Good morning. We're going to open this morning's services with that hymn Joy was just playing, There is a Fountain. It's number 222 in your hardback hymnal, and we'll stand and sing it together. There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains Lose all their guilty stains Lose all their guilty stains And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day. And there may I, though vile as he, Wash all my sins away, Wash all my sins away, Wash all my sins away. And there may I, though vile as He, Wash all my sins away. Dear dying lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power. Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. Be safe to sin no more, be safe to sin no more. Till all the ransomed Church of God be safe to sin no more. E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream, Thy flowing wounds supply. Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die. and shall be till I die, and shall be till I die. Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die. This poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave. Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. I'll sing my power to save. I'll sing my power to save. Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing my power to save. Be seated, please. What a day that'll be when we'll be able to sing in a sweeter, nobler song, His power to save. I pray the Lord will be pleased to bless us with His salvation this morning. We're going to be in 1 Thessalonians 4, continuing our study in this wonderful portion of God's holy word. I pray the Lord will make it profitable to us. Let's ask the Lord's blessings before we begin. Our merciful Heavenly Father, we rejoice in your power to save Lord, we are unable to save ourselves. We are unable to atone for our sins, to satisfy your justice, unable to establish a righteousness before thee that would be pleasing in thy sight. What hope and comfort we have in knowing that that is exactly what thy dear son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did for us. We pray that your Holy Spirit would would cause him to be lifted up, that our hearts and eyes would be drawn to him, that we would be enabled by your grace to set our affections on him, and that we might rest all the hope of our salvation in his glorious person and in his accomplished work. We ask it in his name. Amen. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. I've titled this message, The Believer and Sin. And I know that every child of God has a a very keen interest in that subject. For every believer sees themselves as a sinner saved by God's grace. And our Lord has spoken words of hope and comfort to us and words of correction and rebuke, particularly in the beginning of this passage There's an article in your bulletin that's titled, Henry Mahan wrote it years ago, and it's titled The Believer's Attitude Towards Sin. And I want to try to develop the four points that he made in that article in the second part of this message. But we'll read the first eight verses of this passage and then seek the Lord's help in giving us some understanding as to what the believer's life is in his relationship to sin. Now, I remind you once again that Paul had only been in Thessalonica for three weeks. And so now he's writing back to this predominantly Gentile church who would have come out of a very pagan culture, a culture particularly that's much like our culture in that it is extremely sexually promiscuous. They have no sense of morality. when it comes to that subject. And so these believers now have been converted. They've come to Christ and Paul's reminding them of the things that he told them when he was there with them, particularly in relationship to this subject. In verse one of chapter four, he says, furthermore, Then we beseech thee, now that word beseech means we plead with thee, we ask thee, we're coming beside you brethren and we exhort you, we're comforting you, So these words are pleading words and these words are comforting words and I hope they will be that to us. I hope that we will hear them from the Lord as pleading words and as words of comfort. Words of instruction and words of comfort. We beseech you, brethren, He addresses them as believers and we exhort you by the Lord Jesus. None of these things can be understood or believed apart from our union with Christ. Everything is to be seen in light of him. that as you have received of us, how you ought to walk. Now, the important thing to understand here is this word walk. He's giving them instructions on how they ought to live their lives. He's not particularly talking about their sinless position in Christ before God. That's already been established. Now he's instructing them and comforting them on the manner of life in which they should live, the way in which they should walk. And to please God. So you would abound more and more. Might you grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And might you abound in these things. that the Lord has instructed us in. So he's telling them, this is God's will. These are the things I told you. These are the things that please God. These are the things that are good for you. And they are contrary. They're contrary to everything that your culture tells you. For you know what commandments we gave you by Jesus Christ. We gave you these instructions. When you believe the gospel, we instructed you in the things of God. These are people that prior to Paul coming to town would have had no access to the law of God or to the word of God. though the moral law was written on their hearts even as it is written on the hearts of all men and though men see their conscience and though men call good evil and they call evil good, the law of God is still written on their hearts and they know in their heart of hearts what is pleasing to God and what's not pleasing to God. So here the Lord is instructing his children, he's warning his children as a parent would warn their child of the things of this world and the things that are good for them and the things that are right and things that are wrong and not to be conformed. That's what Paul said in Romans chapter 12, be not conformed to the image of this world, but be you rather transformed by the renewing of your mind in Christ Jesus that you might be able to prove what is that good and acceptable and pleasing will of God. So the things of God are contrary to the things of the world. And believers want to know, well, what does God say? What's God say? Because that's, I know is what's right and that's what's good and that's what's holy and that's what I need. Verse three, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication. All sexual activity outside of marriage, the scripture calls fornication. Abstain from it. The Lord's saying, you know, don't do it. It's a sin against the body, a sin against God. It's going to bring difficult things into your life. Every one of you should know how to possess his vessel, in sanctified vessel, there's the body, in sanctification and honor. And we're gonna look at this subject of sanctification in a little more detail in a moment, but let's just read these verses together. Not in the lust of concupiscence, unrestrained passion, just following the will of the flesh and the desires of the flesh, that's concupiscence. Even as the Gentiles, that's where you came from, which know not God. They don't know God, you do. They have a different rule. You have a different Lord. different desires. That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any manner. When I first read this passage, I mean I read it before, but in preparation for this message I thought, well he's given us two things. Number one, abstain from fornication. Number two, don't defraud your brother. But then in further study I understood better that it's the same subject or being unfaithful is to defraud your brother. He's not talking about, obviously, we ought to be honest in our dealings with men and be, you know, not be greedy and be upfront and, you know, not be cheats and liars and business and whatever else. But that's not what he's talking about here. He's talking about defrauding another man Sexually speaking, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother. Notice the word any is in italics. It doesn't belong there. Really, a better word, if you're going to insert a word there, would be this, not any. Defraud your brother in this matter. Make sure that this matter is understood and followed. You remember the spirit in which this is given is exhortation, it's encouragement, it's beseeching, it's a father speaking to his children and warning them about the dangers that come with this sort of thing. Verse six, that no man go beyond to fraud his brother in this manner. because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as you have also, as we also have forewarned you and testified. We told you these things when we were there. But Paul, understanding the culture of the day, saw the importance of reinforcing this particular sin, this particular thing, this particular problem that would have been easy for a believer to fall into if not if not properly taught. For God has not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness. That's the same word. We've seen the word sanctification twice already in this passage and this word holiness is that word, is to be set apart. He therefore that despiseth that disagrees with this, that has an objection to this clear instruction from God, is not disagreeing with man, he's disagreeing with God. He's taking up with God. There are those who would hear this and they would say, well, that's not important or that's putting me under the law or something to that effect. He'd take that up with God. That's what he's saying. who hath also given us his Holy Spirit. Romans chapter eight says, if man has not the Spirit of God, he's none of his. If we have the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Apostle Paul to write these words is inspiring us right now to believe them, to rejoice in them, to say amen to them. And if we have any other response to the Word of God than that, it is only evidence that we don't have the Spirit of God. We have the Spirit of God, we just, we say amen. Amen, Lord, you're right. You're right. Sanctification is brought up a couple of times in this passage of scripture. And there are those who believe that sanctification is a process by which a believer becomes more and more holy. And we don't believe that. Do we believe that the people of God, the children of God, by the grace of God and by the spirit of God and through the word of God, grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ? Yes. Yes, we do. But a believer's growth is like a tree. In that the higher it reaches into heavens, the deeper the roots go into the ground. And so Do we desire more than anything else for the Lord to restrain our flesh? We know that before God, the Lord made it clear when he said, you've heard that it said that if a man If a man takes his brother's wife, he's guilty of adultery. But I say unto you, if a man lusteth in his heart toward a woman, he's already committed. God judges the heart. Man looks at the outward appearance. God's looking at the heart. So these sins of the heart, we all know what they are. And we hope and pray and desire more than anything that they not manifest themselves in the flesh. but just because the Lord restrains the sins of the heart from being carried out in the flesh doesn't make us more holy. You see, those who believe in progressive sanctification, they mind the things of the flesh. And so they're making judgments on holiness based on what they see. And the child of God, as he grows in grace, the roots are growing deeper and he's seeing more and more of the pride and the unbelief and the worldliness and the sin of the heart. That's where the sin really is. It's in the heart. Those who teach progressive sanctification ultimately use the law to measure and monitor one's progress in holiness. And they end up putting you back under the law. Read the book of Galatians. The whole book of Galatians, Paul is writing against progressive sanctification. He's writing against it. You that are under grace, are you gonna go back to the law? You're gonna go back to the law? No. No. If there's any restraining of the flesh, it's not gonna be done by the law. The strength of sin is the law. You put a man under the law and all it does is inspire sin. It doesn't restrain it. The restraint for sin is the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And though it be restrained in the flesh, And though we grow in grace, we see more and more. I've listened recently to some men, some Calvinist. I think I mentioned this to y'all a couple of weeks ago. I listened to five messages by five of the most popular preachers in America, and they're all Calvinist. And they, They titled their message, What is the Gospel? And none of them preached the gospel. But one thing that is evident in these camps is the pride, the arrogance. You see, what they do is they have a hierarchy of holiness and they separate the clergy from the laity and they use the law to beat one another up. Progressive sanctification is living purgatory. That's what it is. And every religion has a form of purgatory. I mentioned this Wednesday night, the Catholic Church have a very elaborate form of purgatory. You know, you die with venial sins still on your heart. You get to go to this place where you can suffer for a while and atone for your sins before you're allowed into heaven. But you know, those who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, you know that you've heard it. The church is gonna get raptured out of the world, and then there's gonna be seven years of tribulation, and where anybody who professes Christ is gonna be killed for their faith, and then after that will come the second coming of Christ and the thousand year reign. That's all, what is that? It's purgatory. In case you weren't saved when the church is raptured, you can get saved during the tribulation by dying for the faith. And then you can get to go see everybody. And the Reformed Baptists have progressive sanctification, which is nothing more than living purgatory, where everybody is monitored and motivated by the law and measured by the law to see where they stand in this. And you get the assurance of your salvation by looking to your obedience. That's where you get the assurance of your salvation, to see how well you're doing. What's happened in progressive sanctification of men has replaced the outward evidence of sin with a much more sinister form of self-righteousness and pride and arrogance. And the sin has actually become worse. So that the strength of sin is the law. Is the law. If the Lord enables a believer by his grace to be restrained from any acts of sin that he might have considered in his heart, that believer knows that the Lord gets all the glory. That he was the one who kept me. He was the one that restrained me. There can't be There can't be any pride in faith. There can't be any self-righteousness in faith. Faith by its very definition is the absence of such things. And so, the child of God wants to be restrained from these things. He wants to be kept from them. And he prays to be. And when he is, He knows that it was the Lord working in him, causing him to will and to do after God's own pleasure. He takes no pride in what he hasn't done because he sees in his heart, he sees in his heart the evidences of sin and that he has the potential to do anything that the Lord would not keep him from. Is that not true? So when the Lord's speaking of sanctification, let us This word sanctification is used in the Bible in two senses. Number one sense it's used as something that is set apart for the service of God. The firstborn in the Old Testament was sanctified and set apart, belonged to the Lord. The tabernacle, the temple, was sanctified. The utensils of worship, the vessels of worship, were sanctified. They were set apart for for holy purposes, for the purpose of worship and service to God. And in that sense, the child of God has been set apart. And I'm sure that's what the Lord is referring to here in our text. Even your sanctification, you've been set apart. Your body's not your own. It belongs to the Lord. It's a, know you not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? That's what he's saying. Child of God, you've been set apart. Don't forget that. The second meaning of the word sanctification means to make something pure and holy that was not pure and holy. make something sinless that was prior not sinless. And by virtue of our union with Christ and being placed in Christ, we have a holiness, a righteousness before God. First Corinthians chapter one, verse 21, God has made him to be unto us our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. So we have a holiness in Christ. In John chapter 17, the Lord Jesus said, Father, I sanctify myself. Now was the Lord Jesus saying, Father, I'm making myself holy because I wasn't holy before? No, he's saying, I'm setting myself apart as the redeemer. of my people. And so here's the two meanings of that word. In Jude verse 1, the scripture says that we are sanctified by God the Father. We are set apart by the Father. We are made holy in election by the Father. In Ephesians chapter 5 the scripture says that the Lord Jesus Christ might sanctify us unto himself by the washing of water by the word and so the Lord Jesus Christ sets us apart and makes us holy in Christ in himself and in And in 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, God has chosen you through the sanctification of the Spirit. So God the Father sanctified us in election, God the Son has sanctified us in redemption, and God the Holy Spirit has sanctified us in regeneration. And the Lord is reminding us that we've been set apart for God's glory and God's service. And we've been made holy in Christ. And this is the motivation for, how does the Lord say it in our text? To know how to possess our vessel. Not just in fornication, but in all things. the Lord enable us to possess our vessel in a way that would be honoring to him, understanding that our sanctification is all of God. It's all of God. And this sanctification is from beginning to end. He that began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Jesus Christ. So though there are many experiences that the believer has where he loses sight of Christ and loses possession of his vessel, the Lord never leaves him to himself. He's pleased to correct him and to establish him, to keep him. The Lord said, they shall revive as the corn and grow as the vine. So, The Lord grows us in his grace and revives us when we fall. How thankful we are for that. What is the believer's attitude towards sin? Well, first and foremost, most important, is that the Lord Jesus Christ has put away our sin. that we've been sanctified in him, that we stand, we are able to come with boldness before the throne of grace, knowing that our sin has been separated from us as far as the east is from the west and that God remembers it no more. He's buried it in the depths of the sea. Christ put them away by the sacrifice of himself. Once in the end of the world, he has put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself. He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. He offered himself without spot to God, and God saw the travail of his soul, and God was satisfied. He paid the full price for redemption and all the sins of all of God's elect were put away once and for all. Oh, we can come, we can come into the very presence of God knowing that our iniquity is not marked by God. Here's our boldness in the day of judgment that as he is, so are we in this world. If my sin has not been put away, then I have no hope of coming into the presence of a holy God. There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, those that have been sanctified in him. Those had been set apart in him. That's our attitude towards sin. This is our view of sin, my sin. If I'm going to have any ability to come before God, I've got to look in faith to Christ and know that he was successful. He was successful in putting away my sin. And that I'm accepted in the beloved. That's my attitude toward my sin, all my sin. The sin that has broken out in bad behavior and the sin that remains secret in my heart, it's all been put away. All been put away. Second thing we see about our sin is that it has infected every part of our being. Apart from being sanctified in Christ, apart from being made holy in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have no righteousness. Because everything that I do is infected with my sin. Man at his very best state is altogether vanity. Every thought that I have, every word that I speak, everything that I do, oh brethren, There's enough sin, and I say this shamefully, but there's enough sin in what I'm doing right now, trying to preach the gospel, to send me to hell. It's true, I know that's true. I wish it wasn't, but it is. I can't escape it. It's ever before me. When I would do good, evil is ever present with me. We must look outside of ourselves if we're going to find any hope of salvation. If God judges us on the best thing we've done, we'll be condemned for it. And we grieve over that. We do. This is the humbling effect of the gospel, isn't it? You see, if all we saw that we are in Christ without sin, there might be reason for pride. But the second thing about the truth of our sin is that it's ever before us. What a humbling thing that is. As we relate to one another and as we come before the throne of grace, We're always a sinner and always seeing ourselves in need of mercy. As the light of the gospel brightens, it reveals more and more the dark recesses of our heart. And as our love for Christ grows, our hatred for our sin grows. We can't excuse our sin, we can't justify it, we can't find anyone to blame for it. We can say with our brother Job, I am vile. When the Lord Jesus is pleased to reveal his glory, we see like Daniel, my comeliness, my beauty, my strength has turned into corruption. We find ourselves before the throne where the Lord Jesus is high and lifted up and the seraphim are crying, holy, holy, holy, and we cry with a brother, Isaiah, Lord, woe is me, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean, there's no one clean around me. The stars are not clean in his sight. They're not pure in his sight. How much more, he that is born of woman, speaking lies from the womb. Here's our view of sin. This is our attitude towards sin. We say with Brother Paul, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus I am free. So we see that our sin's been completely put away in Christ and we see that the evidence of it is ever with us. Long as we're in this body, how long is it gonna last until this body goes back to where it came from? That's how long it's gonna last. And there is a very real sense in which the more we grow in grace and the more God enables us by his grace to restrain these kind of sins that the Lord is warning us of, that we become more and more sinful in our own minds, in our own hearts, and that we see more and more of the tentacles of it wrapping around everything. Thirdly, the third point about our attitude towards sin is that we must forgive. We must forgive. If we believe ourselves to be the chief of all sinners, if we believe that no one in this world has been given more light and more grace, to whom much is given, much is required, We can't look down our self-righteous nose at people that are doing things that we're not doing and think, well, we're more righteous than they are. We believe that no one has been given more grace and more light and more truth and more love and more opportunity than we've been given and remain as unbelieving as we are. How can we stand in judgment of another? The Lord taught us that. He said, Lord, forgive us our trespasses, even as we forgive those who trespass against me. You see, there's a correlation, isn't there? Between the two. I love the way Brother Henry said it in the article that you have there in your bulletin. He said, to not be able to forgive is to forfeit your right to ask for forgiveness. I love that. That's perfect. That ties the two together. To not be able to forgive is to forfeit your right to ask for forgiveness. If you're gonna be in a position to ask God for forgiveness, you've got to be able to forgive. The Lord gave us a parable in Matthew chapter 18 about that, about the king who had a servant who owed him 10,000 talents. Now, I did a little calculating. My calculations are right. This servant owed his master $227 million, 10,000 talents. A talent was a certain weight of gold in today's economy. He went to his master and he begged for forgiveness. The master wrote off his debt. That servant then turns to one of his servant, and the Bible says that that second servant owed the first servant 100 pence, which is about $300. And the first servant refused to forgive his servant. And his servant begged for forgiveness. and he refused to forgive. And the master found out about it. And the prison keepers came and locked up the first servant. And the scripture says he was tormented by the prison keepers until he paid the full debt. Now that's what an unforgiving spirit will do. It'll leave you tormented by the prison keepers. And what do we do when we're tormented with an unforgiving spirit? We try to find in our hearts the ability to forgive. And we try to drum up enough virtue and enough grace to be able to forgive someone else. And all of our concentration is on the person that we're trying to forgive and on the offense that they've given to us. Don't do that. Don't do that. You might find some relief from the prison keepers for just a little while. But you're gonna end up back in prison. Why? Because the only way to forgive is to look to Christ and see how much he's forgiven you. If you do that, forgiveness will be easy. Forgiveness will be easy. One who cannot forgive has no understanding of how much God has forgiven them. A debt you could not pay. There's our, what is our attitude towards sin? It's all gone, covered by the blood, put away. It's ever present with me, always in need of grace. And where sin abounds, grace does much more bound. I must be a forgiving person. In the light of what God has done for me, I have no option but to forgive. And fourthly, I long for that day when sin will be no more in me, my brother, and my neighbor. Oh, there's two things about heaven, brethren, that's going to make heaven heaven. Number one, we're going to see him as he is. Number two, we're going to be made like him. Anybody talks about heaven otherwise doesn't understand what we have to look forward to. Oh, they talk about the golden streets, they talk about seeing mama in heaven, and they talk about this and that. Those, that's what makes heaven heaven. See him as he is in the full splendor of his glory. We look through glass darkly now, but then face to face. Number two, to be made like Him. What does that mean? It means that we're gonna be without sin, no memory of sin, no experience with sin. Oh, what's that gonna be like? I don't know. I don't know, but I believe it and I look forward to it. What a day it'll be when sin will be no more, no more. Let us receive, in grace and in faith, the instructions of God's Word on how to walk in this world in our sanctification. Amen? All right, let's take a break. Yeah.