1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 (Part B)

This is a group that they want to change the world. They're Christians, they say. And I'm sorry, the world's not going to be changed.

It's going to be destroyed. God so loved the world, not the system of the world, but the human beings on it. But the system is by definition scripturally opposed to God. James says, if you've got friendship with the world, you are at war with God.

Their opinions, their ideas, their standards, when they conflict with God, that is the world. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Thessalonians.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will be teaching through 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Sharing their faith, they think that is optional. Loving their spouse, again, some believe that to be an option. And raising their children in the fear of the Lord, these are just a few of them. We have commandments in the New Testament. They are good. What would we be without them?

We would be a sloppier bunch overall than what we are. And so we affirm these things and we pursue them and the fulfillment thereof and the benefits we enjoy. And when these are abandoned, the world points to us and they mock us. You preach these things and you don't even do it. Not only do you not do it, you don't even attempt to do it. And it's not because of any other reason than you don't believe in the things you say.

Why should they not be then turned off by us? Now, I'm not saying we all do this, but we all need to be mindful of it and answer it for ourselves. He goes on in verse 2, he says, we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. The commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the Lord's commanded them to go out and make disciples.

What if they said, well, you know, it was a suggestion. It was a commandment. Go make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so when the mind is engaged, it is an issue of motive that I ought to do. That's not how we are supposed to do it as Christians.

So that's a part that does enter in, but that's not what drives us. That's the law. The mind says, I must do this.

That's my motive. I'm commanded to. It's not Christian commandments. Christian commandments aren't the same. When the will is engaged, it is an issue of I have to do it. I know this is right, but that's not all there is to the Christian life. It's more than I ought to do it and I have to do it.

There is I want to do it. And that is where the love comes in. To be able to sing about Christ's love, to genuinely sing about it, to be moved by it emotionally, it involves a promise back to the Lord. I see your love for me. I'm going to let you see some of my love for you. James said, you want to show me your faith? You really want to show me your faith? Then do something.

Let's just do it. And so when we sing about the love of God, we are supposed to show him that we love him. In the areas that we fail in, he gives us grace, but in areas that we're not failing in, he gives us opportunity. And so some of us need a refresher course on love. Love to God, not so much love from God.

I'm working all of this towards a point, and I'll get there in a moment. In verse 3 he says, for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you should abstain from sexual immorality. What part do Christians not understand about that? It's God's will. It tells us what God's will is. We have several places in the New Testament that declare what the will of God is. John chapter 6, verse 39 and 40, this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up in the last day. And this is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son of God and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up in the last day.

That's what God wants. And of course what is stated here, in verse 3 of chapter 4, in verse 18 of chapter 5, and thus learnings Paul will write in everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God, gratitude. First Peter chapter 2, for this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. You know, when I worked in the steel industry, you couldn't quote scripture like that and make the point. You couldn't say, for this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence.

Just silence didn't work with those kind of men. You had to say it this way, for this is the will of God, that by doing good you may shut up the ignorant ones. That they understood. And that was one of the pleasant things about preaching the Word to men who never read the Word, is you got to be a Bible translator.

Not from the Greek into whatever language you spoke, but from the Greek into the language we speak, to put it where people could get it. I think I enjoyed that almost the most of it all, was to be able to take the Lord's prayer, for example, and recite it in a language they understood. Our Father, now you might have a dopey father, he's not in heaven like our Father in heaven, who is on the throne in heaven. And that resonated, you know, a lot of those men, many of them Irish Catholics, Mohawk Indians, many of their fathers were drunks, were abusive, were just utter failures. And so if you were going to teach the Father to them, you had to put it in perspective of heaven's view and not their upbringing.

None of this has changed for any of us. It's just talking with one of our brothers about working for the government. Look, if we get more Christians working in the government, we can influence them more, wherever we may find ourselves. Now there are limits to this, we don't want Christians working in brothels. I mean, it just, there's a limit here.

We laugh, right? I got a surprise. Well, your sanctification, that's what he is after. And in that ancient world, during the days of the Church of Thessalonica and Paul, sanctification was dire need, because social immorality and impurity was not only legal, it was a part of worship, state worship. In fact, in the ancient day, the churches had brothels and breweries.

You wanted to worship Bacchus, the god of entertainment and fun and wine, you just go down to his temple and you get plastered. And that's how you would express your gratitude for him. How convenient.

How dopey. But that's what they knew. And so when Paul came along and he said, I want you to be clean and blameless, lights were turning on all over the board, because they knew what dirt was all about.

We do too. We're given an honest look. Just read the headlines on Drudge Report.

You'll find out what dirt is. The politicians, how filthy so many of them are. We must be careful when given the choice to not side with those who side with Satan, and there are many of them.

They're getting the upper hand and they use all sorts of phony arguments to cover their tracks. For us, it's very simple. God said that's wrong. Why are you voting for it? That's all.

Many Christians don't seem because, you know, it's a fashion show. I like him. Why? Do you know what he votes for? Do you know who he empowers? Do you know what this he or she is all about?

You like him. Well, threefold aspects of sanctification. When the Bible talks about sanctification, there is positional sanctification. Now the word sanctification means to be set aside. When the believers that attend the church are referred to as saints, they are those who have come to Christ Jesus, have had their sins forgiven, and God has set them aside for salvation and his purposes.

But the first aspect is justification. Your sins are forgiven. We're never accepted because of who we are, but because what Christ has done for us in our response to. His invitation, Romans 5, 1, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now when Paul wrote this, he would have to explain to them, or when he spoke it to these pagans, he would have to explain, we have peace with Christ through his blood.

He died. It wasn't just to come down to us and give us some noble writings. He had the prophets to do that. He came and he took away our sin on the cross. And we're never more saved than the moment we are saved. I was saved when I was beginning as a Christian, but now 30 years later, I'm really saved.

It doesn't happen that way. You see, justification is something that God does for us. Sanctification in its next phase is something we do for God because of what God has done in us.

Justification is something God does for us, and sanctification is something God does in us. He immerses us in the Holy Spirit if we would have it, and that indwelling spirit begins to move in our minds and we begin to filter everything through the eyes of Jesus. So when we go to the voting booth for example, we filter it through the eyes of Jesus.

The Jew, he would filter everything through the law. If you put bacon in front of him, he would say, the law says I can't do this, and he would not do it. You put it in front of a Christian, and bacon's gone.

Because it's like, Jesus said eat, bless it, and go, bro. And so the first part is positional. My position with God I'm justified. The second part is practical. It's progressive. It happens over time. You're converted. But now the process of working you into being a fine disciple of Christ is just that, a process.

It's faster for some than others because of what you invest in it. If you were to take a money offering to the temple of the Lord in the day of the Jew, and you were to give it to the priest as an offering, the money stayed the money, but its purpose, its uses, or usage was now for God. And in that sense it was sanctified. And so when we give our lives to Christ, we are set apart as holy to God. And even if we fall short, we are still set aside to the Lord. It's not moral perfection.

That will not happen in this life. That's the third part of sanctification. Justification, sanctification, glorification.

But before we get to glorification, I want to cover that statement I made that we're not going to experience moral perfection. Do you know those who penned the scriptures, Solomon, Isaiah, Daniel, all of them in the Old Testament, New Testament alike, but we're going to stay with the Old Testament to make the point. Many of them failed morally, King David. I mean so many of the Psalms penned by King David and this man failed and God let him fail in front of all of us. So he not only had the burden of failing, and not only the burden of failing in the court and in the kingdom he reigned over, but all since that time we all know about it.

We all read about him in Bathsheba, him in Uriah. I mean it's preserved. Because God is saying don't give me that excuse about you being too dirty to be saved. I've saved worse and I'll save you if you come, if you open your heart. If you come to me like David for repentance, I will save you. Second Peter chapter one verse 21, listen to what Peter says, for prophecy never came by the will of men, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

What? You mean men like Solomon and David were moved by the Holy Spirit and when they were moved it became scripture? Yes, that means God uses those who are imperfect because there's no one else for him to use. When it's time for him to use someone that is perfect and there came that time, he had to do it himself, sent his son. And so we have positional, progressive, and now perfect, which is the third part of sanctification called glorification. When we die, we go to heaven and we're like Jesus.

First John three two, beloved, now we are children of God and has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed we should be like him, we shall see him as he is. And then he says that you should abstain from sexual immorality. Sexual lust is a real problem, has been in every generation. The world is inflamed with sexual impurity and oftentimes it's not volume, it's variety.

This explains the harems. The variety, the spice of life can often be a sin in life. It is good for us to remember that the church is to deal with moral impurity, sexual impurity. We're not just acting like it's not there. When it surfaces, when it comes to our attention, we can't go, oh that didn't happen. We have to deal with it. And as a pastor you begin saying, well you better have some foxholes around the church so when you deal with this you can jump in them because people are going to shoot at you. But then you learn, well you know what, I'm right. It's an honor here to hold up God's word. I'm not diving in the foxhole but keep him, I'll throw the other guy in. And if you were pastors you'd be laughing on the floor right now.

Oh that was funny, why didn't I think of that? Anyway, back to this, remember the essence of sin is abuse of something that is legitimate. Legitimate behavior, when it is abused it becomes sin. Jeremiah chapter 10, Jeremiah says, oh Lord I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.

Man gets into trouble, he cannot write laws that really in the end produce the justice that we all want. And so we must be aware of the sinfulness of legitimate things. Something can be relatively innocent but it's really sin. It's running interference for Satan, it's going against righteousness and holiness. Okay I got to get to this.

I'm still holding it out because there's more. We have to get to about the beer and church and all that other stuff, we've got a little time. But first, this is a group that they want to change the world, they're Christians they say. And I'm sorry, the world's not going to be changed, it's going to be destroyed. God so loved the world, not the system of the world, but the human beings on it. But the system is by definition scripturally opposed to God. James says, if you're that friendship with the world you are at war with God.

Their opinions, their ideas, their standards, when they conflict with God, that is the world. And the university has become the leading pulpit of the world. Entertainment, industry also, being their alternate pulpit.

Well here at this particular conference, whatever it is they're having, I'm reading the background on these speakers. One of them, they both said he delivered the sermon at the inaugural prayer in Washington D.C. If I were allowed to do that prayer, right after the prayer, they would have taken me out back and shot me. What can you say to people that are making legal every dirty thing they could get their fingers on? My sermon would, you know, you say this, that's why guys like me don't get invited. They vet them. They listen to their sermons, see what they, okay he's good. They would listen to one of my sermons and then they'd send the IRS and the EPA.

The EPA is getting to the point where they'll claim your head as theirs. Anyway, then this other one, this is a writer. Now she has written a book called Christianity After Religion, The End of the Church and the Birth of the New Spiritual Awakening.

Now I don't know what's in that book. Well I can tell from what some of the other things I'm going to read about this person. And now some of you might not be very uncomfortable with this, lampooning them and all. That's the problem. That's why they've gotten this far. Someone in their childhood did not laugh at them for laughing at God. Well anyway, this one, does she understand that the church is the body of Christ purchased with his blood and with all her failures to attack her is a grave mistake.

It is better to build her up and mind your field and never mind the other guys. But it says she blogs at the Huffington Post. Do you know what the Huffington Post is? Do you know what they're about? What Christian would want to blog there? Then, it also says also for USA Today, Time, the Washington Post, CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, all of these vilify Jesus Christ consistently.

It's their agenda. You love the Lord. You raise your hands. You sing to him.

They hate him. No Christian ought to be boasting about, yeah, I was schmoozing over there. We noshed on chips for a while and dip. Then there's the third one. The fourth one is the big one. This one, she's been featured in interviews on the Today Show and PR, Huffington Post, Oprah.com. She has a book called Evolving in Monkey Town. What does that have to do with Christ? We got to read the book?

No. Once I see Zondervan printed it, I wouldn't read anything Zondervan prints. Then there's this one. Now, maybe this sums it all up. Do you want this in your church? This person says that he's in his fourth decade as chief dreamer. I'm not kidding you.

What is that? Would you like a pastor or a chief dreamer? I mean, and then he goes on that he is a spiritual entrepreneur of ministry marketplace innovations.

You might not be disturbed by this. I happen to believe people really go to hell. And I happen to believe the role of the church is not to play with this sort of language. We are to preach the love of God, but the truth first. There is no agape if there is no truth. The truth of God trumps the love of God or else you cannot get to love.

You have affections or you have erotic love or some other thing called love that's affection or perversity or anything if it's not held together by the fact of God. That's what it means. The truth of God is the fact of God. And the church's role is not to appeal to people. It is to tell the truth.

Paul said is the pillar and the ground of truth. Why does this disturb Christians? Why do they get upset when I don't like how you go about exposing them?

Too bad. They need to be exposed. Elijah mocked the prophets as they cut themselves and blood gushed out. They were sincere in their worship, but they were wrong. And they were leading Israel and the people in Israel to hell. And the prophet decided to deal with them as they needed to be dealt with. Now you always have to be careful with this. I have more. That's just phase one.

I want to get to phase two to see where this lands us. Verse four says that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel and sanctification and honor. Again no honor in this behavior that wants to sort of be accepted by the world. You know there was a time when the evolutionists were coming along with their lies.

No evidence. And the church was embracing it because they wanted to be accepted by the universities. Well we can't say God created man out of the clay of the earth because the people who know everything they will turn on us. They'll call us bumpkins. They'll say when one of them has a book here something about the Bible belt, the one with the monkey evolution writes Christianity in the context of the Bible belt and a year of the biblical womanhood how a liberated woman found herself sitting on a roof covering her head and calling her husband master. Well I guess if he put her on the roof he's the master. But okay.

We won't go into that. Do these people mean well? I'm sure they do. I'm sure they mean well. I don't think they got up in the morning and said let me see who I can damn today. But that's not good enough.

Why? Because the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever. And they have the word of God.

And when they read things that are offensive they skip over them. And they look for things that spiritual interpreter of ministry of marketplace innovation. I mean if you came to the church and said listen I'd like to serve here. I'm a spiritual interpreter, chief dreamer of marketplace innovation. They'd have to take me out on a stretcher laughing so hard. Doctor we can't stop him from laughing. Alright I'm not mocking them for the sake of mocking them.

But we need to stand up when people try to give us this stuff. Oh did you read the latest book? Did you read the Bible? Have you ever read the Bible?

Ever? Have you read a good commentary on the Bible? Why don't you get a Warren Wiersbe commentary? Very insightful, packed with scripture, easy to read. If you've read the Bible and you need some understanding this is a good place to start. Get a Harry Ironside, read a A.W.

Tozier, Oswald Chambers. There's so much good stuff out there. Why would you waste your time with this stuff? Verse four, self control. He says that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel and sanctification and honor.

This is self control, it is underrated, it is understated. The battlefield that we are going to meet the enemy and the world and ourselves on is the battlefield of self control. And when he says possess his own vessel he's meaning yourself. Second Corinthians 4-7, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God not of us. Some commentators like to say no he's talking about the wife but that then rules out the value of everything Paul is saying for the women.

That is I think a wrong understanding. In fact the ancient Romans would refer to the body as a vessel and Paul knew that when he wrote to these Thessalonians. And so purity and self control are what is intended here. And sanctification and honor. Now having dealt with sanctification in verse three we'll just discuss honor.

Honor is not an entitlement, it is an achievement. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of 1 Thessalonians. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry visit our website crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app as well. That's all we have time for today but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of 1 Thessalonians right here on Cross Reference Radio.