SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/7/2014 9:09 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
How Can A Believer Be Sexually
Moral? (PT-1)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1
Thessalonians 4:4-6A
Message of the
verses: Before we get started on our
subject for today I wish to use the ending quote from John MacArthur’s
commentary from our subject of yesterday’s SD (What Kind of Sexual Conduct Does
God Require?) We will have to look first at 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 before we
look at his ending quote: “15 Do you not
know that your bodies are
members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make
them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 16 Or do you not know that the
one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says,
"THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH." 17 But the one who joins himself to
the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside
the body, but the immoral
man sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit who is
in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For
you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
“Paul may have had such sins in mind when he later told
the Corinthians, ‘You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons:
you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons’ (1 Cor.
10:21). The demonic cup and table refer
to the worship in pagan temples in Corinth, and part of that idolatrous ritual
entailed the worshipers having sexual intercourse with temple prostitutes. The apostle was concerned that the new
Corinthian believers had not completely abandoned such activities. The situation at Corinth, where Paul was when
he wrote the Thessalonian epistles, surely highlighted the danger of sexual sin
and motivated Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians. The command, then, is for total abstinence
from any sexual activity outside marriage.”
Now we will proceed with the subject of today’s SD
beginning with the verses we will be looking at over the next few days: “4 that each of you know how to possess his
own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the
Gentiles who do not know God; 6 and that no man transgress and defraud his
brother in the matter (1 Thess. 4:4-61).”
We will begin today to look at the first of three
timeless principles that Paul gives here for maintaining sexual morality. It is good to remember that the temptation
that we undergo is directed towards that old nature, the sights, sounds and
philosophies affect the old nature that all believers still have and will
continue to have until their death or until the Lord comes at the rapture of
the Church.
The Body Should Not Control the Believer (1 Thess. 4:4): “4 that each of you know how to possess his
own vessel in sanctification and honor,”
As one reads through the NT they come across lists of
sinful desires and practices, and example of this is found in Galatians chapter
five where Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit, but before that he has another
list, a list of sinful activities. “17
For the flesh sets its
desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one
another, so that you may not do the things that you please. 18 But if you are led by the
Spirit, you are not under the Law. 19 Now the deeds of the flesh are
evident, which are: immorality,
impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of
anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21
envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I
forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such
things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:17-21).” Jesus also gave lists of sinful activities in
some of His sermons. My point in all of
this is that not all believers have troubles with all sinful activities, but we
all have trouble with some just as Paul wrote in verse 17, and he also wrote
about this in Romans chapter seven where he stated that he was doing the things
that he did not want to do and not doing the things he wanted to do. We Are In A War, and that war pits the spirit
against the flesh. Many male believers
have the temptations with sexual sins either by thought or by deed, and here is
a good point to remember that all sins begins in the mind, and the mind is a
part of the body, and are lesson for today is that we need to control our
bodies and not have our bodies control us.
This may seem impossible, and left to ourselves it is, but as Paul wrote
to the Galatians and the Corinthians we have the Holy Spirit living in us, the
third Person of the Trinity.
John MacArthur says this about the word “know”: Know is from oida, which carries the idea of having the knowledge or skill
necessary to accomplish a desired goal.
Every Christian needs to know himself well so as to understand his
weaknesses and evil propensities and, thereby know how to possess (‘gain
mastery over’) his own vessel.”
I want to write briefly about the word vessel to say that
some believe because this word is used in 1 Peter speaking of a wife that Paul
is talking about a wife in this passage.
Paul writes in some of his letters, like Colossians and Ephesians about
the family, but he is not writing about the family here so the word vessel here
speaks of our bodies and we are to know how to possess it in sanction and honor
as verse four states. MacArthur writes
“Paul was admonishing the Thessalonians to control their bodies, the unredeemed
human flesh that is the beachhead for sin and immorality (cf. Rom. 7:18; 8:5-8,
23). For this reason Paul urged
believers to kill the flesh (cf. Rom. 13:14; 2 Cor. 7:1), live by the Spirit
(Rom. 8:13), and dedicate their bodies to God and allow His Spirit to renew
their minds so that the body would not control them (Rom. 12:1-2).”
Just think about when you see an
advertisement on your TV, and you have to ask the question “What is the
advertisement appealing to?” The answer
is your physical appetite, and they do a good job in doing it too. I leased a car last November and after that I
received a survey to fill out and some of the questions that were asked was why
I leased this car. Did I lease this car
“to show it off” now that is not exactly the question, but that was the meaning
of the question. My answer was no I
leased the car because it was a good deal, and that it will get me where I want
to go. This survey assumes that the
advertisement to “my flesh” worked.
We see advertisements of half naked women selling
toothpaste or dippers or just about anything in order for men to purchase the
items they advertise, and it works. Paul
says that we have to learn how to control our old nature. Paul writes the following to the Corinthians
“Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with
both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the
Lord is for the body. Do you not know
that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of
Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be!” (1 Cor. 6:13, 15).” When we read these verses we may tend to
think that there must have been advertisements in Paul’s days that he was
telling the Corinthians to stay away from.
Sexual pleasure is a gift from the Lord used to have children and also
to bring pleasure to a man and his wife.
Since the fall that is spoken of in Genesis chapter three all persons
ended up with a sinful nature, for God told Adam and Eve that when they would
eat of the tree He told them not to eat from that they would die. They died spiritually right away, and
physically latter on and the man passes on this sinful nature to he children. When Jesus came to pay for our sins and we accept
His forgiveness and make Him our Savior and Lord through faith then we receive
a new nature and as we have spoken of here this new nature goes against the old
nature. The old nature always wants to
do wrong, while the new nature always wants to do right. The old nature is described as the flesh and
what Paul is writing about in verse four is that we need to control the flesh
and live a life in sanctification and honor as we learn to control the old
nature. I heard a story of an Indian who
received Christ as Savior and Lord and the person who led him to the Savior as
him how he was doing in his walk with the Lord.
The Indian said that he had two dogs in him fighting, a white one who
wanted to do good, and a black one who wanted to do wrong. He was asked which one was winning, and the
Indian said the one who I say sic-um to. We have the same choice in our walk
with the Lord, a walk that Paul says we need to “excel still more.”
John MacArthur writes “In several of his other letters,
the apostle Paul made it crystal clear that in order to control their bodies
believes must rely on the Hoy Spirit.
‘Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh’
(Gal 5:16). The key to walking in the
Spirit is being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:17-18), and the key to being
filled with the Spirit is for believers to let God’s Word dwell within them
(Col. 3:16; cf. Pss. 19:7-11; 119:11, 105).
They must sincerely read, study and apply Scripture so that it saturates
their lives and allows them to yield complete control to the Holy Spirit.
“No Christian should every ask how far his or her moral
behavior can depart from God’s standard and still avoid sin. Rather, believers should strive to be utterly
separate from immorality so that they can honor their bodies, which belong to
God, and use them to glorify Jesus Christ, the Head of the church.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: It is my desire
to be able to possess my body in sanctification and honor as Paul writes
here. It is a daily battle, but I do
have the Holy Spirit living in me to show me what His Word says and to empower
me to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
I have to fight the god fight.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Fight the good fight and if I fall to
remember that the successful Christian life is a series of new beginnings, and
to get up and continue to fight the good fight by the help of the Holy Spirit.
Memory verses for the
week: “Philippians 2:5-8
5 Have this attitude in
yourself which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form
of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied
Himself taking on the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men. 8 Being found in appearance as a
man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death
on a cross.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “John” (John 1:1).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where did Abram go during a
famine?”
Answer in our next SD. 6/7/2014 10:36 AM
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