Every person in this room was created for passion. You were designed to be a passionate liver of life, crafted to be a passionate lover of God and his good gifts. But ever since the Garden, person after person, age after age we find ourselves unable to discover a passion we can trust not to destroy us. At the same time we cannot seem to kill or escape our passion for passion.

No matter how much alcohol we drink,

• no matter how many classes we ace
• no matter how many jobs we juggle
• no matter how many lovers we bed down with
• no matter how many grandchildren we spoil
• no matter how many hobbies we master
• no matter how much body fat we can keep off our bones,

we can neither quench nor defeat nor leave behind our passion to be passionate people.

Listen to me. Your passions will never begin to be as pleasurable or as pure as God made them to be until they are centered on the purpose God has for both passion and purity.

We are studying Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church. In the first eight verses of the fourth chapter in that book, the Lord Jesus Christ is showing us his policy on pure sexual passion.

S&R                         

¹ Finally, then, brothers, 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. 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; ⁶ that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. ⁷ For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. ⁸ Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

You might have noticed that the title of this sermon is “Why You’re Here.” I mean why you’re here in the building right at the moment, and I also mean why you’re here on the planet at all. There is a purpose for your life, and what I’m saying is that that purpose is passion, passion for the one thing that is really worth the zeal and the thrill and the heat of your heart—God himself.

Now let’s pause for a moment before we go any further. In the passage we’ve been focusing on for the last few weeks, the word “passion” appears only once, in verse 5. A couple of weeks ago, when we were looking at that verse, I pointed out that the word πάθος was used in classical Greek, a few hundred years before the time of the New Testament, to describe any zeal or commitment or excitement about anything, good or bad. But by the time Paul was writing, the word πάθος normally had a negative connotation: an unbalanced, unguided, uncontrolled, frenzied, dangerous, even deadly excitement. That’s the way Paul used the word in verse 5. However, the word “passion” was not originally used that way in Greek speech or writing, and it’s not used that way in modern English speech and writing, either. We usually just mean excitement about and commitment to something: zeal. Passion for a good thing is good passion, passion for a bad thing is bad passion.

The way Paul used the word passion in verse 5 was because most other educated people used the word that way in that day. But the way we use the word today is much more akin to the way it was originally used in classical Greek. So that’s the way I’m using it in this sermon. Passion for a good thing is a good thing. Passion for a bad thing is a bad thing. Lack of passion—just limp, insipid, burned-out boredom—is also a bad thing.

I’m saying that God’s purpose for the life of a Christian is pure, holy passion, passion for the glory of God and the Kingdom of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. We’ll try to make three significant statements about pure passion

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called personally and purposefully by the Father himself

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

Do you know what Paul means when he says that we’ve been called? This is actually one of his favorite ways to refer to Christians. We are the called ones.

We are not saved as the result of an accident. Nor was it brought about by our own independent choice. Rather, it happened because of the Holy Spirit’s effectual call. If you’re not sure what the term effectual call means, there is a purple paper on the information table in the center of this worship hall with an article printed on it thoroughly explaining the term.

You so need to get this: you reached out to Jesus because he reached down to you first. You called out to Jesus because he called you first. Through the revelation and the conviction of the Holy Spirit, Jesus called you to himself.

Paul explains to the Philippian Christians that, although he knows he’s already saved, yet he will fully and finally lay hold of the salvation that Jesus won for him only when he sees Jesus face to face. That’s what he’s talking about when he says to them,

Philippians 3 ¹² Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 

Do you understand that if you’re saved today, it’s because the Lord Jesus Christ has laid hold of you and made you his own? He called you, and because he called you, you came to him. Now he is your Lord, and you belong to him.

Do you see how the fact that you are the called of Christ impacts your life? In particular, since we’re right here in First Thessalonians, is it clear yet what this means with regard to sexuality? Your body is not yours, to do with as you please. It is Christ’s, to do with as he pleases. And that means your sexuality is not yours, to do with as you please. It is the Lord Jesus Christ’s, to do with as he pleases. Listen again to this passage you’ve heard me read more than once:

1 Corinthians 6 ¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. ¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. ¹⁹ Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, ²⁰ for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Notice that he doesn’t say in this verse that you have been called to purity or to holiness. What you’ve been called to is Christ, for purity, in holiness. If you belong to Christ, you’ve definitely got a call on your life. In fact there are all sorts of things Jesus calls you to! But the most important fact is that you have been called to Christ and now you belong to him.

There is a fundamental confusion here for many evangelical Christians, especially in America. Someone taught them the glorious truth that they are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and not by works. Then they responded to that splendid truth by drawing an unwarranted conclusion. They concluded that justification by grace alone means free salvation with no expectations or consequences or demands on their lives.

For example, one of the most beloved but also most misunderstood verses in the New Testament is Romans 6:23. It says, “For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Many people hear that verse and leap to the inference that, since the gift is free, those who receive the gift are likewise free to do whatever they want. But that’s a complete delusion. Just consider this for a moment. Paul says that the free gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Lord” means “boss” or “king.” It’s somebody who has the right to tell you what to do, and expect obedience from you. If you love your Lord, you’ll give glad obedience. To say that your Lord has given you the free gift of no longer having to obey him Is to say that your Lord has given you the free gift of no longer having him as your Lord. It is absurd on its face. Do you really think that’s what Paul was trying to say? Beyond that, we really need to stop and ask ourselves what is the gift of God? Is it everlasting existence, or eternal life? Well, what is eternal life? It is

• the life of eternity, alive in you right now
• the hope of eternity, alive in you right now
• the values of eternity, alive in you right now
• the perspectives of eternity, alive in you right now
• the priorities of eternity, alive in you right now
• the passions of eternity, alive in you right now

To say that the Lord Jesus Christ has given you the free gift of eternal life is to say that he has graciously made you into a living, breathing example of eternity living in time. It is to say that the will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven has begun in your life right now.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called personally and purposefully by the Father himself. The person to whom he has called you is Jesus Christ your Lord. The purpose for which he has called you is passion for the glory and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ your Lord.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called away from what’s dirty and sinful and ugly and petty

⁷ For God has not called us for impurity …

The word Paul uses is ἀκαθαρσία. It’s the negation of the word from which we get our modern English words “catharsis” and “cathartic.” The word ἀκαθαρσία appears eleven times in the New Testament, almost always describing moral impurity, that is to say, sexual immorality that pollutes and defiles. The one time Jesus uses it, though, it refers to whatever else is in a tomb along with dead men’s bones. If moral sex is sex between a man and his wife, and all other sex is immoral or impure sex, which we’ve seen is exactly what Jesus teaches, then this word impurity is not a nice word at all. You wouldn’t want to think of yourself or your love life as impure. Nasty.

Our modern society, on the other hand, following perverts like Freud and Foucault, insists that all consensual sex is moral sex, good sex, healthy sex, pure sex. What they spread through the academic world several years ago now permeates our society at every level.

For example, Hollywood continually sells us the lie that adultery can be beautiful, and fornication can be blessed. In 1996, Meryl Streep was nominated for the best actress Oscar for the film The Bridges of Madison County. She played a lonely housewife who had a torrid affair with a traveling photographer. The whole point of the film was to paint that adultery as understandable and even beautiful. The film made over 100 million dollars. Sin sells, especially when the Great Salesman below can slyly redirects our attention from what we’re actually looking at.

Here again you just have to decide whether you want to believe God or man, your Lord ot the Liar, the Spirit within you or the society around you.

It will help if we examine the effectiveness of the lie. The deception operates by confusing what is merely alluring or simply soothing with what is truly beautiful. It mixes up being eternally blessed and being emotionally intoxicated. It cashes in the everlasting treasures of godliness for the petty and passing pleasures of sin.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called away from what’s dirty and sinful and ugly and petty. Of course you’ve got to be able to see through Satan’s lies. As the scripture warns, the Wicked One normally makes himself appear as an angel of light. He convinces us that wrong is right and ugly is beautiful and down is up. And he normally convinces the entire world of those things at the same time. It’s only after the world has bought into his lies that the truth begins to come out. As one godly old country preacher put it, the devil’s corn is sweet, but he’ll choke you on the cob every time.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called away from what’s dirty and sinful and ugly and petty.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called to what’s clean and holy and beautiful and magnificent

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

Remember, “holiness” means “separation.” Our Lord wants us pursuing a vision of the magnificent, living a life that’s splendid, discovering the radical adventure of creating a space 3full of virtue in a world full of vice, raising a generation of splendidly idealistic dreamers who are caught up in the dream of living for Jesus, purely passionate about the things they’ve been called to.

Let’s think about two things in particular

A standing passion to use your body and your soul to portray Christ as the supreme treasure of your heart

Whether it’s bodybuilding or body image or body maximizing or body positivity, the culture we live in is outrageously obsessed with the body. No matter how blitzed we become about our bodies, God has a far more potent perspective. Listen to what Paul says as he considers what may happen to his body as he contemplates the possibility or probability of persecution or even death:

Philippians 1  ²⁰ as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹ For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

The only thing he cares about with regard to his body is that his LJC be made to look good by whatever happens to it. Do you think that the way Paul thinks about his body is a lesson for how all Christians should think about our bodies? You should.

We have bodies so that God might be gloried in them. That is why God gave you a body – whether it’s tall or short, pretty or plain, brawny or feeble. Our bodies are given to us so that in the way we use them Christ is made to look more valuable to us than anything.

Mhat has God called you to be passionate about?

First, we all need a standing passion to use our bodies and our souls to portray Christ as the supreme treasure of our hearts

Second, you need

A living vision of fidelity and chastity that display the preciousness and purity of Christ’s love for his church

Human beings are driven and called by what they think they can see—the far country… the light of the end of the tunnel… the Promised Land. In particular, we need to be preparing our young people to build a marriage & family for Jesus by awakening in their souls at vision of  Christ and his church in the marriages they see in their own church.

We make a serious mistake when we think that marriage is all about how we feel. Too often, our vision of a wedding has a  groom in long tails, a bride with a long train, flowers everywhere, and candles all over the place. Daddy has to get a loan from the bank to afford it all. All for his little girl, on her special day, when she is the center of everything.

What an utter travesty. No woman is ever the center of everything. Nor is any mere man. That’s why, at a Christian wedding, the bride is not the focus of attention. The Groom is – and I don’t mean the guy in the penguin suit. The eternal Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the center of attention. The chief end of the whole affair is to put on display the unspeakable glories of the Groom’s love for his Bride, the church. That’s what a wedding is all about, and that’s what marriage is all about. At least, that’s what God thinks, according to Paul in Ephesians 5 and Peter in chapter three of his first letter.

What has God called you to be passionate about? A living vision of fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness that display the preciousness and purity of Christ’s love for his church. Peter was a married man who glorified Jesus with his body by his fidelity to his wife. Paul was an unmarried man who glorified his Lord in his body by his own chastity and his repeated clarion calls for chaste living by Christians. Both men were Christian men who magnified their Lord Jesus Christ by surrendering their bodies to death at the hands of the Roman emperor Nero. Both the lives they lived in their bodies and the death they endured with their bodies glorified their Lord, and edified his Bride.

We so desperately need to understand this. Both love (the emotional) and sex (the physical) were designed for marriage, and marriage was made to be a mirror of the magnificence of the grace of God. And this is true for us whether we’re married or not.

What has God called you to be passionate about? A living vision of fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness that display the preciousness and purity of Christ’s love for his church.

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called personally and purposefully by the Father himself

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called away from what’s dirty and sinful and ugly and petty

If you’re Christ’s, you’ve been called to what’s clean and holy and beautiful and magnificent

A standing passion to use your body and your soul to portray Christ as the supreme treasure of your heart

A living vision of fidelity and chastity that display the preciousness and purity of Christ’s love for his church

Let four final visions rise before the eye of your soul—not as mere passing images, but as steady lights to guide the passions of your life.

The wedding altar—see it as sacred ground, where trembling joy and solemn vows meet beneath the gaze of God. It is a place where two sinners, clothed in grace, dare to promise lifelong faithfulness, not because they trust their own hearts, but because they trust the covenant-keeping heart of Christ. The altar shines with hope—the hope that love can be anchored in something deeper than feeling, something stronger than time.

The marriage bed—not a place of indulgence, but of consecration. It is warm with tenderness, guarded by fidelity, and filled with quiet glory. Here passion is not wild and wandering, but focused and faithful, a reflection—however faint—of the devoted, self-giving love of the Savior for his Bride. It is a fire not meant to consume, but to sustain; not to defile, but to dignify.

The deathbed—still, weighty, and honest. Here the line becomes visible—the straight and steady line that runs from the wedding night to this final hour. In the mind of Jesus, these are not disconnected moments but one faithful story: a covenant made, a covenant kept. The years in between, with all their trials and tenderness, gather here into a testimony of enduring love. And as the body grows weak, there is a quiet strength in knowing that promises were honored, that passion was governed by purity, and that a life of fidelity has become an offering laid gently at the feet of Christ, ready now to be completed in His presence.

The Shire In J R R Tolkein’s Middle Earth, the homeland of the little Halfling heroes of his stories is called the Shire—a place of simple glory, where goodness takes root and quietly multiplies. In that idyllic land, Hobbit lads and lasses find one another in innocence and delight, and their love grows into homes filled with laughter and children. The fields are green and fruitful, the tables are warm and full, and the families are blessed from generation to generation. It is a vision of a land where ordinary faithfulness becomes extraordinary beauty—where life is ordered, fruitful, and glad under the smile of God. And if somehow grace so works among us in the United States of America, such a vision won’t have to be only a story; it may yet be tasted here, in a people whose passions have been made pure—yes, even here in Dundalk.

gospel

Before we can finish our time together,

The cost that was incurred: Rom 6:23

the price that was paid:

The glory that was won:

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.