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Living in the Light of His Coming
1 Thessalonians 4 - 20 May 2007
Andrew Lim
God demands clean holy living
His Son came not just to save us / but call us to live as children of the light
So in verse 1 / Paul shows them “how you must live (literally “walk”)”
4:1 “Finally / brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God
as in fact you are living
Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus
to do this more and more
v. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you
by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
v. 3 It is God's will that you should be sanctified:
that you should avoid sexual immorality
that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way
that is holy and honorable
not in passionate lust like the heathen / who do not know God
The Exhortation to Sexual Purity (4:3-8)
Paul leaves them with no option / He uses the word “should”
v.3a / “you should be sanctified”
v.3b / “you should avoid sexual immorality”
What is required of us is nothing short of “the will of God”
He says it straight out / v.3 “It is God's will that you should be sanctified”
“Sanctification” / Greek hagiasmos
“to set apart” / consecrate / dedicate / sanctify
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified
But how may we be sanctified
Amongst other things / we need to avoid sexual immorality
“that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way
that is holy and honorable / not in passionate lust
like the heathen / who do not know God”
There you have it / “keep away / avoid / abstain from sexual immorality”
The words “sexual immorality” is “porneia”
from which we get the word pornography
- it describes any form of illicit sexual relationship
Paul writes what he writes / because the Thessalonians lived in an environment
in which sexual permissiveness
was not only practiced openly / but was also encouraged
The Thessalonians are non-Jews / they are Gentiles
Unlike the Jews they have never had the Law of God
They have only just now / come out of a lifestyle
which sharply contradicts what God has in His heart for His people
These people have long been immersed in gross idolatry
They lived rather promiscuously / with regards to the matter of sex
- they participated in a kind of worship
which involved the use of temple prostitutes
- immorality was simply a way of life
- in Greece / faithfulness to one’s spouse was virtually non-existent
and family life was not something that was promoted
immorality was something
- thanks to slavery / people had an abundance of leisure
to spend it on gratifying their own lusts
They have never / before this / ever heard the call / to live holy lives
and you can imagine how unbearably difficult it must be
for them to follow such commands of God
God sanctified sex / He made it holy
And sexual union is strictly only
for a covenant relationship within marriage
But sex purely for pleasure sake
was tolerated and in fact encouraged in pagan Greece
The idea of safeguarding the covenant of marriage
went against Greek conventional morality of those days
Demonsthenes / an outstanding citizen of Athens in the 4thC BC
said these words / I quote: “We keep mistresses for pleasure
concubines to attend to our needs
and wives to bear us legitimate children
and to be our faithful housekeepers”
This was the kind of culture the Thessalonicans were immersed in
But now that they have become Christians’
God / Who is holy / demands their moral character to be transformed
Some people have concluded / that sex must be dirty to God!!
For too long / the church has shied away from the issue of sex
In fact it wasn’t until 550 AD / that the church allowed
the literal reading of the Song of Songs
at the Council of Constantinople
The Jews discouraged the reading of the Song of Solomon
until you were thirty
Today / we continue to find it difficult to read that book in public
But as Howard Hendricks once said: “We should not be ashamed
to discuss what God was unashamed to create”
Listen to these lines:
“Then you grew up / became tall and reached the age for fine ornaments
your breasts were formed and your hair had grown
Yet you were naked and bare / Then I passed by you and saw you
and behold / you were at the time for love
So I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness
I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you
so that you became Mine” / declares the Lord GOD
Now / this is highly erotic material / but it’s from Ezekiel 16
The point is this: Human sexuality can be both erotic and holy
God must have thought sex beautiful enough to invent it
God must believe sex to be something delicately beautiful
But lust is a different thing
Lust is an agitated longing / a frightening craving
an out of touch desire to own / to possess / to consume someone
without caring about the needs or feelings of any other person
or the will of God
It’s coveting
It’s a passion that has been distorted / twisted by the power of sin
It dehumanizes a person who bears the image of God
Our Lord / in His teaching / is protecting women as human persons
Jesus knows that people are demeaned and diminished
when they are reduced to mere sexual objects
And this is precisely why pornography is such a deadly thing
it defaces the image of God in a person
And each time / any human relationship is trivialized sexually
we efface a part of the image of God in this other person
No one who has ever so much as glanced at a pornographic photo
has ever known anything about the person depicted there
Millions and millions of people who look at porn photos
ever bother to look into the naked person’s eyes
Instead these models are reduced to disconnected body parts
My brother tells me that when he was in medical school
and working on cadavers / dead bodies / in the anatomy lab
that for most of the time
the face of the cadaver was covered by a piece of cloth
You need to be protected from thinking of it as a person
If you did / if you think of it as a person / as someone
who once had hopes / dreams / loves / and aspirations
it couldn’t proceed with your work properly
It had to be reduced to a specimen / no longer a person
And we’ve even come up with a word for it / we call it a cadaver
But that / is precisely what pornography does to a living person
it reduces the person / to a collection of individual parts
And it is for reasons like this / that God puts a barricade around sex
He is jealous to preserve the sanctity of marriage
And for Him / it is only within the sacred canopy of a marriage
that may two people commit one to another sexually
God will not let anyone violate that
And so jealous is He for the sanctity / sacredness of sex
He warns on pain of death that He will judge
“It is better for you to lose one part of your body
than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” v.29
The reason why God is so zealous
in protecting us from sexual aberrations is this:
To God / our sexuality reflects His image!
We are not saying that God has a male or a female deity / within Him
much like the Hindu god Shiva
But it is vital to note / that right after stating the fact
that God created man “in His own image” / the Word goes on to say:
“Male and female / He created them” Gen 1:27
Somehow creating us male and female is creating us in His image
In some mysterious was
our masculinity and our femininity reflect His image
our sexuality has its blueprint in the Imago Dei
Further / each time a man and his wife come together in a sexual union
there is this silent / but eloquent imaging / of this beautiful relationship
between Christ the Bridegroom / and the Bride His Church
Perhaps no one has put it this way before
But the sexual intimacy between a man and wife
actually works to spell Satan’s doom
It tears at the heart of his scheme / which is
one / to blur and destroy any reflection of God’s image / and
two / to block the world
from seeing the love that the Bridegroom has for His Bride
And he is daily haunted
by this true pure sexual intimacy and what it portrays
And it is partly for this reason that Satan is so interested in sex
- Satan isn’t interested in sex because it is pleasurable for him
- he isn’t interest in sex because it’s a fascination to him
We’ve always got the idea / that sex is Satan’s playground
No / it isn’t / Sex isn’t Satan’s playground
And Satan is interested in sex
only in order to twist and distort that relationship
And so if you thought Satan loves sex / you couldn’t be more wrong
Satan hates sex with an unholy passion
And he does two things to counteract this:
One / He works at destroying any beautiful union between a man and his wife
Two / He comes up with a counterfeit version of true sex
and get it to masquerade as the real thing
Let me elaborate the first point
He works at destroying any beautiful union between a man and his wife
Is it any wonder why we men face such fierce temptations
to flirt with other women / and to be unfaithful to our wives
Satan engages us in a hand-to-hand combat
when it comes to our determination to remain sexually pure
And he seeks to destroy any marital relationship
He will cheapen it / defile it / debauch it / pervert and deprave it
He will do anything / in try to erase it / of any trace
of the imaging of God’s love for His people
Is it any wonder why for many men
the pull to sexual infidelity / or perversion
is sometimes as close to them / as their own breath
Two / He comes up with a counterfeit version of true sex
and get it to masquerade as the real thing
If Satan cannot be God / He will imitate God
Tertullian and Augustine rightly called Satan “Simius Dei”
the “ape of God” / he apes God / he’s a copycat / he copies God
J. O. Sanders documents for us / the counterfeit nature of Satan:
He has his own table and cup / 1 Cor 10:21-22
He has his own sacrifices / sacrifices offered to demons / 1Cor 10:20
He has his own theology / the doctrine of devils / I Tim 4:1
He has his own gospel / called “another gospel’ / Gal 1:6
He has his own ministers / ministers of Satan / 2 Cor 11:15
He has his own church / synagogue of Satan / Rev 2:9
He has his own throne / Rev 13:2 / his own worshipers / Rev 13:4
And finally / more dreadful than all of that / He has his own trinity
- the devil / the beast / and the false prophets / Rev 20:10; 16:13
Satan is one big copycat!
But as G.K. Chesterton says: “It is the fact
that falsehood is never so false / as when it is very nearly true”
But for all his attempts / he’s never produced anything beautiful
and the cheap substitute he comes up with
only goes to prove that he is the idiot god
I think of two immediate examples
One / same-sex union / same-sex union is one of his darkest imitation
but it is an ugly imitation / of the real thing
Two / pornography
The most deprave thing about pornography is not that they are sexual
The most deprave thing about pornography
is that they are not sexual enough
Pornography is a cheap and tawdry imitation of the real thing
It is too shallow / it confines sex to the genitals
as if genital sex is all that sex is about
It reduces something that is really soul-deep
into something that is merely skin-deep
God wants married people to enjoy the beauty of His great gift!
We should be able to outdo Satan in the portrayal of true sexuality
We should taunt Satan / and laugh at him
over the cheap trashy imitation he’s come up with
and tell him that sex is richer / larger / more beautiful
than he is able to see / in his shallowness
C.S. Lewis in his classic book “The Four Loves”
identifies four kinds of love for us and he includes “eros” / sexual love
as part of God’s beautiful creation
“Eros” / or sexual love” / is not a curse of the Fall
To be sure the Fall perverted eros
But our first parents had the experience of the eros
in the pristine Garden of Eden
Lewis says that sexual desire / without eros love / wants only sex
But what eros wants during sex / is the intimacy of the beloved
Lewis says that a lustful man does not “want a woman”
To him / the woman is merely an essential apparatus
to gratify his own lustful desires
He does not seek a woman / He seeks his own gratification
Then Lewis gives us the crunch / he says:
Eros makes a man want / not a woman / but one particular woman
And I believe Genesis 2:25 alludes to this
“The man and his wife were both naked / and they felt no shame”
There was no shame / because there was no perversion
There was no perversion / because there was pure eroticism
Lust / on the other hand / is not eros / lust is a perverted form of eros
Eroticism / looks at the other person / with a pure love to give
Lust / on the other hand / desires to paw and claw in order to get
Lust turns the other person into an object
It cheapens sex / that this is why Jesus condemned it
He says: “If a man looks at a woman with lust
he has already commit adultery with her” / Matt 5:28
BTW Our first mother / was afflicted with lust on two out of three counts
The serpent mesmerized her with the forbidden fruit
This strongly appealed to Eve / Pride of Life
who also liked the fruit’s appearance / lust of the eyes
then she wanted to eat it / lust of the flesh
Sexual intercourse is designed not primarily for self-gratification
not even primarily for procreation / although it includes those aspects
God created sex to gives a man and his wife / the most beautiful means
to express their self-giving love / and trust / and commitment
- their oneness!
Why else would God create man and woman to be the only creatures
who make love / face to face
Some people would include other creatures
like the two toed sloth and the bonobo or ‘pygmy chimpanzee
but research has never been conclusive about those facts
But it is a well-known fact that the human species
is the only mammalian species who make love face to face
True sexual love is a face to face expression
of commitment and love and trust one for the other
This is why the Hebrew people have a word for sex
which is a word that carries such a rich metaphor
it’s the word “yada” / meaning to “know”
Emphasizing the virgin birth / when Mary was pregnant
the Bible says these words: Joseph “had not known her”
And Mary herself when told she will conceive and bear a child
exclaimed: “How can this be since I do not know a man?” / Lk 1:34
“Yada” / is a splendid and graphic euphemism / for sexual relations
It describes an intimate relationship
that’s filled with ardour / passion / mutuality and oneness
“And Adam “yada” his wife / and she conceived and bore a child”
Adam “knew” his wife and she conceived”
Adam had a beautiful face to face sexual communion with Eve
Animals / on the other hand engage in sexual intercourse
purely for the purpose of reproduction / not for communion
and definitely not communion in a covenant relationship
Let’s not forget / that marriage was instituted before the Fall
The very last two verses of Genesis 2
the verses before the serpent came in / in Chapter 3 / say
“And man leaves his father and mother / and they become one flesh”
And the man and his wife were both naked
and they were not ashamed” / 2:24,25
In the sexual union / a man and his wife
produces a mysterious unique “one flesh” bond
This is why sex is such a sacred thing
reserved only for those who are married
The Word warns us:
“Do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute
becomes one body with her?
For “the two will become one flesh” / 1 Cor 6:16
The Word of God says that when a man joins with a prostitute
they become “one body” / “sфma” / 1 Cor. 6:16
Richard Foster says that we need to remember that
we do not have a body / we are a body
we do not have a spirit / we are a spirit
and what touches the body / touches the spirit
Sex is more than just an act / it is a sacrament
Sex involves more than just the body
- more than the emotions / more than the psyche
In a way we cannot fully understand / making love fuses two beings together
It gives birth to “chesed” / which in the Old Testament
is a word which describes is covenant relationship
This is the most compelling reason
why God says you can’t marry a non-Christian
He says: “What has light in common with darkness?”
Sexual intercourse infuses two living beings galvanizing them into one being
one gives wholly of himself to the other
each infects the other / for good or for ill
and its effects are not easily erased
God prohibits any kind of sex outside marriage
not simply because you’ll get disease or you’ll get pregnant
God prohibits it because in the sex act
two people are here proclaiming that there is oneness
when in actual fact there isn’t that oneness
- this sort of sex is portraying is a lie / it is deceitful
To have sex with another person
where there isn’t a oneness in marriage in God’s eyes
is a contemptible violation of God’s holy design for sex
Beware / not all sins have the same permanent effect on the spirit
as the sin of fornication
Overeating can be overcome / stolen goods can be returned
Lies can be owned up / retracted and forgiven / and the truth spoken
But a sexual act / once committed with another person
causes some deep radical change deep in your soul
that cannot be easily undone
The medieval philosophers were quick to recognized
that lost virginity cannot be restored
You hold your purity in your hands / and standing before this man
you reach out with outstretched hands
and you give it away to him
No one loses her virginity
You didn’t lose your virginity / you give it away
Be warned
You may dispense with one person after another like you do a Kleenex tissue
but the Bible insists that if you are having sex
with someone other than the one you are married to
you are either committing fornication or adultery
And the Word of God
categorically / harshly / bluntly condemns fornication or adultery
“Do not be deceived / neither the immoral / not idolaters
not adulterers / nor sexual perverts …
will inherit the kingdom of heaven” 1 Cor 6:9
John Piper traces three reasons for obeying God on this issue
First / v. 6b God will avenge all sin / Rom. 6:23a / and sexual fornication is sin
The seriousness of sexual sin lies in the fact
that it defaces the image of God / and for that it will not go unpunished
It is crystal clear in Hebrews 13:4 / “Marriage should be honored by all
and the marriage bed kept pure
for God will judge the adulterer / and all the sexually immoral”
Piper cites 2 Cor 5:9-10 / “So then whether we are alive or away
we make it our ambition to please him / For we must all appear
before the judgment seat of Christ / so that each one
may be paid back according to what he has done
while in the body / whether good or evil”
Second / right there in v.7 “For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness”
Sexual sin grates against God’s calling us all
God has a plan and purpose and sexual sins have a way
of devouring and consuming all your strength / resolve / energy
and with that gone / you’re derailed form following your calling
v. 7 says God calls us to holiness
By default / sexual sins strip a person of any trace of holiness
Third / v. 8 / Sexual purity is grounded in the truth of God’s revelation
No human person would naturally look at sex outside marriage as sin
Each human person is totally absorbed selfishly in his on interest
We justify sexual sins on two counts
- one / it does not hurt anyone
- two / there is mutual consent
As long as God’s revelation is not part of the equation
no one in his natural mind will see sexual looseness as sin
But God has repeatedly spoken / both through the Old and the New Covenant
It is no longer a case of poor evidence
but of blindness and hardness of heart
John says it emphatically
“Men love darkness rather than light / because their deeds were evil
And choosing to remain sexually pure
is simply choosing to be enlightened by God’s revelation
and bowing and submitting to His holy will
Two questions left”
How may we be delivered?
1 Thessalonians 4:7-8 / “God has called us to be holy
not to live impure lives / Anyone who refuses to live by these rules
is not disobeying human rules but is rejecting God
who gives his Holy Spirit to you”
God has given “His Holy Spirit to you”
God does not tantalize us with commands we cannot possibly keep
When He gives the command / He also gives the enabling
This is none other than the indwelling Spirit of God Himself
He will unleash the power we need to help us stay pure
What about those who have “done it”?
Is the one-flesh-bond irreversible? / Can the soul-tie never be untied?
We are thankful that it is not irreversible
God can heal restore / there can be inner healing
To those who come to see that they have sinned against God
against another person made in God’s image / & against themselves
God can forgive / and He can heal
But unless there is a clear decisive evidential repentance
that healing cannot / and will not be yours to receive
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