SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/5/2014
9:45 AM
My Worship Focus: Introduction to “Abstaining from Sexual Sins
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1
Thessalonians 4:3-8
Message of the
verses: 3 God’s plan is to make you
holy, and that means a clean cut with sexual immorality. 4 Every one of you
should learn to control his body, keeping it pure and treating it with respect,
5 and never allowing it to fall victim to lust, as do pagans with no knowledge
of God. 6 You cannot break this rule without cheating and exploiting your
fellow-men. Indeed God will punish all who do offend in this matter, as we have
plainly told you and warned you. 7 The calling of God is not to impurity but to
the most thorough purity, 8 and anyone who makes light of the matter is not
making light of a man’s ruling but of God’s command. It is not for nothing that
the Spirit God gives us is called the Holy Spirit.” (Philips)
I want to begin by saying that this introduction to this
subject is difficult for me to write about, but because it is in the Word of
God we have to deal with it. As I was
listening to John MacArthur’s sermon on this section, or at least part of this
section he mentioned that he was told that those young couples who came for pre-marital
counseling, that there were 75% of them who had already engaged in sexual
intercourse. This is an alarming statistic
indeed, and it shows the kind of society that we live in today.
When we looked at the beginning of chapter four we stated
that Paul was going to use much of the rest of his letter to show the
Thessalonians how they were to excel still more in their walk with the
Lord. He writes in verse three “For this
is the will of God, your sanctification.”
We have mentioned this word in past SD’s and said that there were three
parts to this process, first when a person receives Christ as their Savior and
Lord they are sanctified, and then as they walk with the Lord their walk is the
process of continuingly being sanctified and then the final sanctification comes
when the person enters heaven. John
MacArthur writes “But before mentioning specifics, Paul defined the will of God
under the broad governing principle of sanctification (hagiosmos), which is the process of being separated from sin and
set apart to God’s holiness. God wants
believers to separate 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
your were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of
God’”
We have to ask ourselves
a question at this point and that question is why did Paul begin his “list” on
how to excel still more with abstain from sexual sins. The answer to that question is that the city
of Thessalonica had all of the vices of sexual sins there and it was a part of
their culture. There was a temple there
to a god which had many prostitutes and the way that you worshiped that god was
to have sex with one of them in order to draw closer to that god. The culture
was actually worse off than what we live in today in some ways. They certainly did not have the technology
that we have today but they did have a society that was driven by sexual
relationships outside the commands of God.
Can you imagine how Paul felt when he had to leave this very young
church and why he was concerned for them and why he prayed for them so
much? As we looked at chapter two we
found out that it was not possible for Paul to return to them to see them in
person so the best thing that he could do was to write to them and encourage
them not to fall prey to the culture that they lived in. It broke the heart of Paul not to be able to
return to them, but God has His own purposes for Paul not to return to them,
and I believe one of them is that we could read the letter that Paul sent to
them and learn from what he wrote.
John MacArthur entitles his ninth chapter of his
commentary on 1 Thessalonians “Abstaining from Sexual Sin,” and it covers
verses 3-8 and we will begin to look at those verses in our next SD but I want
to quote what he writes at the end of introduction in order to share what we
will be looking at: “That this general,
preventive exhortation to sexual morality began his list of practical
instructions in the final two chapters of 1 Thessalonians highlights Paul’s
major concern for sexual fidelity in
Thessalonica. With this background in
mind, one can examine this passage by asking three questions: What kind of sexual conduct does God
require? How can a believer be sexually
moral? Why should a believer be sexual moral?”
These are three questions that all believers need to have answers too and
we will try to do that in our next three SD’s.
For now we need to know that God does have a plan for believers lives
and we know that our God is completely Holy, and desires us to be that way, and
that He is completely good and wants His children to be that way, and that He
has given to His children His Holy Spirit and His Word in order to help us to
live a holy life before Him. We also
know that we worship a God who forgives and will lift us up when we fall and
that is another thing we need to remember.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Trust the Lord to
give me the answers to these three questions and to give me the power to live a
life that is pleasing to Him.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Remember that I can have a wonderful
relationship with my Lord, and that He will help me to do this as I study His
Word and pray that this will come about.
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 of
man, He humbled Himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on
a cross.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Always” (Philippians 4:4).
Today’s Bible
question: “Name the man out of whom
Jesus cast many demons?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/5/2014 10:52 AM
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