All right! Another fun Sunday talking about sex! Or, specifically, sexual purity.

There has been more than a little talk in America over the last couple of years regarding something called “purity culture.” Purity culture, according to one internet source, was “a late‑20th‑century evangelical Christian movement… that framed sexual abstinence before heterosexual marriage as a central marker of spiritual faithfulness, often using pledges, rituals, and moralized teaching to regulate adolescent behavior. Scholars define it not merely as a belief in chastity, but as a system of norms and practices that tied personal worth, religious identity, and moral status to sexual ‘purity,’ frequently employing shame‑ and fear‑based messaging, particularly toward girls and young women.” This time, the internet got it basically right. That is pretty much what purity culture was.

I can say that with some degree of confidence because I was one of the young people who was influenced by purity culture, and I became one of the religious leaders who was perpetuating purity culture. In some ways, I still am. Some people might even say this sermon series is a part of purity culture. I am, after all, preaching on sexual purity.

So before we go any further let me address that elephant in the room. First of all, I should freely confess, on behalf of the movement as a whole, that manipulative, unfair, and unhealthy tactics were sometimes used. I was there for some of those events as a student, and I saw it. I didn’t like it then and I still don’t like it. I don’t believe in hyper-emotional appeals and extreme pressure tactics designed to strong-arm people into making decisions or commitments that they don’t fully understand. I grew up in Baptist churches. I know how that’s done. I expect by now you have noticed that I try not to do it—not in relation to moral purity, or really as regards anything else.

I’ll also admit that there was often a real gap between the way the preachers talked to young men and the way they addressed young women. They sometimes suggested that young women were more responsible for luring young men into sexual sin by the way they acted or dressed—more responsible then the young men, anyway. I heard that sort of thing more than once. That was folly. Of course, the modern response to that error is equally foolish. People these days are saying that nobody is responsible for luring anyone else into sin. We’re all responsible for ourselves, and all free to dress and act however we want. That’s not what the Bible says. It’s not even common sense. The truth is, young women are responsible for the way they lure young men into sin and young men are responsible for the way they lure young women into sin. We’re all responsible for the way we lure each other into sin, and we should expect the Lord Jesus to hold us accountable for doing it. That’s one of the key points of this passage of scripture.

That definition I pulled off the Internet put scare quotes around the word “purity,” to express uncertainty or skepticism about the validity of the use of that word. To a lot of people in the world today, the very idea that there are some sexual actions or passions that are “impure” or “unclean” or “dirty” or “shameful” is a toxic idea. As the modern secular consensus sees things, sex is simply an animal act that evolution uses to perpetuate the species and has therefore conditioned us to experience as pleasurable or fun. And since we are, after all, only animals, sexual actions or passions cannot be right or wrong for us or clean or dirty for us. They’re just fun or not fun.

That’s what worldly people say, but they don’t believe it. Let Professor We’reAllAnimalsSoIt’sNoBigDeal walk into his house and find his wife in bed with another man. Then you’ll really find out what he really believes about right and wrong and sin and shame and guilt and rage when it comes to sex. People talk a good game when it’s all theory and speculation. We may not all admit it, but all do believe in the reality of sexual purity or defilement. God made us that way.

Human beings shift like the wind when it comes to our opinions about sexuality. We are here today to hear God’s opinion on purity. We are looking right now at the first eight verses of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church, which lay out for us in no uncertain terms God’s policy on sexual purity. We find God’s  pronouncement in purity in (1-3); God’s purpose for purity in (3-7); God’s plan for purity in (4-6); and God’s persistence on purity in (8). Today, we focus on God’s purpose for purity. We have been called to Christ for pure passion, including pure sexual passion.

S&R 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

What we’re listening for today is the answers to five questions. The first two are questions about the general idea of personal purity or holiness, and the next three are questions about the particular issue of sexual purity.

What I’m hoping for is that every person in this room will leave here clearly understanding what God says purity is, and firmly determined to live pure, holy lives joyfully for Jesus their Lord, especially in the area of pure sexuality, and to find out how to live that way by the gracious enablement of his Holy Spirit.

the first question about purity

What is the difference between purity and holiness?

Long before the word “purity” got in trouble with worldly people, they had already thoroughly dispensed with the word “holiness.” But God loves both the words, and that’s why we do, too. “Purity” means “freedom from contamination.” “Holiness” means “separation from sin and consecration to God.” So the two words mean almost the same thing.

This relates to our passage because of the use of the word ἁγιασμός in both verse 3 and verse 7. Listen:

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

⁷ For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

“Sanctification” and “holiness” both refer to the same thing: separation from sin, being set apart for God. In these verses, sanctification is both a command and a calling. In verse 3, it is a command, described as “the will of God.” Sanctification is what he commands for your life if you are a Christian.

³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification…

Then pay close attention also to verse 7:

⁷ For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

When Paul says here that God has called us, He is using one of his favorite terms to describe how we got saved. The Holy Spirit called us to Christ. Now we are the called of Christ. Paul talks about Christians that way scores of times in his letters.

One of the things that he loves to do with the word is remind us that Jesus didn’t just save us so that we could feel better. Our Lord called us to himself so that he could make us different for his own sake. Paul points out here that the Lord has not called us for impurity, but has called us in holiness. Worldly people may be turned off by the words “purity” and “holiness,” but Jesus is turned on by them. Which side are you on?

Purity and holiness are almost exactly the same thing. One thing that is precisely the same about them is that the Lord Jesus wants them in your life if you’re one of his followers.

Listen to these two verses again.

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

⁷ For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

I hope you see that sexual purity is just one small part of the personal purity and holiness that the Lord Jesus wants for you.

the second question about purity

Who needs to grow in purity (holiness)?

It’s not at all uncommon to run across the idea that pastors or priests or monks are holy men, while other Christians are just common. That is disastrously wrong. Every Christian is commanded to separate himself from sin, to be holy and pure. Sanctification is for every believer.

Nor is it merely a secondary or ancillary or incidental issue of salvation. It’s not going too far to say that your sanctification is why Jesus died for you.

Eph 5:25-27 Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Col 1:19-22  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight

It is God’s will for you to be sanctified, if you’re a blood-bought believer in Lord Jesus Christ.

So how holy must you be, if you call yourself a Christian?

1Pe 1:14-16  As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

In other words, you only have to be as holy as your Father in heaven.

I can hear the objection now: “but preacher! I can’t be that holy!”

Neither can I. Listen to me closely.

Careful, prayerful, faithful followers of Lord Jesus know good and well they can’t be that holy. In fact, f you’re a devoted disciple of the Lord, it’s one of the chief frustrations of your life. Faithful, frustrated follower of Christ this is the word your Lord has for you:

Psalm 103:8-14

⁸ The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
⁹ He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
¹⁰ He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
¹³ As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
¹⁴ For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.

Do you fear him, but find you sometimes fail nonetheless? I’m with you. Those words are for us.

For those feckless, faithless, false followers of the Lord who lounge around in their sin, contented and complacent in their own inability to be holy, there are passages of Scripture for them.

Hebrews 10:26-31

²⁶ For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, ²⁷ but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. ²⁸ Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? ³⁰ For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” ³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute! Aren’t believers secure in their salvation? Unholy people who walk in fornication are not true believers; they are merely make-believers.

If you are a true believer, you rest on the promise of God that he will accept the flawless holiness of his Son in exchange for all the filth of your unholiness. But by the same token, if you are a true believer, you’ll long for holiness in your life, and you’ll lunge away from unholiness whenever it rears its head.

Those inseparable truths are why Heb 12:14 says,

Make every effort … to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

We’ll be sanctified enough when Jesus comes back and makes us perfectly holy, and how the saints of God yearn for that day! Until that Day, true believers will fight the good fight of faith, and grow in holiness.

Now we move from questions about purity/sanctification in general to the subject of sexual purity in specific. Notice the specific requirement that is the culmination and point of verse three:

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

There’s a lot more that Paul is going to teach us, and we plan to learn it all. But we’re just plain old Baptist folk, and we need it simple. We want to know, in as few words as possible, what Jesus wants us to do. That leads us to

the third question about purity

What is Jesus’ simplest instruction for sexual purity?

It’s this: “Stay away from sexual immorality.”

William Tyndale, the man who published the first translation of the New Testament out of Greek into English in 1526, used the word “abstain” to translate the Greek word ἀπέχεσθαι in verse three: “abstain from sexual immorality.” Since then, ost formal translations—including our ESV—follow his lead. However, the common understanding of the English word “abstain” has changed somewhat in 500 years. The Greek word literally means “to keep away from” something, And that’s pretty much exactly what “abstain” meant in the 1500’s. However, in most American ears today, the word means something like “just don’t do it.” That’s almost the same thing but not quite. That’s why many modern translations use the word “avoid” or “stay away” here. For example, the Christian Standard Bible, produced by the Southern Baptist Convention for use in our publications, reads “that you keep away from sexual immorality.” You might wonder, what’s the difference between “abstain” and “avoid”? For most Americans today, possibly as a lasting result of the Prohibition years a century ago, “abstain” means “just say no,” while “avoid” means “stay far away.” For example, I abstain from radishes; I come to them on the salad bar, and I move on to the carrots or the cucumbers or something. No radishes for me, thank you. On the other hand, I avoid rattlesnakes. Tell me there’s a rattler in the room, and I’m leaving the house.

That is precisely Paul’s approach to sexual immorality: don’t get anywhere close to it. It’s deadly. Consider:

1Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Translation? Run away!

2 Timothy 2:22 Flee youthful lusts. Same thing. Think about Joseph, running away from Potiphar’s wife.

Romans 13:14 Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts. In other words, plan your day in such a way as to make sexual sin a practical impossibility.    x2

Beloved, “avoid sexual immorality” is a command that tells us not to get anywhere close to any sexual experience with somebody you’re not married to. That is Jesus’ simplest instruction for moral purity. Remember: according to Jesus, pure, moral sex is married sex, sex between a man and a woman bound together in a lifelong marriage covenant.

Of course, we haven’t yet clarified what makes an experience a sexual experience. Let’s do that right now.

the fourth question about purity

What is Jesus’ primary concern for sexual purity?

As ever, Jesus is focused on the heart, the desires, the passions. It’s not that the outside doesn’t matter: of course it does! It’s just that the inside matters more.

We spent a good bit of time last week looking at the Sermon on the Mount. Here are a couple of key verses:

Matthew 5 ²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. • • • •

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Jesus says murder and adultery begin in the heart, and must be dealt with at the heart level. Even if you never actually hurt that guy, the murderous wrath in your mind is already a violation of God’s law and an immoral act. Even if you never actually touch that gal, the adulterous lust in your heart, even the intent to look at her to desire her, is already a violation of God’s law and an act of sexual impurity.

What Jesus cares about first or most when a Christian couple are alone together is not primarily which body parts come in contact with which body parts. What he wants to know is, “What is happening in the desires of your hearts?” To boil it down as far as possible: it’s not parts Jesus cares about most; it’s hearts. Jesus wants to know what Christians are doing with the sexual passion in our hearts that can be so easily translated into sexual activity with our bodies.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care what we do with our body parts. He just knows that if he has our hearts, he’ll also have our parts. It’s our minds and hearts and affections and passions that Jesus is most focused on.

Of course, Paul says the exact same thing in this passage:

³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, ⁵ not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; 

The sacred thing that purity seeks to safeguard is sexual passions, not just sexual organs.

We haven’t yet quite addressed the concern that some people have expressed about the use of the words “purity” and “impurity,” or “honor” and “defilement” with regard to sex. Plenty of modern minds insist that those ideas don’t even relate to sex at all, and that we harm and abuse people when we talk that way. I want to be careful and respectful. I certainly don’t want to be rude or dismissive. But I do want to be honest. I really don’t believe people believe what they’re saying when they talk like that. I gave you one hypothetical example near the beginning of this sermon, and that was enough. I respectfully repeat that people talk a good game when it’s all theory and speculation, but when things become very real and personal, everything changes. People may or may not admit it, but they all believe in the reality of sexual purity or defilement. God made us that way. Here’s another succinct statement of Christian conviction from yet another corner of the Bible:

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled,

So let’s put it all together: sexual impurity / immorality / unholiness / sin is any intentional experience of sexual passion of any sort, at any level, outside of marriage between a man and a woman, and our job is to keep ourselves far away from it.

We worked hard to put that sentence together. We went all over the Bible for that. Something that puzzled and frustrated me deeply for a lot of years when I was a young man was that there was no clear definition of sexual immorality anywhere in the Bible, and therefore no clear and definite line between OK and not OK. It was almost as though the biblical authors simply assume that we know what’s allowed and what’s forbidden. Can I get honest for a minute? Why do you reckon I was so intent, as a young man, on finding out where the line between purity and impurity was? Just like so many others, I wanted to get as close to the line as possible without actually stepping across it. What I see now is that, if I’m trying to get as close as possible to sin, I’m already in sin. I should be trying to get as close as possible to the savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. If that’s not my mindset and my heartbeat, I’m already in sin.

So how far into sexual desire can a pair of unmarried Christians go? To put it in the old silly middle school terms, is it 2^nd base? 3^rd base? [[ ]] Jesus’ answer is, get out of the batter’s box! Come to think of it, why are you even on the field?

Now that’s radical! [[ ]] It’s also biblical. It sounds just like the radical, extreme sort of thing that Jesus always seemed to say. Sexual impurity / immorality / unholiness / sin is any intentional experience of sexual passion of any sort, at any level, between anyone other than a woman and man who are married to each other in a lifelong covenant.

the fifth question about purity

What is Jesus’ controlling vision of sexual purity?

When you have to make a moral judgment on an issue where the Bible’s teaching is less than obvious, one thing is plain: morality is determined by God’s design. Immorality is anything that’s not morally in line with God’s creative intent;

impurity is anything that’s not purely in accord with God’s purpose.

Moral purity is whatever fits with God’s creative intent, his design. What is moral is determined by God’s eternal purpose, is clearly reflected in natural law and human conscience, and is infallibly revealed by God’s written Word, the Bible     x2

In Matthew 19, Jesus was asked a question about remarriage after divorce. To establish a solid understanding of the issue in his own day, our Lord went back to Genesis to review God’s creative intent for sex and marriage. If Jesus went back to Genesis and the events in the Garden, with Adam and Eve, multiplied thousands of years before his own time, to find his Father’s purpose for sex and marriage, shouldn’t we do the same?

We have labored carefully through this issue and come up with clear propositions and solid principles for understanding this issue. But sometimes what we need is a picture, an image, a vision. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case it is true. If we want to see sexual impurity the way Jesus does, we need to open the eyes of our souls to his vision of sexual purity. Once again, we need to look at Adam and Eve.

The first chapter of Genesis shows us the creation of everything, climaxing in the crafting of humanity as the image of God, a man and a woman commanded to fill the earth with other humans, the fruit of their godly obsession with each other. In the second chapter we see Adam and Eve in the Garden, naked and unashamed, commanded by God, not only to fill the Garden with babies, but also to cultivate it and defend it. The only way I can really understand this is to think that God intended for Adam and Eve and their children to not only keep the Garden but also to extend the Garden to cover the whole earth. The beautiful sex God planned for Adam and Eve was to grow into a worldwide blessing.

So here it is: sexual passion is designed by the Creator exclusively for lifelong marriage between a man and a woman. Therefore sexual impurity is any intentional experience of any sexual passion of any sort, at any level, outside of marriage. All through the Bible, the blessing of God on a people or a land is conceived in terms of fertile fields and fruitful wombs. God’s gracious and gorgeous design for human sexuality is that a man and his wife enjoy every last little bit of their sexual passion with one another exclusively from the day they are wed until the day one of them dies, and that, under normal circumstances, that passion bears the fruit of children and grandchildren and generations of offspring.

Do you see that vision? It’s compellingly beautiful.

I know I’m speaking to many who have fallen, many who have failed, many who have been frustrated or have felt abused or just feel fatigued by the whole subject of sexual purity. For you, a series of sermons on moral purity may be about as pleasant as a series of root canals. It would be so easy to walk out of here today and not come back until next year—if ever.

I beg you not to do that.

I urge you once again to simply ask yourself whether the things that I have been saying really are the things that God is saying in this passage and in the Bible as a whole. If this is what God says, then choose to believe God, not man. Let me ask you to look at 2 realities here at the end of our time together.

First, look around you. Over the last century, and especially beginning in the 1960’s, our society has been assiduously questioning and then abandoning this vision of sexuality. People refer to this process as the Sexual Revolution: first artificial contraception, then no-fault divorce, then acceptance of premarital sex and cohabitation, then acceptance of pornography, then acceptance of homosexuality, and finally the transgender movement. All of this has happened in my lifetime. All of it was foisted on the public under the guise of sexual freedom and sexual justice. Of course, it was all a lie, and people who believe their Bibles knew it all along. It’s fascinating to hear how many secular voices are now being lifted to recognize the actual outcome of this so-called revolution. It was sold to us on the promise of freer sex and better sex and more sex. What we have today is less sex, worse sex, and fewer babies than at any point in recorded history. One study, released last week, calculated that China’s population will decrease by 60 million people over the next decade, and most likely will continue to fall at even faster rates after that. Their industrial base will suffer, Their economy will be hollowed out, their educational system will empty, their entire society will suffer. That article called it the collapse of the Chinese civilization. The fact is, demographics worldwide look like they’re following the same trend.

I think it was Chesterton who said you should never tear down a fence until you know why it was built in the first place. The near- universal cultural expectation that people would just grow up, get married, have kids, and get on with life, was actually good for us as a people, and usually good for us as individuals. Yes there were imperfections and abuses. There always are, where sinful human beings are involved. But the basic model itself was sound, because it was set in place by God himself. And the cbonsequences of dismantling that basic system are becoming more terrifyingly apparent with every passing year.

After we finish the depressing task of looking around us, let us one more time look to Jesus. Both the solution to that sexual revolution and the full realization of Jesus’ original vision for sexual purity are in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Learn from Jesus how to see the world and how to live8 your life—when it comes to sex and in every other conceivable area. And don’t just stop with yourself. The Lord Jesus calls us to disciple the nations. That doesn’t just mean convince them to become Christians. That means teach the nations and generations to think like Christians and live like Christians.

Our Lord Jesus Christ told us to stay busy till he comes, sowing the seed and reaping the harvest. Let’s do that.

The prophet Isaiah promised that the increase of Christ’s government and his peace would never end. Let’s believe that promise, and help to make it happen.

The apostle Paul lets us know that Jesus is ruling over everything now and he must go on reigning until God has put all his enemies under his feet. So let’s live freely and gladly under his reign, and spread his reign from pole to pole… until he comes.

what God wants them to do

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

Eternal Father, in this very moment, we turn again from our sin and ourselves to you and your glory,

Trusting only in your Son’s sacrifice for our sins to make us right with you.

We want to shelter ourselves in the shadow of his cross,

Bathe ourselves in the blood that he shed there for us,

Rest ourselves on his redemption

Robe ourselves in his righteousness,

Renew ourselves in his resurrection,

Lose ourselves in his Lordship,

And find ourselves in his friendship.

We want him to become for us, for today and forever, wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and salvation.

For he is the One who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to you, our Father.