First Thessalonians. That’s our source material right now as we are studying God’s Word together. Our series is entitled “Kingdom Called,” and that’s based on Paul’s statement in this book. As Christians we are charged “to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls [us] into his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thess 2:12). We are called into Christ’s Kingdom. And we are called to represent Christ before the watching world. And one inescapable part of that “calling” is a call to holiness. A call to purity! That’s our topic for today, church. 

I know it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been in this book, so let me get you quickly up to speed. Paul wrote this book to the church in Thessalonica, and he wrote it after he was forcibly kicked out of the city during his Second Missionary Journey. And Paul fretted over the state of the church in Thessalonica. He was worried about them, because he didn’t have a chance to build into them like he wanted. He was forced to leave the city, and then, as he tells us in this book, Satan kept him from returning (2:18). 

And so, Paul resorted to sending his trusted protégé Timothy to check on the church in Thessalonica, worried that some in the church might have shipwrecked their faith. But Timothy brought back a glowing report on the church. In fact, Timothy told Paul that there was much that was commendable going on in the church of Thessalonica. The brothers and sisters-in-Christ loved one another. They loved Paul. And they were pressing on in their faith despite some deep persecution and affliction. 

Now at the end of Chapter 3, in the passage we looked at a few weeks ago, Paul calls this report from Timothy “good news.” εὐαγγελίζω is the word that Paul uses. Timothy gave Paul the good news of the church in Thessalonica and confirms that they are still a “good news” church, holding fast to the gospel and standing fast in the Lord Jesus Christ, their Savior. There is much to celebrate in what God has done in Thessalonica. 

But, as I’ve said already in this series, this is not a perfect church. In the first three chapters, we may be tempted to think that this church in Thessalonica is a perfect church without any flaws or issues… that they are impeccable in all their action and conduct. Well the last two chapters of this book are going to disabuse us of that notion. And that starts with today’s passage on sexual purity. Paul has some very important topics that he needs to communicate to them regarding the issue of purity. 

Let me be clear about what we’re going to see in the text this morning. There is a very specific issue that Paul addresses head-on in Chapter 4. Today we are going to look specifically and frankly at the topic of sexual immorality. This was an issue in Paul’s day among the churches of the Roman Empire. And let me say, at the risk of understatement, that sexual purity is an issue in our day too. Would you agree with that, church? 

Sometimes as a pastor/preacher, I feel the weight of communicating a message of Scripture that is so relevant and so convicting for us in our present age. I feel that weightiness today. We need 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, church. And we are going to learn and grow and be challenged and be convicted together this morning. So brace yourself for this. 

Honestly I’d rather you hear about this topic here from this pulpit and from this Bible, then from what the world is telling you. So let’s get some principles out here on the table from God’s Word. Here’s what I want to give you this morning. Four principles from 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, and then four applications. 

Let’s start with the principles. Write this down as #1.

1) Sexual purity is God’s will for your life (4:1-3)

Paul says in verse 1. 

4:1 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, 

You know it’s funny that Paul uses that word “finally” there. Because this letter is far from over. Only a preacher would say “finally” and then go on for another two chapters! 

4:1 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.

Paul’s tone here is not angry. And it’s not condemning, either. There’s actually a lot of affirmation here. “Keep walking,” Paul says. “Keep striving!” “You know what we told you when we were there with you. Keep pursuing that!” “You know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember! Keep chasing that. It ain’t over till your dead or Christ comes back… whichever comes first. “So keep chasing God’s will. Keep pursuing God’s will in your lives!”

And to that, the Thessalonians might ask rhetorically, “Ok well, what is God’s will for us?” Good question. Here’s what Paul says:

3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification [your “becoming holy”]: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 

You know, people obsess about God’s will for their lives. People obsess about where they should live and where they should go to college and who they will marry and how many kids they should have. “What’s God’s will for me? What’s God’s will?” Some people, it seems, can’t even get a drink of water without hearing from God in some mystical way. But whenever God speaks about his will for our lives, it typically has less to do with those non-moral choices like college or vocation or a drink of water. It typically has more to do with sin. It typically has to do with living a life of purity and godliness. The truth is “I don’t know what God’s will is for your life as it relates to who you will marry.” But I know this – God’s will for your life is sexual purity. And if you do marry, God’s will is for you to be sexually faithful to whoever you marry. God’s will is for you to honor sex in the way that God created it. It’s something that should be enjoyed in the context of a monogamous, heterosexual, marital relationship. That’s God’s will for your life! What a precious thing to know exactly what God wants in this regard!

Now, let’s be clear about what Paul is saying here. Paul says in verse 3.

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

In other words, “your holiness!” In Greek, your ἁγιασμός. You might even say, “your holification.” We don’t have that word in English, but in Greek the words “holy” and “sanctification” are built on the same root. 

The word sanctification is an English word derived from sanctus, the Latin word for “holy.” So really “sanctification” just means “holification.” The word ἁγιασμός in Greek is related to the word ἅγιος which means “holy.” And in the Bible, we, believers, are called “οἱ ἅγιοι” the “saints of God.” “Hmm, I thought that only really, really righteous people are called saints, like Saint Theresa, Pastor Tony.” No. All genuine believes are saints. We are declared righteous in Christ Jesus. And we are being made righteous through what theologians call the process of sanctification. In terms of justification, we are declared holy in Christ. We are saved and “holy” before God. But as a bonus, we are being progressively sanctified (made holy) in this life. The Zambian pastor and theologian, Conrad Mbewe, said once that, “We have turned God into some kind of flabby grandfather figure who does not mind how his grandchildren mess up his clothes. No, the God of the Bible is holy and demands holiness from his creatures.” Paul says as much here. The will of God is your sanctification! 

And then Paul speaks more specifically about a certain aspect of our sanctification. Look at the end of verse 3. 

that you abstain from sexual immorality; 

What is sexual immorality? Well the word for sexual immorality in Greek is the word πορνεία which in English we derive the word “pornography” from. But Paul doesn’t use this word to refer to pornography. He uses it to describe any and every form of sexual immorality including pornography. In his commentary on this passage, Michael Martin writes, “Much behavior that was tolerated among the Gentiles was considered immoral in the church. The casual use of prostitutes and the practice of ritual sexual intercourse in certain cults was common in Hellenistic cities. Far from limiting sex to the bounds of marriage, it was common for a man of means to have a mistress, and it also was acceptable for him to make use of his slaves for sexual gratification.” 

Some people in our day might say, “Yeah that’s not right. You need two consenting adults. That’s the key.” Well, that’s a modern construct. You may have two consenting adults, but that doesn’t mean you have a consenting God. God is not obliged to hold to our modern concept of consent. 

When Paul uses this word πορνεία to say that we should abstain from any and all kinds of sexual immorality, he’s including adultery, fornication, premarital sex, bestiality, pedophilia, homosexuality, incest, voyeurism, prostitution, lust, rape, and yes also pornography. Let me put it this way—God wants us to abstain from any and every kind of sexual behavior that is inconsistent with a monogamous, heterosexual, marital union. 

You might say, “That’s really difficult, Pastor Tony.” You might say, “What this is asking of me is impossible in this present age.” No, it’s not. It couldn’t be any more impossible for us than it would be for the Thessalonians living in the pagan, oversexualized Roman Empire. If it was possible for them, and Paul expected it from them, why not us? 

You might say, “But Pastor Tony, I have already messed up so badly in this area. I feel so ashamed.” Some of you may have even been victimized in some area of sexuality. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry for that. That’s not right. 

Listen, I want you to hear my heart in this. I am not here to condemn or disparage anyone. I am not here this morning to cast the first stone. I’m not preaching this morning as a man who has perfectly followed God’s command in this regard. I preach to you as a fellow struggler, a fellow pilgrim, as a friend and shepherd, and follower of Christ who has, by the grace of God, experienced victory in this area of my life. And I want us as a church to experience victory in this area of sin and be a beacon of hope to this world that is suffering from the effects of sin and self-indulgence. 

I know it can be easy to just give in to what’s happening in this world. It’s easy to feel defeated and hopeless. But I refuse to give into that. For the record, I don’t do defeatism, especially with this issue. The stakes are too high with this issue. 

You know when the Nazis in Europe had just about taken over all of Europe and were trying to bomb the nation of England into smithereens, England was forced to turn away from appeasers like Neville Chamberlain. And they turned to a natural-born fighter, a man named Winston Churchill. And Churchill gave his nation something that no other statesman at that time was able to give them—a will to fight. And he said once, “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air… we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” That’s the mentality that I want us to walk away with this morning. God has not called us to be defeatists or appeasers. He’s called us to be more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom 8:37). 

It has been said that, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” God’s will for your life, Christian… God’s will for my life is sexual purity. And he wants us to fight for that. And success is not final. And failure is not fatal. It is only the courage to continue that counts. So, keep fighting for purity in your lives. Keep fighting until you’re dead or until Christ returns, whichever comes first. 

Go ahead and write this down as #2. Sexual purity is God’s will for your life. Secondly, 

2) Self-control is evidence of your relationship with God (4:4-5)

Verse 4 is actually a continuation of the beginning of verse 3:

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

Now verse 4.

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; 

Here’s the very simple logic of what Paul is saying here. A Gentile… that’s a reference to an unsaved person who lives within the Roman Empire… A Gentile who is unsaved and has no accurate knowledge of God in any way, will of course live a life of wickedness and dissipation. They don’t know any better. The respected Greek philosopher, Demosthenes, said once, “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons, but wives to bear us legitimate children.” A pagan Gentile, like Demosthenes, doesn’t know any better. They don’t know God!

And by the way, the pagan religious practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans don’t forbid sexual immorality. And that’s pretty simple to understand, because when you look at their pantheon of “gods,” those “gods” were just as wicked and sinful as humans. So what incentive do they have to not be sinful? Why not be like the gods? 

But here’s Paul’s point in verse 5. Paul says to the Thessalonians, “You know God.” And God is not like the “gods” of the Roman Empire. He’s a holy God. Paul says, “You know God, and you know his character. You know God, and you know the Scriptures.” Paul is saying here, “I know you know the Scriptures, because I taught them to you myself.” 

Look back at verse 2:

2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

“So, you are not ignorant of God or ignorant of what God requires of you, Thessalonians. Be different. Live differently. Show the world by your conduct and by “controlling your own body in holiness and honor” that there’s a better way in this life than debauchery and dissipation.” 

By the way, church, we’re called to be different. Did you know that? We’re called to be different from the world. Some of you might be asking, “Why can’t we just be like the world, Pastor Tony?” “Why can’t we just look at porn like everyone else?” “Why can’t we watch sexually explicit movies like everyone else?” “Why can’t we just watch whatever we want or do whatever we want or sleep with whomever we want?” The reason is because we know God! And we are expected to obey God! And we are supposed to represent God before a watching world, a watching world that is drowning in a sea of sexual perversion!

Some churches like to celebrate the fact that they are just like the world. “We’re just like you, so come on in.” And I want to respond to that by saying, “Really? You’re just like the world! That’s how you want to attract people to Christ and the church?” If that’s the case, that the church is just like the world, why would anyone ever bother with church? 

John Piper said this once, “The world does not need more cool, hip, culturally savvy, irrelevant copies of itself. That is a hoax that has duped thousands of young Christians. They think they have to be hip, cool, savvy, culturally aware, watching everything in order not to be freakish. And that is undoing them morally and undoing their witness.” 

The church is not a congregation of sinners sinfully indulging their sinfulness. The church is a congregation of saved sinners who are distancing themselves increasingly from their sinfulness and fighting for purity in their lives. This is called discipleship. This is called sanctification. It’s the inevitable result of knowing God and following God. 

And by the way, that is something that the watching world can’t get anywhere else. So can I just give you some advice this morning, church? Be different! Be different from the world! And let God broadcast that difference before the watching world so that they can see something different than the cesspool of sin that they are swimming in. It won’t appeal to everyone. But it’ll appeal to some. 

Write this down as a third observation from the text:

3) Sexual sin incites human and divine wrath (4:6)

Look at verse 6 with me. I’m going to set this up with verse 3.

3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: Now down to verse 6. 

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. 

The word for “avenger” here is the Greek word ἔκδικος. And it means “avenger” or “punisher.” It’s derived from the Greek word “to judge.” And the Lord here is the judge and the punisher of those who sin sexually against another person. That’s sobering, isn’t it? 

And who is the Lord in this verse? Who’s the avenger? It’s not Ironman or Captain America! The Lord here is the same “Lord” as verse 2. It’s the Lord Jesus. He is the avenger! He’s the Yahweh of Nahum 1:2: “[Yahweh] is a jealous and avenging God; [Yahweh] is avenging and wrathful; [Yahweh] takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.”

You might say, “Pastor Tony, say it isn’t so! You mean sweet little baby Jesus? He’s the avenger! He wouldn’t hurt anyone!” Wouldn’t he, though? Did he die for nothing? Did he die for us so that we could sexually indulge our flesh and wrong a brother or sister in this matter? The Lord avenges those who have been mistreated in the matter of sexual sin. 

You know one of the biggest lies that people use to convince themselves that sexual sin is okay is by saying, “my sin only affects me! It doesn’t affect you or my family or anyone else. It only affects me.” I hear the same thing uttered about illegal drugs. People say, “What does it matter if I smoke a little weed or smoke a little meth? I’m only hurting myself.” No, actually you’re not. What people fail to realize is that there are whole empires of evil that steal, kill, and destroy people to get those drugs into your hands. And when you decide to break the law in that way, you are complicit in crimes perpetuated in this country and others that have destroyed lives. 

The same is true with sexual sin. It wrongs other people. Adultery robs another man or woman of what’s rightfully theirs. Premarital sex violates what is rightfully another person’s in the context of marriage. Every girl in a pornographic video has a father. Every man in a pornographic video has a mother. And often times those individuals are being naively exploited by others who want to use sex to enrich themselves. And by watching those videos you are complicit in that exploitation. 

There’s more that I could say about that. There’s more that I could say about human trafficking and the exploitation of sex in some of the darkest places of our world. But let me just say this—you are never just hurting yourself when you sin sexually. There are always others that you are harming. In some cases, it’s your own children that you are harming the worst, by inviting Satan into your home and allowing him to wreak havoc on your family. 

And Paul says here,

6 [let] no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things…

Paul says essentially, “even if you get away with it without anyone ever knowing… even if a jealous husband never finds out, even if a defrauded woman never finds out, even if an angry father with a shotgun never finds out, Jesus will know. And Jesus will avenge.” It’s one thing to incite the wrath of a human. The Bible says, “For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge” (Prov. 6:34). It’s one thing to incite human wrath. It’s quite another to incite the wrath of God, the Son. 

Now the Bible does say that God is slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness (cf. Ex 34:6; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3). Aren’t you glad God is slow to anger? Yes, God is slow to anger, but he’s not devoid of anger. And if you find yourself this morning stuck in a pattern of sexual sin… And if you are rightfully fearful of God’s vengeance in regard to a matter of sexual sin… here’s my counsel for you. Repent! Repent and cry out for God’s mercy. And you shall have it. And then, after repentance… after the crisis… after you’ve repented, then take up the weapons of warfare and wage war on that sin. I’ll give you some instruction on how to do that in just a moment.     

But before that, write this down. #4. Not only does sin incite God’s wrath but it also impedes. 

4) Sexual sin impedes the work of the Spirit (4:7-8)

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.

Did everyone catch that? God’s Spirit that he places inside of us… that’s the Third Person of the Trinity… God’s Spirit is a Holy Spirit. Literally Paul writes here in Greek, “the Spirit of him, the holy,” as if to emphasize the fact that God’s Spirit is, in fact, Holy. God does not give us his Holy Spirit, so we can continue to live lives of impurity and un-holiness. He gives us his Holy Spirit, so that we can grow and become like Him. He gives us his Holy Spirit to mold us and shape us and grow us into Christ-like disciples. He gives us his Holy Spirit to bring conviction into our lives, and to bring changes to our lives, and to confirm those things that we do that are holy and pleasing to the Lord. 

Maybe some of you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about now. Maybe some of you have never sensed the Holy Spirit’s conviction in your life. And if that’s the case, then maybe it’s because you aren’t saved. You’ve never truly repented of your sins and embraced Jesus as your Savior. You’ve never had the indwelling Holy Spirit guide you and convict you and force the issue of holiness on you when maybe you would have settled for unholiness. 

Do you have the Holy Spirit inside of you? Do you? Has the Holy Spirit been given to you like Paul speaks about here in verse 8? By the way, what’s the first step in sanctification? Do you know? It’s not pursuing holiness. The first step in our sanctification is justification. It’s receiving the free gift of salvation. That’s where the glorious Christian life begins, as Christ’s righteousness is imputed by faith into our lives, and our sin is transferred to Christ and paid for on the cross. Your faith in that work of Christ saves you. And your faith is what brings the Holy Spirit into your life and begins that great work of sanctification. 

And so maybe some of you are struggling with sin and you’re unable to get victory in that area of life because quite frankly, you need to get saved. You need to repent of your sins and embrace Jesus Christ by faith. If that is you this morning, then this message is over. That’s your application. Give your life to the LORD. Exercise your faith in the Son of God who loves you and died upon the cross, so that you might have new life in him. 

Now what about those of you who are saved? What if you have repented of your sins and embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior, but dog-gone-it, you just keep slipping up in an area of sexual sin? You just keep falling into bad patterns of sinfulness. What do you do, then?

Well here’s what you need. You need a crisis, and you need a process. You need a crisis. Maybe today is your crisis. Maybe today is that moment that you put a stake in the ground and say, “This ends today!” For some of you, you might not be there yet. You still love your sin too much. Or you don’t love God enough, which is basically the same thing. But for those of you who have had enough. For those of you who are tired of letting Satan run amok in your family and in your life, you need to welcome the crisis of this moment. You need to say, “I’ve had enough!” “This ends today!” 

You need a crisis. But here’s what else you need. You need a process. The reality is that Satan is not just going to leave you alone because you’ve decided in your heart that you’ve had enough. In fact, the crisis that I’m advocating for today is not a call for a ceasefire. This is a call to arms. And you can bet that Satan will throw everything he has at you in the next 3-6 weeks to nullify your crisis. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

Here’s what you do! Here’s the process. Four things. Write these down. You need to…

1) Increase disclosure among trusted friends 

James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” Let me just talk briefly now about the ubiquitous sin of pornography. You know in the past, you had to go looking for sexual sin. You had to go looking for porn, and it was very shameful. You had to be super-secretive about it, because if anyone found out about it, it would be humiliating. Or you had to slink away to some icky bookstore to buy something. But that’s not the case anymore. Porn comes looking for you. Porn comes looking for you, and by the way, so does adultery and other forms of sexual sin. 

And here’s what’s terrifying for me. Here’s what should sober you up about ever clicking on anything that would lead you some place you shouldn’t be. Porn is never an end in itself. It’s always a means to something else. And once you slink down into that rabbit hole, once you open up that portal to Satan’s cesspool, you never know how far it’s going to lead you. Porn is a “gateway drug” to some very twisted stuff. 

So, what do we do about that? What do we do about it? If you’re a man you get some men in your life who love you enough to ask you hard questions about whether or not you are “controlling your body in holiness and honor.” And you have them ask you that question often! And you ask them, because accountability can’t be a one-way street. And you increase disclosure among trusted friends.

If you’re a woman, you get some women in your life who love you enough to ask hard questions about whether or not you are “controlling your body in holiness and honor.” And you have them ask you that question often! And you reciprocate by asking them the same question. That’s what trusted friends do.

By the way, the Bible says, “faithful are the wounds of a friend.” A faithful friend doesn’t flatter you or justify your behavior or rationalize your sins away. There are 10,000 people like that lining up to be your friend. There are psychiatrists out there that will happily rationalize every sinful thing you do, and they’ll charge you $300 an hour to do it. You don’t need friends like that. You need a friend who is willing to ask you the hard questions, and is ready with grace and truth to help you live the life of purity and holiness that God has called us too. And then you can help them to do the same.   

2) Establish effective boundaries 

The Bible says very clearly to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh” (Rom 13:14). By the way, I know this might be a little uncomfortable for us to talk in specifics about this, but I don’t think the road to victory is paved with generalities. And I don’t want to preach platitudes this morning. And I don’t want to just make you feel guilty about this issue, either. That’s actually pretty easy. 

I don’t want you to just feel guilty. What’s your plan? The Bible says, “make no provision for the flesh.” The Bible says, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” (Prov 6:27-28). What’s your plan for not getting scorched, Christian?  

If your struggle is with online pornography, here’s the solution—don’t have any unfiltered internet content. Don’t have any unfiltered internet content. Make it so that only with the password of a third party can anything even partially questionable be viewed on your computer. 

Now let’s say you are clever enough to get around filters, then here’s another solution, probably a better solution—there are services out there, one of them is called Covenant Eyes, that basically tracks all of your internet activity and sends it to your accountability partner. If you’re having trouble with this, go get that software and have all of your internet activity tracked and sent to your accountability partner. If you’re really serious about this, then go get that software and have all of your internet activity tracked and sent to your spouse. How bad do you want victory in this area? How badly do you want to live a life of purity and holiness before the Lord?

I’ll tell you what, there is nothing more precious and more restful than having a clear conscience before the Lord. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt 5:8).       

3) Wage war on wickedness in your heart 

Jesus said, “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander” (Matt 15:19). Long before a man or woman commits adultery, and long before an act of sexual sin is carried out, there was a desire for sin that was cultivated in the heart. I’ll just tell you church, if you can win the battle for sin in your heart, you can win the battle for purity, plain and simple. Nobody wakes up in the bed of a person other than their spouse and says, “How’d did I get here? It just happened! I never saw this coming!” It doesn’t work that way. You consciously and willfully piece-by-piece give yourself away to your sinful desires and that battle starts in the heart. It starts with the lie that God is holding out on you by not giving you that thing that you so desperately desire. James 1:14-15 says, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” 

4) Don’t ever stop fighting for purity 

We need to reject the faulty notion that someday, in this life, “I won’t struggle with this anymore.” We need to demythologize the fiction that someday we’ll ease into our golden years and then finally we can stop fighting. This fight won’t end until you’re dead. 

If you’re single and you think that marriage will solve all your purity problems, you need to forsake that faulty notion. Marriage helps. It does. The Bible even says clearly if you burn with passion, seek marriage (1 Cor 7:9). But marriage doesn’t eliminate the potential for sin. In some ways it makes the potential devastation of sin greater, because now it involves a family. 

Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t achieve victory in this world. We can achieve victory over sexual sin! We can eliminate sexual sin in our lives. But we can’t eliminate temptation. That awaits another day and another life. In the meanwhile, we have to fight! 

I’ll close with this. Winston Churchill said, “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” And they never did. The British nation never capitulated to Hitler. Hitler bombed their cities to smithereens, but they never gave in. They never surrendered.

Later, after Pearl Harbor, our forefathers went over to Europe and they laid it down to stop the spread of Nazism. They came onto the beaches of Normandy and three blocks deep they came off those boats and they laid it down for you and for me, for our freedoms in this country. My dad used to tell me when I was a kid, that if the Americans didn’t get involved in WWII, we’d probably be speaking German today. Those of you who have studied German know how terrifying a prospect that is. But we stopped them. Almost half a million U.S. soldiers died in WWII, but we stopped them. They laid it down so that the freedoms that we enjoy today would be protected and the fanaticism that would kill five million innocent Jews for no reason other than their race, would be stopped in Europe.

My guess is that many of you, men, if your families were threatened, if your wives were threatened, if your freedoms were threatened by an evil as terrifying as Hitler, you wouldn’t hesitate to lay it down for them. You would fight! You would “fight on the beaches, you would fight in the fields and in the streets, you would fight in the hills; you would never surrender.” 

But how many of you men who would just as heroically lay down your life for your children would at the same time cowardly acquiesce to the spiritual forces that are waging war on you and your family right now? Men, we need to fight for purity. Women, too, we need to fight for purity. We need to pick up our weapons, we need to gather our courage, and we need to make war.  

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