Christian Living

M10000

TITLE: GOD'S GUARANTEED CURE FOR PEER PRESSURE OR MENPLEASERS CANNOT BE GODPLEASERS!

OUTLINE:

1.WHY DID PAUL DESIRE TO PLEASE MEN?

2.II. WHY DO WE DESIRE TO PLEASE MEN?

III. WHY DO WE DESIRE TO PLEASE GOD?

READ: Gal 1:1-12

INTRODUCTION:

In the days of yore when I was but a lad of twelve or so, I had a friend that wasn't much of a friend. He was my friend because no one else wanted to spend time with me after school.

He was not nice, for he broke promises, for he liked to put me down, for he would spend time with me only when he had nothing else to do, for he was stronger than I by bunches and he liked to prove it from time to time. You may find that hard to believe, but when young I was the model that they used to draw the ninety-pound weakling in the Charles Atlas ads. I was a bit on the sickly side. I KNOW! MANY OF YOU THINK THAT I'M STILL SICK!

On one occasion of his proving his superiority of strength he had me down on the ground on my stomach with his knee pressing the side of my head into the ground. He was going to force me to give in.

He would put pressure on my head with his knee and ask me if I would give up. I would reply in tears of pain, "no."

He went through this process for quite some time and found that I was not one to give into pressure, even if it was on the side of my head.

He decided that he wasn't hurting me enough so began sitting on my head and telling me to give in. The reply was still a firm "no" even though the pain was intense.

After a time of this he decided to bounce up and down on my head for a time. I was in serious pain with tears streaming down my face and still the answer was "no."

What this young man did not know about me was that pressure from without, has little to do with what I do.

In frustration the boy began pleading with me to "please give up" so that he could quit hurting me. The answer was still "no."

Finally in utter desperation the lad got off of my head and walked away totally defeated.

HE HAD GIVEN UP!!!!! PEER - PRESSURE had failed.

The moral of the story?

Peer pressure may be great, but there is no place in God's service for you to buckle into it.

If you say no to your peers long enough they will give up and leave you alone.

In retrospect you might wonder if this incident wasn't one of the defining moments in my staunch, never sway, non-conformist, secure, stable, sure, resistant, confident, solid, and firm style of ethic.

DON'T YOU EVER ALLOW PEER PRESSURE TO DICTATE TO YOU WHAT YOU WILL OR WON'T DO!

I believe that we have in our text this morning God's simple answer to peer pressure. It is so simple that we might reject it because of its simplicity.

Galatians 1

1. Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)

2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia:

3 Grace [be] to you and peace from God the Father, and [from] our Lord Jesus Christ,

4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

5 To whom [be] glory forever and ever. Amen.

6. I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:

7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any [man] preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

10. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I would like to key in on verse ten for our thoughts.

"For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ."

Paul is quite obvious in asking if he were still pleasing men if he could be a servant of Christ.

He seems to be stating that if you please men, you cannot serve God. I would like to take that one step further and say that if you please men, you can't please God.

In the early days of Fundamentalism the Conservative Baptist Assoc., General Association of Regular Baptist Churches and Independent Fundamental Churches of America were formed because godly men refused to please men - refused to go with the flow of modernism. Today these same groups are dabbling in the things that lead to modernism years ago. Peer pressure should have no part in how we serve God.

To begin, we need to consider why Paul would have desired to please men.

I. WHY DID PAUL DESIRE TO PLEASE MEN?

We might begin by asking, when Paul was interested in pleasing men.

It would seem that it was before he was saved.

Back when he was persecuting Christians. He was doing what he thought was best. He was following the teaching that he had the best that he could. He was a Pharisee (Acts 23:6; Philp 3:5) and he did the best that he could.

Philip 3:6 declares his zeal, and in Gal 1:14 he mentions that he was very zealous of the traditions of the Pharisees.

I have always been impressed with Paul's zealousness for God in his life. He was misdirected to say the least in that he was out killing Christians, but I always thought that he was what we sometimes call "sincerely wrong."

A brief side light: Being zealous is not wrong - never is it ever wrong to be zealous for what God has told you to do or not do. In our day and age everything that is unwanted is the work of a zealot - someone that is over zealous about things. When serving God how can you ever be over zealous? You cannot. Zealous Christians are greatly needed today!

Now, I'm not going to second guess the apostle and say that this is looking back in retrospect because I do not know, but at the time of the writing of Galatians, he viewed his persecution of Christians and his life as a Jew as a life lived to please man.

The NASB depicts nicely the verb tenses in the text. If you have one read it for yourself.

Notice that phrase "If I were still trying to please men,” it is the proof that he saw his pre-salvation life as one spent in pleasing men.

May I say that pleasing men is a trap that you do not want to get into. Pleasing men is a trap, in that you can never please men.

You can try as hard as you can, but there is no way on God's gorgeous earth that you can ever do it. You might please one now and then for a short period of time, but you will soon be back on the carpet trying to have a repeat performance.

Now, based on this thought from Paul's pre-salvation life let's draw some conclusions.

1. You can be religious and be trying to please men.

2. You can be zealous and be trying to please men.

3. You can be busy and be trying to please men.

4. You can be doing great works and be trying to please men.

5. You can be of single-minded devotion and be trying to please men.

On the other hand you can be all of those things in a desire to please God and Paul rolls all those nice pious sounding activities into one lowly word called "SERVANTHOOD."

If you want to be religious for God

If you want to be zealous for God

If you want to be busy for God

If you want to be doing great works for God

If you want to be of a single minded devotion to God

THEN BE A SERVANT OF GOD!

It would seem to me that in Paul's pre-salvation life he was focused on pleasing the leaders around him in the circles of the Pharisees.

Now, we don't want to go away from this study feeling self-righteous knowing that Paul tried to please men, and we would certainly never get involved in that activity.

Just so we won't leave feeling better than Paul, I have another question.

II. WHY DO WE DESIRE TO PLEASE MEN?

A few thoughts that you can kick around in your mind.

a. It is easier to please men than to cause friction.

Some like the phrase, "But you have to go with the flow." The problem with the flow is that it will catch you and carry you along the same path of destruction that it is taking.

You will find out, if you haven't already, that in life you will be pressured into doing things that you really don't want to do, but if you say no, you know that you will be looked down upon.

Those situations are not pleasant but sometimes the head must give a little for the knee’s sake. You know the opening illustration!

"No" is a viable answer to any question, no matter how loaded the question is for you.

b. To build up our poor self image. I don't feel very important so if I impress them I will be more important.

I trust that you will not fall into this trap either. Impressing people will not help your self-image one iota. It will just require that you keep on impressing people.

Find your value in who you are before God and not what you are before man.

We have a friend that resigned his pastorate against almost all of his incoming advice. He asked me what I thought before he resigned, and I told him that he MUST do what God was leading him to do and set all the advice aside if it indeed, contradicted God's leading. I warned him that he needed to be sure that he and his wife were on God's turf before asking for guidance.

I also warned him that many would criticize them for leaving if that was indeed God's leading. It wasn't to many weeks after his resignation that he mentioned that I had been correct that the criticism would come. IT DID!

He is comfortable in his present, NON-MINISTRY place of serving the Lord and finds his worth in his God rather than the eyes of man.

c. To increase our pride - lift ourselves up.

When living in Denver, we found out that there were some special meetings at one of the churches in town. Two "famous" preachers were speaking each night.

I enjoyed one of them so we decided to go for one evening. The church pastor asked one of them to take an offering. Of course he made a big show of the offering. He asked everyone that was going to give five dollars or more to raise it in their hands. He then asked those that were going to give ten dollars or more to raise their hands. He then asked all that were going to give one hundred dollars or more to stand up. As people raised their hands and finally those that stood you could see that they were doing it to impress people. Most of the ones that stood turned around so everyone could see who they were.

We left that meeting without hearing the second man!

Can we say love of self is the problem? I think that we are very close to the truth with that statement.

We desire to please man because we desire to make ourselves feel good about ourselves.

It would seem that the man pleaser is focused on this life and what can be gained in this life.

This seems to be the same focus that Paul had in his pre-Christian days.

Well if we aren't going to please man we are left with only one alternative and that is to please God.

This brings us to the third question.

III. WHY DO WE DESIRE TO PLEASE GOD?

Several years ago we were interviewing for a position in a large church in Petaluma, CA and the board member of the church that was present asked me a question. He asked what my mindset was as I worked for the Lord in view of the rewards that I was building up.

I was pulled up short. I was speechless for awhile. I had never even considered what rewards I had assembled in heaven. It was never a consideration in anything that I had ever done.

I told the man that his question was totally foreign to my mindset of serving God. I told him that I had from the early days of my walk with the Lord felt that I was His servant and that I would do anything and everything that He asked me to do - Rewards never crossed my mind.

Paul realized that the only one worth serving in this life is the God that extended His grace to include even a Christian killer.

This text really gives me some insight into why Paul was so anti-false teaching and so anti-works.

His former life was tuned into works and the false teaching of the Pharisees. He was totally sold out to that life style.

Indeed, he was under the impression that this would make him spiritual.

It is no wonder that he stresses the proper place of works in the Christian life, and it is no wonder that he stressed the need to guard against false teachers and their influence upon believers!

He was reacting to his own pre-salvation deception!

He is contrasting himself, the servant of God, with the false teachers that he is trying to confront.

He is also contrasting these false teachers - the men pleasers with himself - the God pleaser.

Can you imagine how angry the false teachers must have been when they heard Paul's words?

The focus of one desiring to please God must be on the eternal and not the temporal.

Paul emphasizes this in Colossians when he states,

"Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in god." (Vss. 2,3)

A total selfless love aimed at serving God will be the focus of the one wanting to please God.

I was in a meeting with a missionary years ago and this old missionary woman was talking about the love that she had to have for the people that she worked with. She described some of the ugly, dirty, filthy people that she had to show love to. She mentioned one old woman that had a very serious disease. The woman was one of the dirtiest and most disgusting people that the missionary had ever seen. The sick woman came to talk with the missionary. The missionary told the woman that God loved her. The woman asked if the missionary loved her.

The missionary took a long look at the old woman, considered just how unlovely she was and decided that Christ wanted her to show God's love so the missionary reached over and kissed the woman on the cheek. The old woman began to cry and was totally open to the Gospel message, and became a Christian on the spot.

CONCLUSION:

Being slave to peers has bothered both great and small.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, in his Unpopular Essays mentioned, "America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences."

Even this man had problems with peers. John Davis states of him, "Bertrand Russell suffered ... torture ... each time he was called upon for a speech until one day he said to himself, 'What difference does it really make in the scheme of things if Bertrand Russell makes a good or a poor speech?' It would be of no world-shaking importance. History would go on unchanged. And he says that when he overcame his egotistical concern about being humiliated, his fears left him, and he began to enjoy making speeches -- and they were better speeches!" (John Davis Excerpted from "Complete Speaker's and Toastmaster's Library" Copyright (c) 1993, 1994 Compton's NewMedia Inc.)

So, Christian, how's the peer pressure this morning?

Are you buckling to the world and its pressure?

Are you following the crowd because you are tired of them bouncing on top of your head?

Or are you desirous of pleasing God through your service to Him?

Paul put it in another way when he was writing to Timothy. II Tim. 2:4 states, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

God has called us to be servants and there is no way that we can be proper servants of His if we are tied up in the world system, or in the world's pressures.

Just some final thoughts concerning peer pressure.

1. We tend to only think of peer pressure as negative influence, when in reality it can also be positive influence. We as Christians ought to be putting pressure on lost people around us to live a better life.

When I walk into the break room at times I can hear the swearing and loud stories dwindle to whispers. I assume that this is the result of positive peer pressure - as well as respect for my beliefs.

2. You are someone else's peer. We tend to think of peer pressure only coming our direction, when in fact we also exert it to those around us. I trust that you are exerting POSITIVE pressure on those around you.

3. You are only a positive pressure if you are living a godly life. If you don't take a stand for right, then you will most likely be negative pressure.

4. Know that good peer pressure is probably going to be less effective than bad. The devil seems to win out - probably due to his having more people on his side. Evil peer pressure is more common than holy.

5. You will find that your stand and effectiveness is boosted by being in church or youth activities. You are around others of like mind and are encouraged in your stand.

6. God is your strength in all situations of life. Ps. 18:2 says "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower."

7. The Bible is your only guide for good. David said that it was a light unto his path. It alone can guide us through this life.

We must be free of the world's pressures by having said no to them and having taken the option of serving God!

I would like to share a story from Warren Wiersbe in his book entitled "BE FREE.” (P 20) "When Verdi produced his first opera in Florence, the composer stood by himself in the shadows and kept his eye on the face of one man in the audience - the great Rossini. It mattered not to Verdi whether the people in the hall were cheering him or jeering him; all he wanted was a smile of approval from the master musician."

So, we as Christians should care little what our peers say, what our peers do, or what our peers think, our focus should be on the Master of our lives God. He it is that we should desire to please, and Him only!