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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > God's will is that we abstain from all sexual immorality | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Hymn 3:1-2 Psalm 119:1-3 Psalm 128 Hymn 1 Hymn 84 Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 6 Catechism lesson and text: Lord's Day 41 and 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
It’s hard not to begin a sermon related to the Seventh Commandment without stating the obvious. We live in an age of sexual license. That means just about anything goes. Casual hook-ups arranged through apps like Tinder are considered normal. Fewer people get married – most just choose to cohabit. When people do get married, their marriages don’t tend to last very long. The average marriage in Australia lasts 13 years, with most people getting separated already at the 9 year mark. Many of these marriage breakdowns are caused by the infidelity of one or both spouses.
We would be kidding ourselves if we thought all this sexual license doesn’t happen in the church. We know what the Bible teaches. We know what the Seventh Commandment says. But we also know that few people seem committed to really keeping it. And so maybe we just expect that church-going people are going to be sexually immoral, especially when they’re young. And we’ll just look the other way and pretend it doesn’t happen. Or perhaps we’ll provide them with the means so they don’t get pregnant and embarrass themselves or us. Keep the Seventh Commandment, but wink-wink, nudge-nudge, we know you won’t.
The church in Thessalonica faced a world of sexual license too. As new Christians, they’d been excited and conscientious about following God’s ways when it comes to this. In our passage from 1 Thessalonians, Paul encourages them to keep on going in this direction. These words convict and encourage us too. If we’ve been committed to sexual integrity, God says: keep going, do it more and more. If we haven’t been committed, if we’ve given into sexual license or done the wink-wink, nudge-nudge routine, God calls us to turn away from that and see how it doesn’t fit with being a Christian.
So I preach to you God’s Word this afternoon. I’ve summarized our passage like this: God’s will is that we abstain from all sexual immorality.
We’ll learn how:
- The command comes in and through the Lord Jesus
- The call is to holiness
- The consequence of disobedience is grave
Our Catechism gives us teaching on the Seventh Commandment in the context of a response to what Christ has done for our salvation. All the Ten Commandments are covered under the heading of “Our Thankfulness.” Particularly, it’s thankfulness for the gift of salvation in Jesus. When you keep that in the front of your mind, it’s impossible to approach Lord’s Day 41 in a legalistic way, as if this is somehow about measuring up for God.
The passage we’re looking at in 1 Thessalonians has a similar safe-guard against legalism. God’s exhortation to the Thessalonians about sexual integrity is framed with reference to the Lord Jesus. If you want to know how to live your life in a way that’s pleasing to God, you’ve got to have your eyes first of all on the Lord Jesus. The instructions that Paul gave came “through the Lord Jesus.”
Here the focus is particularly on the teaching Paul gave previously that Christians ought to abstain from sexual immorality. Let’s be clear about what that means. Our Catechism uses the word “unchastity.” It speaks of unchaste acts, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever may entice us to unchastity. But you could substitute the word “sexual immorality” from our passage in 1 Thessalonians – it means the same thing. It refers to any way of breaking the Seventh Commandment.
There are two broad categories of sins against the Seventh Commandment. The first is adultery. Adultery is breaking the bonds of marriage, usually through sexual intimacy with someone you’re not married to, but who is married to someone else. Adultery is cheating, marital infidelity. But the Lord Jesus explains in the Sermon on the Mount that it extends to the lusts of our hearts. He said that if you look at a woman other than your wife with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery with her. That equally applies to women with respect to men, as well as to same-sex attraction. No one is to have sexual desire for anyone other than a spouse. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “You can look, but don’t touch.” Another wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Everybody looks, right? But our Master says, “If you’re looking with lust, you’re an adulterer.” If we consider ourselves to be Christians, we have to take our Lord Jesus seriously about this.
The second broad category of sin against the Seventh Commandment is fornication. Fornication refers to all sexual activity apart from a marriage relationship. If you’re doing any kind of sexual activity with someone before you’re married to them, you’re fornicating. You’re committing sin against the Seventh Commandment. Without going into too much detail, let me stress that it’s any kind of sexual activity. There’s no wiggle room for anyone to rationalize their way out of it.
So when Paul writes in verse 3 that Christians are to “abstain from sexual immorality,” he means to say that we’re to avoid any form of adultery and any form of fornication. Any and every form of sexual transgression is to be off limits for a follower of Jesus. Notice that there are no exceptions. He doesn’t say, “abstain from sexual immorality” unless you’re less than 25 years old, or something like that. Everyone in the church, young and old, if they consider themselves to be Christians, everyone is to follow this teaching.
It’s because this teaching comes “in the Lord Jesus” as it says in verse 1 and “through the Lord Jesus” as it says in verse 2. That can’t be glossed over. This moral teaching about abstaining from sexual immorality came through the lens of the Lord Jesus. It was brought to the Thessalonian Christians in the context of who Christ is and what he did.
You can imagine for a moment Paul there in Thessalonica teaching those new disciples. We’re listening in as he teaches them. He says, “Many of you have lived in the world as worldly people. You have baggage. You have committed fornication and adultery before you knew the Lord Jesus. But now you’ve heard the gospel and believed it. You know that your past sins are all forgiven because of what he did on the cross in your place. Jesus paid for your sins. He took the hell and wrath you deserve. You’re now at peace with God because of Christ.” You can imagine that would be a relief to hear if you were a new believer who had committed sexual sin before being a Christian or maybe even after. There is grace at the cross for everyone who has sinned in these ways. It was true then and it’s true now.
But then Paul goes on and he says, “But the good news gets even better, loved ones. The Lord Jesus also lived a perfect life in your place. He always kept the Seventh Commandment. He never fornicated, he never committed adultery. To the contrary, he has always been faithful to his bride, to the Church. That’s all for you. When you trust in Jesus, his obedience is credited to your account before God. That means God looks at you through him and sees someone perfectly obedient to the Seventh Commandment as well.” If you were in the Thessalonian congregation listening to Paul say that, wouldn’t you be encouraged? I know I would.
He goes on and says, “Now you are in Christ Jesus. You are united to him by God’s grace through the Holy Spirit. He is the vine and you are the branches. He is the Master and you are his disciples. All that means your life is supposed to more and more look like his. Look to Jesus and you’ll see the pattern for your obedience to God in response to your salvation. This is how you walk now and please God. You’ve been doing it already. Now keep on doing it more and more.” You see, that’s how this instruction comes in and through the Lord Jesus. It’s in response to his salvation and it’s carried out in union with him.
What we have in this passage is God’s will in Christ Jesus for our sanctification. To remind you, sanctification is the process of growing in holiness. This whole passage is a call to holiness. Holiness is mentioned three times. The word “sanctification” in verse 3 can also be translated as “holiness.” Then the same word also appears in verses 4 and 7. Holiness is important here.
To be holy means to be set apart. God says in 1 Peter 1:16, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” No one is holy like God is. God is completely set apart from sin and evil. But as his children we’re called to be like he is. Like he has nothing to do with sin, we’re to have nothing to do with sin. We’re to strive for that in our lives.
Here in this passage, we’re told that we’re to be holy with regard to sexuality. The world around us has its way of behaving. Verse 5 speaks of the “passion of lust” of the Gentiles. Unbelievers see a beautiful person and they’re right away thinking of a way to get what they want from that person. They’re driven by their lusts. So they go from one sexual partner to another with no second thoughts. Every weekend is someone new. They do this because they don’t know God. That means they don’t have a healthy, friendly relationship with him. They’re not at peace with God, so this is the way they live.
But a Christian does know God. Therefore a Christian is to be set apart from the world, different to the world. That “passion of lust” can’t be our story. Instead, if we’re Christians we should be controlling our own bodies with holiness and honour. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it matters what we do with our bodies, also when it comes to our sexuality. We can’t just do whatever we want. We have to learn control over our lusts and desires. We have to learn to say ‘no’ to them. We have to learn that we can’t just let ourselves go and do whatever thought pops into our mind. We learn all this by first of all praying for the help of the Holy Spirit to do it. We don’t have the power in ourselves, but the Holy Spirit does. So we begin with prayer. We further learn this by reminding ourselves of God’s will for our lives from his Word. Last of all when our minds are clear, before we’re faced with temptation, we commit ourselves to doing the right thing. Doing these things, over time we will begin to move in the right direction. When it comes to our bodies and our sexuality, there has to be holiness before God and an honouring of God. We have to apply ourselves to it.
Sometimes you’ll hear about these people who call themselves sex-positive Christians. They think that churches like ours are way too negative about sexuality. There are too many restrictions, they say. They say God wants us to celebrate and enjoy our sexuality. That’s certainly true, but within the bounds God has given in the Bible. When you remove it from the marriage context, sexuality comes with all kinds of problems. Its only natural and rightful place is in marriage – when it’s there and there only, we’re positive about it 100%. The call here is to holiness and self-control and when that call is heeded, things are moving in the right direction and it’s for our good, for our flourishing.
In verse 6, there’s one more element to this call to holiness. Sexual sin often involves transgression and wrong against other people. Naturally, we think of the harm caused by cheating and adultery. You’re hurting the other person’s spouse by doing this, regardless of how healthy or unhealthy their relationship might be. Just because someone is unhappy in their marriage or has an unhealthy or even abusive marriage, that doesn’t give you a green light to commit adultery with them. There’s no justification for that. It’s still adultery and it’s still wicked.
But there’s another angle to this. It has to do with the Lord’s Supper. Whenever we hear the Lord’s Supper Form, we’re again reminded that those don’t keep their bodies pure within or outside of holy wedlock, those who persist in that without repenting, they shouldn’t participate in the Lord’s Supper. If they do, they’ll bring judgment upon themselves. But Scripture teaches that they also bring God’s wrath and judgment against the whole congregation. That’s found in 1 Corinthians 11. If there’s someone in our congregation who’s not abstaining from sexual immorality and they’re participating in the Lord’s Supper, that affects us all. They’re not only transgressing against God, but against their brothers and sisters as well. That makes sexual immorality in the church a selfish sin.
And this kind of disobedience will receive grave consequences. There are natural consequences to sexual immorality. Those who do it can find themselves with an STI. Some STIs can be quite debilitating. Those who have been sexual immoral before marriage often struggle with sexual intimacy within marriage. And on it goes.
But our passage focusses on the grave spiritual consequences of sexual immorality and not abstaining from it. Verse 6 says that the Lord Jesus is an avenger in all these things. An avenger is someone who will bring justice. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Vengeance is avenging, repaying, bringing justice. And when Christ returns he will judge, he will bring his justice, his vengeance. This is nothing for a Christian to fear. If you are in Christ, if you hate your sin and trust that God has forgiven it through Jesus, be at peace. If you know your sin, also your sexual sins and fight them, then don’t be concerned about Christ’s return. Look forward to it.
But if you live in your sin, the warning here is for you. Pay attention. Christ is coming to judge unrepentant sinners. Take note of what God says in 1 Corinthians 6. There’s a list there of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. That means that’s a list of people who are not going to be saved. They are not going to heaven. It includes: the sexually immoral, adulterers, and those who practice homosexuality. All of those are sins against the Seventh Commandment. If you live in those sins and you don’t hate them and fight them, you’re not a Christian and you’re not going to heaven. If that’s true of you, my heart breaks for you and I think every true Christian’s heart breaks for you. Don’t go this way – it’s far better to turn from sin and turn to Christ and find forgiveness and life in him. He stands with open arms, ready to embrace anyone who comes to him with a humble heart, broken by their sin.
The weightiness of what’s in this passage is underlined by verse 8. The Seventh Commandment and everything that flows from it in the Bible, that’s not from human beings. God gave the Seventh Commandment. God instituted marriage in the beginning. God ordained that it would be a life-long covenant between one man and one woman. If you disregard that teaching, you disregard God himself. That’s a massively dangerous thing to do. Disregarding God is slapping him in the face. Imagine slapping the infinitely holy God in the face – what a dreadful thing to do, what a foolish thing.
And it’s even more dreadful and foolish when we consider that the Holy Spirit dwells among us. God poured out his Holy Spirit on the church, not Paul, or any other human being. Since we’ve received the Holy Spirit, since we have his presence and his power, we’re called to keep in step with the Spirit. We do that by taking God seriously when he says, “Abstain from sexual immorality.”
Loved ones, sexual lust is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Did you know that in response to sexual stimuli, your body produce its own opioids? It’s no wonder that it’s like a drug in its power. Sometimes it can feel like our own bodies want to destroy us with these lusts within. Then we have the world. Sexuality is an area where the world is putting enormous pressure on the church and often successfully. To top it off, Satan would love to destroy our church from the inside out by having us thoroughly compromised when it comes to sexual integrity. Brothers and sisters, it’s only in Christ and his power that we’ll be able to stand against these formidable forces. Look to him for the forgiveness of all your sexual sins, look to him for the perfect obedience you need before God, but also look to him to live in union with him as one of his disciples. AMEN.
PRAYER
Almighty most holy God,
Thank you for the Lord Jesus and what he did on the cross to bring us peace with you. We have transgressed the Seventh Commandment in various ways and we need Christ’s blood to cover us. Thank you for Jesus and his perfect life of obedience too. We need that perfect obedience in order to be in fellowship with you and you’ve provided it in your Son. But we also thank you for the moral teaching of your Word. We thank you for the Seventh Commandment and the way it leads us to blessing and flourishing. Please help us all, whether we’re young or old, to abstain from sexual immorality. Give us strength with your Holy Spirit to hate all sexual sin and fight against it. With your Spirit, please give us power to control our bodies in holiness and honour. O God, please help us to be holy like you are holy – for your glory and for our good.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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