Sermon Tone Analysis

D. A. Carson wrote for Christianity Today in one of the magazine issues from the year 2000.

More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion (Compromise: Natural Drift from Holiness)

People do not drift toward holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith.

We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

Citation: D. A. Carson, quoted in “Reflections,” Christianity Today (7-31-00)

I’ve titled this Sermon, “God’s Will for You: BE HOLY” and the way we will be dissecting our passage is by answering three questions.

What? - What is God’s will for the believer?

Why? - Why should believers pursue Holiness?

How? - How do believers abstain from sexual immorality?

Let us pray for God’s guidance as we begin.

I’ve often asked God for his will for my life.

Wanting to know at different times things like who I will marry, what career to pursue, where to live, etc… Perhaps you’ve done the same.

God’s will is sometimes hard to discern but then we read passages of scripture like ours today and find it to be quite clear.

WHAT is God’s will for the believer?

God’s will for the believer is:

To pursue Holiness

To abstain from Sexual Immorality

This is what he desires for His chosen people.

Before we dig into our passage, we have to spend sometime with these terms, Holiness and Sexual Immorality.

If Paul is saying God’s will for me is to be Holy, we need to know what that means?

Holiness & Sanctification

The word Holy and Sanctification in our passage are actually the same greek word “hagiasmos” so the bible uses Holy and Sanctified referring to the same greek word which means to be set apart.

There are two sides to the concept of Holiness in the Bible.

There is our STATUS of being Holy where God has declared us Holy and righteous, he has set us apart from the world because of Christ’s payment on the cross.

Christ has paid our debt and we are now declared not guilty, free from condemnation, AND we are now called new creation, co-heirs with Christ, ambassadors for God.

He has set us apart as His chosen people, in doing so we can say that He has made us Holy, we are now set apart by Him.

Paul uses this kind of language to describe believers, for example in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Paul is writing to believers and saying that you were dead to sin, but in Christ you are now washed, and SANCTIFIED.

In Christ we have a new status of Holy because he declares us Holy.

This truth, has lead to a modern heresy of “let go and let God” meaning, that we have a passive role in sanctification.

That’s not accurate because there is the other use of the word “hagiasmos” and that is to pursue Holiness or sanctification.

Wayne Grudem has a helpful illustration in regards to Sanctification.

At the point of conversion, we begin to be sanctified, meaning we grow in Christian Maturity.

Paul in his writing talks about growing in maturing, for example in Colossians 3:10

When we are born again, meaning we have placed our faith in Christ for salvation, we are BEING RENEWED.

This is an ongoing activity and one that we can’t sit idly by.

Hebrews 12:14

We are to strive for Holiness.

You see, we have a human responsibility in sanctification.

This is the PROCESS use of the word where we pursue holiness.

It is both/and, we are made Holy when we place our faith in Christ for salvation and we pursue Holiness as His chosen people set apart from the world.

We bring Glory to our God and King when we act like His chosen holy people by not being like the world.

We set ourselves apart by devoting our selves to God and His desires.

We set ourselves apart by not following the course of the world, but instead following the instructions of our King and fulfilling His desire of bringing the good news of the gospel to all people and living in holiness.

Going back to the image from Grudem, in that middle section you’ll notice that the line goes up and down, meaning, we sometimes make some progress in growing in the likeness of Christ and sometimes we fall back, but if you look at the trajectory, it is an upward trajectory until we see our Lord face-to-face.

We should have that trajectory in our lives, when we look back to our Christian Walk we should be able to see how we have grown in maturity and in Christlikeness.

Let me encourage you to to reflect on this by considering your faith has permeated every area of your life.

The way you treat your children or your parents, your work ethic as an employee.

This is God’s desire for you, to be Holy.

Know that he has declared you His, set apart, Holy, and that he wants you to pursue holiness.

Sexual Immorality

Paul gives us one example of pursuing holiness and that’s by abstaining from sexual immorality.

It is interesting that up to this point we have seen so much praise from Paul to this church.

1 Thess.

1:7-8

They are exemplary Christians and out of all the examples he could have used to drive home the idea of being Sanctified, he makes a point to mention sexual immorality.

What is sexual immorality?

I know this topic can be a sensitive for many reasons but what better place to learn about sexuality than from God’s own word.

I understand that this topic could bring about some significant feelings for many of you.

Feelings of anger, or fear, or shame, but know this, God can and does redeem us from these things when we confess them to Him.

He takes the shame and guilt.

Our God is so gracious that you can bring your anger and bitterness to Him and he does not condemn you for it , and my goal is not to single out anyone, but to point us to God for redemption, of which we ALL need.

Just like we did for Holiness, let us build a working definition of Sexual Immorality which is pretty simple really.

The word for Sexual Immorality is “porneia” which means fornication from which we get our word for Pornography.

When the Bible talks about Sexual Immorality it is talking about sexual activity that is not pleasing to God, this includes, sexual activities outside of marriage between non-married people (fornication) or someone who is married and having an affair with someone else (adultery).

These activities are often mentioned in scripture alongside other evil deeds.

This is the opposite of being Holy, but notice how all of these things are listed together and this isn’t the only time this happens, sexual immorality is often found in within a very similar list like this one in scripture.

Why would Paul choose to mention this?

There is no evidence that this church was struggling with sexual immorality from anywhere else in this letter.

Why mention it at all?

“The Thessalonian Christians lived in a world where people did not see fornication as a sin, but as part of normal life.”

Morris, L. (1984). 1 and 2 Thessalonians: An introduction and commentary (Vol.

13, p. 79).

InterVarsity Press.

This is not so different from us today.

Our society encourages sexual laxity.

Things like the hook-up culture we are living in or the promotion of homosexuality as a practice to be not only accepting but a promoter of it, or the high number of porn users and downloads in our country are all things that I’m sure most of us if not all us have had some interaction with.

Sexual Immorality is not hard to define really, we all know and understand what God has called sin but knowing does not translate to doing, which is why I think Paul makes note of it here.

WHY should believers pursue Holiness?

So we have defined the what, but let us put on our child-like hats and ask “but why!” Let us know dig into our text and see all that it has for us and answer the question why?

We pursue Holiness to PLEASE God

1 Thessalonians 4:1 “1 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.”

Paul says, Finally, but technically he still has 2 chapters left, all of chapter 4 and 5! This word finally can be treated more like a transition word than a concluding thought.

This part of the letter is a transition from Paul reminding and encouraging the church for their example, he reminds them of how the apostles came to nurture their faith, he reminds them how their church was established through their ministry and how he is filled with joy to hear of it growing, and now, we transition in this book to Paul exhorting the church.

So when he says finally, it’s not because he is done but because he has finished with the praise and moving into exhortation.

We pursue holiness to please God, everyone pleases someone, many live to please themselves but as believers we realize that our lives receives a higher calling from God and we also like Paul say, Philippians 3:7-8

Our desire to please God comes from the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.

(he is more precious than anything else)

I remember in college my parents saying to me often, when we die there won’t be much for you and your brother from us, but what we will give you is an education.

My parents paid for my college and I had other family members and church members help without prompting from us who helped me attend bible college and graduate debt free.

I purposed myself to do well in my classes because I knew the sacrifice my parents, family members and church were making and I wanted my work to be pleasing to them.

Perhaps you have a similar experience where someone stood up for you or got you out of a tough spot, you know what it’s like to want to show your thankfulness to them by pleasing them or doing something for them.

How much more should we desire to please our God when we know and understand the price of our redemption.

We pursue holiness to please God.

We pursue Holiness to OBEY God

1 Thessalonians 4:2-3 “2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;”

The New King James and New American Standard Bible replace the word instructions for commandments.

The greek word there actually means “charge” which is a military word.

The apostles had given a charge or command to the church to walk in a manner that pleases God.