A Sin Too Far

Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. I'll read verses 1 through 8, but I will preach only up to verse 6.

And God willing, in two weeks from now, you will hear verses 7 and 8 brought to you in a separate message.

As you turn there, the Apostle Paul has, in the first three chapters of this letter, reminded his beloved

Thessalonians of how the gospel came to them. You recall the phrase, not only in word but in power and in the

Holy Spirit. He reminded them of how they had seen the gospel which captured them, lived out by Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, of how and why he sent

Timothy to establish and exhort them in the faith, of how Timothy returned to him and brought back encouraging news of their steadfastness in the gospel in the face of much affliction.

And now, as was the Apostle Paul's practice, he turns from the theological constructs of the first few chapters, or first many paragraphs, because they didn't have chapters then, of his letter, and he turns from there to the, as we heard this morning at Sunday school, the so what.

What do we do with this? The practical part, as we like to call it, the applications.

He tells them that while their lives seemed to be aligned with all they had been taught so far, and so they were actually pleasing to God, they yet had a long road of growth before them and many sins to avoid along the way.

With that brief introduction, please stand in honor of God's holy word, 1

Thessalonians 4. 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. God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of his words. His word, please be seated.

Now I had great advantages in life. I was raised by well -educated and professional parents.

My mother had two master's degrees, one in European history, and she could name to you all the cousins and the first cousins and the uncles throughout all of Europe, really from England all the way to Russia.

All these interrelationships, and she knew them and she knew what they meant. She had a master's degree in that history, and she had a master's degree in English Lit, and she taught high school

English at Saratoga High School, not far from here. My father was also well -educated.

When he finished his doctoral work at the University of Oregon, we moved here to the San Jose area, and he became the curriculum superintendent of Alum Rock School District, not far from this place, and later, after a few years of that, the same job here in Sunnyvale School District, where his office was just about a mile from where I now stand.

So I was raised with quite the advantage. My mother was the cultured one in the family.

She knew etiquette. She knew which order the silverware went and which order to use it. Instead of just picking up your soup bowl like we would sometimes do and drinking it, she would be appalled at that, but she understood etiquette.

She was really the cultured one, and she rarely used contractions.

The first time she heard me say, I ain't going to do this, she looked at me and said,

I am not going to do this or that. I never want to hear that kind of uncouth talk from you again, and by the way, you shall indeed do this or that.

She was very cultured, knew etiquette, and she had a look, my wife could describe to you also, that could melt you.

Well, one day, I had to be taken out of school early. I was sent home for fighting.

My dad was away at the time, so I had to face my mother. She read the notice, read what it said on there, not just shoving, not just being able to drink, but really fighting.

And I really wish my dad was home, because if my dad was home at the time, he would have yelled at me. He would have told me to knock it off.

He would have added quite a lot to my chores, and I would have had to do them, but it would have been over. My mom would look at me, sort of like Elisha, staring at King Hazael until he was ashamed.

And she said something like this, My son is better than that, at least I thought he was.

And she later explained to me, that there's a step you take away from decent, civilized behavior, that is almost impossible to step back from.

And teacher that she was, she gave me a reading lesson, and I had to read Lord of the Flies, and teacher that she was,

I had to report to her what I learned from it. I learned that depravity, that's my word,

I don't remember the word she used then, but that was my word now, for obvious reasons. I learned that it was too near to play footloose and fancy -free with it.

Well, this is what Paul has for the Thessalonians, here in these verses as well.

He's affirming to the Thessalonians that they're doing well. He said, how you ought to walk and to please

God. Let me put the emphasis a little bit differently, and to please God. And then, just as you are doing.

And then he exhorts them to stay the course. He says that you do so more and more. And then he warns them of a sin too far, of steps over boundaries that are almost impossible to reverse.

Have you ever been in that moment where some tantalizing temptation is dangled before you?

In the middle of our passage here, it's sexual temptation, a proposition, a shady, but it could also be a shady financial deal.

It could be an embellishment on a resume that you know could never be refuted or traced back.

You know it's wrong, and you know that to partake of this thing would be a denial of all you thought that you were.

Have you ever been in that moment? But there it is, once entering your thoughts, it's always there, just ready to burst forth and bring you into that kind of sin.

Have you had that crisis moment? Well, this is what the Apostle Paul warns the Thessalonians against.

He says, you're doing well, you're on the right track, you are pleasing none other than God himself.

Just as you're doing. And do so more and more. Stay on that road. Because you see, there's a sin that can open a floodgate to more sin that's almost impossible to repair.

Nothing is beyond the power of God, so I speak in human terms here. There's a sin that can open a floodgate to more and more sin that's almost impossible to repair.

And Paul would have them to avoid that and to continue living lives that please God and to do that more and more and more.

He would have them to avoid such sorrows and he would have us to avoid such sorrows.

Live lives pleasing to God. Avoiding that sin too far. To live a life pleasing to God, you must grow in his word.

These are the first couple of verses the Apostle gives. Finally then, brothers, verse 1, 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. I want you to notice right away that Paul's not using a sledgehammer to pound them into submission.

It's an entreaty. He says, we ask you, we urge you. We entreat you would be a good way to look at it.

We're cajoling you along in the Lord Jesus to do this. It's more of an entreaty, but nor is it a gentle sort of, hey,

I'm okay, you're okay, what you're doing's fine, don't worry about it, just it's in the Lord Jesus. As you live in the sphere of the

Lord Jesus Christ, as he is in you and you in him. It has more teeth than just I'm okay, you're okay.

It's by virtue of our union with him, by the authority delegated by him to me is more the flavor of this.

Without losing the idea that he is encouraging them that they're on the right track. They are asked to recall what they had received from the apostle.

You know what instruction we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. Recall this. Remember the instruction.

Remember the words that we gave you. And that with the authority of Jesus himself, the authority of the risen

Lord. That's what the two references to Jesus are here. In the

Lord Jesus is living in the sphere of Jesus. Through the Lord Jesus is the authority of Jesus through the apostle.

And he says to walk. You receive from us how you ought to walk.

Now walk in the Old Testament and the New Testament like means to order your life. What is the ruling principle of your life?

What is that sieve through which all decisions go? It's to be the Lord Jesus Christ and the instruction, the apostolic instruction that he gives today, the scripture.

To walk and to please God then. What does that mean? It means to do all things to his glory. That's 1

Corinthians 10 .31. They had received this by way of Paul's preaching and by way of his example.

Which is very clear in chapter one of this epistle where he says, You know what kind of lives we led among you, how we lived holy in your presence.

So it wasn't just the word of God preached to them. It was that. And it was their example.

I discussed last year when we were in Philippians the importance of example. We need to see how things actually are done sometimes.

We can read, for example, the book of Proverbs. Most of us can understand what it says about, let's say, child rearing.

And we can believe it is the very word of God. We can have faith and have every desire to put it into practice.

We just don't know what to actually do. And most of us are helped to see a godly couple showing us the how of the written word.

So right away we see in these verses the importance, once again, of example. Of setting the example, of looking for examples in each other.

And even in a church as small as our church. When there's something that you have trouble implementing from the word of God in an issue in your life that you know you need to correct or do better in, that example is very likely here.

If you ask, if you look, primarily it's the Lord Jesus Christ. But what are we looking for here?

It's someone who emulates the Lord Jesus Christ in their example of that particular issue. It's here.

It's what Paul says to them. You know the instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ?

Let's combine that with what he said earlier about having lived it out before them. They saw the instruction and they heard the instruction.

You know the instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus? Once again, that harkens back to 2 .13

where the Thessalonians recognized Paul's preaching as what it really was, the word of God.

So they received it by word and deed and they received how they ought to live to please God and what?

What was the result of that? Well, they did it. They lived according to what they'd seen and heard from the

Apostle. Recognizing what they heard as the very word of God, therefore seeing the very word of God, lived out in their lives, and they did it.

They followed it. Now wouldn't that be great if someone came to you and told you that they knew that you were representing

Jesus Christ well and that you were actually pleasing God his Father? Now I cannot tell you that with the kind of authority that the

Apostle Paul had. He was directly inspired by the Spirit of God. But just imagine for a moment that I could make that statement to you and it was credible and authoritative.

I said, you know what? I've seen how you live. I've heard your responses to things.

The way you answer questions people ask you. You, you are pleasing

God. Wouldn't that be great to hear? I mean, if I heard somebody say that, if the

Apostle Paul came to me and said, you, Josh, are pleasing God the way you live, you know what

I would do? I'd declare victory and go home. I would stop right there. I wouldn't take another step. This is great.

I'm pleasing God. It's all over. I'm not gonna take any chances with such a great commendation as that.

Of course, that's a little silly, but I want us to understand the magnificence of what he's saying here.

Because he means quite literally what he's saying. You are pleasing God. You saw, you heard from us how to please

God just as you are doing. But he goes on.

He goes on. The urging entreaty at the end of verse one is this.

What's he entreating them to do? That you do so more and more. That you do so more and more.

He asks them to keep doing what they're doing. Well, no, that's not it. Does he say just keep going what you're doing and keep the course that you're on?

No, he says what you're doing, but more and more. Now, does that sound like a taskmaster who could never be satisfied?

I don't want to call him a taskmaster, but I ask you, does it sound that way? He says, hey, you're doing great, but you're not doing enough.

Yeah, you're pleasing God. For goodness sake, you're pleasing God. Now, do it more and more.

It's like the Egyptians in Exodus who placed so many tasks and taskmasters over the Jews and they were never satisfied.

Well, I guess the question here is who could ever be satisfied with how much they please

God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Who could ever be satisfied with how much they satisfy

Him, how much they please Him? Remember, Paul means literally they please

God with their lives. Paul wants for the Thessalonians, what every

Christian, what you, if you are in Christ Jesus, must want for yourself and for others, which is to grow ever more pleasing to God, to follow

His ways ever more closely, to be ever more consistent in His Word until His Word fairly comes out of you as the first instinct to everything you see, to become more and more like His Son, which

Romans 8 .29 says is your predestined destiny from God, to be conformed to the image of His Son.

This is what Paul wants. What does it mean to please God? It means to be like His Son, Jesus Christ.

How do we become like His Son, Jesus Christ? We know and we follow His Word. How do we follow

His Word? Well, first, we recognize His Word as the Word of God, as the authoritative Word of God, and then we do it by example.

We do it by implementing what we see. If you're one of those who can read and follow instructions right away, great.

Do so. Be an example to me. My son can do that. He can open up an auto manual.

He can read a very complicated set of instructions. He can close the book and he can go and he can put wrench to the engine or whatever it is and do it.

I can't do that. I read the instruction three times. I lay out my tools. I put it up on the carburetor or on the top of the engine.

I look at the picture and I turn a nut. I look at the picture. I can't do it. Some of us need to see it laid out.

Others, like my son, can just read it and do it. We need to become more and more like Jesus.

This is what the Apostle Paul means to do it more and more. Growing in His Word, growing in knowledge and implementation of His Word.

What he actually writes in the original is just as you're doing in order that you might abound or become rich, more.

That word more is at the very end of the sentence. So just as you're doing in order that you might abound more.

He's not being impossible to satisfy. He's not failing to acknowledge, compliment or even notice the progress they made and how amazing it was.

Think of it. When we started this book, this letter, we pointed out that Paul was there for maybe as few as three weeks, but no more than four and a half weeks.

And here they are, recognizing the Word of God as the Word of God. Think of how powerful that is.

Following the example of the Apostles because they heard the Word of God. They recognized the Word of God. Therefore, they recognized the conduct as it comports to the

Word of God. And here they are, less than a couple of months, pleasing

God. And Paul says, gain riches more and more.

The riches and the glory of Christ as you reflect Him more and more. More about Jesus would I know.

More of His love would I know. More and more would I have the riches of being in Christ's image.

You know, have you ever seen a child's first steps? Most of us have. You know, you love that time when a child, a baby, an infant can for the first time put one leg in front of the other without holding on to mommy or daddy's thumbs.

And what do you do then? What do good parents do when they see that child take those first couple of steps without holding on to thumbs or anything else?

Just two steps. What do you do? Well, you say, phew, glad that's over.

Now we can leave little Johnny or little Judy on their own to figure out how to skip and how to run and how to jump.

Because now they get that one step. So we're done. Our responsibility's over, right? Well, no one would do that.

No one would do that. They would stay with the child. They would show them how to skip and how to run and to jump and so forth.

That little example falls apart when we think of ourselves with God. Because as His little children, we never do let go of His thumbs.

Insofar as His thumbs that we hang on to are the word of God that He's given us and His Holy Spirit who is in us, who guides us into that word.

Paul doesn't leave them on their own like that. He tells them to continue to grow in the

Lord and in their pleasing God in their lifestyle. To live pleasing to God is to grow in His word.

To grow more and more, to abound in His word. And to live pleasing to God, you need to know what

His will is. Do you not? If you're going to please God, you need to know the will of God because it's

His good and perfect will that He has given to us in His word. To live pleasing to God, you must know His will.

And that's verse 3 through the first half of verse 6. 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 passion of lust like the

Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter.

So I want to ask you to think about this for a moment. After all those encouraging words, after telling the

Thessalonians that you are pleasing God, you are pleasing to God, you receive from His house to walk and to please

God just as you are doing and to do so more and more, but if they're doing it, what is this doing here?

I mean, if they're living pleasing to God, how could they need to be told this? I mean, if they've been involved in this kind of sexual sin that's described in these three verses,

He could never have written that they pleased God, could He? I mean, just ask the

Corinthians. Does sexual sin please God? If they're involved in that, would Paul have written this?

Again, for homework tonight, read the first several chapters of 1 Corinthians. He couldn't have.

He wouldn't have. Well, a little background might help here. A little background into the

Greco -Roman world of that day. That Greco -Roman culture of that time was like a petri dish for sexual misconduct.

But for them, it wasn't misconduct. Promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, prostitution were not only rampant, but accepted as normal.

It was just part of life then. And truly, there's nothing new under the sun.

As I was reading the background commentaries on this, and I'm reading about that world about 2 ,000 years ago,

I said, well, I could just say that this is this greater Bay Area where we live now in 2001.

There's nothing new under the sun. A man might have a concubine then. He'd have a concubine for relationship.

A woman he could talk to. They could read books together and discuss them and that sort of thing. This is the one he related to.

And then he could have a prostitute for gratification of another sort. And then he could have a wife, someone to have his children and to manage the home and to raise up those children and so forth.

This was the lifestyle that these very Thessalonians had known and from which just a few weeks before had been called out of.

And he says, don't be like the Gentiles who do not know God. Don't be like the Gentiles, can we say, who you, not very long ago, were.

And he says, the Gentiles who do not know God. In that phrase,

I mean, Paul's just thrown a whole bunch of people under the bus, as we say today. I mean, a whole bunch of people.

A great big mass of people. In fact, when he says the Gentiles who do not know

God, he just threw most of the Roman Empire and with it most, if not all, of the conquered peoples whose religions were incorporated into the work and woof of that empire.

He's just thrown them all under the bus. And then he backed that bus up again just to make sure the tire tracks were there.

And then he put it in first gear, went forward and got the grooves deep and permanent. Those are serious words.

The Gentiles who do not know God was just about everybody else. We could say that when

Paul said that, he just offended the world. Much of which was just waiting to be conquered and incorporated into this empire and their religion becoming a part of it.

It's almost like a precursor to Star Trek's Borg, where everybody gets incorporated into this one collective.

But that's the world that they had lived in. That's the world that was still all around them.

So this is the will of God, your sanctification. One, abstain from sexual immorality.

Weren't they? Well, of course, they must have been to have had those earlier words written to them. Two, that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.

Didn't they? Paul said they received how to please God and were doing so. Three, that no one transgressed and wronged his brother in this matter.

If this is God's will, and it is, and they were doing it, and they were, why is this here?

Well, as I said, the culture they had so recently been drawn away from was all around them. Chapter 1, verse 9 says that they had turned from idols to serve the living and the true

God. This definitive turning of repentance when you come to Christ in faith and repentance means to turn away from all that you were and go towards all that God is.

All that displeased Him and now all that does please Him. All the sin of which you repented towards the holiness and the image of Christ.

That definitive turning away. To repent, as we say, unto salvation.

Turn around and go diametrically opposed to what you were. To what you were.

Past. Were, not living in the passion of lusts like the Gentiles who do not know God. Like the

Gentiles who you so recently were yourselves. You think of the

Thessalonians with all this around them. Paul was there for maybe four weeks. Then he went to Athens and then he went to Corinth from which he wrote this letter.

So this letter is still very fresh in terms of their walk with Christ. If you've been there for four weeks, let's just add a couple of months, they're less than a year into faith when they get this letter.

Commending them that they are pleasing God and to do so more and more. You see, when you turn to Christ, you turn to a

Lord who is greater than your past. You turn to a Lord who's bigger than the culture from which you came.

You turn to a Lord who's bigger and greater and more powerful than your secular parents.

That's who I described in my introduction. My parents were Jewish. And in the extremely secular version of Jewish that most

Jews are today. Christ is bigger than that. Christ is bigger than your

Jehovah's Witness upbringing, than your Catholic upbringing, than your agnostic upbringing.

Fill in the blank. He's bigger than the culture from which you were taken. When you turn to Christ, you turn to a

Lord who's greater than all that you left behind. That's why repentance, Old Testament and New Testament, they both mean, in the

Hebrew and the Greek, just the same thing. Turn around 180 degrees, the other direction. That's the old stuff.

The old wineskins, as Jesus calls them. You're heading towards new wineskins. You don't want to patch it up and put an old patch onto a new skin because it will burst.

You're going to a Savior who Joel 2, verse 25 says, will restore the years that the locusts have eaten away, these great swarms of judgment that God has called to drive us away from our sin and to Christ.

You're to a God who is not only greater than whatever culture you came from, you turn to a

God because of whom culture even exists. So what's this doing here?

To this group of Thessalonians, this church there that was, Paul says himself, by inspiration of the

Holy Spirit of God, is pleasing to God. Well, it's because the temptation to fall back into our old ways is a clear and present danger.

And most especially, sexual sin is a clear and constant temptation.

So in verses 1 and 2, he encourages them. Now he warns them. And here comes the title of this message.

A sin too far. Sexual sin. Is that sin too far? Is that boundary that once crossed is almost impossible to retreat from?

Is it too easy today to cover our tracks with pornography, with sexting, with online relationships, all done in privacy?

You start to think, Psalm 94, 1 -7 would say that God does not hear, God does not know, the

God of Jacob doesn't pay any attention to me. Why does

Paul bring this one out? Why does he warn us of that? Because that's the sin too far.

You know, if you were there for the Sunday school curriculum we had before the one we're in now, based on Ray Ortlund's book called

Israel's Whoredom, where we studied how idolatry and sexual sin were so closely interrelated to each other, how tightly they're bound together, and how it's sexual sin that leads you further from God than almost any other kind of sin that you can do.

Worse than embezzlement, worse than violence. In chapter 5 of Ephesians, beginning at verse 22 and going through verse 33,

Paul addresses the relationship between husbands and wives. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Wives, obey your husbands as unto the Lord, and all that in between.

We're not gonna read the whole thing. But Paul doesn't say simply stop doing the bad and start doing the good.

You gotta be better than you are. When he gets to the sexual relations between the two, between the one man and the one woman, the literal man, the literal woman, married before God, husband and wife, when he gets to the physical relation between the two in verses 31 and 32 of that passage, he says, and the two shall become one flesh.

That is, they will have sexual relations properly and beautifully and wonderfully before God and according to his design.

Well, let me read to you verse 32. And as I read verse 32 of Ephesians chapter 5, think of where we are in 1

Thessalonians chapter 4. This mystery is profound.

And what I'm saying is it refers to Christ and his church. This beautiful picture, this

God's design for the relationship between a husband and a wife is a picture of Christ and his church.

If you remember from the Sunday school curriculum how idolatry leads to that kind of sin.

And that kind of sin leads to more and more idolatry and draws you further away from God than almost anything else.

So are you doing well in your walk with Christ? I was talking to a friend just a couple of days ago.

A dear friend of mine, a dear Christian brother who doesn't live in this state. And he was talking to me about what church to go to.

The church he was at had some problems. He couldn't worship there in freedom in his spirit. His conscience was bothered.

And we were talking about what kind of church to find. And I said to my friend, what you have to ask yourself is, are you the same

Christian today that you were five years ago? And he thought about it for a second. We were talking about what kind of church to go to, what kind of teaching to give, how attached they were to the word and so forth.

And he thought about it for a moment. He says, you know, I am. I am the same. I haven't really grown.

Sexual sin is not unforgivable. No sin is more powerful than Jesus' cross or the work of the

Holy Spirit in you. But here's what happens. When your body returns to a form of Edenic, and I mean the

Garden of Eden, Edenic innocence. We read there in Genesis, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

When you take that outside of its bounds, when you expose yourself to relations that God did not intend, there's a shame that's so shaming that it's smothering.

It puts a wound in your soul that is severe and incurable. That's Jeremiah 30, verses 12 to 15.

That's why violating this most basic and most sacred trust opens this floodgate to other sin. I think this is why the

Apostle Paul tells them why I tell you this is the kind of sin to be most careful of because of what it leads to, because of what it implies, because that in its proper bounds is to be this picture of Christ and His church.

It opens a floodgate. Have you ever seen that commercial for Flex Seal? Raise your hand if you know what

Flex Seal is. Ah, a lot of you, good. Okay, so the guy's got that aquarium, now you're all gonna know what

I mean, and it's got that gash in it so all the water's coming out, and he takes a spatula with a big glop of Flex Seal on it and goes across his gash while the water's coming out and it seals it right up.

I'm not gonna practice. I don't really trust that it's gonna work quite that well, but you understand the point.

Voila. The leak stops. And I think about that and I say, you know, if only sin were like that.

If only we could go buy a can of Sin Seal. Take a spatula and put it across the gash we ourselves opened up and stop the flood, the floodgate to other sins, to more and more sin.

Not just sexual sin, but it opens you up to so much more because it violates something so basic within us and intended by God to be so beautiful.

Look again at verse 6. He says that, No one transgressed and wronged his brother in this matter.

In this matter. Well, what matter? In sexual sin. You could transgress and wrong your brother back in that day by having an adulterous relationship with his wife, by taking him from her sort of like David did against Uriah when he took

Bathsheba from him. Even if you're not that much more powerful over the other one, it's still transgressing and wronging your brother in this matter.

But he says, Don't wrong your brother in this matter. And I want to point out to you that your sin, sexual and otherwise, is not your business alone.

That you have wronged your brother or your sisters, we could say, in this matter. It's not just your business.

It affects us all in the body of Christ. Your sin affects me. Conley and myself as your pastors particularly affects you.

Whether you feel it explicitly and can put it down in writing what has happened or not. Our sin affects each other.

You think of Joshua chapter 7. You don't have to turn there. I'll make this story very quick. In Joshua chapter 7, they conquer

Jericho and the soldiers go rushing into the walls that God caused to collapse. They've been told not to touch the devoted things, which means the precious things that were used in that city for their idolatrous gods.

They're told to leave those alone. And one soldier, a single soldier, Achan, he takes them for himself.

Well, their next battle is against the city of Ai. And they're defeated there terribly.

And Joshua falls down before the Lord. He's saying, Oh, Lord, why do you not go with the host of Israel anymore?

Have you abandoned us? What is the problem here? And God says to him, Get up off your feet. Israel has sinned.

The nation has sinned. They had all paid for one man's sin.

Well, in the same way, but even more, you wronged your brother in these kind of matters.

We're going to open this up way beyond just sexual sin in a moment. But know this, that your sin affects more than just you.

And even if I or anyone else never finds out, the effect is there. 1

Corinthians 12, Romans chapter 12, both say that the body of Christ is a body. That you're a foot.

I'm a hand. You're an eye. There's a mouth over there. We interrelate to each other and we need each other.

We're incomplete without each other. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 23 says that we, the church, are the very body of Christ.

And then 1 Corinthians 12, 26, and this is exactly to the point I'm trying to make, says that when one suffers, we all suffer.

And if you're suffering for your sin, we all suffer for your sin. And if you confess your sin and tell us your sin, or tell a brother or sister in private about it, we suffer with you as we go to God together and seek

His restoration. And if you're suffering from your sin and you're keeping it to yourself, know this, we suffer just as much.

And we may not be able to put down on paper and say, well, this is what's going wrong so someone here is sinning and so we have to do like Joshua did and line up the clans and the tribes and everything else until we get down to Achan.

We can't do that. But it affects us all. Paul says that to transgress and wrong your brother is to step outside of God's will, which is your sanctification.

The word in verse 6 for transgress is huperbinane. You don't have to remember that.

But it means to step over, to go beyond proper limits. Let no one transgress.

Let no one go beyond proper limits with his brother in this matter. Keep in mind, we're going to come back to this, keep in mind that that word

Paul's using, he's drawing out of a commercial realm. That word was usually meant for fraudulence in business, in the commercial setting.

But he uses it here. I just want you to keep that in mind as we go on. Well, huperbinane is to transgress and that's paired with wrong, which is another

Greek word, which means to take advantage of, to have plenty, and yet to want more.

And together they mean something like ruthless defrauding. And so adultery and the other sexual crimes here is more than just a crime.

It is ruthlessness. It reminds me of Malachi 2 .16 where divorce is said to cover your garment with violence.

And here the one who defrauds does it by failing to keep his own body in holiness and honor and goes into adulterous relationships and such.

And that seems to be the point here, which is adultery. To defraud a brother by taking something out of bounds, which is his wife.

In that day, adultery was very illegal, though it wasn't enforced very much. But the law said that if you caught someone in adultery, caught them in the act, that you could actually kill them.

And you would be charged with no crime, but credited with an execution. In that day, they had certain mores, certain standards.

If a wife fell into adultery and the husband found out and he kept her and did not divorce her, he was considered, and I'll just use the word, a pimp.

That's how they felt, but they didn't do anything with it. They didn't do anything about it. For you who have this kind of sin in your life, know that there is hope.

There's hope in hearing and obeying the instruction of God's word. But it's more than just doing or just not doing.

There must be repentance. 1 John 1 .9, if we've confessed our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

As I said before about culture and upbringing, Christ is bigger than all of this.

In our climate today with the LGBTQ plus and growing with same -sex marriage, same -sex marriage abominating

God's design with a culture that is always pressing for more autonomy but never admitting the shackles and the prison that it builds, this is everywhere.

And it's acceptable. As Paul writes elsewhere, they give approval to those who practice such things and the pressure is on to approve.

The pressure reaches down to the youngest among us in our schools, enticing them to participate and it's harder and harder and harder to resist.

God's will for your sanctification, the same word where we get holiness, is to abstain from sexual immorality, to live upright, self -controlled and godly lives in this present age where I just borrowed from Titus 2 .12

and to not transgress a brother or wrong a brother in this matter.

So you live a life pleasing to God by growing more and more in his word. You live a life pleasing to God by knowing his will.

Your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. And this is pleasing to God.

And finally, to live pleasing to God is to avoid his vengeance. The second half of verse 6, because the

Lord is an avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

I said sexual sin was a floodgate to all other kinds of sin. But it's that sin too far.

And now I can explain why. Paul writes transgress in this matter.

Do you remember that? Let no one transgress in this matter. Singular. And as I said, the word for transgress was commonly used in the commercial realm for fraud, especially contract fraud.

And then he says the Lord is an avenger in all these things. In plural. These things tie back to transgress.

I think the word for transgress because it's not a particularly sexual word, it's a commercial word, but used in that context, but because it's not a particularly sexual word, but it has a more general application, is why

I called this sermon what I did. That's why I'm saying that if you step onto that particular sin, it opens a floodgate, or I should say could or quite possibly will or most probably will open a floodgate to others.

And this is how the Apostle Paul, I believe, makes his point to us. By using that one word there and saying this matter in the one sense, but then the

Lord is an avenger in all these things. Not just the one matter, but all these things that they could possibly lead to.

The sin too far. And who is the avenger of them all?

He says the Lord. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus Christ is the one meant there.

Have you ever talked to anyone? Have you heard this? We hear people say they like the God of the

New Testament. They like this Jesus. They like Jesus who lets the little children come to him. The Jesus who loves so much.

The Jesus who went to the wedding celebration at Cana and so forth. Boy, I really like that Jesus.

I don't quite feel so good about the God of the Old Testament. That angry, scowling God who's always mad at people and always judging people and holy wars and genocides and all that kind of stuff.

Have you ever heard that? Of course, all of us have. It's a very common and very serious misconception.

The God of the Old Testament is so patient. He's so slow to anger, so abounding in love.

Read the end of 2 Chronicles just before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians how he wakes up early in the morning.

Now, God doesn't wake up, but this is the way the Inspired Word says it. He woke up early. He rose up early and sent prophet after prophet after prophet to warn them, to draw them away from their sin and back to God.

But they killed the prophets as Jesus said. How patient is that?

That is patient. And then they like the Jesus of the New Testament because the Jesus of the New Testament doesn't judge, does he?

Wrong. Wrong. He's the avenger in all these things.

Read the book of Revelation. Read it on its own terms. Read how

Jesus is on that white horse, the forehorse of the apocalypse. He's on the white horse.

He is leading the armies that bring death and destruction and misery and suffering upon a sin -cursed world that refuses to repent.

In the New Testament, even though His forgiveness reaches heights never seen before, vengeance is not lacking.

Even in Jesus Christ. The Lord is an avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

Well, this God, so misunderstood from the Old Testament, it's this

God who put Jesus on the cross. He put Jesus on the cross to die for your sins.

And when He put Jesus on the cross to die for your sins, He meted out His vengeance for your sins upon His Son who never sinned.

Jesus suffered God's vengeance on behalf of everyone who would repent and believe this

Gospel. That if you put your faith and your trust and your hope in Him, that He will forgive you your sins.

Because His vengeance was poured out upon Jesus Christ. His rightful vengeance for all these things.

The Lord is an avenger in all these things. Everything that these things lead to. Even if you never sinned in the first sense that I was talking about from verses 3 through 6.

All these things. All sin. God is an avenger. Before He avenges against all that are remaining,

He avenged your... He took vengeance against your sin upon Jesus Christ.

You see, the Lord is an avenger. Vengeance has to go somewhere. Vengeance doesn't just go away. God doesn't make it up and say, okay,

I'll ignore it over here. Read Jeremiah 25 about God's cup of vengeance. Where He tells the prophet to hand it to the nations.

And if they say to you, we will not drink it, you say to them, you shall surely drink this. It has to be drunk. It's the cup of vengeance that Jesus drank at Gethsemane when

He said, take this cup away from me. And then on the cross drank it to its dregs. Either Jesus suffered

God's vengeance on your behalf because you put your faith and your trust in Him, or God will pour out

His vengeance upon you. Jesus on the cross suffered

God's vengeance and suffered it all and rose victorious from the grave because He paid no part for His own sin.

He never sinned. That suffering is forever and ever yours.

If God's vengeance was not poured out on Jesus for you, because it will be poured out upon you.

This Jesus is the one God raised up after three days in the tomb. He raised Him for our justification.

And this Jesus will one day be told by His Father to come back.

God will tell Him to go and He will bring vengeance for all these things. The Lord is a avenger in all of these things.

Vengeance will be or it has been poured out on God in full measure. If you leave this world without faith in Christ Jesus, 2

Thessalonians 1 .8 says that what awaits is God's, quote, flaming fire inflicting vengeance on those who do not know

God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Obey the gospel today.

Do you know Jesus Christ? Obey the gospel today by following God's will for you, by growing more and more in Him.

Are you on the right track? Are you pleasing God? It is possible to please God by following His word.

Does that mean perfectly? Of course not. Nothing's perfect until we see Jesus in heaven.

But grow more and more. Do so more and more. Reach more and more for the prize of the upward calling in Christ Jesus.

Continue on that good track. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? No? Repent today.

Put your faith and your trust and your hope in Him. Know that God's vengeance then has passed over you, was poured out on Jesus Christ, and that what awaits you then is joy forever in His presence eternally.

A life pleasing to God is possible for those who are growing more and more in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's made possible by God's grace and by His Spirit, by obedience to His word, and the working of His Spirit within us to empower us to do so.

Amen? Let's pray. Dear God and Heavenly Father, we thank

You again for this instruction that we have. We pray that You, Lord, by Your Spirit, would grow us more and more into the image of Christ Jesus, our

Lord, and that we would continue to live lives pleasing to You, and that for those who do not know

You, for those who do not please You because they are not in Christ Jesus, that today would be the day of salvation if we ask it all in Jesus' name.