living, where is that going to get me? How do I need to be receptive to what God has to say to me today? That my life might not be the same. You know, every time someone encounters God, though he does not zap their character, they leave changed. And today, wherever you are, I pray that you get to encounter the God of peace himself, who sees your soul as his individual contributor work, that surely he will do it, that he will bring you to completion. That he will shape you into the image of Christ. And I pray that today is an opportunity for you to hear from him.

  And so as we close, I just wanna give you this final meditation prayer, just something for you to, to think through. This is from Augustine, who said, give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will. Let's just take a moment and pray on that. Would you just read that, maybe a few times. And would you just join me in prayer as we ask God to do this? Give me the grace to do as you command. And command me to do what you will. Let that be your prayer.

  If you need to pray with someone this morning, we'll have some prayer counselors in the back, just in this corner over here, but we're going to take a moment now to turn and practice the sacred meal that we call communion, Lord's supper, Eucharist, whatever you would like to call it. And we practice this each week because on the night that he was betrayed, Christ took a loaf of bread and he tore it. And he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup of wine and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me, cup of the new covenant. And so each week we come and take this physical reminder that Christ cares for us, that his body was broken for us, that blood was shed for us, and that he's with us even today. And so as you come and receive this, if you are a believer in Christ, if you are committed to following his way, we invite you to the table. So, if you would please stand with me if you are able, and as we close with the word of prayer and the band makes their way back to the stage, and we practice this communion meal.

  Father, we pray that as we take this meal, as we take of the bread and the cup, that you would be working in our hearts and helping us to hear from you, to glorify you, to magnify you. God may your grace give us what we need to follow your commands. And give us the knowledge to know what we need to do to better follow you. Give me the grace to do as you command and command me to do what you will. And God, we pray that that would be true for us today. That as we participate in this sacred meal, that our hearts will be brought closer to yours. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.