1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 - Let’s Talk About Sex
Main Idea: Respect the holy purpose of your sexual behavior before God.
HUMAN SEXUALITY IS A GOOD GIFT FROM GOD
God created human sexuality for (marital) relational intimacy, joy, and procreation.
God views human sexuality as good, honorable, and something to be celebrated.
God commands married couples to pursue sexual intimacy with each other, with mutual respect and deference.
SEXUAL IMMORALITY IS A DESTRUCTIVE SIN THAT ROBS YOU AND OTHERS OF THE GOOD GIFT GOD INTENDED
Sexual immorality treats other humans as prostitutes, someone to be used sexually without an exclusive, lifelong commitment of fidelity and provision to them before God and all others.
Sexual immorality distorts God’s marital gift into something fickle, temporary, and boundary-crossing.
Sexual immorality rejects God’s authority over your life, takes advantage of either your spiritual sibling or a lost person, and invites God’s corrective judgment into your life.
SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)
I have to tell you guys, I told a couple of my closest pastor friends this week, I have never been quite as nervous about a sermon, or particularly a passage of scripture, as I am about today, not because the passage is difficult to understand, but
for us as the people of God, it's a difficult passage to sometimes hear about, or live. If you have your sermon handout today, you will see a little bit of why it might be odd.
But as you turn in your Bibles today over to 1 Thessalonians 4, and verses 1 through 8, we are going to hear from the mouth and mind of our holy God today.
And I believe truly that if we are to follow Jesus, it means we follow Jesus in this particular area.
The book of 1 Thessalonians, Paul and Silas and Timothy, they were a missionary team, and they were planting churches and equipping some churches that had already been started on Paul's previous missionary journey.
And they were in the town of Thessalonica, a port city of about 200,000 people. They were there for under four weeks. They were there for three Sabbath days, so at least three Saturdays that they were in that city.
Could be a little bit extra on both ends of that, but whatever it was, it was less than a month before they got run out of town.
As a result of this, Paul was incredibly concerned about the faith of this young church and the young Christian believers that were there.
And so he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to check on them and see if they were still following Jesus, if they were still disciples, or if they had gone back to their old ways of idolatry. And Timothy brought back wonderful news.
He says, no, like they are doing phenomenal, and even though there is persecution and people aren't happy about them being Christians, they are continuing to flourish in their faith.
And so Paul was really encouraged, but then he wrote this letter with Silas and Timothy to say, okay, we need to put some finishing touches on the discipleship work that we started with you guys.
And in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, what he says is, let's talk about sex. Now, everyone, I need you to take a giant breath in and breathe a giant breath out. Okay, you know me.
This is going to be a little weird in that God speaks into every area of our life. This is not going to be weird in any sort of inappropriate way, but we want to be faithful to talk about whatever the Bible has for us, just next chapter, next verse.
And as we walk through, we need to be faithful to say what God has for us, we are going to read and obey.
What I want us to see today from the words of Paul, as he echoes the commands of our Lord Jesus, is that we must respect the holy purpose of our sexual behavior before God. Respect the holy purpose of your sexual behavior before God.
Now, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that in this room, we have people that are young, we have people that are old, we have people that have been married for over 50 years, we have people who have never been married.
But I want you to know that this passage isn't just for the married individuals.
It's not just for the single individuals, but that every single one of us, from the age of puberty until the age that we die, God ought to have the say over who we are as people holistically. That means all of us.
And so as we talk about sex, we are going to talk about it in the way that God says, here's how I view you as my child, as my ambassador to the world. And so here is the way that we ought to operate as the people of God and as sexual beings.
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Prayer and Scripture
So let us pray. Continue to take deep breaths as we go through. And I also want to encourage you.
Some people do not struggle at all with sexual immorality. Some people, that has been the totality of their entire life. I want you to know, wherever you find yourself today, there are people in this room who have walked the exact same path.
And so I want you to know that you are not alone. There have been books and study Bibles written calling it every man's battle or every woman's battle, every young man's battle and every young woman's battle.
Whoever you are, Satan wants to convince you that your particular struggles and failures mean that you are to be isolated and put away from everyone else, that you are uniquely flawed as a result of the ways either that others have abused you or the
ways that you have been immorally sexually. I want you to know the ground is level at the foot of the cross and the ground is level among Christians.
There is not a one of us as you think back to John 8 and as Jesus stands in front of all these righteous Pharisees to throw down the woman caught in adultery. And Jesus says, all right, you without sin cast the first stone.
So as we come here today, I don't want you to hear, okay, here's like God's unique condemnation of me. No, this is all of us as the people of God going, we have failed our holy God, but we want to pursue the kind of life that Jesus lived.
And so let's pray today. We'll dive into the passage and then see the thoughts that the Lord has for us. Dear Lord Jesus, we ask that you would be with us this morning.
Lord, I pray that you would be with our hearts. Lord, may we be receptive, may I be receptive to what your spirit has for me today. Lord, we come to this area and it's a place where we can experience great shame or guilt or accusations.
And Lord, I thank you for the fact that for those who have called on Christ for forgiveness, repenting of sin, Lord, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
God, I pray that we would fully recognize the gravity of our actions before you.
And Lord, may we experience the forgiveness of Jesus that is freely offered, not if we have earned it, but because you have offered it to all who would repent and believe. Lord, we ask this in the precious name of Jesus, amen.
Let's read through the passage.
First Thessalonians chapter four and verse number one says, Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God as you're doing, do
this even more. So Paul says, chapter one, we told you that we thank God for you, and here are all the reasons we thank God for you. Chapters two and three, we made disciples of you guys.
You know the way that we interacted with you, that we loved you, we gave you our own selves. And so those are the kinds of people that you should be looking for.
Don't look for the snake oil salesmen, the people that just want to have you be totally happy with them. He says, you know that we were in a relationship with you to please God, not to please you. He says, so look for those kinds of people.
And then in chapter three, he recounts the fact that, man, I was so worried about you guys. I was sick of it. I could no longer stand it.
So I sent Timothy, he brought back good news, and we are just rejoicing and praying for you. So now he says, we gave you some instructions and he's reminding them what he has already told them. So this is like the basics.
In month one of being a Christian, they would have heard these truths presented. And I love here, it says, how you should live, the Greek word for this is parapeteo. It is how you should walk around, how you live your day to day.
And then I love this, and he says, and how you should please God. That phrase there is to delight the heart of God.
As we talk about everything we are going to talk about today, I want you to view it through the lens of this brings incredible joy to the heart of my heavenly father. I know many in this room maybe had not great relationships with their dads.
For some of you, your dad was like your hero and you loved him.
But whatever your relationship with your earthly father was, I want you to know that you can bring joy to the heart of your heavenly father, and in bringing joy to his heart, you will also experience the joy of God as well as you follow him.
He says, for you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. Paul did not come up with the doctrines that we read here. Instead, this was passed down from the Lord Jesus through the disciples to the rest of the Christians.
And as you read throughout both the Old and the New Testament, this is the uniform sexual ethic that we read about.
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Godʼs Will: Sanctification
He says, for this is God's will. Pause right there. He says, how many people want to know the will of God for their life?
That as they think about, I love that you raised your hands. Absolutely. We want to know God's will.
We want to know that the steps that we're walking in, we experience the good pleasure and provision of God. And here Paul says, here is God's will for your life. Says even your sanctification, it's the Greek, hagiasmos.
It is that you are set apart for a purpose. This is the word that would be used for the different cups that they would use in the temple, that these are set apart. They're holy.
They're for God. Many people would call a room like this, where we meet and worship together, a sanctuary. That is a set apart place.
We don't just do perhaps parties or whatever in this area. This is set apart for the worship of Almighty God. He says, your sanctification, that you're set apart, you have a unique purpose.
And then he says that you keep away from sexual immorality. And then he says that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor. The Bible says this, you and I have our body.
If you have perhaps a more literal translation, this word will read vessel. So it's bringing to mind those temple cups. He says, you have a precious set apart for God thing.
And you need to know how to have that. The word control here, most of the other times that it's used in the New Testament, it is translated as buy or gain.
So a helpful word picture for me was there is a wild horse that's out there, and you're trying to get that horse and to tame it so that then you are able to use it.
Maybe it might bring around the king's carriage, or you might have it that your kid can ride on this horse that was once wild. God says for you and I, we have a vessel, a wholly set apart thing for God, which is our body.
Some religions would have our physical bodies as something that's to be ignored or rejected. You should just do everything to ignore any bodily needs or urges that you have. That's not the Christian mindset.
The Christian mindset is our bodies are created by God for specific purposes at specific times. And so God says there's a set apart purpose for your body and for my body, and that we need to tame, to control this in holiness and honor.
Holiness is the set apart. It's got a unique purpose, and that it is good and right. He says, we control our own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passions.
Lustful passions is I see this, I want it, I'm going to participate in it because I have this over urging, craving and desire to be with this person or to engage in this action. He says, the Gentiles who don't know God, behave this way.
The people that don't know God do whatever they want with their body. Certainly, in the first century, in both Rome and Greece, this was what took place.
In the temple worship of their false gods, they would have temple prostitutes that you would pay money and be with prostitutes, and that was a way that you were commanded to worship the false gods.
And so Paul says, it's totally different in the Christian faith. In the Christian faith, we don't have prostitutes. The word there back in verse number three, sexual immorality, is the word pornea.
You might recognize it today from the word, like, pornography comes from this same root, but it is to behave or to act like a prostitute.
He says in verse number five, this means, so us setting apart our body, the will of God, our set-apartness that we keep away from sexual immorality, controlling ourselves for a specific purpose.
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Rejecting Godʼs Command
He says, this means, one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you.
This word, avenger, when you guys hear the word today, you might think Iron Man or Captain America. That's not the word you should be thinking of. Here, an avenger is the writer of wrongs.
He is the one that, where there has been abuse, where there has been people being taken advantage of.
Another word, another way that some translations translate that take advantage is to defraud someone else, that there's something that is rightfully theirs, and we take it from them.
God is the one that avenges, that makes what was wrong, and he makes it right. And then he says, for God has not called us to impurity, but to live in holiness. And then he says this in verse number eight.
He says, consequently, anyone who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
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Sexuality: A Divine Gift
Okay, everyone take deep breath in. Okay, I know it's weird. I'm the guy having to talk about it.
It's weird. But I want us to see two fundamental truths for us today. Number one, human sexuality is a good gift from God.
We're going to get weirder before we get even more weird, and then it'll come back around at the end. But I want us to see this first. God does not say Christians are those who do not engage in any sort of sexual relations.
That is not the Christian way. The Christian way is you have one man and one woman committed together for one lifetime. Here's how God has set it up.
First, you can see it there on your handout, God created human sexuality for marital, relational intimacy, joy, and the possibility of procreation.
We can read this in Genesis 1 and 2, where the very first command that God gives to the human race is be fruitful and multiply. Or in chapter 2, where it says that these two shall be one flesh. Or we're told that Adam knew his wife.
There is a fundamental understanding that comes as a result of marital intimacy. We're also told in Proverbs 6 and 7 to rejoice in the wife of our youth. We're told to let her body satisfy you at all times.
Again, the Bible talks a lot about this. It gets really weird, but we need to hear the mind of God on this, not just the mind of political commentators.
We don't just need to hear our own thoughts on the matter or our own beliefs of what is right or wrong. We have to come to Scripture. Secondly, God views human sexuality as good, honorable, and something to be celebrated.
If you have any doubts about that, go read Song of Songs in the Old Testament.
It is a love sonnet between a man and a woman as they sing each other's praises and talk about kissing and talk about goats and all sorts of stuff as they paint beautiful word pictures of their love and care for each other.
We're told in Hebrews chapter 13 and verse number 4 that marriage is to be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers. You see today, sex is not dirty till marriage.
Instead, it is a holy action set apart by God for marriage, much like a fire is a wonderful gift when it's cooking food or heating up water or warming a house with a fireplace.
But fire is destructive when it's in the woods or in your attic or in the hands of a toddler. Fire is good when it's in the right place. Fire is so destructive when it is in the wrong place.
Number three, God commands married couples to pursue intimacy with each other with mutual respect and deference because intimacy is designed for marriage. God says, pursue this as you are able.
In 1 Corinthians 7, we're told that the wife has control over the husband and vice versa. So we are commanded as married individuals to pursue intimacy with one another unless we mutually agree to abstain for a time for dedicated prayer.
So first we see today that human sexuality is a good gift from God. So that's the fundamental basis. This is made for marriage.
The fire is supposed to go in the fireplace.
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Immorality: A Destructive Sin
So now what Paul says is young believers in Christ, you are commanded, keep away from, stay away from, don't let sexual immorality have a hold on you. This is the way you used to live when you worshiped false gods.
But as believers in God now, we have a new path to walk. So secondly today, I want us to see that sexual immorality is a destructive sin that robs you and others of the good gift that God intended.
Now, because there are so many thoughts and opinions in our world today, I just wanted to find quickly what sexual immorality is.
Sexual immorality, as the Bible defines it, is sexual relations apart from a marriage covenant, or sexual relations with a relative or with an animal.
Very unfortunately, even reading those things, 200 years ago, everyone would have gone, yeah, that makes sense, absolutely.
But over the last 100 years, over the last 50 years, our world has fundamentally changed to say more and more, whatever I want to do, whatever I believe feels good, is what I ought to pursue with my life. That is not God's design.
I also want to highlight very quickly the difference between adultery and sexual immorality. Adultery is the breaking of a marriage covenant by engaging in sexual relations outside the two covenant partners.
I understand polygamy and all of that is much more in fad today, even than it was perhaps 50 years ago. It is far less common than it was 2,000 years ago, but still not very, still more common today.
But I want you to know that when God set up your marital relationship, He set it up for the two of you and no others. Then sexual immorality is at its core, treating another human like a prostitute to be used without lifelong commitment.
That might sound like a very heavy statement. And even as I was reading through the passage this week and studying the words, it struck my heart.
Because even as I stand in front of you guys, like I mentioned at the beginning, all of us, likely, have failed in one way or another in this area.
And so there is no portion of our hearts or lives that should remain unaffected when we see the gravity of our actions before a holy God.
First there on your handout, I want you to see that sexual immorality treats other humans as prostitutes, someone to be used sexually without an exclusive lifelong commitment of fidelity and provision to them before God and all others.
Each one of those aspects is important as you think about marriage and intimacy. Sexual immorality treats someone as you would a prostitute, someone who you use sexually and compensate for their time.
And while I hope most of us have never and would never engage in solicitation of prostitution, it is far too common these days for Christians and non-Christians alike to view taking someone on a third date as adequate compensation for sex, or that
we're choosing only to date a single person. That's a good enough reason for me to be sexually immoral with them.
Next April, we're going to be reminded from 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, as we walk through the book of 1 Corinthians together, that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us as his temple, and that to engage in sexual immorality is to take God's temple and unite
it to someone that is acting like a prostitute. You would be rightfully horrified if you heard that I hired a sex worker and brought them into this sanctuary for evil.
But God is horrified in the way that you and I take him into every non-marital sexual action that we partake in. Second there, sexual immorality distorts God's marital gift into something fickle, temporary, and boundary-crossing.
Sex is intended to be how you show a spouse your love for them, as you care for them every day, as you provide for their needs without any need for worry that you will abandon them.
But sexual immorality lies to us and to our sexual partners, and tells us that we are truly loved, cared for, provided for, and in no danger of abandonment or rejection. And third there, sexual immorality rejects God's authority over your life.
It takes advantage of either your spiritual sibling, if the other person is a Christian, or a lost person, if they are not a Christian. And it invites God's corrective judgment into your life. We read these verses in verse number six and seven.
This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses. This is what we are told. Engaging in sexual immorality says, God, you created me.
You have given me everything I have ever needed to live and thrive throughout my entire life. You died for my sin. You rose again for my justification before you.
You sit on the right hand of God the Father interceding for me. You gave me your Holy Spirit. You've promised me a home with you forever, but I will not obey you when it comes to what's under my clothes.
You have no right to tell me who I can experience pleasure with. This is why Paul says that to reject this command from Jesus is to reject God's Holy Spirit.
It is to spit in the face of God to say, You are not my Lord, you're not my master, when it comes to this area of my life.
Sexual immorality turns a brother or sister in the Lord into an enjoyable temporary experience, rather than a lifelong responsibility and commitment.
I wanna encourage you today, if you are having sex with another Christian, who's not your spouse, I want to challenge you as your pastor. You are taking advantage of your romantic partner, not giving them what they're due.
They deserve to be committed to for life with a ring and a marriage license and a home you two own together, or rent. Fine, homeownership is not the topic of today.
If you don't wanna marry the other person, do not date them and absolutely do not sleep with them outside of marriage.
Today, if you're having sex with someone that's not a Christian, you are actively dissuading them from repenting of their sin and turning to Jesus, as you are repenting of Jesus and turning to your sin.
Scripture has a Genesis to Revelation command to believers to only enter into romantic relationships with those that also love God. And I could tell you story after story of the hardships that mixed faith relationships bring.
And also, if you are regularly engaging in sexual immorality, I want to ask you today, are you truly a Christian?
Christians repent of our sinful direction, and we choose Jesus as our new Lord and Master, regardless of what we would selfishly want to do ourselves.
Christians are not just those people that believe that Jesus is a true historical figure who died and rose again and is God. The devils believe all of that as well. Christians repent of sin and believe in Jesus.
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Forgiveness and Healing
What recourse do we have when we have failed or are failing through sexual immorality? Like I mentioned at the beginning, I think of John 8.
There was this woman caught in adultery, brought forward by the religious leaders of her day, and they cast her down in front of Jesus, and they say, Moses said that these adulteresses should be stoned, but what do you say?
And Jesus said, The one without sin among you cast the first stone. Writes in the sand. We don't know what he writes.
Could have written names of people that the Pharisees had sinned with. He could have written the Pharisees' names, and they brought back to their mind all of their faults and failures. He could have been writing the Ten Commandments.
He could have been making pictures of fish, for all I know. But whatever he was doing, one by one, starting at the oldest all the way to the youngest, they left.
Jesus, looking up, seeing all of the accusers gone, said to the woman, woman, where are your accusers? You know, who is left to condemn you? And she says, no man, Lord.
And he said, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. He doesn't say, live however you want sexually.
Do whatever you want with your body. It's your life. He commands her to follow God's instructions.
Go and sin no more. Don't follow that path anymore. But there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who as in 1 John 1, if we confess our sin, we say the same thing about our sin that God says.
If we confess our sin, he is faithful. That means he will consistently and just. So rightfully, he will consistently and rightfully forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If you turn to Jesus in faith, asking him to forgive you and to cleanse you, he will do it.
Even more wonderfully, we're told in 2 Corinthians 5 that God made Jesus, the one who did not have any sin, to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God through Jesus.
I want you to realize that on the cross of Calvary, Jesus took every wrong thought that you have ever thought. He took every wrong action that you have ever engaged in. And the guilt of that was placed on Jesus on the cross.
And Jesus there said, it is finished. The price is paid in full.
The answer to your sexual immorality and to mine is not that we would somehow become a better and better person and then hopefully eventually we can be set apart enough that God would be happy with us.
The call of the gospel is that because Jesus has forgiven us of all of our sin, we yield our lives over to him and for every failure that we experience and every time that we let God down and every time that we have used another person unrighteously,
Jesus says, forgive them for they do not know what they do. There is no sin that is too much for the saving grace of Christ and no sin that is too far for your Christian brothers and sisters or pastors to help you walk through to find healing.
If you're struggling with sexual immorality or addiction, please talk to me or shoot me a text or call today or tomorrow. There is hope and healing for all of us sexual sinners.
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Call to Obedience
If today you're like, man, it's a hard message, hard to sit through, super awkward. Absolutely get it. I'm up here and I'm having to look out at, I don't know, 80 faces or whatever as I'm doing this.
And it's really weird because you can't like look someone in the face and be like, are you being sexually immoral? Because that's a really awkward thing. And so I have to keep like flitting around as I'm going through.
Two things. Number one, God loves you. And his design for your sexuality is for your flourishing and joy, safety and provision and the fullest joy that you can experience as a human.
God designed that for you. There is absolute forgiveness with Christ for every one of your failures because he's forgiven every one of mine. And as my wife would tell you, I have so many more flaws than almost any of you know.
If God can forgive me, he can forgive you. There was something else that I was going to say. Also, next Sunday is a regular run-of-the-mill passage.
And so you don't have to feel awkward. You're not going to hit this again next week and be like, okay, we're just going to get nailed. Pastor's going to be sweating bullets again.
Next week is a regular passage. But this is so important for your life and for mine. May we realize the goal that Jesus is pointing us to.
May we follow that wholeheartedly. May we repent for our failures, knowing that Jesus absolutely will forgive us. There's no person that will ever come to Jesus and say, Jesus, will you please forgive me for my sin?
And he go, nah, not going to do it. That will never happen. So as we come to him, may we respect the holy purpose of our sexual behavior before God.
It is for a wonderful purpose. Let us be faithful to live according to that purpose. Would you stand with me?
We're going to pray. We're going to sing the song, I Surrender All Together, and then we're going to have a moment of prayer for some people that are having surgeries this upcoming week.
But however the Lord has spoken to you today, I want to ask you to respond in faith and obedience to him. If there's an area of your life, maybe in regards to your sexuality, that you need to repent, confess your sin before Jesus.
Do it and know that he will forgive you for everything that you have ever done, everything that you are doing, and that there is redemption found in Jesus Christ and his perfect payment alone.
