1 Thessalonians 2:4

1 Thessalonians 2:4 Approved by God, not pleasing to men! The word for approved in verse 1 Thes. 2:4 means God checked them out by His own standards and has put His stamp of approval on them. Yet, Paul also knew preaching the Gospel wouldn’t always be pleasing to men.  There is no doubt, we live in a day where the Gospel, the meaning of Biblical truth, is in serious question and is challenged by not only society but also the church in general. We live in a day where sin is normalized and repackaged as something that “feels good” thus creating such crazy heresy. These are the signs of the times: a great falling away, lawlessness, lovers of self, sexuality immorality, etc. We will get into more of these as we move forward, but it is critical that Believers pay attention to what is going on around them. The Gospel is not a social movement. It is truth to the sinner to cause repentance thus redemption by Jesus. It isn’t going to feel good as it will challenge the depths of us, to get us to refute what we hold to, and cling to Christ. The Gospel transcends us, but as I wrote previous, we must first have humility to recognize our sins to then repent of them.  Really, this one verse has so much truth. You really could render it: In order to be approved by God, you cannot be pleasing to man. There are verses that pretty much say this, right? You can do a simple Google search for “pleasing God not men” and find numerous. This doesn’t mean our goal is to make people mad, but know that society is going to continue to reject truth as we push toward our day of redemption. Every day is a day closer to the Rapture of the church, the Tribulation, and the Judgement upon this earth. Every day we get closer to those, the world will continue to grow more evil “as in the days of Noah” or “as in the days of Lot.”  If you can’t look at our society today and see such acceptance, really celebration, of sin, you should really dig more into your Bible to see what makes our Creator mourn. Yet, if we hold onto the truth of the Gospel, we know our redemption is near! MARANATHA!!