Purity Culture

Lead Vocalist (Joel)

Welcome & Announcements (Hopson)

Good morning family!

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3 announcements:

1)Members Meeting TONIGHT

Finger food fellowship in the chapel at 5. Please bring something to share.

Meeting at 6 in the gym. Childcare provided.

You can pick up a meeting packet at the announcement wall.

2) NextGen Christmas Program, December 8 at 5:30

The Sights and Sounds of Christmas!

Cookies and cocoa to follow

3) Christmas in Boutopia, December 15 from 4-7 PM

This is our family’s annual open house

We would love to spend time with you!

Now please take a moment of silence to prepare your heart for worship.

Call to Worship (Ps 117 (p 93))

Prayer of Praise (Jackie Wilson)

No Not One

I Want to Know You

Prayer of Confession (Ronnie Evans), Impurity

Assurance of Pardon (Daniel 9:9)

Jesus Messiah

Here is Love

Scripture Reading (1 Thess. 4:3-8)

You can find it on page 1173 in the black Bibles

Dismiss children ages 10 and under

Pastoral Prayer (Hopson)

Prayer for PBC—Sexual purity

Elderly—that they see this as an important issue for the entire church

Married couples—that they would delight in each other

Singles—that they would resist the culture’s lies about sex

Children—that you would protect them and that parents would raise them in obedience to the Bible

Prayer for kingdom partner—Fox Hill Road Baptist Church (Nathan Cecil)

Vision of being a neighborhood church—that everyone within a 3-mile radius would know who they are and the gospel they proclaim

Financial provision for 2025

Prayer for US—VP-Elect J.D. Vance

Wisdom, courage, faithfulness

Prayer for the world—Togo, home of over 9 million souls

Leader—Faure Gnassingbé (fah-YAY noss-ING-bee) — justice for the vulnerable, protection for the unborn, flourishing for all the citizens of Togo

Social issue(s)—child trafficking (over 300,000 orphans and unwanted children are vulnerable)

Spiritual issue(s)—spread of Islam

Local churches—local churches to be faithful to the gospel

Laborers

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

If you are one of the privileged few Americans who were raised in the church in the 1990’s, you are probably familiar with a phenomenon called “Purity Culture.”

What began with a noble desire to encourage Christian young people towards purity devolved into a massive Christian subculture with “True Love Waits” rallies, purity rings, purity balls, popular Christian songs about abstinence, and best-selling books promoting alternatives to dating.

I still remember attending conferences with my church that railed against the evils of dating. I remember watching VHS tapes with my youth group about courtship and I read books about kissing dating goodbye.

And I may have lingering trauma from a moment at about 13 or 14 years old when my father and I were in a McDonald’s drive-thru. My family had recently attended some seminar where the speaker encouraged his parents to keep their children pure by arranging marriages for them. So as we waited our turn in the McDonald’s drive-thru, my dad asked me a question I wasn’t expecting: “Do you want to be betrothed?” I politely asked if I could just have a Big Mac instead.

It’s hard to imagine a starker contrast between my purity culture upbringing and the city of Thessalonica in Paul’s day.

Sexual misconduct and adultery were widespread.

Innkeepers kept slave girls for the sexual entertainment of their customers. [1]

A few centuries before Paul, a man named Demosthenes wrote this: “Mistresses we keep for our pleasure, concubines for our day to day physical well-being, and wives to bear us legitimate children.” [2]

John MacArthur comments that Thessalonica “was rife with such sinful practices as fornication, adultery, homosexuality (including pedophilia), transvestism, and a wide variety of pornographic and erotic perversions, all done with a seared conscience and society’s acceptance.” [3]

It is in this context—in this city!—that Paul pleads with a local church to develop a culture of purity.

Turn to 1 Thessalonians 4:3

About twenty years after Jesus ascended into heaven, the Apostle Paul started a church in the town of Thessalonica.

SHOW THESSALONICA MAP

And even though this is a very young church, Paul considered it crucial to teach this church about sexual purity.

One commentator argues that “Paul’s brief instruction in this passage may offer the clearest primer on sexual purity in all of Scripture.” [4]

—Richard D. Phillips

The Big idea I hope to communicate this morning is that A thriving local church promotes and pursues a culture of purity.

The problem with the purity culture in my home church wasn’t purity. It was an emphasis on rules about physical abstinence divorced from the power of the gospel.

So let’s see if we can make purity culture great again!

With God’s help, we’re going to ask and answer Three Questions About Purity:

What Does It Mean to Be Pure?

How Can We Be Pure?

Why Should We Be Pure?

1) WHAT Does It Mean to Be Pure?

Remember last week? We looked at verses 1-2 where Paul urged the Thessalonian Christians to continue living in a way that pleased God.

He continues that thought in...

1 Thessalonians 4:3a—For this is the will of God, your sanctification…

Countless Christians have wrestled with the question, “What is God’s will for my life?”

Should I marry this person or not? Should I take that job or not? Should I move my family or not?

While the Bible does not give specific guidance for all of our life choices, it does give a clear, overarching principle that helps us answer all those little questions.

God’s will for you is your sanctification.

That word sanctification is one of those Bible words we regularly use but often fail to define.

The way that word is typically used in the Bible—and what it means here—is this: Sanctification is the believer’s growth in Christlikeness.

Becoming a Christian is much bigger than rescuing sinners from hell. It’s about changing us to look more and more like Jesus.

That doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process that plays out over our entire lives!

What does any of this have to do with purity?

Part of the sanctification process means growing in purity. Look at...

1 Thessalonians 4:3—For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.

Listen to what New Testament scholar Gene Green says about this verse: “Sexual immorality (porneias) meant any kind of sexual relation outside of heterosexual marriage, whether it was fornication, adultery, homosexuality, incest, prostitution, or bestiality. . . . Paul does not call the church to partial moderation of their sexual impulses but to abstain completely from all forms of sexual immorality.” [5]

So what does it mean to be pure?

It’s abstinence from any and all forms of sexual sin.

It means abstaining from any and all forms of homosexual behavior. Since the Bible restricts marriage to one man and one woman, there are no provisions for any form of homosexual practice. If you battle with same-sex attraction, you must commit to follow Jesus and crucify those desires.

It means abstaining from any relationships that are adulterous in nature. It means your body and your heart is reserved for your spouse and your spouse alone.

It means abstaining from fornication. That may be a new F-word for some of you. The Bible frequently uses this term to describe a sexual relationship between two people that aren’t married.

One of the books I read in preparation for this sermon is called Pure, by Dean Inserra. I highly recommend this book, especially for the young singles who are on the front lines in this battle for purity. PBC purchased a few copies last week and you can buy one from the bookstall before you leave here today if you’d like.

In this book, Inserra writes this: “Sex is not for “in love” people. Sex is not for mature people. Sex is not for careful people. Sex is for married people.” [6]

But sexual immorality also refers to a few things we might say are not technically sex...

It means abstaining from foreplay with anyone who is not your spouse. You may call yourself a “technical virgin” if you engage in sexual activities other than intercourse, but that is not biblical purity. It is a sin to engage in any activities that lead to arousal with someone who is not your spouse.

It means abstaining from any and all forms of pornography. If you’re looking at sexually explicit images or videos—whether they’re on Instagram, Pornhub, Netflix, or at the movie theater—you are not being pure. You are being entertained by watching real people engage—or pretend to engage—in real sexual sin.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Biblical purity is a commitment to lifelong, heterosexual marriage as the only God-honoring outlet for sexual activity.

This means that biblical purity is not just something for singles. Every Christian north of puberty has wrestled with illegitimate sexual desires. All of us have to abstain from something.

Maybe you’re at an age where little or none of these things are temptations for you.

Maybe you’re like an older woman at the church I pastored in Louisville. We’ll call her Laura.

I was preaching a series through the Ten Commandments and eventually we got on the seventh commandment—do not commit adultery. Naturally I spent most of the sermon preaching against sexual sin. After the sermon, Laura approached me and said “why are you preaching that stuff here? Don’t you see how old we are?”

I reminded her that not EVERYONE in the church was her age, and that the Bible’s teaching on sexual purity is for the entire church, and that she certainly didn’t want to have a pastor who skipped over portions of the Bible.

Even if you find this material of little practical value to you personally, remember these words weren’t written to individual Christians. They were written to an entire church! You can apply this teaching by helping keep your fellow church members accountable in their purity.

Perhaps your knee-jerk reaction is to say, “What someone does in their own bedroom is not my business!”

I certainly understand that reaction if you’re not a Christian.

But if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, you should know following Jesus is always personal, but it’s never private.

Your Bible has a story in 1 Corinthians 5 where an entire church is called to hold one man accountable for his sexual sin. Because individual Christian purity is a community project.

If we’re going to promote and pursue a culture of purity at PBC, we need to understand what it means to be pure.

But also we need to know...

2) HOW Can We Be Pure?

Beginning in verse 4, Paul gets really practical about this question. The only problem is, we’re not exactly sure how best to translate what he wrote in Greek two thousand years ago.

If the Bible you’re using is the English Standard Version, you’ll probably see a little footnote after verse 4 that offers two alternative translations.

But the good news is, regardless of which translation is most accurate, we can learn something that will help us be pure.

So let’s consider two keys to purity from our passage:

A) We All Need SELF-CONTROL

The preferred translation suggests that what we need to be pure is self control.

1 Thessalonians 4:4-5—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

Incidentally one of the alternative translations actually conveys the same basic idea.

The footnote that says “how to possess his own vessel” is likely a reference to certain body parts.

Whether Paul here is talking about controlling our entire body, or only our reproductive anatomy, the point is basically the same. We need self-control.

Don’t be like the pagans who are controlled by their bodies. They don’t know God and you do!

So you’re going to have to cultivate self-control if you’re going to be pure!

Proverbs 25:28—A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.

Kids, one reason your moms and dads don’t always give you what you want is because we want you to learn self-control.

Without self-control you’re like a nation without an army, a city without walls, a house without a front door. There is nothing to protect you from all the things in this world that will destroy you.

Christian: how is your self-control?

Do you ever deny your appetites? Do you buy whatever you want whenever you want? Do you eat whatever you want whenever you want? Do you ever discipline your body by saying no to your desires?

The first step towards cultivating self-control may be having the strength to talk to someone in your church family about how you’re actually doing in this area. Be honest. Ask them to pray with you and help keep you accountable.

You will never be pure if you never exercise self-control.

The other possible translation for verse 4 gives us a second key to purity...

B) Some May Need a SPOUSE

The other alternative translation for verse 4—that’s radically different than the two we’ve already covered—would cause the verse to read like this:

“that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor.”

We’re not going to get into the technical reasons why I think that’s not the best translation, but you need to know it is a possible translation.

And it IS consistent with Paul’s teaching elsewhere in the New Testament...

1 Corinthians 7:8–9—To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Singles, you need to know that the only legitimate outlet for your God-given sexual desires is in marriage.

Far too many singles are delaying marriage well into their thirties, but they’re not delaying sex.

Who cares what the culture says about this issue, ask yourself what GOD says in His Word!

It is far better to marry young and struggle financially for a few years than to marry late and live in sinful rebellion against a holy God.

To the married couples in this room, how’s your intimacy with your spouse?

Please don’t answer out loud. But please think carefully about this question. Please talk about it with your husband or wife.

If your intimacy is like a thermostat, what does it say about the temperature of your marriage?

Has your love grown cold? Often—not always—the temptation to sexual sin increases when the God-given outlet for intimacy decreases.

Again, if you’re struggling in this area, setup a meeting with your elder and his wife and be honest and open about how you’re doing. We want to help you honor the Lord in this area!

If we’re going to promote and pursue a culture of purity at PBC, we need to understand how we can be pure.

But finally we need to know…

3) WHY Should We Be Pure?

One reason why purity culture failed in the 1990’s was the reasons it gave to encourage purity among young people. Often the goal was to scare and shame people into purity.

For example, many youth groups in the 90’s played a “game” where a cup would be passed around in a circle. At each turn, someone would spit in the cup until the last person had a cup full of spit.

The youth pastor would then ask, “Would you want to drink this? Of course not! And that’s the way people will see you if you sleep around!” [7]

It’s no wonder so many millennials are angry and embarrassed about their Christian upbringing. Shame and fear are not strong enough motivators to cultivate purity!!

Instead, let’s see three biblical reasons why God’s people should be pure from verses 6-8:

First, we should cultivate purity...

A) Because We LOVE Others

After urging the Thessalonian Christians to have self-control with their bodies, Paul gives them a reason for his plea.

1 Thessalonians 4:6a—that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter…

This could not be more counter-cultural. The world presents the Bible’s teaching on sex as harsh, outdated, repressive and prudish.

But the Bible is not anti-sex. The Bible is pro-sex. We actually believe God created sex.

In fact, God’s very first command to humanity required them to have sex. Look it up in Genesis 1.

There’s a whole book of the Bible that celebrates the gift of sex.

The Bible isn’t against sex. It’s just against sex in the wrong context.

Sex is like fire. A fire is great in a fireplace. It can provide light and warmth. But if the fire gets on the living room rug it can cause devastating damage.

We need to trust that the God who designed sex knows the right context for it. It’s only safe with your spouse.

Maybe you’re still not convinced. Maybe you think, it’s just sex. What’s the big deal?

In her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry—who is not a Christian and considers herself a liberal feminist—challenges this belief. She argues that we KNOW it’s not just sex by looking at how the culture responded at the height of the #MeToo movement. If it’s “just sex” why do people get so upset about a boss requesting sexual favors. After all, nobody gets that bent out of shape when a boss asks his secretary to make him coffee, even though that’s not in her job description either. She writes this:

“No worker who makes coffee for their boss will expect to end up dependent on drugs or alcohol as a consequence. No one will expect to become pregnant or acquire a disease that causes infertility. No one will expect to suffer from PTSD or other mental illness. No one will expect to become incapable of having healthy intimate relationships for the rest of her life. Everyone knows that having sex is not the same as making coffee.” [8]

Dear friend, would you at least consider that the Bible has such restrictive views on sex because God actually knows how dangerous this gift can be when it’s taken out of the right context?

Divorcing this gift from it’s proper context will harm your neighbor.

So we should cultivate purity because we love others. But also...

B) Because We FEAR God

Paul gives another reason for pursuing purity in...

1 Thessalonians 4:6b—… because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

The first avenger is not Captain America. It’s God.

And He will return to this earth one day, not as an infant in a manger but as a King with a sword on a horse.

He sees every sexual sin you’ve committed, and He will judge.

In his commentary, G.K. Beale writes this: “Those who do not break off from their former pagan ways of living should not be considered truly Christian and should certainly not be given assurance that their faith is genuine.” [9]

You cannot claim to be a follower of Jesus if you don’t follow Him in every area of your life—including what you do in the bedroom.

PBC members: When we see members tempted to disobey Jesus in this area, we must warn them just like Paul did. And if they will not repent, we must be willing to exercise church discipline. We must even at times be willing to remove them from membership, not because we’re angry with them or because we think we’re better than them. But because we love them too much to let them continue thinking they’re Christians while they’re living in complete disobedience to King Jesus.

We should cultivate purity because we fear God. And finally...

C) Because We Received MERCY

Perhaps you feel crushed by all of this.

Maybe you have a lot of impurity in your past.

Maybe sexual sin is still a major part of your present.

Maybe you feel judged and unwelcome here, that you just can’t measure up.

If that’s you, I want you to notice two examples of God’s incredible mercy from our final two verses.

First, God calls the sexually broken.

1 Thessalonians 4:7—For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

The men and women that joined this little church in Thessalonica weren’t called to repent and believe in Jesus because they were pure.

They were normal Thessalonians, which probably means they shared the same sin struggles that were normal in their culture.

In the same way, God doesn’t call us to believe in Him today because we’re already pure.

God does not call the clean. He cleans the called.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11—Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Unbeliever: No matter how dark and pervasive your sexual sin has become, you are not too far gone to be saved.

EXPLAIN THE GOSPEL

Christian: There is no longer any condemnation for you if you’ve put your faith in Jesus. No, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t care how you live now that you’re a Christian. It means that you will not be punished for those sins, since Jesus has already been punished in your place.

This should lead you to pursue holiness out of love for the One who loved you even when you were His enemy!

And even when your love for God is weak, His love for you is strong!

Second, God gives us His Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 4:8—Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

Rejecting what God’s Word has taught us this morning is not a rejection of me. It’s not a rejection of PBC. It’s not a rejection of Baptists. It’s a rejection of God.

And that should bother us because God offers Himself to us!!!

He doesn’t merely call sinners to follow Him. He calls them then gives them Himself.

The Holy Spirit—God Himself, the third person of the Trinity—gladly takes up residence in the heart of His sin-polluted people.

Christian: If you have been impure, the Bible says you’ve actually been implicating the Holy Spirit in your sin. You’ve been taking Him with you!

But rather than ignoring you or leaving you, the Holy Spirit does something amazing. He gently convicts you of your sin and draws you back to Himself.

Perhaps He’s doing that in your heart today.

Years ago I heard about a sermon preached at the height of the purity culture movement. This preacher began his sermon by taking a beautiful rose, smelling it, then handing it to someone in the audience. He asked the congregation to pass the rose around until every had a chance to smell it.

Near the end of the sermon he shouted, “Where’s my rose?” And someone brought the rose back to the preacher. It was broken, some of the petals had fallen off, the whole thing was a mess.

The preacher then said, “This is what happens to you when you aren’t pure! Who would ever want a rose like this?” [10]

The man who told this story then said this: JESUS WANTS THE ROSE! THAT’S THE POINT OF THE GOSPEL!!!

Dear friend: no matter how far you’ve fallen, Jesus invites you to Himself.

Dear Christian, because you’ve been loved like this, devote your life to purity and holiness.

After I pray, we’re going to sing a song. And then we’re going to take communion together.

If you’re a Christian who has fallen short in this area, I challenge you to do three things.

First, confess to God. Tell Him you’re sorry for your sin against Him.

Second, tell a brother or sister. Sexual sin is impossible to put to death if we keep it in the dark. Find someone in this room you trust, and when the song starts playing go to them and tell them you need to talk after the service.

Third, take communion! Don’t abstain because you’re a sexual sinner! If we abstained whenever the Lord revealed our sin, we’d probably never take the Lord’s Supper!

When God reveals our sin, we’re supposed to confess that sin, then take communion with joy because we have been reminded how amazing God’s grace really is.

If you’re not a Christian, we’re going to ask you NOT to take communion with us after we sing.

You are welcome to leave the service in a moment if you prefer. Folks will be moving around as we sing as parents pick up their children from childcare, so you won’t stand out if you choose to quietly slip out.

But we invite you to stay. One of our pastors will be waiting at the white flag to talk to you if you’d like to talk to someone about what it means to follow Jesus, or anything else the Lord has put on your heart after this sermon.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

His Mercy Is More

Benediction (1 Thess 5 (p 155))

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

You are sent.