Yesterday at Saar Fellowship our text was 1 Thessalonians 4.1-12. It’s quite a passionate passage, isn’t it?
Last week (2.17-3.13) Paul was passionate in saying how he felt and what he wanted for the new church despite earthly circumstances. Here in 4.1-12 he is equally as passionate about how the believers are to live and how they are not to live, where there focus should be and where it shouldn’t be.
In summary, practicing and allowing your mind to dwell on sexual sins (as with any sin) has devastating consequences in our lives. Sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59.2, for example).
It might start small: a thought, looking at something, watching something…the desire is there. Those little desires grow into sin and when that grows it leads to death (James 1.14-15). As sure as the sun shines Scripture tells us that the wages of sin, what we get for sinning, is death (Romans 6.23).
You might feel that those desires come easily, they come almost naturally. Paul has been really clear in 1 Thessalonians 4.1-12 about what not to do and what to do instead. The catalyst, why he wrote to them in this way, how he could say “Hey, stop that, start this…“, the key to all of this, is Jesus. It’s not their own (or your own) willpower and sense of morality. The key to all of this is Jesus.
You know you were made for more than sexual sins. You know you were made for more than any kind of sin. Your sin has devastating consequences for your life. Jesus has different plans for your life.
Sin leads to death.
Jesus is life.
He came and lived and ushered in a new way of life.
A new way of relating to God.
A new way of seeing yourself and your sin.
A new way of defeating it.
A new way of life.
Paul wrote here in 1 Thessalonians 4.1-12 that God has called you to live in holiness, and that He has given His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, to you to empower you to do so.
Jesus came and paid the price and penalty for your sin. Turn to Him for forgiveness and restoration. Turn to Him for a new beginning.
Where you have been letting yourself and others down in these ways turn to Jesus and ask forgiveness. Repent and turn away from those things. Focus on what Paul has written about here, and know that when you turn to Jesus for forgiveness, it is there, it is ready, and by dying that death on that cross He has secured forgiveness from sin and a new life for those that ask.
James Travis 