For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:2

Transcription

1 Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:1

2 For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:2

3 It is God s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 1 THESSALONIANS 4:3

4 that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 1 THESSALONIANS 4:4

5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 1 THESSALONIANS 4:5

6 and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:6

7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:7

8 Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you His Holy Spirit. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:8

9 Believers live to please God by living a holy life. (1 3)

10 One of the great weaknesses of contemporary evangelical Christianity is our comparative neglect of Christian ethics. We have become known rather as people who preach the gospel than as those who live and adorn it. JOHN STOTT

11 People hear our words but they videotape our lives.

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. PHILIPPIANS 3:12

13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, PHILIPPIANS 3:13

14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:14

15 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

16 In our culture nothing is more essential to our identity as human beings than the freedom to express ourselves sexually and use our bodies as we choose. KEVIN DEYOUNG

17 Freedom of sexual expression has in many ways become the cultural god that rules over all the other idolatrous gods of postmodern culture. People want the right, for themselves and others, to express their sexual desires at any cost. JOHN MACARTHUR

18 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God s holy people. EPHESIANS 5:3

19 Sexual purity reflects an increasingly holy life. (4 6)

20 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. 1 CORINTHIANS 6:11

21 We aren t salvation minimalists interested in getting away with something. We want to know how to maximally please God KEVIN DEYOUNG

22 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. 1 CORINTHIANS 6:19,20

23 Our failure to follow the teachings of Scripture in this area undermines our ability to accomplish what God has called us to. Why? Because if we are just like the world, we have nothing to offer it. An unholy world will never be won to Christ by an unholy church. RANDY ALCORN

24 I ve never heard a Christian couple regret all they didn t do before they were married. KEVIN DEYOUNG

25 If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. C.S. LEWIS

26 Sexual impurity makes no sense for people with a holy identity. (7,8)

27 God says, Be holy, for I am holy. I had always thought that the opposite of homosexuality was heterosexuality. But actually the opposite of homosexuality is holiness. God never said, Be heterosexual, for I am heterosexual. He said, Be holy, for I am holy. CHRISTOPHER YUAN

28 Sanctification is at the same time both a divine work and a human obligation that can only be met through the power of the Holy Spirit. GENE GREEN

29 Don t think of Christianity as having to do what a peevish God wants. Think of it as now being able to do what a good God demands. KEVIN DEYOUNG

30 Sexual purity highlights a transformed identity in Jesus Christ.