1Thessalonians: The Barriers to Temptation — Bruce Rodgers

Holiness and Sanctification in 1 Thessalonians

I'm going to read together in Thessalonians again. 1st Thessalonians. We're going to start in chapter 3 at verse 12. 1st Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse 12. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and Toward all men even as we do toward you.

To the end he may establish your hearts Unblameable in holiness before God. Even our father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. Chapter 4 verse 1. Furthermore then we beseech you brethren and exhort you by the Lord Jesus.

That as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God. So you would abound more and more. For you know what? Commandments or charges we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication.

That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor. Not in the lust of concupiscence. Even as the Gentiles which know not God. That no man go beyond and defraud his brother In and it should be in the matter not in any matter in the matter because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as We also have forewarned you and testified.

For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth despiseth not man, but God. Who have also given unto us? his Holy Spirit. But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write unto you for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another and Indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia, but we beseech you brethren that you increase more and more.

Let's just look over in chapter 5 and remind you of what it says in verse 23 and 24 and the very God of peace. Sanctify you wholly and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless Unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Faithful is he that calleth you who also Will do it. Now the subject that I am looking at this morning is what I call barriers to temptation. Barriers to temptation. I'm going to start as I indicated in chapter 3 and I'm going to look at the idea of holiness in the positive sense first of all.

And then we have some of the negative aspects that are touched on in chapter 4. Now I'm just going to give you I've given a few labels of These barriers to temptation and the more I look at it. I could have expanded the list I could have doubled the list even from the passage here let alone other passages.

But I'm just going to give them to you. So you sort of have an idea of where I'm heading. The number one barrier to temptation is The link of love and holiness. The essential link of love and holiness and That is derived from two great statements about God himself.

God is love and God is holy and He says you be holy. Because I am holy. So we need to appreciate what that really means and so love and holiness. They have to be kept together. They have to be kept together or they're destroyed.

God's Will for Holy and Honorable Relationships

The second one is God's will for our lives. And I could have said the Lord's command for our lives because that's right in the same phrase God's will and I'm going to put it this way. God's expressed will for our lives.

It's no secret. He's made this clear is for us to have holy and honorable relationships. Holy and honorable relationships. The third barrier. Is the very sad reality that fornication? Defiles degrades.

Dishonors it devalues ourselves and others in relationship and We could say another thing it dishonors our own body. So fornication and this is how we need to understand sin. We need to value measure what sin is by its Distortion of what is good?

It's corruption of what is good what is honorable. And then the fourth one is that fornication violates the rights of our brother. Or you could put it the rights of a sister, but in this case he's giving it as a brother.

And he's saying you're doing this to your brother. You are defrauding your brother then. Along with that is the Lord himself is the avenger of a defrauded husband or wife. The sixth one is that God's salvation is a call to Sanctification or separation from evil and it is a call to fellowship in his holiness.

And so number seven is that pursuing sexual sin is a rejection of God's character and Of his companionship Indwelling us so we're going to be down through these and try to see how they flow together first of all as we have in chapter 3 the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another.

And then he says to the end he may establish your hearts Unblameable and holiness. This is something we need to meditate in. We need to think about this important link between love and holiness. Now First of all, there's a recognition here that love can grow.

Love can develop. You know, it's it's ironical that in the fantasy world in the realm of imagination It is evil. That's exciting. It's evil that holds the lure. They don't portray a normal Love of a husband with a wife.

No, they portray everything but that as Entertainment imagination glorifies evil. The reality is the opposite and if you don't know it beforehand you will know afterwards. It is true love that is thrilling it is true love that can continue To be Something that holds you casual fornication causes people eventually To be unable to experience intimacy it causes you to lose.

What it promises to give very important for us to understand. God Holds the patent on life. It is God who has designed This part of our being and the relationship in which it is to be experienced. But the word love as it's used here in chapter 3 in verse 12 11 and 12 is is of course a Wider more encompassing.

It's not just talking about marital love. It's the same word that we use so often of God Agape, and so he's saying that love Is really the essence of life? It's no wonder we're attracted by love. No wonder love draws us.

Because we were made for love love blesses us love love fulfills us love satisfies us and to love and to be loved is Life and God is love. So whenever we have an expression where God is Something we're really looking at the essence of his nature.

This is what God is. God is love. So if you were going to grow as a person It must be in the element of love if you're going to truly grow as a person. If you're going to come to fullness, so the idea here, and I didn't draw attention to it.

But the idea of abounding is repeated about three times in these verses that I have read God wants us to grow develop and to overflow and so love has that capacity. It's wonderful to meet beautiful older people.

Not because they've plastered themselves with makeup and you couldn't see the wrinkles if you tried. It's because the inner beauty shines through. God has intended us to be a to be beautiful to be attractive and he wants to do it through love.

Developing but the link that we see here. Is that if you will grow in your love if you will develop in your love. Ultimately, he will bring you to this point. He says you will be unblameable in holiness.

And you understand that connection could I suggest to you? It's because that love is really the most purifying virtue. Because love in its essence is really directing our attention to others. It's not self-focused.

It's others focused but the problem that we have with our fallenness is that our love has become distorted around ourselves and So love relationships then often become distorted by this self-focused aspect that causes us to use that Attraction that belongs in a marital relationship to cause us to cause harm in other relationships.

So if we can understand this that love If it's really growing in me, it is going to purify my being it's going to purify my Motivations and so not only must we understand if we're looking at love as the essence of what God is.

That means everything else you can say about God Must be inherently part of in harmony with love so his holiness is Essential to his being. Now, what do we mean by holiness here? We usually think of holiness as what it's separated from.

That's that's a clear concept set apart from. But when you're talking about God and God says I am holy. Was he holy before there was anything else that existed? What does it mean about him? Now I'm going to suggest to you what I have come to appreciate and I hope it can make sense to you.

I've come to appreciate that when the worship of heaven comes to this pinnacle of Saying in his presence, holy holy, holy. It is really describing the infinite perfection of all his attributes of All his character and nature.

In other words, he is infinite in his love. He is infinite in his faithfulness. He is infinite in his justice. He is infinite in his kindness. So holiness is not just some kind of separate quality of God.

But rather that perfection of all that he is. So that it repels All that is corrupt. We believe that God is incorruptible. It's a wonderful reality to know and I hope you know that when God called you in salvation His goal is to bring you ultimately to Incorruptibility.

A day when you will never never struggle with sin again you will be impervious to evil and this holiness of God is that perfection of Character that repels expels Anything that is unholy that is immoral that is unjust.

So he is saying love is the way to holiness. So we need to understand that vital connection that vital reality. And so then he says in chapter 4. He says brethren. We exhort you that you walk. How he says as we have as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God now.

Walking to Please God Like Enoch

I Remember a long time ago when we were going through this in our assembly Bible reading someone pointed out that Enoch is Pictured here or really Enoch becomes a picture of what is here in this chapter.

Enoch stood out from the generation of men that he lived among it says that Enoch walked with God and the Greek Septuagint version from which Hebrews 11 Comes says that he pleased God. So here's a man Who had a companionship with God.

He had a compatibility with God. Even though the world around him was completely Unholy and he preached against the unholiness of a generation and the Lord raptured him. Kind of interesting, isn't it?

But the Lord's going to do this with us. Wouldn't it be nice to be fit companions Compatible with God like Enoch. I Think that Paul is being very gentle. Remember how in chapter 2 we talked about being like a nursing mother being like a father looking so compassionately upon his own children and I would suggest and this is just reading between the lines that when Timothy came back and Gave this encouraging report of their faith standing firm and of their love towards one another.

There must have been something else that Timothy brought back a Concern a concern about their Behavior with each other and Paul. Excuse me is a preaching Sorry approaching this very gently. He doesn't say like he did in Corinth.

It's commonly reported that something's going on among you or the house of Chloe has said. This is what's going on. He doesn't handle it in that atmosphere. He reminds them of what we taught you when we were with you.

And so he's appealing from for them to remember. Remember what we taught you you ought to walk and to please God. I Want you to encourage you to abound more and more you remember what commandments we gave you that commandment about your sanctification.

And so I want you just to think then about the reality that This word commandment Verse 2 I refer to it as a charge. It's actually a military term. Where we are we are brought under under command and It's not optional.

He is calling us to this he is commanding us To be holy to be pure to avoid to abstain from fornication. And so he says for this is the will of God and so the first Barrier to temptation is to understand the reality that love if it's going to develop.

It's going to develop in purity towards a blameless holiness. The second is that God has expressed his will for us. The Lord himself has charged us stay away from fornication and So it is clearly if we are going to experience Fellowship with God We're going to have to deal with this in our lives.

We're going to have to turn away from every kind of sexual immorality. I Don't know anything that destroys fellowship with God so quickly so absolutely as anything of Entertaining immoral thoughts in your mind.

Let alone fulfilling it in behavior. It destroys our fellowship with God. Now let's think about what he really is saying here. He says that you should abstain from fornication that everyone should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.

So this is sanctification in its negative aspect what it is not. What it avoids what it turns away from and he uses the word Fornication now this word if we were I was to give you the word the Greek word it is pornea pornea.

We get our word today pornography. Pornographic comes from this word now. I'm going to make a few statements about it here. That some of you may not even think is correct. Because today when we use the word fornication generally we usually use it in distinction from the word adultery.

We basically limit it to unmarried people who may get involved in casual sexual relations with someone else's unmarried and If we were talking about a married person Committing sexual sin we would call it adultery.

Fornication, Adultery, and Defrauding a Brother

I Was not limiting this warning to unmarried people. Because he specifically says that you do not go beyond and defraud Your brother he's talking about a Christian who has become infatuated with somebody else's wife and defrauds his brother and This is consistent with the Lord's handling of it in Matthew chapter 19 and the Lord's use of the same terms in Revelation chapter 2.

In Revelation chapter 2 he speaks about that woman Jezebel. He has this against the assembly in Thyatira that you suffer that woman Jezebel Who teaches and Seduces my servants In idolatry and in fornication and then he uses that language of Those who commit fornication of Her fornication and then he uses the word then that commit adultery with her.

This is exactly the same way the Lord in the Old Testament in Jeremiah chapter 3 Ezekiel chapter 16. Hosea chapter 2 Uses these two terms interchangeably of the same people in the same situation so however you try to distinguish and define these terms in some of the difficult issues of divorce and remarriage.

I Want you to understand that you cannot Make that a clear-cut distinction even in Matthew chapter 19. The distinction the Lord is making in Matthew 19 is not between Fornication as happening in the betrothal period and adultery as happening within the marriage.

He's talking about fornication as a cause that breaks it in distinction from all other causes. You can't get along. You've been insulted and so on and so on other causes that cause marital breakups. There is one sin.

There is one kind of sin that is a denial of the marriage a denial of the marriage Relationship and I remember reading. I don't remember the the book many years ago Defining sexual intercourse as being in its truest sense the act of marriage.

If you will accept that definition You will be understanding what God intends by it. When I give my body in this marital intimacy I Am giving myself and it is an obligation to have a total committed relationship With this act.

What is then fornication. Fornication is the distortion of that? You can't properly Understand it as sin and understand the sin of it unless you see what it is the distortion of it is taking that same physical act and Using it simply to fulfill my own sexual passion.

Without regard to the well-being of that person. I know it's become very common in our culture for there to be total impersonal sex. People they call it hooking up go out for the weekend out for the Friday night come home with somebody.

Next weekend is somebody else next weekend at somebody else next weekend at somebody else and They imagine that this does not have consequences within their own being. Here he says this is the will of God that you should abstain from fornication this illicit immoral sexual intercourse and then he says that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in Sanctification and honor now the word vessel here some have thought that it is referring to the wife the other partner that is implied in other passages.

But I believe that as you go through this passage it belongs to me personally. So whether you're in a marriage relationship or not God is asking you he is charging you calling you to possess your vessel to live in and to use your body as a vessel a Vessel to serve God with a vessel to express spiritual virtue and It's beautiful to know that marriage is not incompatible at all with serving the Lord.

It is not incompatible With loving the Lord being devoted to the Lord it belongs together. Because it expresses the very nature of God who is faithful and who binds himself to us in covenant faithfulness.

Whereas fornication ignores that faithfulness ignores that commitment ignores that valuing of the other person and even my own honor and it simply enslaves me to fulfill a physiological desire and so he says here that They to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor now.

Then that implies that fornication then does the opposite of that it dishonors it degrades it devalues it cheapens. Now I remember even back when I was a teenager Going to high school. Even though that was that was just sort of the beginning of a sexual revolution and sex was becoming very commonly Involved engaged in but whenever a girl Would give in to the the lure of some fellow wanting her for Casual sex and she would think this was making her special to him.

That's what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to make you special unique. Nobody else has this closeness. Nobody else you belong to someone in an exclusive close relationship. The tragedy is that it does the opposite when it's fornication and She would get talked about She's a cheap girl now.

Everybody will have a try at her and They'd be even mock and mock her behind her back that still happens. It still cheapens no matter how How commonplace it becomes it still cheapens. You don't give yourself away so cheaply.

Because it devalues you. Nobody should have you who is not willing to be totally committed to you for life. And so he says here to possess his own vessel in Sanctification in holiness and in honor not in the lust of Concupiscence and Concupiscence is lust of concupiscence is just simply the passion of lust Just letting yourself be a slave To this very natural normal desire, but letting it become the dominating controlling influence in your behavior and life.

Pornography and the Need to Resist Temptation

So there's one thing I haven't made any reference to Because the word fornication obviously From the scriptural basis is really talking about a physical act. What about? Pornography. I was really disheartened recently to to read that somewhere between 65 and 70 percent of The total traffic on the internet is pornography.

You think about how the internet today is used by millions upon millions of people for everything business. Whatever and to think that even even with that The majority of the bandwidth that is being used is actually pornography.

That's tragic. The effects are happening on a pretty wide scale today. Police services are being overwhelmed With trying to deal with child pornography which has to be the most despicable Thing that you can possibly fathom and I again read something just just in the last couple of weeks.

Now you might think this is you know some stranger Who could possibly do this to some little child? It's frightening how many times its parents Who have become so corrupted? That they will use their children to market pornography to others.

It's it's it's almost unimaginable That this could be taking place. But the more that fornication is made normal The more the barriers against it are being lowered and lowered. So we're getting down to the basest of levels pornography is a tremendously destructive thing and I there was a pornography conference out in British Columbia.

That is I think available. If you are struggling with this kind of problem I Would urge you to Deal with it before the Lord. That's where it has to happen but if you need some help in Understanding coping methods and so on you might find some help there, but ultimately comes to this choice I Must say no.

I must realize my own life is at stake. My family is at stake. Everything my own spirituality is at stake. My honor as a person before God and before others is at stake. This will destroy me and because it is so available today.

You must you must make this choice. To fight it and even if you have been giving in to it start today. Start to say no and fight it abandon it. Because even if you'd never get to the physical it will still defile you within yourself.

It will still put you at a distance from the presence of God. It will make studying the scriptures and enjoying the Lord a mockery. The Lord is holy. His presence is holy. I want to just remind you of a passage that is very clearly linked with this in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 Where the Apostle Paul appeals to the believers in Corinth.

To abandon fornication to not be involved with prostitutes. He says if you join yourself to that person your one body. It carries an obligation, but then he makes this Contrasting statement. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

I Hope every one of us value that and treasure that what that means is in your most personal moments in your most private moments. There is somebody sharing it with you your relationship to the Lord Jesus is so close.

So complete so binding it is on the deepest level of your existence. You are united with Christ, so you are one. That means that you are bringing him into everything you're doing. Everything you're thinking you are making him a companion of your behavior a Companion of your thoughts, and that's why he appealed.

He says are you going to take the members of Christ? What is his and? Make it a member of a harlot and let's be abhorred by that even in our minds and. So he says here not in the lust of concupiscence even as the Gentiles which know not God.

Sexual Sin and Violating a Brother's Rights

Those who have no relationship to God who don't know him and are not touched by what he is. And then he says that no one go beyond and defraud his brother in the matter. Now I Wonder I'm going to give you an example from the scriptures.

It's a very sad example. So this barrier I want to emphasize is that fornication violates the right of our brother. We're supposed to have a loyalty to one another. I'm supposed to care about you if I allow this physical sexual Coveting of Someone that belongs to you.

I have to go over this barrier of my respect for you. My honoring you. My understanding that you belong to the Lord. And one of the things that I have done for myself to try to protect against this is To do just what Job did in Job chapter 31.

Is it where he says if I? If I have waited at my neighbor's door if I have lain and wait. If I have seduced my neighbor's wife. Then let my wife bow down to another. If it's tantalizing to you if it's a powerful attraction to you, and you can't seem to get it out of your mind just turn it around and Imagine somebody else seducing your partner if we have any hint of that.

We get very upset don't we it can tear us apart if we have any inclination that somebody's flirting. Showing undue. Familiarity seducing in any way my wife. It would turn the inside out. Why does it seem so different when it's the other way.

This is what we need to recognize. This is what he is challenging us to in Job. And Job also said something that I should have mentioned this before. Job starts out that passage by saying I Made a covenant.

I Made a covenant with my eyes. We know especially for the male. It is the visual stimulation that is most often the trigger That triggers this desire within us. And I have learned over and over again in life.

It's when I become careless about that initial look. That it begins to gain a little foothold and it becomes easier to look longer. I Made a covenant with my eyes as saying I refuse To look upon somebody else that does not belong to me.

With covetousness with lust. I reject that. I Would ask you. I would ask each one of you to make that commitment. It's the second look. It's the longer look that leads to the fascination the mental Fantasizing that gets us into trouble.

And so if we need the most powerful reason of all. It's just to look at what it says in verse 6. The Lord is the avenger of all such as we have also forewarned you and testified. The idea of the Avenger.

In the Old Testament times, especially a very familiar idea where if some crime was committed against someone in a family. Either a brother or a close relative would take it upon themselves to avenge that crime.

The Avenger and here the Lord is is saying I'm going to take that place. This teaches me first of all this means so much to God. God looks upon every Christian here as Belonging to him. You know, the Lord has called you his brother or if you're a sister a sister.

The Lord cares about you and the Lord Values Faithfulness. He abhors the treachery as Malachi chapter 2 teaches Treachery to that covenant relationship. Why. Because this is the ultimate expression of the glory of God Christ and the church.

Christ and the church becomes the mystery the great mystery of God himself. God's glory for the ages upon ages to come is going to be displayed in his son and The son's bride Christ and the church. I remember when it dawned on me That a husband-and-wife relationship in the natural realm on earth is The closest expression of the nature of God.

God the one who is plural in oneness. Plurality of being within the Godhead there is perfect love. There is perfect unity perfect harmony a relationship that is eternal and our creation by God was designed to reflect that and so I personally believe that in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 that being created in the image and likeness of God in its fullness really becomes this relationship that is to be experienced and That is just a picture that is just the foreshadowing of when God unveils himself to the creation in fullness it's in his son and In the church it is in Christ in the church that God's glory is to be known in fullness.

So no wonder then that this means so much to him. That he says I will avenge this I Will take this on I will judge this and to me. It's a horrifying thought a Horrifying thought that I should ever have my God Take the stand against me to be an avenger against me.

Let's think about David. King David Had one of the closest relationships to God of anyone in the Old Testament times so many beautiful Psalms. Reflecting Someone who is that God said a man after my own heart.

And yet that terrible blot that happened in David's life. I want you to think about what happened and how it how it all came out in the end. And I want you to think about this question. Could David could David have subdued that passion?

That arose in his within himself for Bathsheba if he could have seen the Consequences of that behavior. I'm sure he could have let me just remind you of what happened. He didn't intend to kill one of his most loyal servants Uriah.

But that's what he ended up doing. David arranged so that Uriah would die. And I'm not going to go into all the details of the sequence of events. But if you remember the first thing he did to cover up his sin was to call Uriah back from the battlefield come home.

Give a report and then go home to your wife. Kind considerate King. Trying to cover up his shame and his sin and Uriah that man of such high High Integrity he says no no the army's out there fighting.

They're away from home. I'm not. I can't do this. David makes him drunk. Tries again still didn't work and then David writes a letter and he had such confidence in the loyalty and faithfulness of this man.

That he could give him a letter with his own death sentence on it, and he knew he wouldn't read that letter. How could he do it? How could he possibly do it I? Want to tell you this is the vice that sin brings you into.

It will take you where you never thought you would ever go, so what was the sequence of events? Well David got to see an innocent baby die his own child. He had prayed he had wept he had fasted, but God said this child's going to die.

What you have done has brought such dishonor. There has to be and this is despite being forgiven. Let's remember this. David was forgiven because he finally broke in repentance. But God did not remove consequences.

He carried out a Moral governmental discipline upon David and upon his family and the first thing he watches an innocent little baby Get sick and die, and then he would have that terrible grief of having a beautiful daughter a beautiful daughter raped and raped by a son another son Within his own family and Then to have that son Slaughtered in vengeance by Absalom and then to have done to him multiplied over what he had done his wives taken and publicly not secretly.

But publicly if you want to call it a rape whatever you would call it I'm sure it wasn't consensual by them his wives his wives and then that son Raised a rebellion. David as the commander-in-chief of the army had unjustly ordered the death of a loyal man a faithful man and he would have a son who would rebel against him and raise an army against him a Civil war in which many many more would die including that son.

The consequences. Terrible consequences. And so there there is in this passage the warning that this means so much to God. He will not passively Let this go on and not judge very very challenging, and then it says for God Has not called us unto uncleanness But unto holiness.

He therefore that despises Despises not man, but God and so God's salvation Includes a one-way street to holiness. To sanctification. He has called us to this it's a it's a call to separation from evil.

I mean it should be so logical to us if God has Delivered us from the ultimate judgment of sin He must also deliver us from the sin that leads to judgment and so God has called us away from evil. Unto purity unto honor unto what is of God unto holiness and so and finally he says If you're going to despise this If you're going to go over these barriers You're not just despising a brother.

You're rejecting God. The word to despise is to reject to show contempt towards He therefore that despises. Despises not man, but God who has also given unto us his Holy Spirit. Now my time is just about gone so I want you to just Just be reminded God has given to you.

He has imparted to you his Holy Spirit. To indwell you to bring to you to make real to you the presence of God. That you might be able to have the capacity to know God and to enjoy him. You are jeopardizing that.

You are showing contempt for that whenever you permit Your body to be used your mind to be used for something that God detests and which is the antithesis of what God himself is and so I Want to just remind you as I didn't get into the next section.

But he says then in verse 9, but as touching brotherly love you don't need for me to write to you. You're taught of God. This is instinctive that you would love one another you would love one another as brothers you would have a family love and loyalty and.

So with this very sobering caution. Do not let your relationship become corrupted. Don't let it become destructive. He says now I want you to. I want you to be close to each other. I Want you to develop.

I want you to overflow in your loving care for one another. I want you to acknowledge one another as brothers in Christ. He says I want you to do this more and more. Every one of us are faced with this great challenge today of Being able to discern what is defiling what is corrupting?

And turn away and Keep turning away and to cultivate instead this closeness with God. So that we are able to please him in this generation and God bless.