I’m sure that you’ve known someone from school or work. Someone who you just know is not for real. I knew someone like in my 5th grade class at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. Ricky was his name. Ricky told us all kinds of things about himself and his family. He had once killed another boy with a single punch while he was in a rage. Ricky’s father used to be a famous football player. Ricky used to live all over Europe. Ricky knew how to fly a plane. Ricky got a little hard to believe sometimes.
Our world is a little like Ricky; a little artificial, a little hard to believe. People are always making themselves out to be something that they are not. We can be this way as Christians too. We can call ourselves Christian, a follower of Christ, but seek to center the world on us and what we want instead of what God wants. We tend to make ourselves out to be a little better than we are. This is a plastic Christianity. Authentic Christianity seeks to chase after knowing and pleasing God with all its being.
God calls us to be an authentic Christian who boldly pursues pleasing God rather than pleasing people. In this passage of Scripture Paul addresses two questions concerning the fact that Paul and his companions were God pleasers. If we wish to be authentic Christians in a world filled with plastic, artificial ones then our goal must be, above all else, to please God. Now what are these two questions that Paul answers in this passage concerning being a God pleaser?
1. Why were they God pleasers?
The first question that Paul answers in this passage is found in verse 4. The question is, “Why were they God pleasers?” Why was Paul concerned about pleasing God in every aspect of his life? He mentions this at the end of verse four when he says that God is the one examining his heart.
What other reason do we need as believers in Christ to seek to please God in every area of our lives? God’s all-knowing eye is upon us. He knows our hearts. He wants to cleanse our hearts so that we might stop being deceived about how good we are. Paul said that, “In my flesh dwells no good thing.” If there is any goodness in me at all it is because of Christ and His transforming power in my life. It is for no other reason.
King David says something very powerful in regard to pleasing God in Psalm 139. Throughout the Psalm, David acknowledges God’s works in his life. At the end of the Psalm he says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
David is not suggesting that God does not know what is in his heart already. It is not that David is now just giving God access to the inner recesses of his heart. He is asking God to look with the intention of revealing to David, that which is in his heart so that he might rid himself of what is hideous to God’s sight. He says, “Try me,” that is “Test me.” One of the tests that we used to conduct in the Navy was an eddy current examination of some of the radioactive piping. This procedure would use magnetic fields to verify that the wall thickness of the pipes was adequate to prevent leakage. Apart from this detailed examination we wouldn’t know if a pipe was about to leak until it was too late. David was telling God to put his heart to the test so that he might find the defects and correct them. He was asking God to give him a detailed report of what was displeasing to God that He might live in a righteous manner. He was seeking God’s revelation of the secret areas in his life that were currently hidden from his sight.
Really, if we are to be God pleasers, what must first take place in our lives is a humbling of ourselves before God. We must admit that we have areas in our lives that need radical revamping. We must admit that only God is the one who can make us understand just how unclean our hearts are and to cause us to acknowledge it.
Let me say first off that this is not the American way. Pride is the American way. Humbly admitting our need for God’s direct intervention in our lives is not what is popular today. Noting that we have spiritual heart defects in a society that prides itself on having it all together is not what is accepted. You and I, my friends, must come to grips with this fact. We must humble ourselves and must begin to recognize that what we so commonly justify as OK is simply not what pleases God.
David says in Psalm 51, his psalm of repentance, “You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are (what is God pleased with?) a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise.” God is pleased when we acknowledge our sinfulness to Him. He already knew it. He is pleased when we fall before Him in a repentant attitude about our sin. He is pleased when we cease to justify our behavior as “normal” or “part of our nature.” He is pleased when we stop stiffening our necks against His Word. We please God when admit to Him that we need His righteousness because our own is as filthy garments. So we see why Paul wanted to be a God pleaser was that he understood it was God who examined his heart.
2. How were they God pleasers?
The second question that Paul answers in this passage is “How were they God pleasers?” He describes this in verses 5-8. How did Paul seek to please God? He explains how he was a God pleaser in four ways here.
A. By speaking God’s truth
The first way that Paul explained how he was a God pleaser is by speaking the truth. He mentions this in verse 5. At the beginning of that verse he says, “For we never came with flattering speech, as you know.” In his concern to please God he didn’t want to tell the Thessalonians what they wanted to hear but what God wanted him to speak.
He didn’t change his message so as to make it more palatable to those with whom he shared the Gospel. There is a tendency in churches today to change the message of the Gospel by couching it in language that no longer speaks the truth. Many pastors and Bible teachers want to use language that softens sin and turns the terrors of hell into a less than pleasant vacation. Hell is often described today as a “Christless eternity.” What does an unbeliever say to that? “Christless eternity? Good I don’t want to spend eternity with Christ forever anyway.” Words like “Christless eternity” instead of eternal punishment do not communicate the truth.
The so-called purpose that some use for this is so that unbelievers will not be offended by such harsh terms and they will not go somewhere else. Well if they kept going somewhere else and hearing the same thing (that is the truth) then sooner or later they’ll get it. The problem in changing the language is that doing this keeps people from understanding what is really at stake for those who reject Christ. Our job is not to remove the offense of the Gospel. It is God who removes the blindness of those who do not believe. It is God who causes those who believe to see the cross and the shedding of Christ’s blood for their sin no longer as offensive but as a precious thing. God allows them to no longer see that the justice of God in the eternal damnation of sinners as something despicable but as a wonderful work in which God carries out what is right. Our job is to present the truth with all its offense to people with the hope that God will grant them repentance. But if we are speaking words that soothe to those that need conviction and not comfort then we are carrying out an injustice before God. Even Martin Luther, the German born monk said before his conversion that he hated the justice of God because it meant that he surely would be condemned. But had that message of God’s justice not been ingrained upon his heart he never would have seen his need for Christ.
We are in a time that the Apostle Paul described in 2 Timothy chapter 3. He said there, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.”
We have had people leave this church because they didn’t hear what they wanted to hear. They wanted to justify their own brand of sin. They wanted some kind of approval to assuage their conscience. They wanted someone in religious garb to give them the OK to continue to do what they were doing. But as God’s grace is with me I will not bend to the pressure to conform to the sinful pattern of our society. I’ve had someone who visited the church once try to push their financial weight around by hinting at some large gift they would like to give. I told this individual that he needed to deal with more important issues first like getting some things right in his life. He hasn’t come back. The problem isn’t that people want to do some good things but rather the problem is they want to cling to the sin that God is convicting them to give up. It is OK for the speaker to preach against sin as long as he doesn’t preach against their particular sin. This kind of false speak is an eternal shame and it merely affirms the condemnation of such individuals if they do not repent.
I am all for making “theological” terminology understandable to everyone because if we speak in a foreign language to people how will they understand what is being said? How will they embrace the truth of the Gospel? How will they understand that they are cut off from God in danger of suffering his eternal wrath because of their sin? How will they understand the simple free gift of the forgiveness of their sin through Jesus Christ? But what I am not in favor of is turning people’s sin into disorders and psychoses and treating it with pills instead of with repentance. Oswald Chambers remarked that, “We must never confuse our desire for people to accept the Gospel with creating a Gospel that is acceptable to people.”
Paul said that he did not come with flattering speech. He did not seek to cause unrepentant people to feel good about their sin. Jeremiah gave a scathing rebuke to those who give false peace to those around them. In Jeremiah 6, the prophet says, “And they have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace . . . therefore they shall fall among those who fall. At the time that I punish them they shall be cast down.” When there is true contrition for sin there is peace. But without repentance, without the desire to follow God’s truth and turn away from our sin then any offered help is merely a false peace that brings death. Paul describes the same idea in 2 Corinthians 7. There he notes, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
Let me say this without equivocation, “If you will not acknowledge your sin and turn from it then you will not have the peace that passes understanding. The Psalmist says in Psalm 32, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.” Repentance is the path to peace. Any other way is a path that leads to death.
We will not help anyone spiritually if we do not give them the medicine that they really need. If we hem and haw about the truth then we will lack the answers for which the world is really looking. If we are merely trying to win a popularity contest we end up with a Christianity that lacks power and does not save because it does not show people their real need. Their real need is to acknowledge their sin against God, recognize Jesus Christ as the king of the universe and receive Him as their Savior. Let me get a little personal here. If you have not received Christ as your Savior personally then God’s wrath abides upon you because of your sin. And if you were to die today God’s wrath would be poured out upon you forever and ever. If you are a Christian but do not want to share this message with others for fear that it might offend them then you are not seeking to please Christ.
B. By serving without greed
The second way that Paul explained how he was a God pleaser is by serving without greed. We see this at the end of verse 5. “Nor (did we come) with a pretext for greed, God is witness.” Paul and his companions did not go to Thessalonica to get rich. They didn’t go there to live off the people.
Simply put, greed is a love of stuff. And Paul, in Colossians 3 calls it idolatry. When our lives are consumed with greed we have replaced God with stuff. And Jesus says this very thing when He states that you cannot serve God and money. Be careful that the love of money, which is the root of all kinds of evil does not become your reason for living. Scripture says that those who have desired to become rich pierce themselves through with many pains. I think that we must be very careful with how we handle and view money. Paul doesn’t differentiate for the motives to become rich. And I think many a person has deceived themselves into thinking that if they can only get rich then they will give greatly to God. The problem with that is that if a person isn’t surrendered to God in that kind of thinking, they are truly already surrendered to their money and using God as a pretext for their greed.
Neither pastoring, preaching nor any other Christian endeavor should be a pretext for getting rich. If we find that as our ambition then we should be getting right with God or getting out. Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle relates these words in his book “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire.” He says, “I am dismayed at the contracts required by some contemporary Christian musical groups. To perform a concert at your church, the stated fee will be so much (in either four or five figures) plus round trip airfare – often in first class, not coach. Every detail of the accommodations is spelled out, down to ‘sushi for twenty persons’ waiting at the hotel, in one case. All this is done so that the group can stand before an inner city audience and exhort the people to ‘just trust the Lord for all your needs.” The commercialization of Christianity has become its bane. We must ask ourselves if there are those who are not willing to serve the Lord except for so much are they really serving the Lord or themselves?
Let me quickly list some steps that we can take in overcoming the greed that is idolatry. First, accept the love of money as an ongoing battle. We must recognize that if we cannot serve God and money then we must crucify the love of money as a part of the flesh that seeks to set itself against God. Secondly, recognize the emptiness of the material and temporal and the fullness of the spiritual and eternal. The material and temporal leave us empty because it never satisfies. Thirdly, develop a wartime lifestyle. John Piper says, “There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriantly ‘as a child of the King’ in this atmosphere sounds hollow – especially since the King Himself is stripped for battle . . . A wartime lifestyle implies that there is a great and worthy cause for which to spend and be spent.” Fourthly, explode the omnipresent economic lie of American merchandising that the only sin you can commit in relation to money is stealing. Lusting for it is equally destructive and anything that feeds that lust should be repudiated. The American lifestyle has caused us to focus on ourselves and our ultimate comfort. We neglect that Scripture is replete with examples of the righteous person lending to those in need. The Scripture says that He who is gracious to the poor man lends to the Lord.
If we want to be a God pleaser we must serve without greed. Look at your heart and see if that desire for just a little more has found its way into you.
C. By seeking God’s praise
The third way that Paul explained that he was a God pleaser is by seeking God’s praise. We find this in verse 6. He doesn’t say it explicitly but implies it by his words. He says, “Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others.” What Paul is saying is that by not seeking glory (or praise) from men they were truly concerned about receiving praise from God. They wanted to receive praise from God because that is the kind of praise that is everlasting. The glory from others is fleeting.
Why were they doing what they were doing? They were not trying to make a name for themselves in the annals of human history. They weren’t trying to get the most popular award or any kind of human accolades. They were seeking eternal treasure from God.
Paul describes that there will come a day when God will judge the motives of people’s actions and that will determine their reward. God will determine if we were seeking His praise or man’s. In 1 Corinthians 4:5, Paul says, “Wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motive’s of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.”
What are your motives for what you are doing? To see people pleased? Do you desire to make yourself a friend of the world and accommodate the world? Or do you wish that in all you do you will be pleasing to the Lord? What makes the difference is whether you take the long look or the short look. Are you seeking praise now or later? Are you seeking glory now or later? Let me encourage each one of you to look for God’s praise and not man’s. It may seem easier to seek the approval of others now but by doing that you are missing the reward of God later. Jesus said that the religious hypocrites of His day did what they did so as to be seen by men. What was Jesus’ comment about them? “They have their reward in full.”
D. By showing gentleness
Finally, the fourth way that Paul explained that he was a God pleaser is by showing gentleness. Paul describes this from the end of verse 6 to verse 8. There he says, “As apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the Gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.”
Paul clearly reveals his heart in this section. Though he had the opportunity to use his authority as an apostle of Christ he didn’t. Paul and his companions didn’t go around the place saying, “We are apostles and you’re not.” They didn’t take their title or authority as Christ’s apostles as something to be used for their own advantage. Though they could have acted like big shots because they had been commissioned by Christ they refused to act that way. Instead, Paul says, we acted like Christ. We acted gently among you. We sought to present the Gospel to you with all the gentleness of Christ.
Paul said, “We proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.” They were gentle and caring for these believers in Thessalonica. Not only did they not tout their authority but they humbled themselves to the point to be as tender as mothers toward their own children. They saw that a powerful Gospel presented in humility showed its real strength. It was especially true for the Thessalonians when this powerful message of forgiveness came humbly through a man who, formerly, was exceedingly abusive and domineering. The Thessalonians were able to see that the Gospel does change people’s lives even as much as it changed this man Saul so that no longer was he a murderer, constantly breathing out threats, Saul of Tarsus. But he was now Paul the gentle, Paul the humble, Paul the follower of Christ.
Here, Paul sought to be a God pleaser by showing gentleness. He knew that if he was to portray the graciousness of God, it would not come through an ostentatious presentation of authority so common today among the world’s celebrities. So Paul humbled himself in front of the Thessalonians and showed, in living display, a God who humbled Himself and took on human flesh in order to suffer for their sin that they might be reconciled to Him and not perish in His just wrath.
What about you? Are you seeking to please men or God? Do you want to impress your friends and seem like someone important? Or are you willing to speak God’s truth, squash your greed, seek God’s rewards and live humbly and gently among those around you who need Christ? If you want to be a God pleaser then you must, by God’s grace, live in this way. Begin today by acknowledging where you have fallen short, in what ways you have been a people pleaser or a self-pleaser instead of God pleaser. Repent, turn from those ways, and give God the glory to be able to live whole-heartedly for Him.