In today's world, very few people blush anymore. What once shocked an entire generation now entertains us and barely raises eyebrows. In fact, we become desensitized to sin. It feels like society has lost its moral compass. But God calls his children to a higher standard.
And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl cuts through the cultural smog with straight talk about moral purity. Drawing from ancient parallels in 1 Thessalonians, Chuck challenges the myth that holiness belongs only to the clergy. This is message number six in the 12-part series titled Contagious Christianity. Since I first delivered this message on moral purity. Internet pornography has begun eating away at our country.
and within our congregations. Men and women alike, from adolescents all the way to senior citizens, from all walks of life. have succumbed. or they are at risk, and more are becoming infested every single day. Without our knowing it, This problem could be eating our churches alive.
And the scariest thing is this We may not even realize the extensive damage. It's causing. The most recent studies suggest that one out of every two people.
Now do the math quickly. Fifty per cent of the people sitting in our pews are looking at and or could be addicted. to Internet pornography. How serious is that? The struggle is going on among those who volunteer in our churches.
Chances are good that some of our full-time staff members. even some who faithfully serve on our boards. could be losing this secret battle. And while I'm listing these grim statistics and possibilities, let's not overlook our young adults. Married and single.
who provide instruction among our junior and senior high school youth, Truth be told, That statistic. could even be higher. Forget the Red Light District or the Adult Bookstore. Pornography has entered homes. via the Internet more pervasively and subtly than any store or strip club ever could.
The irony is that if an X rated store were being established across the street from where you live or where you worship, Why, you'd have a committee assembled to fight it immediately. Yet they've set up shop in the homes of millions of our friends in the church. while most remained mute, and passive. Stop and imagine the ugly but very real possibility of some of your own elders or deacons. Leaving your meetings.
than going home to surf porn. Think about youth leaders viewing it at one minute and then leading a small group with your kids thirty minutes later. It's ruining marriages. It's destroying relationships. It's harming and hurting the minds of the youth.
and the body of Christ at large. you hardly need to be reminded that fallen pastors and priests did not suddenly fall. more often than not, pornography played a role in their downward spiral. It's time to do something about this, friends. In fact, we need to start today.
Making a difference requires action. And Insight for Living is prepared to help you. You may visit our website for more information. But the most important place to begin is is with your own moral decision. Frederick Beechner has penned perhaps the most accurate definition of lust.
I've ever read. Lust is the craving for salt. of a man who is dying of thirst, And isn't that the truth? Is there a salt you have been craving, possibly even tasting? Maybe it is the forbidden delights in the pages of romance novels.
or the airbrushed allure of pornography. Or perhaps your salt comes in the form of intriguing fantasies. played out on daytime television. Maybe it is the heart pounding passion of The secret Rendezvous. you've been involved in.
It could be so intimate that we dare not ask you to write it down. It's too personal even for a diary. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 tells us to flee immorality. And then adds: Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body. But the immoral man, Sins against his His own body.
Here's the way I picture it. I am to flee. I am to run from immorality and pursue that is, run toward a holy life. Holiness Now there's an interesting word. It conjures up so many pictures in our minds, and we tend to cloister holiness in the hushed chambers of.
Monasteries and cathedrals, where saints, hooded monks, and mystics. reside in silence. God, however, wants to unlock the wooden doors and open the stained glass windows of our thinking.
so His Holiness can walk freely through every room of our lives. He longs for us to be holy. that is pure, as he is holy. Yes, ordinary garden variety people like you and me, every day God calls us to be beacons of purity.
So that hope will pierce through to those who are stumbling in the world's moral fog. a fog that seems to get only thicker. with the passing of time. Today, this is exactly what we want to talk about, and our passage in Scripture is found in 1 Thessalonians 4. I'm referring to the first eight verses.
Turn in your Bibles to this passage and follow along as I read it for you. I hope you'll begin to refer to these verses over and over again in your efforts to flee immorality. as you pursue a life of holiness. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1 begins Finally, then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more. For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
For this is the will of God. your sanctification. that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality. that each of you know how to possess his own vessel. in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion.
like the Gentiles who do not know God. And that no man transgress and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things. just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity. but in sanctification.
So he who rejects this is not rejecting man. but the God who gives His Holy Spirit. to you. Um You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into 1 Thessalonians on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook by going to insight.org slash offer.
Chuck titled today's message, Straight Talk About Moral Purity. Holiness sounds scary. To the average American, I am sure it appears to be the kind of thing that would never find its way into a. salesperson's office, certainly not that of um aggressive and successful athletic coach. A mother of small children certainly wouldn't be that concerned about holiness.
Or a teenager that is involved in life in the junior high or senior high school. To say nothing of the young adult in college that's pursuing some. Fabulous career with his or her eyes on some great financial goal. I mean, holiness is something for the cloister. It certainly doesn't seem like what you would have If you were living in the 20th century, Author John White seems to agree with that.
Have you ever gone fishing in a polluted river? He writes. and uh hauled out an old shoe, a tea kettle, or a rusty can, I get a similar sort of catch. If I cast as a bait the word holiness, into the murky depths of my mind. To my dismay, I come up with such associations as thinness.
Hollow-eyed gauntness. beards and sandals. long robes, stone cells. No jokes. hair shirts.
Frequent cold baths, fasting, hours of prayer. Wild rocky deserts, getting up at four in the morning, clean fingernails. stained glass. Self-humiliation. Is that the picture you get in mind when you think of?
Holiness Most do. It's almost as though holiness is the private preserve of. of an austere group of of monks and um Missionaries mystics and martyrs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing.
If you please Holiness does belong in the life of the teenager. Holiness does fit the office of the salesperson. It is indeed. Appropriate. Outside the monastery.
There is every reason in the world for the up-to-date, aggressive Even successful individual in some academic pursuit to pursue holiness as well. I couldn't agree more with Chuck Coulson. Who writes, Holiness is the everyday business of every Christian. It evidences itself in the decisions we make and the things we do hour by hour, day by day.
Now before I get any deeper into that, Give me a few minutes to analyze the fog. The fog. or if it would fit us better, The smog. Turn over to the dusty old ancient writings of a sixth-century prophet named Habakkuk. His name looks like a misprint, doesn't it?
I doubt that more than a half dozen in this entire group of 2,500 people could. On the spur of a moment, give someone else an outline of the book of Habakkuk. We're not familiar with him, but we surely are with his times. He's a man who lived In the fog. His book is an ancient call to repentance.
It is a cry to God who is holy. For some intervention. It's not just a cry, it's a scream. He says, How long, O Lord, will I Cry for help. And you will not hear.
I cry out to thee, violence. And Yet you don't deliver. Why? Those questions sound familiar. How long?
Why? The heavens are brass. Why don't you come through? Why don't you unfold your arms and get With it. in this old polluted world of ours.
Why don't you save? Why do you make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yet destruction and violence are before me, strife exists, and contentions. Arise. Therefore, the law is is ignored, justice is never upheld, The wicked surround the righteous, therefore, justice comes out.
Perverted. Verse 12, I thought you were holy. Aren't you holy? Scholar Kyle Yates is right. Habakkuk could not reconcile a bad world with a holy God.
How bad was his world? Take a look. It was a world of brutal violence, verse 2.
So severe, the prophet screamed out in prayer. It was a world of personal iniquity and wickedness. Verse three, why dost thou make me see iniquity? The word means lying, vanity. and idolatry.
It would include that. Why do you cause me to look on wickedness? The term encompasses oppression, robbery, and assault. There are Homicidal deeds going on in the streets of your people, God. Aren't you Jehovah of Judah?
Aren't you the God of this nation? Where are you, God? There's strife, verse 3. Relational wrangling. There are Fights in homes, and there are fights between parents and kids, there are fights between mates, there is wrangling between bosses and employees.
Verse 4: The law isn't upheld, and when it is, it's compromised. There's legal compromise. Brutal violence, personal iniquity, relational wrangling, legal compromise. That sounds familiar? Does that sound familiar to anybody else?
I laughed when I listened to Ray Steadman, a rather well-known Bible expositor. Ray and I were together ministering and He said he'd just done some digging back into the 4th, 5th, and 6th century BC. And he said, I was interested to discover what they wrestled with back then. There were five issues that concerned the people. Number one, imminent outbreak of international hostility.
Number two, the breakup of homes, weakening marriages. Number three, rebellion of youth. No respect for parents or for those getting older. Number four, corruption in politics. Integrity was undermined, and number five, chug holes in the public roads.
That sounds familiar? Sound like.
Something you could identify with, that's the kind of thing Habakkuk is naming. I thought you were holy, God. Where are you? How could you allow this to happen? There's a moral pollution that comes from the smog, and I'm tired of sucking it in.
I'm tired of its diseased impact on my body. I'm tired of talking about a holy God. in a world of unholy people. Habakkuk screamed, but Jeremiah just quietly sobbed. Go back, if you will.
You'll go back in your Bible to Jeremiah 6, but we're really going a few years ahead in time. He lived a little later than Habakkuk, though not by much. Jeremiah lived to see the end of an era. He saw the nation fall. That's why he wrote Lamentations.
It's another Name for weeping. He's called the The weeping prophet. He doesn't scream. He doesn't fight. He doesn't even argue.
He just. He writes his prophecy. in tears. Verse 8, be warned. O Jerusalem, Jeremiah 6:8, be warned.
Lest I be alienated from you, lest I make you a desolation, a land not inhabited. Verse 10, To whom shall I speak and give a warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed. See, that's the result of living in the fog. That's the result of sucking up the smog.
Your ears get stopped, and you can't hear the spiritual message that God is giving. They cannot listen. See the way he puts it? The word of the Lord has become a reproach to them. They have no delight in it.
Ah. Get off that stuff. Get up with the times, man. That's the sign of the smog. Verse 11: I'm full of the wrath of the Lord.
I'm weary of holding it in. I'm boiling, I'm churning. Verse 13: from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain. Does that sound familiar? That's living in the fog, that's part of the smog.
We're fighting for gain. There's a competition to get more, more. And to make matters worse, from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. I mean, it's bad enough that it's in the law courts. But it's now in the pulpits.
Jehovah. It's to the place where I can't trust the one who wears a collar. I can't be sure that those who are robed with the mantle of God tell me the truth anymore. What do they tell me?
Well, they deal falsely. They have healed the wound of your people. Just slightly. Look at what he says. They keep saying, shalom, shalom, when there is no shalom, there isn't any peace.
But they keep saying, don't worry. Don't worry. It's going to be okay. when it's not going to be okay. And if you don't think that's bad, look at the next verse.
Were they ashamed because of the abomination they've done? Nope. They were not even ashamed at all. They did not even. Know how to blush Ever seen that in the Bible before?
Lord God, when I minister to your people, Judah, And I see them come. With all the pollution, I notice. God that There are no more red faces. No one seems shocked anymore. It's what we shall call Compensating.
In order to handle the shock of our day, we compensate. By remaining free of shock. That's part of living in the fog. Just listen. Carl Menninger, psychiatrist.
several years ago wrote Whatever Became of Sin, In it he said. In a discussion of lust, We have to allow for a considerable shift in the social code during the past. century. It has been called a revolution, perhaps it is. Many forms of sexual activity which for centuries were considered reprehensible, immoral.
and sinful anywhere. And their public exhibitions simply anathema. Are now talked and written about and exhibited on the stage and screen. From Honesty, Morality, and Conscience by Jerry White, I find. Quote, we live in the day of freedom of expression and freedom of lifestyle.
X-rated movies and magazines are available in every city. Legislation to control pornography has failed in most places. The sexual fiction of yesterday is the reality of today. Magazines displayed in supermarkets present articles featuring unmarried couples living together. Sex manuals advocate extramarital affairs.
Fewer and fewer teenagers leave high school as virgins. Prime time television flaunts homosexuality and infidelity. Is that the one? Peter M.
Sorokin, formerly professor of sociology at Harvard. Harvard. Right. There has been a growing preoccupation of our writers with the social sewers. the broken homes of disloyal parents and unloved children, the bedroom of the prostitute, a cannery row brothel, a den of criminals, a ward of the insane, a club of dishonest politicians, a street corner gang of teenage delinquents, A hate-laden prison, a crime-ridden waterfront.
the courtroom of a dishonest judge, the sex adventures of urbanized cavemen and rapists, the loves of adulterers and fornicators, of masochists, sadists, prostitutes. Mistresses, playboys. Juicy love Ids, orgasms, and libidos are seductively prepared and served with all the trimmings. And I add, nobody blushes anymore. It's part of the pollution.
It's part of the fog.
Now you can, with the turn of the dial or the punch of a few buttons on your telephone, bring right into your home thanks to specialized. specialized cable television. Explicit sex. For whoever to watch that knows how to push the right channel and Turn the right knobs. And nobody blushes.
You don't even have to go into a Quote, adult. Yeah. Bookstore. Stupid name. Anymore to find pornography, or you can find it in most of the larger supermarkets.
It's there. You may have to look a little, but it's there. And some of the places will make it available because it's behind the counter. If you want it. Oh.
And nobody blushes. And I scream with Habakkuk and I cry with Jeremiah. The ultimate telltale sign. Uh of a lack of holiness. is that we no longer blush.
wouldn't be fine wrong. Uh Um What could be more important than striving for holiness in a world that's fraught with temptation? Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl is presenting what he calls straight talk about moral purity. There's much more teaching on this topic coming up, so please stay with us for the entire study. As you listened to Chuck's message today, perhaps it inspired you to make a personal resolution to immerse yourself in the truth of God's Word.
That way you'll be equipped to avert temptation rather than succumb to it.
Well, a great way to do that is to spend some quality time in 1 Thessalonians searching the scriptures on your own. To guide you, Insight for Living offers a printed Bible study workbook. The one for 1 Thessalonians is called Contagious Christianity, and it's ready for you today. Whether you use this spiral-bound Bible study workbook in your personal quiet times or with a small group at church, you'll find this interactive resource immensely helpful.
So give us a call at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash offer. You've often heard Chuck laugh on this program because he truly believes that laughter is essential for developing contagious Christianity.
Well, for that reason, we highly recommend reading Chuck's classic book on Philippians called Laugh Again: Experience Outrageous Joy. Let's be honest, some days feel like a slog. We can't seem to rise above it all. But what if your joy wasn't dependent on your circumstances? In his book, Laugh Again, Chuck shows you how to tap into a deeper source of pleasure that no difficulty can diminish.
It's about discovering outrageous joy right where you are. That book is yours as our thank you when you partner with Insight for Living through making a gift today. Call us at 800-772-8888. You can also send your donation and request for the book Laugh Again by writing to us at InsightForLiving. Post Office Box 5000.
Frisco, Texas, 75034, or go online to insight.org/slash donate. I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindahl continues to share straight talk about moral purity. Tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Straight Talk About Moral Purity, was copyrighted in 1984, 1985, 1993, 2003, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R.
Swindahl, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
