Sense and sensuality or, perhaps more rightly, good sense about sensuality, is in very short supply today. It is something our modern culture really needs – and conversely, really lacks. Trouble is, there are very few sources anymore where good sense about sensuality can be found. And there are fewer such places every year.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources reports that more than 17,000 deer die each year after being struck by motorists on state highways. According to Paul Shelton, state wildlife director, the peak season for road kills is in late fall. Why? It isn’t hard to figure out. The bucks are in rut in November. "They're concentrating almost exclusively on reproductive activities," Shelton said, "and are a lot less wary than they normally would be."(1)

Deer aren't the only ones destroyed by preoccupation with "reproductive activities."

Suppose you can guess how much money the U.S. State Department set aside to purchase condoms for our troops deployed in Haiti? According to Focus on the Family, the figure was $200,000.(2) I guess it goes without mentioning that spouses do not accompany our troops on such deployments.

I watched the Biography Channel’s account of the life of actress Jane Seymour last week. The four times married(3) starlet of the CBS made-for-television series Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman was describing her short-lived first marriage to Michael Attenborough, son of famed British director Sir Richard Attenborough. I don’t have an exact quote because I did not write it down, but her explanation for the failure of the marriage was that they were both very young and that, back in those days, sex before marriage was frowned upon. She went on to explain and imply, without the slightest change of expression, that had it not been for the backwardness of that kind of morality, the couple could have just lived together for awhile and discovered that they were not compatible. Thus they could have avoided the messiness of a divorce.

I agree with the assessment of our times by William V. Shannon in the Tampa Tribune-Times. He wrote: "Many of our adolescents and young adults cannot ‘just say no’ …because their whole approach to life has been shaped by television, the land where ‘no’ does not exist."(4)

Indeed, the word "no" doesn’t exist in the lives of many today when it comes to issues of sensuality. 21^st century people are living out the old ‘70s dictum, "If it feels good, do it" in ever greater numbers today with ever greater and more destructive consequences. But you’d better not point it out to them. God forbid that anyone would have the nerve to question the validity of such so-called "freedom." Oh no! You can’t do that!

Never mind the sorry divorce rate, they say. It’s inevitable. Just declare marriage "backward" and "obsolete" or, at the very least, "reversible." And declare multiple sex partners as "healthy" and "liberating." Never mind the broken homes and children without fathers and sometimes without mothers. Kids are resilient. They bounce back with no lasting affects. (Not!) Never mind the A.I.D.S. epidemic. Just practice "safe sex." (Yeah, right. Safe. That’s why it’s an epidemic. Now I understand.) Very soon medical breakthroughs will deliver us, anyway. Or so goes the thinking. Just give it a little more time. Besides, everybody has the right to be happy, even if it means turning their backs on anything and everything that makes sense.

And speaking of making sense, or more accurately, not making sense in the area of unbridled sensuality, have you heard some of the latest news coming from the so-called "gay community?" It seems that quite a number of homosexual men are now trying to get HIV.(5) You heard me right. They’re trying to become infected with this deadly disease. "Bug Chasers" they’re called inside the "community." And their benefactors are affectionately called "Gift Givers." According to the Center for Disease Control, this twisted sensual desire is responsible for a new surge in HIV incidence among homosexual men. Yeah, I know. You’re wondering why someone would entertain such a death wish and actively seek to contract a deadly disease? So am I. If you would like to learn more about it, see me afterward and I’ll let you read the article that was the source of my information.

I’m calling my message this morning Sense and Sensuality. Sense and sensuality or, perhaps more rightly, good sense about sensuality, is in very short supply today. It is something our modern culture really needs – and conversely, really lacks. Trouble is, there are very few sources anymore where good sense about sensuality can be found. And there are fewer such places every year.

There is one reliable source of very good sense in this area, however – a source that is guaranteed to never pass away.(6) I refer to the Bible, the Word of God.

Against a flood of thinking and acting to the contrary, this old and reliable book has so much to say that makes good sense – too much, in fact, for any single sermon. Before I’m finished with this topic I’ll probably end up with a short series. For this morning’s message we’ll begin in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. Please join me there in your Bibles and follow along.

Four points from this passage will give us a good start in understanding God’s mind in the area of sensuality. We’ll consider God’s Standard, God’s Means, God’s Reason, and God’s Warning. The point from this passage then is:

Paul said that God’s will for the Thessalonians (and consequently, His will for us) is sanctification. That word means "purity." It is translated elsewhere, "holiness." Holiness is separation from everything that is sin.

Most cities have public works departments that regulate water quality. These agencies dictate standards of purity for our water by designating how many parts-per-million of various pollutants are acceptable in our drinking water, based on what our bodies can tolerate. While it may be tolerable, our drinking water is seldom pure. God’s standard of purity for our sexuality however, allows no parts-per-million of impurity. Sanctification, in the area of sensuality, means just that. It means that we admit nothing that God says is impure. That’s why the standard is total abstinence from sexual relations except in marriage.

By way of clarification, sex is good and proper when engaged in within the bounds of marriage. It becomes sexual immorality when it ranges outside these God prescribed bounds. Any sexual activity that deviates from the monogamous relationship between a husband and a wife is immoral by God's standard. That is the behavior from which we must abstain.

But oh, how so many people hate that word "abstinence." Just bring it up sometime at your school’s PTC meeting and see how popular you are.

But guess what? The word "abstinence" is God’s word. "For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality…"

"But you can’t just impose such strict standards on a sex saturated culture like ours and expect people to give it any attention," someone says.

Actually, you can. In the day these words in our text were written, the Thessalonians we living in the midst of even more sexual immorality than we see around us. The Greco-Roman culture was awash in it. And they had not had the advantage of several centuries of the influence of Christianity as we have. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, transvestitism, pornography, it was all there. There was no sense of public morality to even slow it down. Apparently there were no civil laws to prohibit such things.

Yet to the Thessalonians, God said, "abstain."

Folks, I know that it is very difficult for us to affect public morals in a day when the tide of unbridled sensuality has crept so high all around us. But for us, the church, we simply must maintain this standard even if the world fully rejects it. As Paul said in Ephesians 5:3, "Do not let immorality or any impurity… even be named among you…."

"But," someone asks, "how can we keep such a standard? How can we say ‘no’ to a biological urge that is so strong?" As one man said to me one time, "If God didn’t want me to do it, why did he make me this way?"

I answered that one. I said, "Well, God made most of us so that we like things that are sweet to the taste. You like candy and cake don’t you? Sure. If you were very hungry (something God put in you) and I brought in a whole plate of glazed donuts but told you that they were laced with cyanide, would you eat them or would you control yourself? Would your excuse that God made you to like sweets make eating the donuts a good thing? Would it somehow take away the affect of the poison?"

Actually, indulging in unrestrained sexual immorality doesn’t take away the desire. It only makes it worse.

Craig Larson writes, "As a kid, I saw a movie in which some shipwrecked men are left drifting aimlessly on the ocean in a lifeboat. As the days pass under the scorching sun, their rations of food and fresh water give out. The men grow deliriously thirsty. One night, while the others are asleep, one man ignores all previous warnings and gulps down some salt water. He quickly dies. Ocean water contains seven times more salt than the human body can safely ingest. Drinking it, a person dehydrates because the kidneys demand extra water to flush the overload of salt. The more salt water someone drinks, the thirstier he gets. He actually dies of thirst. When we lust, we become like this man. We thirst desperately for something that looks like what we want. We don't realize, however, that it is precisely the opposite of what we really need. In fact, it can kill us."(7)

Sometimes saying "no" to our desire is what we need to do to survive. That issue is next addressed in our text. I’ve called it:

Paul says, "…that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God…."

Commentators and even translators are not in full agreement on the meaning of this passage. The confusion centers around that little word "vessel." Some believe it is a metaphor that refers to our physical body. Paul used it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:7 when he said, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels…." He was referring there to the precious gospel carried about in a human body. If that is the proper view, then the verse means, as the NIV translates it: "…that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable…."

Others view this word "vessel" in our text as a reference to a wife. Peter used the word that way in 1 Peter 3:7 when he spoke of husbands living with their wives as a "weaker vessel." If that is the meaning, then what this verse means is as the RSV translates it: "… that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor…."

I haven’t time this morning to do justice to resolving the issue of which is right - that is if I care at all for those of you ladies who might have left a pot roast cooking in your ovens, figuring to get back home in time to prevent a domestic burnt offering. I do lean toward the idea that Paul was talking about learning to control our bodily desires.

The fact is though, that either meaning helps us understand how we are to deal with this issue.

If the meaning is as the NIV translates it: "…that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable…"then what we have here is a call to learn self-control. That is certainly relevant in a culture like ours today because many have given up on the whole idea of self-control. In some minds, in the face of any kind of negative pressure, the only thing to do is yield. That is the only approach that they know. That is the whole point of the "just say no" campaign of a few years ago. The slogan was meant to convey the idea that you have an alternative to dangerous behavior. You have the power to "just say no" to the pressure of the moment so that you don’t have to suffer much more later.

Of course, saying "no" to a body that is unaccustomed to being restrained is not as easy as it sounds. That is why self-control must be learned. We learn such things by making up our minds and then by practicing them. In the case of self-control, we have an added benefit in that it is one of the items listed among the fruit of the Spirit,(8) which means we have God’s help in controlling ourselves when we yield to His will.

If the meaning of our text is as the RSV translates it, that is: "…that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor," then we have a clear reference to God’s alternative to sexual immorality, which is marriage. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:2, "…because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband." Again, this is very relevant today. More and more people are choosing to remain single so that they won’t be hampered in their promiscuity. From God’s perspective, this is not a reason to stay single. A fornicator won’t escape the judgment of God any more than an adulterer. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators… nor adulterers… shall inherit the kingdom of God." Clearly, as Paul also said in 1 Corinthians 7:9, "…if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn [with passion]."

Of course, self-control is still needed, even in marriage, as we must continue in faithfulness to our mates for life. Marriage does not fully remove temptation. Thus, the idea of learning self-control is still important.

But why is God so strict? Does He just want to ruin our fun? Is this command to abstain from sexual immorality arbitrary or are there some good reasons for it?

That’s what we see next in our text:

Paul said in our text: "… that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter…."

I assume by "the matter," Paul is referring to the whole issue of sexual immorality. Sexual immorality always defrauds someone. Fornication, even among so-called "consenting adults" defrauds any children who are conceived, whether they end up aborted or born into the many difficulties of single parent homes. It also defrauds all of us as we are forced to bear the cost of sexually transmitted disease through taxes and higher insurance premiums. Adultery defrauds the faithful mate. Pedophilia defrauds innocent children. Homosexuality defrauds the natural order of things and also those infected by disease. Pornography defrauds the many women who are exploited in order to produce it.

There is no such thing as "victimless" sexual immorality.

Of course, one who commits sexual immorality also defrauds himself (or herself). Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 6:18: "…the immoral man sins against his own body." But self-abuse isn’t what is in view in our text so I’ll restrain myself from that thread of concern. Paul is warning about defrauding another person, "a brother," he says. Whether the sexually immoral act ruins someone’s marriage, ruins the life or home of innocent children, or ruins many lives by spreading sexually transmitted disease, someone besides the perpetrator always gets hurt. And I haven’t even mentioned the dire eternal consequences that accumulate from the acts of the sexually immoral person. To use the excuse that it doesn’t hurt anyone is the devil’s lie. It always hurts someone.

But so what? Everybody’s doing it. How will a single act in such a sea of acts ever possibly be brought into question? Who has the means to hold so many people accountable?

That brings us to the fourth point of this passage:

Looking again to our text, Paul continues, "…and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you."

Paul warned the Thessalonians (as he warns us today) of God’s vengeance against such things.

"But no one is concerned about the vengeance of God anymore are they? Come on! Don’t start that ‘hell-fire and brimstone’ stuff on me. Nobody believes that anymore."

God’s vengeance does not stand or fall on the basis of how many people believe in it. Only eight people in the entire world believed Noah’s warnings about the flood, but that didn’t stop the rain. It did make believers out of all of them, but it was too late.

Do you want to know how strongly God feels about a person "defrauding" his brother through sexual immorality? Suppose the "brother" who is defrauded has a child whose life is messed up in the wake of the sin. That child can hardly speak up for himself. But God speaks up for him. Listen to Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:6: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea."

I cannot begin to imagine the number of children whose lives have been messed up because of their parent’s immorality, but I do know this: Such persons, unless they repentant and are forgiven, will someday consider drowning in the sea to be a far better penalty than what they will actually receive.

So what could be worse than drowning? Listen to God’s words as recorded by John in Rev 21:8:

I will close this message by re-reading our text. Perhaps now we will understand it better than when we started…

If you are off course in this area of your life, now is the time to come to grips with it. Now is the time to realize that it is a serious issue. Now is the time to repent and turn back to God.

If you are not a Christian, may I say that God will provide forgiveness and security for you against ultimate condemnation if you will turn to Him. You do that by acknowledging your faith in Him though His Son, Jesus. You make up your mind to turn away from those things that He calls sin. You submit to being "baptized into Christ"(9) in order that your sins may be forgiven. We can help you with these things whenever you are ready.

Footnotes: (Use your "Back" button to return to your place)

1. Greg Asimakoupoulos, Naperville, Illinois, Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 1.
2. The Pastor's Weekly Briefing (Focus on the Family), 10/210/94. "To Verify," Leadership.
3. http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=24534
4. William V. Shannon in the Tampa Tribune-Times (May 8, 1988). Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 12. Shannon’s statement referred to drugs, but it is equally true when it comes to illicit sex.
5. A Rite of Passage: Choosing to Be Exposed. http://aids.about.com/library/weekly/aa070401a.htm
6. Matthew 24:35
7. Craig Brian Larson
8. Galatians 5:21-22
9. Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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