Holiness

1 Thessalonians 4:1-4 - Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.  For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.  It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;  that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable…

I love how Paul is so bold…he speaks to these brothers and sisters with love…giving them praise for what they are doing right….and then he warns them to continue to be strong against the sexual immorality that existed in Thessalonica.  He tells them to be sanctified….to control their own bodies so that God would be pleased with them.  He tells them to not be satisfied with just pleasing God with some things...but to seek to please him in …‘more and more’…turning everything over to the power of God.

Our world is really no different today…it is also saturated with sexually explicit material everywhere we turn.  Movies are hard to come by that don’t have some really explicit love scenes…and you only have to scroll through a few channels to find what I consider extremely explicit material. Many advertisements contain scantily clad women…or men.  The library is full of books that contain love stories….pretty graphic…would make more than a few people blush.  Oh ….and let’s not leave out all that wonderful music we listen to today…complete with videos of meagerly clothed men and women.

The key is this process of sanctification.  The power to control our human flesh in all sin is found in the process of setting ourselves apart for God.  Paul did not invent this concept…God introduced it to the Israelites when he gave them the 10 Commandments…he told Moses in Exodus 31:13, “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying , Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep : for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.” Joshua reminded them as they were preparing to cross the Jordan…Joshua used these words in Joshua 3:5…when he spoke to them the night before they crossed the mighty river…  “And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”

Paul uses the next few verses to give us some guidelines to start the process of setting ourselves apart for God’s service….being sexually pure must be important…it is at the top of his list. He also tells us to love each other….lead a quiet life…mind our own business…and work with our hands.  All these are to show others what we think is most important…how we love God and his ways more than the ways of the world. He says we must win the ‘respect’ of outsiders….so that they will be curious…want to know how we have so much strength. So they will want the strength that the Holy Spirit gives us to walk away from these worldly temptations of our flesh. So that we will long to be holy…sanctified through Christ….to do his work.

Paul makes one more point in the chapter that I think is very important…he says in verses  7-8,  “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.  He therefore that despiseth , despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.” God’s gift…the Holy Spirit can only control what we allow it too.  That’s what Paul meant when he said….’more and more’…we need to turn everything over to God’s control…to allow his spirit to give us the strength we need to say no to the fleshy lusts of this world. God wants us to be strong…to realize the power we could have if we set ourselves apart for his service…so that he can do ‘wonders among us’…cause if we are honest…we think we just can’t be ‘Holy’…

Father…I apologize for thinking that I cannot be holy.  Forgive me this morning for living so much in the world that I don’t see the possibilities of my life if I truly set myself apart to you.  I ask you to sanctify me…to show me how to live completely in your world…with strength and power to say no to the temptations of flesh in this world.  Help me to stop and think the next time I watch TV….pick a movie….decide on a book to read…or even decide what music to listen too. Give me clear visions of how I can live a life that will earn the respect of others…full of character and love for others. Amen.