Good morning and welcome in today. Today we’re going to look and study the following Passage.
1 Thess 4:2
Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:
6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.
The Apostle wants us to become pleasing unto God. When we please others we are showing them satisfaction because we are obeying them. To please God, we want to do his will and obey him. Obedience is what shows God how much we love and care for him.
Think about joining the military for just a moment. In basic training you have drill sergeants who yell and scream at you. They’re doing this so you’ll learn to obey what they say. When you obey them and do what they tell you it makes them happy. You are pleasing them by being obedient to them. Somebody wrote me just the other day and told me that tough love is the best love that there is.
Some of us learn things very quickly , but some of us don’t because of a rebellious nature. Some people can be saved with love and tenderness but others need to be saved with fear. It all depends on the willingness of the heart of the person to obey.
There are some teachers in the school system who are very mellow and easy going, but there are others who are very strict. I think it results in the kind of household that were they were brought up in and certain convictions that their family had. Somebody who is strict is demanding that certain rules are obeyed and observed. They demand obedience. These kinds of things happen in the military every morning when they get up. Learning to obey is a great thing. If you simply obey and do as you are told who is he that’s going to harm you? In the military those who are disobedient and rebellious get thrown in The stockade or the brig and are punished.
I’ve said it many times before but the church is a spiritual reform school. Each of us are changing our ways and becoming what Christ wants us to become.
There are many people in the military who are very strict, but they are the first person who would lay down their own life for your neck! One person that the Lord Jesus Christ commended for having great faith was a military man
The Apostle Paul had very strong letters that he wrote to the church. It came across very strict. But yet when he was with the people, he was very lowly and meek in person. He instructed one of his ministers to rebuke the church sharply so that they would be sound in the faith.
There’s a time and a place in the church to be strict. It happens when people are rebelling against the truth. Rebukes and corrections have to happen to turn people people from the error of their way. They happen so that we can become pleasing unto God.
The scriptures teach that the older men were supposed to be grave. The word grave means very serious.
I remember as a child going over to see certain relatives and they would tell all of us children to sit down and behave ourselves. They would tell us to sit down and be quiet and then they would bring us our dinner. This continued even in school when I had a teacher who told us to sit quietly and put our hands in our lap. They wanted us to quietly read our lesson with no talking at all. Even at a young age, I was exposed to obedience and taught to respect authority. A lot has changed… and it will continually get worse. Love for those who are in authority is ultimately showed through obedience.
1 John 3:22 – And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
Hebrews 13:16 – But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
God enjoys when we talk with Him in our prayer life. It really pleases him when we do good nice things towards others in our communities. In the end it all comes down to doing the will of yourself or doing the will of somebody else. You can choose to do the will of man or the will of God. For 20 years I’ve always taught that obedience shows your love for others.
John 14:15 – If ye love me, keep my commandments.
Luke 6:46 – And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?
John 14:21 – He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
The requirement of us to love God are keeping commandments. This is where a lot of people who profess Christianity come up short. If you truly love God you will do what He asks you to do. When you do what He says, we show Him that we love him very much.
We know that God loves and cares for us, just as a parent cares for a rebellious child. That doesn’t mean that somebody’s going to inherit eternal life someday. The Bible clearly teaches that those who don’t love the Lord are going to be cast away from his presence at judgement day. God gives us an earth to enjoy. Food, water, trees and beautiful things to look at. That is only half of the equation. In order to obtain eternal life we need to love him back.
In a marriage love is not supposed to be one-sided. One person wants to be with the other but the other doesn’t want to be with them. God loves and cares for us and we want to learn to obey him and return his love back to him. It’s kind of like a boomerang. God sends out a boomerang of love to us. We need to return it back to him to show him we truly care for him. That is salvation. The reason why I say that is because he that loveth not the Lord let him be anathema which means they will be cursed. Love for the Lord Jesus is determinant on keeping his Commandments. It’s determined on wanting to do his will.
2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
Your vessel is the human body. If you abstain from anything it means you restrain yourself from doing something or enjoying something. It’s a practice of self-denial. God wants us to abstain from fornication. This word appears a few times in the New Testament and most of the verses are in regard to fornication.
Fornication includes all kinds of cohabitation outside of marriage.
That includes people we’re living together because there is more than just friendship there but a sexual relationship. Those kinds of things result in premarital sex and all kinds of other issues. God has provided a bed in a marriage as a way to avoid sinning. The bed is undefiled. What people do in the bedroom is a private matter between the two of them and completely undefiled. God has provided the bedroom as a way to keep away from fornication. Sexual relationships are acceptable with God within a bedroom.
Fornication is having sexual relationships with somebody outside of a marriage or committing adultery. Adultery is having sexual intercourse with somebody other than your spouse. That is why a husband or wife is not supposed to deny one another in a marriage. What you are doing is defrauding each other. God is going to punish that. That is the main point of a marriage is to provide and take care of each other’s needs in the bedroom. To deny a spouse of that is wicked. It is a sin against your spouse and also Christ.
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:
Concupiscence is an overwhelming sexual desire or an appetite. That is one of the reasons why God has provided us with with marriage, to help us overcome those desires. Remember that the bed is undefiled.
A lot of the animals in the world have relationships with each other and then go their separate ways. Marriage was created by God. It’s different than the animals. He created marriage so that you could be faithful to the same person for your entire life and raise children together. That truly is the function of marriage. Out in the world people decide that they aren’t going to get married and sleep around with others. Marriage is about learning to settle down with one person and being faithful and loyal to them.
6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.
Most of the passage we talked about today has to do with sexuality. The sexuality we are speaking of has to do with marriage and the bedroom.
1 Cor 7:5
5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
You are not supposed to defraud your spouse of sexuality in the bedroom. The Apostle uses the word defraud. Defraud means that you take something away from you or what belongs to you. It’s basically theft orstealing. It means to take something illegally from somebody else. It also means to prevent somebody from having something that is legally theirs.
Defraud means to deprive something that is rightfully yours. In a marriage your spouse becomes your property. To separate or to deprive each other of some sort of relationship in the bedroom is to defraud your spouse. God will avenge that otherwise His Word wouldn’t be true. This entire passage has to do with abstaining from fornication and not getting involved with concupiscence. It also has to do with not to do with defrauding others. Defrauding has to do with taking something that is not rightfully yours. Each of us want to learn to become pleasing to God but it happens through obedience to Him and faithfulness to the things that he taught.
Think about those things for today and Lord willing we will talk to you some more tomorrow. Till then, bye-bye everybody.
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 