God's Will (1 Thessalonians 4:1-5)

1 Thessalonians chapter 4, starting in verse 1.

1 Thessalonians 4 · chapter mention

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 that you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

For this is God's will, your sanctification, that you keep away from sexual immorality, that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passions like the Gentiles who don't know God.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for scripture, that you've given us this instruction.

Lord, I pray that we would come before you this morning just with humble hearts that are moldable, with ears that are open, eyes that are open, a mind that is open to whatever you want to do with this passage this morning inside of each one of us, but as a church as a whole as well.

God, we pray that you would have your perfect will and that you would move in this place and in our hearts this morning.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So before we jump into verse one, just for a moment, I want you to place yourself in this scenario, okay?

So get your imaginations going a little bit.

So let's all hypothetically believe that we have perfected a chocolate chip cookie recipe.

You've spent years tweaking and experimenting and working to get this recipe just absolutely perfect.

And you did it.

And now you have this perfect recipe, and everybody that takes a bite of that cookie, they just say, This is hands down the best cookie I've ever put in my mouth in my whole life.

And then somebody comes to you and they say, I want to learn this recipe.

And they say, I want to get the same results that you get.

Will you teach me?

I love this so much.

Will you teach me how to get those exact same results?

So they come over, you hand them the recipe with all the ingredients and the measurements, exactly how you do it, and then you walk them step by step through how to make these cookies, exactly how you created this recipe to be.

And then they go home.

And then they come back about a week later and they say, I made the cookies, but something's not right.

And you ask them, Did you follow the recipe exactly like I told you to follow the recipe?

And they say, Well, yeah, I did, but I added two tablespoons of black pepper to the dough.

And you say, uh, well, that's your problem right there.

You need to follow my recipe exactly, step by step, just like I told you to.

And they say, but I love black pepper.

I put it on my eggs in the morning, I put it on my sandwiches at lunch, I put it on my dinner, just the more the better.

And you say, Okay, you may love black pepper, but it was never intended to go into chocolate chip cookies.

Follow my recipe, and you'll get the same results.

So they come back a week later and they have the same problem they did the week before.

But this time they ordered, they uh added a quarter cup of diced onions into the chocolate chip cookie recipe.

And you have that same conversation, they tell you how much they love onions and everything.

And then you say, look, you have to follow the recipe that I gave you.

I created this recipe.

If you want the same results, you have to follow my recipe.

And they said, Don't tell me what to do, don't tell me how to make chocolate chip cookies.

I want it to be my recipe with the things I want it, but I want to get your results.

God created sex, He gives us His recipe for healthy, fulfilling, enjoyable, safe sex.

That recipe is one man and one woman within the context of marriage, with the husband giving himself completely to the wife, and the wife giving herself completely to the husband.

For the purpose, as God said in Genesis, of the two becoming one flesh.

This is God's recipe.

Yet we try to add our own black pepper and onions to this recipe all the time with things like sex before marriage, with things like pornography, homosexuality, lusting after one another, you know, the lusting after people we're not married to.

And we wonder why we get so hurt.

And we wonder why we end up hurting others, and we feel so messed up and so unfulfilled.

You know, today, Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's calling the believers in this church that are in Thessalonica to stick to God's recipe in order to become more sanctified and holy.

This is God's intended results.

That's what we're going through today.

Now, one other thing.

If you remember, last week we talked about the difference between positional sanctification and progressive sanctification.

And I just want to review it real quick just in case you weren't here, but this is really gonna play out as we as we continue through this here this morning.

But positional sanctification is our standing in Christ before God as sanctified and holy.

When we give our life to Jesus Christ, we're justified, sanctified, and glorified.

And this happens the moment we decide to follow after Christ.

God sees the finished work of Jesus Christ in us.

That's where we stand positionally before God.

Now, progressive sanctification speaks of this process that we're in right now while we're on this earth, in between coming to Christ and before we get to see Christ face to face in eternity.

This is where we should be becoming more like Jesus on a daily basis.

Daily becoming more and more set apart for the glory of God.

More and more looking different than the world that surrounds us.

And today, I just want to make it clear it's all about progressive sanctification.

It's about that second one.

This is not about earning salvation, earning our standing before God.

You know, Paul's writing to a church, isn't he?

This church in Thessalonica, they've already been positionally sanctified.

So today is about how to live out that sanctification, how to become more like Jesus Christ, specifically in God's design for sex here.

Now, if you have a past sexual history that you're not proud of, you have a current struggle that you're walking through right now, this is not condemnation on you.

This, as we go through this today, this should be an encouragement to live like this from this day forward.

Okay?

Got it.

Because we start talking about this stuff, a lot of guilt and shame and all that stuff can start coming over us.

But if you are in Christ, you are a new creation.

The old's passed away.

Behold, all is made new.

There's now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

So I just want to remind you of that because there might be some conviction going on by the Holy Spirit here today as we're going through these things.

But this is what God desires from you from this day forward.

So look at verse one with me.

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.

Paul is wanting progressive sanctification for them in all of life and on every topic, but especially regarding these issues that he's going to be addressing here, actually in the next two weeks, that uh as we cover these passages.

He wants to make sure things that are are that things are crystal clear on this topic to this church.

And for a moment, I want us to think about what they're coming out of and what this group, this church, is still surrounded by.

You know, the Gentiles that are in this church, they came out of wicked idolatry probably only months prior to this.

They came out of this religion of trying to appease these little g gods in order to get things from these little g gods.

You know, and the problem with idolatry, with idol worship, is it feeds our flesh.

And that's why it's so hard to give up idolatry because it feeds our flesh.

It feels good in the moment.

And that's for us here today just as much as it is for the Thessalonians.

A lot of us probably aren't bowing down to idols when we get home or anything like that, but we have our own idols, don't we?

And I was thinking about it this week.

I think idols are a lot like junk food for our flesh.

You know, when I was in college and before my brain had fully developed, my Wednesdays on campus were really, really long.

And it was uh partly because of the major that I was in, and partly because I was heavily involved with the campus ministry, and that was kind of a big day for us where we had our meeting in the evening.

Sometimes I was there from 7 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

I would be on campus, and sometimes it was just a really long day.

And then I would leave campus and I'm driving to where I was living at the time, and there was a circle K right by my house that I would drive by.

And they had Hagen Dawes coffee ice cream.

You know, the pint ones to me that's just like as good as it gets.

And on a lot of Wednesdays, I'd be like, oh, it's been a long day.

I'm just gonna get some coffee ice cream, but I'm only gonna eat half the pint.

I'm only gonna eat half the pint.

And then I go and I get it, and I get home and I plop down and turn the TV on, and I would just, you know, start eating it out of the container, and I get halfway and like, but it still feels so good going down.

I mean, the flavor, the texture, everything is so I'm just gonna have a couple more bites.

And then you look and you're like, well, it gets smaller at the bottom.

There's like, there's only a few bites left.

Before I knew it, the whole thing was gone.

It's late at night.

Not only do I have a sugar rush now, the caffeine hits a little bit from the coffee ice cream, then I get a stomach ache because you shouldn't eat you know that much ice cream.

I'd be really in really bad shape after a really long day, just like in pain as I'm trying to go to bed.

But it tasted so good going down.

It was the after effects, it was the consequences of doing that that was really hard to deal with.

But isn't that a picture of idolatry?

You know, isn't that a picture of sin in our life?

You know, I've had a rough day.

I feel like I deserve to feed my flesh just a little bit.

You know, but just a little, and then I'm gonna stop.

But oh, that was good.

You know, just a little more.

Just one more bite, you know, and we just continue down this road until we just end up in really bad shape with a lot of regret.

Our flesh craves idolatry, our flesh craves sexual idolatry, and this is something that the Thessalonian church is struggling with.

Look at verse 2 with me.

For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

So not only is he reminding them of what he already taught them when he was with them, probably just a few months prior, but he adds, hey, those teachings were from and through Jesus.

You know, this wasn't just Paul's desire for them, this was God's teaching.

This was God's desire for this church.

So this is something the Lord had either directly told Paul, like maybe in a vision or something like that, or something that Jesus taught his disciples, and then the disciples told Paul, this is what Jesus said about this topic.

It's not his own words, this is from the Lord.

And before we get into verse 3, I have a question that I want to pose to you.

Would anybody here like to know God's will for their life?

I would imagine that's most of us, isn't it?

That's a question that gets asked a lot, I feel like, within the church.

Like, what's God's will for my life?

What's God's will in this decision that I need to make?

You know, people are gonna say, you know, would you pray for me that I would remain in the center of God's will in whatever the situation might be?

Well, if you ever need to know God's will, just ask me, because I know God's will for your life.

It's in verse 3.

Look, for this is God's will, your sanctification.

There it is right now.

Now you know God's will for your life as well.

Only three times in the New Testament do we see God's will presented in this way, where it says, This is God's will.

And I want to show them to you behind me.

We're gonna see it in the next chapter, chapter 5, verse 18 here.

It says, Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Giving thanks in everything.

And then 1 Peter 2.15 says, For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.

And then right here, as we see, for this is God's will, your sanctification, your holiness, your purity, you becoming more like Jesus.

This is God's will for your life.

You know, the word sanctification here in verse 3, it's translated an equal number of times in the New Testament as holiness.

And I want to show you that definition.

The definition for sanctification or holiness is consecration, purification, the effect of consecration, sanctification of heart and life.

I like to think of utensils and vessels that were consecrated for the temple or the tabernacle in the Old Testament.

You know, they were consecrated, they were set apart for God's use only.

They weren't to be used for anything else.

They were set apart for the worship of God to be used in the temple.

This is God's will for your life as well.

To be set apart for the use of God, for worshiping Him and for worshiping Him alone.

Now, when we think of God's will, you know, I think oftentimes our mind goes to decision making, doesn't it?

You know, if you have a decision to make in your life between two different options, and one of them is gonna lead you to either stay the same in your sanctification or get complacent in it, or it's actually gonna draw you away.

It's gonna draw your time and your attention and your resources away from God.

And then the second decision is something that's gonna lead you to deeper sanctification, deeper set apartness, if you will.

I can tell you God's will for your life again, right there.

It's gonna be the one that leads you to deeper sanctification, leads you to being more set apart for God's use.

You know, if you're single, you have a choice of dating somebody that's really good looking, you know, like total dreamboat, but they are not following after Jesus, or there's somebody that's kind of ho-hum in the looks department, but is following after Jesus with their whole heart, I can tell you God's will for your life again.

God's will for your life is sanctification.

So he says in verse 3, for this is God's will.

We'll look at the whole thing now.

Your sanctification that you keep away from sexual immorality.

Now, this is just as rampant in our culture today as back when Paul's writing this to the Thessalonians.

Satan uses uses sexual immorality and sexual addiction to just try and destroy whole cultures, to try and destroy family units as well.

And paralyzed Christians that are struggling with it because they become so ashamed of their struggle and they have so much guilt and regret that they kind of just crawl into a hole and they become paralyzed in their walk with Jesus.

The enemy is very effective with this and it works quite well.

You know, this word here, just to show you how broad it is for sexual immorality in the Greek, it's the word porneus, where we get our word pornography from.

And the definition is illicit sexual intercourse, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals, sexual intercourse with close relatives, sexual intercourse with a divorced man or woman.

And that's obviously in the context of a non-biblical divorce.

But that covers a lot, doesn't it?

This word really means any type of sex outside of God's recipe, outside of a man and a woman in the context of marriage is sin.

Thessalonica was this city with this heavy Greek and Roman influence upon the culture, where temple prostitutes were common and they were used as a form of worship to worship their false gods.

You know, it's documented then in the Roman culture that man had a wife for home and childbearing, and then they had a mistress for love and companionship.

And this was normal.

This was just kind of expected.

Pedophilia in the Roman Empire was common and expected.

Just absolutely disgusting things are happening, and it wasn't even thought twice about.

And then you have this young church in Thessalonica, most of whom I would guess are coming right out of these things, just months prior to this.

And I think their flesh is just still aching for these things to be fed in this way.

You know, in my mind, I just see them so badly wanting to submit to the Lord, but their flesh is still addicted to these other things that they've been a part of for their whole life.

And I think there's things that their flesh is aching for still, like the temple prostitution.

Maybe they're still being seduced out on the streets.

You know, they need they know that they need to break things off with their mistress.

They've had a really long relationship with her, and they're really missing her, and it's really hard for them to not go back to her.

You know, it's probably a lot more complicated than we think about after we just give this a first read.

You know, uh, Pastor Ed over at Shoreline Morrow Bay, he told me that when they first got to Africa, they were in Kenya planting churches for about 10 years.

And when they first got there, they were going out to these really remote villages, just completely doing their own thing, very pagan, um, no electricity, no running water, no electronics or phones or anything like that.

And they started giving these people the gospel, and these people started to get saved, and God was doing this amazing work, and he started establishing these churches just in these villages and in these tribes, way out in the middle of nowhere.

But they ran into a problem.

These guys that were getting saved, they already had like three or four wives apiece.

And with each one of those wives, they had multiple children with them.

And in this culture, they were completely dependent upon the father, the wives and the kids as well.

So as these men started learning God's word and they started to grow in the Lord, they realized God hates polygamy.

But God also hates divorce.

You see the dilemma here of where these people are?

So, what would they do?

What would you do if you're in that situation?

How would you counsel these people of what they should do?

You know, because according to scripture, they're realizing, oh my gosh, I'm living in sin because of polygamy.

And they have this this whole dilemma between polygamy and divorce.

And what are we gonna do?

Abandoning their wives and children just completely didn't seem right, does it?

But they're completely dependent upon them, so what do you do?

And it's just a complicated situation.

You know, it's hard to say, well, here's what the Bible says when you're caught in this exact predicament.

Here's what you're supposed to do.

So after a lot of prayer and counsel and all those different things, they decided that the best practice would be for the husband to continue providing for all the wives and all the children that he had, all remaining in the same household with the father of these children, but he would only be romantically involved with the first.

Wife that he married.

And that was just kind of how they they figured this is probably the best practice of what we can do in this situation.

All that to say is when we run into different cultures and we we come across scriptures like this, it's probably way more complicated than we think about, you know, in our American minds.

And I think the Thessalonian church is probably in similar situations like this, where it's like we probably don't fully understand it, but it's probably really hard and it's probably really complicated.

You know, there's a lot of change that needs to take place in this church.

Not only that's countercultural, but actually the opposite of what their religion used to teach them.

You know, their old religion was teaching that temple prostitution was not only okay, it's encouraged because that's how you worship.

You know, think about their home life that they that now all of a sudden changes.

You know, now it's like, oh man, I need to learn how to love my wife.

I need to learn how to honor my wife.

I've never done that before.

I need to learn how to place her needs above my own as opposed to treating her like she's some slave in my home.

They have to learn this from scratch.

So there's a lot of things that are really changing within this church.

But I think that sexual immorality must have been a top priority for Paul to write about because it's the first thing that he writes about.

But I just imagine Timothy, he goes to this church, he brings this report back to Paul, and he says, Hey, you know, they're doing really well, but here's where their struggles are.

Here are the things that you need to address to them because this is the first thing that Paul starts writing about when it comes to sanctification.

So he gives them a little bit further instruction here in verse 4.

Look at it with me.

That each of you knows how to control his own body.

Your translation may say vessel, so control his own vessel in holiness and honor.

Now that phrase control his own body or vessel here, it can mean one of two things when you're looking at the original language.

You know, the first thing is probably the first thing that you think.

Hey, have self-control over your body.

You know, don't just do whatever just because it feels good in the moment.

Have self-control.

You know, so that's the first way we can look at it.

The second way, this can also be looked at in some translations, it's actually translated as possess his own vessel or each acquire his own wife.

Meaning be a one-woman man in holiness and honor.

So no more prostitutes, no more mistresses, no more sleeping around before marriage or after marriage.

Who knows?

Maybe Paul intended the double meaning here, because you do have to have self-control if you're gonna do any type of, you know, being a one-woman man.

So keep your marriage pure, keep your marriage bed pure is the main thing I think we need to get out of that.

So know how to control your body in holiness and honor.

Now look at verse 5.

Not with lustful passions like the Gentiles who don't know God.

You know, again, this church had people who were Gentiles that did not know God not that long ago.

You know, in our church, we have a bunch of Gentiles that did not know God at one point.

I think it's like Paul saying, hey guys, there should be a change in you.

In how you control your body when you come to Christ.

Things need to look different when you come to Christ.

You know, before Christ, we were all ruled by our fleshly passions, whether they were sexual or not.

We were just all ruled by what our flesh was telling us to do.

But we're called to holiness.

We're called to being set apart, including those passions that we once had.

You know, there needs to be a stark difference in our sexuality compared to the sexuality of the world.

You know, so many Christians are being deceived by the world regarding sexuality.

God has a recipe.

He gave it to us.

He said, this is what it looks like, this is how it should be.

But in the world we see things like love is love.

You know, how could a loving God be against love?

It's because we keep putting black pepper and onions into his chocolate chip cookie recipe.

And we wonder why things aren't working out, why there's not the same fulfillment and the same satisfaction, and why are there so many STDs and STIs and all of those other things that come along with it.

God's will for our life is sanctification.

His will is for us to be set apart from the world, not to become more like it.

Consecration, remember that word?

Just being set apart for God's worship and only for God's worship in very noticeable ways.

That's why we can't allow the world to define love for us.

That's why we can't allow the world to define sexuality or to define what marriage means.

God already did all of those things.

Not because he wants to ruin our fun.

It's because he knows what's best.

He created it.

He wants what's absolutely best for each and every one of us.

You know, things don't work out so well when we deviate from God's plan.

I want to read you some statistics that just kind of prove this, that God's plan, there's it just works better.

Did you know that if you move in together after engagement and before marriage, the chances of you getting divorced automatically goes up 11%.

Now, if you move in before engagement, when you're just dating, the divorce rate increases by 48%.

That's a lot.

There was a study done in 2019 that showed that couples that had children before they got married were twice as likely to get divorced compared to those that got married and then had kids.

Twice as likely.

Think about what would happen to abortion rates if we followed God's plan for sex.

Only marriage between one man and one woman in the context of that marriage.

Do you realize that we are always one generation away from eliminating STDs and STIs?

It's one generation.

If the one generation decides we're gonna follow God's plan for sex, all of that would go away.

Think about that.

If we stuck to God's plan.

You know, God has a plan, and it's when we deviate from that plan that we get ourselves into all of this trouble that we get ourselves into.

It's when we allow our lustful passions, as it says here, to rule our body.

And then we get into all of this trouble because we've allowed that lustful passion to make our decisions for us.

I want to just reiterate, God's not trying to destroy our fun, he's trying to keep us from destroying ourselves.

God said to Adam and Eve when they came together that the two were becoming one flesh.

Then he said in Malachi that divorce is a violent ripping apart of that flesh.

That God is joined together.

Again, this isn't condemnation if you've been through a divorce before.

This is the reality of what God says in his word.

Every sexual partner that you have, you're giving them a part of you that you're never going to get back again.

You know, and I'm mentioning this because God's plan for sex is to protect you from all of these things that we've been talking about.

It's not to kill your fun.

And please remember, you know, as I started out today, when we are in Christ, we're a new creation.

We are cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

We're made a whole in his sight.

We're standing positionally sanctified.

He sees the finished work of Jesus Christ in us, and he wants us to live that way.

But the thing is, we still have to deal with the consequences of that sin this side of eternity.

God is simply trying to protect us from those consequences.

Do you realize that?

He just knows what's best, and he wants to protect us from ourselves in that way.

He wants to protect our spouses.

He wants to protect our future spouses from the consequences of our sexual sin.

God's will is our sanctification.

You know why that is?

Because he loves us so much.

He wants to protect us from ourselves.

God never gives out rules just for the sake of rules.

Whenever, even all the laws in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, all that stuff, it's because he loved the Israelites so much.

He wanted to protect them.

And that's all that those were for.

It wasn't to kill their fun or because he had a fun power trip trying to kill, you know, see if they would sin against him or not.

It was because he loved them that much that he said, here's how you protect yourself from yourself.

I just want to encourage you this morning.

If you are struggling with sexual sin as a believer in Jesus Christ, this is why Jesus died.

To save us from that exact sin.

There is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

But I want to encourage you to just not walk in this battle alone.

There are so many Christians that struggle with sexual sin, with sexual addiction, and there are so few Christians that talk about it.

But I just want to encourage you to not walk through this battle alone.

You know, so many Christians struggle with this.

And they don't say a word, and it's out of fear of judgment.

Because they're afraid of what's that person gonna think if I actually tell them what's going on up here.

But I just want to encourage you, don't walk through it alone.

James 5.16 says to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another to be freed from the error of sin.

And just be wise.

If you're a woman, do this with a woman.

If you're a man, do this with another man.

If you don't have somebody that you can go to and talk to about this, come talk to one of the elders you saw up here.

Come talk to one of the women's ministry leaders.

We would talk to you about it, or we'll link you up with somebody that you can you can have those conversations with.

We'll direct you to the right person.

And I get it, this can be so scary because we don't want to feel judged.

We don't want people to think we're icky, right?

1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity.

You know, I think you'll be surprised to find how many others struggle with your struggle or something very similar to your struggle, even if it's not a sexual sin.

There's nothing that's uncommon to humanity.

There's nothing new under the sun.

Bring it to light.

Don't walk through it alone.

The next part of 1 Corinthians 10 13 says, But God is faithful.

A way out may be talking to somebody about it, maybe even for the first time, bringing it to light.

You know, if you don't know Christ and you're here today, but you want this forgiveness that we've been talking about regarding sexual sin or any past regret or thing you've done in the past that you're completely ashamed of, don't even like to think about, he wants to make you a new creation.

This is what salvation is about.

He wants to make you a new creation in his sight that is positionally sanctified in the eyes of God.

You simply need to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

And Scripture says you will be saved, you will be cleansed and washed and made a new creation, forgiven of all of those things in the sight of God.

You can do that right now in your seat.

You can do it later.

You can talk to somebody that you came with.

Come talk to us afterward.

We would love to talk to you more about it.

But it's really a belief, it's a faith on your end that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead for our salvation, for the forgiveness of our sins, so that we could take on the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

So when God looks at us, he sees the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, we thank you so much for Jesus.

Lord, when we think about it, we are just so messed up because of the sin that we chose over you.

And Lord, we're just dealing with all these consequences of years of sin.

But we thank you for Jesus, that he died on the cross, that he died the death that we deserved for all of those sins, so that we wouldn't have to.

We thank you that salvation is a free gift that Jesus is offering to each person here today.

That we thank you for the cleansing blood of Jesus that washes us and cleanses us and makes us that new creation in your sight.

Lord, I pray as we deal with struggles and addiction while we're still on this side of eternity.

That you would strengthen us by the power of your Holy Spirit, that you would help us to bring these things to light, to admit to others when we're struggling and some of the things that we're going through.

Lord, so that we can pray for others, we can lift people up, we can come alongside of them and help them through these struggles.

Help us to not be ashamed, but realize that whatever we're struggling with, others have as well.

And it's common to mankind.

So help us to not hide these things and crawl into corners or allow guilt and shame from the enemy to paralyze us as Christians.

But help us to walk through these things, to cling to you.

Lord, we can do nothing without you.

So help us to abide even closer with Jesus Christ through these things and help us to become more and more sanctified, more like Jesus on a daily break on a daily basis.

Help us to encourage each other to do that as well, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.