Moral Purity - Part 3 — Nigel Lee

Well, you were singing about those that have breath. I wonder whether you have any left. Tremendously hot isn't it? Just think what what training this is. Training program begins for India. Although you can forget the swimming together out in India.

The Call to Holiness and Purity

Can you turn in your Bibles, we'll just sort of sit quietly and cool down. Turn in your Bibles, please to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. We're going to read from verse 3 to verse 8.

Verse 3 to verse 8.

Verses and Then we'll have a in English.

First we'll read it in German, then in English.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

How can you turn back to Matthew's gospel?

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8.

1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 8. 7. You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

8. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 9. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

10. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

The Body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit

Now will you turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6. And I will read this just in English, beginning at verse 9. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial.

Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Verse 17. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Let us pray together.

These are serious words, Lord, and you have written them for our life. You know that we are in difficulty because it is so hot tonight.

And yet you can even break through there and speak to us.

Your words can be completely new and fresh in our experience and become alive. We ask that you give every one of us the desire for you and that we thirst and hunger for justice. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

God's Ultimate Purpose: Fellowship and Christlike Character

Some of you may have seen my children around at this conference. This is the one summer campaign conference to which they come. And I wonder how many of you remember the days when you used to do jigsaw puzzles.

Those horrible days have come back to me. What was the rule? How did you start with the jigsaw puzzle? Look for the straight pieces. Get the corners. Fit the frame of the picture together and then you can fill the middle in afterwards.

Now as you think about the Christian life, let's get the frame together at the start tonight. What is God's ultimate purpose for you? What does he really want you to do, to be, to become? An OM team leader?

A track distributing machine? What does he want? What is God's greatest desire for every single person here in this tent and those who have opted to sit outside tonight? The reason for which Christ died?

The ultimate reason why God has brought you on OM? The number one thing on God's heart as you go through this summer campaign, what is it? It is that God wants to have fellowship with you and he wants you to become like him.

God wants your character to grow up to be so like him that you are able to communicate almost face to face with him. Genesis chapter 15 verse 1 God says, I am your shield Abraham and your exceeding great reward.

I am your reward. All this traveling around, all this doing without money, all this riding around on broken camels. I am your reward Abraham. Exodus chapter 19 verse 4 and 5 God says to the Israelites, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians.

And how I bore you on eagle's wings. And I have brought you unto what? Unto a land flowing with milk and honey? I have brought you, says God, unto myself. Hosea chapter 6 verse 6 God says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

I desire the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. God does not want you to simply go out on OM as a matter of evangelistic duty. He wants you to know him and to become merciful like him. Our subject tonight is purity of heart.

We want to deal with the way we think. The word of God, Matthew chapter 5 says, the pure in heart shall see God. And we want to be especially frank about the sexual and moral area. It is good to be alive today.

We live in an age when we can talk perhaps more honestly about these things than has been the case for a very long time. Our feelings, our emotions, our desires, our secret history, we are able to talk about it now.

And you know that being a Christian does not automatically make the problems disappear. For many, many young men and women, Christian men and women, sex is a major cause of spiritual problems.

For many, many young men and women, Christian men and women, sex is a major cause of spiritual problems.

People don't seem to find all their prayers being answered. They feel they've got victory over something and then it comes back a month later. We find that sex is very often a cause of doubt and even unbelief in the Christian.

And in a few days time, you're all going out on teams. You're taking the gospel to men and women across Europe. What are you going to say? You're going to tell people of God's love and forgiveness. You're going to tell people of God's power to remake mankind.

You're going to speak of God's resurrection power to work in your life. And I want to ask you tonight, are you forgiven in every area? Are you experiencing purity in the way you think? Is your gospel true?

Have you faced God on some of these areas and begun to come to terms with what scripture says? So many folks come on OM with tremendous secret guilt feelings about what they've done in the past. And many of these histories and many of these feelings make people wonder whether God can ever really accept them and use them.

Take the problem of masturbation. For very, very many young men and women, this is one of those areas they don't know how to relate to as a Christian. What does the Bible say? How can I go out with a clear conscience to preach God's gospel?

How can I go out with a clear conscience to preach God's gospel?

Sexual Temptation in the First-Century Church

Let us begin by not being naive about the first century. Don't imagine that these early Christians went around with halos and sandals and togas and little plastic smiles on their faces.

Don't imagine that these early Christians went around with halos and sandals and togas and little plastic smiles on their faces.

Those first verses that we read from Paul to the church in Thessalonica. He was writing from Corinth. He could probably see, as he wrote, the hill of the temple of Aphrodite. Thousands of prostitutes from all over the Mediterranean lived on that hill and worked there as Paul was writing these letters.

That city was, shall we say, like the red light district of the whole of the Mediterranean.

That city was, shall we say, like the red light district of the whole of the Mediterranean.

Paul writes in verse 3 of a holy life. It is God's will that you live a holy life. In verses 4 and 5 he speaks of self-control in the body.

In verses 4 and 5 he speaks of self-control in the body. In verse 6 he speaks of the judgment of God.

This is because the first century Christians were exactly the same as us. With the same desires, the same histories, the same problems that you and I have. They lived at an age when fornication was as widespread as it is in a modern European university.

Divorce was easy. A man could command his wife to go, she would be divorced just for burning his breakfast.

A man could command his wife to go, she would be divorced just for burning his breakfast.

There were frequent marriages. Jerome, one of the so-called early church fathers, writes of watching a woman get married to her 23rd husband. And she was his 21st wife. Imagine what that did to the children.

There was an enormous amount of widespread public homosexuality in the Roman Empire. 14 out of the first 15 Roman emperors were known practicing homosexuals.

14 out of the first 15 Roman emperors were known practicing homosexuals.

And it was in this kind of world that Jesus Christ came. God himself came to this earth. The God who gave us our bodies. The God who thought up the idea of sex.

One of the most wonderful ideas that God ever had. God's idea.

Nothing nasty or dirty about God's plan. Finally that God has come to live and walk and move amongst ordinary human beings on this planet. The God who gave us the definition of marriage. That you leave your father and mother and you commit yourself to the other person and you become one flesh with them.

Three stages.

He has come. And we have problems.

We are young disciples. Not finding all the Christian life easy. I think tonight you and I have the right to ask Jesus one or two questions. What solutions, practically, does he have to give me? If he has made me as I am and put me in this world, then how can he help me to live the Christian life for him?

If he has made me as I am and put me in this world, then how can he help me to live the Christian life for him? Maybe you remember Matthew chapter 5. Jesus is so unrealistic.

You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. You have heard the rules, he says. But Jesus says, I want to speak to your hearts now. Jesus said, if a man even looks at another person, to exploit them, to desire after them lustfully, he has already committed adultery with that person in his heart.

He does not say, you shall not look. You have to walk around with your eyes shut. Nothing wrong with walking around with your eyes open, people. You will not look and lust, says Jesus. The problem begins in our heart.

What is it that causes your heart to begin to lust after another person? Whatever it is, you are to cut it off. He is not speaking physically. All the way through the Sermon on the Mount, Christ is addressing the heart.

He is speaking spiritually. Otherwise there would be a lot of one-armed Christians walking around. Or no-armed Christians. I mean, you only need two goes. And blind as well, most of you. What is it that causes you to mentally begin to think about others in a way you should not?

For some it is pornography. For some it is particular kinds of films. Certain sorts of music. Certain things they see on the television or that they read. Certain places they go to. Certain friends they have.

And those things are to be cut away if you want to live pure in heart and see God. Now you have heard on OM about the revolution of love. The revolution of love and balance. Some of you have read the books.

Christian Saltiness and Moral Distinctiveness

What about the revolution of saltiness? Jesus said as he began his kingdom, that you are the salt of the earth. Dear friends, you are called to live differently. Because you have begun to learn to think differently.

Because the one thing you want more on earth than anything else is to know God and see God and love God and walk closely with Him. Jesus would say, you are the salt of the earth. What does salt do? Well, it is a preservative.

It stops things going rotten. And the presence of Christians in society, in factories, in schools, stops those around going so rotten. Salt also creates thirst. And you are to so live at home and with your friends that you create in them a thirst that they too might know Jesus.

Another thing about salt is that it needs spreading around. It is horrible if you get a big lump in your mouth. If it stays too long together in two big lumps, it becomes horrible. So would you. If all your OM summer consisted of conferences like this, you would become horrible after about ten days.

You need to be spread around. To go and love people, to proclaim God's message to people, to smile to people, to care for them and take them to scriptures. You know in this same passage Jesus says that salt can easily lose its saltiness.

The salt used to come up from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem. They would pile big blocks of the stuff that had been cut, pile it by the roadside for transport. It was a rather sort of a dirty browny gray color.

But it was salt. But you know sometimes the rains would come surprisingly. The rain fell on this salt, it would wash the saltiness all out of it. What's left? Jesus said it's useless. It's only good to be thrown on the roads.

My dear Christian, have you lost your saltiness? Have you stopped being morally different from those around you? Have you still got that hunger in your heart to be pure for the Lord? If you lose that, you're only useful to be thrown on the roads and trodden underfoot, says the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ is beginning with your heart. And if you find that there is some influence coming in upon you, you are to learn how to chop that away. Colossians chapter 3 verse 2. Set your mind on the things that are above.

You know it seems to me that there are some problems in the Christian life, and the Lord says to us, well, you fix it. And you pray, and you pray, and you pray, and the Lord says, well, I want you to do something about it.

Very often men and women pray about the problem of sexual temptation, and the thing just gets more and more rooted in their mind the more they pray. They have days of prayer and fasting over the problem of immorality in the mind, and the thing just seems to get worse.

We need to learn to control our minds so that we think in a completely different way about people. That we regard each other as brothers and sisters. That if you find yourself being morally drawn away to think thoughts about someone else that are adulterous, then immediately you train yourself to pray for that person.

Set your mind on the things that are above. Just a practical habit of mind control which God will help you with by his word. This Bible is so realistic. It's not something that's just written for super saints and heroes and angels.

Biblical Case Studies in Sexual Sin and Faithfulness

The very first book of the Bible has practically every different kind of sexual relationship in its pages. Think of King David from 2 Samuel. There was a man who found that his heart was ambushed. He was caught by surprise.

A man who had written some of the greatest Psalms that have encouraged our hearts even perhaps during these days. 2 Samuel 11. David had been sleeping. He woke up in the afternoon, stretched himself. The army was a way out to battle.

David was being easy on himself. He was asking others to go out and fight, but he was being easy on himself at home. And he walked over to the flat roof wall of his house. And he looked down into the garden of the next door house.

Bathsheba having a bath. What on earth was she doing having a bath out in the open air next to the king's house? So let me explain something very practical. Very simple. Words of one syllable. Men and women are not the same.

Right down to the last chromosomes of their body. Men are turned on emotionally, sexually, very often by what they see. Women not so much by what they see, but by how you treat them, how you speak to them, perhaps how you touch them.

The advertisers know this. Do you men ever buy magazines that will try and sell you a car? How many car magazines have you seen advertisements for a nice car with a lovely girl sort of draped across the front with very little clothing on?

How many car magazines have you seen advertisements for a nice car with a lovely girl sort of draped across the front with very little clothing on?

The advertisers know that men stupidly think that if they buy the car they somehow get the girl as well. When did you last see a ladies magazine trying to sell a washing machine with a man sitting in his underpants?

The advertisers know. Now please, let us bear this in mind as Christians. Please girls, be careful with what you wear. Because you may well be stumbling some of your brothers. Now I know it's difficult in the hot weather.

It's very difficult for us men. Please, bear this in mind so that you are not dressing in such a way, just question yourself, dressing in such a way as to sexually draw attention.

Please, bear this in mind so that you are not dressing in such a way, just question yourself, dressing in such a way as to sexually draw attention. David saw. Well, we can't help what we see with our first look.

You're only in control of your second look. And David suddenly reached that point where he was going to have to make a choice. He was caught by surprise. The temptation had suddenly ambushed him. And you know the rest of the story.

He took Bathsheba. She got pregnant. He had her husband killed. He took Bathsheba into his own home to be his own wife. The child was born and then died a week later. I don't know what Bathsheba thought about being the plaything of the king.

Her family and home destroyed. Her child dead because of the sin of another man. Her husband killed in battle because of the plots and the treachery of the king. So much resulting from David's failure to guard his heart.

Two chapters later. Now the consequences beginning to come out in David's own family. David's son Amnon. And his stepsister Tema. And now it was not the case of his heart being surprised in ambush. This was deliberate deceit that he nurtured in his heart.

He raped his sister. Then turned against her. The heartache in that family. Eventually Amnon was killed by his own brothers. The Bible is realistic. About the way men and women think and feel and act.

Think of Joseph. A long way away from home. Joseph in Egypt. Joseph working as a young man aged about 19 or 20. A man being tempted by an older married woman. Don't think Potiphar's wife was some girl fresh out of Bible school.

She persuaded and persuaded and tried to draw Joseph to sleep with her. And Joseph kept his heart right before God. You think what a hero. How God will bless him. How God will protect and honor that young man.

Yeah with a few more years in prison. It's not easy to walk the way of the Lord. People are not always going to understand. You can often be criticized by those closest to you. Some of you perhaps this conference are going to have to make some decisions in this area that others may misunderstand.

But will you keep your heart pure before the Lord? Think of that woman that the Lord met in John chapter 4 by the well. A woman who had five husbands. And was now living with a chap she hadn't even bothered to marry him.

Maybe she'd never ever known any better. And yet she was still spiritually thirsty and hungry. The Lord is meeting these people and dealing with them. The Bible tells us these stories so that we may soak up the meaning.

Forgiveness, Repentance, and Freedom from Guilt

Think of the apostle Paul counseling these Thessalonians or the Corinthians. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Paul has two questions in verse 12. He quotes the saying of the Corinthians. All things are lawful for me.

But he has then his first question. Will your behavior help your Christian growth? All things are lawful for me. But will you fall into the control of anything? How many of us have known that we've got into relationships that have gone wrong and it has brought our whole Christian growth to a grinding halt?

How many of us have known that we've got into relationships that have gone wrong and it has brought our whole Christian growth to a grinding halt?

We've known people come on OM who've come right from immoral relationships. And coming on OM was an attempt to escape from something that is still tangled up inside.

We've known people come on OM who've come right from immoral relationships. And coming on OM was an attempt to escape from something that is still tangled up inside.

We've every year seen people come on OM from a background of homosexual relationships. We want you to face the word of God on this. Where will God begin? As he's going to deal with your thoughts, your mind, your past, your behavior.

The central message of God's word is that you may be free. You may be forgiven. Look at those verses in 1 Corinthians 6. Some of you were fornicators. Some of you were adulterers. But you were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That church, as they sat around listening to Paul's letter being read out, they nodded, they looked at each other, they knew.

Do you need help? Do you need forgiveness? God wants to come and shine light into some dark places in our hearts and our lives. The Lord said to that woman that he met her by the well, The Father is looking for people just like you to be his worshippers.

OM is full of men and women on their way to glory. Men and women who are finding God to be a God of forgiveness, no matter how guilty and how secret they may feel. God is a great God. He deals with our needs in the right order.

Your great need was to receive salvation. To be accepted into God's kingdom. To have your name written in the book of life. It's in your mind. In your heart. Some of you need help and need counseling.

You need to face what scripture is saying. You need to make new beginnings with the Lord. You know, if a man falls off a bicycle and he injures himself in two ways, he ruptures a main artery in his neck and he breaks his leg.

He's rushed to the hospital in the ambulance. What order are the surgeons going to deal with things in? They're going to deal with the rupture with his blood pouring out first and deal with his leg later.

But God is like that. God has saved you from a lost eternity. But the surgeons do not say when they've dealt with the artery, right, fine, you may go home now. That's it, you're done. Some of you are trying to walk around on broken legs.

Your conscience has got still large areas that have never really been cleansed. You have patterns of behavior with your friends that you're already afraid you're going to slip back into when you get home.

When you see written in God's word that fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God, some of you are a little bit afraid. You wonder whether God really has forgiven you. You wonder whether he'll forgive you because of something you did just last month.

You're afraid you're going to slip back.

God forgives sin. If only we will call it sin and let it come out into the light. So often we try to redefine our past. We use different language. We talk about the difficulties we have or the problems we have.

The Bible says that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, not from all little local trivial difficulties. Are you prepared to call sin what the Lord is calling sin in your life? And turn? Turn in repentance?

That word repentance means to turn. And to begin to go in the opposite direction. That's real repentance. I believe God wants to speak to some tonight. And I'm asking for a response. Some of you don't want to go out at the end of the crusade with these areas of heaviness and guilt still uncleansed.

The Lord has told you what to do. To repent, to turn, to get right with him. Perhaps to pray with someone. You don't even want to go to sleep tonight without finally letting that load off your shoulder.

Maybe God is speaking to some about nurturing lust in your own heart. Or worry, the sin of worry. Constant worry about who you will marry, what your future will be, what kind of a home you will have. Even coming here on OM, that's one of the things that's uppermost in your mind.

We need to trust God. We need to ask God for that purity of heart and mind and walk, so that we see him and know him. Some of you need to come and seek counseling on the cold question of homosexuality.

I believe there is hope, there is victory for the homosexual who is prepared to walk in the light. Some of you perhaps need just someone else to talk to about past experiences that have really hurt you deeply.

Maybe some were raped in the past, maybe there was incest in your family and it's been a load on your mind ever since. Maybe some of you have wondered whether God can even forgive what you've been up to.

How can you go out and share the gospel of God's forgiveness if you don't really know it and rejoicing in it yourself in your own heart is the greatest thing in your life? We will pray with you. We will help and counsel you.

We will counsel and advise. Maybe for some of you just the act of talking it out with someone else marks a break from the past. The Lord Jesus said, you hunger, you thirst after righteousness and you shall be filled.

Sexual Maturity, God's Gifts, and Character Formation

Maybe you've got a question in your mind. Why couldn't God have arranged life differently? Why am I the way I am? I see that I'm like the first century Christians. I want to serve the Lord and yet I've got a background and it's not easy to break out of it.

We live in a day when the age of sexual maturity is getting earlier and earlier. A hundred years ago, only 13 of 16 year old girls had reached puberty. Now that figure is 97%. The age of menstruation is getting 6 months lower with every generation.

It's got to stop sometime. But at the same time, in many of our cultures, the age of marriage is not going down, it's actually going up. We live in the gap. We live with our energies and our youthfulness in that gap period.

And my Bible tells me that sex is a gift from God. We think, well, perhaps it's a gift I could well have done without for the time being, thank you. Why has God put us in this situation? Let me say two things about a gift.

Every gift, spiritual gifts, they're all temporary. Whatever your spiritual gift, it is temporary. You may be an evangelist. You're not going to do any evangelism in heaven. You may have the gift of organizing and administrating.

You think you could run a conference like this without one hand and one eye. I tell you, when we get to heaven, there ain't going to be any administrating for us to do. All our spiritual gifts are until the Lord comes back.

But your character goes on for eternity. You are becoming now the kind of person you will always be. God is working in your character to make you like himself. And the second thing to understand about a gift is that very often parents give gifts to children in order to teach them something.

How many of you were given piano lessons? My wife comes from a long line of Scottish engineers. At the age of three, she gave my son a toolbox. I wanted to give him a hockey stick. I couldn't buy one.

It was small enough. Parents give their children something in order to push their characters a certain direction, don't they? Fathers give their sons footballs. And God is exactly the same as a father.

God has given you your gifts so as to develop your character. God has given some of you the gift of evangelism. Your character will be developed by that. Because if you go and preach the gospel, you will get involved with people.

People will ring you up at all hours of the night. They'll come to your home. They'll sprawl all over your furniture and break it. They'll use up all your coffee. And your character will grow a little bit.

Some of you may be a Bible teacher. Don't imagine that you can just stand up in front of the public and switch on a tap and all it just pours out. You spend hours alone studying God's word deep into the night in order to get that which you can give to other people.

You're learning discipline. You're learning diligence. Your character is being changed by the gift you've been given. You'll have different gifts on the team. There'll be the musical encouragers of people.

There'll be the very careful people who keep the team treasury books and count all the money. They are in for much frustration. The team leaders, they've got their gifts. And you're all going to grow.

It's exactly the same with the gift of the ability to relate to another human being sexually and emotionally. Are you going to learn to be honest? Learn to be unselfish? This is the problem with masturbation.