Bible Guys Classics: 1 Thessalonians 4

Show Notes

What does it really mean to live in a way that pleases God? In this episode of The Bible Guys, Jeff and Chris explore 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul calls believers to a life marked by holiness, love, and obedience.

The conversation focuses on practical faith—how everyday choices, relationships, and self-control reflect our desire to honor God. Jeff and Chris talk about growth, obedience, and taking intentional steps forward in faith.

If you’re looking to live with purpose and clarity in your walk with Christ, this episode offers practical biblical guidance.

🎧 Listen now and reflect on what it means to live to please God.
#TheDailyBibleGuys #1Thessalonians4 #BibleStudyPodcast #ChristianLiving #HolyLiving #FaithInAction

What is The Bible Guys?

Whether you’ve been following Jesus for years or you’re just starting to ask questions, there’s a seat for you here.

Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.

Subscribe, bring your questions, and get to know the Bible one conversation at a time. Head over to TheBibleGuys.com for more information!

Hey, everybody, we're the Bible guys, and if you're just tuning in recently, just know that we are showing a little bit of reruns for a few months, and then we'll be back bigger and better than ever on August thirty first, because behind the scenes we're taking a hiatus to do some very important things. Yeah, we're building building out a new studio and we've got some new structure. Super excited about it. So August thirty first, brand new content. But in the meantime, enjoy some of our greatest hits. Well today can be summarized by saying, Holy living Batman. Okay, that was not how I thought you were going to introduce this. Well, let's find out what we're going to talk about. He's Chris, I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. Did you know that Robin said holy whatever? Yeah, the original Batman. Yeah, well today Paul's talking about Holy living Yes. Hey, yeah, you just caught me off guard there. That was not how I thought you were going to induce that. And I don't want to say nothing. By the way, Jeff never knows what I'm going to say. No. In fact, just so you're wondering in case anybody wonders at all, we don't really know what anybody's We don't rehearse these at all, So these are just prepared the whole thing. Other than other than the Bible part. But yeah, I know. But but a lot of these, but a lot of the questions, every single one of them that we ask each other, for the most part, we don't know the other person's going to. Okay. So today is another segment on Stump the pastor where people have sent in questions, and we're doing this all week and so if you have any questions that you'd like to send in, please send them email us at info at the Bible Guys dot com and we would love to just take any questions and maybe in a few weeks we'll do another segment with your question. So this comes from Michael V. And the question today is this, what is the difference between an Israelite and did you? Wow? Yeah? So manlife. There's so many answers to that. Can we just throw in Hebrew? Yes? Can we just throw that one into yes? Well, the word Hebrew Israelite in jew just to sort of give you the short answer first, are all used interchangeably synonymously almost with Paul and and and the word Hebrew started with Abraham, and it's referred to as descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact, nobody really knows why, but Abraham was actually called the Hebrew and but it's it's it's really referred to the descendants of God's promises and the promises of Abraham specifically. So the word Hebrew comes from the the root word that means ever. So it seems like you know that God is saying because remember God said your your people will last forever. It seems like maybe that might be the root of that part of it where Hebrew really references relationship to to Abraham specifically. But then from there Israelite winds up being more of a nationality. We would say Israeli today it's the same same word. That's a nationality thing, But that doesn't necessarily mean you're Jewish. Right now, the word the word jew was Jews were first used when in the second Kings, when when the nation was divided and you had Israel and you had Judah. The people in Judah referred were referred to as Jews. Right and Judah is where Jerusalem is Judah is where Bethlehem is. Well, Bethlehem is in Benjamin. But Judah and Benjamin were one group and Israel was the other group up above. Yeah, yeah, and so and so. And then later on when they became one nation again, then they were all referred to as Jews and uh and and some suggest the reason why is because there were more in the southern region than there were in the northern region. But either way, and not long after that time that they came back together, the Greeks came in and took them all over, and so they're all Jews now. Yeah, So the answer is. This, So Hebrews and Jews and Israelites are used synonymously to refer to the same group of people. However, there is some confusion. In fact, it's been a debate for thousands of years. In fact, I have very good friends who are Jewish, and they would even tell you that even people in their own families disagree on some of these things, because sometimes you can say, oh, I'm Jewish, and what you're meaning is I'm religious, Yes, I'm of the Jewish faith, right, I belong to Judaism. And then some people would say, oh, I'm Jewish, and they're referring to nationality, ethnicity, ethnicity, yesity, yeah, So. The word jew references ethnicity and or religion. And which is why it's so confused, right. For Jewish, But in the Jewish culture of the New Testament and of the Old Testament, you couldn't separate the two. It's like I was with a Sicilian lady when we were in Sicily, and I asked her if she was a Christian, and she said, I'm Sicilian, I'm Catholic, right right, those two in her mind are synonymous. You can't. You can't separate Catholicism from being Sicilian. You can't separate Secilia as being Sicilian from being Catholic. Right. It's kind of the same thing that in Jesus Day and before Jesus Day, Jewish meant this is my nationality and my religion. Today Jewish can mean my nationality and my religion, or my nationality or my religion, right right. Israeli is purely Israelite. It's purely nationality. So you could be a Muslim Israeli, you could be or you could be an atheist Israeli because Israeli Israelite just means nationality, and then Hebrew would be recognizing I'm you know, my ethnicity comes from Abraham. So there's some complexity in that each of those words has its own precise meaning, but we find ourselves sometimes interchanging them. So I was corrected by a good friend of mine, Brian, who I used to work with at my church in Georgia. He's Jewish, and I had made some kind of joke. We met up. I went down for a conference and we met at at a restaurant called the Varsity by the way. Yeah yeah, yeah, for sure, and among other things that wake you up at two. O'clock in the morning to eat it. But we were down. There talking and I had made a reference and he had told me he's like, hey, he said, you know, former President Trump recognized this, and he actually signed a decree or passed some sort of a thing where he was trying to take an identity crisis away from this conundrum. And so he actually with regard to how the State Department used the words yes, yes, and. So he tried to dissolve it by saying, every time you say he's Jewish, you are referring specifically just to ethnicity, nationality. That's it. So Jewish is now supposed to be. Although I'm sure whether or not it was effective. Or not, I'm not sure the US government gets to make those definitions. But what he was saying is it was for the sake of how the State Department yes wrote the word. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you were to describe your faith, then you would have to specifically refer to it as that. Yes, say like I'm the Jewish faith, as opposed to I'm Jewish, right right, So that's I think that more of the standard. Lately, at least among my Rabbi friends, they would say I'm Jewish and they would say I practiced the Jewish faith, which those two things would be would be, you know, somewhat separate. Now, yeah, so I bet you a lot of our listeners didn't understand that. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of complexity in that. So just understand, Jewish usually means both nationality and or I mean ethnicity and or faith. Hebrew means connected to Abraham's family, Israelite means or Israeli is part of the nationality of Israel. Those be the three. So good question. Hey, as you read through the Bible and come across those, those kinds of words. It's fun to ask them and try to figure out what it means. And you know, we will take seven minutes to answer a two minute question if we can. Yeah, wow, yeah, okay. So what verses are we reading today? Chris? The First Thessalonians, Chapter four, verses one through twelve. One through twelve very good. So remember now Paul is in corinth yep, he's there for a year and a half, and he writes a couple of letters back to the church in Thessalonaika that he had helped start in you know, a couple of years before that, and he loves them so much. Right, this is so great, So he says, finally, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus, to live in a way that pleases God. As we've taught you. You live this way already, and we encourage you to do so even more. For remember what we taught you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God's will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the pagan's who not know God and his ways never harm or cheat a fellow believer in this manner by violating his wife, For the Lord avenges all such sins. As we have solemnly warned you before, God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives. Therefore, anyone who refuses to live by these rules is not disobeying human teaching, but is rejecting God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. But we don't need to write to you about the importance of loving each other, for God himself has taught you to love one another. Indeed, you already show your love for all the believers throughout Macedonia. Even so, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you to love them even more. Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live and you will not need to depend on others. That's interesting. Does your version say believers are Christians? Believers? Yeah? Is it the NLT Yeah, mind's of NLT and it says Christians. Well huh and I'll tee yeah. Yeah. Interesting, Well, we probably have a slightly different addition. Mine's the third edition. Yeah, okay, that's really good to point out. Actually it is nifty believers in Christians. It's nifty gifty. Well, if you're a believer, you're a Christian. Oh that's for sure. There you go. So that's all Christians are believers. Is it possible to be a Christian not be a believer? Is it possible to be a Christian and not be a believer? I would say no? Can it goes along with the answer we just gave a minute ago. Well, sometimes people would use it. Sometimes people would use the word I'm Christian, meaning I'm not atheist, I'm not Muslim, and I go to church on occasion. Oh it's different from being. Well, you're talking about semantics, because I was thinking, in my mind the true definition of a christianist to believe that's right, which means they may call themselves Christians. But my note meant whether they call themselves or not they or not one. No, I'm agreeing with you. Yes, okay. So so Paul here is writing and it's really a charge to live holy, which is why I said holy living batman. Yes, because he is asking them to be holy in every way, and he stresses sexual sin, and then he stresses actually, he doesn't really even stress loving one another, although it's implied. And the best thing about this is that he is saying, you already live that way now. So, in other words, he's writing to a group of people who already have evidence in their lives that they've changed, and so he's saying, let me encourage you and encourage you to live that way even more. So it's really cool, Yeah, and I think it's great. He doesn't pull any punches. He's not coming off in a judgmental way. He's just saying, hey, there's a right way to live, and so I want to encourage you. I'm not trying to hurt you. I've already taught you this. You've already been kind of heading in this direction, and I just want to remind you there are consequences to living in moral, unholy lives, right, And it's not like consequences like God hates you. These are just the natural consequences. But he does say God will avenge sexual sin when you're going after somebody else's wife or you know, an adultery kind of a thing. So we shouldn't be surprised when, even as Christians, when we do choose to participate in some sense, there are significant consequences. Right. What we want is we want no consequences. We only want grace and mercy. Oh, I wanted to go with sin and do what I wanted to do, but I can't believe there's consequences to it. I wanted to eat my cake. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. Right, And Paul's just reminding them God will avenge these sins. So I'm not judging you. I'm not telling you off. I'm just reminding you be very cautious when it comes to sexual purity because there are consequences to it. You know, this brings up sort of the bigger topic. In fact. I know we joked about the fact that some people call themselves Christians and then but are they really Christians? But almost serendipitously, those things actually are pretty appropriate. They're connected because there are a lot of people who would say, I call myself a Christian, but doesn't mean that I have to change my way of living at all. Right, so people would say, oh, I love God. It's one of these things. You know. It's like I'd like to thank my creator, you know, you know, or whatever, and it's like it's like that's that's their whole that you know, that that summarizes all their dedication right there. Right he's my good luck time God helped me hit this home run, yes, touchdown. Whatever it is. And I'm not saying everybody who does that is that way, but but but all have to say this. Paul is saying that God still wants us to live righteously. He's saying that it's it's not just about grace, although God gives it to us freely. It's not just about mercy, although God gives it to us endlessly. It's about striving to live holy And if you have Jesus Christ truly in your life, you're going to live that way already. So it's not about obeying because you have to. It's obeying because you want to. And so it's it's so it's such a difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the Old Testament they were looking forward to the Cross of Christ. They're looking forward to the miss Ayah who would come and take away their sin problem. And yet what they were, what they were, you know, given is they were given rules and laws to obey looking forward, you know, to to doing these things to absolve their sins. Jesus Christ has performed all the action necessary to wipe away and absolve all of our sins. So we look back to the cross, and so we realize we don't have to obey for salvation. Right. But but Paul, because of salvation. We obey because of salvation. Right, we will because we we will because we want to out of gratitude, out of and. Then if we can understand that God's laws are not in Paul says in other passage, God's laws are not burdensome. So if they are burdensome, if you're trying to earn a way to heaven, it's not possible, right, But they're not burdensome as far as they make your life better. So you don't have to worry about struggling in sexual intimacy with your partner if you know that you've been pure and holy with each other only right. You don't have to worry about bringing STDs into the family if you've been holy. Right, So there's all these benefits to just doing things God's way. And you know, I love to tell the story about when I used to work with gangs in Chicago, and I told you the story before. I think where dudes walking this massive Rottwiler down the street. But the menus dog I've ever known was these people. They were Puerto Rican people. They had a Chihuahua and this little chiny chihaha pound for pounds medus dog I've ever known, and come flying off the porch and just started smashing itself against the fence trying to get to that giant rottweiler and that whitewader, I'm honestly one of the largest ones I've ever seen. He is probably one hundred and fifteen pounds, and he never even made eye contact with that little dog. That little dog is losing his mind, just pounding himself against this fence. He just, you know, he just wanted to tear into that rattweiler. That rottweiler was so big he could have just inhaled him and not even you know, missed a step. So where was that little chihuahua safest. That chihuahua thought he was more than capable of handing himself with that ratweiler, But this loving master had the fence in the right places that little chiuhaha was completely free and safe inside that fence. Outside that fence, he would have been a scooby snack for that great big jam rat wider. Right, it's kind of the same thing for us. We think we know better, and we throw ourselves against the fence all the time. We want to get out. We're digging underneath the fence, trying to get out away from all the safety and protection that our loving Master has for us. And the Bible says Peter says, the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for whom he made a vour. And if we just understand God's the guidelines for holiness are not oppressive. They give us a better life, a cleaner life, a safer life, a gentler life, a more peaceful life. So I don't think it's a mistake that he ties sexual purity and holiness to so live a peaceful life, live an industrious life, do something that matters with your life, but choose to live at peace. He ties both of those together almost one breath to the next breath. And it's because what he's saying is this. Is a good life. It's not a bad life. Yeah, you know, it's isn't it funny how today when you talk with people in society, the one thing that people do not want to hear is the old fashioned idea. And I say that in quotes, the old fashioned idea that God actually designed sex for marriage. And it's like, I mean, it is just I thought it was. I thought it was not a popular idea thirty years ago, you know, in the eighties, I thought, wow, this is not a popular idea. But holy Christmas, this thing has come. Holy Christmas, bat man, it has come to the point to where people just don't don't want you to talk about it. It's like, it's like, please just change the subject, talk about anything else. Because as a couple dating, we're definitely going to have sex before we're gonna get married. It seems to be the mentality. Right. All talked more about sexual parity than he did about heaven. Yeah, he did, oh for sure. He talked. He talked more about sexual parity and answer prayers. He talked more. We can just going down the line all the things and all the reasons why people go to church, or all the reasons why people like to talk about how important faith is to me. He talked more about sexual purity than any of those topics. And so if it's important to God to make sure that that's preserved in scripture, it should be important to us too. We should just understand that there's a couple of things that really define where our heart is headed. Our money Jesus says, where your treasure is that's to your heart is also and then our sexual purity. Those two issues really define are we running towards God or from God? And so this is a it's kind of a it's almost a spiritual litmus test. Paul's not saying I'm measuring you this way. Just understand, if you're heading towards God, you're going to flee these these these other issues you're gonna gonna And it's not through just pure will power and personal character that he's talking here. It's because of what Christ has already done for us. Then we are free now to live the life You made for us to live. That's great. Yeah, yeah, I think that overall. When Paul, you know, writes back, you know it is it feels like to me it is in loving context, it's within context of relationship. You can tell that he has some history with these people because he says you are already living this way anyway. That's another angle for us to think about. Whenever we decide to encourage somebody to live holy, you know, we do it most effectively in the context of loving relationship. Yeah, so you know what is more effective for the guy standing on the street corner in New York with a sign that says the end is near? You know, with people walking around, how many converts you're going to have right out of the millions of people who see you. How effective is that really going to be? Versus sitting one person down in a coffee shop who you are in relationship with and leveraging your love, your relationship and your influence and you say, can we talk about something that's important to me and it should be important to you, and all of a sudden you decide to give them the message. And so you know, again, it's it's just very evident that Paul has a loving, contextual, contextual relationship absolutely these people. Absolutely, And that was you know, yesterday's conversation was all about that he loved them like a father, he worried about them like a mother, that's right, right, and all these things. And so in this context he kind of has the right to speak up on this. You know it does it just a few verses, but he has the right to speak up on this because this is a major issue, especially in that culture. The note here in the Life Application Bible, which I love you should get one, it says sexual standards were very low in the Roman Empire, and in many societies today they're not any higher. The temptation to engage in sex outside of marriage has always been powerful. Giving into that temptation can have disastrous results. Sexual sins always hurt someone, individuals, families, businesses, churches, and more. Sexual desires and activities must be placed under Christ's control. So it's not my character and my will power, it's I'm surrendering it to Christ. Right. God created sex for procreation and pleasure, and it is an expression of love between a husband and wife. The sexual experience, therefore, must be limited to marriage. Besides the physical consequences and sexual sin, they're also spiritual consequences. We go on and on. He's going to talk about more about that in First Corinthians, as a matter of fact, because while the Thessalonians we're having trouble with this, corinth is rife with it. They worshiped with sex, right, so it's a whole other issue. And he talks about that in Romans or First Crinthians six and seven quite a bit. So we'll talk about it more. But I love the fact that he's speaking with authority and he's not ashamed, but he's doing it like a loving father, like a worried mother for these people that he genuinely loves. And then he goes okay. So then in verse eleven, make it your goal to live quiet lives. So he talks about loving each other, respecting each other, caring for one another, and then just live a good life. And you know, one of the things that he warns about here is idleness, really right, Christian should be industrious people. We should be producing, We should be making a difference, you know, regardless of you know, in America, our goal is to save up enough money to finally we don't have to do any work ever. And God didn't make us that way. Even if you are well off enough to not have to work the nine to five grind, you should still be productive for the kingdom. And so this is what he's saying, to make your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business, working with your hands, and he said, you know, then people who are not believers will respect the way that you live and will not and you won't have to depend on other people. And so he's saying, it's a testimony to other people that Christians would still be producing and be productive in their life. Well, it seems like there's a lot to learn from just these few verses. Which is which is the purpose of the Bible? That's right, because there's always an application for God's truths. Whatever, every one of these passages. We could talk for hours on, yeah, right, for sure. Yeah, Well that's all we have time for. And so we'll see you next time on the Bible, guys,