Practice Purity

Introduction

We left off in our study of 1 Thessalonians by looking at chapter 3 and seeing that we are to pray for one another and grow in holiness. Paul has been preaching to this church for these opening 3 chapters and begins, in chapter 4 to transition to a time of exhortation. Even with these young believers, they are instructed and responsible to live a radically different life. These believers have grown much in the year or so that they have been in existence, but there is still room to grow. In our world affiliations mean a lot and they meant a lot in the ancient world as well!

Think about how affiliations impact the way that people live their lives. If someone is from St. Louis, they are likely a Cardinals fan because they are affiliated with the city. If someone is from the United States and the Olympics are on, they will likely root for the American athlete because they are affiliated with the United States! Likewise, the Christian will live a certain way because He is affiliated with Jesus Christ. It’s one thing to say that you belong to Jesus Christ, it’s another thing to live for Him. Friends, for those of us who are followers of Christ, we should continue to live differently and this is what Paul challenges these believers to do in these verses. Specifically, Christians are called to live a pure and holy life because God is pure and holy.

1 Thessalonians 4:1–8 CSB

1 Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God—as you are doing—do this even more. 2 For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality, 4 that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not with lustful passions, like the Gentiles, who don’t know God. 6 This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you. 7 For God has not called us to impurity but to live in holiness. 8 Consequently, anyone who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Be a Doer of the Word (1-2)

Paul opens up this text by saying that these believers have received instruction on how they should live. Do we like people telling us what we can and can’t do? Generally speaking, no, we don’t! However, these believers obeyed Paul and Timothy’s guidance because what they instructed them to do was in accordance with God’s Word as verse 2 shares with us. In the book of James, likely the first Christian book, we see in verses 22-27 of chapter 1 that Christians are supposed to be doers of the Word rather than just being hearers of the Word. A question for us: Is hearing the Word of God important? I’m not talking about a supernatural moment where someone claims to have a vision or something like that. I’m talking about reading and hearing someone explain God’s Word. Is this important? Certainly it is! Romans 10 says so

Romans 10:17 NASB95

17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Hearing the Word of God is vitally important! However, if we just hear the Word and do nothing with it, are we doing anything productive? No, we’re not. As followers of Christ, we must hear the Word but whenever we hear the Word, we should be motivated to transition to do something about what we have heard.

How can we be a doer of the Word? First, we must understand what God’s Word says! Satan knows Scripture too. We see this to be the case time and time again, but he twists Scripture. Sadly many people in our world do this very same thing. Because of this, we must do a good job of studying Scripture and applying it to our daily lives. Consider someone who you think to be a great Bible teacher or preacher - for some you would say that person was an Adrian Rogers or Billy Graham. Others would look further back to a Charles Spurgeon or Jonathan Edwards. Whoever that person is for you, think about the person teaching these Thessalonian believers: None other than the apostle Paul who many believe to be one of the greatest Bible teachers in the history of the church. This church had a great teacher to learn from and their teachers taught them both foundational and deep theological principles, but when push came to shove, who was responsible for their spiritual walk with the Lord? Paul? Timothy? Apollos? No. Themselves.

They are responsible for what they do with the instruction that they have received - Paul notes that they are doing this presently, however there is a long ways to go. There is an echo here to what the preacher of Hebrews has told his congregation as well as they must continue to grow and persevere. Friends, we must do the same and be doers of the Word. Consider how you can better obey what Scripture says this week.

Understand God’s Will (3-7)

As we study Scripture and try to apply it to our daily lives and live it out, a natural question will arise: What is God’s will for my life? This is a deep question, is it not? Many people want to know what God’s will is for their life and they pray and pray for God to divinely reveal this to them. Sometimes this happens in a miraculous way but often times it is something revealed over time. We don’t always do well in the waiting process, though. Because of this, it helps to understand what the Bible says about God’s will for His followers as there are several basic things that God wants from His people:

God wants you to come to know Christ as Lord (1 Tim 2:4), lived a transformed life (Romans 12:2), share the Gospel with others (Matthew 28:18-20), be thankful (Hebrews 12:28-29), make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) and suffer for your faith (1 Peter 3:17-18).

This is a solid list of things for us to see and help us out as we go throughout our lives. Ultimately, God wants us to be sanctified and to grow in holiness! The situation that Paul is addressing for these Thessalonians specifically is the area of sexual immorality. If you want to be a doer of the Word, you must know what God’s Word says about sexual immorality. It is very clear: abstain from it!

We know that this is true in our world today, but we also know that our society is enamored with sexual immorality. It is praised and promoted left and right. Just as our world views sex as a casual thing to be done whenever and wherever, the ancient world, especially Thessalonica viewed sex the same way.

Why does Paul begin this discussion by addressing sexual immorality? Because this congregation, even though they have responded to the Gospel and were growing to be like Christ, they were still tempted by things in their community. In our world people are tempted to do all sorts of things. Today people are tempted to treat Sunday as though it is just another day. We are tempted to treat church as though it is optional. Certainly we know that we can worship anywhere and we worship other days than just on Sunday, but the fact remains that we are called to gather and praise God. Likewise, even though these believers knew what the Word said, they were tempted to do things that go against the Word of God.

Whenever you become a follower of Christ, you are called to live according to a new set of standards. These new standards include to stop doing things that go against God’s Word. I know that some of you don’t care too much about baseball but other’s do a little bit. Did you know that the New York Yankees have a very unique team rule? The Yankees have the most world series championships in Major League history (27) but they are also different from the rest of the league by having a rule that says that no player on the team can have facial hair. Last year there was a very good pitcher who signed as a free agent with the Yankees and he joked and said that it was unfortunate, but that he would comply and shave off his beard to abide with his new team’s rules. Likewise, whenever we become a part of the Kingdom of God, we have to shave our facial hair… Just kidding! But we do have to live differently because there are some new rules for us.

Because God’s will for us is to be sanctified, part of our responsibility is to surrender to His plan and avoid doing certain things that we used to do. There are some things that we used to do that we no longer can do as a follower of Jesus Christ. The thing mentioned in our text is sexual immorality. There are no excuses, what ifs or gray area, we must flee from it!

Why is sexual immorality so bad? Our world certainly doesn’t view it as a bad thing - in fact our world doesn’t even know what sexual immorality is. Sexual immorality can be defined as any sexual activity contrary to Biblical commands. This includes actions and even thoughts as Jesus reminds us in the Sermon on the Mount

Matthew 5:28 CSB

28 But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Further, it means that it must be within the confines of marriage as we will examine next Sunday morning in Hebrews 13

Hebrews 13:4 CSB

4 Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

Consider a person living in a city like Thessalonica. Perhaps they would have been participating in sexual immorality because it was something accepted by their society just as it is accepted by many in our society. They are living and doing things that seem fine to them but then they meet Paul and they hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In time, they come to accept Jesus as their Lord. Praise God for this development and we know that many people in Thessalonica experienced this very thing. With that said, would they have had to make some changes because they are a new creation and can’t keep on living according to their lustful passions. They must make some changes.

Consider your life before Christ and contrast it to your life now. If you have basically been a Christian your entire life then consider some areas where you struggle sometimes. Just as sexual sin was prevalent in Thessalonica, we know that it is also prevalent in our world today - even in the church! Sometimes people weigh sins on a scale and say that some are worse than others. In Baptist life, we often hear sermons on alcoholism, adultery and abuse. Those 3 things are extremely bad but we’ll let other things slide by. The fact remains that even if you don’t struggle with sexual immorality, we all struggle with certain sins. As we grow to be more like Christ and accomplish His will for our lives, we must strive to surrender those and pursue holiness and purity!

Looking specifically at sexual immorality in verses 6 and 7, we see a severe warning towards these believers who practiced or were tempted to continue practicing this behavior. If you do, you are transgressing against a brother or sister. As humans, we like pushing boundaries. Kids like doing this especially! Because of this, we must realize that our actions have severe consequences because sexual immorality affects not only our walk with the Lord but also our relationship with others. Mark Howell puts it well when he says this, “Sexual sin is saying to God, “I don’t care if I sin against You, and I also don’t care if I cause this other person to sin against You.”

To a person who see’s no problem with this type of behavior, Jesus issued a stern warning in Matthew 18

Matthew 18:6 CSB

6 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea.

Friends, all sin is serious and sexual sin is serious as well. Even if someone or some people think that they are going to get away with their action, verse 6 states that God is an avenger of all - He see’s all, even things done in secret.

Because of this, rather than living a double life, the Christian is to stop living in impurity and to instead live a life of holiness.

Again, we all have areas where we fall short - we must repent and strive to live a life of holiness. This is where Christian community is a beautiful thing as we have people to encourage us and hold us accountable just as Paul and Timothy were there to assist these believers in Thessalonica.

Follow God’s guidance (8)

Our final verse gives us a warning and a piece of application. If you reject this command and continue to live in sin, especially in the realm of sexual immorality or any action that society says is ok but that goes against God’s Word, not only are you rejecting man but you are ultimately rejecting God. Because of who God is, we strive to obey Him, not to receive wealth or health, but because we know that He knows best. Therefore, we seek His will and strive to do that. The Psalmist talks about this very thing

Psalm 1:1–2 CSB

1 How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! 2 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.

Is your delight on the Lord’s instruction? Are you following God’s guidance in your life today? Are you meditating on His Word day and night or is it more of a thing that you only look at when you’re really struggling? Friends, consider the second half of this verse and think of the power that lives in us. God doesn’t leave us to do this on our own, He gives us the Holy Spirit! As we covered in our Trinity study last year, the Holy Spirit is more than just a force, He is a person who changes us in a variety of ways.

He convicts us of our sin (John 16:8)

He helps us pray when we don’t know what to say (Romans 8:27)

He helps us live a life that pleases God (Galatians 5:16)

He confirms our salvation as He lives within us (1 John 4:13)

Consider if you have the Holy Spirit today. If you do, ask yourself how you can do a better job of following His guidance on a daily basis.

Conclusion

We have freedom as human beings - freedom is a great thing! However, we must be careful in how we use our freedom. Consider if you are using your freedom to push the boundary and get as close to the line as you can or if you are striving to live as a new creation? Many people want to see gray whenever the Bible paints a picture as being black and white. Many people want to do the bare minimum nowadays with their work and sadly that same mentality carries over into their walk with the Lord. Friends, may we not see our Spiritual life in that regard. There is work to be done. We must not think that we have done enough. We have room to grow. We must not grow complacent and use our passions and freedom to please ourselves, rather as we grow in our understanding of Scripture, we strive to fulfill God’s will for our lives and we live to please Him in all things.

Consider what you can do this week to practice purity and how you can encourage others to do the same and not see things as areas of freedom but rather as things that we are commanded to not do as followers of Jesus Christ. Practice purity this week.