SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/6/2014 7:36 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: What
Kind of Sexual Conduct Does God Require?
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 Thess. 4:3
Message of the
verse: “For this is the will of God,
your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality;”
We will try and answer this first question from verse
three, a question that some may be surprised at the answer, but the answer is
given at the end of verse three where Paul writes: “that is, that you abstain from sexual
immorality.”
John MacArthur points out that the conjunction “for”
links this command to Paul’s previous exhortation that the Thessalonians strive
to excel more from verses one and two of chapter four. As we read over chapter 1 and verses 3-10 we
will be reminded that these people had a desire to do the will of God, and so Paul is explaining more
fully this command which is the will of God. People desire to know what the will of God is
and there are different places in the Word of God that tells us exactly what
the will of God is for our lives.
Paul begins by giving a general or broad governing
principle of what the will of God is and that is sanctification (hagiosmos), which is the Greek word
translated in the NASB as sanctification.
In some other translations it is translated as holy. MacArthur writes that it is the “process of being separated from sin and
set apart to God’s holiness (Ps. 4:3; Jer. 1:5; John 17:17; Acts 20:32;
Rom. 6:22; 15:16; 1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 5:26-27; 2 Tim. 2:21; Heb. 2:11; 10:10;
13:12; cf. 2 Cor 6:17; Eph. 5:7-9; Phil. 2:12-13). God wants believers to be separated from all that is evil, fleshly, and
impure. The sanctification
process is the direct result of salvation, as Paul instructed the Corinthians:
‘Such [sexually immoral] were some of you; but you were washed, but you were
sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in
the Spirit of our God. The apostle’s
reference to sanctification points back to one of the requests he had just
prayed for the Thessalonians: ‘that He
may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father’
(1 Thess. 3:13).”
Paul
now gets more specific by saying that part of this sanctification process is to
be sexually pure before the Lord that is we abstain from sexual immorality. We mentioned in our last SD that these people
lived in a very sexual perverse society, something like we live in today in the
United States, and I suppose other countries as well. Paul uses the word abstain and this word
means complete abstinence, and in this case , staying completely away from any
though or behavior that violates the principles of God’s Word and results in
any sexual sin. MacArthur writes “sexual
immorality (porneias) is a term used
to describe any form of illicit sexual behavior. Any sexual activity that deviates from the
monogamous relationship between a husband and a wife is immoral by God’s
standard. The Lord does bless the sexual
relationship in matrimony: ‘Marriage is
to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled’ (Heb.
13:4b; cf. Rom 1:24-32; 2:2).”
Let us look at a couple of verses that Paul wrote on this
subject: “But immorality or any impurity
or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; (Eph.
5:3)”
“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in
God…. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to
idolatry. (Col. 3:3, 5).” As we look at these three verses we can see
the word impurity in two of them and this word is the same Greek Word with the meaning not only speaks of acts, but also
thoughts, which is the beginning of problem of sin. Jesus said in “Mt 5:28 but I say to you that
everyone who looks at a
woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
We can conclude that people who habitually commit sexual
sins are not true believers in Jesus Christ.
However Paul does write in 1 Corinthians about a man who was a believer
who committed a sexual sin and I think that he writes later on in his second
letter that this man had confessed this sin to the Lord and to those in that
church.
I have tried to describe what God’s standard are for
abstaining from sexual sin, and we have to understand that God created sex and
therefore knows what the best way is for having a sexual relationship, and that
way is with one’s own spouse. There are
some people today who think that this is way too rigid, however God’s ways for
us are perfect, and are given to us to protect us not to hinder us.
I
would say that I believe that the most problematic idol we face today is the
idol of sex. Sex is used on TV
commercials to sell almost everything and we are inundated with sex almost
everywhere we go and this causes believers to be beaten down and to not
understand how God feels about this as we can see from His Word. It is the old story about the frog in the
kettle and sexual sin in our country and world has the frog in the kettle getting
burned up and not even knowing it.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I want to be committed to overcoming and abstaining
from any form of sexual sin. It is
something that is truly difficult to do in this society, but God is bigger than
our society.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Fight the good fight against sexual sins.
Memory verses for the
week: Philippians 2:5-8
5 Have this attitude in
yourselves 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 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: “Legion” (Luke 8:30).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said ‘In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God?’”
Answer in our next SD.
6/6/2014 8:31 AM
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