INTRO.- ILL.- The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, "Only a little while."
The American then asked, "Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?"
The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs."
The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your
time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life."
The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "15 to 20 years." "But what then?" asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said that’s the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions?...Then what?"
The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."
Brothers and sisters, what are we living for? To make money? Retirement? To take it easy and do as little as possible? All of us have certain goals in life whether it’s retirement, success, etc.
No matter what our goal is in life we have another goal and that is to please God. No matter what we do in life, no matter what we do to make a living, etc. Or whether we retire or not, WE MUST MAKE IT OUR GOAL IN LIFE TO PLEASE GOD!
1Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living.
II Cor. 5:9 "So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it."
Yes, our major goal, whether we live or die, should be to please the Lord!
PROP.- The Bible is full of admonition on how to please God in life. We have three different admonitions in this text.
1- Avoid sexual lust
2- Adopt brotherly love
3- Ambitiously work hard
I. AVOID SEXUAL LUST
3It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Sexual immorality and sexual lust are everywhere in our society: TV, the movies, the internet, billboards, magazine advertisements, etc. HOW CAN WE AVOID THIS STUFF?
Obviously, it’s easier for some people to avoid this junk than others. Young people have a strong temptation toward this stuff. But it’s not just young people.
ILL.- 54 year old former model, Christie Brinkley, divorced her 4th husband this last summer. Here’s the story. Brinkley married her fourth husband, Peter Cook (48), an architect, in 1996, and filed for divorce in September 2006. The public divorce proceedings, held in summer 2008, were regular tabloid fodder, in part due to Cook’s admission that he had committed adultery with eighteen-year-old Diana Bianchi.
Press and public interest increased with Cook’s revelations that he had paid $300,000 to Bianchi in the hopes of forestalling a lawsuit and had spent thousands of dollars each month on internet pornography.
Brinkley and Cook settled out-of-court on July 10, 2008, with Brinkley granting her fourth husband $2.1 million in exchange for custody of their two children and the retention of 18 disputed properties in the Hamptons.
This is just one of many stories. And, of course, many of these lurid stories never make the headlines or the news.
ILL.- 48 year old actor, David Duchovny, checked himself into a rehabilitation facility for treating sex addiction on August 28, 2008. Often likened to alcoholism, drug addiction or gambling, sex addiction is a form of compulsive behaviour which is sending growing numbers of people into therapy but which is not formally recognized as a "diagnosable disorder" by the American Psychiatric Association.
ILL.- Then, of course, you’ve got the sexually immoral who have chosen the gay lifestyle: Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Mellisa Etheridge, Jodie Foster, Elton John, and 72 year old singer, Johnny Mathis. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
A 1982 Us Magazine article quoted Mathis as having said, "Homosexuality is a way of life that I’ve grown accustomed to." He further confirmed a sexual relationship with a male saxophonist. And there a host of others.
What’s a person to do today? How can we avoid any kind of sexual immorality: gay, straight or otherwise? And how can we stay as holy as possible?
ILL.- Alexander was trying to save all the pennies he could in order to buy a baseball bat. But he had a hard struggle. One night when he was saying his prayers, his mother heard him say fervently: “O Lord, please help me save my money for a baseball bat. And, God, don’t let the ice cream man come down this street!”
One of the ways to avoid any kind of temptation is to stay out of the devil’s territory. Or pray for protection from evil. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lean on the Lord. Pray. Put up a fight. Hide the Word of God in your heart so that you might not sin against Him (Ps. 119:11).
There are many things we can do to avoid sexual lust and become holy. God gives us many outs and safeguards, if we will use them. And to please the Lord we must avoid the unholy and choose the holy in life.
II. ADOPT BROTHERLY LOVE
9Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
We all need to adopt a brother or a sister and love them. The idea is that we need to adopt the love of God into our lives and demonstrate it to others.
ILL.- Lee Iacocca once asked legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. The book entitled Iacocca records Lombardi’s answer. He said, "There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don’t win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you’re going to play together as a team, you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: If I don’t block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his.
"The difference between mediocrity and greatness," Lombardi said that night, "is the feeling those guys have for each other."
If a football team can band together and demonstrate love for one another then what about the church? If any one group should love one another it should be the Lord’s church!
ILL.- DEAR ABBY: I am writing about a change I have seen in church. I accept the loud guitar music and informal settings, although I do miss the traditional hymns and formal altars. What I cannot get used to is the forced "friendly" greeting and handshaking. I attend church to meditate and worship with my family. I do not go to shake hands with strangers and give them a greeting dictated by a pastor.
I like people. I am naturally caring, outgoing and friendly. However, I believe that a greeting or handshake should come from my own heart.
I have mentioned this to friends and family from all faiths, ages and walks of life. None of them like this scheduled "greeting" either. Many say they head for the restroom at that time, turn their backs or just shake hands with the people they came with, come to church late to avoid it, or don’t come at all. Others feel the practice is unsanitary.
I suggest that church leaders take an anonymous poll and ask how many in their congregations agree with me. What do you think, Abby? -- MINISTER’S DAUGHTER, CALIF.
DEAR DAUGHTER: Thank you for asking my opinion. Here it is: Something is wrong in our fragmented society if, for one moment in a house of God, people cannot find it in their hearts to reach out and make sure that everyone feels included and welcome. And for those who fear it is unsanitary -- bring small bottles of hand sanitizer.
Brothers and sisters, all I’m suggesting is that our greeting time is good and should be just a simple indication of our love for one another. And if a genuine greeting time isn’t a part of of the church, how else can we make visitors feel like they are welcome?
A part of living to please the Lord is learning to love others! How do we do this? By being friendly. By being quick to greet one another. By praying for one another. By checking on one another when someone is sick and/or perhaps absent from the worship. By ministering to one another any way we can! To please God we must love other!
III. AMBITIOUSLY WORK HARD
ILL.- The perfect job
- My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned...couldn’t concentrate.
- Next I tried working in a muffler factory but that was too exhausting.
- I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining.
- I attempted to be a deli worker, but any way I sliced it, I couldn’t cut the mustard.
- Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn’t hack it, so they gave me the ax.
- Next was a job in a shoe factory; I tried but I just didn’t fit in.
- So then I got a job in a workout center, but they said I wasn’t fit for the job.
- My last job was working at Starbucks, but I had to quit because it was always the same old grind. SO I RETIRED AND FOUND I’M PERFECT FOR THE JOB!
God wants us all to work at something! And whether we’re good at it or not.
11Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
We need to ambitiously work hard at whatever we do in life because this pleases God and is a good witness for Christ.
ILL.- My first job was working as a sack boy for the Foodtown grocery store in Webb City, MO. I made 50 cents and some of you worked for less, but we were taught to work. We were what to do, how to do it and were expected to do it. Later I graduated to stock clerk.
One guy who worked there was a stocker was newly married and going to college at the same time. His new wife also worked. But you talk about a worker. That guy was a worker!
We each had our different aisles that we stocked whether dog food, canned goods, glass aisle, etc. I was pretty good at stocking shelves but this one guy beat anything I’d ever seen. We each would cut open our boxes of merchandise and stack them on carts and then push to the proper aisle and stock those shelves.
I remember going to the backroom one day to get another load of merchandise that I stacked on a cart and it was gone. I went out into the store, looking for it and this other stock clerk was stocking my stuff! He was so fast at stocking shelves that he’d already done his load and took my cart and was doing my work as well. I was both humbled and embarrassed that I couldn’t stock as fast as he could. And I don’t think he did it to make me look bad. He was just a worker and when his work was done he went looking for more work.
In a sense, that’s the way we’re supposed to be in this world. Workers who work hard at whatever we do. Slackers don’t please God and don’t present a good witness for Christ.
Col. 3:23 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."
CONCLUSION--------------------
A hospital posted a notice in the nurse’s lounge saying: "Remember, the first five minutes of a human being’s life are the most dangerous." Underneath, a nurse had written: "The last five are pretty risky, too."
Brothers and sisters, I would say that ALL of life is important, and can be risky or dangerous. This is why we must always follow the Lord. The best place in life in doing the Lord’s will.
