1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 - God's Will and a Christian Sexual Ethic

Well, welcome back to another episode of Tabernacle Talk. I got to tell you guys, I'm super excited for the next couple of days.

When I was looking at doing the book of First Thessalonians, these couple of paragraphs in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 were some of the biggest reasons for me wanting to do this book. Just wonderful truths that every Christian needs to hear.

And I hope that it'll be an encouragement to you. I know these passages have been so formational in my life.

And I hope that together we'll learn to follow Jesus and love him more as a result of the time that we spend over the next few days in the last two chapters of 1 Thessalonians. Chapter 4, verse number 1.

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 are doing, do this even more, for you know what commands we gave you

through the Lord Jesus. Here Paul encourages them, you've heard from us what you need to do for how you should live and how you should please God, and you guys are doing it.

We just want to encourage you keep on doing it, and then he's going to give some specifics on what that should look like in their life.

For us today, let's not shy away from hearing when God uses people to let us know when there's something that we can do to please Jesus, to live worthy of the life that he's called us to, if it's rebuking sin in our life, if it's encouraging us in

actions to take. Let's not shy away from that, let's embrace that.

Frankly, as a pastor, one of the things that I've communicated to people before is being uncertain of, I know what God's word says, and so I have counsel that I can give to people that are in some situations.

But I don't know if the person wants that advice, like if they can handle it. Even as you look at scripture and you see comments like, okay, don't cast your pearls before swine. Pardon me, there's a garbage truck going by.

It might be a little bit loud. As we are not to cast our pearls before swine, that is, Proverbs would tell us, if you rebuke a scorn or if you rebuke a fool, they will hate you for it. But if you rebuke a wise person, they will love you.

And on the pastoral side of things, I know, like, I don't have advice that I can give people on, hey, here's your, like, best investment practices. That's not something I know anything about.

Other than, like, very, very vague financial principles that I could bring from the Word of God, I can't speak into that. If someone's like, okay, how do I, you know, build my construction business?

I wouldn't have anything for that other than just some very basic things that would apply to any business that you would do.

But as a pastor, my whole life mission is to know this book and to know what it says and to encourage people like Paul and Silas and Timothy did, to encourage them to live for and to please God, to pursue Jesus, to know him and to communicate him to

others. And sometimes because we're human, we don't like hearing what God has to say because it runs immediately contrary to the way that we think and we act.

I can think in my life of times when even my wife has spoken into my life and gone like, hey, there's this area and that doesn't really line up with how God says you need to be acting or thinking about this or having this emotion.

And in those moments when I'm when I'm not walking in the Spirit and I'm like, no, trust me. Like it's it's totally justified. Like it's I'm right in this.

And then as soon as you know, the Holy Spirit convicts me or as soon as I come to my senses, I go, yeah, she's right. I do I do love Jesus. I want to follow Jesus.

And so I don't want to I don't want to hold on to my sin anymore. And so I encourage you wherever you are in your life. Verbalize to a spiritual person that you trust.

Verbally give them the authority to speak into your life, to warn you, to try and protect you, because sin is cancerous. It destroys everything that it touches.

Galatians 5 says that a little leaven contaminates the whole lump of bread, that it's pervasive. It just grows and grows and grows. Same is true for sin in our life.

So allow people to speak into your life. So that's Paul's initial statement. Hey, we just want to encourage you guys with some things.

We know that you're doing them. And we just want to give you a few more things that we think are really important for you. And that's where we get to verse 3.

For this is God's will. Okay, I'm stopping right there before we go any further. Whoa.

Many people spend their whole lives wanting to know what God's will is. And a lot of times when we think about it, we think it means, okay, God, what person do you want me to marry? What job do you want me to have?

What place do you want me to live? What church do you want me to go to? And we think about God's will in that way.

But God's will is more about, if you will, how you travel on the journey rather than a specific destination.

So when God talks about his will, several points in Scripture, we'll see two of them actually in 1 Thessalonians, one here in chapter 4 and one in chapter 5.

When God talks about his will, it's about how you travel through your decisions and your life with God. It's not necessarily about, hey, where does my end destination here need to be?

Instead, it's if you're walking in God's will, if you are, I won't give it away just yet what this action is, but using some of the others, if I am giving thanks in everything that I'm doing, if I am praying always in everything that I'm doing, then

I can know whenever I get to the end of that path, there is a certainty that maybe God didn't do like a Gideon and the wet fleece, dry fleece, like that kind of test, or the Urim and Thumim that we've talked about before, I think was in Leviticus and

maybe in one other. Old Testament book. Maybe we didn't have that kind of like gigantic sign from God that we're in His will.

But if you're with God, if you're in His will every step of the way, then you can know that wherever you ended up, that was where God wanted you.

I think in one of the Psalms that we went through, it might be Psalm 37, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way.

Though he falls, he will not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand, that as we journey through life, we can know, okay, God, be with me for my next step. God, I want you to be with me in this conversation.

I've got some friends right now that are in a situation where they need to go and buy a new house or rent a new house or something. And so every step along the way, they're praying, hey God, would you help me as I meet with this realtor?

Would you help me as I look at this house? Would you help me as I think through the finances for this? Would you help me in this area?

And each one of those steps as they're relying on God, then they can know wherever the destination is, I am in God's will. And I don't have to maybe fret on, OK, well, what if I accidentally missed, you know, God wanted me to wake up at 3 a.m.

and wander over and, you know, turn on my computer and see this particular ad for this particular house that was sold the next morning. And but I rolled over in my sleep and maybe I missed God's will for my life.

I know for me, when I was a young adult and looking at who maybe God would have for me to marry.

And I think I mentioned this before in my episode on Psalm 16 that I was so concerned about, OK, what if this girl was the one that I was supposed to marry and somehow I, you know, didn't say the right thing or do the right thing.

And and now like I've permanently lost God's will for my life. That's not the way that God speaks about it. So all of that from five words, for this is God's will.

I promise I'll hasten on here. For this is God's will, your sanctification. That's that day by day process by which the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make the child of God more like the Son of God.

Sanctification is, well, salvation is normally talked about in three ways. Number one, there's justification. That's at the moment of your salvation.

When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you repent and you believe the Holy Spirit of God moves into your life. You are adopted into God's family. The Holy Spirit baptizes you into into Christ.

He immerses, he places you into Christ. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption. You are God's forever.

There's no condemnation. All of that happens at your justification. That moment where you put your faith and trust in Christ, repent from sin and believe in Jesus alone.

That's your justification. So that's the first part of salvation. That's one and done.

That is forever. That is never taken away from you. Number two is your sanctification is the second part of salvation.

So in justification, you are saved forever from the penalty of your sin that you will never spend one moment in hell or in purgatory or in any other form of judgment for your sin.

That all of your condemnation was placed on Jesus and he paid it in full. So justification, you're freed from the penalty of sin. Sanctification, we are being saved from the power of sin.

That as we yield ourselves to God and to His will, to the Holy Spirit, to listening to Him when He says, hey, I want you to maybe do this. I want you to say this. I want you to obey my word in this way and no longer just go by what you feel is right.

Go by what I have revealed in my word, that that faith and belief that you have in the Lord and you are repenting, if you will, you're repenting moment by moment of wanting to follow your own way or wanting to follow the world.

And you are choosing to believe what God has said and following and obeying him and trusting him in his word. That as you do that, you are saved from the power of sin. And that is a lifelong process.

That is moment by moment, you are relying on Jesus saying, I don't have enough willpower or innate righteousness to be able to defeat this on my own. And so God, I'm relying on you. So justification, once and for all, saved from the penalty of sin.

It's through faith in Jesus. Sanctification, which is being saved from the power of sin in the here and now. That's a lifelong process, and it's accomplished through faith in Jesus.

It's not accomplished through your own willpower, though certainly God calls us to act in such a way to respond to his word. In obedience, but it is still the work of Jesus.

Then lastly, there is glorification, and that's either when we die or when Jesus returns, and that's when we are saved forever from the presence of sin. So justification, we are saved from the penalty of sin.

Sanctification, we are saved from the power of sin each and every day, that it loses its hold on us as time goes on. Then lastly, there is glorification, when we are saved forever from the presence of sin, that sin will have no more hold on us.

That old man that Roman 6 talks about, it is forever shed and away, and it is no more. You will never have again a temptation to evil or to wrong. You will be glorified just as Jesus is glorified even now.

So, this is God's will, your sanctification, your day by day growth in following Jesus. And then he says this, that you keep away from sexual immorality.

He says, here's the particular aspect of sanctification that I want to bring to your guys' attention. The ancient Greek and Roman culture was incredibly sexualized.

Frankly, maybe even more so than today, as I see sometimes people remarking, maybe from the 40s in America to today, they might say, man, it's insane, everything that's taking place. As you look back at the ancient cultures, it was so much worse.

Pedophilia was not something that was looked down on. It was something that was embraced.

You even had the Roman Emperor Nero that married a young boy, who I think might have been a eunuch, that he dressed as a woman, and he, quote unquote, married this young boy. You had homosexuality and all sorts of stuff was rampant.

This term here that's used, that we would keep away from sexual immorality. This would include premarital sex, that is, sex that would occur between partners that have not covenanted to each other in an exclusive marital contract, if you will.

Over the past about 50, 60 years in America, that's been something that has not grown in popularity.

Waiting till marriage or abstaining from sex outside of marriage, it's very assumed, especially in my generation, that you would live with a person for at least two, three, five, seven years before you would consider marrying them.

That is not God's design. Today, maybe if you are in a situation like that, where you and your partner are not married, can I challenge you? Listen to God's word.

Look at how God designed marriage and intimacy to work and follow His design. I promise you, there is blessing in following Jesus.

And here, this is God's will for your life, that you would grow more like Jesus in realizing what the bounds of intimacy are. Not just a, yeah, we promised one another that we won't see anyone else. That's not, frankly, it's not what marriage is.

Marriage is that promise, that covenant between you two and God to say, hey, I am exclusively this person's until death, and I will not break this contract.

So premarital sex, it would also prohibit incest, as you would read about maybe in 1 Corinthians 6, something that was very common in this early world.

You would also have things like bestiality, things that were particularly condemned in the Book of Leviticus as we went over, something that thankfully in today's world is also condemned, even though maybe some other things aren't.

And then you have homosexuality that would have been included in this catch-all term, sexual immorality, the Greek word porneia, that God says, all of these things are not how I have designed intimacy to work.

And he goes into this, so God's will is your sanctification that you would keep away from sexual immorality, that you would reserve physical intimacy for a marriage covenant, that it is only to be enjoyed within that realm.

It says that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor.

When it comes to sexual immorality, the question is, are you able to control what you do with your body, that you would make the choice, that you would say, this belongs to God, this does not belong to me.

And so because of that, I don't get to choose what I do with it. I am a steward, a manager of this body that God has given me. The Holy Spirit lives in me, and so I'm responsible to only do with it what God calls me to.

So he says that each of you would know how to control their own body in holiness and honor, set apart to God and honorable in what you would do. That as people see your life, they would go, yeah, that's honorable, that's respectable.

There's nothing shocking or scandalous about how you are conducting yourself. Verse number five, not with lustful passions like the Gentiles who don't know God.

He says the people around you in this city of Thessalonica with all of your idols and all of the false worship and the goddesses of love and fertility, he says, these people don't know how to control themselves. They don't know God.

They aren't accountable to God for how they are living their, if you will, sexual lives. He says, but you guys are different. You guys have Jesus.

You guys have the Holy Spirit living inside of you.

And whereas these Gentiles are told that they need to worship Aphrodite through soliciting temple prostitutes, and though there are expectations that, oh yes, of course, you would, you know, subjugate slaves or children or whoever to your passions.

He says, you guys are not to be like that.

Verse number six, 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 you and warned you.

For God has not called us to impurity, but to live in holiness. Consequently, anyone who rejects this does not reject a man, but God, who gives you His Holy Spirit.

So he says, when you commit sexual immorality, especially with a brother or sister in Christ, he says, there is, in verse number six, there is vengeance from the Lord.

He says, as we previously told and warned you, it is impurity and it is a rejection of God to say, I know the Bible says this, but I'm going to do this. I know God doesn't want me to have this relationship.

I know God doesn't want me to do this within this stage of my relationship, but I'm going to choose it because I enjoy it, because I don't want to have self-control, because I think that maybe if I don't participate in this, then I might lose my

partner. And God says, don't think that way. Realize that you do not belong to you. You have the Holy Spirit living inside of you.

God is the one who judges all sin, and that when we choose to identify ourselves as being against God's design of flaunting in the Lord's face the fact that, yes, I purport to be your child. I claim that I've been washed by Jesus.

I say that I know eternal life, that I've repented from sin and believed in you, but I'm going to refuse to obey you because it brings temporary happiness and joy to my life. Paul warns them, don't do that. We warned you guys about this.

As you look at Paul's ministry, this was something he interacted with often in the Greek and Roman cultures, that as they had a very sexually promiscuous culture, very unlike the Jewish culture, which was much more kind of chaste in their sexual

relations, Paul warns these believers again and again of the danger. He tells the Corinthian Church that no sexually immoral person, no men that have sex with men, no people that are effeminate, none of those types of people, those people that make

that their life, none of them will inherit the kingdom of God. He says, as we look at 1st John, where we would see, you will know them by their fruits. They're talking about people and figuring out, okay, is this person a believer or not a believer?

John, the Apostle tells us, you will know in the end who really is a believer or an unbeliever by the way that they live their life.

Now, I want to speak maybe to those of you that you are in a situation, you've been living with a partner, you've been sleeping with your partner, and maybe as you're hearing this, number one, guard goes up that, as I mentioned, a couple of episodes

or something, as we hear God's word, it doesn't line up with what we want to be true. We want God just to say, oh, if you guys love each other, everything's great. But that's not what God wrote in His word.

I want you to know, first of all, that there is absolutely forgiveness and grace for every sin. Number two, realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that He lives inside of you.

Paul would tell the Corinthian Church, don't commit sexual immorality because the Holy Spirit's in you. And, you know, He's not just going to like temporarily leave you while you sin.

And so you are making Him party to your wickedness that you are, that you're getting involved in. So He says, realize that you do not belong to you. You belong to Jesus.

So it's not necessarily just a line of, okay, can I choose to do this with my body? It's not your body. It's God's.

So you are called. If God is the one that owns you, that if He bought you through the blood of Jesus, if He placed His Holy Spirit in your life as the down payment, then He has the right to tell us, yes, you can do this, no, you cannot do that.

So number one, there's grace, there's forgiveness. Number two, it is a serious thing to commit sexual immorality. And number three, involve other people in your life.

Have a, maybe a family member, have a really close spiritual friend that you can be accountable to.

For some people, this might be something like pornography, that if you're struggling with that, that you would have maybe a friend, a brother, a pastor, a men's leader, some, someone like that, that you would have an open, honest, transparent

relationship with to say, hey, I've been struggling with this. I don't want to struggle with it anymore. Would you text me, you know, every couple of days? Would you text me once a week and just ask, hey, how are you doing?

Are you struggling? Are you okay? To be able to introduce some of that transparency, it's that James 5, that if we have sins, we are to confess our faults to one another and pray for one another so that we would be healed.

And the King James, James 5, 17, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. I want to encourage you, there can absolutely be victory over sin in this area. Number two, people might not understand why you make that decision.

You might have a partner that maybe because they're so used to you participating in that, that they would bear some resentment or some anger for you saying, no, I can't do that anymore. I'm a Christian and Christians don't do that.

That's not the way that God designed it to work. But I want to encourage you, as you obey Jesus in this matter, you please Him. You are living and pleasing God, that you are accomplishing God's will for your life.

Would you rather be in God's will being sanctified, overcoming the power of sin in your life through obedience and belief in the Word of God? Or would you rather just do what you want to do? Thanks for tuning in today.

I know it was a little bit longer of an episode. I know this is a heavy topic. I want to reiterate, so many people have struggled in this area of life in so many different ways.

Don't let Satan trick you and think that you are all alone in this situation. If you need help, please message the church.

Would love to get you some very, very helpful resources, some books and podcasts on ways in which you can overcome temptation through the Holy Spirit, belief in God's Word and involving maybe those close friends, spiritual mentors in your life.

I promise you it's worthwhile and you will never, ever, ever, ever regret following God's will in this circumstance. Thanks for tuning in today. Tomorrow, we're going to be going at least verses 9 through 12.