Introduction

Well, here we go! If you have your Bible’s, let’s open them to 1 Thessalonians 4.

After spending the first three chapters of the book recounting everything that had happened in the 18 months or so since their little band of missionaries had rolled into town and changed their lives, Paul ends the first half of the book praying for them. He prayed for three specific things:

  1. That they would love more and more.
  2. That they would sin less and less.
  3. That they would keep on keeping on.

He tells them that they are already pleasing God with their lives, but that they should continue to do so more and more, as they wait for Jesus to come back again the second time.

And the rest of this book will be expounding on those two themes: the return of King Jesus, and what our lives should look like as the family of God in the meantime.

Let’s just jump in with the first line of our text today. 1 Thessalonians 4:3:

For this is God’s will, your sanctification:

1 Thessalonians 4:3a

Have you ever wondered, “What’s God’s will for my life?” That question can be answered a lot of different ways, but the first statement in this book is a good place to start. This is God’s will, your sanctification; that as the days, months, years of your life go by, you would be further and further from who you used to be, and closer and closer to what you will be one day.

Now, if you were writing this letter, you were the one discipling these new believers from a distance, where would you start? Prayer, Bible study, church attendance?

You already know that’s not where Paul starts, because I told you last week where we were going through the rest of the book. Before we get there, let’s read the rest of verse 3:

For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality,

1 Thessalonians 4:3

One of most helpful approaches to study God’s word is to stop and ask “Why?” Why start there, Paul? If the goal is to live a life pleasing to God, or to use the definition from a couple weeks ago, to be a disciple who is “increasingly worshipping Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and obeying Jesus in all of life,” why start with this topic?

I won’t assume to know the complete answer now, of course—looking forward to asking one day—but I think we can get some pretty good clues by understanding the culture in which this letter was written.

Cultural Background

Remember when we started this series, talked about how Thessalonica/Thessaloniki is this perfect location to be a central hub for the area? Let’s look at the map again, with some other major cities of the time as well.

So it’s roughly 18 months since Paul left Thessaloniki. After the little stopover in Berea, he went down to Athens, and then over to Corinth about 50 miles away. That’s where he’s writing this letter from, from one major city in Greece to another.

And here’s where I think we get the first part of our answer… the Greek culture was about as far from God’s design for sexuality as you could possibly get.

You’ve heard me use C.S. Lewis’s term “chronological snobbery” before; it’s the idea that we have this tendency to think that we are the smartest, most enlightened generation in history, and that ancient people were just ignorant and superstitious.

But when it comes to the topic of sexuality, a lot of Christians tend to have that same sort of chronological snobbery, but in reverse. If you listen, you’d think that our current culture is literally the worst that the world has ever known. And honestly, objectively that’s not even remotely close to accurate.

I’ve thought about this a lot this week. It would be so easy to stand up here, bemoan the state of the world around us, and say things like, “Did you ever think you’d see the day when…” I’d get the easy “Amen!”, we’d leave feeling good about how much more righteous we are than “those people”, and we’d go home and be no closer to Jesus.

Greek Culture

Paul’s writing from the town of Corinth, a place that was so loose that the noun had actually became a verb. If someone was “corinthianized” it meant they had become sexually deviant. At one point, this town of around 30,000 people had over a thousand prostitutes!

But if Corinth was like the modern day Vegas (what happens in Corinth stays in Corinth), then what about Thessaloniki? Were things any different? Not much.

First of all, it’s a major port city. And what are these guys most interested when they get off the ship? To quote one of the sailors from the movie On the Town, “I’ll tell you when your voice changes, Junior!”

Rather than try to describe it myself, let me just read you a bit from a book by Scott McKnight that describes what the sexual atmosphere was like in that day:

“Studies of the sexual lives of Roman (or Greek) men reveal a typical pattern: males had ‘procreational’ sex with their wives, with whom they shared a home, children, and a family life, and had ‘recreational’ sex with others. This was normal sexuality for a Roman male, and to a lesser degree for Roman females. Yes, that’s right. This was the norm. Those recreational others included young boys (pederasty), prostitutes (the percentage of prostitutes in Roman cities staggers the mind), and slaves… Sex outside marriage was not a moral issue for most in the Roman Empire… Romans believed in uninhibited sexual exploration, married or not.”

Scott McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents

Are you starting to get a feel for why Paul might have started with this?

Greek Gods

Well, do you remember studying the Greek Pantheon of gods in school? Maybe not, but I’ll bet you’ll recognize a lot of their names—if not in Greek, then for sure in Latin. Names like…

Actually, it wasn’t just Venus. These lower-g gods were not like the Almighty God that we worship. All the mythology surrounding them is full of intrigue, murder, adultery, any/every human vice you can imagine, but couple with god-like power. Not the kind of gods worth worshipping, but they were fickle gods that they feared.

The worship of these gods (and many others) dominated Greek and Roman cultural life. They’re known as the 12 Olympians because they lived on Mt. Olympus. Why’s that relevant in answering our question? Well here’s a beautiful picture of Mt. Olympus, from downtown Thessaloniki. Yeah.

These new believers that Paul’s writing to, they’ve lived their whole lives literally under the shadow of these Greek gods, and everybody they knew worshipped not just one, but all 12 of them, plus some lesser known ones.

Knowing that sheds a whole new light on what Paul wrote back in 1:9:

[Other believers in the region] report what kind of reception we had from you: how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God

1 Thessalonians 1:9

Not only were they dealing with the influence of all these fake, demonic gods, they’ve also spent their whole lives immersed in…

Greek Philosophy

Aristotle, probably the most famous Greek philosopher, was born about 60 miles from Thessaloniki, so obviously he held a larger-than-life place in their history.

And a big part of Greek philosophy he learned from his mentor Plato was the concept of dualism, the notion that we are made up of two main parts, the body and soul/spirit. Their philosophy was that the physical body is basically worthless—only the spirit matters. What really matters, the real you, is what you are on the inside, and your body’s a necessary evil, until at death you finally get to leave it behind.

Does that idea ring a bell to you? Do people still this way? Absolutely, we do. Western culture borrows a ton from Greek/Roman culture, way more than just the names of the planets. This idea, known as Platonic dualism, has filtered its way into our worldview at a deep, deep level—even among followers of Christ.

Not only does the Bible not teach this idea, it actually undermines the entire storyline of the God’s Word. That’s a bold statement, but I think we’ll see as we go along that it’s the truth.

This philosphy will rear it’s ugly head again later on in this chapter, when we get to death and resurrection. Death is a tragedy and resurrection is glorious because our bodies matter.

Adam and Eve, Body and Soul

Think back to the beginning, when God made the first man, Adam. Look at Genesis 2:

Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2:7

So in God’s first description of humanity, you have both body and soul, in the same sentence. They’re inextricably tied together.

But even though God has made this first man, Adam, in His own image, he knows it’s not good for him to be alone, and so he puts Adam to sleep, takes an rib, fashions Eve, and brings her to him.

Can you imagine what moment must have been like? She’s standing there, pre-Fall, and I can just imagine if this were a movie scene, the camera zooms in on Adam’s face as he opens his eyes, and the music comes in…

🎶 At last my love has come along
🎶 My lonely days are over!

I guess it must be lonely day since Adam was less than 24 hours old, but the idea still stands.

“At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh!

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

Genesis 2:23–25

Here we have the first tale of romance the world has ever known. One man, one woman, both fully known and fully loved, becoming one flesh. That night, the 6th night of creation, Adam and Eve’s wedding night, it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed.”

I promise we’re going to come back to 1 Thessalonians, but we need to lay this groundwork first. If we’re going to be faithful in “living a life that pleases God more and more” in this area, we’re going to have to get a vision of the goodness of God’s way. Because it’s clear in a million different ways that the culture around us has discipled many people in this area much more than God’s Word has.

And on that note, it’s high time for the Church of Jesus Christ go on the offense instead of constantly being on the defense. For sure amongst ourselves, but not just that, in the culture at large. Human beings are made in the very image of God, and in some way.

But it’s the best way, and we’ve been too embarrassed to say so for way too long. I’m not so much embarrassed as I am worried about being embarrased! I’m talking to you right now while also fasting and praying in the back of my mind, “Lord, please don’t let me say some accidental double entendre, catch myself, and get all flustered and red as a beet!”

But I came to the realization over the past couple weeks, we shouldn’t be ashamed to talk about what God wasn’t ashamed to create. And not only create, but talk about pretty darn openly in His Word, so much so that multiple times this week I read a verse, and then went, “No, I can’t read that out loud on Sunday, there’s no way.”

I read this last week, and it just grabbed a hold of me.

One of the great failures of the church in our generation is that we have constantly spoken about the negative issues and condemned sex outside of marriage, adultery, and homosexuality. Don’t misunderstand my point—those are indeed wrong behaviors. Christians should not participate in such conduct. But the message here is not only negative. If all our children hear is no, they will not understand the proper role of sexual relationships. And if we do not teach them a proper understanding of sexual relationships, where will they learn it? We know the answer to that question. Our children learn about issues related to sexuality from television and commercials and movies. That is not healthy. We must not only state what is wrong, but we must explain what is right and glorious about sexuality in the way God created it.

James Grant Jr.

The idea that our children would learn about this topic from television, commercials, and movies sends a chill down my spine, and I’m sure it does yours too. So if you’re anything like me, there may be some uncomfortable moments this morning, but I can guarantee you one thing… I’ll more uncomfortable than you are!

God’s Good Plan

This topic was God’s idea from the very start. He’s the One who formed Adam from the dust of the ground; and He’s the One who formed Eve, and he formed them both to reflect His image, and to fit together, both physically and spiritually.

Because it’s not just about the flesh, is it? Look at that last line: “They were naked”, that’s body; “yet felt no shame”, spirit. Along with our creation story, we get a picture of what this aspect of life is meant by the Creator God to be: it’s not just physical; it’s spiritual.

But, alas, after the beauty of Genesis 2 comes the absolute destruction of chapter 3. In the Fall, in Adam and Eve’s spiritual death, every single aspect of humanity was broken, and sexuality did not escape that reality. We get this glimpse in the beginning of what it could be, what it ought to be, and then the rest of the history in the Old Testament (besides Song of Solomon, but I’m not even going to go there this morning!) is some heart-breaking, gut-wrenching combination of selfishness, power, abuse, neglect, rape.

We have hearts that want to defile and misuse every good gift that God has given. It’s kinda what we do all of them—possessions, work, food, sex—we use them and abuse them, often subconsciously, all to try to fill the void.

BTW, if you want to understand people—and people are hard to understand sometimes, aren’t we—here’s a clue that will help you: we’re all trying to get back what we’ve lost. We’re all trying to get back to the Garden. We know instinctively, deep down that’s something’s broken, not just out there, but in here, and we’re desperate to get it back. Right relationship with God, right relationship with each other, right relationship with creation itself. Fully known, utterly vulnerable, fully loved. No shame.

The lie is still the same. The same as the serpent whispered in Eve’s ear ::mark[“Did God really say?”] The answer to the question was no, BTW, he didn’t say what the Eve said He said.

We’ve got a lot of issues to deal with, and I’m not trying to deny or downplay them, we’re going to get there this morning. But first, we’ve got to understand that we are not the first generation to go through these issues, and we won’t be the last.

Let’s get back to 1 Thessalonians. We’ll start in verse 3 again because it’s been a while!

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.

1 Thessalonians 4:3–5

1. Knowing God changes everything.

A lot of professing Christians are functional atheists when it comes to their sexual lives.

Have sex like you know God.

Marshall Segal

2. Fearing God changes everything

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.

1 Thessalonians 4:6

Jesus: “If your eyes causes you to lust…“

3. The Holy Spirit changes everything.

Application

Lord, help me! 😳

Married Couples

:mark[Remember your wedding day?] Hopefully fond memories! Remember How everything was just perfect—that’s not true. I’m a pastor, weddings very rarely go perfectly, but that’s usually part of what makes them perfect… within reason. Maybe you’ve got some pictures around the house of that day—here’s a picture of ours. Yes, that’s what I look like without a beard, 14 years younger and 30 pounds lighter!

Remember when you first locked eyes as she walked down the aisle, or as you walked down the aisle toward him? Remember looking into their eyes, taking their hand, saying your vows, promising to love, honor, cherish till death do you part? And then the reception, celebrating with all your family and friends, cutting the cake.

All of that is meant to signify **covenant.

And remember driving away, how everything was the same, and yet everything was different now. And then… the wedding night, consummating the covenant.

Do you recite your vows to your spouse on a regular basis? If so, I want to hear about it, that’s actually a really cool idea. But for most of us, the answer is no, right? Hopefully you celebrate your anniversary every year! Maybe you renew your vows at 25 or 50 years.

But there’s one part of that day that husbands and wives repeat. This is the one thing you reinact more often (I hope!)

Marriage in the Kingdom of God is first and foremost a covenant. We’re partnering together for life, committed to one another, committed to stay together, committed to partner together in the Gospel. Kay and I, we’re doing our best to raise children that will grow up to worship Jesus passionately and serve Him faithfully whereever He calls them, and I know most of you are doing the same. But we’re also partners on this spiritual journey together.

One more question: how much do you care about your spouses’ spiritual wellbeing? A lot, I hope!

Remember your answer, ‘cause it’s about to get real practical real quick! And praise the Lord, I don’t have to make up something here, all we have to do is read God’s Word.

Because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.

1 Corinthians 7:2

Amen, we should have our own husband/wife, but the reasoning’s interesting, isn’t it? Paul, the hopeless romantic, here! We know he was given the gift of singleness, but he makes it obvious here!

And if you have that spouse, he has more instruction for you:

Do not deprive one another—except when you agree for a time, to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again; otherwise, Satan may tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

1 Corinthians 7:5-6

This verse always made me chuckle a little bit… if you’re so busy that you need to stop to fast, you should probably be up here teaching right now!

Be that as it may, pay careful attention to the logic that Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is giving here. Do not deprive one another—notice that it’s not about you, it’s about the other—and if you do agree to do so, don’t go too long, why? Again, the answer isn’t physical, it’s spiritual. Satan may tempt you.

There is an inversely proportional
relationship between time and temptation.

But listen, this is really, really important: this verse is talking about how things should work, how we should think about these things. And it’s entirely focused on the other person’s needs. The whole thing falls apart if you use it as a club. And God-forbid that you would ever, EVER use it as a tool to shift blame to your spouse if you fall in this area. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t have happened if you’d have…” Uh-uh.

These are wonderful, helpful verses for two people following Jesus. I wouldn’t want to face Jesus knowing I used His Word to gaslight my spouse into feeling guilty for my sin.

So there’s the verses, you apply them as the Holy Spirit leads you.

Singles/Widows

I told my sister, this is the hardest part of this message for me. I’m not single, and I’m not a widower, and I can’t imagine the pain you have been through and may still be going through today. Yesterday at the Grocery Giveaway, one of the ladies came through, and when I asked her how we could pray for her, she told me it was the five year anniversary of loosing her husband, as tears began to well up in her eyes.

So as I was saying, “Lord, what do you want me to say?” my Bible was open to that passage in 1 Corinthians 7, and literally the next verse says this:

I say to the unmarried and to widows: It is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they do not have self-control, they should marry, since it is better to marry than to burn with desire.

1 Corinthians 7:8–9

Some people, like Paul, are given the gift of singleness for their whole lives; others are given that gift after their spouse passes away; and some don’t get that gift, and that’s okay, too!

What’s absolutely necessary is to be honest with God and with yourself about whether you’re cut out for singleness or not, and then act appropriately. Sexual temptation does not have a expiration date… well, it does—yours!

Just yesterday I read an interview on the Baptist Press from the pastor of FBC Sun City, AZ. That’s a retirement community where the mininum age is 55. And do you know what he said was the biggest problem his church is facing? “Both professing Christians and nonbelievering senior adults living together with being married.” A lot of the time it’s for financial reasons, retirement, pensions. He said, “They’re choosing to cohabitate for financial reasons rather than getting married for spiritual reasons.”

Parents

We’re raising children to be adults, and we’re raising disciples to make more disciples. That’s the goal. Don’t let awkwardness get in the way of that. Dads, have you figured out some strategies over the years for how to avoid sexual temptation, and confront it like a man when it comes? I hope so.

Don’t you think your teenage son could use some of those tips/tricks?

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “My sweet baby would never…” Nonsense. They’ve got hormones coursing through their veins, but even more than that, they’ve got a sin nature in their heart. Protect their childlik innocence as long as you can, but the whole time, you’ve got to keep in mind… in the deepest part of their hearts, they’re not innocent. They’re sinners, just like you. And the only thing that’s gonna change that is the blood of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit over the course of a lifetime.

And filter your internet. For their protection and yours. Handing a kid a cellphone or iPad and unfiltered internet access is like handing them a couple of loaded AR-15s and saying, “Go play chicken in the backyard.”

Kids & Teenagers

I’m going to talk to you like you’re my younger brother or sister, because if you’ve put your faith in Jesus, that’s what you are.

Jesus died to redeem all of you, your soul and your body. Make up your mind right now to use both of them for His glory as long as you live.

It’s not always going to be easy.

People will tell you that God’s way is better; and they’re right, it is. But even more than that, I want you to know, Jesus Himself is better. He’s the prize. He’s the reward.

When you’re dealing with this stuff at school, when your friends are talking about the stuff they’ve read or seen at home on their phones, on Instagram or Snapchat and Tiktok,

Gutsy Guilt

Last thing and I’m through. One more category of people I want to talk to, and that’s people who have failed in this area in the past. So all of us, to one degree or another.

When Adam and Eve were in the Garden that first night, it says that they were naked and felt no shame. After the fall, what’s the first thing they did? Find some fig leaves to cover up with, because they were ashamed. It was the first effect of the Fall, and it continues to this day, wreaking havock in millions of lives all across the world.

I’m convinced of this: the shame of sexual sin is most often a greater tool of the enemy than the sin itself. Oh, he loves it when you fall down, don’t get me wrong. But he’s thrilled beyond belief when you stay down, and it’ll make his day if he can keep you there, kicking you in the gut over and over again, reminding you of what you did.

That moment of passion, the backseat of that car, that fling in college, that lasted a few minutes, maybe a few days. But the shame… the shame can keep a death-grip on your life for decades.

Part of that is because of the fall. Part of that is a church culture where we somehow made it a sin to struggle. Listen, temptation is not a sin. Sin is seductive—quite literally in this case.

Jesus was tempted, yet without sin, and he’s given you his Holy Spirit. I don’t know if any other area where it is more of a struggle to admit that you’re struggling.