1 Tim 2:1-4 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 
	Good and acceptable in the sight of our God. This is a key statement in any of the letters of the Apostle Paul, as well as in every book of the Bible. Everything is tied up in being that man or woman who is good and acceptable in the sight of God.
	Before we proceed any farther, let it be clearly understood that we are not saying that we can earn His acceptance or that by our actions we can prove that we deserve His salvation. Never, never think to ourselves that there is any manner in which we can gain credit for that which has been done by and in His great Love, wherewith He has loved us. I pray that our last consideration of this letter to Timothy did away with any of the focus being on our abilities and our efforts and our works as a means of gaining admittance into the family of God. That is only our place now because it is our dwelling in Christ. He is the One Who brought us into this intimate relationship with God. He is the One Who became the sacrifice for our acceptance into the Beloved of God. He is the One Who now lives forth from us in His Love, and His Holiness, and His Righteousness, and His Sanctification by the Holy Spirit. 
	Being good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, is, in fact, the exact opposite of our thoughts of goodness and actions of self-sacrifice. Those things are done because the focus can then be placed on us, what we receive, what we deserve, and what we earn for our givingness and our generosity and our compassion. 
	Note, that while being good and acceptable in the sight of God is to be characteristic of our lives, it is not based on us, but singly based in Jesus Christ, Who indwells us. We give forth that which He is in us unto others. As He is the perfect sacrifice for our redemption, so do we desire that He expresses that sacrifice daily for others. We are not the concern or the focus, He is. It is His love for others that becomes our very life. Just as His life is lived for our benefit in always pleasing the Heavenly Father, so our lives are now lived for the benefit of others in always pleasing the Heavenly Father. 
	That brings us back to the key of this chapter and of every book of the Bible. We are to live in the fact that, in Christ, we are good and acceptable to God. As such, our every action, our every thought, our every reaction and interaction is set in the single basis of that which pleases God. And, what pleases God is Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not our efforts that bring blessing to Him. It is as we live forth from the power and the love of Christ, expressing His Life, that God is pleased. It is not in how good we try to become, it is in how our lives become a living obedience because of the more and more accurate guidance of the Holy Spirit being embraced from within our hearts that pleases God.
	To please God in everything we do is to have our selves set aside, put completely to death, as we sometimes state. We become that expression of the love of Christ as the light unto this world. We are now brought directly into the heart of John 3:16,"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. This is not just a passage that had its effect those 2000 years ago. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is just as active and powerful and vibrant today as it was then. God still expresses that saving and life-giving love in Christ to this world, and He does it by virtue of Christ living His life in us. We are now incorporated vitally into that saving love and grace of God because we are now the living expression of the love of God to all those in our sphere of influence. 
	It is not our goodness and our righteousness that is seen, it is simply the truth of living forth in His Righteousness and His Holiness and His Love. Because of that, we are to become ever more perfect expressions of Christ’s love, and that is what pleases God and brings glory to His name. It is no longer for us that we live; it is for Him and only Him that we live. That is why we have these letters written to Timothy and Titus and to the churches in Rome and throughout the then known world. It is not for the purpose of trying to make our lives conform to a set of rigid rules and regulations. It is all for the purpose of showing us that it is no longer we that live, but Christ Who lives in us. Our lives are no longer our own, they are His to do with as He deems best and proper. He makes us the living expression of His love, that Love so freely given in Christ Jesus Our Lord and Savior.
	We do not follow a rigid set of rules and regulations that are in place to control us and to bridle our spirits. No Way! We live in the manner that pleases God because we love Him and we desire to only do those things that express our love to Him. Because we love Him, we choose to follow His guidance. Because we love Him, we choose to ask the Holy Spirit to make our lives the evermore perfect expression of Christ to bless our Heavenly Father. We love the Word of God and it tears us up inside when we disappoint God. That is why we choose to have God put our self lives to death. We desire to do only that which will please Him and no longer seek after that which serves only to please ourselves. 
This is the key, don’t you see, to our life in Christ. We quit seeking after our benefit and rather completely and absolutely seek after God’s benefit, after His purposes, and unto His glory. We become less and less the focal point of these lives. We live more and more fully unto Him. We desire this. We crave this with all our hearts. We determine in our beings that He will have preeminence in everything, not because we have to, but because He means that much to us. He is the focal point of our walk on this earth. That is what is being developed in us corporately and individually. 
	To please Him in everything we do is the focus of all these scriptural exhortations. That is our life in Christ. And, as we learn this tremendous truth, we will find that we are living lives that are ever more increasingly secure day by day. As we read in Prov 16:7, When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. We experience His peace, even in the midst of trial and tribulation, because we are no longer focused on how things affect us. We are focused, absolutely and completely focused, on how everything will bring greater glory to God. This is so because we are now living in accordance with that characteristic, that distinguishing attribute of Christ Our Lord and Master. John 8:28-30 Jesus therefore said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. "And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him. 
	Christ only did that which pleased the Father. His life was a living sacrifice from birth. It culminated on the cross and received validation in His glorious resurrection. It was the very life that Jesus lived everyday. He chose to do what He knew the Father desired because He loved the Father and could not do otherwise. And, the Father was pleased with the life that His Only Begotten Son lived on this earth. As we read in Matt 3:16+17, And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." 
That is the only confirmation that mattered to Jesus Christ. That is the only acclamation that He sought. That is what made His entire living sacrifice worth all that it entailed. It is because His Heavenly Father was well-pleased in all that He was doing. It didn’t matter how it affected His life or how much glory Jesus did or did not receive. He didn’t mope about the strain and the stress and the arduousness of living His life. His focal point was not on Himself, but on the glory of His Heavenly Father. That is the only basis for everything He did. It was always and unfailingly just to please the Father and that was worth everything to Him. 
Oh that we would give ourselves to that same exact focus of living. That we would quit looking at ourselves as the entire reason for life. We build up resentments and unforgiveness and hatred because we think that we deserve better, that we are being maligned, that we are missing out on something. We only look at how we are affected rather than how the Father will be glorified.
 When our perspective is set on Him, it makes all the difference in this world’s journey. We no longer see our mistreatment. Rather, we see the vast need for the love of God to be expressed. Rather than seeing everything as working against us and against our beliefs and against our conceptual knowledge, we focus on the manner in which God’s name and His beauty and His grace and His mercy can be further expressed, even in seemingly hopeless situations. Rather than holding something against a brother or sister, we give it up to the Lord and ask Him to love that one all the more. We willingly offer up ourselves for the sake of that Love in action.
That is the aim of true ministry. 1 Thess 2:3+4 For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men but God, who examines our hearts. Ministry is not for the position or for the respect or for the power. It is for the single purpose of pleasing the Father. Whether our ministry is to the flock, to the children, to our family or friends, it is a ministry of Love. It is because we so love the Father that we answer the call that He places on our hearts to bring forth His Word, His Love, His Admonition, His Joy, and His Peace to every situation. It is because He is pleased that we lay down our lives, as the Lord lay down His life. 
	This is true of all Christians every day in every place that God has placed us. 1 Thess 4:1 Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you may excel still more. It is the scripture, opened livingly by the Holy Spirit that explains the manner in which our lives are to bring pleasure to God. We no longer view this world from the level of our place in it; what it is that we are to do and that we are to receive. Neither do we have to guess how we are to function as Christians. 
	We know when our lives please the Father. We know when that registration of the Holy Spirit conveys the truth that the Father is well pleased in our words, our deeds, our thoughts, our praises, and our sacrifices. Heb 13:15+16 Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing; for with such sacrifices God is pleased. 
	When we truly take the time to pray about every situation and every circumstance, we find that He is very faithful, always perfectly faithful, to give us the course that we are to take. Sadly, our difficulty is not so much in knowing what we are to do. It is set in knowing what we do not want to do. When we honestly, before God and not before man, consider the route that is before us, there is no way in which we can miss that which pleases the Father. It is the road of His peace and of His guidance, always in line with His Word. The confusion results when we do not want to travel that road. When we see that road as not going the direction we want for our lives. 
	We need to learn to live in the only manner that truly pleases God, a complete faith and trust in Him. We do not throw ourselves into the frays and struggles of life based on our pitiful and minuscule knowledge and abilities. We stand before the storms and the quandaries of this realm in the faith that God has all things well in hand. He is the Lord. In that truth, we are firmly and resolutely indwelled with the faith that withstands the otherwise crushing and devastating attacks of this realm. We know God is in control and we rest in that fact! 
	Consider that faith and the pleasure that God received from it as evidenced in Enoch. It was to such a level that God was pleased to bring Enoch into His immediate presence. Heb 11:5+6 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Oh that we would all be found living in that faith which so pleases the Father. It is the faith that carries us through the miseries, the heartaches, the emotional upheaval, and the physical torment of this age. It is the faith that resolutely maintains the clear testimony of the life that is perfectly pleasing to God. We are not perfect, but we are becoming more and more conformed to the perfection that is ours in Jesus Christ. 
Our lives more and more reflect that complete reliance upon God as our everything. We find, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day, that our hearts are ever more filled with love for God and for His glory to be set into place in our lives. We are more and more coming into the reality of 1 John 3:21-23, Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. 
	This is the heart of what was written to Timothy. This is the heart of who we are in Christ. This is the heart of the life that we have in Christ. We express the love of God as the only beacon of hope and salvation to the nations. This is the life that seeks to please God in all that we say, and do, and think. It is the life lived before God and before man with the singleness of desire to bless His heart completely. In living in that Faith of Jesus Christ, we will always know that we are His children in whom He is well pleased. 
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Amen

Our benediction this morning is Deut 28:1-9 Now it shall be, if you will diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. "The Lord will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way and shall flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, as He swore to you, if you will keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and walk in His ways. Amen