How To Abstain From Sexual Immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:1-6 Jeff Kliewer)

Will you please stand with me?

Praise him.

Who was and is to come, and to the Lamb who was slain, be all

glory, King on the throne.

Who was and is to come, and to the Lamb who was slain,

be the King on the throne.

Who was and is to come, and to the Lamb who was slain,

be

worthy

of our praise.

Let's sing praises to him this morning as we stand before him.

Scriptures say throughout the Psalms, let us praise the Lord.

Praise him with singing.

That's what we're here to do this morning, is lift our voices in response and obedience to what he has in his word.

Let's sing together.

You are holy. You are mighty.

You are mighty.

You are worthy.

My day.

Prince of peace, and I will live my life whole.

Let's sing that again.

You are holy.

Prince of peace, and I will live my life

whole.

Lord Jesus, you are the one who

was and who is to come.

Let's

sing

together

the

verse again.

He is holy.

Let's pray.

Triune.

God, we are filled with thanksgiving this morning.

Father, thank you for choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

Jesus, thank you for interposing your precious blood on the cross to accomplish our redemption.

Holy Spirit, thank you for applying that redemption, regenerating us unto eternal life,

and dwelling in us to conform us to the likeness of Christ.

Thank you for who you are and all that you've done for us.

We bless your name.

You are worthy. You are God.

And because you are holy, Lord, we pray that today you would help us to be like you, help us to be holy

as you are holy.

Your word asks the question, how can a man keep his way pure?

And then answers it by guarding according to your word.

Help us to guard our lives according to your word.

Help us to be pure and holy as you are.

In Jesus' name, amen.

H .L. Mencken was a social commentator, kind of a godless, witty

guy from back in the day.

And he described Puritans and Puritanism this way.

He said the Puritans, Puritanism, is the haunting fear

that someone somewhere may be happy.

The irony, of course, is that those who live self -centered lives,

pursuing happiness or just pleasure, actually turn out to be completely unhappy.

It's utterly unsatisfying to pursue one's own pleasure.

And those who, like the Puritans, pursued the glory of God, actually find happiness and joy

in Christ.

To glorify God is to enjoy him, and that is the chief end of man.

Jonathan Edwards was one who glorified God.

Pursuing godliness, he was given a godly wife and wrote a beautiful poem to her when they were just

courting.

I think she was only 15 years old and him 19 when he wrote the apostrophe to her

and described her as having such a gentle, sweet spirit that contemplated the glory of God all day

long and how she would go about her day sweetly singing songs quietly under her breath and

no one could quite figure out why she was so joyful.

And God gave Sarah Piedmont to Jonathan as a wife.

He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.

And together they had 11 children.

So they were, in a way, satisfied, I'm sure, and very happy also with the children

given them.

God is a good giver of gifts.

You know, Jonathan Edwards is famous for being the founder or the

most prominent figure in the first Great Awakening.

In the year 1722, he took to the pulpit.

300 years ago, exactly, Jonathan Edwards began to preach.

And he is currently regarded by most as the greatest theologian in American

history or on this continent's history.

Just a great man of God.

Jonathan Edwards, in 1732, began to see the first fires of revival.

About 10 years into his ministry, the first fires of the Great Awakening began to burst out in

his congregation.

So many people coming to saving faith.

Disciples walking in truth.

People singing worship.

You could hear it throughout the town.

And this fire of revival spread for decades.

He wrote a book, a sermon in 1741, which many of you are familiar with,

"'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'".

Sounds terrifying, right?

And that's how, when you read it in school, you read the terrifying parts.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But his point in the sermon was that, yes, we deserve to fall into the fire of God's wrath, but

it's his hands that are graciously.

Keeping us from falling.

It was a sermon, yes, about wrath, but also about grace, how God rescues us from what we deserve.

He wrote, "'Religious Affections' in 1747.

Then 28 years into his ministry, his church fired him.".

Twist in the plot, right?

The great Jonathan Edwards was fired in 1750 with a

vote of 90 in the congregation.

So only 10 % figured he should go on.

What happened in the midst of the First Great Awakening?

Well, what's happened was the bundling controversy.

Anybody heard of the bundling controversy?

Probably not.

Back in New England days, it was very cold in the winters.

And there was a practice amongst the Puritans of New England for

a courting couple to spend the night in bed together.

Here's how one of the bundling proponents described it in a poem.

"'Let coat and shift be turned to drift and breeches take their flight.

An honest man and virgin can lie quiet all the night.'".

Strange poem.

The concept was that an honest man and a good virgin, daughter of God,

can sleep in a bed together and spend the night together, bundle as they called it, without falling

into sexual sin.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, Jonathan Edwards, being the pastor of the church, began to notice that the marriage ceremonies that

he was performing in the church and the birth of these firstborn children were not quite reaching nine months.

And he began to suspect that the bundling concept was not according to God's word.

I once had a youth pastor teaching that I heard and I found it very, very powerful.

He was speaking from 1 Corinthians 6, 18, which says, flee

youthful passions.

Remember the Lord's Prayer?

Does the Lord pray, help us overcome temptation or lead us not into temptation?

Lead us not into temptation.

Well, this youth pastor was teaching on flee youthful passions.

And he didn't say put yourself in a position as close to the line as you can go without falling into sexual sin.

He said, let me tell you what flee youthful passions means.

Hold on a second.

And then the youth pastor bolted.

I mean, he just bolted out of the room, out the back door and he was gone.

And all of us were just sitting there looking around like, is he coming back?

And he didn't.

And that was his point.

Flee youthful passions.

Very often young people will ask, well, how far is too far?

How close to the line can I get without actually sinning?

And this youth pastor's point was, you're moving in the opposite direction.

You're trying to tow the line as close as possible without actually sinning, when in fact you need to be guarding

very jealously your purity.

And so flee youthful passions.

Christians underestimate the danger and the problem of sexual immorality.

And Paul was very much a serious man and very much wanted

the Christians in Thessalonica to walk in purity.

It was a high priority.

In fact, let's turn now to the book of 1 Thessalonians.

We're gonna read verses one to eight.

Before we do, notice that word, in chapter four, verse one, finally.

By finally, he doesn't mean that this is the last thing he's going to say.

Because as it unfolds, he will also talk about brotherly love and the rapture and the timing of the second

coming.

There's much more for him to say.

So finally here doesn't mean the last thing I have to say.

Rather, it's underscoring what he finally wanted to say in the first place.

In other words, the first three chapters are almost introductory to him getting to the point.

I think this is what prompted him to write to the Thessalonians.

They are young Christians living in a

sexually immoral culture.

Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, right?

And some of you husbands, you will get a heart -shaped box of candy.

And on it will be a picture of a little fat boy with a bow and arrow that they call Cupid.

Cupid was a pagan god.

Corresponding to Cupid was the Greek god Eros.

The pagan culture had temple prostitution, all manner of sexual lasciviousness in the

culture.

But the Christian did not teach Eros or Cupid, but agape.

So when we come to 1 Thessalonians chapter four, Paul is

teaching the Christian sexual ethic.

And this is what I think occasioned him to write.

Because the Christians in Thessalonica were only a few months old in the Lord.

He had spent three weeks in the Sabbath reasoning with the Jewish people, and then probably spent a number of

weeks with the Gentiles preaching the gospel.

But he got run out of town.

And now he leaves behind these baby Christians who are new to the faith, and his greatest concern for them,

finally, is their sexual purity.

Because the persecution that's coming from the culture, that's dangerous to them,

okay?

Someone might kill them.

But the Christian under persecution will bow up and be strong.

But sexual temptation, as Samson discovered, requires a different kind of strength.

Sexual temptation might undermine the faith.

And so let's read it.

1 Thessalonians four, one to eight.

Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that

as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God,

just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification.

That you abstain from sexual immorality.

That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in

the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.

That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter.

Because the Lord is an avenger in all these things.

As we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you, for God has not called us for impurity, but

in holiness.

Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man,

but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

Amen.

We thank God for his word.

You know, our loving father, our God, does not simply tell us here, don't do

this.

It's not the extent of the charge.

It's not, don't commit sexual immorality with a finger wag.

No, our loving father here tells us how to overcome.

Look at that word in verse four.

Each of us should know how to control his own body.

And these very words, the how, is the point of the text this morning.

It's teaching us five principles in this passage for how to control

the lust of the flesh to remain pure and walk in holiness.

Isn't that good news that God gave us this?

I think we all need it.

In the short time that Paul had known the Thessalonians, he had already spent considerable time

training them to abstain from sexual immorality.

Now he's going to underscore the point.

Do you see in verse two?

He reminds them what instructions we gave you.

That means he was already talking about this.

And he says in verse six, we told you beforehand.

Again, when he was in Thessalonica for just a few weeks, this was prominent in his teaching.

He had taught them how to control themselves sexually.

Now he comes back to it, puts it in writing, and by God's grace, we have it.

As God's word to us.

So let's look at five points from this passage.

Each one will help us overcome the desires of the body, the lusts of the flesh.

Number one, know the boundaries of sexual morality

and hear the moral imperative, the command to obey.

Look at the language of verse one.

Ask and urge.

Paul doesn't merely ask us, as in this is a suggestion,

but he urges, meaning this is urgent.

This is more than a suggestion.

There is an ought associated with it.

It says in verse one, how you ought to walk and please God.

There is a standard.

He also says that he's given instructions.

One of the things we need to understand about sexuality is that there are

instructions because there's a designer, right?

There's an author of sexuality.

When Adam was alone in the Garden of Eden, this was not good.

And so God took a rib from his side and fashioned a woman and presented her to

him as a good gift.

And he delighted in this gift from God.

And then he gave the parameters moving forward that a man should leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the

two shall become one flesh.

The sex act is a good gift from God meant to unite

husband and wife in unity in the marriage and resulting in procreation.

What is the first command that God gives in the Bible?

Be fruitful and multiply.

These are his instructions because it's his design.

And of course, if a designer of a thing values what he's made, he

will set safeguards around it.

And that is the nature of the boundaries that God has placed around sexuality.

Excluding all but the husband and wife in the sexual union, adultery

is outlawed in Exodus chapter 20.

And other more specific sexual sins are outlawed in Leviticus 18.

But Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount actually doesn't stop with physical actions themselves,

but even speaks to the lustful thoughts that a man or woman has in the

mind.

He says, if a man even lusts after a woman, he has violated the deeper meaning of

thou shalt not commit adultery.

Now, many get confused at this particular point and assume

that lustful thoughts are the same as adultery

rather than a heart kind of adultery.

There is a distinction and we'll get into that.

Those who say a sin is a sin is a sin are wrong.

Even the smallest sin that a person commits makes you guilty before a holy God and worthy to be condemned.

But there is a difference between having a lustful thought and committing physical adultery.

Just like if someone cuts me off in traffic and I get angry, that's very different than if I pull out a

gun and shoot the person.

To have murder in the heart is very different than to murder.

And so the boundary does not equivocate the two.

It's not true to say a sin is a sin is a sin.

And we'll get to that in a minute.

But notice that the boundaries are from God and this should be enough, right?

This should end the conversation.

The God who made the heavens and the earth, the author of all things told us what we're allowed to do and what we're

not allowed to do.

That's the first reason.

But here's the sad reality of all 8 billion people living on the planet.

If they grow to maturity physically, they will violate the deeper meaning of the law.

To be told don't do it will not be enough.

All people will fall short of the glory of God.

Even though the lawgiver told us what we're allowed to do, we still transgress his boundary.

So there's more.

Let's look at the second point.

The second point is to understand sanctification is a growth

process.

Look what it says in verse three.

This is the will of God, your sanctification,

to be made holy.

It's not positional here, although sanctification in other places can be spoken of positionally.

Here it's speaking to the process of becoming more like God.

Look at the end of verse one.

We're told in our walk with Christ to do such and such more and more.

So there's a conforming that's happening, and this process of being made more and more like Jesus is called

sanctification.

Here's the problem.

When we're born into the world, we're born lustful.

Not necessarily sexually until we kind of reach puberty, but there's a lust in us to

have our appetites satisfied.

Whether that be the desire for sugar or the desire for some form of entertainment,

the natural disposition of the body is to crave and to desire, and the

temptation is to let the body have mastery over the man.

But here we're being told that the Gentiles simply allow their passions of lust to carry them

away, not so the Christian.

Rather, the Christian is to learn by discipline to control himself.

That we are to master our bodies, the vessel as spoken of here.

Spoken of in 1 Peter 3, remember the passage about the weaker vessel?

The woman is the weaker vessel?

Which means as a physical body, generally speaking, he's weak

and she's weaker.

Not that he's strong and she's weak, but she's weaker and he's weak.

Our fallen bodies in the flesh, our vessels given to us, and they're weak.

We must learn to master our bodies and not allow our bodies to master us.

This is the point here of your sanctification, to learn to control your body.

Now this happens when you have a good father who disciplines you.

He does not allow you to satisfy any appetite that arises, but he disciplines you

because he loves you.

But there comes a point as you grow and mature that external discipline from a father must turn

into self -discipline.

And you learn to control your appetites by delayed gratification.

That I won't just follow the lust of the flesh, I will put off the gratification of this desire,

trusting God for the fulfillment of it, and something better.

Because when we short circuit that process and we allow lust to control us, it turns around and

kills us.

That's what sin does.

To transgress the boundaries results in pain and suffering.

But as we're being sanctified, we're learning to control ourselves.

We're growing.

And it's a process, which is good news.

Because nobody here has perfectly mastered your thoughts.

Hopefully no one's transgressing the line into physical adultery.

But there is a kind of adultery of the mind that also needs to be disciplined.

As we're sanctified, that our minds would be the mind of Christ.

We're told to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

And as we're being sanctified, we're learning to control our bodies and our minds.

So the second thing is to understand that this is a sanctificational process.

But what direction are you moving in?

Having been born again, are you becoming more like him, learning to master your body, master your thoughts, or are you

carried away as the Gentiles are?

The third point I have found extremely helpful, and many Christians

don't know this because there is a certain justification of sin

whereby even Christians will say, listen, love is love.

All I'm doing in transgressing sexually is expressing love.

No, that's eros, not agape.

Notice the third point, and it comes from verse six,

that no one transgress and wrong his brother

in this matter.

That is very important because it drives away the lie that sexual immorality,

even in your thoughts, is ever a victimless crime.

Sexual immorality actually does affect the brother and sister.

Young people, you may be dating somebody that you think you might marry one day,

but in the secret plan of God, you will marry another besides the one you're

currently dating.

And the one you're dating is destined to be married to someone else.

If you transgress the boundary, even if you say love is love, we felt love,

you are taking away from a future husband or wife.

You are robbing from them.

You are entrusted to date, guys, this girl and to keep watch

over her, be a protector like Adam.

And instead, you took from her something that she would have given in

purity to her husband.

You are wronging her.

Some people say, well, listen, then I'll just look at pornography.

But your demand for pornography on the internet is feeding the

supply of the people who are producing it.

And many of those young girls are exploited and abused and

participating in that is feeding that monster.

You're wronging her and viewing her.

And even in the privacy of your own thoughts and fantasies and illusions, you're rewiring your

brain contrary to what should be given to your spouse.

It's never a victimless crime.

This point is powerful in verse six, that no one transgress and wrong his brother.

He's saying that sexually, transgressing the law of God will hurt

someone that you're called to express agape towards.

Your eros will undermine your agape.

Very important point.

Number four of five.

Regarding sexual sin, we are to fear the Avenger.

Did you think it was Stan Lee that coined that term, the Avenger?

When the Avengers invented this big green guy monster,.

Right?

No, don't fear that Avenger.

Look what it says in verse six.

Because the Lord is an Avenger in all these things.

As we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you, did you hear that language?

Solemnly warned you.

Paul is very serious.

He's like a Jonathan Edwards.

Got himself fired because he was standing up against this bundling.

And the congregation is saying, why are you so hard on this?

You're too conservative.

You're too serious.

Why are you so solemn?

And they fired him, the great revival preacher.

But he understood that God is solemn and he warns, who's the

Avenger in the passage?

God.

And it's because he loves us.

A loving father disciplines his son.

In the same way, according to Hebrews 12, our God, if we are transgressing, we'll notice

pain coming into our life.

And many people, when experiencing pain, will say, why am I such a victim?

Why are these painful things happening to me?

Well, could it be that a loving God is bringing discipline and correction into your life so that you'll change course?

We are to fear the Avenger.

Fear God.

So much of our culture has lost all fear of God.

When you look out at what America looks like, it's no better than Thessalonica before the gospel came.

And yet this culture was entrusted with the gospel.

It's just by the sexual revolution, really starting with Darwinism.

If men are just nothing more than primordial soup now walking around, what difference

does it make?

And so people have lost a moral compass and this country has descended

into debauchery.

Complete disregard for God.

But what does it say in verse eight?

Whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God.

One of the scariest things is those who transgress, and we talked about how a

sin is a sin is a sin, is a lie.

It's not true that a sin is a sin is a sin, right?

There's a difference between having a sexual or lustful thought that you entertain in your mind from

actually committing adultery physically.

But what ends up happening is that people might justify in their mind, listen, I've already thought these thoughts.

Well, I guess I'm adulterer at heart.

I should go ahead and do what the flesh is pulling me toward doing.

But a sin is a sin is a sin is not how the Bible presents it.

Instead, what happens is by crossing certain boundaries as God defined them, people

descend farther and farther into depravity.

And what is at first the good gift of conscience that would not allow you to transgress,

the more times you do that, the less conscience objects.

Someone once described it as like taking a piece of duct tape and putting it on your jeans.

And as you rip that off, it's got a strong hold.

But as it gathers lint, however you say it, the more times you do that, the less sticky the tape becomes.

That's how it is with your conscience.

The more you offend your conscience, the less pull it has on you.

And as you cross one line, it invites the crossing of the next until in Romans 1, 26 and

27, Paul says God gave them over to do what ought not be done.

For even their women, exchanging the natural function, were engaged

in lust with one another.

And their men likewise, doing what ought not be done.

They were given over to this.

It was a process of maybe first of all thoughts and then looking at images and then participation

and then finally more and more aberrant sexual practices.

But the Avenger warns against this.

It's possible to be given over and then finally to be lost in eternal hell.

Hence, Edwards preaches lovingly, sinners in the hands of an angry God.

I'm glad my sermon doesn't end at point four because the best one here

is at the end of verse eight.

Best because it's the good news.

We are to love the giver.

Notice how the Avenger is then described almost as like a twist in the plot at the end of the verse.

Whoever disregards this disregards not man.

But God.

You can picture Edwards just bellowing this out.

In fact, actually they say Edwards preached in a high -pitched monotone and he

read his sermons by manuscript.

And yet people would be trembling and clinging to the posts that held up the church.

They were so under conviction by the spirit.

It shows that it was the power of the word of God, not Edwards' personality that led the first great awakening.

It was the power of the word doing it.

But here we don't have Edwards shouting.

You notice the final phrase who gives his

Holy Spirit to you.

The Father gave the second member of the Trinity to atone for your sin.

All of you who have transgressed, at least in your mind, some lustful thoughts.

You're guilty before a Holy God.

You're a sinner in the hands of an angry God.

And yet the hands of his grace are holding you up.

His hands were pinned to a cross and he wore

the crown of your shame and sin on his head.

And he bled for us, taking the penalty that we deserve.

The second member of the Trinity paid the price of our sin.

And then he returned to the Father, but he said, I don't leave you as orphans.

I give you another helper, the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and he

will live in you.

This battle against lust, this battle against your flesh is not to be fought alone.

It's to be fought by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The spirit of life will overwhelm and overcome the spirit of this world

and the power of your own flesh.

Remember the parable that Jesus taught?

He said, picture a loving father.

If his son comes to him and says, father, give me a loaf of bread, the

father won't instead give him a stone.

And the little boy says, daddy, give me some fish.

The father won't give him a snake instead, a poisonous snake.

And if a loving father, an earthly father knows how to give good gifts to his children,

how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

There is life in the spirit.

When you ask God, fill me with your Holy Spirit, you decide, I don't wanna grieve

the Holy Spirit of God.

I want to be controlled by the Spirit of God.

Do not get drunk on wine, but be being filled with the Holy Spirit.

When you ask God for his Spirit to come and help you and fill you, you're walking

in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Self -control, all of us in the flesh lack that.

Where does self -control come from?

It's a fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5.

The last listed fruit in that list.

We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that's where this passage ends with regard to sexual immorality.

It says he gives his Holy Spirit to you.

Isn't that good news?

We have the Spirit of God, we can overcome.

Now, the Gentiles, they can't.

They're controlled by the world, the flesh, and the devil because they're not born again and they don't have the Spirit.

But you, Christian, are empowered by the Spirit to overcome the world.

Take heart, Christ has already overcome the world and his Spirit now lives in you.

Giving you the power to overcome.

So in closing, today's sermon is what Paul wanted to say to the Thessalonians.

And here in 2022, 300 years after Edwards, we're right back to Thessalonica, aren't we?

You'll notice it if you watch the Super Bowl.

You'll see the commercials, which I would recommend you turn off.

We'll be praying here instead at six o 'clock if anybody wants to join the prayer meeting.

These five things, listen.

When you're bundled, you're in a moment of temptation.

Don't ever do that, by the way, young people.

Nobody's tempted sexually on a Sunday morning under the preaching of the Word, right?

You're tempted Sunday night or Monday night.

But when the Word of God has shaped the way you think, these thoughts will return to you, that there's a

lawgiver who tells me what's right and wrong.

This is either good or bad, and God has determined these things.

And he commands me, he instructs me.

Don't disregard him, he says what to do.

He's God, I'm not, that's the first thought.

The second one, I'm being sanctified.

I'm learning to overcome.

I'm growing in godliness.

I'm being sanctified in my walk in order to please God.

The third thing, if I transgress, even in my thoughts or behaviors, I will wrong a

brother or sister, and that's not agape.

The fourth thought, God will discipline me.

Think of that.

God will discipline me, not because he hates me, but because he loves me.

He won't let me go on this pattern of behavior.

He will bring correction into my life because he loves.

And the greatest thought of all, the gospel.

He's the giver of good gifts.

He gave us Christ, his son, to suffer in our stead and to take this sin away, to wash us clean.

We're pure in his sight.

And he gave us the spirit to overcome the world.

These thoughts need to come back into your mind.

And by the hearing of his word, he transforms us and gives us the mind of Christ.

So in closing, whatever happened to Jonathan Edwards?

When he got fired, do you think he threw in the towel and that was the end of him?

No, he went off to a Native American tribe, the Mohawk Indians.

And he spent the last seven years of his life teaching little children

how to learn English, to read and write, agape.

He gave himself to the education of these Mohawk Indian children, teaching first grade.

And then at night, he wrote some of the greatest theological works in the history of the world.

Which we still have with us today.

It's agape.

He enjoyed a full life of the spirit with a godly family, joy describing him

because he did things God's way.

And now his joy is complete.

He's in heaven and he's delighting forever that he walked the way he did.

Our friend Rob Randall has given us a movie that many of us had never heard of.

It's called Time Changer.

And it's the story of a professor, a theology professor that comes from the 1800s

into our day and age.

And it's not like, you know, Hollywood quality, but it's an amazing movie because when this professor

coming from the 19th century sees our day, he's walking through like a Dillard's or a Macy's or something.

And he sees a mannequin wearing lingerie.

And he's so horrified by this,.

He runs out of the store.

He just can't believe what he's seeing, that this would be out in public.

And when he goes to the movie theaters, someone takes the Lord's name in vain and he bolts out of there.

That's how we should be reacting.

But we live in a culture that's saturated with sex.

And so we become numb to it.

And our consciences are not as prickly as they ought to be.

In this culture, we must flee sexual immorality.

The Lord will help you to do it.

And it's utterly important that you do.

Those who make shipwreck of their faith very often do so because of falling into sexual sin.

Let's close in a word of prayer.

Father, thank you so much that you've given us your word.

You didn't just tell us what to do and wag your finger and crush us if we don't.

Quite the opposite, Lord, you taught us how.

You've given us the thoughts, the mind of Christ, that we would be holy as you are holy.

So Lord, sanctify your people.

Lord, we wanna pray, especially for the young people in the room whose hormones are surging.

Lord God, we pray that you would keep them pure, help them to wait for the good gift that you

have for them in their spouse.

Pray that you would keep them pure.

Lord, how can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word.

Thank you, Lord.

Help us to be holy as you are holy.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Let's stand and sing.

Means

of

justice

and

mercy

of

God

Jesus,

to you we

lift

Jesus, our glory and our Adore you,

behold you, our Savior ever true Our glory,

adore

you,

Savior

ever

true,

Savior

May the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great

shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip

you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is

pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever

and ever.

Amen.