I’ve entitled this message A Passion for Sexual Purity… A Passion for Sexual Purity. Some of these subjects might be a bit hot, I suppose when we’re talking about the whole subject of sex and purity, you… you don’t normally think about. Oh… I’m gonna hear this from the pulpit. Yes, God also addresses the matter of society at large embraces an immoral sexual promiscuous view that embraces principles like… and these are some of those that you find in society. People are inherently good and therefore sexual immorality must be tolerated, like consensual sex or, since sexual actions or biological it should be engaged in without moral restrictions. All casual sex is another form of fun and pleasure and should be enjoyed recreationally with the consenting part. or fulfilling your sexual desires are more important than a meaningful personal relationship…. or instant gratification is more important than delayed satisfaction…. or sex is the most important thing, and a good marriage relationship, which means every romantic relationship should include sex. I recently also saw on the Internet what is called the Pleasure Project that gives you principles guiding you towards a journey of embracing a sex positive pleasure-based attitude towards sexual health and they these principles included things like, first principle – be positive. And what they say is the possible the possibility of having pleasurable, safe sex free of discrimination, coercion and violence is a fundamental part of sexual health and well-being for all. In other words, what they’re talking about here is discrimination. They most probably referring to your Christian standing up and saying, hey, you know God’s wits is… is not right. Or rights first, second principle. Sexual pleasure is a fundamental part of sexual rights as a matter of human rights. Well, thirdly, think universal access to sources of sexual pleasure is a part of human experience and subjective well-being. The 4th principle is adopt evidence-based pleasure, inclusive language and imagery across your media and mediums. In other words, use… use that inclusive language or the fifth point be flexible. Sexual pleasure includes the possibility of diverse sexual experiences. Sex talk, sexy sexual pleasures, shall be integrated into education, health promotion, and service delivery, research and advocacy in all parts of the world. On the 7th point is love yourself. Well, the programmatic inclusion of sexual pleasure to meet individuals needs aspirations and realities. Contribute to a global health and sustainable development, and it should require comprehensive, immediate, and sustainable actions. It’s scary when you read these kinds of things. That’s our society at large, when we see how far we have fallen away from God’s principles and God’s design for sexual purity, and I think our sermon today and next week, and… and maybe the following week is going to be revealing what God has to say about sexual purity versus the world’s views. And so, this isn’t just a one-sermon. There’s a couple of sermons here. I thought I’ll slow down this machine that just… goes on. And we’re going to park a little bit on this and then we’ll carry on as we delve into this.

Some history, historical background concerning Thessaloniki…, this is the culture that Paul was ministering in. And in fact, there were an extremely sexually perverse culture, even more than our modern-day western culture! Which is some, you know, we have the benefit of Christianity restraining the modern-day culture. Thessaloniki was a city full of fornication, adultery, homosexuality, pedophilia, transvestism in a men dressing as women and a variety of pornographic and erotic perversions. There was no restraint in that society. Pagan Greek society had no civil laws prohibiting immoral behaviour. Now what’s interesting, is Apollodorus, provides you kind of with the cultural perspective behind the term sexual immorality. One of the commentaries in New International Dictionary says this is what was happening in those times.

For this is what living with the woman as one’s wife means in that culture. To have children by her and to introduce the sons to the members of the clan and of the Demi, which is the local population and to betroth the daughters to husbands as one’s own. Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons. But wives to bear our legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our household.

That was the perspective that was happening in that time period. And so essentially, sexual immorality was ingrained into the… the Greek and the Roman culture, which was in Thessaloniki. Adding to that the many mystery religions that promoted ritual prostitution, Sexually engaging with the temple prostitute meant you were in communion with the deity of that prostitute and… and Corinth. The temple of Aphrodite and Corinth had more than 1000 priestesses who were basically temple prostitutes. And so, people did not consider these practices illegal or immoral, but actually condoned them. And so, when Paul and Silas and Timothy comes… he’s fundamentally rescuing people out of an extremely perverse pornographic society. And that’s what’s actually happening here. And we don’t recognize all of that reality behind that. Now, many of the converts that Paul and Silas were ministering to would have had their own mistresses. Many of the women would have been involved in Hillary or… or prostitute. And so that’s kind of the background that he’s ministering to them. And remember, Paul only had three weeks with them and so he’s… he…, You may recall that he was saying, hey, I need to teach you some of the things, some of the things that you were lacking, and I needed to send this kind of instruction to you. And so that’s part of some of the instructions they’ll be getting now from Paul as he writes back to them. He begins to also address this particular area.