Possessing Our Vessels - 2022-09-18

“Possessing Our Vessels”

1 Thessalonians 3:11 – 4:8

Message #8 in 1 Thess. Series

McEwen Bible Fellowship

18 September 2022

INTRODUCTION:

Fire, guns, sports cars, dynamite, and sky diving—what do these 5 things all have in common?

Ø  All 5 can be exciting

Ø  All 5 can be useful

Ø  All 5 can be dangerous 

Let’s pretend that we are all going on an elk-hunting trip this year. Sing along with me, “A-hunting we will go, A-hunting we will go, Heigh-ho, the derry-o, A-hunting we will go.” We are all going to take our rifles and go after the illusive Rocky Mountain bull elk. But for those who have never handled a rifle, what words of good advice should we give them before we put a high-powered elk-slayer into their hands?

Ø  Never point it at anything you do not plan to kill

Ø  Carry it with the barrel pointed at the ground

Ø  Never carry a loaded rifle in the car with you

Ø  Never lean a loaded rifle against a tree

Ø  Never try to cross a fence while holding one

 

Why do we insist on these rules? Because while a rifle is exciting, and useful, it can also be deadly dangerous. A hunter needs to know the things to do and the things not to do to avoid hurting himself or others. 

TRANSITION:

In our text for today the apostle Paul brings up a subject that has much in common with what we have just been discussing. He talks about something that has great power for good, but also for evil. Let’s read the passage together in 1 Thessalonians 3:11 – 4:8.

¹¹ Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; ¹² and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you; ¹³ so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. ¹ 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. ² For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, 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 because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. ⁷ For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. ⁸ So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you. 

MAIN BODY:

Verse 11: Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you;

·        Verses 11-13 is Paul’s prayer to the Lord, expressing his sincere desire to get together again with the Thessalonian believers. He looks forward to when he will see them once again to continue the discipling work he started before he was forced to flee from their city. 

Verse 12: and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you;

·        “...May the Lord cause you...” – This is important because it is the Lord who is orchestrating our sanctification. He is the one who causes the growth in our lives, although sometimes we do not like His methods nor the “fertilizer” He uses.

·        “...to increase and abound in love...” – See in your mind a bucket being filled up at a cool spring flowing out of the mountain. You set the bucket under the flow of water and the level begins to rise. The water is “increasing.” Finally, the water gets to the top and begins to flow over the sides of the bucket. Now it is “abounding.” That is what Paul is praying for... that their love for one another in the Body might overflow all boundaries, but that the overflow would reach out even to their enemies.

·        And he adds that his own love for them has this same characteristic. 

Verse 13: ...so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.

·        Again, Paul brings in the subject of Christ’s return. That is a scarlet thread woven throughout the tapestry of his theology.

·        “...so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness...” – The only way we can be without blame is to be truly holy. But we cannot be truly holy without Christ making us holy. It is the Lord Himself who establishes our hearts. Again, this is looking at the process of sanctification that God the Holy Spirit brings about in the Christian’s life over time. 

Verse 1: 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.

·        Here we sense a change of subject. This letter has several purposes:

ü  Paul wants to encourage the saints

ü  He wants to instruct the saints

ü  He wants to warn the saints.

·        “...we request and exhort you...” – To request is to ask politely, to ask as a favour. To exhort is to command, to require compliance. Paul does both things here in the same sentence. If the request gets the desired result, then the command is unnecessary. However, Paul is leaving nothing to chance. This is too important.

·        What is the area of concern? – “How you ought to walk [i.e., live] in order to please God.” Here he throws in the word of commendation that they are already practicing this, but he wants them to excel in it to an even greater degree.

Verse 2: For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

·        He reminds them that this teaching was not invented by him and the other apostles but came from the Lord Himself. Therefore, it is authoritative and cannot be ignored or blown off. We often do this with things we do not like to hear, don’t we. Or is it just me? 

Verse 3: For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.

·        This is one of the clearest statements of intent in the Scriptures. God wants our sanctification. That means He wants us to live a sanctified life. “Sanctified” means holy, set apart unto God’s service. It means given over to a holy purpose, a holy calling. Paul says that this is God’s will for the Thessalonians, and by extension, for us too.

·        But he does not leave to the imagination what he means here by sanctification. He narrows it down to specifics—he is talking about the area of our human sexuality. We are to abstain from, desist, refrain, withdraw, and give up all forms of sexual immorality. ALL FORMS? What does he mean by all forms? How many forms are there for crying out loud? Well, let’s list a few:

ü  Adultery

ü  Fornication

ü  Bestiality

ü  Homosexuality

ü  Child pornography

ü  Prostitution and sex trafficking

ü  Internet pornography

ü  Sexual chat rooms

ü  Sexual dating

ü  Sleeping around

ü  Sexual favours for business or career advancement

·        This is where we get back to our discussion from the beginning, that certain things in life may be exciting, fun, even useful under the right circumstances, but they can kill you when used wrongly. SEX is one of those things. Fire in the fireplace is wonderful, but fire in the curtains is awful. A rifle on a hunting trip is great but pointed at your head it is dangerous and can kill you. Sex in the confines of a loving marriage is marvellous, but anywhere else it is like acid dripping on the soul. It will eat you up. It will kill you. 

Verse 4: that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour,

·        Notice that Paul says, “each of you.” You cannot do this for me, and I cannot do it for you. We each must go to God for power to live a life of purity and holiness. It is a sure cinch we cannot do it on our own!

·        “How to possess his own vessel” – Some scholars have tried to say that Paul here is talking about how to take care of your wife [i.e., the weaker vessel]. I do not think so because it does not fit the context. He is using the same language and word picture here that he used in 2 Cor. 4:7 where he talked about us being “earthen vessels,” “jars of clay.” “But we have this treasure [i.e., the Gospel] in earthen vessels [i.e., fleshly human bodies], that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.”

·        There is something here, however, that should be an encouragement to us. God never commands us or asks us to do something that is impossible. He always gives us the means to carry out His will. That means that it is possible to have my body be sanctified (set apart unto God’s service), and holy (with no filthiness or sin). It is possible to live a life of sexual purity without dropping back into the old patterns. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to obey this command.

Verses 5: ...not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God.

·        Paul is not making a racial slam against non-Jews but is simply referring to the fact that most of the Gentiles of his day were pagans, followers of pagan religions, with their pagan practices, including their sexual practices. This was not a cultural issue but a religious one.

·        Most of the pagan religions practiced some form of temple prostitution, or fertility rites including sexual intercourse with priests, or in some cases, with total strangers. Those religions included the worship of Astarte, Baal, Aphrodite, and Ishtar, etc.

Verse 6: and that no man transgress [cross the line] and defraud [deceive, cheat, swindle, take advantage of] his brother [= generic, includes both sexes] in the matter because the Lord is the Avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.

·        From this verse it is obvious that Paul is not joking around. There is no “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” here. This is profoundly serious business and to violate God’s laws in this area is to invite severe divine punishment.

·        What is Paul’s point? All forms of sexual sin hurt, defraud, and take advantage of someone. For example, people sometimes call prostitution a “victimless crime,” but nothing is further from the truth. Terrible damage is done both to the women themselves and to the men who pay to use them as sex objects. Or how about the child pornography industry around the world? Is that victimless? Of course not! And is viewing pornography not a violation of the dignity and sanctity of the bodies of the young people, usually women, who appear in those photos and films? Even though they are usually complicit in their own destruction that does not justify or exonerate those who buy or view their products. Statistics show that most of the young women (± 90%) in the sex industry grew up without fathers and most of them were molested when they were just little girls.

·        Paul says here that God Himself will avenge all these things, and I tend to believe Him. To blow off this warning and continue in any of these sinful practices is to invite hellfire, and I do not think I am overstating the case. 

Verse 7: For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.

·        God did not call us to Himself just to have us continue in sinfulness and impurity. He called us to Himself to walk in holiness, as a witness to others of the power and presence of God in our life. 

Verse 8: So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.

·        Paul makes it clear that to walk in sexual impurity is to reject God. This is a profoundly important concept to grasp. We cannot claim to know Him, to belong to Him, to have Him abiding in our life, and then go out and practice sexual impurity, which He forbids. Listen to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ Such 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.

·        I love that last verse: “Such were some of you; but you were washed (in the blood of the Lamb), but you were sanctified (by the cleansing of the Word of God), but you were justified (declared righteous and not guilty) in the name of the Lord Jesus.” The Bottom Line = A holy life must accompany a holy profession. Once again, we are being called to walk-the-walk, as well as talk-the-talk.

CONCLUSION:

I am frankly astonished at the number of people today who call themselves “Christians” yet who live lives of sexual immorality and filthiness.

·        I have talked to many professing Christians over the years who say that they do not think that God means for them to go through life being forever deprived of a loving sexual relationship, just because they do not happen to be married.

·        I know for a fact that Internet pornography is one of the most common sins among both Christian and non-Christian men in much of the world. It is at epidemic proportions, with a quickly growing number of women caught up in the same demonic web of sin, secrecy, self-gratification, and self-deception.

·        Double-blind surveys reveal that many pastors and full-time Christian workers say that pornography is the greatest temptation and battlefield in their lives.

·        Adult porno shops, sexual massage parlours, and sex toy stores have popped up everywhere, even in places you would never have dreamed of seeing one. And city governments are complicit in allowing them to move in and set up shop.

·        Among professing Christian teens many are caught up in premarital sexual practices that include anything and everything including full-on sexual intercourse, and they justify it by saying that they are just “messing around” or “hooking up.”

·        Today, it is reported that at least 90 percent of kids between the ages of 8 and 16 have watched pornography online at least once. Not only have most tweens and teens seen porn, but boys ages 12 to 17 are actually the largest consumers of online pornography. With this statistic, pornography has even been compared to being the drug of choice for youth. In fact, the statistics keep rising every single year. Right now, statistics are showing that kids first gain exposure to pornography at the age of 10 or 11.

 

At the beginning of this message, I started out by asking a question. Do you remember what it was? I said, “Fire, guns, sports cars, dynamite, and sky diving—what do these 5 things all have in common?” We said...

Ø  All 5 can be exciting

Ø  All 5 can be useful

Ø  All 5 can be dangerous

 

We need to add a sixth thing to that list—our human sexuality. Like the others, it can be exciting. In fact, it is perhaps the most wonderful thing God ever invented. It can also be useful. It allows us to form families and continue the human race. It allows us to obey God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” But thirdly, our sexuality outside of the boundaries that God placed around it is like fire in the drapery—it is very dangerous, a disaster, and capable of destroying everything in its path, destroying us, our families, our testimonies, our ministries, plus a whole lot of other people. 

FEEDBACK:

·        Why do you think that God gave us such a powerful thing as our human sexuality and our sometimes-out-of-control sex drives? Isn’t it kind of like handing a kid a machine gun?

·        Why did He make the drive so strong in us? And why is it so hard for us to keep our sexuality under control?

·        Why does God seem to take this so seriously? Is it really that big of a deal or are Paul and I blowing this out of proportion?

·        What are you going to do with what we have learned today? Is there a personal step you need to take to bring your life more in line with the Word of God?