The Marks of a Good Christian: Holiness

• View transcript

  The Marks of a Good Christian: Holiness

  Download transcript

  The section of Scripture we're going through in 1 Thessalonians 4 as we saw a few weeks ago, last we left off in verses one and two, how Paul turned the corner from talking about our Christian identity to our activity, that who we are in Christ precedes and defines, determines what we do for Christ, and we do it for him and through him and to him. And that matter usually comes back to a matter of obedience, a matter of wanting to, as verse one says in 1 Thessalonians 4:1, live in a way pleasing to God and excelling still more. And I was encouraged because the first sermon of the conference two weeks ago that I went to was on obedience, and how in the day and age we're in, the church has, in its own small ways certain denominations or tribes or whatever you want to call them, responded in great measure to defending the doctrine of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and justification by faith alone. But the opening sermon was on what happened to sanctification, what happened to calling the church to obedience, to wanting to live a life pleasing to God and not everything dying the death of a thousand qualifications of well, make sure you remind people of the grace of God and looking to Christ. And that is important. And it's not just important. It's the heart of our faith that we stand in Christ and in Christ alone. As Paul says in verse one, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus. But verse two, he can also say, now we command you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. And really, that's what we're looking at the rest of the way in this letter, in chapters four and five, it is an exhortation to excel still more and living a life pleasing to God. I would commend to you verse one of chapter four as one to memorize. When you want to think of what does sanctification and obedience and growing in Christ and living the Christian life, really come down to, verse four has it for you because it grounds you in Christ. And then it says, and you received instruction, remember, its teaching. That's what we need. We need to sit under the Word of God. I need to sit under the Word of God. That was refreshing for me the last two weeks, because often I'm the one up here, not out there. And no matter how many sermons you can listen to online, it does not replace sitting under the Word of God. In person, letting the work of the spirit from the work of the W ord through the mouth of a preacher hit you. Now those sermons you can listen to online and the studies you do on your own. They're wonderful for helping you to understand more of who God is and what he expects of us. But there has been and never will be a replacement for the live preaching of God's Word to his people. And you see that and hear that in verse one. They're being requested and exhorted in Christ, and they received instruction. And here's a word on our obedience, our response, how you ought to walk and please God that you excel still more. That's what you need to have memorized. What does sanctification come down to? How? As in, it's instructive. It's not pie in the sky. You ought...as in this is expected of you, Christian. This isn't optional. To walk, it should be something not just instructive that you are expected to do. But to walk means you can walk it out, you can see it. You can live it. But what drives it? How you ought to walk and please God. The devotion that drives your sanctification. Your obedience is everything to you. It's not just creating rules and regulations for us to follow when we talk about obedience. Yes, the instructions are important, but as we saw preaching through Mark years ago, that the love of God could get buried under the law of God, when you just start to relate yourself to instructions only and you lose the motivation of wanting to please God. That's the drive train of our growth in Christ. It's the relationship we have with God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. And so it's not merely a matter of the things we distance ourselves from. This word sanctification that we'll hear three times this morning. Sanctification is is not merely, though it does include what you separate from, but really the center of it, the heart of it...what gives it life is what you are devoted to. More so, who you're devoted to. And this is where Paul starts in chapter four. And we saw the first mark of a good Christian is wanting to please God. So that being the drivetrain of our sanctification...now let's read three through eight and see what's first on the list in the Christian life. What shows up immediately in a person who lives a life wanting to please God? The first mark of a good Christian is holiness. I'm going to read all of one through eight just to set the section in our minds, and then we will look at verses three through eight. 
"Finally, then, brothers, 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 excel still more. For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before, and solemnly warned you again. For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you." 
This is God's holy Word to us, given through His Holy Spirit to produce holiness in his children. May he do it to his glory today. 
You saw that word sanctification three times. If you have the NASB, in verse three and in verse four and in verse seven, and that is the theme. That's why the second mark is we're going to talk about the marks of a good Christian in the rest of this letter. The second mark is holiness. There is a plan that God has for us to become more holy, more devoted to him, more separated from the world, more separated from sin. It's the mark of every and any good Christian. It's not an option. It's not an add on. That's right immediately out of the gates, as Paul is talking to this church, he wants to establish that sanctification, being devoted to God. That is what God desires for his children. You might question what's the relationship between the word holiness and sanctification? Some of your Bibles say holiness. Really, holiness is the aim of our sanctification. Sanctification is the process, and our holiness is the direction we're headed in, not just here and now, but ultimately when we are glorified with him, when we will be perfect and pure, spotless, undefiled, and we in this lifetime are in a continual process of that holiness being produced in us from the inside out. That's why we never lose sight of verse one, that we are to be pleasing to God. That's where it starts. Today, we'll walk through this passage and answer three questions about sanctification. That process of holiness in us: what it is, how God expects it, and why we should do it. What does God want his children to know about holiness? Well, how does God want his children to act in regard to it? And why does he want his children to abstain from all forms of immorality? That's the way the Spirit has laid this out in these verses from 3 to 8. And as we enter into this study, I do want to stop and speak to the issue of sexual immorality to two groups in the room. As we get into this, I want to speak at my vantage point at age 43 to some in this room as a father, because there are many now who attend here in this main service, that I'm the age to be a father and want to have a moment to speak to you as a dad. And then I want to speak to a portion of the people in the room who I would say I could be a son to and who this may seem like this is something behind you. Whereas the other group, it's something right now in front of you. First, I want to speak to you as a father, to the young, to the impressionable. And I want to say this, that God wants you to know about holiness. He wants you to know about this issue. He wants it to be first and foremost in your mind when you think about what it is to have a relationship with him and the general subject of sanctification or holiness in verse three does move into the particular subject of sexual immorality, sexual purity. And God doesn't avoid talking to us about that because he is a loving father. God created sexual purity as good, holy and beautiful. And if the subject is unfamiliar to you, that's okay. Um, it was a subject that was probably unfamiliar...sexual purity to these people when they were saved. This is a young church. They were less than a year old. This was an impressionable church. This was even a naive and a weak church. And the first thing that God intended for Paul to talk to them about their sin is sexual purity. So let me give the young in the room a simple way to think about it. I'm not calling it a definition. I just want to give you a way to think about it, young people. Sexual purity is a word for the thoughts, feelings, words and actions that God made to be good, holy and beautiful between a husband and a wife, and only for a husband and a wife. That's how I want you young people to think about this. Sexual purity is a word that encompasses the thoughts and feelings, the words and the actions that God made to be good and holy and beautiful between a husband and a wife...your mommy and daddy...and only between them. So you can picture dad coming home from work, and what's he do? He gets on the ground and he wrestles. And that's maybe the way he relates to his sons. And then he goes into the kitchen and he sees mom, and he goes up to her and gives her the biggest smooch and hug he can conjure up after a long, hard day's worth of work. And that big smooch and hug is only for her and absolutely for her. Devoted to her and no other her out there. That's what sexual purity is about. That's what I want you young people to think about. There's a hundred other things that could be included in this. But I want that to be what's in your head. This is God's good design. Sexual purity between one man and one woman, a husband and a wife. It tells young people that this is not for a boyfriend and a girlfriend. This is not between a boy and a boy or a girl and a girl. Anything in those categories is sexual immorality, but sexual purity by the good, holy and perfect and beautiful way God designed it is for two people committed before God for as long as they both shall live. So that's my word to the young in the room, and I hope that helps today as we get into this. The second group is to the older and more mature. The people that I could call a parent in here. And I don't want you checking out because you think you've arrived. May not have been a struggle for a while. And it could be easy to think this is for everybody else. And the first warning scripture would give you would be what? Take heed lest you fall...if you think that sin is put to death. Second, I would say in relation to that, and I praise God if you would say, hey, it hasn't been a weakness for me in a long time. Then I would say, you know, you can take the same vigilance, and holy violence that you are to wage war against your lusts with, and do so against any other sin in your life. This was brought to mind at the conference I was at this past week. You may have heard of John Piper, big arms when he preaches. And if you think I lean over this a lot, you should watch him so I restrain myself. Can't watch him, I usually just have to listen. And I know when he's getting dramatic. But he said this point. They asked him what have been the things you've had to fight with and fight in your own life of holiness? And he talked about, you know, he waged holy violence against lust, his entire pastoral ministry. And by God's grace, he ran that race. But he said, you know, it was sad was it took him until 30 years in, 2010. He started at his church in 1980, he said, for some reason, all those passages, like in Matthew where Jesus says, you know, if lust is from the inside and thinking about a woman who's not your wife with a lustful thoughts is adultery, he would attack that with holy violence and vigilance, and yet he would give a pass to sullenness, to bitterness that leads to anger, that leads to isolating himself from his family. And he said, so whatever you might apply that same excel still more with all your might to lust. If lust isn't your issue, then what is today? What principle can you learn from sanctification today to apply somewhere else? That would be my word as a son to a parent in here. So let's start with what does God want us to know about holiness, in particular sexual purity. 
And the first thing he wants you to know in verse three is that sexual purity is possible. God's will, verse three, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality. He works from general to specific. A comprehensive opening phrase...the will of God, the desire of God, the plan of God for every single Christian's life is to be sanctified, to be devoted to God, and set apart from sin. That blanket statement then leads to a specific, that is, to abstain from sexual immorality. Now that word abstain doesn't need a ton of defining. Abstain means abstain. It means stay away from...avoid at all costs. Don't ask the question how close can I get? Because that's revealing. But how far can I stay away? Stay away from what? Sexual immorality in the time of Paul in the New Testament, that word is the most general word. for sexual immorality. It's a catch all word. It covers every kind of sexual sin when Paul uses it in the New Testament. He has other words more specific. You'll hear those in 1 Corinthians 6 or Galatians 5...impurity, sensuality, homosexuality, adultery. Yes, those are specific. But when Paul pulls this word out...in the KJV, fornication, it is his junk drawer word for sexual sin. You know what a junk drawer is? What do you find in a junk drawer? Everything. Exactly. You find your keys there. You find your wallet. You find one of your kids there. It's a junk drawer. And that's the word he has here for abstaining from sexual immorality. So why do I emphasize that? Because there are no loopholes around this, brothers and sisters. Oh, you know, but that one sin...no. If you're talking about any deviation from behavior that brings honor and glory to God. With your thoughts, your attitudes, your words, and your actions in regards to sexual purity, there are no loopholes here. Abstain. Absolute purity. No compromise, no caveats, no cop outs. Is that clear? So it's going to be tempting on the issue of this that before you hit 70, whether in your mind or in a conversation. You go, yeah, you know, I know it says abstain. And then you what? You try to qualify it. You take that word and try to make it something it's not. But come on, it's. Look at the era that we live in. It's harder now than it's ever been. No it's not. It may be more ubiquitous. It may be more available. It may be more accessible. But it's no worse than it was when Paul wrote this. What could stay out of sight in anonymity today...phones, screens. It is more available. But what was in the sight of plain day was the immorality rampant in Thessalonica. You could join a religious cult where they had temple prostitutes. So it is just as awful, if not worse in this time, because the heart of man doesn't change. All that's changed now is it's wider, it's broader, but it's no deeper in the heart of man and the sin of man. Gordon Fee, who's a expert on Pauline epistles, wrote a 300 page commentary on this Thessalonian letter, wrote, "In order to appreciate why sexual immorality is the first matter up, one needs to be reminded that what the Jewish and its offspring Christian community regarded as immoral, was not considered to be so among pagan Gentiles." What's this expert on Pauline literature saying? He's saying, look among the Gentiles, those people that got saved in Acts 17, in Thessalonica, hearing about who Jesus is, that he is Lord and not Caesar was all they knew. But the ethics that came with following Jesus Christ, they had no idea. And if they came out of the darkness of some cult, some false religion that associated sexual pleasure with a religious experience...that had to be separated out now. So that's why it's first on the list. The culture that he came preaching Christ and Him crucified to was debauched. And just because they trusted in Jesus Christ, their mind wasn't immediately back-filled with all that they were supposed to do. But what Paul wanted them to know, first and foremost, right out of the gates, is that sexual purity is possible. The spirit of his age would have been, if it feels good, do it. Which is nothing different than what we hear today. In the spirit of their age, because of Gnostic dualism, this idea that the spiritual life is good...the Greek philosophers believed. And our whole existence is to escape the bounds of our evil mortal flesh, because it's weak. And Greeks believed in strength, strength of the mind, strength of the spirit. So they had a dualism that just said, you know what? Because that's that separation you could do whatever you want in your body. It doesn't matter. Treat it however you want. Enjoy pleasure. Just, you know, think like the stoics and resist for the greater good of your own preservation. So there was a feels good...do it mentality. But Paul says God's will is clear, Thessalonians...you abstain. Don't test it. Don't try it. Don't follow your feelings. Don't give in to your flesh. Abstain. And that's the root of the command here. And it sounds strong and it is strong and it's rooted not in the voice of a preacher. It's rooted in the authority of Jesus Christ in the preceding verse, Verse two. You know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. That's why later on he says, I have to tell you this again. I'm solemnly warning you. How clear do I have to be about what God expects in regards to sexual purity? He can't say anything greater than...this is God's will for your life. All the mystery that we sometimes talk about surrounding God's will for our lives. What does he want me to do today or tomorrow? Where should I go? What should I do? Who should I marry? Where should I get a job? And oh, if I only knew God's will. If he would only show me. But yet we give a pass to the things that are patently obvious. How should you? How should you really? I mean, if you think about wrestling with making decisions, God's will for your life, but you have an ongoing, unchecked, unrepentant sin in your life, how would you have the discernment to know what God would want you to do? Because your thinking is not clear. You're not seeing things straight. So Romans 12:1-2 told us a few weeks ago, we have to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. 
Which leads us to the second point. How does God expect us to do this? He gives us this standard absolute purity abstain from immorality. So point two in verses 4 to 6, how does he expect us to remain sexually pure? He wants you to make it personal. Purity is personal, and it's personal in three ways. He wants you to know something about yourself, something about the people it affects around you, and ultimately something about Jesus Christ. And he talks about these three realms of relationship. 
First is, how am I supposed to fulfill this command to be pure? Know something about yourself, verse four...that each of you know. So this doesn't even really start with a specific to do. This is something to know. I need to know how to possess my own body. That's the word for vessel in sanctification and honor. Opposite of the lustful passions of the Gentiles, the pagans who don't know God. I need to know something about myself that I know God and He knows me, and I'm to live differently. But he's not just leaving that out in the atmosphere, something just purely on the spiritual level. He's saying practically, how can you have self control? It's at the center of knowing how to possess your body. He wants you, Christian, to know yourself, to know your ears and eyes and brain and mouth and hands and feet, heart, lungs, guts, all of your inner and outer being. That's step one to living a pure life. Know what tempts you. He's contrasting them with their old life, how they used to live, the lustful passions...the live and let live philosophy. The do what feels good philosophy of lustful passions. What are these lustful passions? Well, John Piper says it this way. "That lustful passion he's talking about is any good desire, minus personal holiness and honor to God. Go back to verse four. That's what he's saying. What does it mean to have a lustful passion? It's when you take a good desire and you subtract God's honor and your personal holiness. What are you left with?...sexual immorality? And he's saying, that's the thing you need to know about yourself first. Have some self control. Go to Galatians 5, walking in the spirit and you won't gratify the desires of your flesh. What are you feeding your spirit? Versus what are you feeding your flesh? What are you putting before your eyes, ears, all of that? He's saying that's your first step today. You got to take an inventory of everything in your life, a circumspect view of your life. And see every angle that the temptations come at you from the outside, but also the inside. Because that's where it lands. I mean, it's going to eventually land in your heart and lead your heart astray. Paul wants you to have self-control over your body. Your new mentality is, if it honors God, then I'll do it. If it doesn't, I won't. And I need to know how I work. So let me give you some practical application here, just from some things that as I was listening and reading and thinking about this, that maybe some starting points, starting points to live in a way pleasing to the Lord. Knowing how to possess your own body. And we're talking holistically. First application is this. You need to break free from old patterns of thinking about sexual sin. You want a practical way to apply this? Start with the renewing of your mind. The hardest thing for some people is to do what? It's not to delete the pictures off the phone. It's not to unplug the computer. It's not to, cancel an account. You can do those things, but you can't do that to your mind as easy, can you? It's much harder to delete memories. It's much harder to cancel thoughts that could come back into your head. And so the scriptures would tell us to start fighting at the level of the mind, because that's where your old life comes back to life first. I heard it in a sermon this week, and I had to stop and replay it about five times for the poignancy of this statement. "Old sins recycled in our minds become tomorrow's temptations". That's what it means to fight at the level of your mind. Old sins recycled in your mind become tomorrow's temptations. That's why you can try to put all the boundaries and guards around everything around you. But can you guard this? What are you going to do for that? Because nobody could see into that. Nobody could break into that. The only one sees that is the Lord. And so the moment that thought that old sin wants to recycle in your mind, what are you going to do with it? Because you got about, as Piper would say, five seconds to decide. And if you give that lustful thought, that tempting thought, anything more than five seconds, it'll lodge itself with such a force that will be immovable. And some of you know that by experience, painful experience, and the damage that leaving that thought life unchecked can do for the rest of your life until you start taking every thought captive immediately to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and his design for you to be holy. Anything less than that will not cut it. First Peter 1:13, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That phrase keep prepared your minds for action. It was an idiom, a literal saying of gird up the loose ends of your thinking, preparing your mind for action as a Christian to fight against temptation. In first Peter 1:13 is the image of a Roman soldier who's sleeping at night, and he has his long gown on underneath his weapons. He's ready for battle at any moment, but when he wakes up and charges into there, he has to take that long flowing toga and tuck it back into his belt. Otherwise it will be his demise. He'll trip over it and he'll die. So Peter borrows that image and he says, that's what you have to do with your thought life, Christian. You have hope for future grace coming to you at the revealing of Jesus Christ. But in the meantime, how sober minded do you have to be about sin? You got to be like that soldier that takes that and tucks the fringes of the gown back in. And you, Christian, take the fringes of your thought life where it can just play out in that danger zone and you tuck it back in. You take the fight to it the moment it comes to you. Colossians 3:5, it's easy for me to turn to in my Bible because it's a lasting memory for me. Colossians 3:5...it's one place in my Bible I had to tape up. Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality...first on the list...that same word. Why is it taped up? Because I was preaching this to teenagers about a decade ago, and I was using a cheap old music stand, and I had my Bible up there, and I was trying to give the sense, the power of when Paul says, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality. That's the word. John Owen, the Puritan who wrote Mortification of Sin, that's the word for mortify. And I was trying to give them an example of what does it look like to mortify our sin. And so I told them a story that there was an evening. Shannon and I, we were watching a movie, and I had a Spidey sense, not because I'm a superhero. I had a sense of a spider being near us. I don't know why I'd been reading about spiders. I had found them in our basement, and I just had a sense that as the lights were out, there was a spider in the room, and I was right. I flipped the light on and there it was. It was kind of just along the baseboards. And it was a wolf spider, you know, those kind that when you walk out in the morning and the dew is set on your grass, they, they hide in those burrows and then they come out and snatch something up and pull it back in there. They are baby tarantulas...hate those things. But as the man of the home, it is my duty to kill them. And something that I actually hate, I really kill. I mean, if I'm neutral towards it, an ant, I might pick it up, flick it back outside. Have a nice day, ant. I don't do that. But a wolf spider in my house is getting mortified, because that word meant to kill something beyond death. It really did. When Paul says consider the members of your earthly body as dead. This word was to take extreme measures to ensure all life ceases in the object. You've seen the movie, the action movie, the thriller movie where they want to keep the plot going. And so they think they kill the guy, and then they turn around and talk about how the world saved. And then they see his arm move and reaches for. That's not mortification. Finish the job. And that's what Paul is saying in Colossians 3:5. How do we deal with sexual sin? You kill it beyond killing it. John Owen, in Mortification of Sin said, "be killing sin or sin will be killing you." And we know that line. But here's what he next said, "let not that man thinks he make any progress in holiness, who walks not daily over the bellies of his lust." Got that mental image in now? Don't think you've made any progress in holiness in this area unless daily you walk over, you tread over, you squash down the bellies...the hungry part of your body, the lusty part of your body. I want to eat that snack. And he says, you got to walk daily over that. You got to crush it. Put it to death completely. Because anything less; that sin will come back to life and what?... kill you. Because what does the enemy want to do?...steal, kill and destroy. So if there's no quarter for the enemy towards you, how should you feel about it? You mortify it. You take all measures that you can to fight that battle of the mind. 
Second application...break free of old patterns of living that lead to sexual sin. The first one was break free of old patterns of thinking. Immediately crush it, mortify it, get rid of it. The second one is are there any old habits, any old patterns that you can recognize? Another preacher talked about fighting the near battle, not the far off one. He said, the vast majority of Christians don't fight the battle up close of avoiding a prostitute, but they will face it at the ad at the bottom of their beloved Fox News page. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Unless you don't read Fox News. The ads that they want to pop up to get you to look. That's what he's saying. That's the near fight. That's not the far off fight. You know, we could sound sanctimonious, pious about the far off fight. I'd never drive through that part of town. But just mindlessly scroll. That's the near fight. That's the one that will plant the seed for that old recycled thought to come back. To get you right back where you've tried to not go. I remember thinking that it dawned on me when I was in high school. I loved reading the sports section and this thing young people don't understand called a newspaper. It was made of wood pulp, and I distributed them through my neighborhood. And in the sports section is where first that near fight dawned on me that at the bottom of the sports section had those ads for the gentlemen club in town. And all it took was that spark right there to be a thought for later on that day. Fight the near fight...not the far off one, because the near fight is the one that what?...it tricks you. It makes you think, oh, that wasn't so bad. I'll get it out of my head. If you know that's where it is...That's why I stopped reading the sports section in the morning. It wasn't worth it. You take some measures. Those measures aren't the thing ultimately, that's purifying me. The Spirit through the Word is. But it sure helps to put some boundaries in your life. So that's what we need to know about ourselves. How to control our own body, verse four and five. Back to first Thessalonians. But now he wants you to know something about others. Sub point number two under point two about what we need to know how to win the fight. Verse six, and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter. Just that right there. Paul says it's not just about you, it's about the people around you. That your sin doesn't just affect you, it affects others. Now, we don't know from that one line if Paul got some report from Timothy that there was adultery going on in this church. It seems to suggest that. But we can certainly see how the phrase brother, sometimes some translations talk about brother or sister, and this wouldn't be something only for men. But it's for men and women, brothers and sisters, to not what?...transgress, which means to break God's law. Go beyond the bounds. Step out of bounds. Here's the line. You don't just walk up to it, you willfully cross it. That's what it means to transgress. That's an issue you have with breaking God's law. But then there's the issue of defrauding your brother or sister. What's that word, defraud? It's about taking advantage of someone, usually in the writings in the New Testament, it's about being greedy, gaining something at someone else's expense, taking what's not yours. Paul says, Christians, we don't take what's not ours. That person's not your husband or wife. It doesn't matter if they're your boyfriend, girlfriend. They're not yours. When are they yours? Right there. (holding up wedding band). That's when you found the one. How do you know when you found the one you want? Do you want Ashoff's dating advice? If this is on your finger, you found the one. And that's your one...you're only one. And if you don't have that, you don't have the right to anyone else. Because that's where it'll head. You'll think, but I can compromise. No you can't. You won't be the exception to the rule. Not in today's climate, not with the temptations around you. Abstain from sexual immorality. Don't defraud your brother or sister in the matter. What does God demand in 1 Timothy 5 for how young men are to treat young women in church... absolute purity. Young men, how do you treat your sister? That's how you should treat the girl you're pursuing, and nothing less than that. And if you go any less than that, you've compromised the Scripture. You do what Paul is going to say later on, you reject the Word of God...who's given his spirit to you. God is pretty serious about this, but the most serious thing comes next. The third relationship when it comes to who you need to know...know something about yourself, know something about your brothers and sisters. But here's the one that you need to pay attention to at the end of verse six. Know this because the Lord is the avenger in all these things. Is he being comprehensive enough for us?...any matter related to abstaining from sexual immorality, the Lord is the one who will judge you, the Christian. How serious is Paul about it? He told them before; he solemnly warned them. Clearly, the message wasn't getting through. So this same Lord Jesus, who in 1 Thessalonians 1:10 will rescue us from the wrath to come. Look, if you're a Christian and you sin, you are not destined for wrath. That's not the point of what he's saying about Jesus being the avenger here. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 says, God has not destined us believers. He could say this to the same people He's warning here. He has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. So rather than say, oh Adam, it sounds like you're saying that, hey, if I sin as a Christian, then I thought...you are absolved from ultimate judgment. Praise God. Your salvation is secure. Your glorification will come...your deliverance. So what's the warning here?...the avenger in all these things? It's a warning to say that there's some judgment that the Lord Jesus can carry out on us as believers, as chastisement to prune us, to make us more fruitful. He's talking about Galatians 6...reaping what you sow. The damage that you don't think you're doing because you're keeping it private. You will reap that. Some of you know that, some of you don't. And he's saying the Lord is the avenger. He has perfect justice, perfect righteousness, perfect love, perfect grace. He knows exactly when and where and how to do it. But know this, Ephesians 5, when it talks about Christ and His bride. He will fight for the purity of his bride, the church, by any means necessary. Do you believe that? When Ephesians 5 says he wants to wash his bride in His Word, he presents her as sanctified before himself and the Father. You don't want to mess with that. He is fighting for the purity of his bride. And the implication then is we should be solemnly warned in how we treat one another. Because of the judge...that same one who delivers us from the wrath of God. There is a consequence to our actions all through the scriptures. There's a consequence of physical sickness, even a sickness that can lead to death when we don't obey God's prohibitions for sexual sin. Psalm 32, David talks about God's hand on him for his sin. His vitality drained away as with the fever heat of summer, he wasn't talking figuratively there. It's God's disciplining of him. Romans 1:27 speaks about the sins of a homosexual lifestyle that receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error. You know that's impartial right there that doesn't discriminate between Christians and non-Christians. You transgress, you cross the line of God's boundaries of sexual sin that could be you...receiving in your own body the penalty of your error. The reality of sexual sin causing physical consequences, even ones that lead to death. It doesn't separate out Christians from non-Christians. The latest estimate from the World Health Organization, estimates a million STIs are transmitted a day and hepatitis B alone still kills a million people a year. There's the evidence to that. And there would be more. You could go down the list all day. Warnings...Proverbs five, six, and seven, each one of those chapters warning against a sexually immoral lifestyle ends with really the same warning in all of them, it's a warning to back up, because you will what?...Proverbs 5:23, die for lack of instruction. Chapter six, the one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking, sense; he who destroy himself does it. Chapter seven, many are the victims she has cast down, and numerous are her slain. Her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death. There are no loopholes around those warnings in the scriptures. Second, the Bible talks about losing blessing. A loss of some experience of God's good gifts in this lifetime. Psalm 51, David lost the joy of his salvation. He didn't lose his salvation. But he lost the joy of it...in his unrepentant, unconfessed sin. And what does he say?...restore to me the joy of my salvation. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. I mean the blessing that he knew he was losing, that he experienced by his sin. Then his own son Solomon, 1 kings 11, you read to the end. After his 700 wives and 300 mistresses, God's judgment for him was that the kingdom would be taken from his hand. He lived a long life. Lived for his pleasures. Ecclesiastes 2 said he didn't hold back from himself any pleasure, but what did he lose? He lost God's blessing. And then last but not least, the Bible can talk about a professing Christian whose salvation can be called into question. When unrepentant sexual sin becomes the defining mark of his or her life. 1 Corinthians 6:9, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived...as in you could be deceived into thinking somebody could just profess Jesus and go on unchanged untransformed and just live the life they want to live. And what does Paul say? Don't be deceived. Neither fornicators nor adulterers, idolaters, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, nor revilers swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Now here's the hope. Such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. There's the expectation that there's the change and when that change is not seen there's reason to question it. Which is the most serious warning there is...eternal judgment. What's the motivation behind this all after we've talked about the what and the how, the last one third point back to 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8, why does God want his children to abstain from immorality? 
Because purity has a purpose and that's God's purpose for your life. Look at verse seven. God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. That's where it ends. That's where it ends. God's holy purpose in saving us is to set us apart, to be his shining lights in a dark world, Philippians 2:15. Salt and light in a world that we can all look around and say, yeah, it's as bad as it's ever been. Immorality, its availability, accessibility, anonymity, accountability for it, all of it could be harder than it's ever been. And he says you were saved to be set apart from that stuff, not to be sucked into it. He's not called you to that impurity, and he wouldn't call you to something that you couldn't do. If his will for you is sanctification, his purpose for you is toward sanctification, then if you're fighting against that, if you're pushing it aside, if you're questioning it right now in your heart, verse eight tells you about yourself right now. He who rejects this is not rejecting man, not the word of man. He says chapter two, verse 13. You didn't receive the Word of God which you heard from us, as the word of men. You heard it as it really is the Word of God, which if you receive it by faith, if you believe it's warnings and it's promises, it performs its work in you who believe. The starting point for some of us to change this morning is just believing what God is telling you right now. It will change your heart. It'll move you to action more than anything I can do. And so he says, if you, verse eight, reject this, you're not rejecting man, the preacher. You're rejecting the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you. This is talking to Christians saying you're digging your heels in right now if you're fighting against this, against the God who gave you His Spirit, his Spirit that should transform you and change you from the inside out. So for the Christian, you know that God has given you His Spirit. He's given you His Word to know what to do as a result of it. And you have to believe the promise of this section is it unfolds that purity is possible. Because it's God's purpose for you. But it starts with you taking it personal. It starts with you taking it personal today, doing an inventory on your own life. And just coming back to that starting point, this is what God has for me because he loves me. Now, some of you, it needs to go beyond this room to some level of accountability, because in the world that we're in, the anonymity with which some people could be sucked into sexual sin, namely pornography and its wide accessibility and availability, you cannot win on your own. It's too prevalent. The access that people could have to it today. It'd be like expecting an alcoholic to get over drinking when all the while underneath his jacket he has an IV of liquor going into his veins that he can get any time he wants. Would you expect that guy to get over his alcoholism? How do you expect somebody that's sucked into pornography in that addiction to get over it on their own without some level of accountability, because it's so private, it's so anonymous. Accountability is the friend of integrity, and anonymity is your enemy. It's everywhere. You can get it in every way. If you need accountability, that's what we're here for. And there's help that's available. Guy or girl, no matter what your age is... Email me, email Kurtis who heads up our counseling department. We'll get you the help we can give. We'll do our best to fight for you, to walk beside you. But we don't want to leave you behind. You got to let us know you need help. You need accountability. Deepak Raju, he's a pastor of counseling at a church up in Capitol Hill. He has an acronym for accountability. If you're already in an accountability relationship and you want to get it better, remember the word HOLD. This is the type of accountability you need. H is for honest. You, the person struggling in the sin, have to start with yourself and be honest with yourself. You can't hold anything back. That person needs to know everything you're struggling with. It starts with honesty. Second letter O, often. You can't be when you feel like it, or when you think you're about to sin. If you're stuck in that ditch of sexual immorality sucked in by it, can't get out of it, you need it often. How often?...as often as it's going to take to get you out. L is for local. It can be easier to stay in it when your accountability is on the other side of the country. It may be a great old friend. It may be a family member. It may be a pastor. You need it locally. You need somebody face to face, eye to eye, sitting down with you. Asking you the hard questions, which brings you to D. It needs to be direct. That person you pick needs to be direct with you. No sugarcoating the questions, no dancing around them. You come up with the set of questions to answer and regularly, often, directly and person to person. Get the help you need. Romans 13:14 says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, clothe yourself in him, and make no provision for the flesh. Yes, you're putting on the Lord Jesus Christ as a Christian in this, none of our power to be holy and walk in holiness comes apart from him. But it does say make no provision for the flesh, as in there's something we have to do as well. What provisions are you making? That's for the Christian in the room. For the non-Christian, you may hear these warnings of sexual sin and its consequences and want to live a better life. But that will fall short in two ways. One is if you don't come to Christ and he doesn't change you from the inside, all the external things you can try to do will only get you so far, because you haven't removed your sin problem. It's still in your heart. It still has power over you. No matter all the boundary lines you can put up. So it'll fall short there. And even if you succeed for a while the second problem with you, if you're not in Christ today, is the eternal. It's the wrath that is to come. You can find ways to walk in purity externally and then find yourself outside of Christ eternally. So the solution to that is to look to Christ today for salvation. Jesus Christ Himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we may die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you are healed. Do you believe that in faith today? Do you believe that his wounds are what heal you?...more than any habits, more than any helpful hints. The only way your sin problem is healed is by the what?...body and blood of Christ broken for you that you trust in faith. Do you believe that he bore those sins on the cross? Do you believe that his death is your life? And you can look to him for salvation because he's the only person that never sinned?...never once. You think of all the ways we're tempted to sin and we give in to sin, and never once did he sin. And that's why Christ is your hope today. So call upon him and be saved...for any sins you've committed past, present, or worry about in the future. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. 
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We thank you for the promise it holds...the power it has to transform us, to change us. We're saved only by the body, blood, the work, the righteous work of Christ, his sacrificial death raised by his justification to life. And we trust in him entirely and completely. We need your help, Spirit, to take this word from conviction to application. Don't let it just be something we did today and we walk away from. But let the word have examined us as a mirror shows us what we're really like. That we looked into it. It shows us, us back. We see where our true help is needed. It's in you, Christ. It's in your words. It's by your spirit, we ask. Help us, we pray. Amen.