Almost any time any of America’s cultural elite say anything about the Bible, they reveal a little more of how much they don’t know about what that Book actually says. I almost feel embarrassed for them. One of my favorite examples of their astonishing lack of knowledge is this simple piece of witlessness: “Jesus never said anything about sexual morality.” Have you heard that coming out of the mouths of so-called experts? I sure have, disturbingly often. “Jesus never said anything about sexual morality.”  The further tragedy is that most folks in America don’t know any better than to just believe it. The Lord Jesus has sent me here today to set the record straight.

Jesus says that moral sex is married sex, and married sex is the only moral sex. I understand that most people in America no longer buy into that idea. I just tend to believe that Jesus knows more about what is right and wrong, true or false, than most Americans do.

Sadly, I also understand that most people in America who call themselves Christians have gotten very unclear and unsure about this subject. I suspect the reason for that is that many Christians—including some in this room—have made choices that make it painful to dwell on the truth that this is what the Lord Jesus thinks. I feel that. Yet we are where we are in this book that was inspired by the Spirit of LJC, and written by the Apostles of LJC, and this is what it says on this page of the book. This is what Jesus thinks, it’s my job to read it to you and explain to you.

Do you know why so many people make the claim that Jesus didn’t say anything about sexual morality? Usually, it’s because they just assume that whatever they think of as “kind” or “compassionate” or just plain old “nice” must be what Jesus thinks. They cannot even conceive the possibility that Jesus might think something different from what they think.

But how can we know what Jesus thinks?  The only reasonable way is to ask, What did he say? So let me make this point again: there is exactly one set of documents from the ancient world that has a credible claim to have been written by people who actually knew Jesus of Nazareth and saw what he did and heard what he said. Those documents are the 27 books of the New Testament. So that’s where we’ll go to find out what Jesus thinks and says.

We continue our journey through Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, we find ourselves this morning entering the fourth chapter. It begins with the words “finally, brothers,” which helps us know that in some important way Paul is wrapping up his letter. If you’re in the habit of reading Paul’s letters as they are preserved for us in the New Testament, you’ll quickly recognize this as the classic break in a Pauline letter. He does this in most of his epistles: after an extensive section laying out his personal or doctrinal basis for what he’s about to say, he finally gets down to the meat of the message. That’s exactly what we see him doing here. He has been speaking to his beloved disciples in Thessalonica with passionate personal intensity about why he’s writing them: to fill out the rest of their basic training, to complete his teaching on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. This is where he turns the corner and begins that teaching. The first crucial issue he has to deal with is sexual purity.

That may not seem like a crucial issue to you or me. It may not even have looked that way to them. But that is the way Paul saw it. I conclude, then, that it is also the way that the Lord Jesus saw it.

Thessalonica was like any Greek city of that day: a sewer of sexual sin, without even smelling the stink. The Greek and Roman culture of that day was actually much more debauched and depraved than our own—although most Greeks Romans thought of themselves as fine, upstanding, honorable people. It’s just that they had no idea what perverts they were.

In the Greek world, any free man was free do whatever he wanted to his slaves, male or female. They were his property, and every part of their bodies was supposed to be accessible to him at any time. Many mature and respectable Greek men expected to have sexual relations with teenaged boys on a regular basis, as part of a customary kind of mentorship known as pederasty. They thought it was good for the lads. Built character. Naturally, there were plenty of prostitutes servicing the worshippers in or near the temples of the various gods. After all, sexual themes, symbols, and narratives ran all throughout Greek and Roman religion. The gods themselves were famously profligate degenerates.

To the ancient Greeks, we Christians were freaks. One of the things that they and the Romans thought was weirdest about us was our bizarre belief that each man should have his own wife, was obligated to make love to her gladly and often, and was forbidden to have sex with anybody else, ever.

So when it came time to get down to brass tacks and do some strong discipleship regarding basic Christian living in Thessalonica, it’s only natural Paul went first to the bedroom. I promise you, what he said to them then matters plenty for us now. Our nation needs to know this. Our grandchildren need to know this. Our children need to know this. We all need to know this.

S&R 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

We’ll be looking at those eight verses closely over the next four Sundays. For today, we’re listening for THREE observations on King Jesus’ decree that moral sex is married sex.

FIRST We receive this teaching from the Lord Jesus Christ

Paul uses standard language for fundamental, nonnegotiable, authoritative teaching given directly from Jesus to his apostles, and then passed on from the apostles to the churches with the full authority of Christ

¹ … we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 

1Cor 11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,

1Cor 15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, ² and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

Gal 1  ⁹ As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. ¹⁰ For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. ¹¹ For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. ¹² For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Php 4:9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Why am I saying that “moral sex is married sex” is “received” as fundamental, nonnegotiable, authoritative teaching given directly from Jesus to his Apostles, and then passed on from the Apostles to the churches with the full authority of Christ? Well, first of all, that’s the way Paul put it.

We go on with the basic observation that every time Jesus says anything about sex or sexuality or marriage in the gospels, he accepts the ancient Hebrew consensus, based on the creation accounts and the law codes of the Torah, as the flat-out truth. He never questions them, and never negotiates about them.

We continue with Jesus’ insistence in the Sermon on the Mount that the basic commandments of the Law are unchanging. As Jesus sees it, the basic principles of the moral law of God are set, settled, and sure—and have been from the beginning.

Matthew 5 ¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 

When Jesus refers here to “the Law and the Prophets,” he’s using standard Jewish language to refer to the whole Tanakh, what modern Christians call the Old Testament—not  just the 613 commandments catalogued out of the Torah by the ancient rabbis. Jesus is not teaching the literal applicability of all the law codes of the Old Testament in every age and every place. He is teaching the eternal validity of the whole Old Testament as the very word of God, revealing the heart and the character of his Father.

Next in the sermon, Jesus talks about the folly of relaxing the commandments. He makes it clear that he’s talking about the 10 commandments, as originally given and intended.

Matthew 5 ¹⁹ Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

He then immediately gives two examples of commandments people tended to relax (and still do), and explains their true, original, accurate, authoritative interpretation and application.

To keep things simple, he uses the first two practical “thou shalt not”s: murder and adultery.

Matthew 5 ²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. Watch how he does things in verse 22: he moves from threatening judgment in general to judgment before the Sanhedrin to judgment in hell.

As Jesus sees things, murder in your mind and murder with your mouth are as much murder as murder with a machete. He is not at all saying that all sorts or senses of murder are of equal severity, or worthy of equal punishment. It’s just that they are all alike murder, and all equally worthy of condemnation before God.

Then he moves to the next commandment: “thou shalt not commit adultery”

Matthew 5 ²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

• sexual sin with your mind or your eyes is as much sin as if you had committed the act with the actual organs
• doesn’t necessarily do equal damage to other people, but definitely does real damage to you and in the world
• stands between you and God as serious sexual sin

• these crucial bits of teaching about the nature of moral sin—violation of the Ten Commandments—helps us understand why Paul and the other apostles treated fornication (sexual sin, including adultery and any other sin outside of a permanent marriage covenant between husband and wife) as damnable sin
• Jesus taught them to treat sexual sin this way

Jesus always treated the standard, time-honored Hebrew moral consensus on any issue as valid and binding. That’s certainly so when it comes to sexuality. It is gloriously true that he was tender and merciful with people who were caught in sexual sin. (And how we praise God for that mercy!) But he never changed, diluted, lightened, or lessened anything about what actually counts as sin. He didn’t say to the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you, because I’m woke to the abusiveness of all those oppressive, outdated sexual taboos that the patriarchy promulgate.” He said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

What I’m saying is, we receive this teaching about sexual purity from the Lord Jesus Christ as a fundamental, nonnegotiable, authoritative teaching  handed down directly from him to his Apostles, and then passed on from the Apostles to us with the full authority of Christ.

¹ … we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, …  ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 

• we receive this teaching from the Lord Jesus Christ

This truth is just a part of basic Christian living

If you’ve got your eyes open at all these days, you know what I mean when I say that the sentence “Moral sex is married sex” sounds like a foreign language to lots of people in our neighborhoods today. I promise you it sounded far mor outlandish in 49 AD when Paul sent this letter to the Thessalonian church. And yet that is exactly what this passage of scripture is saying.

I am telling you, this truth is just a part of basic Christian living. I want to show you five phrases across these three verses that express how natural, normal, and really obvious it is for Christians—even if it’s utterly preposterous to everyone else.

1. It’s how we ought to live

¹ … we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk …

2. It’s what pleases God

¹ … you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God…

3. It’s what Jesus says

¹ … you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, … ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 

We’ve already gone to some length to make this point, looking back at the bare bones of what Matthew’s gospel says Jesus said. Here Paul just simply states it, plain and simple: “I told you Jesus told us this.”

4. It’s what God wants

¹ … you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, … ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. ³ For this is the will of God, 

5. It’s sanctification

¹ …  you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more… ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;

Now look. I know that just pointing out a few lines of text is not the same thing as proving my point. However, I already showed you that this ancient standard (“moral sex is married sex”) really is what the real, historical Jesus believed and taught. Now the question is, who will you believe: popular opinion in the world today, or Jesus? If you believe Jesus, this truth is just a part of basic Christian living.

We grow in obedience here like everywhere

This is just general Christian growth: we grow in living how we ought to live; we grow in doing what pleases God; we grow in doing what Jesus says; we grow in doing what God wants; we grow in sanctification. We start off messed up and sinful and stained and broken. Jesus lovingly accepts us as we are, and them begins to grow us.

These eight verses are written to take the general principle of Christian growth and apply it specifically to the issue of sexual morality and immorality. His point here is that Christians grow in sexual purity just as they grow in every other part of their character and relationship with God. There are some clear and severe warnings in these words, to be sure. To miss them or ignore them would be colossally foolish. But God spoke these words through Paul to the Thessalonians and the Dundalkians to give us hope and joy in the middle of our mess. The promise is that we will grow, more and more. To miss that would be even worse.

¹ …  you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. 

• three glorious implications

It is possible for us to grow in sexual purity through Jesus

• don’t ever believe the devil’s lie that you’ve messed yourself up too severely

It is prescribed for us to grow in sexual purity through Jesus

• did you hear this: a commendation and a command
• Jesus commands us to grow in sexual purity
• yes, he does attach some serious consequences to sexual sin over these eight verses, and some severe threats
• he’s not offering a suggestion here
• that’s what it means to say that it is prescribed: God has written down a prescription for what you should do and not do

It is pleasurable for us to grow in sexual purity through Jesus

• commends them, praises them, points out the pleasure and the satisfaction that come from sanctification
• why Christians insist that Christian sexual morality is good for each of us individually and all of us together as a society
• we want every American to become a disciple of LJC
• we want every one to live pure and enjoy its blessings

• Did you know that what you believe about Jesus, what he said, what he did, what he wants, and who he is, actually affects everything about how you see the world?
• the words and the will of LJC are why we Christians want there to be a clear and society-wide taboo against sexual immorality like there used to be
• sexual immorality really is so bad, unhealthy, dangerous, and sexual morality really is so good, pleasant , blessed
• there already is an American dream that calls to each of us: Little House on the Prairie
• Teen pregnancy on the decline in America
• all pregnancy on the decline in America
• the sexual revolution promised more sex and better sex and freer sex and funner sex… less actual sex going on in America now than at any point since records have been kept
• In survey after survey, the most sexually satisfied people in America are religious married omen
• Did you know that what you believe about Jesus, what he said, what he did, what he wants, and who he is, actually affects everything about how you see the world?

what God wants them to do

1. face up to past failures
2. find forgiveness and healing in Jesus
3. forge ahead into a new way to live
4. focus on the barren cross and the empty tomb