God’s Will? Abstain from Sexual Immorality | 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

Have you ever wanted to know God’s will for your life? Have you ever wondered what job you should take, where you should live, who you should marry, what school you should attend? Have you ever had difficulty discerning the Lord’s will? Have you ever found out that it’s a challenge to know, to appreciate, to understand, to get a clear yes or no from the Lord concerning his will for your life? I have good news for you. I’m going to show you God’s will for your life today. This is categorically, unequivocally, 100% God’s known will for your life today.

Turn the New Testament book of First Thessalonians, chapter four. Paul 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; 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.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

My text is verse three, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality.” To understand this passage, you need to understand a little bit about the context that Paul the Apostle is writing in. He’s writing to a church in a town called Thessalonica in the northeast corner of Greece, right there on the Aegean Sea. This is a Greek city under Roman occupation. Paul preached here in the synagogue during his second and third missionary journeys. This letter, First Thessalonians, is a letter that Paul wrote to this church roughly a year after visiting them.

Background

Ancient Greece was polytheistic and idolatrous

You need to understand a little bit about the culture of the day. Ancient Greece was polytheistic and idolatrous. In other words, they worshiped many gods and they worshiped those gods in the form of idols. The Greeks had 12 gods and goddesses, which they believed ruled the universe from Mount Olympus in Greece. You’ve probably heard of Aphrodite, she was a Greek goddess. You’ve heard of Zeus and Poseidon. They were Greek gods.

But Thessalonica is a city under Roman occupation, and the Romans also had 12 gods. You’ve probably heard of Apollo, Diana, Neptune. So Paul is writing to a church in a city where they either worship 12 Greek gods or 12 Roman gods, or maybe a mix of the two. Now, when Paul spoke to this church, he spoke in the synagogue, and we’re going to learn of the significance of that in a minute.

Ancient Greece was sexually immoral

Not only was the culture polytheistic and idolatrous, but the culture of Thessalonica was also sexually immoral. Sexual immorality was rampant in the pagan culture of Greece. Prostitution was widespread and public. Sex before marriage was commonplace. Many of the Greek gods they worshiped were sexually immoral. Sexual immorality even played a role in their religion.

1. The Will of God Involves Communication (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

The first point I want to make from this text is that the will of God involves communication. Paul says, “For this is the will of God.” Now, when he says “For,” he’s referring back to something that he has just been writing about. At the end of chapter three, Paul says he wants the Lord to make you to increase and abound and love one toward another. He’s writing to the Thessalonians, and he’s saying, “I want the love of God to abound, to increase.”

He says in verse 13 of chapter three, at the end, that “He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. Furthermore, then, we beseech you, we beg you, we plead with you and we exhort you, by the Lord Jesus that as ye have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God. So ye would abound more and more.”

You see there that Christianity is a walk. He says, “For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. So not only did Paul describe to this congregation how they should walk, because of what he told them they should do, but he also says he passed onto them the commandments of Jesus. And so he says, given the following, “This is the will of God.”

Now, you notice he speaks of God in the singular. Not this is the will of the gods. This is the will of the God, the singular God, the one and only God. We learn from the book of Acts that when Paul came to Thessalonica with Silas, we read that, “some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few” (Acts 17:4). The devout Greeks were Greeks who were proselytes of Judaism. They had left their idolatry and they were now followers of Jehovah.

Paul, in his letter, at the end of chapter one, says, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven.” So we know that in the church of Thessalonica, there were Greek converts to Judaism, but there were also pagans, because they turned from their idols.

They turned from dumb idols that they made with their hands to the living God. And they turned to the true God, not one of the many false gods. This is the church that Paul is writing to in First Thessalonians, and he says to them, “This is the will of God.” This is a Greek word that means a desire. This is God’s desire for you. This is what he desires of you. It’s not a suggestion. This is not the wish of God. This is the will of God. Paul tells this church in Thessalonica, “This God that you serve has a will for you, and he has communicated His will for you.

Now, let’s just bring this into contemporary times. Many people today don’t go to the Bible for guidance. They don’t go to God for guidance.

According to recent studies, half of all US adults believe that ethics and morals are based on what seems right to a person based on their own judgment and ideas. Eight out of 10 people say people can believe whatever they want, as long as those beliefs don’t hurt anybody. And when it comes to sexual activity, nine out of 10 Americans believe each person has to decide his or her own sexual boundaries.

Paul wrote to this church in Thessalonica and he said, “This is the will of God. You’re to listen to God, and you’re to obey God, not yourself. You are not your own moral authority. You do not have authority to decide what is right and wrong where sexual immorality is concerned. You do not have any authority to decide your own sexual boundaries. There is one God. He has a will for you, and he has communicated that will to you. That’s the first point that we learn from this text.

2. The Will of God Produces Transformation (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

Not only does the will of God involve communication, the will of God also produces transformation.

Paul says, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” That’s not a word that we use much these days, sanctification. It’s from the Greek. It means holy. It means to set something apart for a holy purpose. That’s what sanctification is. It’s also translated holiness as you’ll see in a minute.

So why is sanctification God’s will for the Thessalonians? Because they didn’t have it. This is God’s will for you. He wants you to have something that you don’t have—sanctification. If they had it, he wouldn’t have told them it was God’s will for them. God calls them to be sanctified because they aren’t sanctified. He calls them to be holy because they aren’t holy.

Sanctification or holiness is the target that they are to aim for. They are not automatically holy, practically speaking. There is a positional sanctification that we enjoy as believers. There’s a transaction that took place in heaven when we believed. We are positionally sanctified, we are positionally justified, and so on. But practically, day to day, they were not holy or sanctified. Holiness, we read in the book of Hebrews, is something that we’re to follow after. So, you can be positionally sanctified, but you’re also to be practically sanctified. In other words, holiness is to be part of your walk with the Lord.

What is the goal of God for unbelievers? It’s salvation. What is the will of God for believers? It’s sanctification. Now, discerning God’s will can be difficult. Who should I marry? Where should I go to school? Should I take that job? Should I not take that job? Where should I live? How many children should we have? No one can tell you definitively what the will of God is for any of those things. No one knows. I don’t know.

You can seek godly the counsel. You can study God’s word. But nobody can tell you the will of God for you concerning who you should marry or where you should live or what job you should take. But they can tell you God’s will for your life on this matter of sanctification. One thing I can tell you categorically, 100% positively, is that God’s will for you is that you be sanctified. You don’t have to search God’s word to discover if you should be sanctified or not. You don’t have to pray about this. You don’t have to lay out a fleece. You don’t have to talk to the elders. You don’t have to seek godly counsel and ask, “Should I be sanctified? Is it God’s will for me that I be sanctified?”

Because God has spoken, He’s communicated. This is the will of God, even your sanctification. So, not only does the will of God involve communication, the will of also God produces transformation, that is, your sanctification.

3. The Will of God Requires Mortification (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

And thirdly, the will of God requires mortification. That’s a word we don’t hear much these days. To mortify means to put to death, to kill. Paul says, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.” This word fornication in the Greek is the word pornea. It’s the Greek word that we get pornography from. It means sexual immorality. So you could say, you could read this, as many bibles do, “This is the will of God for you, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality.”

So, you might be wondering, where is the line that I can go right up to, beyond which it’s sexually immoral? Well, in the time that Paul was writing this letter to the Church of the Thessalonians, sex outside of marriage was sexual immorality, and it still is today. Adultery was sexual immorality, and it is today.

The easiest way to understand what sexual immorality is, is to understand the opposite. What is God’s will for sexual relations? It’s one man, one woman, in one marriage for one lifetime. That’s His standard. One man, one woman, married for one lifetime. Any act, any thought, any desire that’s outside of that model is sexual immoral.

Why does Paul, in this letter to the Thessalonians, say, “This is the will of God for you, that you abstain from sexual immorality?” Because this is obviously not God’s only will, but it was in this letter. It was the will of God for them, that they abstain from sexual immorality. Well, just as they weren’t sanctified, and he had to tell them to be sanctified, they were practicing sexual immorality, and Paul had to tell them to abstain. This was clearly the greatest need of the church in Thessalonica, just as it was in many of the other churches in Greece at the time.

You’ll remember that sexual immorality was commonplace in New Testament assemblies. There was the church of Corinth, where Paul wrote this letter from. Paul says to the church of Corinth, “There’s a man in your congregation who’s practicing sexual immorality that even the pagans don’t do, that he has his mother’s wife, his stepmother—that’s sexual immorality. And Paul rebukes the church, not just for the sin, but for the church tolerating it. There were people in that same church, the Church of Corinth, single people, that were doing with each other what they should only have been doing if they were married. They were sexually immoral.

You’ll remember from the Book of Acts, Gentile believers came to know the Lord, and the Jewish leaders of the day said to them, “You have to be circumcised. You have to obey the law of Moses. You have to practice the ceremonies and law of Judaism.” The early church got together, they had a council,  and they decided on four things for the Gentiles. The early church decided that there were four things that the Gentiles were not to do. You read about this in Acts 15: 28. They were to:

1. abstain from things offered to idols
2. abstain from blood
3. abstain from things strangled
4. abstain from sexual immorality

Sexual immorality was widespread in the New Testament churches, and in that culture, and so they had to abstain from it. Abstain is the Greek word that means to keep off, to hold back from, to be away from, to be distant from. Properly, in the Greek, it means to have one thing by letting go of something else. You can’t have the two things. You have to let go of the one in order to have this one. That’s what abstaining means. It would be like me having pornography in one hand and the Bible on the other one. I have to put one of them down. I have to abstain from one or the other. To abstain from sexual immorality means to be distant from, to keep away from, to not go near.

Now why did Paul tell the church at Thessalonica that they had to abstain? Because they were surrounded by a culture that said that sexual immorality was okay—even to be celebrated. Does this sound at all familiar? Sex outside of marriage, adultery and all manner of other sins that I won’t even name are not only considered okay these days, but they are to be celebrated. We’re to have parades to celebrate them.

So, Paul was telling these believers to abstain from sexual immorality because it’s part of the culture you’re living in. It might be the culture that you came out of when you joined the church, when the Lord saved you, but also he tells them to abstain from sexual immorality because he knows that they will be tempted.

We live in a culture that’s highly sexualized. It’s impossible to read the news or even to go shopping without facing nudity and sexually explicit images. You can’t watch TV, you can’t watch movies. It’s impossible to get away from. You are going to be tempted. And so Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, and he tells them, “You are to abstain from sexual immorality because it’s part of your culture. It might be something that you practiced as a non-believer, and you are going to be tempted to sin in this way.

Sanctification is an exercise in subtraction

Now, I want you to learn a lesson here, and I’ve discovered this the hard way in my life, and that is that sanctification is an exercise in subtraction. To abstain from sexual immorality, you find the people, the places, and the things that tempt you to sin sexually, and you subtract them from your life.

• Are you tempted by Netflix? Cancel your subscription.
• Are you tempted by your smartphone? Smash it into a hundred pieces, incinerate the remains, and scatter them across 20 dumpsters

You abstain by subtracting temptation from your life. That’s what it means to abstain. It comes at a price.

Sexual immorality starts between your ears, not between your legs

Paul tells them to abstain because sexual immorality starts between your ears, not between your legs. Sexual temptation, the temptation to sin sexually, starts in your mind. It starts in your will. It starts in your affections. It starts in your desires. You’ll remember that Jesus said, “Any man that looketh upon a woman” to do what? To lust after her. The physical act of sexual immorality simply consummates what started earlier in the mind. Jesus said, “Any man that looked upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” He said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away.” Now, if you plucked out your right eye, would it be of any use to you anymore? No. Why does Jesus tell you to throw it away as well? Because he doesn’t want you plucking out your eye and then looking for it later on. You pluck it out, and you throw it away, so that you can never, ever, possibly use it again.

So let’s just make this a little bit more practical.

When Jesus says, “If your right eye offends you, pluck it out,” He doesn’t mean to literally pluck out your right eye. What does he mean? Well, think about your right eye. It’s helpful, it’s valuable, it’s convenient. What Jesus is saying to our modern ears is, “If you have something in your life that is helpful and practical and convenient, even valuable, but it causes you to sin, you’re to pluck it out and you’re to throw it away.” You’re to pay a price for being sexually pure. That’s the price that Jesus is talking about.

Anything in your life that’s valuable, handy, convenient, worth something, if it causes you to sin sexually, you pluck it out, you throw it away, you abstain. So let’s get practical here. Paul says to the church, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God.”

4. To abstain from sexual immorality, you must dominate your body (1 Thessalonians 4:4-5)

So I’m going to describe practical ways that Paul tells us to abstain from sexual immorality. Number one, to abstain from sexual immorality, you must dominate your body. Paul says, “every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.” Now, this is Elizabethan English. It might be a little bit abstract for us. This word possess means to win mastery over. It means to control. And when he says, “every one of you should know how to possess his vessel,” that word is in the neuter in the Greek, so it means his or hers. Anybody. He’s speaking to anybody. He’s not just speaking to men.

When Paul talks about “his vessel,” this is a Greek word that means a vessel to contain liquid. Anything that’s used in that way. But you’ll remember that Paul said to the believers, “We this treasure in earthen vessels.” Peter also said in one of his letters that men are to treat their wives in a certain way because “they are the weaker vessel.”

Some scholars think that this word here, vessel, means wives. Other scholars think it means your body. Now, this word possess, it means to win mastery over and to control. So I don’t think Paul is speaking of the vessel of the wife. He’s speaking of the vessel, the earthen vessel of your body. He’s saying, “You need to master your body. You need to have control over your body.”

In what way? You’re to possess your vessel in sanctification. There it is again—in sanctification, in holiness. Honor means the perceived value of something, literally the price of something. You’re to honor your body it because it’s worth something.

Notice that Paul says, “in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence.” Here’s a word I don’t use that often—concupiscence. It means a strong sexual desire. So, you’re not to allow your body to operate in a way where it controls you with strong sexual desire.

You’ll notice that he says that “every one of you should know.” Not only should you possess your body in sanctification and honor, not only should you master your body, but you should know how to. This is not something that comes to us naturally. It doesn’t come naturally to men to control where their eyes go. As a Christian man, I have to learn how to control my eyes, to not take the second look, to bounce my eyes.

Sanctification, abstaining from sexual immorality, Paul says, is something that you are to know how to do. It’s something that you are to learn. You learn by practice. God doesn’t just give it to you. You must practice sanctification. And you’ll notice that Paul says “not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God.” This is a sober, sober lesson for us today. When you commit sexual immorality, you act like you don’t know God. Paul says, “You’re not to be sexually immoral like the pagans, the heathen, the Gentiles who don’t know God.” When you’re sexually immoral, you act as though you don’t know God. You simply dismiss him. You pretend you’re lost again.

All right, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. To the church at Thessalonica, Paul said, “You are to control your body. You’re to dominate your body. He meant don’t commit adultery, don’t have sex outside of marriage. Don’t hire temple prostitutes. In our day, Paul is saying, “Don’t commit adultery. Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Don’t view pornography.”

Let’s look for a few minutes at pornography because pornography is one of the greatest threats to the church today.

Pornography is pervasive

• 30% of the internet is pornography
• Pornographic sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined
• This pornography is available to you in your pocket, in your purse, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year

Pornography is progressive

Men and women who view pornography for any length of time discover that they need ever harder forms of pornography to achieve the same level of a rush. You talk to any heroin addict today, ask how they got started. “Well,” they reply, “I smoked a joint when I was 14, around the back of the school, but eventually the marijuana didn’t do it for me anymore. I didn’t get the same buzz from marijuana, so somebody handed me a pill. I took Oxycontin or some other drug, and eventually that didn’t work either. I had to graduate to ever harder drugs to get the same buzz.

Talk to any alcoholic. “How did you get to where you are today?” “Well,” they reply, “I took a drink. I used to get drunk on one beer. Then, I needed two beers to get drunk. Then I needed five beers. One beer didn’t do it anymore.

Drugs are progressive. Alcoholism is progressive. Pornography is progressive. People who consume pornography start with something they see. In my day, when I was 11 years old and saw my first pornographic image, it was a pornographic magazine that you could buy in the store. Today, it’s probably something you see on a phone.

It starts small, but men and women that look at pornography, they discover that the first thing that aroused them doesn’t do it anymore. After a couple of weeks, they have to graduate to something more wicked, more evil, more hardcore, more illegal, to get the same level of arousal that they used to get from something pornographic. Some people even graduate to the real world, and act out their fantasies. I’ll give you an example, Ted Bundy.

Ted Bundy was a prolific kidnapper, serial sex offender and murderer. He was executed in the electric chair. The day before he died, he gave an interview to James Dobson. He’d already been in prison for 15 years, in maximum security, with other sex offenders. This is what Ted Bundy, Bundy said:

I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violent sexual acts Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography, deeply consumed by their addiction. The FBI’s own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornography.”

Every serial killer started with pornography—and progressed.

Pornography is punitive

• 40% of people who identify as sex addicts lose their spouse
• 58% suffer considerable financial loss
• 33% lose their jobs
• Pornography use increases marital infidelity by 300%

Pornography is in the church

Josh McDowell commissioned a study by Barna Research.

• Average age that a child in North America discovers pornography: 11
• Percentage of Christian men who view pornography at least once a month: 64%
• Percentage of Christian women who view porn at least once a month: 15%
• Percentage of pastors who admit they have struggled with porn: 57%
• According to Covenant Eyes, 50% of Christian men and a smaller percentage Christian women say they are addicted to pornography
• Day of the week when Christians most often look at pornography: Sunday

You have it harder than the Thessalonians did

I want you to appreciate something. If you struggle in this area, you have it harder than any person in Thessalonica ever did. In those days, most sexual immorality was out in the open. It was commonly accepted. Sexual immorality was no big deal, and the menu of what you could do was pretty limited.

Today, there are wicked, wicked sins that people commit around the world—and you can watch them on your phone. You can watch them on your computer. The most wicked, wicked sins that you could even imagine—or even not ever imagine—you can watch them. People in Thessalonica could never do that. You have it harder than they ever did.

When I was growing up, when I was in my teens, if I wanted to get hardcore pornography, I would’ve had to go to a back alley off Times Square and talk to some seedy character and give him money. I would’ve had to get on a plane and fly to Amsterdam or Copenhagen to get hardcore pornography. It would’ve cost me lots of money. It was illegal. Today, you can get that same pornography—and worse—for free, anonymously. You don’t have to go anywhere. We have it worse than the people of Thessalonica ever did.

Pornography is pervasive, it’s progressive, and it’s destructive. Unless you forsake it, and abstain from it, you will fall into ever more wicked forms of this sin. You’ll lose your testimony, you’ll lose your marriage. You’ll lose access to your kids. You’ll lose your job, and you may even end up going to jail.

If you never repent and amend your ways, you’ll go to the lake of fire. Jesus said, It is better for you to pluck out your eye and cast it away. It is better for you to go through life with only one eye than to be cast into hell. It’s better for you to cut off your hand, cut off your foot, pluck out your eye, and go through life blind and maimed, than to have your whole body be thrown into hell.

Paul said to the church at Corinth, “Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither sexually immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [homosexuals], nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now, I want us to be eminently practical here. Drug addicts don’t carry drugs in their pocket if they want to quit. Alcoholics who are trying to go straight, trying to get clean, don’t visit their local bar during happy hour. They abstain.

Today, 80% of pornography is viewed on smartphones. Smartphones are convenient. You take them everywhere you go. You can look at pornography anytime you want, anywhere you are, with nobody knowing except the Lord. So I have a question for you. I’m speaking particularly to Christian men. If you know that your phone causes you to sin, why do you still have it? If you know that the phone in your pocket causes you to sin sexually, why do you still carry it around? Why insist on carrying sexual temptation with you, everywhere you go?

You have a choice. You can install software on your phone that blocks all pornographic sites. You can install Covenant Eyes. It not only blocks pornographic sites, but it sends an email to someone you trust with screenshots of where you’ve been.

If your phone causes you to sin, install Covenant Eyes on it. Anytime you visit an inappropriate site, it takes a picture and emails that picture to someone you trust, an accountability partner. The reason I’m telling you this is that, if you’re a brother and you struggle in this area, you must lock down your phone. You should not be carrying a phone that gives you unlimited, unhindered access to the worst depravity in the world, 24/7. You should have your phone locked down.

That’s not what Paul says. That’s what I say. You should not be exposing yourself to wicked, depraved pornography, especially if you struggle in this area.

5. To abstain from sexual immorality, you must not defraud your brother (1 Thessalonians 4:6)

You must abstain from sexual immorality. You must dominate your body. Now Paul says, “Let no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.”

Don’t defraud your brother. Don’t go beyond, that is, don’t step over the line. Don’t overreach and defraud your brother. This word defraud is two Greek words: more, and have—to have more. Don’t go over the line. Don’t overreach by wanting to have more than you’re entitled to. Don’t defraud your brother, because the Lord is the avenger of all such. What Paul is telling us here is that your sexual immorality hurts other people. It’s not just a sin that you do in private. It hurts other people. It defrauds them.

Now, I have a quiz for you. Jesus said, “Any man that looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already with her I in his heart.”

I read that passage for probably 30 years before I noticed that phrase, “with her.” I want you to let this sink in. If you’re someone who looks at pornographic images, you are committing adultery with that person that you’re looking at. That’s what Jesus said. He said, “If you look at a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery with her. Now, you may say, but that’s only in my heart.” But that’s not the point. The point is, you’ve committed adultery. Not, like adultery. Not similar to adultery. You’ve committed adultery with her, that person. Whether you do it in a hotel room or whether you do it in your heart, you’ve committed adultery with her. That’s what Paul is getting at here when he says, “You’re not to defraud your brother.”

Now, let me get practical here. If you’re single and you’re hearing this message, you may be tempted by your friends, your peers, the culture to do things sexually that you’re not supposed to do unless you’re married. Remember, God’s design is one man, one woman, one marriage, one lifetime. That’s God’s standard. Anything outside of that is sexual immorality.

You may have a boyfriend, you may have a girlfriend. You may have somebody who pressures you to sin sexually. If you’re single and young, you’re probably thinking, “One day, I’d like to be married.” This means the person you’re going to marry one day is alive today, right? I want you to imagine this person that you’re going to marry one day. How would you feel if you knew that they were climbing into the back seat of a car with their boyfriend or girlfriend and they were going to commit sexual immorality? Would you feel defrauded?

Sure.

Would you feel that the other person in the car is defrauding you because they are going to have sex with your future spouse? This also applies to you personally. If you commit sexual immorality with somebody, you are defrauding their future spouse. If you don’t marry that person, you’re defrauding their future spouse. You’re taking what belongs to their future spouse and you’re taking it from them. You’re defrauding them. That’s what it means to defraud a brother. You’re taking something, you’re stepping beyond the mark. You’re wanting more and you’re taking something that belongs to them. Your sexual immorality hurts others.

6. To abstain from sexual immorality, don’t despise God (1 Thessalonians 4:8)

This word despise means to set aside, to annul, to ignore, to make of no effect, to slight. Jesus said to his disciples, “He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.”

Paul says, he therefore, that despises this commandment that I’m telling you, this way of life, that you’re to walk abstaining from sexual immorality, he doesn’t despise me or any other apostle or any other man—he despises God who was also given unto us his Holy Spirit.

This passage demolishes the three lies that you tell yourself when you commit sexual immorality. If you commit sexual immorality, you likely tell yourself, “Well, I can’t help it. I’m an addict. That’s not true. It’s a lie. Paul says you are to master your body. Clearly you can.

The second lie you tell yourself is, “I’m not hurting anybody. It’s just me and my smartphone. I’m not hurting anybody.” Paul says you are defrauding your brother or your sister

The third and final lie that you tell yourself when you commit sexual immorality is, “I still love God. This sin in my life is just a small thing. But I still love God. Yes, I have sex outside of marriage. I look at pornography. But I still love God.” Paul says, no you don’t. You despise God. It’s right there in the text. If you despise this teaching, you don’t despise men—you despise God.

There’s hope for you

I want to offer some hope. If you’re a brother that struggles in this area of sexual immorality, you should find a brother who has victory in this area and get some help. That brother can show you practical tips, things that actually work, to protect yourself as you go through this world. If you want to, you can talk to me. I have victory in this area.

The other hope I want to offer you is that, if you are a man or a woman reading this, and if you’re in sexual sin, if you have committed, or if you are committing, sexual immorality, God can forgive you. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we confess our sins, there’s forgiveness for you. There’s restoration for you for this sin, if you confess your sins to God.

Three lessons

Lesson 1. Abstaining from sexual immorality is the race, not the prize

You’ll notice that Paul doesn’t say to the church at Thessalonica, “This is the will of God for you, that you abstain from sexual immorality.” He says, “This is the will of God for you, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.

Abstaining is simply the how. God is the who. Sanctification is the what you are to do, what you are to be, but abstaining from sexual immorality is simply how you get there. It’s the race, not the prize. The ultimate goal is not sexual purity alone, in isolation. The ultimate goal, God’s ultimate will for your life is that you be sanctified. That’s the goal. That’s His will for you. Sanctification. You get there by abstaining from sexual immorality. Achieving and maintaining sexual purity is one way to grow in sanctification.

Now, this works in the reverse. If you think about obedience, why do you abstain from sexual immorality? So that you’ll be sanctified. Why do you want to be sanctified? To obey God. That’s the reverse. It’s God’s will that you be sanctified, so you should abstain. You should abstain to be sanctified, to please God, to obey God. The will of God in this passage isn’t so much something that he wants you to do or not do. It’s something he wants you to become. He wants you to become sanctified. That’s His will. Not just that you avoid something, but that you avoid it so that you become holy. You become sanctified.

Lesson 2. You are sanctified gradually, but you abstain immediately

Sanctification is a process. It happens over time. We gradually become sanctified. We gradually become holy. We gradually become more Christ-like. It doesn’t happen at once. It’s not an event.

But you don’t abstain slowly. You don’t quit sexual immorality gradually. You don’t stop committing sexual sins slowly, over time. You don’t wean yourself off sexual immorality. You are sanctified gradually, but you abstain immediately.

God’s will for your life is not that you go from hardcore porn to soft core porn. God’s will for your life is not that you sin sexually, just less than before. God’s will for your life is not that you have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend once a week instead of four times a week. He doesn’t want you to do it less gradually, slowly. He wants you to stop—and to never start. You are sanctified gradually, but you abstain immediately.

Lesson 3: sanctification isn’t a destination that you reach tomorrow. It’s a walk you take with the Lord

What’s the most important day in your marriage? Is it your wedding day? No. If you’re a professional football player, what’s the most important day in your career? Is it the day you got drafted? Is that the most important day? No. What about your career, your work life? What’s the most important day in your career? Is it the day you got your diploma? Is it the day you got hired? No. The most important day in your marriage is today. If you’re a football player, the most important day is today, today’s game.

The most important day in your Christian life is not the day you raised your hand in AWANA. The most important day in your Christian life is not the day you prayed the sinner’s prayer. Although that day was important, that day was the start. That day is a day on the calendar. It’s history. I’m not saying it’s not important. The day you got saved is a day in history. What about today?

Today is the most important day in your walk with the Lord. The Christian life isn’t about how you start. It’s about how you end. The day that the Lord cares about is today. This is the will of God for you, your sanctification—today. The Lord wanted you to be saved. He wanted you to repent. He wanted you to believe the gospel. You’ve already done that. What does he want now? He wants you to be sanctified.

He doesn’t want you to say, I was sanctified 30 years ago. Cause that’s not true. He wants you to be in the process of being sanctified today. Your walk today with the Lord should be characterized by sanctification, by a holy walk, by pleasing God, abounding in spiritual maturity, obeying Jesus, and abstaining from sexual immorality. That’s God’s will for you—your sanctification.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, you are a gracious loving God. We worship you today. We acknowledge you as the beginning and the end. The first and the last. The holy one. The righteous one. The eternal one. Lord, your ways are past finding out, but you’ve loved us. You loved us with an everlasting love. You sent Jesus into the world to save us, to redeem us, to sanctify us, to draw us to You, to set us apart, to make us holy. And Lord, we’ve learned here in your word to the church of Thessalonica, and to us today, that you desire of us that we would be holy, that we would be sanctified, that we would abstain from sexual immorality. My prayer is, if there’s a brother or sister that struggles in this area, that you would help them to repent, to turn from their sin, to leave it behind, to abstain from it, and to grow in holiness, to abound in their walk with Jesus, to be sanctified, to be holy, to make efforts and strides in that direction and to forsake sexual immorality. We thank you, Lord, that you’re a God of forgiveness. You’re a God of mercy. If we come to you, and if we confess our sins, you’re faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You are a marvelous, wonderful God. We praise you and thank you, in Jesus’ name. Amen.