The Lord’s Day Morning
July 1, 2012
“Living Life in Light of Jesus’
Return: A Call to Sexual Purity”
1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4. We’re going to be looking
at verses 3 to 8. A number of years
ago when Phil Ryken was beginning to write his book called,
The Message of Salvation, which was going to be a book which focused
on the main New Testament themes that describe different aspects of what God
does for us in redemption — justification and adoption and glorification — he
wrote to me and we had a conversation for several weeks about what passage he
was going to choose to use to preach, to teach, on sanctification in that book.
And we batted back and forth a number of ideas and I’m not sure whether I
really gave him good counsel. Since
that time I have thought that if I only had one passage to go to, to address the
issue of sanctification, it would probably be either Philippians 2:12 and 13, or
the passage we’re going to look at today.
This passage is that significant in terms of articulating Paul’s view of
sanctification.
Now before we go any further, let me be very clear about what I mean by
sanctification. I know you’ve
already got your Bibles open, but if you would take your hymnals and turn back
with me to page 872, not hymn 872 — there isn’t a hymn 872 — but if you look at
the bottom of the page and look at page 872 and then go all the way to the top
on the left-hand margin and look at the question number 35:
“What is sanctification?”
What do we mean by sanctification?
“Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the
whole man, after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin
and live unto righteousness.” So
sanctification is about growing in godliness.
It’s about more and more living to righteousness and dying to sin in our
lives. And this is a passage, 1
Thessalonians 4:3-8, in which Paul tells us much about sanctification.
As we read this passage, in fact, I want you to be on the lookout for three
things. First of all, for what Paul
says about sanctification, and you’ll see him emphasize the will of God, the
call of God, and the empowerment of God in sanctification as you look at verses
3, 7, and 8. So be on the lookout
for the theme of sanctification.
Secondly, in this passage Paul’s big pastoral concern is sexual purity.
He’s writing to a congregation that lives in a crazy time of sexual
immorality. Do you ever look around
at the world now and kind of get discouraged, especially those of us who are a
little bit older and can remember when it wasn’t quite too crazy?
There are some of us in this room that can remember before the ‘60’s hit
and it’s a very different landscape today, very different world today, with
regards to sexual morality in our culture.
Well Paul is writing to a congregation that’s in a worse situation than
ours and he’s calling them to sexual purity.
And if you look at the second half of verse 3 all the way down to verse 6
that’s what his focus is on in speaking to this congregation.
In fact, it’s very clearly one of the two major pastoral issues that he
wants to talk to them about. The
other is going to be about the second coming.
If you can remember all the way back, we’ve said all along that the theme
of this book is “Living Life in Light of Jesus’ Return” and he’s going to get to
that issue in this section but before he even gets there he wants to address the
issue of sexual morality.
And then finally, I want you to see the very strong warnings that Paul gives in
this passage. He gives solemn
warnings for us, and look especially at verse 6 and verse 8.
So be on the lookout for what Paul says about sanctification, sexual
purity, and this solemn warning that he gives.
Let’s pray before we read God’s Word.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word.
Every word of it is inspired; every word of it is profitable.
And so we ask today that You would bring to bear the truth of Your Word
in our hearts so that we would acknowledge practically its authority.
It is the only rule of faith and life.
So we want, O Lord, by the Spirit, to have an attitude of believing and
accepting and sitting under Your Word.
We pray today that Your Word would search our lives out and find if there
is any unclean thing in us and then not only apply the Gospel to us but apply
the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to us, O Lord.
And we ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
This is the Word of God. Hear it:
“For this is the will
of God, your sanctification: that
you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his
own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who
do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter,
because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand
and solemnly warned you. For God has
not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives
His Holy Spirit to you.”
Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
We live in a confused and confusing world with regard to sexual practice and
societal norms. If any of us in this
room had gone to our grandparents and told them that a federal judge was going
to rule in our time that gender was of no significance to the societal
institution of marriage, I am almost certain among a number of horrified
responses that our grandparents would have had, they would have thought that we
would have lost our minds. And yet
that’s the world we live in, where we’re not even sure how maleness and
femaleness relate to marriage; we’re not sure that they’re essential to
marriage. We live in a confused and
confusing society with regard to sexual practice and societal norms.
And I think sometimes we look at that, especially those of us who can
remember saner times, and we think, “Boy, it couldn’t get any worse than this.”
But I want you to remember that Paul is writing to these Christians in
Thessalonica from Corinth, not
Corinth,
Mississippi,
the Corinth.
And Corinth
and Thessalonica both were famed for their sexual immorality.
It would be kind of like Paul writing from Amsterdam to San
Francisco in our own day.
He’s at the epicenter of the prevalent immorality that persisted in
Greco-Roman culture.
You have to understand, in Greco-Roman culture, fornication was not only common,
it wasn’t even illegal. Adultery was
illegal if you were in the upper class and the woman that you were committing
adultery with was in the upper class but fornication was institutionally and
legally pervasive. If you were upper
class in the Greco-Roman world, you were a male, it would be not uncommon for
you to have a wife to run your household and to bear your children, but in
addition to that to have a concubine, to have slaves with whom you would be
allowed to have sexual relationships, and even to have young boys attached to
you who would give you sexual favors.
This is the world that the Thessalonians were living in.
Do you know that the Jewish rabbis — so pervasive was the sexual
immorality of the Greco-Roman world, that Jewish rabbis had determined that no
Gentile woman could be assumed to be a virgin who was older than three years and
one day. The Jews were just
horrified at the pervasive sexual immorality of the world in which they lived.
And here’s Paul and he’s writing to the Thessalonians and he’s wanting to
address this issue. He’s wanting to
do this not because he’s a prude, not because he’s repressed, but because he
cares about the Word of God and because he’s a pastor that loves his people.
And as he does so, he wants to speak to them about three important things
— sanctification, sexual purity, and then he wants to give a solemn warning
about the importance of these things.
And so I’d like to look at those with you today very briefly.
SANCTIFICATION: THE PURPOSE OF
GOD’S GRACE
TO US
IS OUR GROWTH IN HOLINESS
The first one is sanctification. You
see it right out of the bat. If you
look at verse 3, Paul says this:
“This is the will of God, your sanctification.”
You hear what Paul is saying?
God’s will for you is that you grow in holiness.
You know pastors get tons of opportunities to talk with people,
especially young people, about what God’s will is for them in their life.
That’s why there are so many books written on that subject.
If you talk to young folks who are in high school or in college of just
out of college in that career stage, they’re all trying to figure out, “Lord,
what did You put me here for? What
do You want me to do for the rest of my life?
Where do You want me to work?
Who do You want me to marry? Where
do you want me to live? What do You
want me to do with the gifts and abilities that You’ve given to me?”
And pastors get to have those conversations all the time.
And some of the time we don’t know what the specific will of God is for
you in your life in terms of who you’re supposed to marry and where you’re
supposed to live and what job or career you’re supposed to pursue.
But I can tell you this, on the basis of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse
3, if you ask me, “What is the will of God?” for your life, I know this — the
will of God for your life is that you grow in holiness.
Every Christian, no matter where you are, no matter whether you’re male
or female, young or old, whether you live in Jackson or whether you live in
Darfur, it is God’s will for you to grow in holiness.
And Paul makes that crystal clear in this passage and he reinforces it in three
ways. Notice how he does this – in
verse 3, in verse 7, and verse 8.
First of all, he says God’s purpose, God’s plan for your life, is for you to
grow in holiness. Look at what he
says in verse 3. “This is the will
of God, your sanctification.” So
he’s saying God’s will, God’s plan, God’s purpose for every Christian is that we
grow in godliness. In fact, if I had
to give a one sentence summarization of this whole passage it would be — God’s
will is for you to be godly. God’s
will is for you to be godly.
SEXUAL PURITY: OUR BELONGING TO
GOD OUGHT ESPECIALLY
BE EXPRESSED IN OUR SEXUAL PURITY
AND FIDELITY
Secondly, in verse 7 he says, “God has not called us for impurity, but in
holiness.” In other words, God has
not called us to live impure, immoral lives.
He has literally called us into holiness.
Just as we are called into Christ to be His disciples and to be in
fellowship with Him, so we are called into holiness.
We are called into a life of holiness.
And Paul is saying that the reason God has called you out of darkness and
into His marvelous light is not just to be forgiven, not just to be justified,
but to be sanctified, to live in holiness.
So we’ve been not only — is it the will of God that we live in holiness
but God has called us in order that we would live in holiness.
And notice what he doesn’t say.
He doesn’t say that we were saved by that holiness and were therefore
called. That’s good news because if
that were true none of us were going to be in heaven.
If we were saved by our holiness we’re all in trouble.
But he does say, having been saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
saved by the grace of God, God’s undeserved favor shown to us in the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ so that all who believe on Him alone for
salvation as He is offered in the Gospel are forgiven and accepted only because
of what Jesus has done, having been saved, we’re saved into a life of holiness,
into a life of growing godliness.
God’s called us to that in our salvation.
Third, look in verse 8. Notice that
Paul emphasizes that God has given us His Holy Spirit.
And interestingly in the Old Testament, what is the most common name for
the Holy Spirit? Spirit of God.
That’s the most common name for the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament — Spirit of
God. Here, Paul calls the Spirit of
God the Holy Spirit. That has become
the most common name that we Christians use to designate the third person of the
Trinity because Paul is drawing attention to one of the things that the Holy
Spirit does. The Spirit of God
indwells us in order to grow us in holiness.
Paul will talk to the Ephesians about this in Ephesians 3:14-19.
Go read what he says about what the Holy Spirit does in your heart when
He indwells you as a believer.
Now what’s Paul doing? He’s telling
you that God’s will is your holiness, God’s call to you was into holiness, and
He has indwelt you with His Holy Spirit so that you would grow in holiness.
Paul is describing for us why sanctification is so important.
The purpose of God’s grace in us is that we would grow in holiness.
God has called us by His grace into holiness and God has given us and
indwelt us with His Holy Spirit so that we might grow in holiness.
Sanctification is both a process and a pursuit.
It’s something that God is at work in us to do and it is something that
we are to pursue ourselves. And he’s
exhorting the Thessalonians to pursue this kind of holiness and to recognize the
importance of it. It is the will of
God for us that we would grow in holiness.
The second thing he says in this passage is to specifically apply this issue of
broken holiness to one hugely important pastoral issue — sexual immorality.
And look at what he says:
“That you abstain from sexual immorality.”
This is the specific application of your growing in holiness, your
sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.
“That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and
honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no
one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an
avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.”
Paul is exhorting the Thessalonians to sexual purity.
Now very frankly, he has us in the crosshairs and this is a very uncomfortable
place to be with Paul because his words are just as applicable to us today as
they were to those Thessalonians.
You know when we look around today and we live in a world where same-sex
attraction is not simply celebrated but it’s now increasingly legalized,
fornication has become a societal norm, the very definition of marriage has
become murky in our own time, and we think it’s really bad.
Well think of how it would have been for these Thessalonians to be
rearing children in the crazy kind of culture that they had with regard to
marriage, family, and sexual morality.
That’s the kind of culture that they had to raise them in.
But don’t you love the way that Paul speaks about this to them?
Look at what he says to them in verse 5.
He says, “I don’t want you to live in the passion of lust like the
Gentiles.” Now just pause and glory
in that for a minute. Most of this
congregation was not Jewish. You
know if there were Jewish members of this congregation it was a fairly small
core. Paul’s pattern was typically
to go into town, preach the Gospel to Jewish folks there, gather up a little
core group, study the Bible with them, and then reach out to the Gentiles.
And so in most of his congregations the Gentiles far outnumbered the
Jewish people and that was certainly the case with the Thessalonians — they’re a
majority Gentile congregation. But
he says to this majority Gentile congregation, “I don’t want you to act like
Gentiles.” Isn’t that interesting?
He says to a majority Gentile congregation, “I don’t want you to act like
Gentiles.” In the Old Testament,
there were two kinds of people in the world – Jews and Gentiles; Jews and
everybody else. For Paul, there are
two kinds of people in the world — those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and pagans. And he’s saying to
former pagans, “Don’t act like pagans.
Don’t act like the Gentiles.
Don’t act like the culture around you.
You don’t get your marching orders for how to live with one another and
relate to one another sexually from the world.
You get it from God’s Word.
God’s Word gives us our marching orders in terms of how we’re going to live in
this way.”
And he says three things in particular about sexual immorality.
One, he tells them to abstain from it.
Look at verse 3. “Abstain
from sexual immorality. He uses a
general term there that refers to all kinds of sexual immorality.
And he says, “I know that the culture around you does not abstain from
it, but in here, in the church, we are going to abstain from it.
We’re going to be different from the world around us.”
Secondly, if you’ll look with me at verse 4 he tells them that he wants them to
control their bodily appetites.
“That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,
not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
So they’re going to control their bodily appetites, their lust and their
passion, whereas the Gentiles — “Just let them go!
Just do whatever you feel! Do
whatever you like!” They’re not
going to do that. They’re going to
be in control of their bodily appetites.
And then third, if you look at verse 6, he tells them do not transgress.
Now that’s interesting. Transgress means to cross the line, to trespass,
to break the law of God. But here
he’s not just talking about transgressing against God, breaking His law, he’s
saying that in your sexual morality if you act inappropriately, immorally, not
with purity, you are not just transgressing against God — what does he say?
“No one should transgress and wrong his brother in this matter.”
So there are horizontal ramifications for sexual morality. It’s always
the case. And you think, “No, that’s only the case if you’ve got a situation of
adultery.” No, because all of us are
responsible not only to the spouse of other people but we are responsible to our
own spouse or our own potential spouse in our sexual behavior.
And when we are immoral, we are sinning against our brethren in any and
every instance because there are horizontal requirements for our sexual purity.
Now this is hugely important for us.
Over the last twenty years I’ve seen marriages that have been broken apart by
pornography, by same-sex attraction, and by adultery.
This is a standing issue in our culture and Paul is putting this right in
his crosshairs and he’s saying to the Thessalonians and he’s saying to you and
me, “This is vitally important.” Now
you may ask, “Well why? Why can’t we
just relegate sexual behavior to just something that’s between individuals and
it doesn’t have anything to do with the church and it doesn’t have anything to
do with God?” Well actually, the
Bible gives a lot of answers to that question and I don’t have time to give all
the answers that the Bible gives to that question but I want to draw your
attention to three answers that the Bible gives to that question.
The first reason is, if you will remember in the Old Testament the major
metaphor for being unfaithful to God is?
Adultery. When Israel goes
after other gods, what do the prophets consistently accuse Israel of doing?
Committing spiritual adultery.
Now there is a reason for that.
There is a reason for that.
Part of the reason for that is, of course, in many of these other religions,
especially in Baal worship, actual prostitution and adultery was involved in the
ritual of the religion. You would go
to temple prostitutes and participate in sexual immorality as a part of the
ritual for the religion. But much
deeper than that is this understanding that there is a fundamental connection
between physical adultery and spiritual adultery.
I’ve told you before when I was working with college students, one of my best
guys in high school, one of my most mature guys in high school, who’d gone off
to college and then gotten out of college and was starting off in his career,
came to me really struggling and he said, “I’m not sure I believe in the
existence of God anymore.” Now I’m a
college director and I’m trying to figure out, “Okay, how am I going to follow
up on that conversation?” And so my
first question was, “Are you sleeping with your girlfriend?”
And he looked like a ghost.
And in the course of the conversation it unfolded that yes, he was, and there
were a whole variety of things going on.
But there was a direct connection between his spiritual crisis and his
sexual immorality. And until he
understood that, his spiritual crisis was not going to be addressed.
God has made us, He understands how we function as sexual beings, and we
cannot ignore Him in this area and think that it will not impact our
relationship with Him.
And so I just want to say to husbands of the congregation, this means that you
have got to declare war on pornography.
It means to the young people in this congregation that when you’re in
high school and in college and everybody else around you has a different moral
code than the moral code that your parents have inculcated in your home and you
just think, “This is the season of life where we just kind of enjoy ourselves
and it’s okay to engage in fornication.
It’s fine. I can go off to
State and Ole Miss and Vanderbilt and Millsaps and MC and Belhaven and I can
live it up and then when I get out of college I can settle down and get more
serious about Jesus and one person and it will all be fine.”
It doesn’t work that way.
And Paul is saying to this congregation, “We’re not going to live that way for a
second reason — because of the boundary between the church and the world.”
It’s not only important because of that spiritual connection between
adultery and idolatry, it’s important for the boundary between the church and
the world. Paul is saying, “One of
the ways that we’re going to show that the Gospel is true and that the Holy
Spirit is real and that regeneration is a miracle of God that is verifiable, is
through the lives that we live that are distinguishable from the pagan world
around us. We’re not going to live
like they live and they’re going to see it in our fidelity to our spouses in our
sexual purity.”
Thirdly, it’s absolutely essential for harmony in the congregation.
It’s not only the connection between adultery and idolatry, it’s not only
that boundary between the church and the world so that the world can look at us
and say, “You know, they’re different from us.
They act differently with regard to their sexual behavior” but it’s also
significant for the harmony in a congregation.
Does adultery and sexual sin help the unity of a congregation?
I’ve never ever seen it help the unity of a congregation, never once.
It always does what? It
always breaks it up. People take
sides. People decide that the elders
should have done this or they should have done that.
It’s always fragmented the unity of a congregation.
And so Paul is concerned about sexual morality because of its connection
with our spiritual fidelity to God, because of the boundary between the church
and the world, and because of the harmony within the congregation.
I could give you hundreds of other reasons, literally, from the
Scriptures, but these are some of the reasons why Christians care so much about
sexual purity. It’s not because
we’re repressed, it’s not because we’re prude, it’s not because we’re
Puritanical — although I can’t imagine a better compliment to be given to
somebody than being like the Puritans.
What a compliment. I wish I
were. It’s because we love people,
it’s because we love God, it’s because we care about their everlasting souls.
A SOLEMN WARNING
You know you understand that in this issue our biggest concerns aren’t even the
dramatic heartbreaking temporal ramifications of sexual impurity — marriages
breaking up, families breaking up, lives being wounded and ruined.
It’s eternal concerns and that’s exactly where Paul goes in this passage.
Look at what he says in verse 6 and in verse 8.
Why is it that we shouldn’t transgress and wrong our brother?
Look at the second half of verse 6.
“Because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you
beforehand and solemnly warned you.”
Look at verse 8. “Therefore
whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives His Holy Spirit
to you.” Paul is warning here that
the unrepentant, sexually immoral, face God’s avenging justice and wrath and
that those who disregard God’s call to holiness and disregarding God Himself.
Now what this does not mean is that sexual sin is the unforgiveable sin.
Paul will say, of course to the Corinthians, after he lists all manner of
sexual immorality, “such were some of you but now you have been washed and
cleaned and glorified.” So Paul
understands that it is possible to repent of these sins and be not only members
in good standing but gloriously, graciously accepted by God, nor does this mean
that true Christians will never struggle with these things. I remind you that
the man who wrote more psalms than anyone else was an adulterer.
His name was David.
But the Christian may never make peace with these sins, ever seek to justify
them, and whenever we have succumbed to temptation in these sins, our souls are
in danger. And Paul’s telling it to
us here very, very clearly in this solemn warning.
He’s saying unrepentant, sexually immoral people, face the avenging
justice and wrath of God. If God has
called us to live in holiness, then to live in sexual immorality constitutes a
rejection of that call and that rejection brings God’s wrath and that rejection
of God’s call to holiness constitutes a rejection of God.
You can’t say, “Jesus, I want to be Your disciple but I don’t want to
live like You’ve called me to live.”
Can you imagine saying that to Jesus?
“I want to be Your disciple, but I don’t want to live the way that You’ve
called me to live.” Those who have
attempted to justify their sexual immorality are doing exactly that.
And my friends, we see that happening more and more in this culture.
People want to say, “I want to live in a way that is diametrically
opposed to God’s Word and I want to call myself a Christian and I want to sue
you if you say that I can’t.” That’s
what they do in this culture. So
your culture is not going to help you think straight in this area; only the Word
of God is.
Now, if you’re struggling, if you’re struggling in any of these areas of
immorality — pornography, same-sex attraction, adultery, fornication — we want
to be your allies in that fight against those sins.
And I haven’t told you enough how to begin to fight those battles except
to draw you attention to Paul’s pointing of the work of the Holy Spirit.
If you attempt to fight those battles on your own, I can just tell you
right now you will lose because this is a spiritual battle and it must be done
in dependence upon the Holy Spirit and there’s no easy 1-2-3 solution in any of
these areas. It is a long, grueling,
bruising battle, but it’s the battle that every Christian is called to.
I promise you, if we went around this room and if we trusted one another
enough, for each of us to stand up and announce what our three greatest
besetting sins were, there would be no one in this room who named a besetting
sin and said that it was an easy sin to fight against.
That’s why it’s a besetting sin.
But we never ever can make peace with those sins or justify them.
Paul says, “For those who are unrepentant in sexual immorality, the wrath
of God awaits them.” And it’s
because we care about people eternally that we say these things, not because
we’re all narrow-minded and bigoted and repressed; it’s because we love people
and we want them to be with God forever.
And I’ve seen people literally look at the choice between sexual
immorality and God and look me in the eye and say, “It’s going to have to be
sexual immorality.” And when I’ve
seen them take that fork in the road, I have also often seen many who never come
back. This is serious business and we need God’s help and we need God’s grace to
stay in this fight together.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word.
We ask that You would work it deep down in our hearts.
We do want to be different from the world but Lord I recognize that many
of us in this room are in grave, terrible battles right now with sexual
immorality. Lord God, by Your
Spirit, give us freedom from bondage to sin and newness of life and the will to
continue this fight. If we have to
fight it to our last breath, O God, with no relief, then give us the grace of
perseverance to fight it to our last breath with no relief because, O God, a
blessed rest awaits. Lord, help us,
by Your Spirit. We pray in Jesus’
name, amen.
Now let’s sing about this. What I’d
like you to do is open your hymnals to 335 and I want us to sing just the fourth
stanza of “Gracious Spirit, Dwell with Me” and really take in those words.
In fact, let’s sing the fourth stanza twice.
Receive now the Lord’s blessing.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.