Please turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, we will read again verses 1 through 8, which we began to look at last time. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, beginning in verse 1. Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God. For you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit. Let's pray. Father, we do thank You for Your abundant grace to us, for the precious teachings of Your Word, and all that we have in here that concerns our life and our spiritual well-being. We do praise You for that, and we ask that You would be pleased to fill us with Your Spirit now, to enable us to lay hold of the truths that are in this text here before us, to consider the applications and how these things would apply to our lives right here and now. Father, we ask that you would be gracious to us. We pray that you would forgive us for our sins and that your mercy, Lord, would rain down upon us now and that you would accomplish your will in us this day. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Paul has transitioned from the indicative, from the informative portion of this letter to the imperative, to the command portion of this letter. Last week we began to consider Paul's first order of business in the imperative, in the command section of this epistle. And we found that it deals with the significant matter of pursuing holiness of purity in our walk with Christ, and that very consciously in the face of ongoing trials and persecution or tribulation. And furthermore, Paul has narrowed his focus down to addressing that most predominant sin of sexual immorality within the context of this call to purity. Having worked through this text last week, we worked through the whole text last week. This morning, however, we will spend the bulk of our time now looking at several specific relevant applications which we can draw out of all that we've gone over. Normally, I try to include the applications. at the end of the message each week, but last week, because of the extensive nature of this message, I did not get to the applications. So, in an unusual sense, today we will just be looking at the applications. And so let's go through several applications then from this text. First brethren, and these by the way have been interspersed in some of what I said last week as well, so there's some repetition there, but I will focus more on applying these things to us this week. And so first brethren, recognize again that generally speaking, the temptation towards sin and lust will often increase during times of trial and tribulation. And so when it gets hard, when it gets difficult, when we are going through suffering, especially if it's for lengthy periods of time, generally speaking, temptation will increase at such times. Clearly, That is Paul's great concern here for the Thessalonians as they are enduring significant and ongoing trials. It is one of the main purposes, active purposes, of this letter. Paul is concerned that they do not get set back by these trials and persecutions, that they're suffering. He knows that the desire and temptation toward their former heathen practices, the desire for quick-fix relief outside of Christ, will especially become attractive the longer they have to endure under the weight of difficult trials. Brethren, I know that I can say for myself that when the Lord first saved me, and probably many of you can relate to this, there's a sense early on, not always, but probably for many of us, where you almost feel like sin is not even an option. The temptation is so minimal. You're kind of at the top of the mountain. You're so excited about your salvation. However, as you continue on in your walk with the Lord, and things get difficult, and the Lord is teaching you to walk by faith and not sight, and some of the emotions begin to dwindle down a bit, and you're being trained through that process of sanctification, suddenly some of the temptations that you thought were now gone and defeated become relevant again and begin to come upon you. And it can become a fearful thing if we're not ready to handle that. And so, brethren, like the Thessalonians, while we must always be on alert in our Christian walk, we're told that the devil is like a roaring lion. He goes lurking about, seeking whom he may devour. And so we need to be on guard at all times. And those who are complacent in a life of ease are very vulnerable to temptation. I don't want to in any way diminish that reality. However, at the same time, I believe that we must be on a higher sense of alert even during times of ongoing trial, because our proneness toward weariness will leave us vulnerable toward finding immediate relief outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. And during such times, sin, and very particularly sexual sin, will present itself as a false Christ. It will present itself as a savior of sorts, offering us some kind of relief, a resting place for the weary in the wilderness, when ultimately such a short-lived quick fix will only serve to divert us away from the blessed benefit that will most certainly come from persevering through trial and tribulation. All it will seek to do, giving into those sins, is divert us away from the great blessing that will come as we stand fast and endure during times of trial and tribulation. And so, brethren, during times of suffering, we must, with our minds, remind ourselves of the bigger picture. That is, of the sanctifying benefits which must and will come throughout trials. We must think big picture, long term. in the immediate sense. We must remember, as the author of the Hebrews reminds us, that God only chastens those whom He loves. That He scourges only the sons that He receives and the daughters that He receives. And that if we are trained by our sufferings, we will become partakers of our Father's holiness. We must remind ourselves that although we may not understand how, in the present, there are and will be sanctifying benefits attached to all of our trials which we are called to this endure. And so, to this end, brethren, we must fix our attention on what we can see by faith when we cannot see with our eyes or with our Physical senses and what we can see is what Paul tells us here in our text What we can be certain of is that God's will is our sanctification and He desires us to patiently endure and to wait upon Him. The Scriptures never tell us that you may face difficult trials in life. The Scriptures never tell us that suffering is a possibility for the Christian. It tells us that we are guaranteed trials, guaranteed sufferings and how we can prepare and benefit for those enduring through those sufferings. When we can't see anything else, we can always see that God desires us to pursue holiness and to walk in purity before Him. This we can see if we can see nothing else. That is our certainty in the midst of all uncertainty. And so, brethren, let us be on guard to this end, recognizing that we are without excuse if we cave into idolatry and sexual immorality. Again, I'm not saying that those sins are unpardonable. I will address that in the end. But I am saying what we don't want to do is find ourselves in a time of trial and give in to sin and say, well, we could not help it. It was just too difficult. God has given us everything that we need to endure, to persevere in all trial. Secondly then, brethren, by way of application, secondly, I want you to see here that according to what Paul says here and the general, of course, common sense of Scripture, that it is impossible to please God apart from keeping the commands of Christ. Now, keeping the commands of Christ does not merit salvation. It's not a means of meriting anything or earning God's favor in some way. But having been saved, having come to God freely for His grace in Christ, being saved freely in Christ, it is then our duty to please God by obeying the commands of Christ. And that is the way we please God in our walk with Christ, is by keeping His commands. You will recall that the third pillar of the Great Commission, given to the Church by Christ in Matthew 28, is to teach made and baptized disciples to do whatsoever things He has commanded us. That is the commission of the church. That is the vision and ministry of the church, or at least ought to be. To go, therefore, into all the world to make disciples. How? By preaching the gospel. And then what do we do with those made disciples? We baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But we don't leave it there. We then teach them as well to observe all the things, whatsoever things, Christ has commanded us. Well again here, Paul speaks along these same lines when he states what he states in the first three verses. Look at verse 1 through 3 again. Let's read them in chapter 4 here. He says, Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God. For you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality. So brethren, notice the connective line that the Apostle Paul is drawing here. Paul calls the Thessalonians to abound more and more in accordance with what they receive from Paul concerning how they ought to walk and to please God. They know, Paul has told them, even in the short time he was there. He gave them the message of the gospel and of salvation, but he called them to obedience to Christ. He spoke specifically to them on how they ought to walk. And so he says, Abound more and more according to the things that we spoke to you about how you ought to please God. And then he further elaborates on this by specifically identifying what Paul taught them as commands given them through the Lord Jesus. Christ commands that Paul was preaching to them. And then he attaches all of this to the foundational reality that all of this is the case because the will of God is our sanctification. You see the connection there? The reason for this is because God's will is not simply our salvation, is not simply our redemption, but also our sanctification, a completed picture of our salvation. And so once again we find that justification and forgiveness from sin are not ends in themselves. Rather, God's will is our sanctification, which calls us to please Him by keeping the commands of Christ as a progressive means unto furthering our sanctification. And we talked about what sanctification is. It is indeed dealing with remaining sin in our life, seeking to put it to death by the Spirit, But in a nutshell, what it really is by way of summary, is that we are being conformed and we are partaking in that conformity into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, there is a cooperative effort involved here, as we have already seen, right? We cannot do this alone. We need the Spirit of God, very much so. Without Him, we have no chance. But at the same time, we are called to act. We are called to be aggressive in our sanctification, to be involved in working out our salvation. We saw in verses 11 through 13, a few weeks ago, in Paul's benedictory prayer, that he says very much there, he's calling upon the Lord, as it were. He's invoking God with the hope that God will work in the Thessalonians, that He will enable them to do what they cannot do in themselves. Notice what he says again in verses 11 and following. Listen to these words. He says, Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all just as we do to you so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. And so what is he saying? May God do this work in you. I call upon God because I know He needs to do it. If He doesn't do it, you cannot change even one iota. And yet, at the same time, Paul moves on to say as well, that we are to strive unto abounding more and more, right? In one sense he's saying, may God do this, and then in verse 4 and following, he says, Finally, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk, and to please God, for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus, because this is the will of God, your sanctification. So in one vein, he's hoping that God will do this, and in another vein, he's saying, you need to do this. There's that cooperative effort that Paul is speaking about here in our sanctification. It is in keeping with what he has said in Philippians, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you to will and to do according to his good pleasure. Both are true. And brethren, what is God's good pleasure? His good pleasure is that we would listen to and obey the commands of His beloved Son. One of those profound texts of Scripture, and of course there are many, is that event that took place when the Lord Jesus Christ, right after speaking to Peter and the disciples about who He was, and that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, speaking to them as He's on His way to Jerusalem to be crucified, explaining to them what must happen. Well, shortly thereafter, we find Him atop a mountain, with James and Peter and John. And he's transfigured and his glory is exposed. He's bright like the sun. And Moses and Elijah come down and they speak with him there about his upcoming death, about what's to take place. And Peter and James and John are amazed and they want to build tabernacles there and kind of settle down. And then this cloud comes upon them and it is a representative of the glory of the Father. And the Father says to them, This is my beloved Son. Hear Him. And brethren, I think that that is the Lord God expressing His will to the church. even through those apostles, to say that we are called to hear, to obey the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one anointed and appointed by God to be our God and our King. And of course, even as the disciples were quite shaken at those moments, it is so comforting to see that the Lord Jesus Christ is the next thing that they see. And he says basically, come on, he encourages them not to be afraid. And so, brethren, all of this simply to say, or simply to make the connective link between our sanctification, God's will, and obedience to the commands of Christ. A profession of faith which is not attached to a heart that is intent on following and obeying Christ is baseless, shallow, and empty. If you desire to be saved, to be spared from hellfire, as we all would naturally desire that, but have no desire to follow Christ, to come before the One who has died for sinners and shed His blood with the desire to turn from sin, to fight that good fight for His glorious namesake, then you have come with false motives. You have come with a pretense. You have come with wrong intentions. And that is not the way of salvation. There is the desire to receive Christ as Lord, even as He is Savior. Notice, brethren, go back to chapter 2 for a moment. It's always interesting to see some of these parallels in Scripture. In chapter 2, verses 13 and following, Paul mentions those who do not please God. And he explains why they don't please God, even as in our text, he talks about how we please God by abounding more and more in obedience to the commands of Christ. Listen to verse 13 to 16, those who are troubling Paul. He says, For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcome it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. for you brethren became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus for you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen just as they did from the Judeans who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and have persecuted us and they do not please God and are contrary to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved so always as always to fill up the measure of their sins but rather has come upon them to the uttermost. Wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. So here we see, in contrast, these who are opposing the work of the gospel, opposing the Word of God, and seeking to transform the lives of sinners in need of redemption, that they do not please God. And yet we see, in contrast to chapter 4, that those who abound more and more in the commands of Christ are those who will please God, whose will is our sanctification. Well, brethren, thirdly, by way of application, thirdly then, See the connection between what Paul said about pursuing love as a means of advancing in holiness. We went over this a few weeks ago. See the connection between what Paul said about pursuing love as a means of advancing in holiness and that which he says here about not taking advantage of and defrauding your brother by pursuing his wife, by looking upon your brother's spouse in a way that is sexually impure. Here he talks about, in our text here, about possessing your own vessel and maintaining self-control so as not to fall into the gross sin of adultery. But again, brethren, if you recall what he has said earlier on in verse 12, in that prayer or that invocation of God, he says, And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you. May He do that, increase your love for one another, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness, before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints, we see here again that connection of loving others, of exercising positive love as a means of producing sanctification, of overcoming these kinds of sins, of even coveting someone else's wife. If we are intentionally, proactively, consciously, and in very specific ways seeking to increase our love toward one another, will we slip into the lustful trance of taking advantage of or defrauding our brother? If we're seeking to intentionally love them? You see, if we are walking faithfully with Christ, brethren, and if our attention is fixed more and more on doing good to and loving others, there will be no room in our hearts to covet what our brother has and to take it from him. There will be no room for jealousy or envy, because we are set on a course to bless him, to do him good, to love him. It's like what Paul says in Ephesians about putting off and putting on. We don't simply put off the negatives, put off the sinful things that are negative. We also replace those things with positives. One very clear example is in the idea of stealing. Paul says to put off stealing. But he doesn't just say to put off stealing, he says to replace that by working so that you may give to the one who is in need. You see, the positive replacement. If we're doing the positive, then we know we have ultimately fulfilled, right, not doing the negative. And that is a very common theme in Scripture. So we don't want to get caught up in just what we don't do, but we want to be proactive in doing good, in loving. And that will be ultimately the way of prospering against sin. And so again, brethren, while self-restraint is important, the silver bullet is found in not just holding back, but rather in taking the forward action of consciously striving to love and serving one another in increasing tangible ways. If you want to avoid the various negative pitfalls of sin, then plead with God to work in your heart in such a way that you will positively be living a life that is seeking to love others in very tangible and effective and conscious ways. We saw that a few weeks ago, and here we have it confirmed. Fourthly, by way of application, brethren, fourthly, If the will of God is our sanctification, and I mentioned this last week, but we see here in our text that that is the will of God. If the will of God is our sanctification, then we can be certain that we are praying in the will of God when we are praying concerning issues that are related to our sanctification. If we're praying in the direction of our sanctification, in the direction of pursuing holiness, then we can be certain that we are praying within the will of God. Now, why is this important? Well, because we're familiar with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, written by John the Apostle, and also John's words, written in the first epistle of John, which speaks of the assurance that we can have while praying that God hears us and will answer our prayers. Now I'm not saying don't pray about things that we're not certain about the will of God. So-and-so is sick, we'd like to see them better, we're praying for them to get better. No, we don't know if that's the will of God and we still should pray for that. But we ought to especially pray according to John, according to Christ, for those things that we know are within the context of God's will. And if we're praying about issues related to our sanctification and our pursuit of holiness, then we know we're praying according to His will and we know that He will answer those prayers. Brethren, we're very familiar with how the Word of Faith proponents misuse and abuse those texts. And think of praying for whatever you ask, God will give you. And they pray for all kinds of material things. Name it and claim it. We know that that is a misuse, an abuse, a gross misuse of those texts as they see no relevance for the whole concept of sanctification being the primary sphere that those prayers are to be made in. Bearing fruit is what those prayers are all about and not about material gain. Well, brethren, I want to suggest to you again that these texts are directly related to our sanctification, those two texts in John and 1 John, and to fruit-bearing, both of which are interconnected as well. Go to John 15 for a moment. And this is important, as I said, because we need to know how to answer those who will misuse these texts, and we also need to know how to use these texts, because our tendency is to say, well, You know, we don't know what the will of God is and, you know, we just know He'll answer whatever is according to His will, whatever that might be, and so we'll just pray and hope for the best. No, we can know that He hears us. We can know we are praying in His will. That's the point of the encouragement of the text. In John 15, verses 1 through 8, Jesus says these words, He says, I am the true vine and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. Now listen to verse 8, right in line with what Paul is saying in Thessalonians with sanctification. You see, brethren, this text is in a context within which we find our Lord saying that when we ask whatever we desire, it will be done for us, but it's all within the context of being a disciple of Christ, concerned about bearing fruit unto His glory. Right? That's the whole context here. These are people who are concerned about bearing fruit, about being useful for the kingdom of God, about being sanctified. They go hand in hand together. It assumes that that is the great interest and concern of the Christian. And so many people who misuse these texts have no right to these texts, because they do not understand what it is to live a new life in Christ, which is desirous to advance the kingdom of God and to bear fruit for His glory. Go to 1 John chapter 5 real quick. I don't want to beat this too much, but it is important to understand, brethren. Again, positively, I think we need to access these texts and make use of them. 1 John chapter 5, verses 14 and 15. John says this. Now this is the confidence that we have in Him. Notice that, confidence we have in Him. That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. See, this is not some random flimsy, well, I hope it's according to God's will. No, we can be confident when we pray, He says. And if we know, verse 15, if we know that He hears us whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. What is John saying here? We know, we're guaranteed that he will answer those prayers. We don't want to diminish what's said here. Sometimes as reformers, we might think we're going in dangerous ground. No, it's real in what he's saying here. You see, brethren, here we find the same idea of praying with certainty and assurance about receiving the things for which we ask. But again, it is when we pray according to the will of God, a will which we can know about, which we can understand. Well brethren, all of this simply to say that contrary to the word of faith, name it and claim it heresies, we find that such confident praying is directly related to matters of fruit bearing and sanctification. as we gather together to pray at our prayer meetings, and I'm not just limiting it to prayer meetings, privately in the homes as well, we can be certain, brethren, as we pray together in line with the will of God concerning issues related to our sanctification and fruit bearing, that God will hear those prayers. Now I'm not saying let's eliminate everything else, but I am saying what ought to be the primary focus of the prayers of the prayer meeting or of our prayer life. praying in the will of God. And so, brethren, be encouraged to know that if it is your desire to grow in grace, and to further your sanctification, unto further fruit bearing, to be useful for the kingdom of God. If you feel your weakness, you see that upon, in your own strength, that you have no hope of doing anything profitable for the kingdom of God. If you see your weakness, well brethren, we see that you can pray expectantly about these things, being certain that God hears you, and if He hears you, He will answer you. It may not be an overnight ordeal. In fact, more often than not, it is not going to be an overnight ordeal. If you want to pray for God to give you the blessing of humility, more than likely you're not going to hear the doorbell ring and go down to the door and open the door and see somebody with a package showing up with a UPS package and you open it up and boom, there's humility. It just doesn't happen like that. More than likely you're going to get run over by a few trucks Probably going to get beaten with a few bats and God is going to bring you lovingly but scourgingly to the place of humility. If you're looking for boldness in your evangelistic efforts, then get out and evangelize. Pray and do it and God will meet you there. And he will honor that and you will find it easier to be bolder in the work of the kingdom. Over time, you can be certain that God will work in you to make you more like His Son, Jesus Christ. Brethren, if it is your desire to be more Christ-like, if you look at your own soul and your own heart and you sense the distance that exists between you and Christ-likeness, which any of us can do on any given occasion, and you spill out your heart before God and say, more of Christ in me, He will answer that prayer. you can be certain. If you long to be holy, if there are specific sins which you struggle with, which plague you and lead you to think that you will never win the battle. See, this is who this is for, the wrestling Christian, the one who is suffering under the weight of sin and trial and struggle and weakness. If you think that you will never win the battle, God invites you to pray about such things, knowing that He can and will provide the grace and the power to find victory in your sanctification. How do we know this? Because His will is our sanctification. And if we pray in accordance with His will, He will give us the things we ask. And brethren, I believe that as God brings about that change, it will be so powerful that you will know that it was the Lord who did that. You will say, Lord, I didn't have any of that in my heart before. You know where I was. And here I am now doing this very thing that I never could do before, bearing fruit in this way, not tempted in these ways or overcoming temptation much more easier in these ways. Lord, it is all what you have done for me in Christ freely by your grace. You have honored my prayer. Fifthly, by way of application, fifthly, I would be remiss not to say anything about sexual immorality when that is what Paul is emphasizing most in this text. Sometimes it can be something we struggle with and say, wow, this idea of preaching on sexual sin can be tough because nobody likes to hear those words. There are young people present. I'm glad Nanny's not here. Some of those older generation people don't like to hear that. But We have to emphasize what the scriptures emphasize, and brethren, we would be really denying reality if we were to say that people in this congregation are not struggling with sexual sin. And so let us consider for a few moments, brethren, and there's two applications to this. Let us consider for a few moments the gravity of sexual sin. I want you to see the severity of it. Not to condemn you, but I do want you to get an appreciation, at least in some sense, and this is from only one angle. And when I talk about sexual sin, I'm talking about fornication, sexual sin, premarital sex, sex outside of marriage, adultery, of course, Being involved with someone sexually is not your spouse. Pornography, viewing materials of people who are doing things sexually or without clothing and so on. Homosexuality. I'm including the whole gamut here in sexual immorality. You see, brethren, the world, this is important, the world tends to view sexual sin as minor or insignificant. And the reasons are kind of logical from a world standpoint. Because sexual sin, generally, unless you're dealing with rape, generally it involves consenting adults. Well, the two people aren't hurting each other, they're consenting, so if they want to fornicate, if they want to be involved with someone of the same sex in a relationship, it's not hurting you, leave them alone, let them do that. Or, Some people also in our culture would take the looking without touching type principle. What's the harm in looking at pornographic materials online or on a magazine in your own private quarters if you're not going to touch them? You can look but you can't touch. It's not the principle of our culture. But brethren, here's the reality. We don't draw our moral principles from the world and the world's logic. See, the world will logicize anything. Well, abortion, the baby is not able to depend upon itself, and so it depends upon the mother, and so it has no right to make its own decision or to be... It's up to the mother. The mother is the one who makes that decision. Well, it's only a life after it gets to a certain point. All kinds of things that we can make excuses about abortion in our culture. We don't go by the world or our natural feelings which are corrupted by sin. We must draw our convictions in every moral sphere from Scripture, which reveal and expose to us the heart of God. Why do we have Scripture? So that we don't depend on American culture, or any culture, or our own flesh, but on what God says. And what God says about sexual sin is pretty strong. Now, I'm not going to get into every area of Scripture, but brethren, we know that in Hebrews, very clearly, it tells us that the marriage bed is undefiled. Sexual relations within the context of marriage is honored by God. It's an honorable thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's meant to be enjoyed. Every part of it. We don't take that strict, you know, priestly type of view of sexuality. Well, it's just for childbearing and that's it. No! It's supposed to be joyful. within the context of marriage. But then he goes on to say as well that fornicators will be judged. Right? There is a context in which it is unhealthy and ungodly even with two consenting adults outside of marriage. It is something that God hates. Also, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, which we read in our first scripture reading, sexual sin is highlighted and distinguished as a unique sin. It's its own category and sin in one particular evil sense. And Paul says that. Notice, he says in verses 18 to 20, he commands us and the Corinthians, he says, Sexual immorality. Run from it. Every sin that a man does is outside the body. But he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Now why is that significant? He says, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Brethren, these are sobering words, which ought to raise the bar quite significantly in recognizing how serious an offense sexual immorality is. Sexual immorality is the one sin that is also a sin against one's own body. And the significance of this is greatly magnified when we consider that our bodies are now holy vessels purchased by God in Christ, akin to the tabernacle and temple of old, within which the Holy Spirit of God dwells. We have been purchased by Christ. We have been redeemed out of the slavery and bondage of sin, but brethren, we are not now left in some neutral stagnant state. Even our physical bodies matter. We're not agnostics. We're not like the Greeks of old who say the body doesn't matter, the Epicureans. We have been transferred into the kingdom of light where we now belong, joyfully belong to Christ. Imagine brethren, here's the picture that God wants us to get in Corinthians. Imagine a priest of old going into the temple, into the holy place and sleeping with a prostitute right there. You would say that's unheard of. You wouldn't do that with your own wife in the temple, let alone a prostitute. In 1 Samuel chapter 2, one of the great sins of Hophni and Phinehas was not only that they were taking from God sacrifices and eating the fat they weren't supposed to eat, but they were sleeping with women, the women who were by the gates. They were involved with sexual immorality, defiling God's temple. Well, brethren, that is a picture that God wants us to get across with what we do when we are involved with sexual sin, how we sin against our own body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Brethren, if our bodies are the temple of God, we ought to recognize the severity of sexual immorality and how it defiles that temple. You never entertain lust without the presence of the Holy Spirit within you. Look at verses 7 and 8 again of our text in 1 Thessalonians, and then I'm going to get into the second part of this application. Notice he reiterates here in less specific terms, more general, but he says, for God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit. You see the connection to Corinthians there, when Paul says, he's not just saying nice words. By the way, he's given us this gift of the Holy Spirit. God has done such a wonderful thing for you, and that ought to motivate you to not do this, and that's true, but he wants us to know that this is the Holy Spirit that God has given us to indwell us, so that our bodies would be purified and be sanctified, so that we would look at sexual sin and sexual morality of every kind, and we would be, we would be, look at it in such a way that we are repulsed by it. Well, brethren, let's then move on to our sixth application. Thanks be unto God that sexual immorality is not the unpardonable sin. Is it very serious? Absolutely. Ought we to flee from it, like Joseph, at all costs? Ought our redemption in Christ, the hallowing of our bodies and becoming as purchased possessions, and the reality of the Holy Spirit's indwelling to serve as sobering deterrence against sexual morality? Absolutely! We must fight the good fight in these regards. We must take aim against the flesh. And yet, brethren, thanks be unto God that there is grace in Christ. How many of us in this room, in some way, if not in the mind, in some way, have not fallen in this kind of sin? There is attainable forgiveness for even such gross violations of God's law as this. Christ shed blood, yet prevails. There may be temporal consequences in this life at times, but the love of Christ yet purges us. His untarnished vessel is yet able to hallow our tarnished vessels. So brethren, whatever you've done in the past, whatever you struggle with in the present, Your righteousness is always in Christ. This is an encouragement for those who have fallen into some form of sexual sin, even repeatedly. You don't have to live in yesterday's guilt if you presently live in the grace of Christ. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. I think of the high dive at the pool and just jumping up and doing flips and landing into that blood. How we need that, brethren. If you confess your sins in Christ, God is faithful and just to forgive you for your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. That is the joy that we have that we can serve God effectively today, brethren, regardless of the sins that we've fallen into yesterday. But brethren, I tell you these things so that you don't sin, as John says. It's a motivation not to put down the armor and say, okay, great, I'm forgiven, I don't have to be concerned about sexual sin because Christ's blood abounds. Oh, don't have that kind of a mindset. Let it motivate you all the more to say the love of Christ is so great toward me that I am forgiven, I am washed again today, and I can take aim to put this sin to death by His free grace. That's the joy. of a salvation that is completely and totally based upon Christ. And then lastly, by way of application, if the will of God is the sanctification, is the purifying and the hallowing of redeemed sinners, If that is God's will, the Creator of heaven and earth and all things, His will for this creation, if it centers not upon economic life, not upon the American dream, not upon prosperity in this world and getting the top of the ladder, if it centers upon redeeming a fallen people, then unbeliever, those of you who are outside of Christ, recognize that you are presently living outside of God's unchangeable righteous divine will. You're walking contrary to the will of your Creator. And if you die in such a lost, sinful, unholy condition, you will perish forever and ever in hell. You will be condemned and judged for your sins, every last one of them. You need to be holy. Your God is holy. This is the Creator that we serve. It's His very nature. God didn't choose holiness as an option. Say, you know what, I'm going to make a creation and I'll be holy with it. He is holy. He is righteous. He is too pure to look upon sin. You need to be holy, and that holiness that you need needs to be perfect. And you can only obtain that perfect holiness if you come to Jesus Christ for it. See, I'm not saying here, which would be terrible news, you need to live a perfect and righteous life, and if you have not done it all up to this day, you have no hope of being saved. That is, in right, what we deserve. But God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, in the world because we cannot live the kind of life that meets God's holy, righteous standard, that is just and righteous. We are sinful at the core. We live sinful lives. We violate His law daily. But there is hope for you in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into this world, who became a man, who suffered and died on behalf of sinners, and rose again three days later victoriously, sending out good news to this world that exists to the present day that all who come to Him in truth will be forgiven and received by God, will be cleansed of all their sins. Mankind is defiled from birth. Your very nature is contaminated through and through and so you cannot please God in your natural state. You must be born again. You must receive all of the benefits of the once dead and now risen Christ who came into this world for the very purpose of saving and sanctifying sinners. And so friends, I say to those of you who are unsaved, flee to Christ. Come to Him. Don't let another day, another moment go by that you stand unprotected outside of Christ. Can you imagine being in the middle of a battlefield and all kinds of weaponry is being fired all over the place and guns and tanks and all these things and there's bombs in the ground and you're not protected, you're not shielded and you can be. That's what it's like, but even worse if you're in your sin and outside of Jesus Christ. But I appeal to you to come to Christ, pray, call upon the name of the Lord and be saved, that He might sanctify you and cleanse you and forgive you and that you would experience the love of God, which is more precious. than all of this world's goods combined. May God give you the grace to find forgiveness, righteousness, salvation, redemption, adoption in Christ. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you so much for your glory, which you reveal to us in creation, but also in your word. Things that we cannot see in creation because of our sin. You reveal to us so clearly about Your righteous character. And Lord, we see that how wicked the sin of impurity and sexual immorality is in Your sight. And we know, Lord, that if we're honest, even when we're not in times of trial, Lord, that that is a temptation that we struggle with at times. And Lord, we do ask for Your grace to be upon us. We do pray, Lord, that we would take action to restrain ourselves, to have self-discipline and self-control against this sin, Lord, but even above all that we would see the love of Christ as so precious that we would hate and be repulsed by these wicked sins. Father, help us to be a people that abound more and more in exercising love toward one another. Help us to be so positive in our keeping of the law, intentional on loving others that we would not even dream of the negative things of taking a brother's spouse or taking from our brother in any sense. Father, we do pray that you would be gracious to us, that you would forgive us for our sins. We are an unworthy people and may we see your continued grace toward us as a primary motivation for us to exercise grace toward others. May there not be a single person in this world, Father, that we could look upon and see them without hope in the gospel of Christ. And Father, we pray for those this morning who don't know you today. Lord, young and old alike, we ask that this would be the day of salvation, that they would not put it off, but that they would cry out to you and be certain that they are found in Christ, Lord, even before this day, this hour ends. And we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen.