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Welcome to our look at 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 in Daily Drive Time
Devotions. This is day two of our look at that chapter. We're going to be
looking at verses three to eight today.

Yesterday you might remember we talked about God's will being that you be
sanctified, you be holy, you be growing to become more and more like Jesus
Christ. We talked about a real life, an excellent life that God wants us to
live. And in these verses, as you begin this chapter, Paul talks about two
specifics of your growth in Christ, two specifics of the excellent life that God
has for you.

Let me read the beginning of verse three that we looked at yesterday and then
finish that verse. Verse three says, "It is God's will that you should be
sanctified. That you should avoid sexual immorality.

" Paul says from the very beginning, your sanctification is, the idea here is,
abstaining from sexual immorality. He could have said a lot of things about
sanctification. There's a lot of things I need to do to grow as a Christian.

But Paul wanted to make sure that these people who lived in this society that
was overrun with sexual sin did not miss the point that if they were going to
grow, if they were going to have an excellent faith, they were going to have to
abstain from sexual immorality. Physical purity is one of the keys to spiritual
excellence. That's what he's saying here.

There is no doubt about it. If you want to live a life of excellent faith, you
have to ask God, "God, give me the faith to choose physical purity. " In the
beginning of this passage in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, there are really two
questions for sanctification.

The first is, how do you treat your body? Look at the second in days to come,
but today we focus on this first one. How do you treat your body?

You see, our bodies are more than just containers. The Bible teaches us that our
bodies aren't just a container of our spirit. The Bible's picture is they are a
temple of God's Holy Spirit.

The more I treat this body as a temple, the temple that it is, the more
excellently I can live my faith. The idea that spirituality somehow has nothing
to do with the material world, that's an idea from Eastern religions. It is not
a Christian idea.

Christianity is a very material faith. I didn't say it was a materialistic
faith. I said material faith.

It's real. It sees how God wants to work through these bodies that He gave us in
the world that we live in. He even calls His church the body of Christ.

Once you realize how the idea of our body and our spirituality begin to connect,
the body that God gave me and the faith that He wants me to live out, then you
can begin to live an excellent faith. And Paul says, let's just be very honest
about this from the beginning. It means you've got to abstain from sexual
immorality.

Now, sexual immorality is one of what some people call the collegiate sins. It
has a lot of degrees. Sorry for the pun.

We tend to excuse ourselves by noting that others are far worse off than we are
when it comes to sexual sins. And so we think, well, yeah, I have some sins in
my life, but it's not as bad as these other people. Well, the fact remains,
Paul's saying here, when I involve myself in something or I look at something or
I think about something that I know is immoral, sexually immoral, I am training
excellence for mediocrity.

The question is, in this world that we live in, that is rampant with sexual sin,
how do we overcome the temptations? It might seem overwhelming to you sometimes.
How do we live the kind of life that God wants us to live?

Well, let me read this passage, verses four to eight, and see what God says will
work Beginning in verse four. "That each of you should learn to control his own
body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the
heathen who do not know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong his
brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as
we've already told you and warned you.

For God does not call us to be impure but to live a holy life. For he who
rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit.
" Paul points here to two things that you can do to overcome sexual sin.

First, you can decide to say no. Paul points here to two things that you can do
to overcome, to abstain from sexual sin. First of all, he says, you can abstain,
which means, one, I can decide to say no.

You can decide to say no. It's difficult for us to say no because we think the
temptation is irresistible. We think that the temptation towards sexual sin in
our day is greater than at any time in human history.

Well, let me just tell you, it may have been at its worst in the time that Paul
preached. Rome, Thessalonica, they were very immoral places. They worshiped
idols, and part of the worship was the presence of temple prostitutes.

They connected prostitution and the worship of their gods. That's how immoral
they were. Adultery was rampant in this society.

Many men committed adultery in three different ways, with their mistresses, with
slaves, and with temple prostitutes. So when Paul wrote and said, "You need to
learn to abstain," he knew that it was going to take the power of God. The Bible
says, "Avoid sexual immorality.

Learn to abstain. Learn to say no. " Now, for help in learning to say no, I
think the one word that helps me, most empowers me to be able to say no is the
word "yes.

" You have to know what to say no to, but you also have to know what to say yes
to. Say no. Avoid all sexual immorality.

That means no sexual wrongdoing. God created sex for a man and a woman in a
lifetime commitment of marriage. That's what Genesis says.

That's what Jesus says. So you say no to anything but God's plan. Premarital
sex, extramarital sex, homosexual sex, pornography.

Say no. But to say no. But to say no, I've got to learn to say yes.

What do I have to say yes to? I have to say yes to God's plan. I have to say yes
to sex in marriage, healthy sex in marriage, and give myself to my husband, to
my wife.

If you're not yet married, I have to say yes to God's perfect plan and wait for
sex until marriage, even when no one else around you is. If no other believers
around you even are saying yes to God's plan, you be the one that says yes. You
be the one that says yes.

That's what changes the world. That's what makes you an excellent believer,
someone who is living in excellent faith. And we need believers who excel.

You get just one believer who excels and it challenges everyone else to look at
Christ. They look at you and they think, "How can they be doing that? " And they
realize they can't be doing that.

There must be some power. And they realize it's Christ. That's what happens when
you excel by saying no to sexual sin instead saying yes to God.

Excel. Learn to say no. That's the first point that Paul talks about here.

And then secondly, he says, "If you want to learn to abstain from sexual sin,
you have to understand what God says about your body. " This is very important.
You have to learn to control your body in a way that's holy and honorable.

Is this body merely physical? Well, if you think that way, it's very easy to sin
with it. If it's just a physical thing that's going to be thrown off like a
container at the end of your life, it doesn't really matter that much what you
do with it in this life.

But it's not just merely physical. The idea that you get from a lot of corners
in this world is that this is just a natural body and whatever our natural
desires want to do with it, go ahead. But the Bible says that this body, your
body as a believer, is one day going to be resurrected.

This physical body is one day going to be resurrected just like Jesus was. And
these bodies even now are living temples of Jesus Christ. That is a totally
different picture of our bodies than the world around us gives us.

And so Paul expresses the true nature of these bodies with two words, "holy" and
"honorable. " Holy, set apart for God's use. Society has caused us to think
sometimes of the body as only physical, disconnected from God.

So you think of your body as overweight or athletic or sexual, just the physical
side. No, this is a holy body. Think of it as set apart for God's use.

Think of it as honorable, made to glorify God and honor God. You might be
thinking two words right now. You might be thinking the words too late.

I've already made choices with this body. I've already made choices with my life
that were not holy, that were not honorable. Well, I have some good news.

The Bible is written to the same kind of people that many of us are. It was
written to people who became believers after they became adults. And because of
that, they had a lot of sins in their past.

They had a lot of things they had done that they were ashamed of. They had a lot
of things that they'd done with this body that God gave to them that were not
holy and were not honorable. But the Bible does not write to these people or to
you either and say, "If you did any of these things in your past, you may as
well just give up.

You can never achieve God's standard or you can never be the kind of person that
serves and worships God, so why even bother? " That is not what the Bible says.
You know what the Bible says?

The Bible says, "Do it no longer. " Don't let Satan tempt you by saying, "You
were that way in the past. You might as well keep acting that way now.

You've already ruined things. " The Bible's word to you, the good news to you
is, "Do it no longer. " You can grow from this day forward, on this day forward.

You can choose to live a holy life, an honorable life, holy and honorable. Do
you want to give a gift to this world? Here is the greatest gift that you could
give to the world around us.

We as believers need to be people who love sex but hate sexual sin. There are a
lot of Christians out there who hate sexual sin, but you also get the idea that
they hate sex and marriage too. Society looks at them and thinks, "There's not
anything really attractive for me there about faith.

" If only the world could see believers who treat these bodies that God has
given us in holiness and honor. Even before you're married, you can still love
the sexuality that God created you with. You love sex, the fact that God created
it for unity, for intimacy in marriage, but you hate sexual sin.

That's what the world needs to see. How do you treat your body? It is more than
a container that one day is going to be tossed aside.

It is a temple that awaits a renovating resurrection. Treat it that way. If you
want to have an excellent faith, first of all, I've got to think about how to
handle this body that God has given to me.

God says, "Treat it with holiness and with honor. " Let's take a moment to pray
together. Let me encourage you, as we pray, to take just a few personal intimate
moments with the Lord Jesus.

You may need to say to Him in your heart right now, "Lord, I struggle in this
area of my sexual life. There is an immorality in my life, and I know it. Jesus,
I know that you forgive me, but I want to live an excellent thing.

Would you teach me to say no by saying yes? Would you teach me how you view this
body that you created? Would you teach me to find help when and where I need it?

Jesus, would you teach me what it means to live in a holy and an honorable way
that shows the world what you are like? Sanctify me, Jesus. Help me to grow to
be more and more like you.

I ask it in your name. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at the
second key to your sanctification that Paul talks about in this chapter as we
look at verses 9 to 12.